Fay Grim: Grade A

A

Fay Grim (2006)

Parker Posey, Jeff Goldblum, James Urbaniak, Thomas Jay Ryan. Writer-Director: Hal Hartley.

This is ostensibly a sequel to Hartley’s 1997 Henry Fool, but it is not necessary to have seen the earlier film. This one stands as a brilliant parody of international espionage thrillers, not the chase-and-explosion James Bond type, but the tricky, intellectual ones, like Syriana, The Good Shepherd, Bourne Identity, Manchurian Candidate, and the Le Carre thrillers like Tailor of Panama and Constant Gardener. Posey is an ordinary, single, suburban mom until CIA agent Goldblum tells her that her missing husband (Ryan) is not really dead, but a rogue, ex-CIA terrorist on the lam. The CIA needs his prison notebooks, which supposedly encode embarrassing state secrets, if not specifications for nuclear weapons. She agrees to help in exchange for releasing her poet brother (Urbaniak) from jail. International travel, assassins, double-crosses, murders and secret handoffs follow, but the send-up is subtle and ironic. There are a few goofy slapstick bits but this is no Austin Powers. Each scene is so well directed, acted, scripted and photographed, it is completely absorbing and believable, even if, after it is over, you realize it doesn’t make any sense (as is often the case in spy movies). There is real “spy” tension in each scene, even when characters say things that upon a moment’s reflection, are obviously self-parodies, allusions to other films, or self-referential jokes. Even the music is funny. I loved every minute of this movie’s 2.5 hours and never wanted it to end. On a larger view, the film satirizes Americans’ ignorance of world affairs, the chaos of post-cold war international relations, and the self-serving cynicism of intergovernmental espionage. There is an implied yearning for the “Spy Who Came In From The Cold” era. Goldblum says with furrowed brow, “Yes, I think Fay has gone over to the other side.” Her young son (Liam Aiken) asks pointedly, “The other side of what?” I haven’t seen Henry Fool, but I will, even though Fay Grim is a perfect multilayered comedy on its own.

The Dead Girl: Grade A

A

The Dead Girl

Toni Collette, Piper Laurie, Giovanni Ribisi, Rose Byrn, Mary Steenburgen, Marcia Gay Harden, Mary Beth Hurt, Kerry Washington. Writer-Director: Karen Moncrieff

A dead girl is found in a pasture. Five scenarios ensue showing the ripple effects into other people’s lives. All feature some kind of sub-psychotic mental disorder: clinical depression, substance abuse, psychopathy, and various severe personality disorders. It is interesting that on the DVD extras, the interviewed actors “explain” their characters as being tested by hard life and tough breaks but nobody, including the director, mentions mental abnormality. It’s hard to believe that is such a blind spot. Without that theme, there would be no movie because healthy people do not act like this. But as a writer/director’s gimmick, it justifies surreal acting. Kerry Washington as a hooker is astonishing. Newcomer Rose Byrne is completely absorbing. Toni Collette is so good she gives you the creeps. Marcia Gay is wonderful. Photography and directing are outstanding, especially a favorite fixed camera shot into one room from another room. I don’t know how the depth of field is controlled on those. Moncrieff has done mostly TV shows and that probably accounts for the episodic nature of the story, but the overall theme does unfold in an organic way. Only the mistaken identity of the girl in the morgue rings a false note. If you love good acting, this is the one.

The Good German: Grade D

D

The Good German (2006)

George Clooney, Cate Blanchett, Toby Maguire. Director Steven Soderbergh

Photography is the star of this black-and-white movie set in 1945 Berlin and Potsdam. Clooney is a reporter who “accidentally” encounters his German mistress from years ago (Blanchett). She does a skulking lady of mystery, acting well, but with no character to act around. Her husband, a proxy for Werner von Braun, is dead and now she hangs out with a young American GI (Maguire), hoping to find her way out of Germany. She puts off Clooney’s interest, if it interest is not too strong a word. They show no hint of former or current passion. It’s a clunker of a relationship. Maguire is horribly miscast, his manufactured and anachronistic effervescence grating on the nerves. The role needed a sly and sophisticated wheeler-dealer like James Garner in The Great Escape, or even a dark Peter Lorre type, and someone closer in age to Blanchett’s character. Clooney brings nothing but stone-faced mug shots to the role. The evil Russian is the only standout actor. The plot is not well-told and generates no tension. The only thing keeping your eyes on the screen is the photography, high-contrast, side-lit and bottom-lit stuff as from an old Bogart movie, well-shot and well-composed. The ending is a lame allusion to Casablanca. But even the photography loses its way at times, with bright light coming from the center of someone’s desk so their face can be lit from below. Still, the movie is worth watching with the sound off, just to appreciate the pictures.

Little Children: Grade A

A

Little Children (2006)

Kate Winslet, Jennifer Connelly, Patrick Wilson. Director & co-writer: Todd Field

In this extremely well-written movie, Winslet is an unhappily married, affluent suburbanite who takes her toddler to the park and mingles with stereotypical suburban moms and their young children. The anthropological satire is biting, highlighted by voice-over from that deep-voiced guy who narrates PBS documentaries like Frontline. But it's a one-off joke, a result of having two writers. This is not really a comedy. Stay-at-home dad Wilson appears in the park with his toddler and he and Winslet strike up a conversation leading to a passionate adulterous relationship. She justifies her own behavior in a reading group discussing Madame Bovary. She describes Bovary as refusing to settle for a life of unhappiness regardless of circumstances or consequences. Wilson is a simple minded jock who cannot pass the bar exam, and is alienated from his beautiful, intelligent, high-achieving wife, Connelly. The adulterers would risk their lives, social status, families – everything – just to have sex on the washing machine or in the attic. What sense does that make? Sexual desire overcomes reason and responsibility. Meanwhile, there is a sexual predator living in the neighborhood, generating remarks among the characters about what should be done to him. The predator’s urges do not make sense either, but at least he knows he is slave to them, a self-awareness the other characters lack. We almost feel sympathetic toward the adulterers until we (led by Winslet) suddenly see how selfish and blind they have been. The ending is rushed, leaving us on our own to consider the meaning of what happens. The acting is riveting and whoever did the casting should get an award. Winslet confronts the camera honestly, without makeup in some scenes. Costumes, sets, and dialogs are perfect. This is an unblinking look at adult psychological development.

.45: Grade B

B

.45 (2006)

Milla Jovovich, Angus Macfadyen, Sarah Strange, Aisha Tyler. Writer-Director: Gary Lennon

Jovovich looks as good as she did as God in “The Fifth Element,” and shows acting talent too. She is the battered girlfriend of sociopathic hoodlum “Big Al” (Macfadyen). Her social worker (Tyler) tries to convince her to move out, get a restraining order, etc., and Jovovich considers it, not because Al treats her like dirt and beats her senseless, but because he cut her hair. That’s going too far! It’s a revealing moment typical of the insightful script. Although the topic is dark and the scenes gritty, there is enough humor, surprise, and compassion to prevent it being a downer. There is something wrong with the directing though. Maybe it’s when secondary characters talk to the camera. They perform well and say interesting things, but they sound like actors rehearsing lines instead of characters. Even the main characters are often caught standing with hands at sides, at a loss for how to behave. The weak directing and slightly muddled ending detract from an otherwise fine film.

Deja Vu: Grade C

Déjà vu (2006)

Denzel Washington, Paula Patten. Director Tony Scott

Time travel movies are fundamentally sterile because of the familiar paradox: if you change the past, its future will not unfold as before, so you will not be in a position to change the past. Nonsense is thus guaranteed. Denzel is an ATF agent working with government technologists who have discovered how to use spacetime wormholes to see the past on a huge video screen. They are searching 4 days in the past for a crazy bad guy who blew up a New Orleans car ferry for no obvious reason. They identify him and arrest him (in the present tense, after the tragedy). But Washington wants to go into the past to save the life of one particular woman. Why? Because she’s cute. The plot does not quite hold water. Unlike Memento, to which it alludes, the logic is not tight. The romance has no basis either. The ATF voyeurs watch the girl in her home, tapping into our webcam consciousness, but of course she knows nothing of her watchers. The gee-whiz technology is well-done (reminiscent of 1998’s “Enemy of the State”), calling out our paranoia about NSA snooping. Denzel is highly watchable, but overall this is a quickly forgettable picture.

Code Name: The Cleaner: Grade C

C

Code Name: The Cleaner (2007)

Cedric the Entertainer, Lucy Liu. Dir=Les Mayfield

This one must have caught me in a silly mood, because I enjoyed it, even though it is ridiculous. Cedric is a building janitor but he wakes up next to a dead body and a briefcase full of money, and with amnesia. He decides he must be a secret agent. Predictably, bad guys pursue him, but it’s not the money they want, no, it's a computer chip holding a video game, which actually disguises plans for a WMD. I said it was silly. He befriends waitress Liu, who is not who she appears to be (A waitress with a Saab should have been a tip off). A great moment was Liu affecting a disbelieving black woman’s attitude as Cedric tries to explain his involvement with another woman. An irrelevant, crazy song and dance routine was also good fun. Most of the humor stays close to bump-the-head slapstick and obvious gags, but there is some subtlety. Filmed partly in Seattle made it fun for me, also. Liu’s infectious giggle in the DVD extras is charming. I don’t think we have seen all she has to offer.

Moonlight: Grade B

B

Moonlight (2002)

Laurien Van den Broeck, Hunter Bussemaker Director Paula van der Oest. (Netherlands, mostly in English, no subtitles).

This older film just popped up at my video store, or maybe I just happened to find it. A young Middle-Eastern boy is a drug mule in The Netherlands. The bad guys shoot him and leave him for dead (for no obvious reason), but he survives and finds his way to a wooden shed, where the young girl (Van den Broeck), discovers him bleeding to death and tends him back to relative health, without telling her fabulously wealthy parents. These kids are portrayed as about 10 years old. The children communicate mostly by gesture, signs, charades, and intuition. In fact there is remarkably little dialog in this movie and it would have been a fine achievement to do the whole thing without any. The bad guys pursue the boy, so the two kids run away (it is not clear why she does not just tell her parents). They hitchhike, stowaway in a truck and end up in a city in Belgium. The scenery and photography are good. But then the charming buddy movie collapses. The kids spontaneously start smoking, drinking, snorting cocaine, and having sex. It could happen, I guess, but that’s not the movie I was watching for the first hour. The ending is contrived and predictable, but overall, the European sensibility, the economy of dialog, and good acting by the girl, make this watchable.

Alpha Dog: Grade A

A

Alpha Dog (2006)

Justin Timberlake, Ben Foster, Emile Hirsch, Shawn Hatosy, Anton Yelchin, Sharon Stone, Bruce Willis. Writer, Director: Nick Cassavetes.

A gang of mostly white, young, drug-dealing hoodlums in LA go about their low-life activities, talking trash, strutting macho, objectifying decorative females, drinking beer (Heineken only in this movie), smoking tobacco and weed. It’s a depressing start, watching a bunch of dim bulbs.

But the pace quickens as we find that a couple of characters owe money to Hirsch, the gangleader-Godfather (looking and acting a bit like DiCaprio) who lords it over them. He’s got perfect gangleader moves, expressions, and psychopathic smiles. Foster, one of the debtors, ignites the screen with his intense performance. He sizzles like Ben Kingsley did in Sexy Beast. Genuinely scary. His little brother (Yelchin) is kidnapped as debt leverage, and Timberlake becomes his minder. Timberlake’s acting is subtle and nuanced, a revelation.

And speaking of revelations: Sharon Stone as the kidnapped boy’s mother. Where has that performance been all her career? Unbelievable. There is a lot of outstanding acting in this movie: stars of tomorrow. The directing is hard to describe, but the result feels real, human, and intimate, not cartoony like so many gangster movies. The influence of the Godfather and Goodfellas is evident, but these gangsters are scary because they haven’t got a clue. Their wealthy, self-obsessed, absent parents render a subtle social commentary. Some split screen shots showing different camera angles add interest, but I didn’t understand what they meant. This movie was a real surprise. It will be a classic.

10 Items or Less: Grade B

B

10 Items or Less (2006)

Morgan Freeman, Paz Vega. Writer, director Brad Silberling.

Freeman plays Morgan Freeman, a fading movie star researching a role by observing a neighborhood grocery store in a small southern California town. (Details like flaking green paint cue squalor, with no cars in the lot and few customers, but the spacious, well-lighted store has an enormous inventory. Odd). Freeman meets checkout clerk Vega, from whom he bums a ride home, but then decides to help her get ready for an interview for an office job. They have several innocuous adventures. The light comedy arises from mild cultural differences and Freeman’s fish-out-of-water disorientation as he sees the life of a working class Latina through the eyes of a movie actor. More of that could have produced a strong satire rather than a weak buddy movie. Vega is not as striking as Penelope Cruz, which will help her avoid stereotypy, but she is good looking, her Spanish accent just as charming, and her acting outstanding. A rising star, I would say. Freeman’s character is undeveloped, making him goofy, not really engaged in the relationship. Vega goes through a mild character change, winning self confidence and determination to succeed. Freeman is untouched by anything. Dramatic tension, such as it is, comes from tiny banalities (Is the shirt the right color or not? Omigod!). Music is good: Mexican Hip-hop and Paul Simon. Vega is the big draw, and the humor makes this modest slice of life watchable. DVD extras on “the making of” are informative.

Does God Exist?: Grade B

B

Does God Exist?

Writer, director, producer, editor, cinematographer: Antoine Douchet. Actors Keith Eyles and John Rakham.

This zero-budget independent will be hard to find, but is worth looking for. It is shot in hand held video so although we don’t see him, we have the point of view of Victor, a French police officer documenting a serial killer investigation in England. The shaky picture can get tiring, but is generally well used and gives the tone of a reality show like “Cops.” The serial killer, who calls himself God, also carries a hand-held, so we look down the gun barrel as he pops at least a dozen people. There are allusions to “The Terminator” movies and some amusing penis acting you don’t see very often. The plentiful humor in this movie has the sensibility of a college student, so it surprising to learn that Douchet is 40 years old. The whole thing seems like a film school project, but rather than characterize it as amateurish, I would call it “ultra-new wave.” It breaks so many moviemaking traditions, I think it could define a future direction. Worth seeing.

The Queen: Grade C

C

The Queen (2006)

Helen Mirren, Michael Sheen. Director Stephan Frears.

Princess Diana died in a car crash in 1997, and this is the story of how the queen failed to respond immediately to the public outpouring of grief, and of how new prime minister Blair cajoled her into finally making a public statement. Archival news footage shows Princess Di in public appearances, to tug at your nostalgic heart strings, if any. Mirren does Lizzy II down to the waddle, but it is more than a fine impersonation. She brings real complexity to the role and her Oscar is well deserved. Costumes and sets are perfect; dialog is believable. Music is over the top. There is a fine symbolic subtheme involving a 14-point stag representing the crown. The problem is that nothing is at stake. True, the royal family did not make an immediate statement about Diana’s death. Gosh and golly, how serious is that? Monarchy is a British cultural obsession that eludes us Yanks. It seems like everyone at Number 10 and Balmoral spend all their time watching television news and reading newspapers. Sadly, that might be right. This drama might have made a good brain-dead television show, but as a feature film, save Mirren’s performance, it is unremarkable.

Notes on A Scandal: Grade C

C

Notes on a Scandal (2006)

Judi Dench, Cate Blanchett. Director Richare Eyre.

Amazing acting by Dame Judi raises this work up from near failure to average. She has you riveted to her face just by the way she smokes a cigarette. She plays a pathologically lonely spinster who tries emotional blackmail on Blanchett to secure an intimate friendship. Dench happens to see Blanchett having sex with one of their school’s students, and promises to keep the secret in return for friendship. Never mind that it is statutory rape and they both could go to prison. Blanchett’s character is a cipher. She acts irrationally and since we don’t know anything about her, there is no reason for her behavior, personality, profession, husband, or any of her choices. Anything she does is unmotivated so it’s difficult to care about her relationship with Dench. Add to that a droning voice-over narrative by Dench, supposedly representing entries in her diary (the titular “notes” on the scandal), and the audience is held six feet away from engagement. Dench’s character has some kind of severe personality disorder. If somebody is nuts, they can do or say anything without regard to common sense because hey, they’re nuts! But as a result, the audience can’t relate, so when Dench turns vengeant for some trivial reason, we don’t even care. This story has about as much psychological reality as an afternoon soap opera on TV. The music by Philip Glass is good, but it is manipulated into service of melodrama, with swelling violins at the “emotional” moments, pizzicato cello for tension. That spoils both the music and the drama. Still, Dench’s performance is worth seeing as its own tour de force.

The Last King of Scotland: Grade B

B

The Last King of Scotland (2006)

Forest Whitaker, James McAvoy, Kerry Washington. Director Kevin MacDonald.

Whitaker is Idi Amin, the genocidal dictator of Uganda in the 1970’s. McAvoy is a young Scot doctor (too young, it seems to me) who becomes his personal physician. Showing their relationship reveals Amin as a paranoid psychopath and the Doc, who seems to have no common sense, realizes too late he is in over his head. Whitaker delivers an amazing performance but there is little historical context for it. Not all of us are clear on where Uganda even is, let alone the circumstances that motivated Amin's actions thirty years ago. There are fleeting moments suggesting Amin was legitimately panicked and confused, maybe not just a degenerate nutjob. Those fascinating suggestions are tribute to Whitaker’s skill. I wished for more context so we could understand what the characters were thinking. Many deleted scenes provided connective tissue and they should have been left in, cutting instead dancing and singing in colorful native costumes. Sixty seconds of that would have been more than plenty. Kerry Washington, who was fabulous in “Ray,” gives another standout performance.

Color Me Kubrick: Grade B

B

Color Me Kubrick (2006)

John Malkovich. Director Brian Cook

Malkovich is a brilliant actor and this is a vehicle for him to shine, a light comedy in which he plays a Stanley Kubrick impersonator. By talking like a movie director (more like a producer, actually) dropping big names and alluding to new “projects”, he manages to get free drinks, hotel rooms, cigarettes and sexual partners until he is finally found out.It’s a commentary on how ordinary people and even movie insiders lose all critical thinking capacity when they’re around the rich, famous, and powerful.That’s not much of a premise to sustain a whole movie and Malkovich is way better than the movie. But it’s funny and he is terrific, especially for his dedicated fans.Honor Blackman, who was Pussy Galore in 1964’s Goldfinger, looks remarkably good (at 80 years old!) in a bit part.

3 Needles: Grade D

D

3 Needles (2006)

Stockard Channing, Lucy Liu, Chloe Sevigny, Sandra Oh, Olympia Dukkakis, Shawn Ashmore. Director Thom Fitzgerald.

Three and a half short stories about the AIDS epidemic are dramatized. The first (and best) full story has Liu as a black market Chinese blood dealer. With unsterile equipment she accidentally spreads AIDS through three villages. Her acting is subtle and the scenery is great, but the point of the story is what? AIDS exists? AIDS is terrible? The main theme uniting all three stories is that greed trumps morality when it comes to AIDS education, prevention and care.

In the second story, a porn actor in Montreal (Ashmore) disguises his blood test and continues working even after he suspects he is HIV-positive. His mother (Channing) pulls an insurance scam so they can at least die high on the hog. Again, greed trumps morality. Channing gives the best performance in the film. I’ve always thought she is underrated.

All the sex scenes in this movie are puerile and prurient. There are a lot of ways to present porn in the context of an AIDS story without trying for (unachievable anyway) shock value. The same in the other two stories: Lucy Liu was gang raped in a van – something not essential to her story. In the third story, a nun strips and her body is sensuously explored by the heavy. While many characters in the movie inexplicably don’t seem to know that AIDS is an STD, there is, of course, no connection between crude, shocking, or violent sex and AIDS. Any kind of sex will do it. Is the director trying to make an irrational quasi-moral connection? If so, that would be shocking.

The final full story has three Catholic nuns in a South African village trying to bring souls to Jesus before they perish from the epidemic. This story has a palpable sense of place, but its purpose is not clear. Some young boys steal used needles, repackage them as new and sell them. Again, greed trumps morality, although perhaps the boys are too young to understand AIDS. A second theme has Sevigny offer her body to the plantation owner in exchange for cash for the mission. Presumably she has a high moral purpose, but the bottom line that is she repeatedly prostitutes herself. And the point about AIDS is…?

Finally, there is a half story of some African tribal boys going through a circumcision ritual. It is well filmed, and one cringes at the bloody, unsterilized knife being reused, but other than that allusion, the segment is unfinished and unrelated to the rest of the movie, except that it is consistent with the offensive and destructive subtext that only "bad" people, including porn actors, darkies, pagans, peasants, and ignorant foreigners get AIDS. We do not see a story of AIDS striking a rich white family in Boston.

An extremely obnoxious feature is a stentorian narrator (it might be Dukkakis), who adds zero value. The narration is apparently to thump witless viewers over the head, spoiling whatever artistic effect might have been achieved with pictures alone. In the end, does the narrator conclude that greed trumps morality? No. Contrary to the previous 2 hours of film, she concludes that the AIDS epidemic is God’s fault. What? This seems to have been a well-intended didactic effort but it is so coarse and chaotic it delivers no message but a pseudo moralistic stench.

Conejo en la Luna: Grade A

A

Conejo en la Luna (2006)

Jesús Ochoa, Adam Kotz; Writer, Producer & Director: Jorge Ramirez-Suarez. Spanish (subtitled)

Truckloads of grit fill this urban crime thriller. Set in Mexico city and London, it is a dark, creepy story of government corruption at the highest levels. To cover up an assassination, an innocent couple and their friends are picked as suspects, but all does not go as planned. There are high suspense chases, paranoid suspicions, evil henchmen, and scenes of dark desperation. The body count is high, but guts and gore minimal, as vics are shot off camera. It’s also a cultural commentary about the helplessness and hopelessness that corruption visits on ordinary citizens. The ending is realistic but not entirely happy. What makes the film great is the intricate plotting, full of entirely plausible surprises, no red herrings, and edge-of-seat tension throughout. I love a tight plot. Acting is good, music is strange but interesting, more sound effects than music, but the editing is terrible, to the point of being jerky. Film noir doesn’t get better than this.

Bobby: Grade D

D

Bobby (2006)

Anthony Hopkins, Laurence Fishburne, Sharon Stone, Demi Moore, William Macy, many others. Written and Directed by Emilio Estevez.

This is not a movie about Bobby Kennedy. It is about two dozen ordinary people who were in the hotel where he was shot in 1968. Some short archival clips show him making speeches, adding authenticity to the setting, but there is no exploration of the man, his policies or achievements. It is not a political movie. The two dozen "little people" are played by a huge cast of stars, which implies the Estevez-Sheen family is very well connected in Hollywood, because the roles are all light throwaways and what acting is present is suffocated by the clunky dialog and stereotyped characters. Even Hopkins gasps for air. There is no dramatic tension. We know Kennedy gets shot, and that is dramatized in the last moments, but the preceding hour and a half is an exercise in banality, people worrying about their shoes or the Dodgers. The Vietnam war is vaguely in the background. I give credit for meticulous period sets and costumes, although everything is so new and shiny they are not entirely convincing. Period music burbling in the background is a fine tease (I don’t think I have heard Donovan since 1968). But the script is appallingly mundane and full of anachronisms (Operators did not say “How may I direct your call?” in 1968, and nobody said “Have a nice day.”) If the nostalgia is not even right, what is left? If you did not live through that period, I cannot imagine what possible interest this movie would offer.

Volver: Grade C

C

Volver (2006)

Penelope Cruz. Director Pedro Almodovar. (Spanish, subtitled)

A daughter (Cruz) was estranged from her mother when the mother was believed to have died but the mother unexpectedly returns from years in hiding, providing a chance for mother-daughter reconciliation. That’s not exactly a fresh story, but Almodovar makes every scene so visually compelling it’s like visiting an art gallery. Cruz is unquestionably easy on the eyes and she gives a performance more realistic than a stereotype (as she was in Bandidas, for example). This light comedy is a vehicle to display her acting (but not singing) talent, and the director’s own prowess, and it is successful to that extent. Her mother reveals implausible dark secrets from the past, but Cruz does not reveal her own secrets, either to her mother, her daughter, or her sister. None of the relationships feels authentic. Almodovar has Cruz sitting on the toilet, doing laundry, cooking, singing, smelling farts, and denying that she’s had work done on her breasts, apparently to move her from bigger-than-life female icon to ordinary working woman in a suburb of Madrid. But if he wanted to humanize her, he should have put her in a character that had a real developmental arc instead of in this cutesy, slightly ditzy role where she is at all times, Penelope Cruz.

The Good Shepherd: Grade B

B

The Good Shepherd (2006)

Robert DeNiro, Matt Damon, Angelina Jolie, Alec Baldwin, Billy Crudup, William Hurt, Timothy Hutton, Michael Gambon, Joe Pesci, John Turturro. Director Robert DeNiro.

It seems like DeNiro wanted to create a “Godfather” epic here, using the founding and development of the CIA instead of the Mafia in America (Francis Coppola produced). But it doesn’t work. What made the Godfather stick together was the Corleone family. Here the family of early CIA agent Damon is only sketched. He drifts into spy work from his network at Yale, and his father was a spy with the OSS, but we never see him choose that career with passion. There is a faint suggestion that Damon needs to compensate for his father’s failure but that is very faint. I might have imagined it. Damon is forced to marry Jolie but the passionless marriage does not survive his six years abroad. His mixed-up son gets involved with a woman with questionable security so Damon is torn between protectiveness, permissiveness, and duty.

The movie is episodic, with numerous mini-stories of deception, paranoia and backstabbing, but there is no momentum. The Godfather was also episodic but the themes of building the crime empire, ensuring family loyalty, and going legitimate, were overarching. There is nothing like that here. It is just “one damn thing after another.” The long (160 minute) run time would have been tolerable if there had been a thread to follow. The acting is adequate, the music good, and individual episodes, written Le Carre style, are directed with a real sense of cloak and dagger, but it is all unconnected. Annoying cliche green filters are overdone. Damon is completely unexpressive, almost catatonic throughout. In Godfather III, Pacino was catatonic but conveyed seething menace. Here Damon has no interiority. It would be great to see a Godfather-like epic moving through the cold war, but this isn’t it.

Death of a President: Grade C

C

Death of a President (2006)

Co-writer, director: Gabriel Range

George W. Bush is assassinated by a sharpshooter while traveling in Chicago (on October 19, 2007). This fake documentary tells the story in retrospect as if it were a “Frontline” news analysis or a segment on “60 Minutes”. It uses all the clichés of those shows, such as news footage interspersed with interviews of key players like FBI investigators and family members of suspects. Some of the news clips are real and used to good effect. For example, eulogies delivered at former president Gerald Ford’s funeral are edited to be appropriate for a Bush funeral. Some news clips are realistically staged. There are fake video security camera tapes and fake interviews using the standard shallow depth of field portrait shot of highlighted, high-contrast people recalling “how it was.” It is a realistic-looking documentary but it overlooks the fundamental fact that such documentaries are generally boring as dirt. They actually don’t give much information (like exactly how the security failed, the background and motivation of the shooter, the forensic trail, the political consequences, etc.), but rely on dramatic music and a deep-voiced announcer to imply gravity, and use irrelevancies to pad out 5 minutes of whodunit suspense to 90. The result is air salad. Creating a good simulation of something so empty is not much of an achievement. There is also a gratuitous left-wing criticism of Bush foreign policy and the Patriot Act. A fake counterfactual documentary is a clever idea but the novelty wears off quickly. The shock value of imagining the assassination of George W. Bush dissipates even more quickly.

Blood Diamond: Grade C

C

Blood Diamond

Leonardo DiCaprio, Djimon Hounsou, Jennifer Connelly. Director Edward Zwick.

This movie earns a C instead of a D because the story of conflict diamonds is important and it is clearly told here. The message is pounded in with heavy handed speechifying, but I give credit for trying. Also, DiCaprio does a fine acting job, with a convincing Afrikaans accent, although he is too delicate to be fully believable as a crusty, he-man adventurer. Hounsou doesn't have many lines but is a physical actor who projects a lot of presence. I hope we see more of him. Connelly is wasted by the abyssmal dialog. (To L.D. dying, "I'm really glad I met you." L.D.: "I'm really glad I met you too."). She was so good in House of Sand and Fog, it is inexcusable to reduce her to a pretty face. The story is almost, but not quite the life-cycle of one huge raw diamond found by Hounsou in Sierra Leone. DiCaprio is a smuggler who wants to sell it to a thinly disguised DeBeers corporation. Connelly is a reporter trying to expose the blood diamond trade. Meanwhile rebels are overthrowing Sierra Leone by indiscriminate killing and recruiting of child soldiers. Corrupt generals on all sides also compete for the special diamond. Amazingly, after the second village slaughter, I became bored with slaughter. Have Hollywood editors lost all independence? I personally could have cut this movie back from 2.5 hours to 90 minutes. The African scenery is nice, but also repetitive. The violence is shocking at first, but soon I started trying to see how the special effects blood spurts were achieved. There are about 5 themes here, each worthy of a movie, but just when you think the movie is over, another theme is introduced. That's called rambling.

Cars: Grade B

B

Cars (2006)

Owen Wilson, Paul Newman, Larry the Cable Guy, Cheech Marin, others (as voices). Director John Lasseter.

Animation is the star of this Pixar/Disney movie. Throughout, I marveled at the computing power needed to render the complex reflections and motion effects that made the animated surfaces and movements look so good. In fact the weakest part was the background scenery, which Snow White artists could have done as well. Also, everything was too bright. Even the shadows were bright, which detracted from the realism. The car characters however were near-perfect, despite some anthropomorphic awkwardness involving hands, arms and shoulders (how would a car operate a camera, anyway?) Wilson was perfect in the lead.

The story is typical sentimental claptrap reinforcing normative stereotypes, which is why I find all Disney films so depressing. In this case the themes were that community trumps individualism, simplistic aesthetics are best, cramped, change-resistant, small-minded, small town values are best, all steeped in 60's nostalgia. Still, the voice acting was terrific, the realizations of character in the cars was excellent, and the dialog was genuinely funny, subtle at times, and consistently strong enough to sustain the piffle of a story. I understand that NASCAR is all the rage these days, but I had to fast forward through many repetitive turns around the track. The extended tipping tractors joke could have been cut. Kids will love this movie for decades to come.

Children of Men: Grade A

A

Children of Men (2006)

Clive Owen, Julianne Moore, Michael Caine, Claire-Hope Ashity. Director Alfonso Cuarón.

I expected a throwaway action-adventure, and was totally surprised. There is action, adventure, and plentiful explosions and gun fights, but thematically, this oddly named movie is about a future when all women have inexplicably become infertile. There hasn’t been a baby born in 20 years and humanity moves inexorably toward extinction. It’s a thought-provoking premise. Schools are derelict, playground noise a memory. I would have liked to explore the consequences of the idea, such as, what would be the meaning of the family? How would economics be structured if there were no next generation? What would gender relations be like? Would there still be motivation to create art and literature? Would the environmental movement continue?

What would we do, as a species, as we face our end on this planet? The movie’s answer is that we would persist in trying to kill each other. It is a dark, apocalyptic portrait of state terror and rebel resistance, set in London. As in all such dystopic visions, cities are in ruins, society has broken down, and tyrannical government rules. The urban landscape is seen through blue filters with mandatory bonfires in the street, but at least not in old oil barrels. Why people in the future always want fires on sidewalks is a mystery understood only by movie directors.

The main social strife is between rebels and the government. The rebels are refugees from other countries that have disintegrated, for reasons unknown. No explanation is given for the breakdown of law and order, and if it is the infertility problem, that connection is not made. The chaos is not justified by the film, which also shows automobiles running on roads in good repair implying healthy petrochemical and manufacturing industries; thriving radio, television and advertising, well-fed and clothed people, functioning public transport, and even a wealthy Tate museum. The refugees are shown herded into camps and pens reminiscent of Nazi concentration camps. The violence between the government and the rebels recalls the IRA rebellion, the Bosnia-Serbian war, Israel vs Hamas, and Iraq. The unifying theme is violent state suppression of ideological opposition with indifference to human rights and dignity. What has that got to do with infertility? I don’t know. Perhaps the infertility theme should be taken metaphorically – maybe it represents the sterility of efforts to accommodate people other than ourselves, the impotence of creative solutions to social problems, or a highlighting by contrast of women’s contribution to civilization. A term paper would have to be written.

The McGuffin is that one of the refugee women (Ashitey) becomes pregnant. Her gang, led by Julianne Moore, plans to smuggle her to a mysterious research ship. There is no explanation why she cannot just go to a hospital. Maybe there are no OB-Gyn specialists left. Moore recruits Owen to assist. He hides the girl for a spell at the country home of an unreconstructed hippie (Caine) who plays his role with obvious relish, to the obvious delight of Owen. But bad guys are in hot pursuit and the meta-refugees must move on. Each scene is directed masterfully, with enormous tension that had me squirming in my seat. The battles especially seem realistic, not cartoony like most. Finally everybody dies except the girl and the baby, who somehow make it to the boat (for what purpose we don’t know).

The DVD extras include a completely fascinating essay on modern society featuring, for no obvious reason, Thomas Lovejoy, founder of the Gaia environmental theory, expounding the dangers of global warming. Other segments are on the societal effects of fear, terrorism, globalization, capitalism, war, and other forces. While completely disjointed, and only tangentially relevant to the movie, it is a thought-provoking extra that alone justifies a DVD rental.

Based on a book by P.D. James, the narrative of this movie doesn’t really add up to a coherent story, but the ideas and images paint an impressionistic vision that stimulates thought.

A Prairie Home Companion: Grade F

F

A Prairie Home Companion (2006)

Garrison Keillor, Meryl Streep, Lily Tomlin, Kevin Kline, Tommy Lee Jones. Directed by Robert Altman (his last).

Written by beloved radio host Keillor, this movie purports to show the last live radio broadcast of PHC. It is an unstructured mélange of video clips, dominated by really bad singing of sappy airheaded songs. Streep and Tomlin manage to sing without embarrassing themselves, but it’s not good, by any generous measure. So why do it?

Kline does a pathetically lame Inspector Clouseau bit for no purpose. Keillor’s humor hinges on using “funny” words like “tweezers” and “Oshkosh” in meandering, mind-numbing anecdotes that make me want to scream.

The body of the film is an endless stream of inane songs, interspersed with old people displaying early Alzheimer’s by recounting their mundane youth in irrelevant detail to anyone who will listen. Tommy Lee Jones has a few good lines but he mumbles. The famous Altman overlapping dialog is evident but is obviously scripted, which misses the point.

The photography and directing are undistinguished. The camera becomes dizzying as it zooms and pans repetitively in a desperate attempt to add interest to Streep and Tomlin’s droning. I avoided this film as long as I could but my wife encouraged me to rent it, out of curiosity. She agreed in the end that it has no redeeming virtue. I confess I have never been a PHC fan and I actively dislike Keillor’s manufactured sing-song intonations on NPR, but I love Altman, and all these actors, so I went in without prejudgment. Call me un-American, but this movie is a dog.