In the Land of Milk and Money: Grade B

B
In the Land of Milk and Money (2004)

Christopher Coulson, Kim Gillingham. Writer-director Susan Emshwiller

In this bizarre comedy a scientist (Coulson) introduces a genetic modification into cows to increase milk production, but the milk causes mothers to become psychotic killers of their children. The contamination only affects mothers and they only want to kill their own children. The situations that develop are hilarious, as sweet, stereotype moms quietly go nuts and try to kill their (mostly adult) children. Mercifully, we don’t see any violence against youngsters. The agribusiness corporation naturally covers up the scandal while the scientist works feverishly on an antidote. Meanwhile, zombie-like mothers across the country are captured and placed in concentration camps suggestive of the Japanese-American internment camps of WWII.

What is life like without any mothers? The movie echoes “A Day Without A Mexican” to show how much everyone depends on mothers, but in other respects, men prosper taking women’s places in the workforce, reminding us how it was in Germany when the Jews were whisked away, and some men are happy to be free of nagging wives. Gillingham is a pregnant news reporter who finds out the story then is desperate for the antidote before her child is born.

The sets are corny or ironic abstractions of 1950’s suburbia, right down to the furniture, costumes, colors, hairstyles, and accessories (except, oddly, the scientist drives a Miata, and the news equipment is modern). Music tends to uptempo pizzicato strings from 1950’s TV ads or drive-in movie intermezzos. The acting is remarkably good for such fluff. At first I thought this would be a wicked satire of popular concern over mad cow disease, then it seemed it would be a parody of 1950’s B-movies, or 1950’s stereotypes, then it looked to be comparing the morality of American and German WWII concentration camps, then by the first hour I knew it was only a collection of funny skits and silly bits in a dark mood. But it kept me laughing.

Evan Almighty: Grade D

D
Evan Almighty (2007)

Steve Carell, Morgan Freeman. Director Tom Shadyac.

Bruce Almighty with Jim Carrey was silly-funny and enjoyable. This is not quite a sequel or a remake, although Morgan Freeman is still God, this time without wit. Carell is a suburban congressman commanded to build an ark prior to a promised great flood. The premise is basically funny, and the involvement of the animals is cute, but the script must be aimed at 5 year old children, Christian and Jewish children who can recognize the Biblical story, because despite a few clever one-liners, this movie is devoid of imagination. And acting. Carell’s family is cringingly bad, as are his colleagues in congress. Even Wanda Sykes – how can you suppress her? But somehow they did. Carell does some good Carrey-esque physical acting but is basically boxed in the lifeless script. There were hints of more, as when Carell’s wife (Lauren Graham) is perplexed by her husband’s messianic turn, but the possibility of mental illness does not cross her mind. I only give this failure of a movie a passing grade because of a very faint, very sly political satire, that I may be reading in. President Bush has said that God talks to him, so the movie makes you wonder if God told Bush to build an ark in Virginia, would he do it? I wish they had played that theme out, which goes all the way back to Abraham and Isaac. The clues for the theme are slight but I thought I saw them. If so, it was a lost opportunity.

Mr. Brooks: Grade D

D

Mr. Brooks (2007)

Kevin Costner, Demi Moore, Dane Cook, William Hurt. Co-writer-Director Bruce Evans.

This should have been a good movie. It has a great story premise, a mild mannered businessman (Costner), who is addicted to killing. He even goes to an AA meeting and announces that he is “an addict.” Demi Moore is a troubled detective hunting Costner and Cook is a younger fellow who wants Costner to teach him how to be a serial killer. The second big plus is a gimmick in which the killer’s conscience is portrayed as a character (Hurt) so the killer and his conscience can have on-screen dialog. “Raines,” a recent TV show that sadly, didn’t make it, involved Jeff Goldblum as a detective with a visible alter-ego. Beats a Shakespearean soliloquy. Add to those benefits a strong cast and some very good cinematography and you should have an excellent movie.

So what went wrong? Two things: the acting and the writing. The acting is flat, mechanical, and dull from the beginning, to the point where we just don’t engage with any of the characters. I wasn’t convinced that any of these players were strong actors to begin with and this movie confirms my opinion. The bad writing is more difficult to fathom. After a strong first hour, it inexplicably goes south, becoming increasingly stilted, unimaginative, and implausible. There was a promise of character development in the beginning, with Costner trying to quit his killing habit, but nothing comes of it. When Costner goes to kiss his sleeping daughter and she suddenly lunges up and stabs him in the neck with a large pair of scissors, I knew the writers had become desperate for ideas. And that’s no spoiler either, because it didn’t really happen. Ha-ha. It’s just an illustration of how stupid the writing becomes, serially killing what could have been, with better actors, or with a director who could make these actors dance, a potentially great film.

Man Push Cart: Grade B

B

Man Push Cart (2005)

Amahd Razvi, Leticia Dolera. Writer-Director: Ramin Bahrani.

This is an enjoyable though somewhat depressing slice of life – of a young Pakistani street vendor in New York City. He hauls his stainless steel cart through the busy pre-dawn streets to sell bagels and coffee to office workers when the business day begins. He lives alone, pines for his deceased wife, and tries to connect with his young son in foster care. He tries unsuccessfully to form relationships. He rescues a subway kitten, which then dies in his apartment. It’s a cold, hard, extremely lonely life, in which the tiny bright spots are the small kindnesses exchanged among street vendors and fellow Pakistanis in the city. The cinematography is beautiful and the music haunting (although unnecessary). Sound engineering is exceptionally good. New York City never sounded or looked so good. The success of the movie is in giving us a sense of intimacy with the character. We feel that we understand what it is like to be inside that coffee cart, inside his skin, grateful that we are not, and how hard life really is for immigrants like him. One former street vendor who has been wildly successful is described as now working in a Dunkin Donuts in Albany. “He’s got it made, man.” I enjoy this kind of artistic cinema, but I confess it was sloooow, even for me. I get that life is hard, without having to see him wrestle his cart down the street SIX times. Twice would have done it; maybe only once. A little character development also would have gone a long way.

The Hoax: Grade A

A

The Hoax (2006)

Richard Gere, Alfred Molina, Hope Davis, Marcia Gay Harden. Director Lasse Hallstrom.

Since the success of Capote last year, there have been several movies about novel writers and their New York publishers. I think there was even a second Capote movie. In this rendition, Gere plays Clifford Irving, a writer who in the 1970’s wrote a fake autobiography of reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes and sold it to McGraw Hill for millions. He was found out and went to jail, so there isn’t much dramatic suspense built into the story. What keeps the story alive is Gere’s acting, yes, actual acting. I usually avoid Gere movies, but here he shows unexpected talent. Is the character a psychopathic liar or just a desperate and creative man who must continue to one-up himself? It must have been good directing that brought Gere out. The overwrought sidekick (Molina) is difficult to decipher but he is an interesting face actor. Marcia Gay Harden looks good as Irving’s wife. I couldn’t tell what kind of an accent she was putting on, but her performance was somehow both comedic and serious at the same time. This is not a great movie but it remains engaging throughout. Also, it is nice to see an intelligent story about real human dynamics, with no explosions, murders, gang fights, or drug sniffing; okay maybe a little money laundering, tops.

Do or Die: Grade A

B

Do or Die (2001)

Tom Long, Kate Ashfield, Hugo Speer. Director Rowan Woods. Australian.

This older Aussie TV miniseries is now out on DVD and it is worth a look, despite the fact that it really should have English subtitles for those of us who do not speak Australian. I lost about a quarter of the dialog into the accents. And it does have the tinny feel of television, especially in its abrupt edits and implausible, melodramatic story. Despite these flaws, excellent acting by the principals and sharp dialog, makes the overall product quite good. In upper middle class London, Ashfield’s young boy is diagnosed with a leukemia that only transplanting white blood cells from the father can treat. This situation forces the mother to reveal that her husband (Speer) is not the father. The real father (Long) is a convict in Australia. She goes looking for him, but he escapes from prison just before she arrives. She must find him before the police gun him down. Several twists and turns ensue. Tom Long as the convict father is tremendous. His scowl through furrowed brow is wonderful, and he has a great screen look. He also shows subtlety of expression equal to Ashfield’s, so while the characters are somewhat flat, the project stays grounded, never escaping into cartoon land. Very high end TV!

Civic Duty: Grade D

D

Civic Duty (2006)

Peter Krause, Khaled Abol Naga, Kari Machett, Richard Schiff. Director Jeff Renfroe.

I would call this government propaganda but it isn’t, really. For that, the government must control both the source and the message. Here, I think the filmmakers were telling their own story, even though it accepts uncritically the government’s fear-mongering message that there is a terrorist under every bed. Structurally, the movie is like another bad remake of Hitchcock’s Rear Window. An unemployed accountant (Krause) spies a “middle-eastern” fellow (Naga) in the apartment next door, doing “odd” things like taking out garbage in the middle of the night and receiving boxes from other (“evil”) dark-skinned people with facial hair. All the while, government propaganda does play incessantly on the TV “news” shortly after the 9-11 attacks, urging citizen vigilance. Kraus becomes convinced that the neighbor is plotting a terrorist act and his beliefs and actions flow rapidly into a hostage standoff that invokes some torture imagery. He suffers a mental breakdown which “explains” his irrational reasoning and vigilante mentality, but maybe he is not really nuts, only patriotic. We should be not only the eyes and ears of antiterrorism, as the president says on TV, but also, apparently, the executioners. Notably bad, way too loud orchestral music tries to create suspense where there is none, an admission of story failure. There is no character development or acting to speak of, though I do like Krause. He has more potential than this. I won’t give away the ending except to say that it is either cynical and dishonest, or disturbingly ignorant. I don’t mind movies with a message I disagree with, but they have to offer some artistic value or at least some ideas more robust than racism and unthinking propaganda.

The TV Set: Grade A

A

The TV Set (2006)

David Duchovny, Sigourney Weaver, Ioan Gruffudd, Judy Greer, Fran Kanz, Lindsay Sloane. Writer-director Jake Kasdan.

This satire of the TV business is so sly it is almost a straight documentary. Duchovny is a television writer who creates a pilot for a new TV show. Weaver is the studio executive who "offers” her often absurd-sounding ideas on how to “improve” the show to make it commercially viable. (“What if it were just prison instead of suicide? Suicide is so depressing!”) The nominal tension is between commercialism and artistic integrity. Weaver (and the other “suits”) also suggest different lead actors, the director has different ideas about how to shoot scenes, and the actors are hopeless. Duchovny swallows his pride to get the show on the air. American TV viewing preferences are an easy target for satire, but what makes it work so well here is good acting and great writing. Weaver is a little too much, but we can imagine such an oblivious yet dialed-in executive. Duchovny’s long-suffering sighs are too much, but we do sympathize. The best acting comes from Judy Greer, his effervescent assistant. The dialog has plenty of laugh out loud lines that keep the ball rolling, even though the destination is foreordained in the first 10 minutes. The BS “professional” conversations are hilarious and often cringe-inducing. I think For Your Consideration was a better and funnier movie, as was The Player, but this one was subtle and sophisticated enough to keep my funny bone tickled throughout.

A Few Days in September: Grade B

B

A Few Days in September (2006)

Juliette Binoche, John Turturro, Sarah Forestier, Tom Riley, Nick Nolte. Writer-Director Santiago Amigorena. French and English – subtitled.

I was shocked to see how Juliette Binoche had aged, although she would say the same about me. I haven’t seen her on screen in many years, and it is a pleasure to see her again. She still has “the look” and her acting is as compelling as ever. She is some kind of a government agent, U.S. I think, trying to find the mysterious CIA rogue agent played by Nolte (who appears at the end just in time to get shot). Why she needs to find him is never clear. She has in tow his clueless adult children (Forestier and Riley). All of them are followed by enigmatic hit man Turturro. He casually kills several clerks to establish his ruthlessness while he also hunts the mysterious David. Who he works for and why he is on the hunt is unknown. Meanwhile, untrustworthy American, Saudi, and French guys are also after David. So the story is a mish-mash of a chase theme and though we never know the characters’ exact roles or motivation, it all hangs together just enough to highlight the fine acting, witty dialog, great locations (Venice and Paris), and outstanding cinematography. I especially enjoyed the technique of having the camera set to a flat depth of field then having characters walk in from the blur to the focal point. Neat. Turturro does an excellent job as a smiling, poetry-reading assassin who has to call his psychoanalyst after he kills someone. Even though the overall tone of the film is noir-ish (neon reflecting in dark, rain-slicked streets, gratuitous murders, kitty lapping the expanding pool of blood, etc.), and the category pretends to “thriller,” I would say this is actually a subtle comedy.

Knocked Up: Grade B

B

Knocked Up (2007)

Seth Rogen, Katherine Heigl, Leslie Mann, Paul Rudd. Writer & Director: Judd Apatow.

This movie, especially the first half, demonstrates or discusses in detail every possible body product, from semen to sputum, farts to urine, blood, sweat, tears, and others too numerous to mention. I don’t think anything was omitted. There must have been a comprehensive master list somewhere. Anatomy discussions are restricted to the body parts you would expect for someone with a mental age of 10. This is more than uninteresting, it’s downright depressing for what it implies about the psychological development of American moviegoers. I almost did not get through the first hour, but the last half picks up when the central theme turns slightly more toward adult relationships, marriage, and issues of trust and self-disclosure. The basic story is that Heigl’s character goes out on a drinking binge and ends up in the sack with a dorky, nerdy loser guy (Rogen) who gets her pregnant. Even with an alcohol crazed brain, the character’s actions are not believable, but that’s the story. Then it’s a matter of the two of them building a relationship of necessity. Mann and Rudd play bickering married neighbors who alternately frighten and support the protagonists. Rogen’s gang of childish, deadbeat friends retard his psychological development but he eventually breaks free. All this would be no more than an exercise juvenile pandering except that, amazingly, the writing, acting, and directing are outstanding. If you can ignore the tedious body function topics, you find that the script is often intellectually sophisticated and socially subtle. The face and voice acting are wide-ranging, well-integrated with the dialog, and completely believable. Even members of the dimwitted gang of loser nerds often have socially attuned, deliciously ironic lines. The doctor who delivers the baby is a gem of a character. Even the DVD outtakes and other extras are wonderful. It is a terrible waste to burn up all that talent on jokes about farts and blowjobs, but the movie business is what it is.

Closure: Grade B

B

Closure (aka: Straightaheads) (2007)

Gillian Anderson, Danny Dyer. Writer-Director Dan Reed. British.

This slightly claustrophobic revenge movie is extremely violent, much more so than a war or gangster movie showing dozens of people mowed down by automatic weapons or shot in the head by hired killers. Nor is it stylistic violence as in Kill Bill and similar movies. This is far more violent because the action is so personal and well motivated. Anderson and Dyer are beat up and raped by a cocaine-crazed gang on a lonely highway. As they slowly recover from their ordeal, Anderson accidentally discovers where the ringleader lives. The pair stalks him with a gun but Dyer is inclined to let it go while Anderson is bent on bloody revenge. But as developments ensue, Anderson becomes ambivalent. Then she gets over that and finds a brutal revenge that satisfies her, but then Dyer is suddenly unsatisfied and wants complete, bloodthirsty revenge, reversing their earlier dispositions. The scenes are so violent because we understand exactly what the perpetrators are trying to accomplish and we participate in their psychological need. Despite that considerable cinematic achievement, I thought the characters were so emotionally inconsistent that I often felt jerked around. This was true of the substory characters as well. Anderson and Dyer especially are alternately manic and depressive, filled with grim determination then ambivalence, compassion flipping to detachment. Maybe that’s how people would be in such a situation, but it didn’t seem authentic to me. Also, several story points were not properly motivated, such as having Dyer sneak into the bad guy’s house. Photography seemed dark and dreary; even the outdoor scenes, which was perhaps appropriate to the theme, but not very attractive to look at. Music was unintrusive. Despite some flaws then, after a slow start, the film gives a good ride if you can tolerate the violence.

13 Tzameti: Grade B

B

13 Tzameti (2005)

George Babluani; Writer-Director: Géla Babluani. French, subtitled.

Babluani is a young roofer working on an old mansion when an envelope with a ticket and instructions accidentally comes into his hands. Since the owner of the house died and he will not be paid for his work, he decides to use the ticket and follow the instructions, based on a conversation he overheard about possibly big financial rewards. The film is in beautiful black and white, well composed and photographed, reminiscent of French existential films of the 60’s. The “deal” he walks into is an illegal gambling operation very similar to the situation of Christopher Walken's in The Deerhunter. That outcome was was disappointing after such a nice tense buildup. There are so many more interesting story possibilities for a young man walking blindly into an illegal deal. Anyway, the life and death gambling proceeds in the obvious way with predictable outcome, although a few surprises await the young man on the way home. There is a faint existential theme: “A man only lives once and dies once. Why not do it this way?” But the situation was formulaic and abstract, robbing such words of their meaning. The acting is good and the photography very pleasing, but the tension of the central set piece was too contrived to be engaging.

Lonely Hearts: Grade D

D

Lonely Hearts (2006)

John Travolta, Janes Gandolfini, Salma Hayek, Jared Leto, Laura Dern; Writer & Director Todd Robinson.

Travolta and Gandolfini are 1950s era detectives on the trail of a pair of con artists (Leto and Hayek). Leto romances elderly women to rob them. Hayek hangs around looking beautiful while he does this, and sometimes kills the women and helps cut up the bodies. Meanwhile, Travolta is supposed to be having an affair with Dern, but that relationship is lifeless and pointless. This is a tired theme, done much better as a comedy by Michael Caine and Steve Martin 20 years ago (and it was a remake even then). There is no humor in this version, which is just a long trail of dark, sordid episodes as the con artists swindle one victim after another. Gandolfini does his Tony Soprano shtik without self-irony, Travolta frowns a lot, but the only decent acting is from Hayek, who gives a fine performance despite a stupid role. Music and directing are mediocre at best. Costumes and sets try to make up for a weak narrative, but only detract. Were police station walls really painted in Sears green, including the wainscoting? A large stellar cast like this is usually a bad sign, and this project proves that rule.

The Contractor: Grade F

F

The Contractor (2007)

Wesley Snipes, Eliza Bennet, Lena Heady; Director Josef Rusnak

Snipes is an ex-government hit man called out of retirement for one last job. Wow, what a novel premise for a movie! He kills the target but then the CIA wants to kill him as part of a coverup. I’m shocked! The action is set in London so closed circuit cameras peppering that city can be used by police to track Snipe’s movements. But fear not; Snipes has a flash drive filled with evidence of past CIA assassination orders as his “insurance” although how that would protect him is unclear. Snipes gets shot several times but proves remarkably resilient. Fortunately for him all the bad guys are incredibly incompetent. The evil CIA boss corners Snipes in a commercial kitchen (great place to hide), but only manages to shoot the large bowls of salad with his double barreled shotgun (standard CIA issue), blasting lettuce into the air but missing the pots of boiling soup. Great shooting! Snipes does befriend a child (Bennet) along the way who helps him map an escape route, and that is the only development of interest in this entire brain dead movie.

Slow Burn: Grade D

D

Slow Burn (2005)

Ray Liotta, LL Cool J, Taye Diggs, Jolene Blalock. Writer & Director Wayne Beach

The DA (Liotta with too much hair) hunts for a mysterious gangleader nobody has actually seen. As in The Usual Suspects, Roshomonic stories are told in flashback until he is revealed. Blalock, the assistant DA, plays the evasive interviewee created by Kevin Spacey, although in this heavy handed script the revelation of the bad guy is arbitrary and uninteresting. There is a mild racial theme since Blalock is supposed to be a black woman who passes for white but that has no real bearing on the story. These are good actors but bad directing sucks the energy out of them. I know Liotta is capable of much more than slack jaw surprise, so why mug that shot repeatedly? It is no mystery that the wordy and lifeless dialog comes from that same director.

Inland Empire: Grade B

B

Inland Empire (2006)

Laura Dern, Justin Theroux, Jeremy Irons. Director David Lynch.

This is the best movie I have seen all year but it lacks one critical ingredient, a story. It is a set of hundreds of individual scenes in which characters act out small situations. They tend to group into thematic categories. The largest has Laura Dern, in a fantastic, riveting set of performances, as a Hollywood actress who gets a part in a dreary B movie directed by Irons and co-starring Theroux. In this movie-within-a-movie, her character falls in love with a married man, and in the making of the movie, maybe the actress and actor also fall in love, an ambiguity heavily exploited by Lynch. Quite often you think you are watching the actors off set when the director yells “Cut!” and you realize you have been watching the inner movie.

In another group of scenes, Dern goes down long dark hallways or through steel doors and emerges in other locations, including a cheesy 1950’s bungalow, a stone mansion, an extremely sensuous gilded interior, and at the seedy corner of Hollywood and Vine. No explanation for these through-the-looking-glass events is given but I thought I detected a similarity between one of the many sound tracks and Jefferson Airplane’s “Go Ask Alice.”

In another group of scenes, a woman (not Dern) walks enigmatically and fearfully around pre-war Poland in the winter. In a group of scenes that seems connected to those by color and texture, Dern tells a story to an interrogator in a dank basement.

The giant rabbit-headed people in a one-room green apartment must be mentioned. They take turns pronouncing nonsequitur statements that made me think of Mamet, interspersed with laugh tracks, so they must be in some kind of a sitcom.

There are other groups of scenes as well. Some of the narrative mini-themes intersect slightly from time to time. Individual scenes recur throughout the three hour (!) movie but are never exactly the same. They are time-warped or close-up, or recontextualized. It all just ends when there are no more scenes to show.

Call me old fashioned, but I think the number one purpose of any movie is to tell a story. I loved this movie, but without a story, I will not give it an A. I can imagine a comedic meta-theme about the inability to distinguish reality and fantasy, but that might be reading too much in. After about an hour, I started to get a "contact high" and could literally feel the mental disorientation that Dern's character was experiencing. Laura Dern’s astonishing performance alone should earn the movie an A, but I am sticking to my no-story rule.

Here’s what I think the movie is about: cinematography. Lynch explores every narrative cinematic technique you can think of, from creepy horror gestures to silly farce, and it’s a joy to watch a master effortlessly at work. But above all, I think he is exploring a new way to deal with light. The movie was apparently shot with a digital camcorder so there isn’t much tonal range. Consequently the brights are blindingly bright and the shadows are black without detail. The amazing thing is how he gets both of those in the same shot. How is it even possible? I think he recruits the human eye’s (or brain’s) tendency to conserve meaning, in order to bridge the sensory gaps where the video is lacking.

For example, two characters are sitting in a dimly lit warehouse, and you become visually engaged in those surroundings, when suddenly the door opens and the full strength of California noontime sunlight comes blasting through the opening, turning one side of the picture into a blurry white fireball, while the interior of the room goes into extremely high contrast relief, colors leaping off every surface. Then the door slams and you are back in the dim brown light of the warehouse where the characters casually greet each other. You feel the pupils of your eyes struggling to adapt. And they do, so the net result is that you would say, “The door opened and somebody came into the room.” But in retrospect, you realize what a mind-blowing visual experience you just went through.

On the DVD extras (in the special edition 2-DVD set), there is a 20 minute B&W film that I think confirms my hypothesis. It’s called Quinoa, and shows Lynch boiling a pot of water and making a serving of quinoa, while blithering inane narrative about what he’s doing. If you didn’t realize it was really about putting the whitest of whites intimately next to the blackest of blacks so the viewer’s eye and brain must provide the interpolar context, you would think this was the most boring, meaningless bit of film ever created. But once you get what’s going on with the light, it is an exhilarating work of art.

I should also mention that the sound track was extremely diverse in this movie, from computer generated, to string quartets, to 50’s rock n roll. I think Lynch may have been trying to do with the sound the same thing he was doing with the light, but for me, it was less successful. Because of the experimentation with both sound and light, Inland Empire would probably be worth seeing on the big silver screen, although it’s too late for that now. DVD on a large screen digital TV is still an incredible head trip.

Finally, once again, here’s my vote for Laura Dern for the most stunning acting performance of the year.

Even Money: Grade B

B

Even Money (2006)

Kim Basinger, Danny DeVito, Kelsey Grammer, Ray Liotta, Tim Roth, Forest Whitaker. Director Mark Rydell

Two short stories about gambling addicts are very loosely woven. Basinger hides her problem from her trusting husband (Liotta), while Whitaker convinces his basketball star brother to shave points so he can pay off his evil bookie (Roth). Predictably, both addicts' lives crumble to dust. Grammer is a Columbo-like detective snooping around for unclear reasons, while DeVito is an ebullient casino rat who befriends Basinger for no particular reason. The story line lacks tension and the characters are predictable and not very interesting. But the acting is a joy. Roth was born to be evil. Whitaker and Basinger show their chops. You can’t ever forget you’re watching Danny DeVito, but you have to admire a guy who gives 110% to every scene. The cinematography is a standout. Overall, the movie is a compassionate message without moralizing: Gambling addiction is tragic. Strong acting and photography raise it above mediocrity.

Copying Beethoven: Grade F

F

Copying Beethoven (2006)

Ed Harris, Diane Kruger; Director Agnieszka Holland

First let’s be clear about Beethoven’s 9th symphony: It gets an A+. But this movie can take no responsibility for that. It fails on so many levels. Ed Harris does a respectable job with a lame story and a dead script. Kruger does well with the jarringly inane dialog. Lighting is ridiculous, photography stereotyped, directing unimaginative. Beethoven’s hearing loss is not treated consistently. At times he is stone deaf but at other moments he hears whispers. There is no story line pushing the action. The social significance and musical revolution of the 9th are glossed over. The relationship between Beethoven (Harris) and his copyist (Kruger) is lifeless. There is just nothing here.

Perfect Stranger: Grade D

D

Perfect Stranger (2007)

Halle Berry, Giovanni Ribisi, Bruce Willis; Director James Foley

The movie opens with a long irrelevancy, always a bad sign. Berry is a big time New York reporter who gets the goods on a gay senator and is about to expose him when the story is spiked for reasons that suggest political interference. She quits her job in protest but it doesn’t matter because none of that has anything to do with the movie anyway. The real story starts when a childhood friend turns up murdered. A home computer shows she was involved in torrid chat with Willis’ character, a rich advertising man, and that they had a brief affair, after which he dumped her and she then threatened to blackmail him. Aha, that seals his guilt! Since Willis is in advertising, it is an excuse for shameless, in-your-face product placement, from Sony computers, to Victoria’s Secret, Reebok, and many others. Why, we hardly noticed! Ribisi is Berry’s friend at the newspaper (I think –he never is seen working), who helps her dig up more dirt on Willis. Why Berry cares is not clear, since she is not even a reporter any more. Some flashback memories try but fail to establish her motivation. She gets a job as a temp at Willis’ ad agency where she can tap her foot waiting for a file transfer on his computer before he comes into the office. Have I ever seen that situation before? Hmmm, let me think. The camera work is so stiff in this movie, I suspect Willis and Berry were never actually on the same set together. Sets and costumes were way too fussy: elaborate, brand new, spotlessly clean, shiny and bright, untouched by human hands – major distractions from the characters. Halle Berry is gorgeous of course, so predictably the camera tediously lingers on her butt and cleavage, but she really can act and there are flashing moments of talent. Willis remains asleep throughout. Ribisi is an interesting actor but his character was amorphous. The surprise ending is so contrived it is unintentionally humorous. Why do I give the movie a passing grade? Berry is easy to watch, and the music that plays over the closing credits is quite good. Is that enough? I’m feeling generous.

The Lookout: Grade C

C

The Lookout (2007)

Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Jeff Daniels, Matthew Goode. Writer-Director Scott Frank

A high school student (Gordon-Levitt) suffers severe head injury in a stupid car crash in which several of his friends were killed. We come upon him 2 years later in rehabilitation classes trying to improve his memory, speech, and social skills. It is a realistic and sensitive portrayal of recovery from moderately severe brain injury but extremely slow moving and repetitive. The first 45 minutes of the film could have been conveyed in a few lines of dialog. The character’s blind roommate is Daniels, who leavens the depressive tone with sarcasm, but otherwise is a vague and undeveloped character. Finally the protagonist meets a cute stripper in a bar and the story begins. She seems to care for him, but as soon as he has sex with her, she is written out of the story without a trace, her entire presence reduced to the role of an ashtray. The hero, meanwhile, is a night janitor at a rural bank in Kansas. Some bad guys led by Goode manipulate him into helping rob the bank. The heist goes bad and the movie ends where it began, a young man with brain damage trying to make his way in life. It’s like a tedious documentary about living with brain trauma, with a bank heist thrown in for excitement. The documentary is boring and the bank heist is stereotypical, so the whole thing adds up to a question mark. Strong acting by Gordon-Levitt and Goode make the film watchable.

The Lives of Others: Grade A

A
The Lives of Others (2006)

Sebastian Koch, Martina Gedeck, Ulrich Muhe. Director: Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck. German, Subtitled.

Five years before the fall of the Wall, the GDR Stasi spies on its citizens. A prominent playwright (Koch) and his star actress (Gedeck) are targeted by the police for surveillance. The apartment is bugged and the captain in charge of listening (Muhe) waits for incriminating talk. There is none. But he learns that the reason for the surveillance on the playwright is that a fatcat higher-up government minister lusts for the actress, not because of any threat to state security. The movie describes the character transformation of the captain as he slowly comes to sympathize with his prey. It is a tremendous story once you accept that he is capable of that radical change so quickly. It’s not psychologically believable, but every great story hinges on a lie, and that is a relatively small one. Excellent directing, costumes and sets. A DVD extra explains why night scenes are shot through a yellow, instead of a traditional blue filter (it looks a lot better, too). The music is wonderful, the acting thoroughly compelling and the historical theme relevant to modern Germany, and by analogy, modern America.

Court of Lonely Royals: Grade C

C

Court of Lonely Royals (2006)

Damon Gameau, Samantha Noble, Leah De Neise, Ayse Tezel. Writer, Director Rohan Michael Toole. (Australian)

I love the youthful exuberance of this obscure, dark, gritty, Aussie crime thriller. Two young people are hired assassins working for the police in an unidentified Australian city. The young man wants out of the business but is told “there is no out.” A depressive young woman is eventually given a contract to kill him, but not before she forms a relationship with a hooker who wants to be part of the business, for excitement and to get revenge on men. Various incidents and accidents occur until the noir-ish, unresolved ending. The story is patchy, not quite strong enough in character or plot to carry the weight, but with fine individual scenes of intense drama or subtle humor. Strong acting and noticeably good directing keep you watching. The music is good, urban, hip, but the sound engineering is so bad that it obscures much of the dialog. Directing and photography are very creative, borrowing the creepy nocturnal violence of Hong-Kong crime drama and using loads of creative photographic techniques: color intercut with black and white, solarization, filtration, tinting, odd pans and zooms, double exposures, and on and on. All that experimentation lacks discipline however and becomes distracting, but it’s still fun to see what the young people are doing these days.

Fracture: Grade A

A

Fracture (2007)

Anthony Hopkins, Ryan Gosling, David Strathairn, Rosamund Pike. Director Gregory Hoblit

Mr. “Ate-his-liver-with-fava-beans-and-a-nice-Chianti” treats us again to his intellectual psychopath bit. Despite the cliché role, Hopkins is a magnificent actor. Allusions to Hannibal Lecter are done with lighting, directing, and acting, not by script quotations. But once again we have Hopkins as a super smart murderer who plays cat and mouse with the young assistant DA (Gosling). Gosling, who was great in Half Nelson, is on par with Hopkins here. What starts out as a slam dunk case with a full confession, ends up as an acquittal due to no evidence, as Hopkins gets away with the perfect crime. The sudden reversal at the end depends on some giant leaps of faith by the audience, but is within the range of plausible. The romantic substory between Gosling and Pike seems like an afterthought. Lighting is often distracting – mysterious strong light below faces and law office and courtroom scenes lit by streaks of dusty light through louvered blinds as if it were 1925. Music is stereotypically manipulative and adds nothing. These flaws are easily overcome by very strong acting and a good story.

Wild Hogs: Grade C

C

Wild Hogs (2007)

Tim Allen, John Travolta, Martin Lawrence, William H. Macy, Ray Liotta, Marisa Tomei. Director Walt Becker.

Four professional men in their 40’s and 50’s are fed up with suburban life and decide on a cross-country motorcycle trip. They wear “Wild Hogs” insignia on their black leathers. Harley-Davidson obviously helped finance this movie. It’s like City Slickers on bikes, only not as funny. Disney owns Touchstone Pictures, who put out this movie, and this has the heavy hand of Disney stereotypy. The first hour is so full of lame, juvenile homophobic “jokes” that I almost quit watching. Who finds that stuff funny? I think even young kids are more sophisticated than that nowadays. But the humor picks up slightly in the last half and that saved the movie for me. Acting is completely adequate. Macy does a great job. There are some funny one-liners and a “surprise” cameo at the end is a hoot, so overall the movie made me smile even as it made me more annoyed with the pernicious social influence of the Disney corporation.

I Think I Love My Wife: Grade C

C

I Think I Love My Wife (2007)

Chris Rock, Kerry Washington, Gina Torres. Writer, Director Chris Rock.

Rock is an affluent stock broker in Manhattan. His shirts are button-down, his briefcase leather, and he shops at Saks, not Macy’s. In the suburbs he has a lovely wife (Torres) and two cute kids in a huge, well-appointed house. But alas, Rock tells us in tedious voiceover, he and his wife no longer have sex (for undisclosed reasons). He therefore fantasizes about being wild and single again, and surprise, along comes the devil in a red dress (Washington). Will he take the bait? Stay tuned to find out! These are all archetypes of modern life, none realistic or intended to be. But neither are they novel or interesting. Instead of showing us dramatic or comedic situations, Rock narrates a witty stand-up routine over mundane scenes. He is such a funny guy, that approach could work, but instead of the insightful social satire he is capable of, we get worn-out pre-adolescent sexual innuendo and farce, along with facile racial/racist one-liners. Add it all up and you have a shallow comedy that could only appeal to a child's mind.

Nevertheless, there are two redeeming virtues. One is the subtle message about growing up. It often does happen that one day you ask yourself, “Is this all there is?” You have suppressed the wild urges and dreams of adolescence in exchange for the respect and stability of adulthood, only to find you have traded the best part of life for a living death. That is a modern tragedy deserving serious attention. That would have been a great movie. The theme is here, but buried. Why is Rock’s character bored? He has no interests except sex. He doesn’t read, play the violin, watch movies, coach baseball, sail a boat, collect stamps, follow politics, or even show interest in work or making money. He is indeed the living dead, and it wasn’t marriage that caused it. What is that story?

A second tantalizing, unexplored theme is race. Rock’s character is over-the-top successful. He’s not CEO of the brokerage, but he would be in the top 5% of income earners in America. His clothes, habits, household, language, values, everything about him, are white stereotypes. He is the black man who achieves virtual whiteness. It is nice not to see the typical black stereotypes but why substitute white stereotypes? Putting a white stereotype on a black man is not played for laughs here. It is simply the factual premise of the character. Yet there are only the slightest hints of tension between those two stereotypes. How does he feel now about being “b-l-a-c-k,” as he says to his wife so the girls won’t understand? Did he check his ethnicity at the door along with his adolescent joie-de-vivre when he became an adult? This is the second theme that makes you think long after the movie is over.

I get the feeling Rock had a serious movie in mind but lacked the courage to go for it, the result being a couple of deep ideas thickly plastered over with safe, familiar jokes. The movie is thus perhaps an unintentional self-portrait.