Old Boy: Grade B

B
Old Boy (2003)
Min-sik Choi, Hye-jeong Kang, Ji-tae Yu; Director Chan-wook Park. (Korean, subtitled)

A middle aged man (Choi) is imprisoned in a windowless hotel room and he does not know why. Food appears under the door, and each day the room is filled with gas that puts him to sleep while the staff cleans the room. Predictably, he goes nuts, but he recovers (more or less) upon release without explanation or context after fifteen years.

He meets a sympathetic waitress (Kang) and develops a relationship with her, but he is consumed by desire to know what happened and for revenge on his captor (Yu), who he discovers through careful research. There are many twists and turns and a surprising ending.

The film is beautifully photographed, well directed, and the music is outstanding. The picture is extremely stylish and good-looking. It is also drenched in blood. Tartan Films (Tarantino’s outfit) “presents” the movie, so you should know what to expect. I just fast forwarded past the most violent scenes.

Acting is outstanding by Choi and Kang and it is fun to get a glimpse into Korean culture. A sense of modern, urban, existential alienation comes through although the ultimate theme of the story is fairly pedestrian, not as shocking to an American audience as the actors’ reactions suggest. I recommend it on the basis of excellent filmmaking.

Not Quite Hollywood: Grade C

C
Not Quite Hollywood (2008)
Writer-Director Mark Hartley.

This is a documentary of Australian action and horror films of the 1970’s and 1980’s, few of which are known to a wide audience. Mel Gibson’s Mad Max is probably the best known example. They featured buckets of blood, naked breasts, and above all, high speed land and sea vehicles that ultimately explode.

Dozens of films are briefly reviewed with short clips and commentaries from the actors who appeared in them, their producers and directors, film critics, and Quentin Tarantino, who presents himself as some kind of an expert on the genre and who seems to want to elevate it to the level of the Spaghetti Western.

The films are interesting, especially in the first hour, but Tarantino’s comments are inane and obnoxious, telling us over and over how great these films were and how much he loves them. That is just not informative or helpful. However, the comments of the aging actors who appeared in them are often insightful. They include a few well-known actors such as Dennis Hopper, Jamie Lee Curtis, and George Lazenby, but mostly are unknown (to me) Aussies.

There are some worthwhile insights about the development of the Australian movie industry in general. After about an hour though, the whole project becomes repetitive and boring. How many exploding cars can you watch? It becomes apparent why the genre never transcended its roots.

American Violet: Grade C

C
American Violet (2008)
Nicole Beharie, Alfre Woodard, Will Patton; Director Tim Disney.

A young African-American single mother (Beharie) with four kids is wrongfully arrested on drug charges in a small town in Texas. The police “drug task force” had her name on a list of pushers provided by a mentally incompetent informant under duress. She is offered 6 years as a plea bargain, against 25 years if adjudicated guilty. The local DA is the stereotypical racist “lock ‘em up” bastard. The ACLU intervenes and persuades the mother to sue the DA for racism, an almost impossible charge to prove.

Based on a true story, the movie highlights many legal problems, not just in Texas but all over the country: racial profiling, disproportionate numbers of blacks in prison, use of dubious police informants, the problems inherent in the plea bargaining system, and of course, racist DA’s. These are all important issues, so the movie gets points for didacticism. Acting is strong, particularly by newcomer Beharie and by a sensitively played ACLU local counsel, Patton. Directing is undistinguished, cinematography is television cliché, and so is the writing. The pace is far too slow to sustain what little legal tension there is in the script. It will do fine on TV.

The Brothers Bloom: Grade C

C
The Brothers Bloom
Adrian Brody, Mark Ruffalo, Rachel Weisz, Rinko Kikuchi; Writer-Director Rian Johnson.

Brody and Ruffalo are brothers and con men in New Jersey. Brody wants out, but Ruffalo talks him into one last job, a complex hustle of a rich heiress (Weisz) that takes the trio to Paris, Prague (if I recall), someplace in Mexico, and other places. The McGuffin is a rare medieval book worth millions. Predictably, Brody falls in love with the mark and the job goes bad. Or does it? Maybe that was all part of the con. Maybe Brody is being played by Ruffalo. Or maybe Weisz is actually not the mark but is in on the con. By the end of the movie it is impossible to tell what is real and what is the con, which is how Brody’s character feels. So I guess that is tricky. What put me off though (besides Brody’s excruciatingly stiff acting), is the wacky screenwriting. Why was it necessary to have Weisz’s character demonstrate that she could juggle chain saws while riding a unicycle? Is that funny? It has nothing to do with anything. There are many such campy, tongue in cheek scenes that don’t make any sense and disrupt the story. Maybe I’m too old to understand the humor. Ruffalo gives a good performance, and Weisz is beautiful. Locations are attractive, but overall, the story was lacking in tension, not believable, and unnecessarily complex. Characters were less than two-dimensional, if that is possible. They were actually caricatures of characters. The movie is worth a mindless kill of two hours if your expectations are low.

Crossing Over: Grade C

C
Crossing Over (2009)
Harrison Ford, Ashley Judd, Ray Liotta, Jim Sturgess, Alice Shepard; Writer-Director Wayne Kramer.

Good plotting saves this familiar story of illegal immigrants trying to make a life in southern California. We’ve seen it all before: the immigrants are hard-working family people, but the nasty ICE keeps snooping around, deporting people, separating mothers from children, breaking up families, ruining lives, etc., etc. This edition of the story has a few variations that make it better than a mere rehash. Liotta is a crooked immigration bureaucrat who exchanges sex with a cute Aussie illegal (Shepard) for a green card; Ford is a way-past-retirement street officer who takes the trouble to return the child of a deported mom to the grandparents in Tijuana, and he also manages to solve a murder case involving an illegal muslim family. The film tries to represent the immigration authorities sympathetically. They are not uncaring bigots but sensitive officials and ordinary human beings just doing their jobs. It also tries to air brush the fact that the vast majority of immigrants to the US are Mexican. It does this by presenting a (non-random) “sample” of immigration stories including an Israeli, an Aussie, a Kenyan, a Korean family, and several Iranians, along with one Mexican family. However, Mexican immigrants constitute about 25% of all immigrants, while the next closest ethnic group is Chinese, at 5%. Why the film would attempt to distort these facts is unknown. Perhaps it was simply to introduce variety for entertainment value, but the political agenda of the movie suggests otherwise. Overall then, the film is mildly interesting with a bland but confused political message, some familiar actors but only mediocre acting and directing, and stereotypical characters. However clever mini-plots keep you just connected enough for its two-hour anthology of cases to be shown.

The Merry Gentleman: Grade C

C
The Merry Gentleman (2008)
Michael Keaton, Kelly MacDonald, Tom Bastounes. Director Michael Keaton

Keaton is a Chicago hit man who chances to meet a young woman (MacDonald) who is hiding from an abusive husband. They develop a tenuous relationship that grows into friendship, although neither knows the other’s secret until a detective (Batounes) investigating one of the murders starts sniffing around. He questions the woman, who got a glimpse of the perp escaping and decides to ask her out, but he is coarse while she is polite and proper so they don’t hit it off. However, he finds out she is seeing Keaton and as much out of jealousy as professional duty, tails him for a while until his police instincts make him suspicious. He conveys his suspicions to the woman, who then becomes suspicious also. The end.

A movie can get away without a plot as long as the character studies are compelling, but in this case, we learn nothing about the characters, who are all stereotypes. The hit man shoots people, but we don’t see him in any context or have a clue about his motivation or background. Except for the fact that he is a cold blooded killer, he seems like a nice guy, albeit with a depressive streak. The woman has an extremely cute working class Scottish accent, but otherwise is a cipher. The hard-bitten detective is the best motivated character but that’s not saying much. So without plot, without character, what do you have? Some very good acting. Keaton especially gives a knockout performance, possibly his best ever. His supreme confidence nails the role. MacDonald is a rising star, for good reason, and newcomer Bastounes reminds me of Joe Mantegna. So this picture is worth seeing for the excellent acting and to see Keaton's very respectable debut as a director.

Savage Grace: Grade C

C
Savage Grace (2007)
Julianne Moore, Stephen Dillane, Barney Clark, Eddie Redmayne; Director Tom Kalin.

If you like sumptuous costumes and sets, this docudrama is for you. The story spans 1946 to 1972, following the wife of an infinitely wealthy European (Brook Baekeland, heir of the inventor of Bakelite, an early form of plastic). Moore is the wife and she swoops around Europe in stunning outfits, visiting stunning villas and stunning restaurants, all lovingly photographed. It is a feast for the eyes.

Moore gives a riveting performance as the wealthy, foul-mouthed, gold-digger wife who married for money and cares nothing for her husband but dotes on her son (Clark and Redmayne). There is no plot. She and her son just appear in various places around Europe acting rich and fabulous, but as they do, we become aware that the relationship between mother and son is disturbingly more than just close, and that she is mentally unstable. In the end, we learn that the son is mentally incompetent too, although there was little forewarning of that fact, a weakness in the narrative. There is no throughput to the narrative however; it is just scene after unconnected scene until the tragic end. Characters are “based on” actual people, but we do not see any psychological development over the 25 year period, so there is nothing there. The residual is Moore’s excellent acting and the stunning photography of the costumes and sets, which is enough to make you sit and enjoy the whole thing.

The Escapist: Grade B

B
The Escapist (2008)
Brian Cox, Joseph Fiennes, Damien Lewis, Seu Jorge, Liam Cunningham; Co-writer and director Rupert Wyatt.

It’s definitely “a guy thing” and maybe just a married guy fantasy, but I love prison escape movies, and this low budget drama is one of the best ever. Brian Cox heads the team of lifers who breaks out of a prison somewhere in Britain. The sense of place and time are deliberately foggy perhaps because they are lifers, and you can focus on the characters. On display are the prerequisite whispering plan in the cafeteria, bareknuckle fistfights, and plenty of digging, of course. There are long journeys through pipes, sewers (why is it always the sewers?) and subway tunnels. But these features simply define the genre. What the film is really about is the inner character of Frank Perry (Cox), and how that is expressed in his fine acting. Cox has been around forever, playing secondary roles since the 1960’s but he only came to my attention in 2004 when he stood out in The Bourne Supremacy as the only person who could act. This is his first starring role and it is well-deserved. Supporting performances are all very strong, a tribute to the director. Photography is excellent and the music, featuring cellos and other strings, is extremely good (although far too loud: three times the level of the dialog, according to my on-screen indicator). Actually, there is not much dialog in the whole movie. It is a visual story, which I like. Admittedly this film is not great art, but for its genre, it is sure to be a classic.

The Inheritance: Grade A

A
The Inheritance (2003)
Ulrich Thomsen, Lisa Werlinder; Co-writer and director Per Fly (Swedish and French, subtitled)

Christoffer (Thomsen) is the son of a wealthy steel tycoon in Sweden. He has left the family firm to pursue his dream of building a restaurant business in Stockholm. He has the support and love of his actor-girlfriend Maria (Werlinder). But when his father dies, his mother urges him to take the lead at the steel company, as a crucial merger with a French firm is in the works. The mother insists that the younger brother, Ulric, is not competent to lead. Against his better judgment, and against the wishes of Maria, Christoffer takes the helm. He quickly finds that the company is in dire straits and that severe action is needed, like massive layoffs. He is required to become cold-blooded, which he does, but Maria leaves him. It’s the story of the human cost of modern capitalism.

The internal structure of the story has much in common with The Godfather, I thought, including the betrayal by the younger brother, the “whacking” of close associates, and so forth. (No actual whacking. This is a character study, not a mobster tale, but many of the moves are similar). Christoffer’s ambitious mother takes the Vito Corleone role, while Werlinder plays Diane Keaton’s part. Not to make too much of that analogy, because this is a completely different film, but the family dynamics are just as dramatic. Acting is uniformly strong, sets are excellent, directing is deft (although a little slow for my preference), and photography is compelling. Plus, as a bonus, it makes you think. How much is business success worth? Your whole life? Maybe so, if you have nothing else going for you.

The Future of Food (2004): Grade C

C
The Future of Food (2004)
Writer-Director Deborah Koons.

This obviously heartfelt documentary shows how large agricultural companies like Monsanto are force-feeding unlabelled, genetically modified food down our throats. They create special seeds through genetic engineering, patent them, then sue the socks off of any farmer who has any crops with their genetic signature, no matter if those seeds came onto the farm in the wind or by bird droppings. The agribusinesses own the farmer’s crops and it is against the law for the farmers to re-plant their own seeds once their fields are contaminated with GMO seeds. The film also documents government collusion in this takeover of American farming by giant seed and chemical companies, by stacking executive agencies like the EPA and the judiciary with “business-friendly” leaders. This sad story is well-told, but it is not a new story. Shows like this have been on TV for a long time (PBS at least). There is little or no new information here. The film is well-photographed, with good production values, but like a PBS-NOVA presentation, which it emulates, the material quickly becomes repetitive and boring. A feeble call to action is presented at the end: eat organic and buy local. Would that help? Maybe if you are rich. Organic produce usually costs at least double and often is of inferior quality. Maybe it is worth it though, to prevent Monsanto from taking over the world. But this documentary never does gen up a really rallying cry. It is strictly an “ain’t it awful?” presentation. Yeah, it’s awful, tragically awful, but Americans don’t seem to care. Maybe more call to action would have leavened the heavy fact-based presentation to better effect.

The Return: Grade B

B
The Return (2003)
Vladimir Garin, Ivan Dobronravov, Konstantin Lavronenko; Director Andrei Zvyagintsev (Russian, subtitled)

In this lyrical visual poem, two teenage boys (Garin and Dobronravov) must come to terms with their taciturn father (Lavronenko) who appears unexpectedly after a twelve year absence. They know him only from a single picture their mother kept. The father (who has no name in the movie) takes them on a road trip to a remote seashore, and then in a small dingy to a mysterious island some distance out. All the while the boys talk about the father, argue about him, wonder. He treats them very sternly but also with respect. There is no plot. Oddly, there is a quasi-McGuffin, a buried treasure the father digs up on the island, but we never learn what is in the box or why he wants it, even though it apparently is what motivated the journey. We never learn why the father was absent or where he has been. The story is all about the relationships among the three, and it explores them masterfully. It’s a quiet movie, mostly visual, with little dialog and very little music. The cinematography is thoughtful and beautiful. There is always a palpable sense of mystery, even foreboding, even though ultimately nothing happens. Objectively, the pace is extremely slow since there is no story deveopment, but in fact I was totally engaged for the whole ninety minutes with the visuals, the extremely fine minimalist acting, and the emotional tension. The movie has that mysterious and unforgettable sense of time, place and character, such as in Le Chateau de ma Mere (1990).

Waltz With Bashir: Grade B

B
Waltz With Bashir (2008)
Ron Ben-Yishai, Ronny Dayag, Ari Folman (voices); Writer and Director Ari Folman.

This hand-drawn animated documentary is stunningly beautiful. The sets and characters are drawn with such care that it is sometimes worthwhile to stop the DVD and examine details in the background. Colors are mesmerizing. Motion animation is only perfunctory, so the feel is that of a graphic novel, not a Dreamworks project. The illustrations are there to help the documentary along, not to create a whole alternate world.

And the story is tough. It is about Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in the early 80’s, the horrors of war, and ultimately about a massacre of civilians committed by the Israelis. The main character is a soldier who allegedly does not remember what he did in the war, so he goes around interviewing his old war buddies and gradually his memory comes back. This is a neat device for telling the story and allegorically, it also reflects the psychological and emotional conflict this story presents to modern Israelis, who do not want to admit that they committed such a massacre. It is apparently a very sensitive, political topic even today, and this film presents a radical breakthrough in public discourse in that respect. An animation also lets an Israeli audience maintain some emotional distance from reality even as they learn what happened.

The story is very sympathetic to the Israeli soldiers, not necessarily justifying the killing or the war, but it is from their point of view, showing how they were just ordinary soldiers suffering the privations and confusion of being in battle, not monsters, not killing machines, not committers of war crimes. The actual massacre is only touched upon lightly at the end, as if it were too “hot” even for this movie. So I don’t think it is as brave a picture as it pretends to be, but I am not Israeli and not a historian. Politics aside, just as an appreciator of film, I’d say it is engaging, a good-looking piece of work, worth seeing.

The Man Who Came Back: Grade F

F
The Man Who Came Back (2008)
Eric Braeden, James Patrick Stuart, George Kennedy, Armand Assante; Co-writer and Director Glen Pitre.

I don’t normally take the trouble to review movies that I don’t feel have anything to offer, but this one fails in so many interesting ways that it might be worth talking about. In the 1860’s right after the Civil War a plantation supervisor (Braeden) speaks to the plantation boss (Kennedy) about how his arrogant son (Stuart) apparently has not received the memo that the slaves are free, and has been treating them cruelly. The boss fires the super on the spot for being an abject nigger lover and puts the arrogant son in charge instead.

In fact, the old cowboy is then accused of killing one of the black men in a sort of Crossbow Incident scene. The accusation is a fabrication, but everybody backs up the evil boss and his son. To make things about as mean as they could be, the evil son cages the super and makes him watch as he and his men rape his wife and throw his young boy down a well. That would make anybody mad, for sure. The old cowboy escapes from territorial prison, after several direct visual quotations from Cool Hand Luke, and goes back to town for revenge, killing at least half a dozen of the ordinary townsfolk who falsely spoke against him and of course the plantation owner and his son.

I love a revenge story and I enjoy a good western so I had hoped this would be along the lines of the terrific Steve McQueen film, Nevada Smith (1966). And maybe it is vaguely like that in structure, but there is no drama here. The lead cowboy, Braeden, has only one look, a stoneface gaze with head tipped down, eyes staring from under furrowed brow. It’s a good look, but it’s his only one. Also he rides a horse well, I’ll give him that. Despite being in his 60’s the character can absorb a severe beating without consequence and punch out a man half his age, not too believably however.

Kennedy gives an admirable performance with the stereotype part he has, but that’s not enough to hold up the whole picture. Assante has the perfect look of a sonofabitch cowboy, almost like Lee Van Cleef, but without the acting ability.

It takes an hour to get to the revenge part of the story but the prelude is so over the top it is ridiculous. A ten minute scene would have motivated the revenge. In the last half, Braeden casually walks up to each citizen and kills him. He is not tricky or stealthy. There is no tension, no hunt, no mystery. He doesn’t give a speech, the victims don’t plead. The townspeople seem disinterested. It’s just boring. Wow. How could a story like that be boring? That is aggressively bad writing and worse directing.

The costumes are ludicrous. All are spotless, new, perfectly stitched, pressed and starched, a stupid error, but also they are very fancy fine clothes, with many topcoats in identical shades of implausible purple. How could something like that happen? Was nobody in charge? Props are shiny museum pieces. Anachronisms abound. Slaves speak modern English. Buildings are built with modern lumber. The whore has tons of modern makeup, professional hair color and lingerie from Victoria’s Secret. Was this supposed to be a historical drama or not? The visuals are unimaginative, grainy, set-bound, and give no sense of time and place. Sound is muddy.

Oh well, that’s enough. There is nothing good about the movie, but oddly, it seems like it was a sincere attempt. I wonder how a movie like this gets made.

Adam Resurrected: Grade A

A
Adam Resurrected (2008)
Jeff Goldblum, Willem Dafoe, Ayelet Zurer; Director Paul Schrader.

Is it better to accept an unjust death with dignity or at least defiance, or would you completely humiliate yourself to purchase continued life? That is the dilemma faced by Adam (Goldblum), a Jew from Berlin during World War II. The psychopathic Nazi commandant (Dafoe) allows Adam to survive and maybe his wife and daughter too, if he agrees to live like a dog, literally, on all fours, barking, eating from the floor, sleeping outside in the cage with the dogs. A more abject degradation can hardly be imagined. It is a compact metaphor for the subhuman status of the concentration camp inmates, without cataloging yet again the individual horrors they suffered.

Prior to the war, Adam was a famous vaudevillian and stage magician, and even in captivity he can force a funny face or play a tune on the violin to amuse the commandant. After the war, in Tel Aviv, he is a patient in a psychiatric institute for holocaust survivors. He uses sharp wit, clever remarks, practical jokes, and alcohol to avoid engagement with his therapist and as defense against his mental dislocation. The movie effectively intercuts his postwar struggle with his wartime experiences (in black and white), to tell this psychological story.

Goldblum’s acting is phenomenal, way beyond his usual mad scientist role. Photography is excellent, especially the sepia-toned scenes. The rich story raises questions about life, fate, God, grief and loss, human nature, and the accidents of history. When I was young there were lots of Holocaust survivors about but I was only dimly aware of them and had little feeling for their experience. Now they are virtually all gone and the Holocaust story is becoming social mythology and historical symbology. This movie reconnects us with a personal story.

On the down side, the start is slow, and directing is crude and obvious throughout, pitched for melodrama rather than drama. Adam swans about the hospital cracking jokes, spouting Yiddish phrases; making lame allusions to the Nazis. It is a poor introduction to the character, not amusing or believable. Other patients and the hospital staff are two-dimensional. Ridiculous German accents persist, but we overcome all that and finally connect with Adam. The implausible introduction of a feral child adds symbolic interest to the story but comes out of left field. The recurring element of magical realism is distracting. Though the directing is big and heavy, there are some moving moments. Despite these flaws, the multi-layered story and great performance by Goldblum make the movie worth seeing.

Sunshine Cleaning: Grade C

C
Sunshine Cleaning (2008)
Amy Adams, Emily Blunt, Alan Arkin; Director Christine Jeffs.

Adams is a single mom working as a housecleaner in Albuquerque. She realizes it’s a dead-end job so she cajoles her sister (Blunt) to start a waste removal cleaning service with her, cleaning up blood and guts after crime scenes, suicides, etc. There are plenty of gross-out scenes as the ladies deal with all manner of body fluids and filth, but the main theme is the drama of Adams trying to better her station in life by doing “whatever it takes” to make good.

The best scene is when she goes to a baby shower for an old high school acquaintance and hopes to appear successful and respectable to the snooty middle-class women there. It is a tribute to the director who pulled that performance out of Adams. Lord knows how many takes it involved; the editing is not seamless. The scene stands out head and shoulders above all others in the movie, the way Virginia Madsen stood out in Sideways(2004) when she explained Pinot Noir. Adams definitely demonstrates her acting chops in this movie.

But beyond that sterling performance, there is little going for this picture. It is moderately funny in places, mildly interesting, slightly charming. Blunt and Arkin turn in good performances. But the story goes nowhere. Two girls start a company, ta-da. Nor is there any character development. So the movie adds up to zero, but Adams is the reason to take a look at it.

Sleep Dealer: Grade A

A
Sleep Dealer ( 2008 )
Luis Fernando Peña, Leonor Varela, Jacob Vargas; Co-writer and Director Alex Rivera. (Mostly Spanish, subtitled).

This low-budget, sci-fi indie gets an A for its genre, but like nearly all sci-fi movies, it is more fascinated with its technology than with human drama, so allowances must be made.

In a near-future North America, Mexican laborers “telecommute” to the U.S. by plugging their nervous systems into computers so they can remotely operate robots across the border that pick fruit, perform welding and yard work. As the manager of a telecommuting center in Tijuana notes, it gives America its foreign labor without the foreigners. The main theme is technological imperialism and human exploitation, ostensibly under the guise of anti-terrorist vigilance.

Memo, a young Mexican in Oaxaca (Pena), built his own HAM radio and while surfing picks up a police channel. He overhears police chasing then killing some offender. In his own neighborhood, drone aircraft patrol the private dam that has blocked his village’s river and ruined his father’s small farm. The drones are operated remotely by pilots in San Diego. When the San Diego corporation detects that they have been overheard by a HAM operator, they order a strike, and Memo’s family home is blown up, his father killed. The incident is reported on TV and hailed as a victory in the ongoing fight against terrorism.

Memo leaves for Tijuana to earn money for his now destitute family. He finds work as a telecommuter, operating remote construction robots in California. He must have “nodes” installed on his body to interface to the computer, and an attractive young woman (Varela) installs them for him, and they develop a relationship. The details of how Memo plugs into the computer are visually fascinating, reminiscent of scenes from Brazil (1985) and Blade Runner (1982), as well as William Gibson’s classic novel, Neuromancer. We, and Memo, discover however that “jacking in” to the computer eventually destroys your nervous system and makes you blind, so the human exploitation embodied by the system is total.

The romantic story with the girl develops in an interesting way, and so does an unlikely relationship between Memo and the pilot who killed his father (Vargas). The ending is predictable and unimaginative, but plausible and Hollywood Happy.

It is an extremely well-made film, especially considering its budget; beautifully photographed, intellectually stimulating, and dramatically interesting. I especially appreciated creative camera work, shots using mirrors, and so on. The main disappointment is the lack of an overall message. The important political and economic themes of the movie are not dealt with. Those issues are raised, shown, but abandoned. Perhaps that is the film’s message: heartless capitalistic exploitation will continue and nothing can change it.

Gomorrah: Grade B

B
Gomorrah (2008)
Salvatore Cantalupo, Salvatore Abruzzese, others; Director Matteo Garrone. (Italian, subtitled).

The movie documents some activities of the Camorra, the crime syndicate of Naples. The American spelling of the title is arbitrary.

The camera stays mostly close up on various characters as they extort money, trade guns and drugs, commit murders, make dirty deals, and intimidate people. A postscript emphasizes that these are genuine activities of the Camorra, which is a plague on southern Italy.

The narrative skips among three threads: two airhead young men who want to be gangsters find a cache of weapons and embark on an “independent” life of crime, which is not tolerated by the mob; a high fashion tailor sells trade secrets to a competing Chinese couture house, a move the mob does not appreciate; and a group of mobsters provide a discount hazardous waste disposal service, but they just bury the stuff illegally at night.

The movie is confusing. You can vaguely discern the outlines of the three threads, but they don’t intersect and lack internal structure. None has much dramatic tension or character motivation. Unidentified people are killed for vague reasons not established. There is no unfolding drama as in The Godfather or Goodfellas. Rather, daily murder and mayhem are as mundane as going in to the office every morning. Ignorance, decay, poverty, and egocentricity are palpable and stifling. Acting and directing are so good it doesn’t seem like acting and directing. You feel you are watching a verite documentary.

There is a keen feel of reality, as if you had been inserted into Camorra operations without a clue. You would be confused and disoriented, horrified and frightened. The close camera gives that sense of presence. Sometimes I thought I was a mosquito about to buzz into someone’s ear. Even long shots are framed by a close-up detail like a window frame so you always know where you are located in the scene. The camera did not seem to be hand held, although it moved around anthropomorphically. The sense of presence given by the camera was something I had not experienced before. You could almost smell the body odor of the characters.

What makes this movie worth watching is the extremely fine cinematography. I was enraptured for the entire 90 minutes by the pictures, even though I had little idea what was going on. Every shot was stunning in color, composition, and point of view. You could turn the sound off and enjoy this movie. I have rarely seen such a confident camera. To fill the frame with a close profile and watch a man smoke a cigarette takes guts. You have to truly believe it is an excellent shot to spend a full 15 seconds on it. And in this film, there were a lot of courageous shots and they were all excellent. I often paused the DVD to take a longer look.

The movie is “presented by” Martin Scorsese. I’m not sure what that means, but his imprimatur is not wasted on this cinematography.

Tyson: Grade D

D
Tyson (2008)
Mike Tyson; Writer-Director James Toback.

This documentary biography of boxing champion Mike Tyson is mildly interesting. Head shots of him (now in his 40’s and retired) talking about his life are interspersed with archival clips from his life, mostly from the ring, but also of weddings, press conferences, and so on.

He had a remarkable life, rising from poor, neglected street kid in Brooklyn to a multi-millionaire, international sports figure. Along the way he served prison time for rape, and famously, bit off part of the ear of one of his heavyweight opponents during a match. But no topic is pursued in detail. There is no interviewer and no hard questions are posed. Tyson simply rambles on in self-exculpatory fashion. He does reveal himself, perhaps more than he intended, as an angry and depressed, uneducated, under-socialized criminal, irresponsible and financially incompetent; a rapist and a drug addict (all this by his own admission except the rape charge, which he denies without detail). How interesting can a psychopath like that be? His moments of self-reflection produce banal conclusions. He seems not capable of providing insight into his, or any life. For crucial incidents (such as the ear-biting), he simply denies personal responsibility (“I just blacked out momentarily”). Maybe that’s so, but it illuminates nothing. The result is a superficial exercise in self-aggrandizement, of value only for dedicated fans.

Yonkers Joe: Grade B

B
Yonkers Joe (2008)
Chaz Palminteri, Christine Lahti, Tom Guiry; Writer-Director Robert Celestino.

I am a longtime fan of Chaz Palminteri so I may be overrating this movie, but I enjoyed it despite its often sagging pace. Joe is an old gambler and hustler, an expert in cheating at cards and at dice. He bets the ponies compulsively, apparently with mixed results, and practices palming dice to relax. His comfortable life in Yonkers with his girlfriend (Lahti) is disturbed when a facility caring for his retarded son (Guiry) expels the teenager for aggressiveness. The old con man is panicked, at a loss about what to do with the child, but his girlfriend responds better to the challenge. The retarded character is extremely annoying and was a significant negative for me. It was some kind of implausible synthesis of Down Syndrome, autism spectrum disorder, nonspecific cognitive deficit, and most annoying, a sensorimotor problem that had the young man hold his jaw off to one side and speak as if he had CP. The picture is so wrong I winced every time I saw him on screen. Perhaps those less familiar with developmental disorders could accept the stereotype.

Joe must come up with a pile of money to pay for a group home to get the kid out of his house and off his back, so he decides to run a dice scam in Los Vegas, even though his buddies tell him it is impossible to beat Vegas security. But he has a plan that makes a great plot, with lots of interesting moves and good internal tension. Meanwhile, his girlfriend is increasingly ticked off at him for not stepping up to his fatherly duties with his son.The two stories come together when Joe does finally establish an emotional connection with his son just as the dice scam reaches its conclusion.

It is a sensitively written movie, part grifter-thriller, and part adult relationship drama. The relationship theme was too slow, too predictable, and not drawn sharply enough, so it always was a maddening diversion from the gambling plot, which was far more interesting. The relationship side of the story didn’t have anything to say. Many dramatic possibilities were overlooked.

Palminteri acts better than I have ever seen him, the venerable gangster stereotype even doing “sensitive” relationship scenes convincingly. Supporting characters are very strong. Directing is strong, especially in small details and gestures. Sets are perfect. It is hard to say why this independent project does not come alive on both levels, but it’s got enough going for it to be worth a look.

Sin Nombre: Grade A

A
Sin Nombre (2009)
Paulina Gaitan, Kristian Ferrer, Édgar Flores; Writer-Director Cary Fukunaga. (Spanish, subtitled).

A father and two youths from Guatemala make the long journey north to escape the poverty and hopelessness of their lives. They walk, and boat, and travel through Mexico riding on top of freight trains, dodging the border patrol, scavenging food, shelter and water as they can. It is a well told story, very realistic, not over-sentimentalized, but sympathetic. As they cross Chiapas in southern Mexico, a young man (Flores) jumps on the train with a few fellow gangsters. They are members of one of the notorious Latino gangs similar to the mafia. They start robbing the hundreds of migrants at gunpoint, but when the mean, ugly, psychopathic gang leader attempts to molest the young girl from Guatemala (Gaitan), his fellow gang member has an attack of scruples and slashes the leader's throat with a single slice of a machete. He knows that makes him marked for death. He continues on the train north, but the gang is international and will not forget about him. The Guatemalan girl befriends him and as they jointly dodge border patrol and gangsters, they develop a relationship. The young man realizes the futility of the gang life, but it is too late for him. The girl seems oblivious to this darker side of life, but maybe not. It’s ambiguous. The ending is realistic, but definitely not Hollywood Happy.

Acting by the young people is excellent. Scenery and music are excellent. Photography is excellent. This is a compelling movie without a false note. It would have been easy to slip into melodrama, like Slumdog Millionaire did, but this picture is completely honest. It conveys a palpable sense of the reality of the Latino gangs and shows how easy it is for youngsters to get involved with them. The title means “without a name,” perhaps a reference to the nameless millions who attempt the journey to El Norte each year. There is perhaps a secondary political statement, but this is primarily a love story that illustrates a world alien to most of us.

Rudo y Cursi: Grade F

F
Rudo y Cursi (2008)
Gael García Bernal, Diego Luna; Writer-Director Carlos Cuarón. (Spanish, subtitled)

I like foreign films, other languages, other ethnicities; I like seeing how people live in other cultures, what they assume about life, what the world looks like to them. But this film might be just too ethnic, even for me, because I could not get a thing out of it. Granted, I am not a huge soccer fan and this movie focuses on two brothers from a poor village in southern Mexico who aspire to become professional soccer stars. They achieve their goal when an unconvincing talent scout implausibly “discovers” them in their village and whisks them off to the big leagues, though even to my untrained eye, they aren’t very good players. So they make a lot of money, get a fancy apartment, a big white SUV, are on TV, and have lots of women and champagne. Woo-woo. They visit their village as heroes but also as aliens, no longer able to relate to village life or even to their families. Finally there is the inevitable “big match” where everything is at stake, and it all comes down to a penalty kick with one brother kicking and the other the goalie. What drama!

This is all predictable, without an ounce of real tension. The acting is hammy, dialog uninteresting, story unbelievable. The relationship between the brothers is not well developed. Directing and cinematography are unremarkable. It is nice to see village life in southern Mexico, but that is only a small part of the film. I’m sure I am being culturally insensitive but for me, this wasn’t even adequate soap opera.

Triangle: Grade C

C
Triangle (2007)
Simon Yam, Honglei Sun, Ka Tung Lam, Kelly Lin, Yong You, others.
Directors Ringo Lam, Johnnie To, Hark Tsui; (Chinese; subtitled)

In this contemporary Hong Kong crime drama, three men discover a buried treasure worth 8 million dollars. A suspicious detective hovers about as they try to fence it, but he is also sleeping with the wife of one of the men. They lose the treasure, recover it, lose it again, recover it again, and so on, until there is a long, drawn out gun battle at the end. The story is pretty silly, and anyway, it is not clear that the men committed any crime so why were they on the run from the police?

Oh, well, never mind that, because what this movie is really about is the three directors. Each director takes a 30 minute segment, and the different styles of work is what makes the film interesting. The first third is like a typical thriller, with the men skulking about at night, then digging up the treasure, and with the theme of the unfaithful wife. The style is atmospheric and the photography is high contrast, self-consciously dramatic. The story is a bit hard to follow because it took me a while to catch on that the cop’s girlfriend was a wife of one of the diggers. Without transition, you gradually realize that you are in the second segment, because the style has changed so radically. Now it is a psychological drama with the main treasure hunter obsessed by his wife’s infidelity and becoming violent, unpredictable, even crazy as he tortures the cop. There are vignette scenes that mix his imagination with reality. It is interesting and artistically done, but disconnected thematically from the thriller format that had been developing, so the character doesn't make psychological sense. The cop gets away from his tormenter and the chase is on, and before you know it, it is a madcap chase worthy of the Keystone Cops. You realize you are now in the hands of the third director who turns the film into a farcical comedy.

Basically it is three different 30 minute movies, loosely stitched together. But none of them bothers to give a complete story with a beginning, middle, and end. The result is like some experimental novel where different authors write succeeding chapters. It is neither a set of short stories, nor a coherent novel. So it is fun to see the directors’ styles, but as a movie, it is unsatisfying. A format like that used in The Driver (2001) works better, where the same short story is told in its entirety by different directors.

Goodbye Solo: Grade D

D
Goodbye Solo (2008)
Souleymane Sy Savane, Red West; Writer-Director Ramin Bahrani.

A pathologically cheerful Senegalese taxi driver (Savane) picks up an angry, misanthropic old man (West) in contemporary North Carolina. They agree that the driver will take him to the mountains in two weeks. They see each other several times before that and the driver realizes that the old man is depressed and possibly considering suicide. Gradually the men form the barest thread of a connection that could possibly be construed as friendship. There is no plot, no motivation, no outcome, no point to any of it. Each man denies his loneliness to himself and the other, but finds a tiny solace in caring. (I am generously attributing or imagining a theme that may not really be there.)

Acting by the two principals is very good, but without anything to hang on to, the story is just a set of unconnected scenes. At least 20% of the movie is composed of long shots of the taxi driving around, and short shots of the driver driving it. The rest of the movie is about as interesting. The relationship does not develop so much as creep along, so little is revealed about either character. Bahrani is expert at portraying the circumstances and struggles of hard-working immigrants (Chop Shop, Man Push Cart), but this project doesn’t come up to his standards, either narratively or photographically.

Big Man Japan: Grade A

A
Big Man Japan (2007)
Hitoshi Matsumoto. Co-writer and Director Hitoshi Matsumoto. (Japanese, subtitled)

This bizarre film can only be recommended to the adventurous. The protagonist, “Big Man Japan” (Matsumoto), is a middle aged television actor in contemporary Tokyo. His terrible, low-budget sci-fi show, on at 2am, struggles to keep sponsors. In the show, a giant (“Big Man”) as tall as the buildings of downtown Tokyo, fights evil monsters just as big. The CGI effects are purposely clunky to recall classic Japanese sci-fi of the 1950’s. The monsters are the most creative you will ever see. Forget giant ants, lizards, and moths. These monsters are direct from the id but at the same time hilarious, more so, I imagine, if you were high.

Adding complexity, the premise is that the actor is being interviewed in documentary style, so a camera crew follows him everywhere, into his crowded apartment, a restaurant (where he only eats “super-noodles”) and on a visit to his estranged wife and beloved daughter. We learn that he endures large blasts of electricity which transform him into the superhero giant. He complains that he is getting old and the electric jolts are hard to take, but he is the only one of his type left. His ageing grandfather (Big Man the Fourth) has dementia, he believes, because he took too much electricity in his youth. The realities of the actor’s life and of his superhero character are so skillfully blended that we become unsure what kind of a movie we are watching. Is he really a superhero and not an actor? Or both? What is the deal?

Then there is a third layer of meaning in which we discover that as a child the actor was abused by his father (now dead), but was saved by his grandfather. The worst monster, a sort of red devil, thus represents the actor’s inner demon, his unforgiving memory of his father. In a final scene too strange to describe, a family of justice encourages him to find peace with the past. He does overcome his demon, but in yet another twist during the credits, we discover that coming to terms with the past is not a state of bliss.

Then we start to rethink the other monsters as symbols. Are they actually complaints about life in ultra-crowded Tokyo: crushed by the sheer press of people, stepping on them and being stepped on, having no privacy from peering eyes, enduring the stink of living so close, and so on? A whole new social meaning emerges to what we have been watching. Was this story a representation of the actor’s mental state all along, the monsters actually dream symbols? What is the reality? There are also historical and cultural dimensions I have not mentioned.

While reaching to the edge of delightfully, hilariously confusing madness, the movie demonstrates how to use the medium to its maximum capacity and not waste it photographing stage plays. The colors and effects are brilliant, exciting, and extremely creative as visuals. Photography is first class. The layers of allusion are dizzying. The music is terrific. However, if you like straight Disneyesque fables, you should skip this one because it will make no sense to you.

An American Affair: Grade C

C
An American Affair (2009)
Gretchen Mol, Cameron Bright, James Rebhorn, Marc Pellegrino; Director William Olsson.

The only reason to watch this picture is Gretchen Mol, whose performance is a beacon in a dim terrain. She is a wealthy artist and divorcee in Georgetown (Washington, D.C.) and also one of JFK’s many mistresses. Mol’s ex-husband (Pellegrino) is CIA and he is pressured by his boss (Rebhorn) to get Mol to warn Kennedy of vague imminent danger just prior to the assassination (an allusion to the Oliver Stone thesis). We are to believe that JFK has cut off contact with the CIA so Mol is “the only remaining line of communication.” However, she wants nothing to do with that, and anyway, JFK has dumped her and she can no longer even get into the White House. Add a rich Georgetown youth next door (Bright) who is infatuated (mostly hormonally) with Mol, and steals her diary, which implausibly looks like a schoolgirl's. The CIA must have the diary, they suspect the boy has it. This is all afterthought to lend some conceptual direction to a rambling story. Characters do not change over time, and there is no plot development other than pursuit of the diary in the last 15 minutes, so the movie is plodding and uninteresting. The boy’s search for a sexual coming of age is 100% cliché. There are numerous linguistic anachronisms. Only Mol (and to a lesser extent Rebhorn and Pellegrino) keep you awake. She captures the big screen in every scene she is in. Costumes and sets for 1963 are perfect – too perfect, not a seam out of place or a lampshade deviating from level, or even the tiniest suggestion of dust or disorder. Everything looks like museum tableaux not places people inhabit. The movie is setbound and there is no attempt to recreate the Washington of a half century ago, which would be a formidable task. Instead, cliché news clips of Kennedy are shown on TV, but that is a weak convention that doesn’t convey us to another time.