Sex and Lucia: Grade B

B
Sex and Lucia (2001)
Paz Vega, Tristán Ulloa; writer and director Julio Medem. (Spanish, subtitled)

I’ve been charmed by Paz Vega ever since 10 Items or Less (2006), so I looked at this one, which was among her first half dozen roles on the big screen, at the tender age of 26. Even then she had all the mysterious, earnest, and intense looks, glances and gestures that make her so compelling. Comparisons to Penelope Cruz cannot be avoided.

This is not a great movie, serving mainly as a vehicle for writerly self-aggrandizement. It is a story about a writer who, perhaps unwittingly, is writing the story that we are watching unfold, except sometimes he is also unknowingly acting it out. In the end, it doesn’t add up, and gets so caught up in its tricky self-references that after a while the viewer just tunes out, listens to the melodic language and watches the lovely scenery, good acting, and the mesmerizing Vega.

The cinematography is beautiful, some of it stunning, where color saturation is pushed so hard clouds become pink. In some scenes the film is almost solarized to give the impression of intense heat. Locations are gorgeous, sets are interesting, especially the country house, and the costumes are good.

As for sex, well, there is considerable naked writhing, but apart from the odd nipple or buttock, there is really nothing to look at. The characters are hypersexual at times, but hey, they are young. That’s really not the point of the movie. Rather, it is the complex characters and convincing acting.

Cold Souls: Grade C

C

Cold Souls (2009)

Paul Giamatti, David Straithairn, Emily Watson, Dina Korzun, Sergey Kolesnikov; Writer-Director Sophie Barthes.

Paul Giamatti plays Paul Giamatti, a depressed American actor having trouble performing in a production of Chekov’s Uncle Vanya. He gives a humorous “bad” performance to illustrate. Even more depressed then, he decides to have his soul removed. A hi-tech New York medical company with gleaming white offices, headed by a confident and reassuring doctor (Straithairn) puts him into what looks like a giant CAT-scan machine. His soul in a jar, looks like a chickpea. It is stored safely in a vault.

The new, soulless Paul feels lighter, unburdened by “dark thoughts” but his acting in Uncle Vanya is now bizarre, flippant, way off the mark. His wife (Watson – who is wasted in this movie) thinks he is having an affair because he has become so distant. But when Paul tries to get his soul reinstalled, it is missing, having been stolen by the Russian mafia, which traffics in souls. Instead, he rents the soul of a Russian poet and gives a respectable Uncle Vanya, although still very much Paul Giamatti with all his trademark twitches and quirks. Finally, he travels to St. Petersberg to retrieve his soul from a Russian gangster (Kolesnikov in a standout performance). Then he walks on a beach and the movie is over.

The clever premise and story development is the best part of the movie, and there are some good jokes in the beginning, such as whether scientists and celebrities have souls, whether “size matters,” and so forth. But it is all just silliness. There is no exploration of what a soul is or why it matters. Nobody behaves much differently than they did before with or without a soul or with somebody else’s soul implanted. The Uncle Vanya performances were arbitrary, none of them expressing anything about souls or soullessness. The Russian woman did not start to act like Paul Giamatti when she had his soul – that would have been terrific.

So there is no intellectual or philosophical point to the movie. It begins as a comedy, then turns into a sort of thriller, then loses its way altogether. It alludes to “Being John Malkovich,” a somewhat similar film that was outrageously creative, as this one is not. And finally, I have to say, Paul Giamatti is an acquired taste. His mercurial, hammy emoting really doesn't do well in a dramatic role, and he never plays any character other than Paul Giamatti, which the movie emphasizes. The film is a great idea but a missed opportunity.

Zombieland: Grade C

C

Zombieland (2009)

Woody Harrelson, Jesse Eisenberg, Emma Stone, Abigail Breslin, with Bill Murray; Director Reuben Fleischer.

A young man (Eisenberg) is a lone survivor in a future America where a virus has turned everyone into flesh-eating zombies. He begins a journey to see if his parents are alive. Along the way he hitches a ride from a tough-guy zombie killer (Harrelson) and they develop an uneasy friendship as they drive across country, killing zombies and searching for a Hostess Twinkie, the tough’s favorite food. They encounter two young women (Stone and Breslin) who eventually join them and so it is a road trip where paranoia gradually fades, and trust, even real affection slowly develops among the survivors. Inevitably, the women get trapped by a huge pack of zombies and have to be rescued by the men in a glorious slaughter.

The movie is really a romantic comedy that just happens to have zombies in it. As a comedy, it is similar to Shaun of the Dead, and the romantic and friendship relationships make the characters more than just cartoons. Woody Harrelson plays his Crocodile Dundee character to a T. Eisenberg has some funny, ironic lines as the “sensitive” zombie killer. Breslin is there to be cute, and does that. Stone, I thought, was directed poorly. Her character has a gothic look, not too bright or expressive, which doesn’t add much. Maybe she is just not as strong an actor as the others.

There are plenty of funny lines and visual gags. The action is kinetic, the characters interesting. Plus you have some good special effects with the zombie gore as they eat their victims. But bottom line, it is a dumb story and the comedy angle has already been done better, and how many zombie films can there be, anyway? As a me-too movie, it is amusing but not inspired. It will appeal to boys under 18.

A Serious Man: Grade A

A

A Serious Man (2009)

Michael Stuhlbarg, Fred Melamed, Aaron Wolf, Sari Lennick; Writer-Directors Ethan and Joel Cohen.

Larry Gopnik (Stuhlbarg) is a physics professor at a Midwestern university, and a 1960’s Jewish nebbish. He lives in a Levittown-like suburb (sets and costumes are absolutely nailed in this film), with his out-of-control teenage kids and wife who wants a divorce.

The wife and her paramour (Melamed) try to be “adult” about confronting the cuckolded husband by suggesting ever so kindly that he might be “more comfortable” if he moved out to the Jolly Roger Motel. The unctuous pseudo-caring of the lovers' “advice” is squirm-in-your-seat funny and a masterpiece of acting and directing.

Numerous other troubles, large and small, befall the professor, who seeks advice from rabbis and lawyers, each of whom is a brilliant parody. There is no plot, just a documentary of this Job-like man’s pathetic life.

The opening scene, which seems disconnected at first, is in retrospect, the key to this funny but dark satirical essay on Jewish existentialism. The opener says that in “the old days” God was present to us and we knew what things meant and we knew how to act. The rules were simple. Today, God does not seem present in life and nobody knows what anything means. It is a scathing commentary on modern life, not just Jewish life, but in this case, life in the Jewish tradition.

The writing is flawless. The acting is utterly gripping by just about every character, and that’s a tribute also to the directors. I was put off a bit by the main character’s extreme passivity, which was frustratingly unrealistic, but it was designed to highlight the world around him, not him as an individual, so it works. Sixties and seventies rock music (featuring Grace Slick) mixed with some lovely ceremonial cant, was excellent. It is another masterpiece from the Cohen brothers.

American History X: Grade A

A

American History X (1998)

Edward Norton, Edward Furlong, Stacy Keach, Elliot Gould. Director Tony Kaye.

This gem of a movie had slipped by me so I was glad I picked it up from Netflix, which is strong on backlist. Norton, one of the finest actors working today, plays a Crypto-Nazi racist in Los Angeles. But unlike most racist baboons, his character is intelligent and can articulate extremely well the fear, helplessness, and xenophobia that underlie racism. Actually there are a couple of speeches where his mouth is so full of words that we lose the sense of character. That is the writer’s fault, not his.

Intelligent and intuitive though he is, he is nevertheless a violent scumbag, and ends up serving three years in prison for killing two black guys (pretty light sentence, actually). While in the joint (where he is informed that “he is the nigger here”), his high-school aged brother (Furlong), who worships him, drifts ever deeper into the local Nazi movement, led by Keach.

After prison, Norton has a more mature, tolerant attitude. We see his transformation in beautiful black and white flashback scenes that tell a wonderful substory. He is dismayed by his young brother’s extreme attitudes and is rejected by his old crowd, which has become even more violent and crazy than before.

Directing and the script too, are extremely clunky in the first half hour, so much so that I thought the film would be unwatchable, but it is worth sticking with it because it all smoothes out. They must have had a second crew create the beginning as a separate project, because its quality is really out of line with the rest.

The film’s message is overtly preachy (“racism is bad”), and the story is only just barely believable because it does not address the facts that these skinhead types are very uneducated and living way outside of society’s economic and social structures. It takes more than “a change in attitude” to correct those problems. Still, Norton’s character's development is plausible, and his acting alone is worth the price of admission.

The Invention of Lying: Grade C

C
The Invention of Lying (2009)
Ricky Gervais, Jennifer Garner, Jonah Hill. With Rob Lowe, Tina Fey, and uncredited cameos by Edward Norton and Philip Seymour Hoffman (I think that was him). Co-writer and Director Ricky Gervais.

I am a huge fan of English standup Gervais, the creater of “The Office” television show. He is not only a great joke writer but a subtle face and voice actor. So I was a bit disappointed at the flatness of this romantic comedy. We are to imagine a contemporary world in which everyone tells the truth all the time and nobody has ever lied. So there are lots of funny gags along the lines of “Yes, that dress does make your butt look fat.”

However, after just a few minutes, it is obviously all the same joke, and it's not that funny because the social interactions are so far removed from what we are familiar with that all you can see is a goofy comedy sketch. Characterization is close to nil.

Then one day, a man (Gervais) discovers (not invents) lying, by telling a bank teller that he has more money in his account than he does. She naturally assumes the computer is wrong and gives him what he asks for, because lying is unknown. Soon he is rich.

The funniest bit is when he lies to his dying mother, to comfort her, by telling her there is a “man in the sky who controls everything.” The word gets out on this, and soon he is a famous prophet, with his ten rules about the man in the sky written on the back of two pizza boxes (nice product placement for Pizza Hut). But even that extremely funny and satirical scene doesn’t go anywhere. The movie is, after all, just a light vehicle for Gervais’ jokes, and not intended as a meaningful satire on religion or contemporary culture.

Everything ends up happy and normal and he gets the girl (Garner), even though her acting is abominable. Lots of good jokes, but then why not just rent a Gervais stand-up video for that.

Summer Hours: Grade A

A
Summer Hours (2008)
Juliette Binoche, Charles Berling, Jeremie Renier, Edith Scob; Writer-Director Oliver Assayas. (French, subtitled).

An aristocratic matriarch (Scob) is joined at the family’s French country house by her three adult children (Binoche, Berling, Renier). It is full summer; colors are deep and the sunlight strong. The country house is a fabulous mansion. Although it is crumbling, with peeling wallpaper and crooked walls (as the best country mansions are), it is filled with museum quality furniture and valuable works of art (Corots, Redons, etc.). Grandchildren play in the meadows with carefree hearts. Dogs bark. A feast is spread on the long table outdoors and everyone eats, drinks wine, and tells stories about the family and gives presents to the mother on her 75th birthday. It has the same aching enchantment as the 1990 film, “My Father’s Glory” directed by Yves Robert.

When the matriarch dies, the siblings must deal with the estate. The heart of the story is the tension between their lifetime of fond memories at the country house, that they wish to replicate for their children, and the reality of busy, international lives that have little time for retreats in provincial France and in fact, need cash flow. Only one of the siblings lives in Paris, the others now live in New York and Beijing because of their jobs. As the country house and all its possessions are sold off, we witness the end of an era.

What makes all this more than mere sentimentality is the fine acting, insightful writing, and beautiful photography. It makes you realize that when you die, nobody cares about your lifetime of experiences and memories. Your precious mementos become just stuff that may have some cash value. The lifetime of meaning that each of us constructs is an egocentric vanity that quickly evaporates.

The Hurt Locker: Grade C

C
The Hurt Locker (2009)
Jeremie Renner, Anthony Mackie, Ralph Fiennes, David Morse; Director Katheryn Bigelow.

This docudrama portrays combat life in Baghdad in 2004. We follow a patrol of US soldiers who disarm bombs. That is an inherently tense setup , as uncountable films and TV shows have demonstrated with timers ticking toward zero while the hero decides which wire to cut. No matter how many times we have watched that cliché, it still has some power, I don’t know why.

In this film, that scene is played out about six times in several mini-dramas with slight variations. Some bombs explode, some don’t. One scene is different, a gun battle at half a mile using long range, high powered rifles.

In between battles and bombs there are the predictable scenes of the guys in barracks, laying on their bunks, smoking cigarettes, talking about the girl back home, making macabre jokes, fighting, the usual stuff.

The lead demolition expert for most of the film (Renner) is a psychopath who scoffs at personal peril, even seeks the excitement, putting the rest of his team at risk. Other cliché characters include the young recruit who is afraid to die, the Iraqi boy who befriends a soldier, and so on. The movie reminds me of “Combat,” a WWII TV series from the sixties that had a similar episodic structure.

Sound effects/music were interesting and well engineered, although emotionally manipulative, like the rest of the film. I did not feel this was a good portrayal of a genuine experience of war in Iraq because the situations and characters were so obviously contrived, yet the film did not exploit its fictional possibilities to make any sort of political or moral statement, as Apocalypse Now did, for example. So as a war movie, it is well made and watchable, but it doesn’t add up to anything.

Moon: Grade A

A
Moon (2009)
Sam Rockwell, Kevin Spacey (voice); Co-writer and director Duncan Jones.

This is a rare bird indeed, a sci-fi movie that is intelligent, dramatic, well-acted, beautiful to look at and thought-provoking. I think it ranks right up there with Kubrik’s 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Sam Rockwell is an astronaut named Sam, working for a large corporation, alone on a lunar station, remotely managing robot “harvesters” that extract some kind of fuel from the moon that is shipped to Earth in unknown ways. The harvesters look like giant agricultural combines, which is silly, but they seem pretty convincing churning over the lunar surface. You must suspend your disbelief.

Sam's three year contract is up in only two weeks and he longs to return to Earth. When one of the harvesters malfunctions, he goes out to investigate and has an accident. He wakes up back in the moonbase infirmary, tended by the omnipotent and omniscient robot, Gerty, voiced by Spacey, and clearly inspired by Kubrick’s HAL 2000 (“Open the pod bay doors, Hal”). Despite some early autocratic tendencies, we discover that Gerty is not malevolent.

Sam recovers from his accident but discovers that everything is not as it was. The consequent psychological drama is a real mind-bender, amazingly acted and photographed, and raises all sorts of interesting social and moral issues. It also makes you think about the meaning of your own life. How many movies can do that?

Music is adequate, not memorably grand as Kubrik's use of Strauss was. There are a couple of story flaws, such as the assertion that the moon base is on the dark side of the moon, which is clearly not true, due to the lunar lighting and the communications towers (which would be useless on the dark side). But aside from a few scientific errors, it is an amazing production for a low-budget independent film. A must-see for sci-fi fans

The Hangover: Grade B

B
The Hangover (2009)
Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms, Zach Galifianakis, Justin Bartha, Ken Jeong, Heather Graham, Rachel Harris; Director Todd Phillips.

Four guys go to Las Vegas for a bachelor party, rent a swank suite and drink too much. In the morning, the suite is in ruins, there is a Bengal tiger in the bathroom, a chicken in the living room, a baby in the closet, and only three of them left. The bridegroom is missing. None of the survivors can remember what happened the night before, but they have a few clues, such as, one of the guys is wearing a hospital wristband, and another is missing a front tooth. They set about trying to solve the mystery and finding their missing friend. As they make inquiries, even more bizarre clues and incidents turn up. In the end, everything is all right, more or less.

It is a sophomoric tale with silly gags, plenty of vomiting and car crashes, but the writing is very funny, the acting excellent, and the directing perfect. So stupid or not, it is a LOL comedy that rises far above the level of its genre. Acting in several supporting roles was quite outstanding, especially by Ken Jeong and Rachel Harris as the shrew girlfriend. Heather Graham didn’t do anything special. Popular music was mostly foreign to me, but interesting and appropriate.

The only serious error is the ending, in which the re-united foursome find a camera with pictures of the adventure, and they agree to look at the pictures once only. It should have ended there. But the filmmakers could not resist actually showing the photos while the credits rolled and the pictures are totally out of keeping with the spirit of the movie, showing gratuitous nudity and explicit sex. That had to be some jerk producer’s decision because the director had struck just the right notes up to that point. For a nonsense romp, this is way better than expected.

Best DVDs of 2009

Best DVDs I saw in 2009

Movie	Grade	Find the review archived in 2009: Month/Day
Hamlet 2	A	1/10
Pride and Glory	A	2/2
Frozen River	A	3/1
The Lucky Ones	A	3/2
Milk	A	3/21
Rachel Getting Married	A	3/28
Special	A	4/4
I’ve Loved You So Long	A	4/19
Frost Nixon	A	4/26
The Wrestler	A	4/27
Just Another Love Story	A	5/11
Saturday Night Fever	A	6/23
Another Woman	A	6/28
Tokyo!	A	8/7
Big Man Japan	A	9/11
Sin Nombre	A	9/20
Sleep Dealer	A	9/26
Adam Resurrected	A	10/1
The Inheritance	A	10/19
Lady Vengeance	A	11/22
Brief Interviews With Hideous Men	A	12/27
Ghost Town	B	1/3
Chris Rock-Kill The Messenger	B	1/24
Sleepwalking	B	1/25
Vicky Cristina Barcelona	B	2/1
Elegy	B	3/22
Body of Lies	B	3/29
Doubt	B	4/11
Nobel Son	B	5/19
12	B	7/19
The Great Buck Howard	B	8/3
Kill Shot	B	8/6
The Unknown Woman	B	8/14
The Last Hit Man	B	8/19
Julia	B	8/29
State of Play	B	9/7
Yonkers Joe	B	9/23
Gomorrah	B	9/25
Waltz with Bashir	B	10/7
The Return	B	10/10
The Escapist	B	10/20
Old Boy	B	11/8
Maiden Heist	B	11/11
Adoration	B	11/12
French Film	B	11/12
Lone Star	B	11/21
3-Iron	B	12/14
Bon Cop, Bad Cop	B	12/19
Inglourious Basterds	B	12/20
Julie & Julia	B	12/23
District 9	B	12/30

District 9: Grade B

B
District 9 (2009)

Sharlto Copley; Co-writer and director Neill Blomkamp. (English and Alien; subtitled).

An enormous space ship hovers motionlessly over modern Johannesburg. A million weak and sickly aliens emerge. We never do learn what was wrong with them or why they came. They are (as is usual with aliens) extremely humanoid, with upright, bipedal locomotion, frontal eyes, opposable “thumbs” and in general, looking like a very humanoid morphology. The main thing that makes them alien-looking is an insect-like scaley skin (which they really don’t need since they obviously have endoskeletons), and an insect-like face with creepy-looking tentacles that don’t do anything, and some gratuitous antennae.

The aliens are quarantined to an area called District 9, which over the years becomes a sprawling slum just like Soweto under the apartheid regime. Aliens are held in contempt by mainstream society (black and white). There are alien riots and confrontations with the police, all reported in a pseudo-documentary style by scientists and news coverage. The apartheid analogy is played for over an hour so that even the most dim-witted viewers cannot miss it. Neverthless, there is no point; no new insight or twist. Apartheid happened, we knew that. Okay, blacks seemed like space aliens to the white culture maybe, got that. But what is the point of on and on and on with the allegory? After the initial novelty of the setup, boredom quickly sets in.

About half way through, the lead white detective is contaminated with some secret alien fluid (which is also space ship fuel, it turns out), and he begins to change into an alien himself, growing an alien claw-like hand. The special effects are pretty good there. He is on the run then from the police. The head alien-chemist promises to stop and reverse his conversion in exchange for the secret fluid. But the police intervene and there is a gun battle, and a melodramatic ending involving what seems to be the only juvenile alien in the population.

So the story is just barely interesting. Acting is negligible. Directing is good. Special effects are uneven. The aliens are more silly than creative or scary, but their language is interesting. High concept is the main attraction, supported by some though-provoking details. Sci-fi films as a genre are inferior in quality to most, for unknown reasons (with notable exceptions, such as Kubrick’s), so an “above average” rating for this one should be taken relative to the genre. It gets points for thoughtfulness and competent execution.

Wrong Turn at Tahoe: Grade C

C
Wrong Turn at Tahoe (2009)
Cuba Gooding, Jr., Miguel Ferrer, Harvey Keitel; Director Franck Khalfoun.

This is a nice, average gangster movie, well photographed, well-paced, tightly directed, with dialog that is direct and free of most clichés. Gooding collects debts for a violent and psychopathic drug lord (Ferrer), who kills (beats to death with a baseball bat) a lieutenant of an opposing drug lord who is even more lordly (Keitel). So the war is on. Plenty of gun battles and a high body count are in the offing.

Keitel gives a good portrayal of decadent, still vicious, but slightly burned out elder gangster, but there is little trace of the intensity we enjoyed in Pulp Fiction or Cop Town. He is 75 years old now, so we should be happy he is still working. Gooding is maturing nicely, both physically and as an actor. His character has a tiny bit of depth.

It’s an unimaginative, typical crime drama, but remarkable for avoiding the usual stupidities, such as gratuitous car chases and building explosions. The sets are well done, especially the pseudo-opulence of Keitel’s palace, which is humorous in its own right for its ironic specification of an owner who has more money than taste. Music is inoffensive. In fact the whole movie, despite the blood and violence, could be described as inoffensive.

Brief Interviews With Hideous Men: Grade A

A
Brief Interviews With Hideous Men (2009)

Julianne Nicholson, Timothy Hutton, Bobby Cannavale, John Krazinski; Co-writer and Director John Krazinski.

Nicholson is Sara, a graduate student doing anthropological research by interviewing on film a sample of young men (20 to 40 years old) about their attitudes toward women. We see short clips of her conducting the interviews and parts of the interviews themselves. The men are uniformly self-centered, mendacious, un-self-aware misogynists. That makes their statements humorously ironic, so we get the message that this movie is a postmodern comedy. Taken in that spirit, it is indeed funny, although not LOL hilarious. But postmodern humor never is.

Sara is played straight, not ironically, and she is horrified to discover the truth about the alien species called men. When her own boyfriend (Krazinski) cheats on her then comes back with a compelling, heartfelt apology and explanation, she is loathe to believe a word of it, since she now knows men are all lying, manipulative bastards. But could this be different?

The story line of the movie is thus slight, and there is neither deep psychological insight nor outright laughter. The entertainment value is in the subtle, postmodern, ironic rib-tickling. Acting by some of the interviewed men is outstanding, but Nicholson’s performance is unremarkable, and I can’t get past “Jim” in The Office when I see Krazinski. He is a competent actor but he never steps outside the range of expression that is so familiar from that TV series.

But what makes the film terrific is Krazinski’s directing. He has found his calling there, even though the movie is not well-integrated overall. The interview clips are starkly edited; lots of jumpy cuts make each interview a collage rather than a real soliloquy, but that’s why they are so interesting. There is not a microsecond of slack. They are 100% very good acting, even though some segments might be only a single gesture or a single phrase lasting no more than 5 seconds. That’s an innovative and very effective technique for producing outstanding scenes of superior acting, and an educated visual sensibility easily accepts the format. The director has a gifted eye for micro-acting.

There are several other directorial innovations, or at least interesting choices and embellishments, many reminiscent of Woody Allen, such as when one character tells a story of a girl stood up at the airport by her boyfriend, and the storyteller appears in the scene along with the girl. Very effective. The anthropological interviews are against a stark brick wall background. Elsewhere in the movie, one character gives a great speech to a closed door. There are experiments with color and movement and many other directorial gestures that make this movie an excellent exploitation of the medium of film. Krazinski the director is a revelation and the story line is amusing in its own right, so overall a big success for this one.

Shrink: Grade C

C
Shrink (2009)

Kevin Spacey, Keke Palmer, Mark Webber; Director Jonas Pate.

Spacey is an L.A. psychiatrist to celebrities, but he is suffering from depression, possible alcoholism, and, it seems, drug addiction, although we only see him smoking marijuana, which does not make you depressed, and we only see him drinking occasional wine and beer, so the addiction story is not convincing. His real problem is that he is grieving over the recent suicide of his wife, although we do not see him go through much actual grieving. Mainly he just stares into space as if depressed, and makes angry, sarcastic remarks to everyone, which is not consistent with depression. So it is not clear what is up with him except he is burned out on life in a monumentally self-centered way.

One of his clients is a high school student (Palmer) who is also grieving, over her mother’s suicide. We never learn much about that situation, but over the course of the movie, each character yields enough self-defensive anger to become sort-of friends in a way reminiscent of Good Will Hunting. (Actually, Robin Williams appears as an alcoholic patient in an uncredited role, and Spacey’s dope dealer looks like Matt Damon – probably not accidents).

There is no story really, it is just various characters adrift, confused by life, searching for something. In the end, everybody conveniently finds some kind of salvation to wrap it up on a relatively happy note. Without a story and without believable characters, there is really nothing going on in this movie, but Spacey is always a joy to watch, and Keke Palmer is extremely interesting. I wanted to see a lot more of her character, and a lot less of the other deadbeat characters.

Photography has some noticeably good moments but sets and scenes are nondescript or clichéd. Music is appallingly bad, designed to evoke sentimental feelings, but had me reaching for the mute button. Directing is obtrusively trite. The script is terrible. No therapist could survive a week in business with the skills of Spacey’s character. So all you have left is some enjoyable acting, especially by Spacey and Palmer.

In The Loop: Grade C

C
In the Loop (2009)

Peter Capaldi, Tom Hollander, Gina McKee, Mimi Kennedy, James Gandolfini, Chris Addison, Anna Chlumsky; Director Armando Iannucci.

This British comedy is like The Office set in Number 10 Downing Street instead of in a commercial establishment . Maybe a cross between The Office and the BBC series, Yes, Minister is a good description. Clueless mid-level managers frenetically strut their self-importance, vie for ephemeral recognition, lord it over their staff, who are by turn ambitious, idealistic, naive, and cynical. No characters are developed. The style is not the mockumentary style of The Office but the sitcom feel is unmistakable. It is a movie adaptation of a television series (which I’ve never seen), and that’s how it plays.

The basic story is that the U.S. President and the British Prime Minister are set on invading Iraq, and within the government staff on both sides of the Atlantic there are factions supportive of that decision and those ardently opposed. Facts are manipulated, reports are doctored, committee meetings are held in secret, and other shenanigans are executed as each faction tries to facilitate or obstruct the political trend. That’s all good political fodder, but this is a comedy, not a serious movie about the decision to go to war.

As a comedy, it is successful, especially if you like British humor. However, any sitcom is only amusing for 20 minutes, so 90 minutes of clever one-liners, creative profanity, snappy comebacks, snide remarks, and witty zingers wears you down. Real people are not that funny, so the verbal deluge of wit is a writerly conceit that gets in the way of the story, except the story is only perfunctory, and I lost track of it, characters’ motivations, and even their names. Despite the film's failings however, there are laughs to be had.

Julie & Julia: Grade B

B
Julie & Julia (2009)

Meryl Streep, Amy Adams, Stanley Tucci, Chris Messina; Co-writer and director Nora Ephron.

Streep is Julia Child, the famous cookbook author and prominent television chef over several decades. In postwar Paris she is drifting without purpose to be with her diplomatic attaché husband (Tucci). She takes the Cordon Bleu course, and after many years of effort manages to get her book published, the iconic Mastering the Art of French Cooking. The television show hardly features in the movie.

This is not a very interesting story but Meryl Streep is mesmerizing. Her impersonation of Child is perfect, not just the falsetto voice, but the gait, gestures, attitudes, diction: all perfect. Channeling counts as acting, and even if you don’t know Julia Child, you would find the character interesting and its expression masterful. However, as a biography, there isn’t much content there. It’s all about the acting.

Meanwhile, Adams is Julie Powell, a depressed young cubicle worker in modern New York, living in a flat over a pizza place in Queens. Like Child’s character in Paris of 60 years ago, she takes up cooking just for something to do, and she decides, for no obvious reason, to cook every recipe in Child’s book within a year, and blog about that experience. She does that, with predictable tribulations. The scene of putting live lobsters into boiling water is unashamedly lifted right from Annie Hall, and most of the other cooking, serving, and eating scenes are equally unimaginative. This character is not very interesting and neither is her story. However, Amy Adams is brilliant, even within this restricted role. As with Streep, even though you don’t care about her character, you do care about her superb acting.

So those two stories alternate in time slices and that’s it. Julia and Julie never meet, but they both accomplish their goals. As a piece of storytelling, you are left with the thought, “Who cares?” But the acting by the principals makes the film worthwhile. The cinematography is also above average – extremely sensual pictures of food. The movie will make you hungry for sure. The directing is expert but pointed at sentimentality over psychological or narrative substance, which for my taste, is a defect.

Inglourious Basterds: Grade B

B

Inglourious Basterds (2009)

Brad Pitt, Christoph Waltz, Melanie Laurent, Diane Kruger. Writer-Director Quentin Tarantino. (English, German, and French – Subtitled)

Perhaps the most interesting thing about this movie is the marketing. The trailer, played endlessly on TV, shows Brad Pitt as a WWII officer barking out his unit’s “mission” to his band of men: to kill, maim, and mutilate Nazis. So we expect an action picture with plenty of death, mayhem, and blood from the director of the blood-soaked Kill Bill.

But the trailer is misleading. The movie is mostly about a Jewish cinema owner (Laurent) in occupied France who is forced to have a special showing of a German war film for all the German bigwigs, including Hitler. It is also about British and American spies among the Nazis. Pitt and his “Basterds” play only a small role in the story. A few Nazis are multilated as promised, but that is a sideshow.

The main story is not strong either. The Nazis watching the special movie are ultimately locked into the theater while it burns, but there is no real suspense or narrative drive. The picture is more like a series of loosely connected scenes that don’t add up to much.

But what scenes they are! They demonstrate Tarantino’s brilliance as a director. The opening scene, in which the nasty, but effusively polite and multilingual Nazi commander (Waltz) interrogates a French farmer about hiding Jews, has nail-biting, edge-of-your-seat tension, created entirely by the director. The German officer is polite and urbane, and there is no violence until the very last moment when machine guns shoot through the floorboards. Yet the precision with which the Captain unscrews his pen, writes in his ominous book, asks his questions, are rife with emotion. The farmer’s reactions are equally calibrated to create a very high tension scene in which nothing is going on but an inane conversation. That scene alone demonstrates Tarantino’s genius. And it is not the only one like that. There are dozens of scenes of equally stunning directorial mastery, including even an excellent barroom gunfight. That’s why you want to see this movie, for the directing.

Acting is very engaging by Pitt and Waltz, and the dialog is snappy, alternating between comedy and tragedy. Production values are first class, photography is faultless. But if a movie is suposed to be a vehicle for telling a story, this one falls flat. The characters are all two-dimensional so we don’t know or care anything about them. The war is way in the background and there are no new insights on that. Nazis are evil, as always. Human relationships are perfunctory. The narrative lacks suspense and forward momentum. The ending is trite. This is a failed exercise in storytelling, but as a director’s showcase, it is a winner.

Bon Cop, Bad Cop: Grade B

B
Bon Cop, Bad Cop (2006)

Colme Feore, Patrick Huard. Director Erik Canuel. (English and French, subtitled).

This Canadian comedy involves an English speaking cop from Ontario partnered with a French-speaking cop from Quebec. Actually they are both completely bilingual but the purpose of the setup is to allow each to make fun of the other’s language and culture, invoking many cultural stereotypes. The jokes and jibes are extremely funny if you know a little French and if you are familiar with Quebec. Having lived in Montreal, I was laughing until I had tears in my eyes, but I have to admit it is not a great movie overall.

There is a serial killer on the loose who targets hockey players and owners (hockey rivalry of course being a huge source of competitive pride between the two provinces). When a victim is found literally on the border, the two cops are forced by their superiors to become partners on the case. They investigate leads and get into fist fights on both sides of the border, enabling each to make fun of the other on his home turf. The plot gets confusing and there are lots of loose ends, so even though the killer is finally caught, the story doesn’t add up, but that’s not the point. It’s a comedy.

You have to be a fast reader if you don’t know French because the dialog is dense and sophisticated. Photography is good (although overusing green filters for some reason, which really gives a picture a dreary look. Why do cinematographers love green filters? ). Music is undistinguished except by its overloud volume. Direction is spotty, a gratuitous car chase, for example, inserted just for an arbitrary pacing change. Acting is very good by the two principals. I’m rating the film a bit higher than it deserves because I had such a good time, but I recognize it is not for everyone.

Fulltime Killer: Grade C

C
Fulltime Killer (2001)

Andy Lau, Takashi Sorimachi, Kelly Lin; Co-directors: Johnnie To, Ka-Fai Wai (also co-wrote). (Chinese and Japanese, subtitled).

This is a classic Hong-Kong action thriller in the style of Johnnie To. A new, brash, and flamboyant hit man (Sorimachi) is in town, challenging the hegemony of the king of assassins (Lau). They also compete over the girl (Lin). There is a high body count, as you would expect, and a plodding police detective after both young men. The acting is above average, music is excellent, and Hong Kong is displayed in all its glory. Although this is a typical shoot-em-up, the good story, acting and photography are strong enough to keep you engaged. I have probably overrated this film because I am a fan of the genre, but it is pretty good on its merits.

3-Iron: Grade B

B
3-Iron (2004)

Seung-yeon Lee, Hyun-kyoon Lee, Hyuk-ho Kwon; Writer and director Ki-duk Kim. (Korean, subtitled).

A young man (S. Lee) breaks into empty houses in a Korean city and makes himself comfortable for a few days. The owners are away (which he learns from their answering machine message) so he eats their food, sleeps there, watches TV, fixes their broken appliances, waters their plants, does their laundry, then leaves. It’s a neat premise. In one house however, there is a battered woman (H. Lee) who watches him, then confronts him wordlessly. In fact, neither character says a word to each other in the whole movie. (The woman says five words at the very end, but it is ambiguous whom she is addressing). So the movie is almost a silent film, giving it a dreamlike quality.

The young man saves her from another beating by her mean husband who comes home, and she runs off with the young man and joins him in his house-breaking enterprise. Inevitably they get caught when the family comes home unexpectedly. In one case, it is not clear how that problem was resolved, but in another, the young man ends up in jail and the woman is returned to her husband. The ending is not really a proper resolution but is emotionally satisfying. Photography is good, directing is good, and sets are excellent. It’s a beautiful, quiet, romantic story worth seeing. Only the lightweight (even silly) plot detracts from its overall quality.

Public Enemies: Grade D

D
Public Enemies (2009)

Johnny Depp, Christian Bale, Billy Crudup, Marion Cotillard; Co-writer and Director Michael Mann.

It’s gangsters in 1930’s Chicago doing gangstery things. Have we not seen this before? Street battles with tommy guns, bank robberies, lovely cars and costumes, art deco interiors, tough guy talk, prison breaks, the incorruptible FBI agent in obsessive pursuit, and every other period gangster cliché you can think of – it’s all here. There is absolutely nothing new.

Depp is John Dillinger, notorious bank robber and Bale is his FBI nemesis with a bizarre, ludicrous, and totally unnecessary southern accent. I thought, with all these big stars, what could go wrong? Bad script, that’s what. It is so wooden and unimaginative that the actors have no chance of bringing it to life. Story? What story? FBI pursues bank robber, shoots him dead. There is no suspense whatsoever and the characters are two-dimensional cutouts.

The film’s 2:20 running time is unconscionable, especially since the first hour could be eliminated with no loss. Sure, you would miss a shoot-em-up bank robbery, but there are two others, almost identical to look at later. The only thing that keeps this movie from complete failure is the fine photography of excellent, detailed sets. The pictures are crisp and creatively shot, compelling to watch. The sepia colors are overdone, but pleasant and moody, some even fading to black and white to remind you that this is a quasi-biography “based on” Dillinger’s life (even though we learn nothing about him). When the colors are not sepia, they are through a green filter, which is less attractive, but still interesting. There is some good period music, Billie Holiday and the like, but some of it seems anachronistically modern and unconnected. That’s not much to recommend a film with so much resource behind it, but that’s all there is behind the muzzle flash.