You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger: Grade A

A

You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger (2010)

Josh Brolin, Anthony Hopkins, Gemma Jones, Naomi Watts, Antonio Banderas; Writer-Director Woody Allen.

An elderly married couple breaks up (Hopkins-Jones) when he realizes that his wife “has let herself get old.” He hits the gym and takes up with a young, beautiful, airhead, gold digger prostitute. Meanwhile their daughter (Watts) breaks up with her husband (Brolin), a failed writer. Each of the four is soon attracted to other potential mates. Everyone is haunted by failed relationships and struggles to start a new life.

It took me a while to get into this movie. It starts out with dreadful acting, a stilted script, noticeably mechanical directing, and a dreadful, intrusive narrator. I thought, "This is aggressively bad!" About halfway through, some real acting begins to show, although the characters never do become well developed. Finally I realized what Allen was trying to do. He did not want us to get involved with these characters. They are symbols, or archetypes for the lives in our culture, not real people we should care about. That’s why the plot line is practically nonexistent, the romantic relationships stereotypes, and the acting hollow. None of that matters. He is forcing us beyond the particular characters into universals. We are being shown the archetypes of modern, Western, sophisticated urban life, so that we might reflect on its meaning, or lack of same. Ultimately this is an existential movie that says, your life has no meaning, despite today’s passions and angst that seem so gripping. That is the human condition.

What makes this approach work is the superlative film making, especially the sets and costumes. Every detail, and I mean every one, is absolutely perfect. Colors, camera angles, framing, lighting, movement, rhythm, jewelry, hairstyle, buttons, every tiny detail is done to loving perfection, and the movie is worth seeing just for that exercise of craft. But as a bonus, you get the subtle existential message, and the pleasure of seeing some familiar faces on the big screen. You could watch this movie as a mildly interesting romantic comedy/drama, but you’d be missing the point. It is so much more if you look a little deeper.

Dirty Pretty Things: Grade C

C
Dirty Pretty Things (2002)
Chiwetel Ejiofor, Audrey Tautou, Sophie Okonedo; Director Stephen Frears;

The three main characters are illegal immigrants working at a fancy London hotel. Ejiofor’s character, the desk man, discovers that black market human organs are being traded at the hotel, and worse, the surgeries are being performed there also. Destitute immigrants trade kidneys for forged British passports and money. Being illegal, Ejiofor and his colleagues cannot go to the police. Meanwhile the immigration service is on everyone’s back trying to catch them working in the country illegally. There is good tension when they raid.

This movie is of the “Ain’t it Awful!” genre. Instead of relying on the main story line of the black market organs, or developing the lives of the characters, the movie focuses instead on the plight of illegal immigrants, the humiliations they must suffer, the long hours they must work, their poverty, oppression, exploitation, yada, yada; all while they hold their heads up high, pronounce high moral principles and fierce allegiance to their ethnicity. It is all too much. I get that illegal immigrants have a tough time. However, they are illegal, so what can they expect? It’s an old story and not particularly well retold. A movie like The Visitor does the topic much better.

Meanwhile, the organ market story is not explored in detail. There is a twisty penultimate scene that is satisfying, although the final ending is a melodramatic sapsucker. And I thought the sound engineering was poor: muddy dialog throughout. Acting by the principals is excellent however. I am a huge fan of Ejiofor, and enjoyed watching him, even though this is not his best performance. And who can resist Audrey Tatou’s trembling upper lip? Okenedo is magical, and it is a mystery in itself why we do not see more of her. So good acting redeems an otherwise substandard movie.

Last Chance Harvey: Grade C

C
Last Chance Harvey (2008)
Dustin Hoffman, Emma Thompson. Writer-director Joel Hopkins.

Hoffman is an American businessman in London for the wedding of his estranged daughter. Just before going there, he was put on probation by his boss, so he is doubly upset when he learns that he is only tolerated, not really welcome at the wedding. We have no explanation why he is in trouble at work or why he is not welcome at the wedding, but Hoffman does his hurt and bewildered Willy Loman act to great effect. He misses his flight back to New York and is fired. Depressed, he meets Thompson in an airport restaurant and strikes up a conversation. It is just barely plausible that they find an immediate friendship which develops quickly thereafter into affection. Her character is a lonely single in her forties (Thomson is actually 50), and we might believe she would be open to friendship with a 70 year old American she just met and knows nothing about. For him, the motivation is completely opaque. Implausibly, he convinces her to attend the reception after the wedding, where they bond, and eventually, the two of them walk off into the sunset hand in hand.

The story starts well, with scenes from Hoffman’s life intercut with parallel scenes from Thompson’s. Both actors demonstrate why they are truly great in these opening scenes. After the restaurant meeting however, the story switches from existential angst and humor to sentimental claptrap and by the time they go to the wedding reception, the script has degenerated to adolescent melodrama, from which it never recovers. Likewise direction starts out crisply but then degenerates to cliché montages indicating “romance.” Music begins with an interesting piano tune based on a Satie groove, but quickly mutates into loud, noxious, relentless orchestration. Overall, the fine acting in the first half makes the movie worth seeing, but the last half could be skipped entirely.

RocknRolla: Grade C

C
RocknRolla (2008)
Gerard Butler, Thandie Newton, Tom Wilkenson, Toby Kebbell, Karel Roden; Writer-Director Guy Ritchie.

Lenny (Wilkenson) is a real-estate gangster in contemporary London. He bribes cops, judges, and city council to get irregular building permits so he can work his deceptive schemes. In the opening scene, he defrauds two small-time crooks out of a warehouse, but they come back later to sting him. Lenny thinks he has hit the jackpot when a Russian billionaire (Roden) needs a permit for a sports arena. The Russian loans Lenny his prized “lucky” painting, whose content we never see. The deal is set but the Russian’s accountant (Newton) tips off the local crooks about the money transfer, which they intercept. Meanwhile, somebody steals the Russian’s painting from Lenny, the suspect being a drug-addled rock singer who turns out to be Lenny's estranged stepson.

The story continues in this fashion with dozens of characters and as many improbable plot twists. There are double and triple crosses, but since nobody is properly motivated, none of it matters, so don’t waste your time trying to track the intricate plot. Instead, just enjoy gangsters doing gangstery things, the gritty sets, smart dialog, and gratuitous violence perpetrated by psychopathic hotheads. There is some good wit and plenty of British-isms in the dialog for Americans to puzzle over. The accents are manageable. But characters are no more than video game avatars and there is not one convincing emotion in the whole picture. Editing and directing are the strongest aspects of the film. The overall look is attractive, but there is nothing significant.

The Bank Job: Grade C

C
The Bank Job (2008)

Jason Statham, Saffron Burrows, David Suchet; Director Roger Donaldson

In 1970’s London, a group of amateur thieves (headed by Statham) is recruited by an old thief acquaintance (Burrows) to rob the safe-deposit boxes of a bank “while the alarms are being repaired.” In fact she works for the government, which wants to recover embarrassing pictures of royalty held in the bank by a blackmailer, but the government wants deniability, thus the ruse. All this is told to us in the first few minutes of the movie, robbing the story of any dramatic tension. We watch the team dig a tunnel under the bank vault with zero suspense. There is nothing interesting to see. The robbery goes without a hitch and they get away. The government agents learn that the pictures have not been recovered and millions of dollars are gone, but they manage to track down the thieves without much trouble. In a last minute twist involving cops on the take, the pictures are turned over to the government but the thieves are allowed to keep their money. None of this is very interesting and the story would strain credulity except it is supposedly based on a true event. That doesn’t make it a good movie though. Except for the lack of computers and cell phones, the film does not have a period feel. Acting is adequate although there is no chemistry among the players. The filmmakers apparently forgot they were doing a movie and thought it was a documentary, and the compromised result is completely flat.

Cassandra's Dream: Grade A

A
Cassandra’s Dream
Colin Farrell, Ewan McGregor, Hayley Atwell, Sally Hawkins, Tom Wilkinson; Writer-Director Woody Allen.

This is a classic tragedy in ancient Greek style. Cassandra was a mythological Greek figure who could foretell the future (usually tragedies) but could do nothing to change it because nobody believed her. In this movie, Cassandra’s Dream is the name of the small sailboat owned by two working class brothers (Farrell and McGregor) in modern day London. The movie opens with the men buying the boat and it ends with them dying on it. The idea we are supposed to take away is that one cannot change one’s fate, but that is an allusive pretension the movie didn’t need. In fact the story is a very slow starter and that whole early scene of buying the boat could have been cut. My guess is that Woody Allen wanted the boat to play the part of the Greek Chorus, but again, the allusion is weak, pretentious, adds little, and wastes time.

The brothers have dreams of greater things, but get into debt. A rich uncle (Wilkinson) seems their salvation until he reveals that he will be imprisoned if a colleague is allowed to testify. He convinces the brothers to kill that man. Farrell does some fine acting as he wrestles with his conscience before and after the event. Wilkinson and McGregor also produce great performances. The directing and dialog are noticeably stilted and stagey, especially in the first half, but that may be to support the idea that this is an update of a classic Greek tragedy. The flow smoothes out in the second half. The climax of the movie is Farrell’s crisis of conscience when he says something like, “We have done something that goes against the order of things. The world must be made right again.” That is crux of all Greek tragedy, and in fact, Allen manages to have a character throw in a reference to Euripides in case we were not catching the allusion. I would have liked more attention paid to whether the brothers’ actions were really personal choices or just fulfillment of their inexorable fate. Allen has not quite captured the essence of a Greek tragedy but I certainly enjoyed his attempt.

Eastern Promises: Grade A

A
Eastern Promises (2007)
Naomi Watts, Viggo Mortenstern, Vincent Cassel, Armin Mueller-Stahl. Director David Cronenberg. Mostly English, with some subtitled Russian.

It’s Russian mafia trafficking in women vs. Chechen criminal gangs, all in modern London. Into that dark, cold, extremely violent world stumbles Watts’ character, after a young, pregnant Russian girl arrives at the hospital where she works. The girl dies, the baby survives, and so does the girl’s diary, which reveals incriminating facts about the Russian gang’s operations. Before the diary is translated, Watts tries to find a relative, to prevent the baby from going into foster care, and discovers “godfather” Mueller-Stahl’s restaurant. He learns of the diary and sends thug Mortenstern to get it. Meanwhile there are murders and retaliatory murders between the Russian and Chechen gangs. There is more than a little allusion to the Godfather series, but this movie actually reminds me a lot of 1994’s Little Odessa. I kept expecting Tim Roth to appear. There are many unexpected events and shocking scenes that jolt you upright in your chair. There is a fight scene in a public bath house where Mortenstern, completely naked, defends himself against two assassins with knives. The vulnerable flesh against the hard tile is almost more painful to watch than the bloody slashing. It is a memorable scene that held me breathless. But there is more than violence and gore here. Both Mortensterns’ and Watt’s characters develop plausibly as events continue, and the intellectual thread of the plot is engaging. Although the ending is a little too pat, it works. Watt’s character often behaves in the infuriatingly stupid ways that characters do in cheap horror films. There are some loose ends, and that always bothers me, but they are minor. While not for the queasy, the movie is a memorable masterpiece of filmmaking.

Played: Grade D

D

Played (2006)

Mick Rossi, Vinnie Jones, Gabriel Byrne, Anthony LaPaglia, Val Kilmer; Director Sean Stanek

This gangster movie is shot in the mean streets of London and some in LA. Mick Rossi (co-writer also), took the fall for a bad robbery, and now out of prison, wants revenge on the guys who betrayed him. High body count, lots of point blank murders. Unfortunately there are way too many characters in the movie, all of them shooting at each other. It is impossible to keep the characters straight or make out any clear story line. The big names, like Kilmer and Byrne, appear only briefly. In the DVD extras the writers and director are quite proud that this is a zero-budget movie with ad-lib dialog and no story boards. They claim it proves that “anybody” can make a movie. I think they are right, and this is the result you get. I give it a barely passing grade because of some good acting, by Rossi especially, good characterizations (if a bit stereotypical), and some good “gritty” scenes.

Breaking and Entering: Grade B

B
Breaking and Entering (2006)

Jude Law, Juliette Binoche, Robin Wright Penn, Vera Farmiga, Ray Winstone. Director Anthony Minghella.

Where were the editors on this one? It is a very slow moving 2-hour tale of a London architect (Law) in a strained relationship with his wife (Penn) and her hyperactive daughter. Why is the relationship strained? The story unconvincingly pins it on her chronic depression but it is clear that Law’s character is an insensitive, workaholic, psychopathic jerk. There are several misogynous themes like that. Penn excels at emotionally scrambled characters and she is in her element here with a fine performance. Law is the best I’ve ever seen him, but that’s not up to the level of Penn, Binoche, and Farmiga. He barks his lines, perhaps hoping fine diction will compensate for stiff acting. While watching his office at night for another attempted break-in, Law encounters Farmiga as a brazen and witty hooker. They strike up a friendship of sorts. It is a small part but Farmiga plays it to the hilt in an enjoyable and memorable performance. Binoche is a Serbian refugee whose son did the break-ins at Law’s firm. Law tracks the kid but when he meets the mother, he inexplicably falls in love with her and neglects to call the police. Binoche gives a subtle and rich performance, with a perfect accent. It is a pleasure to watch such excellent acting, but the endless scenes of domestic banality in this movie are just dead weight. Photography is noticeably good. The ending is Hollywood happy, not the least bit believable.