Adjustment Bureau: Grade C

C

The Adjustment Bureau (2011)

Matt Damon, Emily Blunt, Terence Stamp. Co-Writer & Director George Nolfi.

Maybe there is no such thing as science fiction and that’s why there are so few good sci-fi movies. Science is about logic, and cause-and-effect, whereas fiction delves into areas that are impenetrable to science, such as love.

This is actually a love story, with a sci-fi backdrop, and it works as long as you don’t try to make sense out of the sci-fi part. Damon is a New York congressman. He briefly meets a woman (Blunt) in a hotel men’s room, in strong opening scene. But despite his wish to see her again, he can’t because he lost her phone number.

Well, he didn't really lose it, it was taken from him by thugs from the “adjustment bureau,” a group of heavies wearing felt fedoras, who are divine caseworkers sent to enforce “the plan” of human predestination. The Big Guy (known as “the Chairman”) has decided that humans can no longer be trusted with free will and every life must be completely managed. In the master plan, Damon is designed to become President someday and a romance with Blunt would throw that off track. How that could happen, if free will is nullified and life is predetermined, is one of many logical lacunae that must be overlooked. Just like the fact that, since he is a well-known congressman, it would not be much trouble for her to contact him, but never mind that either.

Anyway, he persists in trying to find her, despite warnings and threats from the angelic thugs, and he even does find her once “by chance” (whatever that is, in a predetermined world), but he is again separated from her. The movie then devolves into endless chase scenes, with Damon dragging her around the city by the hand, to prove finally that love conquers even Fate. Wow, so individual free will (which supposedly does not exist) is greater than God’s plan for all humanity? Hmmm…

Nonsense aside, the relationship story between Damon and Blunt is interesting enough to keep the movie going. Damon is more than just Jason Bourne here, he actually shows some acting chops, not as good as in The Informant, but very watchable. Blunt’s role is teary-eyed, passive-submissive but she executes well. Cinematography is crisp and the city looks good.

Please Give: Grade B

B

Please Give (2010)

Catherine Keener, Amanda Peet, Rebecca Hall, Oliver Platt, Sarah Steele, Ann Morgan Guilbert; Writer-Director Nicole Holofcener.

This film is almost a remake of Holofcener’s “Friends With Money,” another talky-comedy, which was set in LA. This one takes place in Manhattan and has a Woody-Allen feel. Two families are neighbors in a condo. The Keener-Platt couple (and their daughter Steele) have bought the neighboring apartment but allow the old lady living there (Guilbert) to remain as a tenant until she dies. She is tended to by her daughters Hall and Peet.

So what happens? Nothing. In the end, the old lady dies and the Keener-Platts take possession of her apartment as expected. There is no dramatic story line running through this film. Instead, it is about the characters, but they do not develop much over the course of the film. So what that leaves you is a set of little portraits or vignettes. But these characters are ordinary, white, affluent, moderately educated, generally uninteresting people. So this seems like a setup for an extremely boring movie, except that the acting is stellar and the script is moderately witty.

All these actors are so strong that you don’t really care that there is basically no story, no dramatic tension. Little quotidian things do happen, such as the two sisters, Hall and Peet bickering, Platt cheating on Keener, the daughter Steele wanting expensive jeans her mother won’t buy, the anxiety of how much money one should give street people. None of it builds story or character, and none of it contributes to a contemporary theme you could name. But again, the writing is sharp and the acting mesmerizing, and that’s enough to carry the picture.

Jack Goes Boating: Grade A

A

Jack Goes Boating (2010)

Philip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Ryan, Daphne Rubin-Vega, John Ortiz; Director Philip Seymour Hoffman.

Jack (Hoffman) and Clyde (Ortiz) are a couple of 40 year old limo drivers in New York City who like reggae music. Clyde fixes Jack up with Connie (Ryan), a woman who works as a telemarketer with his wife, Lucy (Rubin-Vega). The date goes well, a relationship evolves, and Jack makes two promises, to take Connie boating next summer, and to cook a dinner next month at Clyde’s apartment (because Jack lives in his parents’ basement and has only a hotplate). Jack learns how to cook, and also how to swim, in preparation. The dinner party goes well at first, then turns to disaster when the food is burned and a fierce argument erupts between Clyde and Lucy. Jack and Connie make a hasty retreat and presumably will go boating next summer. That’s it. Eighty four minutes.

Now, why isn’t that the most boring movie you've ever heard of? One reason is the excellent writing. The dialog is completely original, interesting, witty, natural, and flows from the wellsprings of the human condition. (The story is from an off-Broadway play by Robert Glaudini that Hoffman starred in.) Add to that, remarkable, riveting, heartfelt acting, especially by Hoffman and Ryan. Hoffman never ceases to amaze me with his courage. He can do embarrassed vulnerability like no other actor. Ryan does vulnerability almost as well, but her character is more psychologically complex, so she adds a touch of fearful paranoia, which works extremely well. Ortiz and Rubin-Vega (also from the original stage performance) give fine performances, if not quite as nuanced. Ortiz’s voice and diction sound so much like Denzel Washington that it is distracting at first.

Then you have to consider the excellent directing, by Hoffman also. It is his directorial debut and clearly he has the knack. The overall feel is kind of stagey and a bit claustrophobic, but so are the characters’ lives, so that’s not necessarily a bad thing. The tone is Woody-Allenesque – nothing terribly original there, but the way Hoffman gets the camera right into the faces of his performers, including himself, is just as courageous as his own acting is. Finally, add in a first rate job on other elements of the movie, from the infectious reggae and Bill Evans soundtrack to pitch-perfect costumes and sets. It all adds up to a tour de force and a mesmerizing adult relationship drama that has not a minute of slack.

Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work: Grade B

B

Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work (2010)

Joan Rivers; Directors Ricki Stern, Anne Sundberg.

This documentary follows Rivers for one year, her seventy-fifth, as she tries to get performance dates, performs, and frets over her career and her relationship with her daughter. She is chronically anxious about getting engagements because, she says, she needs the money, and that’s not surprising, considering how she lives. She has an enormous apartment in New York City with more square footage than my house, and it looks like a replica of the Palace at Versailles. It is truly bizarre.

She seems sharp for 75 years old, although the film is edited to give only limited access to her life. She relates a superficial autobiography revealing only the mundane: marriages, children, and showbiz gossip, trials, and tribulations. We learn about her mainly by watching her behave in this film, and what we learn is that she is an ordinary, neurotic, insecure, slightly scatterbrained person, and not a particularly interesting one, except for the way she wastes mountains of money (with no explanation). She is a great comedian though, and I would have much rather watched an hour of her performing or at least talking about how she writes. Still, you have to give respect to someone who is still doing standup after a half century.

The Other Guys: Grade B

B
The Other Guys (2010)

Will Ferrell, Mark Wahlberg, Michael Keaton, Eva Mendes, Steve Coogan; Co-writer & director Adam McKay.

I am not a big fan of Will Ferrell’s loud and obvious comic style, but this movie was LOL funny for me. I’ve never seen Wahlberg in a comic role before but he has good timing and made the part a success.

The two cops are ridiculed NYPD officers assigned to desk jobs. Ferrell’s character likes doing paperwork because it is quiet and happy work and nobody shoots at you. Wahlberg craves action, but has been confined to the desk ever since he accidentally shot Derek Jeter in the leg. Jeter has a cameo for that scene. Throughout the movie Wahlberg is introduced as “the cop who shot Jeter.” A typical response is “You should have shot A-Rod!”

The jokes are often wordgames and cultural allusions, which I enjoy. And there are some just plain loopy scenes, like Ferrell's story of a band of tunas attacking a pack of lions. The writers have a worthy successor to the Leslie Nielsen brand of screwball humor. The visual and situational gags are usually silly, sometimes satirical. I especially enjoyed the Prius-related jokes and gags. The exasperated police captain (Keaton) has a second job at Bed, Bath & Beyond.

The two deskbound cops finally get out on some assignments which leads to “buddy cop” jokes reminiscent of the Lethal Weapon franchise, with a dash of Inspector Clouseau bumbling to success. I think what makes it really work, besides good writing, is Ferrell’s deadpan delivery, great face acting, and impeccable timing, traits that Wahlberg copies admirably, if not to the same degree of perfection. Coogan also shows excellent comic form in his role as a crooked financial wizard.

Music is quite good, and there are plenty of loud, colorful explosions for the kids. Samuel Jackson and Dwayne Johnson appear in a brief opening segment that is not necessary and not funny, but burnishes the film’s action credentials. You must appreciate goofy humor to like this movie, which is above average for its genre.

Wall Street-Money Never Sleeps: Grade C

C
Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (2010)

Michael Douglas, Shia LaBeouf, Carey Mulligan, Frank Langella, Josh Brolin; Co-writer & Director Oliver Stone.

This sequel is a huge disappointment for anyone who enjoyed the 1987 original morality play. Back then, when Gordon Gecko (Douglas) declared, “Greed is good,” we understood exactly what he meant and who he was. He got his comeuppance when his young protégé (Charlie Sheen) got a strange attack of conscience that switched him from greed to revenge. Sheen makes a fun but meaningless cameo appearance in this movie.

Gecko is released from prison, broke and alone. His estranged daughter (Mulligan) won’t speak to him, but her fiancé (LaBeouf), a young, ambitious trader, strikes up a relationship. In this version, Brolin is the greedy powerhouse financier and there is talk (but no solid story) that he is the one who put Gecko behind bars, so he is clearly identified as “bad” and we know he has to go down by the end of the movie. But it will be because of Wall Street infighting, not because of the self-destructive self-blindness that made the original Gecko such an interesting character.

Before his fall though, Brolin destroys Langella’s company (supposed to stand for Lehmann Brothers) by front-running and shorting the stock, as if that explained the collapse of Lehmann. LaBeouf, who worked for Langella, is thus out of a job but improbably falls into the employ of the evil and hated Brolin (under not-very-believable circumstances).

There are many scenes of bigwigs sitting around huge conference tables deciding the fate of the financial world. Certain actors were obviously cast to look like Hank Paulsen and Timothy Geitner, but the financial chatter they speak is drivel. Either the writers didn’t understand the extremely dramatic personal and financial dynamics of that crisis or they despaired of explaining it and resorted to obfuscatory babble instead. It could have been so good. But that would have been a different story. But at least it would have been a story.

Instead, that theme is dropped and out of the blue, Gecko reveals to LaBeouf that he has a secret $100m trust fund set up for his daughter and all she has to do is sign it over to him and he will give it to her early. Why she would go along is not explained. Predictably he keeps all the money, invests it, and gets rich again in a few days (somehow). How this is related to the Brolin character is, …well, it’s not related. The writers simply lost their way and the story line becomes scrambled in a tremendous lost opportunity.

Acting is strong throughout, especially by Mulligan and Langella. Douglas shows his self-confidence and presence in a fine performance. But all the characters are cartoony, so there is not much acting opportunity. Music is mostly dreadful, but probably aimed at a different demographic than me. What do I know from pop music. Photography is at times striking, such as oversaturated cityscape scenes. There are a few cinematic effects like split screen telephone calls that add nothing. I enjoyed all the actors but hated the movie so the average is a middling score.

The Believer: Grade A

A

The Believer (2001)

Ryan Gosling, Summer Phoenix; Writer and Director Henry Bean.

A Jewish boy in contemporary New York defies his Rabbi, questioning whether the teachings of the Torah are meaningful. He accuses God of being needy, moody, and selfish and defies God to strike him dead on the spot if this is not so. Fast forward to the young man in his twenties (Gosling) who has become a Nazi skinhead and spews hatred for all Jews, denies the holocaust and reveres Hitler. He and his thug buddies go around intimidating Jewish shop owners and plotting to blow up a synagogue. He becomes an articulate anti-semitic spokesman among his friends and even for a shadowy political fascist group in the city. But as each anti-semitic plot and incident develops, we see him showing thoughtful reverence, almost longing, for the Torah, for the Hebrew language, for Jewish ritual and custom, and for an integrated self. He becomes increasingly confused about his self-identity but remains oblivious to his own self-hatred. In the end, he makes a dramatic choice that is nevertheless driven more by pragmatics than by any insight or conversion of belief.

This picture is a close remake of the 1998 American History X that starred Edward Norton in the lead role, and it is just about as good. Gosling is a major acting genius and carries the role as well as Norton did his. This film is more psychologically nuanced, showing the character’s inner conflict extremely well, whereas American History X was more external and obvious. However, for this movie to work, you have to accept the almost psychotic self-hatred and identity confusion of the main character, which is a leap of imagination. The movie does not even try to explain the development of the character’s confused thinking, and the flashbacks to childhood do not help in that, so we just have to take it as it is. Once you get past that however, the acting is superb, and the script excellent – not one false note. Here is another case where I was rewarded for going into the stacks of older films when I could not find an attractive current release.

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.

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.

The Taking of Pelham 123: Grade C

C
The Taking of Pelham 123 (2009)

Denzel Washington, John Travolta, Luis Guzman, John Turturro, James Gandolfini; Director Tony Scott.

I never saw the 1974 original, so I took this remake on its own terms. Hijackers (Travolta and Guzman) take over a NYC subway car and hold 17 hostages, demanding 10 million dollars. Washington is the train dispatcher who becomes default hostage negotiator, a role he has played before. Turturro is the “official” hostage negotiator who tries to muscle in on Washington, but Travolta won’t have it. Gandolfini is hizzoner, who must come up with the money. The money is transferred, most of the hostages are saved, the bad guys almost get away, but not quite.

The story is extremely weak, with innumerable non sequiturs, absurdities, loose ends and contradictions. The basic plot, as described above, is basically boring. The obvious attraction of the movie is the spectacular special effects and great photography of New York City. The sound engineers obviously had collected tons of authentic train sounds, and they make sure you hear them. Pseudo-dramatic music, and traffic are equally deafening, triple the level of the dialog. This is a very noisy movie. You will need your mute button. The visuals are very good, for the most part, although some shots near the end plainly look like models. The stunts/special effects are the usual car crashes in the city with taxicabs flipping end over end. Happens all the time in New York, I’m sure.

Travolta plays an excellent psychopathic bad guy, enjoyable to watch despite the stereotype. Washington plays himself. Gandolfini turns in a sincere, believable, non-hammy performance. That’s the good part.

But the plot is so implausible, it is very difficult to stay interested. If Travolta is actually doing a stock market manipulation, what does he need the hostage money for? If he didn’t already have the money, how did he make the stock market bet on gold? Why does the money car coming from the federal reserve have a police escort? It is obviously useless for anything but bright lights, loud engines, and sirens, since the convoy has three spectacular fatal accidents on its short trip. Couldn’t the police have just turned all the lights red? How do the police identify two random-looking men on the street as bad guys and proceed to shoot them to death? Did they have “Bad Guy” stenciled on their foreheads? And so on.

The movie is obviously about car crashes and sparks flying from the wheels of trains, not plot development, not character exploration. It will be successful among children and child-like minds as yet another immature action movie. Just what we need.

The Caller: Grade C

C
The Caller (2008)
Frank Langella, Elliott Gould. Co-writer and director Richard Ledes.

In this stylish neo-noir drama, Langella is a financial analyst who blows the whistle on an energy company’s evildoings. Naturally, they hire a contract killer to silence him. He knew they would do that, so he hires a PI (Gould) to keep an eye on him, but he tells Gould (with an electronically disguised voice) that “the subject” is a dangerous murderer. The logic of that move is unclear. The PI gets to know the exec, without realizing he is also his employer. He learns a few things about the exec, all of it mundane, none of it important. In a series of irrelevant Langella flashbacks to a WWII childhood, we learn that the exec and the PI were childhood friends who narrowly escaped the Nazis in France. Gould however is unaware of this historical link, and in the climactic scene of the movie, he becomes aware. So what? So nothing. The story in all its parts is pointless. However, you might want to look at this movie anyway to see Langella’s fine, brooding performance, and excellent acting from Gould and several other characters, and the high quality cinematography, directing, and music, especially bandoneon music, which I am nuts about. This is really an attractive movie; too bad they did not have a decent story to tell.

Another Woman: Grade A

A
Another Woman (1988)
Gena Rowlands, Mia Farrow, Ian Holm, Blythe Danner, Gene Hackman, Sandy Dennis, Martha Plimpton, John Housman. Writer & Director Woody Allen

Despairing the quality of summer releases, I went to the stacks and pulled out this gem from 20 years ago. Better acting in an adult relationship film you will not find. Gena Rowlands is an eminent college professor who overhears a conversation between a young woman (Farrow) and her psychiatrist concerning love, relationships, self esteem. This gets the professor thinking about her own life and relationships. Later we see that her relationship with her husband (Holm) is perfunctory, and although she still seeks a flame of romance, he has long since shut her out with clever words. She meets an old friend (Dennis) and discovers that relationship is not what she thought it was. She sees her husband with another woman. And on and on. Nothing happens. There are no gunfights, explosions, car chases or even much laughter. But the story does goes to the heart of modern adult relationships. Sets and costumes are deliciously perfect in the Woody Allen trademark style of wealthy New Yorkers. Every detail is perfect. Cinematography (Sven Nyquist) is stylish and perfect as always. And the acting! Gene Hackman was flat, but the others were memorable, especially Sandy Dennis. This is a movie that rewards another look.

The Code: Grade D

D
The Code (aka Thick as Thieves) (2009)
Morgan Freeman, Antonio Banderas, Robert Forster; Director Mimi Leder.

How does a big star like Morgan Freeman get roped into projects like this? He is a master jewel thief who recruits Banderas, apparently a professional thief as well, to steal two Faberge eggs from “Romanov’s” a Russian jeweler in NYC. Stupidly but predictably, the owner of the shop gives a guided tour of the impenetrable security, demonstrating the biometric passwords, laser scanners, motion detectors, and the biggest steel vault door you have ever seen. But this is all no match for our thieves. Catherine Z. Jones looked good dancing between the laser beams in some other movie with this cliché scene, whereas Banderas slips by on a mechanic’s crawler. In the end, there are complex double-crosses and surprise plot revelations that contradict whatever fragile plausibility the beginning of the movie ever had, so the story only works for people with memory deficits and short attention span, which is maybe the intended audience. It’s a waste of acting talent, although the players do their best. It was nice to see Robert Forster on screen again.

The International: Grade B

B
The International (2009)
Clive Owen, Naomi Watts. Director Tom Tykwer.

In this thinking-person’s thriller, Owen is an Interpol agent trying to bring down an international bank he believes guilty of money laundering and weapons dealing. The bank is named after the real IBBC bank which collapsed in a cloud of corruption and criminal scandal in the 1980’s. Watts is a NYPD detective pursuing the bank’s New York office, working with Owen on the case. Unfortunately, Watts gives a terrible, flat, non-believable performance that kills any relationship theme between the two of them. This is a mystery in itself because Watts has proven herself a first rate actor in other contexts. She must have had bad direction.

Owen’s Interpol partner is killed as he interviews someone at the bank who will turn state’s evidence, and as Owen pursues clues, everybody ends up dead either just before or just after he talks to them. The point of view is omniscient so the audience knows more about what’s going on than he does, and that puts the burden on us to keep it straight, but after the movie is over, you realize there were a million loose ends. Who killed Calvino, and why? IBBC had no motivation. Why would Calvino’s sons believe Owen’s wild tale? At the time, you think such mysteries will eventually be resolved so you let them go, but in the end they are still hanging out there.

Owen’s performance is quite good, as are several supporting actors, and the overall story is marginally plausible. The film is visually excellent, shot in high contrast blacks, whites, and yellows, and featuring some very fine European architecture and some creative angles. The action highlight is a terrific gun battle inside New York’s Guggenheim. Music is unobtrusive and attractive. It is not a satisfying story, but an entertaining movie.

Frozen River: Grade A

A
Frozen River (2008)
Melissa Leo, Misty Upham, Charlie McDermott; Writer-director Courtney Hunt.

A single mother (Leo) lives with her two sons in a tin-box trailer in New York, right near the Canadian border and the Mohawk reservation. Her life is the picture of low income desperation. In the darkness of winter she works part-time at a Dollar Store trying to stay ahead of the the Rent to Own company coming to take the TV. She serves the kids popcorn and Tang for dinner. The older son (McDermott) accuses her of driving away her no-good gambler husband. The bleakness of their lives is unmerciful.

Leo meets a Mohawk woman (Upham) who offers to buy her husband’s car if she will accompany her on an errand to get the money. They drive a cross a frozen river into Canada and make several stops where seedy-looking guys take something from the trunk, we presume drugs, and hand over cash. Despite their mutual cultural, racial, and personal distrust, they continue the relationship to keep the money flowing. The job evolves into smuggling immigrants into the U.S. In a masterpiece of writing, the women do finally come to trust each other completely.

Cinematography is outstanding, for the vast emptiness of the river and the claustrophobic interiors. Dialogs are so realistic you never lose sight of the characters. Excellent acting is what makes this movie stand out. It made only $70K on its first weekend, showing on 7 screens, but the word got out and now it makes 2.5 million a week and Melissa Leo was nominated for an Oscar and Upham won best supporting in the American Indian Movie Awards.

Pride and Glory: Grade A

A
Pride and Glory (2008)
Colin Farrell, Edward Norton, John Voight, Noah Emmerich, John Ortiz; Co-writer and director Gavin O’Connor.

This is a traditional corrupt cops movie without anything new to say, but the acting is outstanding, making the drama extremely intense. Anything with Colin Farrell is going to be intense anyway, but opposite Edward Norton, the movie just sizzles. Kudos to the casting director on this one. Actually there are outstanding performances in many secondary roles as well, including Emmerich and Ortiz.

Norton is persuaded by his father (Voight), a retired NYPD chief, to transfer out of “missing persons” to find the guy who shot four cops in a drug bust gone bad. We quickly find out, but Norton doesn’t, that his brother in law, Farrell, heads a cabal of corrupt cops involved in extortion and drugs. They’re after the shooter because they want the drug money back. Several well-dramatized and well-acted scenes show the bad cops brutally forcing information out of street informants. Eventually Norton discovers there is a dirty cop inside the case. His father wants him to suppress the information, “for the good of the force,” and we learn that years ago, his father had persuaded him to lie to a grand jury, a decision he regrets.

As he cautiously pursues doing the right thing, Norton edges closer to the inevitable confrontation with Farrell. Unfortunately, right at the end, the movie goes south, and instead of busting Farrell in the normal way, both remove their weapons and have a juvenile fistfight that proves nothing. Not only is that stupid and out of character, but the whole tone of the photography and direction changes in the final act, so one suspects this was not the original ending. It is easy to visualize a very dark ending with Norton getting the shaft and the evildoers getting off. That would have made a terrifically noir morality tale, but apparently some producer decided that goodness must reign so we get this very weak ending. Disappointing as that is, the ending was not ruinous, merely diminishing what was almost a pitch-perfect movie.

Righteous Kill: Grade D

D
Righteous Kill (2008)
Robert DeNiro, Al Pacino. Director Jon Avnet.

“Camera suspense” is the dishonest technique of restricting the camera’s scope so the viewer cannot tell what is going on. Typically, there will be a tight shot on a person’s face, but we are not allowed to see what that person sees. Or the camera shows the actor’s feet walking along a sidewalk but no surroundings, and we’re not even sure which character it is. These, and similar techniques are designed to add suspense to a scene that does not have any. Camera suspense is a crude attempt to cover up bad writing or bad directing, or both. This film is entirely based on camera suspense.

A second structural deception is the “And then I woke up” gambit. That’s the way ninth-graders end stories they have started but cannot resolve. This movie doesn’t use that technique literally, but it inserts arbitrary writer’s tricks to end a story, and those tricks inevitably invalidate much of what has gone before, making them a slap in the face of the viewer. Like camera suspense, it is deeply dishonest, a cheap cover-up for poor writing.

DeNiro and Pacino are NYPD homicide detectives after a serial killer. There is suspicion in the department that the killer might be a cop. In the end, the killer does not shoot a victim dead enough, he identifies his assailant from his hospital bed, and the killer is caught, but it’s not who you think, because of the dishonest writing that just jerks the story to a close, so who cares.

The dialog is terrible, full of clichés, platitudes, lame smart remarks, and statements of the obvious. The story reeks of racism and sexism. Granted, it is a cop movie, but it does not skillfully use racism and sexism as story telling devices. Rather it is just an unself-conscious racist and sexist movie. It could have been made in the 60’s.

The acting is uniformly abominable. The characters are not developed nor crafted by the actors. DeNiro gives about 5 minutes of acting and I saw about one minute from Pacino. Otherwise they were asleep throughout. These two mega-stars could have saved this movie with the right director, but my hunch is that all the filmmakers were so star-struck that they forgot they needed to tell a story. Redeeming virtue? DeNiro and Pacino. They really do have charisma, even when they are sleepwalking.

Ghost Town: Grade B

B
Ghost Town (2008)
Ricky Gervais, Tea Leoni, Greg Kinnear, Kristin Wiig. Cowriter-Director David Koepp.

Gervais is a misanthropic Manhattan dentist who clinically dies for 7 minutes in a hospital and afterward is able to see and converse with ghosts. One such is Kinnear, who wants him to prevent his widow (Leoni) from marrying a lawyer he thinks is a sleazeball. Gervais reluctantly agrees but then falls for Leoni himself and confuses her by revealing information that only her dead husband would have known.

The story is a composite of many ghost stories, including Topper, Ghost, and The Sixth Sense and there is even a bit of Groundhog Day. Gervais was the original boss in The Office before it was remade for American TV and I am highly susceptible to his brand of understated British humor. He is a great face actor as well. I am also a fan of seldom-seen Leoni. Her face and voice are particularly expressive. Kristin Wiig, well known from SNL, plays the surgeon presiding over the hospital disaster. She is a comic genius. Kinnear holds his own against these huge talents. The directing and editing let us feel the characters’ situations, and the writing is laugh until you cry funny with these players. Overall however, story is an implausible, overly sentimental romantic comedy that is quite pointless. The “message” that the living clinging to the dead is what makes them remain as ghosts, is flatly contradicted in the final act. The romance between Gervais and Leoni has zero chemistry. In fact none of the characters is literally believable so the movie is more like an elongated sketch. And the sentimentality inherent in a ghost story is nothing but cheap emotional exploitation. But despite the weak story, the jokes are genuinely funny.

Man on Wire: Grade B

B
Man on Wire (2008)
Philippe Petit. Director James Marsh

In 1974, Philippe Petit strung a tightrope between the two towers of the World Trade Center in New York City then walked out into the void. He spent 45 minutes out there, a quarter mile above the traffic, dancing, twirling, showing off. It was a worldwide news incident, as intended. When he finally came in, police snatched him up. He was charged with trespassing.

This documentary tells the story with some background from his youth and reports on his earlier wire-walks between the towers of Notre Dame and the towers of a bridge in Sydney. The story is told in convincing reenactments, archival news footage, and interviews with Petit and the friends who helped him. The story is only slightly interesting, though photography, editing and directing are excellent. Philippe is charming, as is his French-accented English. I would have liked a lot more information about the technical and financial aspects of the stunt. How is the wire made and anchored? What kind of slippers does he wear? Where does he fix his eyes while walking? What does he think about? How is the balance pole used? Who paid for all the equipment and airline flights? None of these questions is addressed. What's left is a report of an inconsequential media stunt from three decades ago.

At first, I wondered what kind of a nut Petit was. He would have made an excellent terrorist. But in the DVD extra interview with him, I became convinced that he is a genuine performance artist, deranged only to the extent any great artist must be. It might have been a better film to frame it more clearly as an inquiry into the soul of an artist rather than as a news report. But it is an engaging worthwhile hour of viewing.

The Visitor: Grade A

A
The Visitor (2008)
Richard Jenkins, Haaz Sleiman, Danai Gurira, Hiam Abbas; Writer-Director Thomas McCarthy.

An aging, burned out economics professor (Jenkins) leaves his home in Connecticut to visit his apartment in New York City. He finds a young couple (Sleiman and Gurira) living there illegally. The young man is an aspiring musician from Syria, a player of African drums, while she makes and sells beadwork of her native Senegal on the street. The professor politely asks them to leave and they politely leave, but he realizes they will be destitute and invites them back to share his (amazingly spacious) apartment for a while. Relationships are awkward but he develops a friendship with the young man, but alas, the ICE (immigration authorities) capture the young man. His mother (Abbas) appears at the professor’s door and the movie shifts to the slowly developing relationship between the professor and the mother as they try to get her son out of prison.

The acting by these four principal characters is nothing short of phenomenal. They are all utterly compelling, but Jenkins’ performance is astonishing. He says in a DVD interview, “I have been waiting all my professional life for this role.” It makes you wonder why he had to wait. Abbas also gives an outstanding performance, as does the director in portraying the quiet yet deep relationship that develops between the two older adults. The first half of the picture features the exuberance of the younger couple and conveys the multicultural world that is modern New York. The city is a star character in its own right, lovingly portrayed and beautifully photographed to unite the two halves of the movie. Writing and dialog seem authentic. I didn’t notice a single cliché in dialog, characterization, or photography.

This movie has the slow pace and subtle emotions of a serious foreign film. There are no guns, no drugs, no explosions, no sex, no violence, no stereotypes. It will not please most American moviegoers, but for the few who do enjoy a deeply meaningful study of modern human lives in development, it will be very rewarding.