The Book of Eli: Grade C

C
The Book of Eli (2010)
Denzel Washington, Gary Oldman, Mila Kunis; Directors Allen Hughes & Albert Hughes.

Stellar acting by Denzel pulls this movie up to average. Without his performance, it would be seriously sub-par. He is a solitary traveler (Eli) in a post-apocalyptic America, a sun-burnt wasteland that looks like the aftermath of nuclear war (few buildings left). He walks from town to town for no special purpose, reading his Bible when he can. Highway robbers of all sorts try to attack him for reasons unknown (they are presumably just mean) but fortunately he has deadly martial arts skills, a big knife and a short-handled shotgun, so he is in no real danger. And he apparently skipped right over that part in the Bible about not killing.

Eventually an evil gangleader (Oldman) discovers that Eli has a Bible and will do anything to get it. Why? So he can rule the world with its ideas. Hmmm. There isn’t much to rule, really, nor even much for his gang to do, but never mind. So it is cat and mouse focused around the Bible for a while. Meanwhile, a young woman (Kunis) who used to belong to the gangleader, runs away to travel with Eli, perhaps because he keeps saving her from the danger she chronically falls into.

It’s all silly nonsense. Water is a rare commodity in the future world but petrol is still plentiful, so the bad guys can race around in giant SUVs and motorcycles, all of them in remarkably good shape, implying not only a petroleum refining and distribution industry but also a thriving machine parts industry somewhere. Eli has to shoot pigeons with a bow and arrow for food, even though everyone in the picture is quite well fed. Oldman’s gang collects books for him but he just burns them because all he wants is a Bible. This overlooks the fact that the Bible is, and always has been, the most frequently printed book in history, so statistically, you would expect to find more Bibles than any other book. Oh well.

There is a Mad Max allusion with all the choppers screaming around a dusty green environment (why the atmosphere in the future is green is unexplained). And there is a significant allusion to the Sergio Leone spaghettis in the beginning.

Besides Denzels’ strong performance, the cinematography is attractive. Many of the shots are stereotypes, but quite a few are beautiful and creative. That’s worth seeing. Overall however, the acting is clunky, directing undistinguished, story laughable, dialog obvious and stilted.

Star Trek: Grade C

C
Star Trek (2009)
Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Zoe Saldano, John Cho, with Leonard Nimoy; Director J.J. Abrams.

This is a competently made explosion film that will amuse boys 8 to 14 years old, and is watchable by others because of nostalgia value. It treats the original (1966) Star Trek television series with respect but imagines the beginning of the story as a prequel. Captain Kirk’s father is killed off by evil others (I never have been clear on the difference between evil Romulans and evil Klingons, but whatever), and his successor, Captain Pike is captured, leaving Spock (Quinto) commanding the Enterprise.

But Spock shows emotion when he punches out Kirk The Younger (Pine) for insulting his mother, so he resigns his position, putting Kirk in the captain’s chair. (This development overlooks the fact that Spock had previously been kissing Lieutenant Uhuru (Saldana), but apparently, not with any emotion – a guy thing, I guess).

Meanwhile, Spock as his future self (Nimoy) arrives from the future to give counsel to both Kirk and Spock the younger. It was great to see Nimoy in the pointy ears again. What a hoot that must have been for him. He looks like his 80 years of age, but the voice still says “Spock.”

Ninety percent of the movie is taken up with ballooning exothermic chemical reactions and swooping spacecraft, which is more Star Wars than Star Trek, which tended to the cerebral (and, like the original, ignored the fact that there is no fire in space because no oxygen, and no sound because no medium to carry it).

Also, they didn’t quite “get” the character of Captain Kirk, who was not simply a wild rule-breaker, as portrayed, but was a master strategist, able to change the grounds of engagement to his favor. Subtlety is not a feature of this movie. It is actually quite unimaginative, relying on spectacular effects and ear-splitting noise and music for excitement. Obnoxious (and unnecessary) as it was, the music was actually complex and interesting. The pace was good, and acting competent if hammy. The "human" relationships were compelling but the "scientific" side of the tale was pure nonsense. Kids won't know the difference.

It was satisfying that the script managed to include nearly all the nostalgic clichés. Scotty frets over the engines, Kirk recites into the captain’s log, and Spock says “Live long and prosper.” I missed only “Phasers on stun,” and the whoosh of the accelerating starship. In a final nod to nostalgia, Nimoy read the preamble (“These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise…”) at the end of the movie, only very slightly updated for modern times. It would have been better with Shatner, but he apparently is done with that phase of life.

Tokyo! : Grade A

A
Tokyo! (2008)
Numerous unknown Japanese and French actors; Co-writers and Directors: Michel Gondry, Leos Carax, Joon-hoo Bong; French and Japanese (subtitled).

These three strange stories are not for everyone. They are weird and surreal, but beautiful, provocative, well-acted, well-directed and exceptionally creative Each film is about 30 minutes and produced by separate directors, crews and actors.

In Interior Design a broke young couple searches for their first apartment in Tokyo. The young man wants to be a filmmaker and we see samples of his fantasy work. The woman has no apparent direction, although we otice that she is a talented visual artist. He criticizes her for lacking ambition and direction and she becomes despondent and turns into a wooden chair. Yes. The story reminds me of Kobo Abe’s 1967 one-act play, The Man Who Turned Into a Stick.

In the second film, Merde, A deranged man who lives in the sewers surfaces to terrorize Tokyo. He is arrested but there are only three people in the world who speak his strange language. The film has a lot of fun with how arbitrary languages can seem. Monsieur Merde’s special language involves hoots, whines, guttural noises, tapping the teeth with a fingernail and slapping of the right side one’s own face with the left hand. It’s hilarious, but a careful observer will note that the language sounds are culled from actual human languages, and that there is a definite syntax to the made-up language. The linguistic games reminded me of the synthetic language in Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange. It could be an overdeveloped theme for those not as interested in language. What does Mr. Merde stand for? He is definitely from the sewers and that metaphor could be taken literally. There is also a suggestion that he represents Uncle Sam or at least, non-Japanese foreigners in general.

Finally there is Shaking Tokyo, about a man who has become a recluse, living inside his Tokyo apartment without seeing anyone for ten years. He orders his pizza and dry cleaning by phone, until one day there is an earthquake and he accidentally makes eye contact with the attractive young pizza delivery girl. Eventually he leaves the house to search for her and finds the streets empty and the city deserted. Everyone has become a recluse! Apparently this is a real social problem in Tokyo, and it is understandable, the population pressure being so enormous in that city.

Any one of these films is a gem. All three of them are mind-spinning. There are interesting DVD extras, each as long as its film. Highly recommended for the adventurous.

Special: Grade A

A
Special (2006)
Michael Rapaport, Alexandra Holden, Jack Kehler; Co writers and directors Hal Haberman & Jeremy Passmore.

I have been a fan of Michael Rapaport since I saw him in Zebrahead in 1992 when he was only 22 years old, and I never could understand why he didn’t become a mega-star. Looking over his bio, it seems he has opted for serious acting roles in small movies, and for television, where I have surfed over him a few times and been appalled at the waste. But he’s back at full strength in this small, obscure movie.

Rapaport plays an ordinary, lonely guy, a parking cop, who signs up for an experimental drug testing program. The drug makes him believe he has super powers, such as the ability to levitate, read minds, and walk through walls. He decides to become a superhero so he makes himself a hilarious but sincere costume like a white ski outfit cum flight suit. He proceeds to thwart crimes at convenience stores and on the street by tackling the bad guys.

The brilliance of the writing and directing is in management of the point of view. We learn that police are searching for a strange guy in a white costume who tackles innocent people on the streets and in stores, and we start to get the idea that “Les” is delusional and that this movie’s genre is not fantasy but realism. Then it switches back to Les’s point of view and we realize that even if he is nuts, he has never before felt so confident about himself. The pills have given him new life, which is exactly what patients say after taking Prozac or other antidepressants. So we wonder, is he really delusional or just eccentric in living his life to the fullest? The point of view flips around skillfully, keeping us guessing and the dramatic tension high.

It is a very well-made movie, well-acted, and it illuminates the human condition. What more could one ask? Rapaport is even better than I remember him, in Kiss of Death (1995), for example. He is a joy to watch. Alexandra Holden, who has a small part, gives a standout performance.

Blindness: Grade C

C
Blindness (2008)
Julianne Moore, Mark Ruffalo, Gael Garcia Bernal. Director Fernando Meirelles.

Inexplicably, people in a major modern city go instantly blind, one by one, until the whole city is blind. That’s the premise we must accept. Ruffalo is an ophthalmologist who examines a patient with the mysterious ailment, then “goes” himself. His wife, Moore, accompanies him to the quarantine, even though she remains sighted. Soon the quarantine is overcrowded, chaotic, filthy and surrounded by guard towers, so we have morphed from an allegory of social fear of biological pathogens, like an escaped virus or maybe HIV, to some sort of Holocaust metaphor.

Moore conceals her visual ability, for reasons unknown, and helps individuals and groups get somewhat organized. But the “bad” group gets hold of a gun, seizes the limited food supply and demands payment from the others for food. The dramatic situation could have been resolved in five minutes, since a gun is not that useful for a blind person, while sighted Moore could easily have overcome the lot of them. But instead the movie morphs into a Lord of the Flies theme to show the dark side of human nature. Finally someone thinks to check the front door, which is open and all the guards are gone and the city is empty of life except other starving and dying blind people. And so on. There is no resolution, no message, no point to the whole thing.

The strengths of the film include terrific (though terrifically bleak) cinematography, compelling acting from Moore, and some moments of insight. On the down side, the screenplay lacks any semblance of story arc or character development. Some scenes are thought-provoking, such as the realization that it makes no sense to segregate the genders for dressing and bathing, since everybody is blind. But in general, the movie is an insult to blind people, and over all nothing adds up. We could accept throwing reason to the wind for the sake of observing human behavior in a contrived crucible, but Lord of the Flies has already been done, so why do it again, badly?

The Fall: Grade A

A
The Fall (2008)
Catinca Untaru, Lee Pace. Director Tarsem Singh.

This dreamlike fantasy is a visual masterpiece. Colors, costumes and characters flow past in a kaleidoscope of swirling images. If you weren’t high when you started watching, you will be at the end. An injured, drug-addicted, and suicidal Hollywood stunt man (Pace) is in a 1920’s Los Angeles hospital when he meets a little Romanian girl with a broken arm who barely speaks English (Untaru). The visual of the girl in a cast braced up over her shoulder is indelible. Untaru is a charmer even saying very little, and that is a tribute to the director’s skill (even though I think it is unethical to put such young people in movies). The man tells the girl a fantastic story of five heroes in a desert, all vowing to kill the wicked Count Odious. Pace, in a sort of Sergeant Pepper outfit, also plays the Blue Bandit, leader of the heroes, which include Charles Darwin and his monkey, Alexander the Great, an escaped African slave wearing a fantastic headdress of gazelle horns, too much else to describe.

Costumes are unbelievable, like nothing you've ever seen. The film was shot in 18 countries, and there are beautiful architectural scenes of the Taj Mahal and the Red Fort in Agra. Meanwhile, in the hospital, the man recruits the girl to steal morphine from the dispensary, as that story and the fantasy story increasingly overlap. The iceman for the hospital appears as the slave in the fairy tale, for example. The visual and narrative creativity of this movie is intoxicating. The fantasy story is somehow light-hearted and dramatic at the same time, yet the core story between the man and the girl is consistently engaging, both humorous and poignant. Music is by Beethoven. One of the best movies I’ve seen so far this year.

Vampire Diary: Grade C

C
Vampire Diary (2007)
Anna Walton, Morvin Macbeth; Directors Mark James & Phil O’Shea.

I have questions about vampires and this movie did nothing to clear them up. Aren’t vampires immortal? So what is their fear of being captured or shot by the police? And how nutritious is an exclusive blood diet, anyway? Don’t vampires need the basic 20 amino acids? This movie introduces a whole new set of questions about vampire reproduction as well.

Vicki is a relatively good-looking young woman, in a dark, Addams Family sort of way. She crashes vampire parties held by Gothic teens who wear false fangs and use loads of eye and mouth makeup. Vicki falls in love with Holly, the host of a vampire party, and eventually confesses that she is a real vampire, that she is pregnant, and that she is hungry. Holly shows about sixty seconds of skepticism then vows to help her lover get what she needs. They start hunting derelict drunks, but Vicki complains about the low quality blood, so they have to move upscale. Details are sketchy, but some members of the party crowd turn up dead. The city-wide hunt is on for the “Vampire Killer.”

But the movie is really about the relationship between the two women and the lengths to which Holly will go to protect and sustain her friend. Most disturbing is how the film justifies and ennobles self-mutilation, which is actually a severe psychopathology. Holly cuts herself with a razor blade to feed her lover. Camera work is dark, grainy, shaky hand-held video, and reflects the fact that many young people have video cameras going all the time, objectifying their lives instead of living them, another disturbing trend. Editing is primitive, directing is clunky. I could not evaluate the music, which is from a youth culture I don’t know. But the acting was actually pretty good. As she hands her new baby to Holly before the police get there, Vicki says that she is not really a vampire, just a psychopathic serial killer. There are no vampires, she says. That would have been a good ambiguity to play throughout the story instead of throwing it in at the last minute. Despite the mediocre writing and very low production values, the result is mildly interesting, not too bad.

Ghost Rider: Grade C

C

Ghost Rider (2007)

Nicolas Cage, Peter Fonda, Sam Elliot. Writer, director: Mark Steven Johnson

A young man sells his soul to the devil (Fonda) to save his father’s life. He becomes the devil’s sleeper cell. Fonda is a slow-talking, ironic devil, like Jack Nicholson without the menace. There are nice visual allusions to Easy Rider. The wit in this movie is its most attractive feature and Cage has some fine comedic moments, but it is not a consistent trait as it was for Bruce Willis in the Die Hard series. A lost opportunity there. As an adult, Cage must find and destroy the devil’s son before some nonsensical McGuffin is found. At that point, a good half hour into the movie, Cage morphs into Ghost Rider, a black-leathered dude with a flaming skull for a head, riding an enormous hog that leaves a trail of flames. The special effects are imaginative but rendered with cheese. GR’s assignment and strategy are unclear. He rips around town, burning up the highway, but pausing to save damsels in distress from urban punks, reminiscent of the Charles Bronson vigilante movies. There are also allusions to Dirty Harry, and later, to Eastwood’s spaghetti westerns. The flaming bike even behaves and sounds like a horse at times. And there’s a werewolf theme, as well as some Spider Man imagery as GR cycles up the vertical face of skyscrapers because he can. Any of these themes could have supported a story and/or parody, but the writer was directionless. Sam Elliot is a wonderful avuncular cowboy who gives Cage pointers on Ghost Riding. Finally there is a murky showdown between GR and Son of the Devil, though it is unclear what they are fighting over or how, since everyone is immortal and invincible. But Son of the Devil has dark eye makeup so he’s bad and must “die.” This whole movie is obviously designed to set up a franchise. Watch for Ghost Rider II: Avenger of Evil.

The Piano Tuner of Earthquakes: Grade F

F
The Piano Tuner of Earthquakes (2005)

Amira Casar, César Saracho. Directors: Stephen Quay, Timothy Quay.

The images are the main feature of this surrealistic fairy tale. In some kind of a dark world, an evil psychiatrist holds his patients prisoner and attempts to turn them into singing marionettes in his automated, mechanical music machines, which are a mixture of pin-ball, player piano, and 19th century mechanical toys. The piano tuner is supposed to repair the machines, but gets wise to the plot, which he possibly foils, or possibly not; it is impossible to tell. I’m a big fan of imaginative surrealism, but to appreciate the pictures, one must be able to see them. These images are extremely dark and muddy, mostly black and brown shadows with no detail, punctuated by blasts of overexposed, blinding light, creating silhouettes and high contrast close-ups of who knows what. Many shots are heavily gauzed and vignetted, just to be sure you don’t see anything. A very unpleasant movie to look at. The dialog was equally murky. Perhaps that was an artistic analogy to the visuals but there is hardly much value in an inaudible and incomprehensible sound track (some of it in untranslated, unsubtitled Portuguese). The music was too loud, consisting of inane strings expressing nonexistent tension, and meaningless sound effects. Acting: was there any acting? I couldn’t see. Story: was there any story? I couldn’t follow. I think the directors went over the edge of surrealism into pure obscurantism.