The Monk: Grade B

B

The Monk (2011)

Vincent Cassel, Déborah François, Joséphine Japy; Director Dominik Moll. (French, subtitled).

The 1796 novel, by Matthew Lewis, is a classic of gothic fiction. It has all the elements that define the genre, including dank stone medieval buildings, mistaken identity, magic, hidden passages, murky candlelight, mysterious dreams, romance, incest, class distinctions, and a subtle anti-Catholic message.

The story itself is also well-worn. A baby is left on the doorstep of a monastery. The monks take him in. He grows up to become the head monk, a pillar of harsh religious virtue, but racked by satanic obsessions, mainly sexual ones, and finally he “cracks,” giving into his growing madness and committing unspeakable sin.

Even for someone who doesn’t know the genre or the story, this is an enjoyable movie, mainly because of the astonishing acting performance of Vincent Cassel. But in addition, the whole story is told realistically, without melodrama, so the characters seem empathic and approachable. The cinematography is eye-candy, and the medieval sets and costumes are totally convincing. Although there is little dramatic tension, the movie is so well-made that it will keep you glued to the screen.

The Smell of Success: Grade C

C

The Smell of Success (2009)

Billy Bob Thornton, Tea Leone, Ed Helms, Kyle McLachlan; Co-writer and director: Michael Polish.

This is a silly trifle of a movie, but I wanted to review it because it has been so thoroughly ignored, despite having some hidden virtues. It is about a group of salesmen in Kansas, led by Thornton, who work for Rose’s Manure, and sell the stuff to farmers. Old Man Rose dies and his daughter (Leone) from New York City, takes over the company, with the aim of pumping up sales then selling it.

The film is an example of screwball comedy, a genre characterized by witty repartee, usually a romantic relationship, a satirical emphasis on social class distinctions, with farce and slapstick. It was a style of movie popular in the 1930’s during the Depression, so ordinary people could watch the upper crust get their comeuppance and have a laugh at their expense. Perhaps the filmmakers thought it was time to revive the genre during the current Great Recession.

That intuition might have been right, but they made two critical mistakes. One is that the manure theme is pitched too low to be socially or politically satirical, or even, really, very funny. Most of the gag lines are pretty obvious: “Rose’s Manure: We’re number one in number two!” And worse, much worse. I admit, some of the joke lines made me laugh anyway. When the beautiful and sophisticated Tea Leone, in frustration, calls one of her salesmen “Shit-For-Brains,” I laughed, not because it is an original epithet, but because of the way she said it. But the relentless poop jokes wear you down, and even if they do make you chuckle, you realize there isn’t going to be any artistic point to the humor.

Secondly, the relationship between Thornton and Leone just isn’t. They are the romantic leads, and they even go to bed together (just wrestling, no sex). But there is no suggestion of a romance. Why not? Even if the movie was aimed at children 5 to 8, (and I don’t think it was), that should not rule out a romance. Maybe the omission was a far-too-subtle reference to the censorship codes of the 1930’s that forbade portrayal of any kind of sex. If that was the intent, it failed.

The film does have strong redeeming virtues. The cinematography is excellent, as are costumes (the period seems to be early 1960’s). The bluesy music is attractive. The artistic direction is distinctive, with a kind of sepia palette, reminiscent of O Brother Where Art Thou, that is perfect for the surrealistic scenes. And those are fantastic. The competitors, a chemical fertilizer company, parachutes crates of their product, and themselves, into cornfields and the imagery there is stunningly surreal. A kind of World War II theme emerges, and although it is not developed, it is a very creative twist. Acting: MacLachlan and his team, dressed like Men In Black, do a fair parody of evildoers, though not arch enough. Ed Helms is an inherently funny guy. Leone, I’ll watch in any movie. Same for BBT. So this movie has plenty of virtues and deserves to be seen, by adults, even though, as an overall artistic effort, it falls short.

The Mill and the Cross: Grade A

A
The Mill and the Cross (2011)

Rutger Hauer, Charlotte Rampling, Michael York; Director Lech Majewski. (Spanish; Subtitled)

This is a stunningly beautiful film by a legendary director, based on a painting by the Flemish master, Peter Bruegel, his 1564 painting, "Way to Calvary." You can see the painting online. The film is the story of how Breugel designed the work as he watched people and events in his medieval village, which had been occupied by hated Spanish mercenaries. So there is political commentary in the painting and in the film.

The painting shows Jesus carrying his own cross to Calvary, but somehow this scene takes place in Flanders in the 1500’s. The director uses a combination of CGI, green-screen, location shooting, and live actors to move seamlessly in and out of the painting, with fantastic effect.

A windmill on a towering rock is a metaphor for heaven, God as a miller, the massive wooden gears and wheels of the mill showing how heaven grinds humanity down, down, down, into flour-like dust.

Hauer plays Breugel, who explains his painting’s design to wealthy patron York. Rampling is Jesus’s mother, Mary, who keeps saying “I don’t understand,” as she watches the crucifixion. She represents a modern voice perhaps, speaking for the audience, who sees humanity of that time devoid of intellectual understanding, only passive acquiescence to senseless hardship. There were only the tasks of staying alive, until you were finally ground to dust. Nothing made any sense, not even religion, according to this painting and film. Only art might have made sense.

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.

A Single Man: Grade D

D

A Single Man (2009)
Colin Firth, Julianne Moore. Co-writer and director Tom Ford.

The stars are two of my favorite actors, which is why I selected this movie, and indeed they both give extremely fine performances, Firth’s perhaps the best I’ve ever seen from him. However the story/screenplay has zero forward momentum, plotwise or characterwise, so fundamentally this picture is extremely boring.

A gay college professor in 1962 Los Angeles (Firth) is grieving the loss of his longtime partner. He does this by walking slowly, as if in a trance, and by gazing into middle distance a lot. He visits his old buddy (Moore) for consolation they have a few drinks and dance in her apartment. He carries a gun in his briefcase, in case he decides to do himself in, you never know (but of course he doesn't, for that would constitute a story line). He ogles some of the young men on the campus to show he still has libido, even in his grief. He wears heavy black plastic eyeglass frames like they did back then so you know he is in 1962. And that’s about it.

There is just nothing going on in this movie except some pretty pictures. What keeps it from complete failure are the extremely good performances by Firth and Moore, and the excellent cinematography and directing. But without either character development or story line, it just does not add up as a movie. It amounts to no more than a random collection of mildly interesting scenes.

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.

Savage Grace: Grade C

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

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

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

The Women: Grade B

B
The Women (2008)
Meg Ryan, Annette Benning, Eva Mendes, Debra Messing, Jada Pinkett Smith, Candice Bergen, Cloris Leachman; Co-writer & Director Diane English.

The dialog is still funny in this update of the 1939 classic comedy. Meg Ryan learns that her husband is having an affair with a shop girl (Mendes). Her girlfriends, especially Benning, give her copious advice. Now on her own (although still wealthy) she discovers that she doesn’t have to be a wife to be a person, so she starts her own fashion business. She resolves to get a divorce but can’t sign the papers. It turns out she wants to be married after all. Who could have guessed that?

The original film was fascinating for showing idle rich women in the midst of the Great Depression, and also because back then, women really were little more than wives, so breaking free to be a female person was a radical character development. All that context is gone in this movie, leaving only witty dialog, and it’s witty in a jokey, sitcom way, without the acerbic tones of the original.

The modern characters are brain-dead and the story a catalog of banality. Despite its ostensible celebration of women’s independence, this film does the cause a disservice by stereotyping its characters’ concerns around clothing, food, children, babies, marriage and domestic matters. There are no men in the movie but a male definition of the world is built-in, whether in ogling Eva Mendes’ butt or by having men and marriage be the psychological hub of life.

The acting is nothing special although it is fun to see so many big names. Bette Midler’s cameo is a high point. Jada Smith’s performance is seriously grating. There are some nice directorial touches. The silly dialog and cheap sentimentality make this light, empty-headed comedy an amusing diversion.

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.