Slippery Slope: Grade A

A
Slippery Slope (2006)
Kelly Hutchinson, Jim True-Frost. Writer-director Sarah Schenk

A struggling, out of work filmmaker (Hutchinson) learns that her film Feminism for Dummies has unexpectedly been accepted at Cannes, but she can’t afford the lab bill to retrieve it from the shop. Desperate to raise $50K in a few weeks, she searches the classifieds for jobs. Through circumstance and luck she lands a job directing a cheap indie movie, but when she shows up on the set, discovers it is a porn film. In the only special effect of the movie, black rectangles appear over the floppy bits of the actors, indicating her horror and repulsion. That was funny but an odd break from the otherwise straight ahead comedic realism of the movie.

She needs the money so badly, she goes ahead with it, disguising the project’s true nature from her husband (True-Frost). But soon she commits to rewriting the appalling script to put more humanity into it, and must make up ever more elaborate and hilarious lies as she workes feverishly at home. The husband finally catches her red-handed, but in desperation she recruits him into the project. Their love life at home takes a turn for the better and in the end there is some mad dashing about to get the money.

Acting and directing are terrific, including for the movie-within-the-movie. The pornography scenes are realistic but tame and not disrespectful or crude, and fun to watch. The overall message is difficult to ascertain. One theme repeatedly articulated is that pornography harms women, dehumanizes us all. Yet through the action, we see that the porn industry is also an economic and artistic opportunity for many people, and that porn can even be cathartically therapeutic for some. I think that is a realistic mixed conclusion, but in arriving at it the film takes us on a delightful ride.

Juncture: Grade F

F
Juncture (2008)
Christine Blackport. Director James Seale

A young woman in contemporary New York or Boston (there is no clear sense of place), has brain tumor and only two months to live. With her remaining time she chooses to hunt down and kill “bad people” who have harmed children, and that includes everything from middle aged men who collect kiddy porn, ex-con pedophiles (who have served their time), and neglectful, heroin-addicted mothers. She uses newspaper headlines for her research and whatever they say is enough justification for her to travel to a person’s city and blow their head off.

I love a good revenge/vigilante story but this is a cartoon. The character is not well- motivated. She starts her killing spree even before she is diagnosed, so her motivation seems to be (guessing from a brief shot of some tombstones with her family name) based simply on grief. Nobody suspects her and nobody is after her even though she wears no disguises and has a tendency to stand under bright porch lights. At the end she acts stupidly and is chased by police but there is no dramatic tension The acting and directing are execrable, consistent with the terrible writing.

The Counterfeiters: Grade A

A
The Counterfeiters (2007)
Karl Markovics, August Diehl, Devid Striesow; Co-writer (screenplay) and Director Stefan Ruzowitzky. (German, subtitled).

I didn’t think there was anything left to say in film about World War II, especially not about Nazis Vs. Jews in the concentration camps, but this movie proves me wrong, for it is an original. A light fictionalization of a true story, adapted from a memoir of a surviving participant, this films tells the tale of master Jewish counterfeiters sent to Sachsenhausen, a concentration camp north of Berlin. Their job was to counterfeit British bank notes, which they did perfectly. Nazis posing as businessmen get experts and even the Bank of England to certify the authenticity of the notes. But as the surviving counterfeiter reveals in a DVD extra, there is an almost imperceptible difference between a Sachsenhausen and a genuine five-pound note. That’s a fascinating technicality that should have been in the movie. After the pound, the mission was to counterfeit the dollar, a much more difficult task requiring a tricky transfer process. The prisoners realize that if they are successful, they will prolong the war by damaging the American economy, and also that once they are successful, they will be shot. On the other hand, if they fail, they will be shot.

I would have liked a lot more detail on the counterfeiting processes, but this is really the story of how the prisoners survived, what stories they told themselves about what they were doing, and how they dealt with the knowledge that they were clean and well-fed while their families and friends were being gassed every day. The acting is superb but the writing is even better. When the prisoners arrive at the new camp, they are given civilian jackets to wear over their prison stripes. All eagerly put them on and the camera is on the two main characters when they notice the names of the dead victims from whom the jackets were taken, pinned to the sleeves. Salomon (“Sally”), the “whatever it takes to survive” leader, discards the name tag and puts on his coat. Burger (the young man who is the now-90 year old survivor who advised the director of the film), sees the name tag and drops the jacket to the concrete. He stands alone in his stripes among the men. Without a word of dialog, we understand oceans about these two characters. It’s brilliant screenplay writing.

The screenplay writer and director, Austrian Stefan Ruzowitzky says in an interview that he could not bear to do a traditional concentration camp movie, but since these prisoners were treated well by the Nazis, he was able to focus on their moral struggles without being swamped by the emotion of how most prisoners were handled in the camps. He is a wise man and this is a wise film.

The Onion Movie: Grade B

B
The Onion Movie (2008)
Len Cariou, Scott Klace, Larissa Laskin, others, and Steven Seagal; Directors Tom Kuntz & Mike Maguire.

A long series of satirical sketches is loosely tangled into a story stabilized by a news anchorman (Cariou) who reports bogus news in the style of Saturday Night Live or The Daily Show. He becomes “mad as hell” (as in the movie Network) when advertising intrudes on “hard news”. Just as he is about to give an on-air scathing denouncement, the studio is attacked by terrorists. He is saved when the terrorists are distracted by “Cherry,” a popular singer who does thinly disguised pornographic videos, and that gives Steven Segal, gamely appearing as himself, who is the hero in the blockbuster action movie, Cockpuncher, an opportunity to save the day by doing what you would expect a character with that moniker to do.

The quality of the humor is wide, from stupid, childish and vulgar, to sharply cutting social satire of news reporting, politics, popular music, terrorists, cultural values, social attitudes, and even, preemptively perhaps, film criticism. The sketches are all very well-acted, well-directed; most are well-written, and all are shot with high production values and good attention to detail. Even lazy, prurient sketches like an ad for a gay cruise on the “Queen Nathan II” are produced with fine visual satire of ads of that type, even though the gay jokes are unimaginative and unfunny.

Other jokes, such as the porno-denying sexy pop singer are only slightly less sophomoric, but again, done with spot-on visual satire of the genre. Some sketches are just silly, like the failed automobile safety device, the neck-belt. The writers obviously took lessons from SNL, and Monty Python, and from movies like Idiocracy and the National Lampoon series. The quality varies about as widely as it does on The Onion itself (www.theonion.com). But despite the uneven quality, I spent a lot of time laughing and hooting.

The Walker: Grade B

B
The Walker (2007)
Woody Harrelson, Kristin Scott Thomas, Lauren Bacall, Ned Beatty, Lily Tomlin, Willem Dafoe. Writer-director Paul Schrader.

Harrelson is a gay Washington, DC escort and gossip-monger for ageing rich women and wives of the powerful (e.g., Bacall, Tomlin, Thomas). He plays canasta with them in the afternoons and takes them to the opera in the evenings. They accept him into their circle like a useful mascot. When one of the women’s secret lovers is found murdered, the walker calls it in to shield her from publicity, but soon he is the prime suspect. He keeps the secret even when he quickly becomes a social pariah. His "ladies" won't see him any more. He breaks up with his boyfriend in a crisis of self-loathing. I’m not even sure who committed the murder, possibly Ned Beatty? Disconnected talk about a senate scandal hearing went by too quickly. The story is really about Harrelson’s character, although it would have been a better movie if it had taken the whodunit angle more seriously.

This is Harrelson’s show. He is always a strong actor, but often as a supporting character. Here he demonstrates that he has the chops to carry the whole film. It is such a great performance, he is almost unrecognizable as the same guy who was in No Country for Old Men and Trans Siberian. Schrader’s writing and direction highlight Harrelson’s talent. The walker’s character resolution in the end is weak, as he simply announces his motive for keeping the secret. It is believable, but that motivation was not well-demonstrated in the action, so we just have to accept him at his word. The strong part of the movie is the characterization of the walker and Harrelson’s conveyance of it.

There Will Be Blood: Grade B

B
There Will Be Blood (2007)
Daniel Day Lewis, Paul Dano. Writer (screenplay) & director: Paul Thomas Anderson.

There is no blood. This mis-titled movie is about oil, or rather about one particular oilman (Lewis) in the early years of 20th century California. He is a psychopathic, greedy egomaniac who buys farms and drills them for oil, along the way alienating everyone he meets. He shoots a man who pretends to be his long lost half brother, threatens others, beats up still others. He is humiliated by, and finally humiliates in return, a country preacher (Dano). The preacher's character is just as crazy and self-obsessed as the oilman's but Dano gives a fascinating rendition of a complex person who has some inner life, unlike Lewis' character. Finally the oilman retires wealthy, lonely, still angry, and unenlightened. There is no plot, and little dramatic tension. The oilman’s character never changes, so this 2.5 hour film is merely a depiction of early oil exploration in California. Its virtues are visual, the wide open spaces, the men sweating to build and operate wooden derricks. (Women are nonentities in this film). The opening 10 minute mini-drama is accomplished without any dialog and is the best part of the movie.

Lewis’ acting is widely acclaimed (won best actor), but I thought it was just adequate. Since his character is psychopathically unpredictable, who can tell if the acting is good or not? The dialog for all characters was stilted, strangely formal. No contractions are used and everyone says “yes,” never “yup” or “yeh.” There were numerous linguistic anachronisms as well. The music, rich, varied, and full orchestra, was exceptionally beautiful, but completely disconnected from the rest of the movie, as if a high-dollar composer was hired to show his or her stuff, without having read the screenplay. This movie has been vastly overrated, yet it is worth seeing, for the good scenery, sets, costumes, and plausible historical description.

Into the Wild: Grade A

A
Into the Wild (2007)
Emile Hirsch, Marcia Gay Harden, William Hurt, Catherine Keener, Brian Dierker, Vince Vaughan, Jena Malone, Hal Holbrook. Co-writer (screenplay) and director Sean Penn.

A young man (Hirsch) leaves his wealthy suburban life in contemporary Atlanta, escaping his battling parents (Harden and Hurt), to pursue his fantasy of a hobo’s life “on the road.” He rides “third boxcar, midnight train.” He works in fast food joints and on a Kansas wheat farm. He kayaks down the Colorado river, hitches with truckers and stays with old hippies in a painted van (Keener and Dierker), until he finally makes it to Anchorage, where he vows to “live off the land,” free of society’s hypocrisy. Along the way he quotes Thoreau, Tolstoy, and great poets (being a recent university graduate). All this makes for a charming, if lightweight, adventure story.

The cinematography is stunning and original music by Pearl Jam’s Eddy Vedder (among others) is gripping. Penn’s directing is intense, thoughtful and nearly perfect. There are some groan-eliciting visual clichés, such as the camera spinning around Hirsch’s uplifted face to indicate giddy happiness, and several scenes drag on, but these faults are overcome by the fine performances Penn gets out of his actors. Hirsch is a standout as the enthusiastic young man. More surprising are tremendous performances from Vince Vaughan (best I’ve ever seen him), and 83 year old Hal Holbrook, who is unexpectedly nuanced. Catherine Keener is as wonderful as she always is and it would have been nice to see more of her. Harden, likewise, gives 100% of her best stuff. Dierker, who I did not know, reminded me of a younger Donald Sutherland.

The young man embodies the idealism of youth, but aside from quoting poetry, he does not make a case that society is corrupt and best left behind. There is a vague suggestion that he is running away from an awful childhood, but that theme is not well-established. Stultifying voice-overs by his sister (Malone), distance us from him. At least it should have been his voice so he could explain to us what was on his mind. Without much insight into him, we can only say, here is a kid on an exuberant, youthful adventure (which ends badly for him, but that hardly matters for the bulk of the movie). Some of his remarks suggest an anti-intellectual tone, as when he says “just being” in nature is the highest good, yet he always has his nose in a book and he declares to Keener that he seeks “truth, not love.” Also, for such an attractive young man, he has no romantic interest, male or female, which seems odd. The point is that it is a superficial, well-worn story, watchable, but of little intrinsic interest. This is, above all, a movie about Sean Penn’s directing and for that it is well-worth seeing.

Shotgun Stories: Grade B

B
Shotgun Stories (2008)
Michael Shannon, Douglas Ligon, Barlow Jacobs; Writer-Director Jeff Nichols.

In contemporary rural Arkansas, three adult brothers are notified by their hateful mother that the despised father who abandoned them years ago has died. They attend the funeral where they encounter the three half brothers from the runaway father’s second family. These half-brothers seem to be a little better off economically, but such things are only relative in this poor community. The oldest of the abandoned brothers insults the memory of their father and spits on his grave, starting a family feud that begins as insults and threats, and over the weeks escalates to fistfights, knives and shotguns. It is a sensitive portrayal of character, not the shoot-em-up vendetta movie it is promoted as. You can feel the sweat running down your back in the hot, humid, rural settings. Characters move slowly and talk slowly. The writing is Faulkneresque in the way it portrays the rural south, the naivety and ignorance, yet sensitivity of its inhabitants. I don’t like Faulkner for that reason. It is just not very interesting to watch stupid people behave stupidly. Yet the acting is superlative, directing, sets, costumes are perfect, and the script is engaging and original, so the movie, while a bit too slow for me, never sags.

Turn the River: Grade C

C
Turn the River (2007)
Famke Janssen, Jaymie Dornan, Rip Torn. Writer-Director Chris Eigman.

Janssen is a pool hustler in modern New York City, hanging out at a dingy pool hall run by Rip Torn. She is desperate to “find a game” so she can raise money for fake ID so she can kidnap her own son (Dornan), who lives with his father. The rich father is a mean drunk, the stepmother is clueless, and the meddling grandmother a witch, so the boy is supposed to be unhappy there, making the mother’s kidnap plan seem less selfish and more acceptable to the audience. We don’t know anything about the marriage or divorce, or why she didn’t get alimony or child support, or why the incompetent father got custody. The film shows some nice pool shots, although the camera has to cut away to allow professionals to slip in there and make the spectacular plays shown on the table, so the continuity of the games is not smooth. Still, the movie is about the woman and her child, not really about the game, so that is ok. She raises the money and takes the child. There is no character development and we never really understand her. All the characters are stereotypes, and the acting is only adequate, except for Rip Torn, who is really obnoxious, barking his lines without context as if he were deaf. There is no chemistry among any of the characters, not even between mother and child. But sets, costumes and colors are good, and it is nice to see a woman play the “tough-guy” pool-shark role.

A Lawyer Walks Into A Bar: Grade F

F
A Lawyer Walks Into A Bar (2007)
Six law students in California, plus some commentators. Director Eric Chaikin.

This documentary follows six law students for a few months as they study for the California Bar exam, one of the toughest in the country. They range from recent graduates to a middle-aged man who has already failed the exam 41 times. The candidates tell why they want to pass (to get a law license, of course!), and about the pressure on them to pass, their personal anxieties, and so on. We don’t get to know much about any of them, or care about them. Artificial suspense is built as they wring their hands over how important it is for them to pass. In the end, some pass and some don’t, just as you would expect. I learned nothing from this movie. It is promoted as “a witty, seriocomic look at the American legal process.” It isn’t. Reviewers rave, “Edge of my seat,” “Impressive,” Gut-wrenching,” “Hilarious,” and “a film that every prospective lawyer should see.” I disagree with all those comments. The film is boring and uninformative. I’m sure every law student in California and in the whole USA understands that they must pass a bar exam and that not everybody does pass. The film does not seriously explore the American legal system, the legal educational system, the bar exam, or anything else, and despite the great title, the movie is not funny. A documentary on legal education could be fascinating, but this one isn’t.

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.

Persepolis: Grade B

B
Persepolis (2007)
Chiara Mastroianni, Catherine Deneuve, Danielle Darrieux, Gabrielle Lopes; Co-writers & co-directors Vincent Paronnaud, Marjane Satrapi. (French, subtitled)

This animated feature is an autobiography of Satrapi, who grew up in Teheran during the Islamic revolution, survived the long war with Iraq, and finally left for good to escape the oppression of the modern theocracy. Apparently there is a graphic novel (comic book) of this story, upon which the movie is based. The animation style is unusual, using only flat black and white areas, no shading, with close foregrounds and far backgrounds in a sepia tone, giving the scenes just a bit of depth against the very high contrast figures. Nearly every shot is vignetted, reminding us that it is a memoir. The style is simple, but not simplistic, as there are plenty of interesting angles, silhouettes, and unique point of view shots, including some fantasy and dream-like sequences that are the most creative parts of the film. There are a few colored scenes to indicate the present, but since 99% of the film is memoir, most is in black and white.

Satrapi apparently felt that Iranian people are not known in the West, except as violent fanatics, so this movie intends to demonstrate that she is, and most Iranians are, just ordinary folks like everyone else. That sentiment is expressed in the movie. There is also national pride in the selection of the title, as Persepolis was the magnificent palace of emperors Darius and Xerxes, built near Teheran after 518 BCE.

Despite its 95 minute length, the story drags after the novelty wears off, as anybody’s life story other than one’s own always will. It is no more nor less than the banal story of a girl growing up, going to college in Vienna, returning after the war to the oppressive theocracy, then finally moving to France. Nothing special happens to her or her wealthy, comfortable family, and she remains politically naïve, so the film sheds little light on Iranian or international political or cultural history. However, the autobiography seems honest and heartfelt, and it is easy to become emotionally engaged with the Satrapi character.

Rambo: Grade F

F
Rambo. (aka Rambo, The Fight Continues) (2008)
Sylvester Stallone, Julie Benz, Graham McTavish. Co-writer and Director Sylvester Stallone.

I enjoy one-man-against-the-army movies, including the first Rambo of 1982, the Die-Hard series, the Death Wish series, and many memorable westerns. It’s a vehicle for Nietzschean exaltation of individual physical and moral superiority in the face of overwhelming opposition when no one else has the strength or courage or wits to do the right thing. And you would think that Stallone of all people would understand that theme. Alas, this latest (and presumably last) Rambo does not “get” the Rambo archetype.

In the early Rambos, the character was on a revenge or rescue mission, motivated by personal righteousness, with a grim determination that pushed him to near superhuman feats of endurance, resourcefulness, and strength against huge odds. Here, Rambo is merely catatonic, perhaps clinically depressed, but certainly “emotionally unavailable” to put it kindly. No explanation is provided for his sluggish movement and expressionless monotone. He has been living in civil-war-torn Burma since the Vietnam war, for reasons unknown, catching snakes for 30 years apparently. A group of Christian missionaries including the mandatory young blonde (Benz) convinces him to take them upriver to distribute Bibles and medicine. He drops them off and guess what, they are quickly captured by evil soldiers. The church hires a group of mercenaries to rescue them and Rambo takes them upriver also. Guards have their throats cut and gunfights ensue. Most of the missionaries are rescued. The blonde falls in the mud and ruins her outfit, but she is okay. The combat emphasizes heads and body parts being blown off in enormous sprays of blood. The special effects are good, but not new. The mutilation goes on and on, to the point of boredom. That’s what tipped me off that this is probably designed as a video game for mindless youth, and indeed the video game came out right after the movie’s release. There is no point to this movie except to blow up as many bodies as possible.

Early on, Rambo kills a gang of bad guys with a high powered bow and a quiver of arrows, a neat trick, but the bow quickly vanishes, traded for a more blood-spewing machine gun. Rambo has no particular reason to care about the missionaries and since their fate was entirely predictable, had no reason to take them upriver in the first place. Cryptically, he accepted no pay for taking them, implying a sudden Christian conversion? It is impossible to salvage a story out of this nonsense. Stallone looks fit for his 60 years but that’s not enough to carry a movie. Individual scenes are well photographed if you can ignore the heavy green and blue filters that indicate night or rain. Night is green and rain is blue; rain trumps night. Acting and dialog are uniformly abominable, except for some glimmers from mercenary McTavish. Music is what you’d expect to accompany glorification of pointless, bloody violence.

Election: Grade B

B
Election (2005)
Simon Yam, Tony Leung Ka Fei; Director Johnny To. (Cantonese; subtitled)

This Hong Kong gangster film is one of the best of the genre. There is already an “Election II” sequel out (not yet on DVD). In this movie, a 100 year old triad (gang) elects its new chairman (Yam), but the loser, "Big D" (Leung) does not accept defeat. He tries kidnapping, bribery, and intimidation to get his way, but the “honor” of the gang’s tradition does not yield. Big D declares he will form his own organization (with himself as boss) declaring war on the others. But the police round up all the leadership, and there are meetings in prison. The winner and the loser agree to work together, sort of, for a while, maybe. The story is easily strong enough to sustain the action. The violence is brutal and shocking (as is the custom in this genre), but also very personal because there are no guns in the whole movie! Enemies are beaten, stabbed, run over with cars, bashed with shovels and hit with whisky bottles. I kept imagining guns that were not there. Three black Mercedes screech to a stop and 12 thugs jump out. Cue the ouzi’s! But no, it is a fistfight with knives, machetes, boxes, and steel barrels. It’s amazing how much more effective the violence is without the depersonalization of the gun. There’s no martial arts either, making every scene feel realistic. The sharp dialog and good characterizations also help us engage with the humanity of the characters. There is a real sense that these guys are like any society of people, with history, tradition, and alliances, dealing with their particular culture of violence, individual talents, social hierarchy, and even mental illness. The scene with a community of monkeys watching a violent murder is especially telling. You come away appreciating the breadth and depth of Triad life in Hong Kong.

4 months, 3 weeks, and 2 days: Grade A

A
4 months, 3 weeks, and 2 days (2007) (Romanian, Subtitled)
Anamaria Marinca, Laura Vasiliu. Writer-director Cristian Mungiu.

In Romania, just before the fall of communism, a college student (Vasiliu), needs an illegal abortion. Her roommate and friend (Marinca) helps her through the whole process, which is completed successfully. At one level then, it is a story of friendship, in which the implicit understanding of what it means to be a woman, especially in this environment, pulls the women through almost unimaginable stress.

Is it a pro-choice statement? An abortion does take place, but the extremely bleak environment, the unblinking anti-sentimentalism of the cinematography, emotionally honest dialog, and difficult consequences of the story make me wonder if it is. It could as well be an anti-abortion message. I’d say it is neutral on that dichotomy. I don’t think that was the issue being addressed.

It is also about Romania under communism. The bare winter trees and slushy roads describe the cultural climate, while the scenes of making hotel reservations convey the stifling bureaucracy perfectly, and we feel the background of paranoia that permeates everybody’s life. The movie succeeds on that level as well.

But at it’s core, the story focuses on the conflict between the roommate’s (or any woman’s) socially defined personality, and the biological facticity of reproduction. For these women, conception is a biological punishment for the social act of sex, but in a horrific scene, we also see that the social value of sex can be used to regain control of the body. This conflict between a woman’s biology and personality is the driver of the story, all the more remarkable for it having been written and directed by a man.

Brilliant cinematography, directing, acting, and editing tell the story as well as the dialog. The roommate has dinner with her boyfriend’s parents, where there is joking, singing, story-telling, and wine, in a warm, brightly-lit atmosphere of educated people surrounded by books and laughter. In the next scene, in a stark hotel, the quack doctor negotiates his price. Then it is the harsh reality of the procedure. We are, with the protagonist, plunged from the socially constructed world of the dinner party, ten stories down a chute to the biological foundation of reproduction, with such suddenness that we are disoriented, as are the two women. In the final scene, the women sip water in the hotel restaurant, waiting for the only food left on the late-night menu. They can hardly speak to each other, they are so stunned by what has happened. The waiter brings the food, what was served at the concurrent wedding party: cooked brains, liver, and marrow, a healthy, high protein meal, no doubt. The dish is pushed aside without a word.

Honeydripper: Grade D

D

Honeydripper (2007)

Danny Glover, Lisa Gay Hamilton, Yaya DaCosta, Charles S. Dutton, Gary Clark, Jr., Stacy Keach, Mary Steenburger, Keb’Mo’; Writer-Director John Sayles.

With all this talent, it is hard to explain why this movie is so bad. It’s a black movie about a slice of black history. Sayles is white, but I don’t believe that old fallacy that you can’t understand someone’s struggle if you aren’t a member of their clan. Movies are supposed to illuminate the human condition, but this one doesn’t.

Glover owns a dumpy road house in rural Alabama in the 1950’s, but he is on the verge of bankruptcy. His last hope before eviction is to pack the place by bringing in a regional star, “Guitar Sam,” but Sam doesn’t show up. Instead, a drifter with a homemade electric guitar (Clark) takes the stage and all ends well.

The problem is that it takes two hours of “What we gonna do” hand-wringing for Clark to play, and then he plays about 60 seconds of hot electric blues before he and his pickup band lapse into featureless rock and roll while all the young people jump like they’re on American Bandstand. 1950 is almost a decade too early for rock n roll to be supplanting blues in Alabama, but we can let that go. Even more frustrating is that throughout the movie, Glover encounters a blind dobro player around town who absolutely rivets your attention every time he plays a couple of notes. It is Keb’ Mo’, the well-known blues artist with a Robert Johnson legacy. I was yelling at the screen, “Danny, it’s Keb’Mo’ for God’s sake! Put him on your stage!” But he didn’t hear me. There was a suggestion that slide guitar was “too common” to pass for entertainment, even though he had already acquiesced to Guitar Sam. So the movie plods on for another 90 minutes with its stereotyped characters, wooden acting, aimless story, stilted script, and incongruously bright-and-shiny sets. Everybody wears the same (spotless) clothes for a week and there are numerous anachronisms in props and dialog. What saves the movie from utter failure are the all-too-brief snippets of fine blues music, and the noble, if failed, attempt to portray an important piece of black history.

Fierce People: Grade C

C
Fierce People (2007)
Donald Sutherland, Diane Lane, Anton Yelchin, Chris Evans, Kristen Stewart. Director Griffin Dunne.

Yelchin is a 15 year old with absent father and alcoholic mother. He is obsessed with anthropology and the fierce Amazonian Yanomami tribe. His mother (Lane), a masseuse, goes on the wagon and takes her son to a rich client’s estate in New Jersey. Sutherland, the rich man, gives a wonderful performance as a modern day Great Gatsby. There are parties, feasts, festivals, balloon races, and romances as the undereducated, amoral and idle rich fritter away their lives. The thrust of the story is that the boy is supposed to study the wealthy clan anthropologically, establishing a parallel with the premodern Yanomami by showing extremely primitive motives and behavior beneath the veneer of high society. The sets and costumes are excellent and do convey the boy’s sense of being accepted into the upper crust, but as a mascot, not a real member, perhaps as a participant anthropologist would be.

Unfortunately, all the characters are two-dimensional and uninteresting. The rich people’s antics are stereotypical, exaggerated, and the portrayal is mean-spirited. The directing of physical movement is good but the dialog is clunky so characters seem to be reciting lines. At the end of the movie, everybody just goes home. No conclusions are drawn, no lessons are learned. The filmmakers add some ghostly Yanomami tribesmen in the woods to reinforce the supposed parallel between the two kinds of “fierce people,” and that’s a nice touch, but only a superficial overlay, symptomatic of the way the premise for the story is wasted. The Nanny Diaries also adopted the anthropological premise but like this movie, threw it away. Rich people with feet of clay is a fertile topic, but it was explored better in The Godfather series or even in TV shows like Dallas, than in this movie. One last criticism is that Yelchin’s character grated on my nerves throughout. He plays a slow-talking, highly controlled, extremely precocious youth, so precocious that the character was downright annoying. The movie is a lost opportunity but moderately interesting for what it attempts to do.

In Bruges: Grade B

B
In Bruges (2008)
Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson, Ralph Fiennes, Clemence Poesy, Thekla Reuten, Jordan Prentice. Writer-Director Martin McDonagh.

This ultra-noir comedy is shot in Bruges, Belgium, a beautiful city. Two hitmen (Farrell and Gleeson) await instructions from their boss (Fiennes) about their next job. There is humorous back and forth as Farrell, exercising his Groucho Marx eyebrows, petulantly complains about being bored with “culture and all that crap” (“history is just a bunch of stuff that’s already happened”), while Gleeson drags him to medieval churches and takes him on cold, windy canal tours. We learn in a flashback the special rule that governs these hit men: if you kill an innocent boy, that’s wrong, and you must kill yourself. Makes sense, right? Whatever, that’s the rule that controls the whole story.

The story is utter nonsense, and any residual of realism is sacrificed when Gleeson falls from a tower, his head exploding like a watermelon on the sidewalk, but he isn’t dead! No, he still has time to give a few crucial words of advice to Farrell. When Farrell is shot five times through the abdomen with an automatic weapon loaded with dum-dums, he doesn’t die, either. There are some funny lines and some melodramatic moments too, but there is no realistic overall comedic or dramatic story so the character arcs are hard to take seriously. Farrell overacts; Gleeson does a good job, Prentice is fascinating, but Fiennes is super intense, even electrifying. His character should have been brought in much earlier. Cinematography is stylish and enjoyable, as is the music. A tighter story with more respect for realism would have made it an excellent film.

Charlie Bartlett: Grade D

D
Charlie Bartlett (2007)
Anton Yelchin, Kat Dennings, Hope Davis, Robert Downey Jr. Director Jon Poll.

This high school, coming of age picture is half way between a comedy and a drama. As a comedy it is more along the lines of Napoleon Dynamite than the vulgar (but funny) humor of SuperBad, but it doesn’t contribute anything of its own, not the snappy teen dialogue of Juno, or the silly caricatures of Mean Girls. Dramatically, the movie poster quotes John Hughes’ 1968, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, about a high school wise guy, but that film had a charm that this heavy-handed and unmotivated story lacks.

Charlie Barlett (Yelchin) is a rich kid who has been kicked out of private school for reasons unknown, so his mother (Davis) enrolls him in public school, where he cannot make friends. There was a great opening here for some intellectual snobbery and class warfare humor, but it passes by. Instead Charlie sees a psychiatrist after being beat up in school (blaming the victim?) and the Dr. gives him Ritalin, which gets him high (which Ritalin does not do). Charlie starts selling the pills at school to win popularity. He reads the DSM to trick other psychiatrists into giving him additional meds (without his mother’s knowledge?) and soon he is a wheeler-dealer BMOC. He falls for the principal’s (Downey) daughter (Denning). None of the underage drinking, smoking, drug-dealing and drug taking is funny (or even noticed by adults). All the humor derives from Charlie being precocious about teenage mental health. The teens’ “rebellious” attitude toward the school administration is contrived. What kind of school is this, anyway? Nobody cracks a book, goes to a class, or throws a baseball. Hope Davis and Robert Downey Jr. give excellent performances worth seeing. Yelchin is a pretty face, but only competent as an actor, not a shooting star like Paige’s Juno.

Lost in Beijing: Grade A

A
Lost in Beijing (2007)
Tony Leung, Bingbing Fan, Dawei Tong. Cowriter and Director: Yu Li. (Chinese, subtitled).

A young, poor couple and an older, rich couple interact in modern Beijing, which was unrecognizable since I was there in 1979 when there was no building over about 7 storeys, and even those were crumbling stone blocks built by the British. Now gleaming glass and steel towers sprout like mushrooms after a rain, under a filthy brown sky. It could be Detroit or Miami or any other modern city. The movie gives a glimpse into the lives of people living high in the towers and low on the ground.

The young man (Tong) is a window washer and happens to see through the window, his wife (Fan) being raped by her boss (Leung). The young man demands payment in retribution, but things become complicated when we learn that Fan is pregnant. This movie is banned in China and the filmmakers are forbidden to work for two years, ostensibly because of the sex and nudity in the film. But I don’t think that is the real reason it was banned. There isn’t really much nudity on screen and the film is in no sense pornographic. We see some naked legs and buttocks, and that’s about it.

Of course among a billion people, there is sex every minute of every day, but to show it on film probably contrasts too harshly with the “official” view that all Chinese people are proud and dignified. The sharp division between inner and outer personality is core to the culture, and this film allows all the world, especially us barbarian Westerners, to look past the outer formalities to the inner private life.

More important though was probably the censors’ embarrassment or shame about how badly women are treated. The movie is a strong social statement by the female director and co-writer. Women are raped, beat up, murdered, ordered to have an abortion, forbidden to have an abortion, kidnapped, their babies bought and sold. Although the movie is not explicitly violent, the story makes it very clear that women are chattel in China today, despite the veneer of modern civilization. If that were not so, the censors would not be embarrassed by the movie and would have let it run. In the ending, the protagonist woman makes a defiant move, her declaration of independence, but I wonder how realistic that possibility is in today’s Beijing.

It is a very well-acted movie, with considerable sensitivity and humor, great photography, some interesting editing, and a stunning look into modern Beijing. But above all, it is a courageous expose and plea on behalf of Chinese women, and women everywhere.

King of California: Grade A

A
King of California (2007)
Evan Rachel Wood, Michael Douglas; Writer-Director Mike Cahill.

Douglas gives a terrific performance as a geezer just released from a mental institution to his 17 year old daughter (Wood). She has been driving her beat-up Volvo to work at McDonalds in a California suburb, just getting by. We see in flashbacks that their 100 year old house was once a jewel in rolling agricultural acres, but now is a sore thumb in an endless sea of unimaginative tract homes. Charlie, her dad, believes he has discovered a map to golden treasure, buried nearby by early Spanish explorers. He schemes to find it, even selling the Volvo and the house to finance his exploration. The best line in the movie is the daughter’s incredulous outrage: “What? Are you nuts?” He stares at her. She says quietly, “Sorry.” He actually does not seem to be psychotic, only slightly delusional, and who isn’t these days? That ambiguity makes it plausible that she would become Panza to his Quixotic search for the maybe-gold. The ending is accordingly ambiguous as well. We are half-convinced there might be gold, but finally we realize it doesn’t matter. The point is that she is able to re-establish her relationship with her father during the adventure. The movie is also a cry of anguish over the squalor of cookie-cutter “development” that relentlessly buries the treasure of natural beauty under concrete and commerce. It is a surprisingly sensitive performance from Douglas, and first rate from Wood, too.

The Air I Breathe: Grade C

C
The Air I Breathe (2008)
Kevin Bacon, Julie Delpy, Andy Garcia, Brendan Fraser, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Emile Hirsch, Forest Whitaker; Co-writer and Director Jieho Lee.

Four mini-dramas are loosely connected in the style of Crash. Whitaker is a clerk who bets big on a horse that loses, leaving him indebted to a vicious shark (Garcia), so he does the only reasonable thing and robs a bank, but gets shot by SWAT. Garcia does a great hot-and-cold psychopath that channels Pacino. It is totally derivative but really a great imitation. Whitaker’s character is not well motivated but he gives a strong performance anyway. Fraser shows the best acting of the movie, and the best I have ever seen from him, as an emotionless debt collector for Garcia. Fraser gets glimpses of the immediate future so he knows when he is going to be attacked from behind, for example, very useful for a gangster. When his clairvoyance fails for the first time in his life, he becomes happy at his new freedom (a logic that escaped me), and falls in love with an emerging rock star (Gellar) who is “owned” by Garcia since her manager paid off his debt with the management contract. I’m no expert in contract law, but I don’t think that would be an enforceable agreement. Nevertheless, the girl is tyrannized by the evil Garcia, and Fraser can only protect her for a little while. Meanwhile, Bacon is a physician with a patient who requires an immediate transfusion but who has a rare blood type. He just happens to overhear a television interview with the rock star who just happens to reveal that she has that blood type! Rather than make a phone call, Bacon rushes downtown (conveniently same town, and staying nearby), to accost her in the street, which leads, predictably, to him being beaten up by her bodyguards. Somehow that unpleasantness is resolved (not shown in the movie), and the patient is saved. We don’t know what happens to Garcia.

It is difficult to understand what the writers were trying to achieve with these weak-to-ridiculous stories, or with the overused format of linking stories through common characters, no matter how implausible the linkages. What saves the movie from total disaster are strong performances by Garcia, Whitaker, and especially, Fraser.

Flawless: Grade B

Alas, this gem of a movie is flawed. Moore gives an outstanding performance as an executive in 1960 London, working for a DeBeers-like diamond supplier. She looks terrific in the period costumes and reacts with subtlety and depth when she is repeatedly passed over for promotions. Caine is a rascally janitor who, because of his unrestricted access to the building, knows all about her, her career and its frustrations. He suggests that they remove a thermos full of diamonds from the vault, retire happily, the company never the wiser. He counts on her frustration and desire for revenge. The heist goes well, with enough tension to keep us on edge, secret motives are revealed, and some unexpected twists surface. We are satisfied, as we were in The Thomas Crowne Affair, when these anti-heroes get away with it.

Or we would be satisfied if it weren't for a wrong-headed set of before and after scenes obviously tacked on later. In the opening scene, a reporter interviews an aged Moore, newly free after 30 years in prison. What that means is never explained, but it contradicts the story to be told and turns it into an emotionally distant flashback. The closing scene of the movie is Moore telling the reporter that she never heard from Caine after the heist. These scenes don’t make any sense, are unnecessary, and spoil the perfection of the movie. The opener was probably added to foil (falsely, it turns out) easy plot predictions, then the opener needed the closer. Very bad choice.

Otherwise, though, photography is clean and bright, directing and editing are good, sets and costumes are perfection. Paul Desmond’s clarinet solo from “Take Five” sets the mood. The feminist theme blends well into the story, giving the tired heist genre a lift. All the actors give strong performances. This could have been a sophisticated heist movie, until somebody realized there were no guns, explosives or car chases, so added a stupid red herring instead. You have to wonder how such poor decisions get through.

Cleaner: Grade B

B
Cleaner
Samuel L. Jackson, Ed Harris, Eva Mendes, Luiz Guzman; Director Renny Harlin.

This is an entirely plot-driven, light throwaway “dirty cops” story that has been told a thousand times before, but this one is above average for several reasons. First, Jackson does some of his best acting ever, showing depth and range. Then there’s Guzman, who usually must radiate his considerable talent from a deep background part, as in Fast Food Nation, but here is featured as the lead detective on the case. Ed Harris is always a pleasure to watch, and Eva Mendes is easy on the eyes, although both of those latter actors do not shine here as well as they might.

The story is silly, about a sort of janitorial service that cleans up stores and residences after messy homicides and suicides. When you think about it, I guess somebody has to do that work. The visuals showing Jackson in his hazmat suit, taking the squeegee to blood spatter on windows, are aggressively graphic and I think, tongue in cheek. He cleans up a homicide in a rich suburban house, forgets to return the key, goes back the next day to find the house populated by a woman (Mendes) and a dozen children celebrating a birthday party. She knows nothing of any homicide or any cleanup, and Jackson, confused and wary, backs away. That was a pretty good start to an intriguing paranoid mystery.

But instead the story takes a number of unlikely turns to become some other, much less interesting, non-mysterious story about cops on the take, a secret book of all their badge numbers formerly owned by the homicide victim, now owned by Mendes and hotly pursued by Guzman. Mendes befriends Jackson for reasons unknown and the story writhes on. In the implausible end, some justice is served on a platter of compromise. I would be disappointed if I spent money to see this film in a theater, but as a DVD rental, it will amuse you as much as any television cop show.

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.