Kinky Boots

KINKY BOOTS takes Ejiofor from "actor of note" status to "can do no wrong" status, right there with Emma Thompson, Toni Collette, and Edward Everett Horton. He takes a pleasant and occasionally funny story of plucky entrepreneurship and infuses it with energy and warmth.

KINKY BOOTS tells the story of a Northampton shoe factory that's in big trouble. Joel Edgerton plays a young man who has just inherited the venerable institution, only to discover that it's on the verge of bankruptcy. When a drag queen called Lola (Ejiofor) inspires him to go into the 'women's boots for men' business, he bets the factory on the idea. Various plots and subplots get resolved, some people find happiness, etc., and the movie rocks along pleasantly for an hour and a half. Without Ejiofor, it'd be a perfectly nice movie, the kind of thing that'd appeal to the CALENDAR GIRLS crowd (and I mean that in a good way). With Ejiofor, however, it's fabulous.

Ejiofor's can make Lola simultaneously confident and fragile, happy and heartbroken, joyous and deeply pained. He's a lousy singer and not much of a dancer, but he carries his nightclub numbers with such gusto and joy that we can't help but delight in them. He so thoroughly embodies his character that the guest with whom we saw it couldn't imagine him in any other kind of role - she thought Ejiofor had been discovered in SoHo's club scene. The guy is just plain fun to watch, as he was in MELINDA AND MELINDA, SERENITY, DIRTY PRETTY THINGS, and INSIDE MAN.

I can't wait to see what he does next.

A Room with a View

Several weeks ago, I wrote that life is too short to re-see A ROOM WITH A VIEW. I was wrong.

The fact is, life is too short, so we should see A ROOM WITH A VIEW at every opportunity. As each minute of watching the walking bobble-head known as Helena Bonham Carter make a Baxter out of Daniel Day Lewis stretches into an eternity, the glacial passage of time makes us feel that life, rather than fleeting, is a long, tedious trudge of geologic proportions.

I want to see this movie on my deathbed. It'll make me feel like I'm living forever.

3-Iron

If you're planning to see 3-IRON, I'd like you consider doing me a favor: watch it with the sound turned off. I want to know if the movie packs the same wallop with no sound at all.

I think it will. 3-IRON is basically a silent movie, anyway. Its lead characters say less than four lines of dialogue throughout the film, and its director (Kim Ki-Duk, who also wrote it) is confident enough to let our eyes linger on his actors, trusting them to emote (or us to project, perhaps) without the crutch of explanatory dialogue. It's a wise choice. When you have actors who are capable of showing us how they feel, there's no need to have them tell us, as well.

What happens? Jae Hee is a young man with a strange life: he breaks into empty homes, stays the night while the inhabitants are away, then disappears before their return. To pay his freight, he cleans the places up, does minor repair work, and even does the laundry. (How strange it must be to return from a trip and find your house inexplicaby neater, with all your gadgets working!) One gets the sense that these homes need him if they are to become the homes they're meant to be. One day, he enters a home that practically vibrates with need, for it's the home of Lee Seung-yeon. Lee is broken, you see.

As with all serious films, what happens and what it's about aren't exactly the same thing. 3-IRON is a film about the heart, and about need, and about the worlds we create for ourselves. It's beautiful, and heartfelt, and true, and I loved it. Enjoy.

Birdman of Alcatraz

In Birdman of Alcatraz (1962), Burt Lancaster plays a hard man, a remorseless killer, who slowly finds his way to humanity. It's an excellent film about redemption and dignity, and it showcases some great performances, but that's not what I want to talk about.

Its central theme is a celebration of the rugged individual, and the importance of staying true to onesself in the face of pressure to conform. It shares this theme with The Great Escape (1963), Cool Hand Luke (1967), and Easy Rider (1969). My thumbnail analysis leads me see these films as an adaptation of the classic rugged individualistic formula for the post-Eisenhower era, precursors and, ultimately, embodiments of the countercultural movement that swept the nation in the late '60s.

OK, so sometimes I have to release my inner English major. Regardless, BIRD MAN OF ALCATRAZ is thought provoking stuff and well worth the time.