The A-Team

Y’know, I’m all about character and story and craftsmanship and art.  I love for films to challenge me, to bring me into cultures I don’t understand and introduce me to people I don’t know.  I like to think and I like to revel in beautiful cinematography and music.  I also like to watch stuff blow up real good. 

THE A-TEAM blows up lots of stuff real good.  Not only that, it features Herc action.  Hot Herc action.  Lots and lots of hot Herc action.  A C-130 Hercules takes out a squadron of F/A-18s.  A Herc engages in a protracted air combat duel with a couple of fighter drones (oh yeah, and treats us to a full flare show, in the process).  A Herc even brings the thunder with an airstrike that blows up stuff better than real good – it blows stuff up real real good.  Hercs can do anything, and THE A-TEAM does everything with them.  Awesome.

The hot Herc action is so awesome, in fact, that it overcomes the film’s disregard for the laws of physics, the basics of military life, and even the destructive potential of weapons like the rocket-propelled grenade.  It overcomes the film’s quick-cut editing style, a style that often made me wonder who was doing what to whom and why.  It even overcomes the fact that the members of the A-Team fascinate themselves more than they do us.  You can get away with a lot when you pile on the Herc porn.

The Flowers of St. Francis

Perhaps I’m lost.

THE FLOWERS OF ST FRANCIS, an Italian film about the early ministry of St. Francis of Assisi and his followers, is supposed to retell beloved parts of Francis’s tale to the faithful. I think we’re supposed to be inspired by the faith, the humility of Francis and his followers.

All I saw was a bunch of lunatics wandering around in the mud.

Humility, service, sacrifice – I get it. But when Francis remonstrates with one of his disciples for “trying to hurt brother fire” by not putting enough fuel under the cooking pot, all I can think is, “Brother Fire? Are you kidding me?” When Francis tells one of his disciples that true happiness can be found by hassling people (in the middle of the night) to serve Jesus as they do, all I can think is, “I’d call the cops if these guys banged on my door at three in the morning.”

Am I supposed to see these guys as role models? As examples of perfect faith? If so, then my practical Lutheranism ain’t cuttin’ it. Perhaps THE FLOWERS OF ST FRANCIS is actually subersive, designed to make us question the activities it beatifies.

Regardless, this film made me spend too much time in utter mystification to work as an entertainment. For me, THE FLOWERS OF ST FRANCIS represented an hour and forty-five minutes of wondering, “What were they thinking?”

The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call - New Orleans

I am so happy to have Nicolas Cage back.

The man’s career began so well, with idiosyncratic work in commercial films like VALLEY GIRL and RAISING ARIZONA.  But then he went for the money, shaming himself in the unwatchable CON AIR and pandering to audiences with pictures like WIND TALKERS and BANGKOK DANGEROUS.  Sure, there was the occasional LORD OF WAR or the wackiness of GHOST RIDER to remind us Cage still harbored that spark of genius, but I thought that the risk-taking phase of the man’s career had passed.

KICK-ASS seemed a fluke, a one-off.  But THE BAD LIEUTENANT: PORT OF CALL -NEW ORLEANS confirms that Nicolas Cage has dialed himself back in.  Not only is he crazy as hell in this remake of BAD LIEUTENANT, he’s also absolutely outstanding as a physical actor.

It begins with the walk.  Early in the film, Cage’s character (the eponymous bad lieutenant) injures his back.  The actor walks like a guy with a bad back, a guy who’s trying to gut out his pain and stay on the job anyway.  As the film progresses and the lieutenant deteriorates, the back gets worse.  Cage distorts his body, for a time grows Nixon-like.  Toward the end, he becomes both Frankenstein’s Monster and Igor, both trapped in the same body.  It’s amazing.  And I haven’t even mentioned the sleep deprivation.

Look, everyone knows that Nicolas Cage can do crazy eyes.  We’ve got that.  But this progressive physical distortion is a testament to craft and discipline.  Can you imagine finding just the right posture for a character going through so many phases of unwellness, day after day and take after take?  The achievement rivals Lon Chaney.  I’m impressed.

As for the film, it’s a Werner Herzog picture, for crying out loud.  Of course it’s outstanding.  It might even blow your mind.  See it.

Black Narcissus

BLACK NARCISSUS is a Command Movie with a twist: it’s set in a convent high in the Himalayas, and its commander is a young nun who is in far over her head.  It’s a spotty film, with brilliant moments balanced with groaners and a great setup marred by a poor resolution.

Deborah Kerr plays the nun, a smart and wealthy Irish girl who forsakes her home for the austerity of service.  Her order sends her to a decrepit old compound up in the mountains, in a part of Raj-era India so remote that it can’t even boast a proper English presence.  To succeed, she must lead the nuns assigned to her (whether she likes them or not), win the respect of local leaders and villagers, and defeat the elements and scratch subsistence out of the rocky soil.

It’s a great setup, right?  Toss in a rakish young David Farrar as the local satrap’s English advisor and default sex symbol to the women of the convent, and you could really be on to something.  And for the first two-thirds of the film, BLACK NARCISSUS is.  Yes, there’s an annoying subplot about a local prince and a girl of low reputation, but the film doesn’t let that kill it.  BLACK NARCISSUS gives us all the personality conflicts, culture clashes, and delightfully quaint colonial color we could desire.  It even builds up to a series of cascading crises that put both me and my ten-year-old boy on edge.

But then, in the last act, it all falls apart.  Because the film can’t adequately manage cascading crises, it tries to merge them all into one climactic sequence that depends, for its success, on disregarding previously established geography and an editing style that makes the audience wonder who’s doing what to whom.

What a disappointment.  BLACK NARCISSUS has so much going for it, especially early on.  If only it had followed through.

Shutter Island

SHUTTER ISLAND, Martin Scorcese’s brilliant and unsettling film, captivated me from beginning to end.  Its story combined horror and suspense, its performances drew me in, and its flamboyant visual style never strayed from serving the tale to serving itself.

The film is set in 1954.  Leonardo DiCaprio and Mark Ruffalo come to Shutter Island, an Alcatraz – like mental facility for the violently insane.  They turn in their US Marshals’ badges and their sidearms at the gate, meet the warden, and commence their investigation of an inmate’s disappearance.  It seems like the setup for a delicious locked-room mystery, but the film won’t stop there.  The inmate in question had committed a crime so heinous that it can not exist in a ‘delicious mystery.’  Further, DiCaprio, the lead marshal, senses that something is off.  Why does the Warden and Chief Psychiatrist (Ben Kingsley, chillingly solicitous) insist on inserting himself into every phase of the investigation?  Why does everyone, patients and staff alike, seem off-kilter even for a mental institution?  What is it about this place that keeps him flashing back to The War and its horrors?  What’s going on here?

The film goes to dark, creepy, scary places.  And it stays there, knowing that dread and foreboding and that tickle at the back of your brain telling you to stay alert are far scarier and more effective than monsters and gallons of Kensington Gore.

The people in these places, people like the aforementioned DiCaprio, Ruffalo, and Kingsley; as well as Max von Sydow, Patricia Clarkson, and Jackie Earle Haley, among others; get under our skins, each in their own ways.  Not only are they fully realized human beings, but they seamlessly advance the story, build dread, and even give us the feeling that what seams they may show are actually faces to meet the people that they meet.  When you’re Martin Scorsese, these are the kinds of actors with whom you get to work.

While Scorsese gets the best from his performers, he pays considerable attention to his cinematographer, editor, designers, and artists.  This work feels like that of a master of his art, delighting in his ability to create worlds both fanciful and pedestrian.  From the brilliant juxtaposition of past and present to the contrasts in dress, demeanor, and even worlds of different characters, to Shutter Island itself, the film works in bold, assured strokes, delighting in storytelling and its medium, confident that we will stay for the whole ride.  I saw this film on my basement enormovision, but I wish I’d done better: I wish I’d seen it on the big screen.

For SHUTTER ISLAND is successful in every way.  I can’t wait to see it again.