Joint Security Area

Chan Wook-Park's JOINT SECURITY AREA is a noble, and reasonably successful, attempt to grapple with issues of power, warfare, and common humanity. It doesn't say anything new or particularly startling about the human condition, but it does a fine job of capturing its time, place, and people. For a movie billed as an action thriller, this is a pleasant surprise.

Here's the setup: a Swiss major of Korean ancestry (and a Korean accent, but watcha gonna do?) reports for duty at the Joint Security Area, the zone in Panmunjong that's run by Switzerland and Sweden and serves as a meeting point and negotiating center for the Koreas. There's been a border skirmish that could get ugly, as the South accuses the North of having kidnapped one of its men and the North accuses the South of violating its territory. There's an injured South Korean sergeant who was either a victim or provocateur, there's a Northern sergeant who was either a victim or provocateur, and there's a guardpost full of dead communists. This being Korea, everyone's hewing to their respective party lines. What happened? Who was to blame? Can the major avert a war?

JOINT SECURITY AREA proceeds along the lines of an investigative thriller, building tension in anticipation of the inevitable skirmish as it meditates on the nature of nationalism, friendship, and human nature. We get to know both sergeants, we get to like them, and we come to mourn the requirements of patriotism and power. JSA puts us in that guardpost and it breaks our hearts. Not bad for an action thriller.

Sky High

I enjoyed the heck out of SKY HIGH.

SKY HIGH's hero is one Will Stronghold, a young man born of superhero parents whose power, it seems, is his ability to look just like an adolescent Scott Bakula. It's Will's first day of superhero high school, and he hasn't yet manifested powers cool enough to elevate him above "sidekick." That's the least of his problems, however. He has to make friends; find his way; handle a new enemy; and choose between the unbelievably hot Gwen, a sexually aggressive girl with super-techno powers, and Layla, the reasonably attractive childhood friend who's good with plants. Hmm, tough call: do you go with the knockout who builds cool gadgets and wants to jump your bones, or the proto-hippie who can, uhh, grow fruit? My answer: I went to the wrong high school.

One of SKY HIGH's pleasures is its cast. From a perfectly cast Kurt Russell as Pa Stronghold/The Commander to Kelly Preston, Cloris Leachman, Bruce Campbell, Kevin Heffernan, and Lynda Carter, this movie can afford to coast by on goodwill alone. It doesn't, whoever, boasting instead a clever script, excellent effects, and a pleasing, consistent palette.

Did I love SKY HIGH? No, I can't say that I did. The heavier stuff tends to exercise a firmer hold on my imagination. Did the movie make for an enjoyable family evening gathered around the enormovision? Absolutely. SKY HIGH is worth the rental.

Children of Men

Ahh, the Sixties. The dope was great, the people were groovy, the music had a conscience, and everything would have been all right, man, if only the fascist pigs hadn't screwed it all up. CHILDREN OF MEN, supposedly a science fiction movie, is the most backward-looking film I've seen in a long time.

In the world of the future, the conservatives won. They had their wars, they polluted their planet, and they blew it. Now, Mother Nature is exacting her revenge by wiping out the human race through the infertility of its women, and the only thing standing between us and human extinction is a sold-out ex-yippie; an idealistic hippie; and the personification of Earthly fecundity, a pregnant young African woman named, obviously enough, Kee. In the world of the present, the bores won.

What is it about the '60s countercultural movement that so captures the creative imagination of generations too young to remember it? Director Alfonso Cuarón was born in Mexico City in 1961, so he wasn't even around for the really good stuff. Nevertheless, the film's moral center (played by an always-engaging Michael Caine) is a guy for whom time stopped in 1969. He grows his weed, he listens to his Beatles records, and he cares for his invalid wife (crushed under the boot of The Man, of course) in an eco-friendly home that's safely tucked away from the horrors of the outside world. Here's the thing, however: if the movie's set in 2027 and the Caine character is 74 years old, that means that he has dedicated his life to a world that moved along when he was twenty years old. It's as if I decided to dedicate my life to the Reagan '80s and moved my family to a country house where I could revel in supply-side economics and Devo music 'til the end of my days. It's crazy. It doesn't make sense. In the world of CHILDREN OF MEN, it's about the best possible thing a man can do.

Anachronistic ideology aside, CHILDREN OF MEN is a decent chase thriller with the requisite twists and set pieces. Though it criminally misuses Chiwetel Ejiofor in the Sean Bean role and its denoument clunks like the shed chains of the Liberated, it does have some magnficent bits and it does move along. Now if we could just get a science fiction movie set in the future.

Faraway, So Close!

FAR AWAY, SO CLOSE!, the unnecessary sequel to the superlative WINGS OF DESIRE, has two special treats that make it worth the viewing: it tells us whatever happened to WINGS' Damiel and Marion, and it gives us Willem Dafoe as one of cinema's best demons. WINGS fans will be delighted to find Damiel and Marion happily married, very much in love, and the parents of an adored daughter who's developing gymnastics skills of her own. That's sweet, and I'm a sucker for sweet, but Dafoe's performance here is what really brings the goods home.

Here's the setup: Cassiel the Angel is feeling the angst. Growing tired of watching, he's ready to put his hand in the mix. When events conspire to push him into making an abrupt choice, he does the right thing and sheds his angelic nature so that he may walk among the humans. I was ready for a different take on assimilation into a foreign world, but the film's actually a little disappointing, here. Cassiel has an innocence that strikes me as ridiculous, and while his adventures culminate in an appropriate and satisfying way, I was much more interested in Dafoe's demon.

The character is never clearly identified as a demon, but he has the ability to shift between the angelic and the mundane world, which makes him neither angel nor human. I doubt that he's the Devil, though he could be, because I get the sense that Wenders' major theological antagonists are somehow more cosmic than the angels he's shown us thus far. That the character is Satanic in the Hebraic sense of the word, I have no doubt: he describes himself not as merciless, but as pitiless: a prosecutor who will pursue and aggravate every flaw; who will create temptations and then pass judgement when men succumb. And Dafoe, cinema's finest Christ, plays him just right. He's seductive, friendly, and mean. He's brutally harsh, engaged yet calculating, and he neither expects nor gives quarter.

That's why I don't understand the climax. Why does he do what he does, and what does that mean about his relationship with Cassiel and Raphaela (Cassiel's angelic friend)? And speaking of the climax, where did that minor villain come from?

I think the answers may be found on an editing room floor somewhere, but you know what? It doesn't really matter. In ten years, I'm not going to remember FAR AWAY, SO CLOSE!'s plot points. I am, however, going to remember that Dafoe performance. What an actor.

Rocky III

You know the difference between a good friend and a great friend? A good friend gives you all the ROCKY movies for your birthday; a great friend gives you all the ROCKY movies, minus ROCKY V, for your birthday.

ROCKY III has a great beginning: we start with the opening bars of the Bill Conti anthem, then segue into "Eye of the Tiger" for the opening montage that tells us what Rocky's been up to. "Eye of the Tiger" is perfect for dancing with a baby, and it's so catchy that my older boy has been making, "Dvvt. Dvvvvt dvvvvt dvvt." noises for the last three days. ROCKY III is slicker than the two previous entries in the franchise, and this works as a reflection of Rocky's new, slicker life. He's on the covers of magazines. He has a custom tailor and a nice house. He looks like a body builder and not a power lifter. He thinks he has it all together, but Mickey knows better: he's lost his hunger.

Enter Mister T as Clubber Lang, easily the best of Rocky's opponents. He's dedicated, he's tough, he's mean, and he gives the greatest pre-fight interview imaginable:
"What's your prediction for the fight?"
"My prediction?"
"Yes, your prediction."
(Looks into camera)
"Paaaaiiiiinnnnnn!"
Man, I had to rewind that twice.

The film takes us through a crisis of confidence, a training montage that is absolutely out of this world, and an extraordinarily well-choreographed final bout that's a masterpiece of choreography, cinematography, editing, and sound design. If real boxing was half as exciting as a ROCKY movie, I'd watch it all the time.

Murderball

MURDERBALL wants to have it both ways. It demands that we see its subjects as regular guys, not quadriplegics, but it has a problem: most of these guys are assholes. In trying to overcome this handicap, it goes with shameless heartstring-pulling, an emotional manipulation dependent on the fact that no, these guys aren't regular at all, but courageous quadriplegics. Which is it, gang?

It's a standard documentary formula, and it worked for RIZE: find a subculture, select some sympathetic members of that subculture, and show how the subculture has helped them overcome their handicaps. This subculture happens to be the one of elite wheelchair rugby, a bone-jarring, highly competitive full contact sport. Its sympathetic members include Mark Zurpan, a dominant player for Team USA, and Joe Soares, the coach of archrival Canada. They hate each other and I didn't much like either of them. They're both louts, though Soares does develop over the course of the film. Unfortunately, these principles, as well as other team members, refuse to discuss how their subculture has helped them: they're too busy pouring their hearts into it to leave much room for reflection.

So what we're left with, really, is a documentary about a couple of seasons in the life of a rugby team. That would be fine, but the filmmakers don't have enough faith in that story to run with it and really sell their point. Instead, they spend significant time with a recently injured quadriplegic man who for whom wheelchair rugby might be a reason to live. They end with the team's visit to Walter Reed Army Medical Center, where they introduce the sport to wounded soldiers just back from the war. These detours are emotionally engaging, but they focus our attention on these guys' handicaps, rather than their athleticism.

MURDERBALL wants to be a sports documentary. MURDERBALL wants to be a documentary about quadriplegics overcoming their handicaps. MURDERBALL doesn't have the courage to be either, or both. Given the material, MURDERBALL could have been great. Too bad its lack of courage stops it in its tracks.

The Polar Express

The ads and trailers for THE POLAR EXPRESS did not capture my imagination. In fact, they looked a little creepy, and I was all too happy to wave off. My loss.

THE POLAR EXPRESS is an excellent movie. It's visually stunning, with the kind of roller-coaster events that heighten its sense of adventure, and its audio presentation is absolutely top-notch, with a number of scenes that put the viewer right in the middle of things. Further, the movie has something that's rare in children's shows: a palpable sense of danger, that things could go very, very wrong. This is important, because it's all to common for movies to trumpet the importance of courage without presenting their children with any real dangers.

THE POLAR EXPRESS does have a downside, however. I was quite happy with my DLP enormovision right up until I saw the movie on a relative's Sony DLP/LCD hybrid TV. Calibration disk, here I come!

Rififi

Tony le Stephanois (Jean Servais) has problems. He's old, he's tired, his girl left him while he was in prison, and he sucks at poker. When his protege suggests a smash-n-grab at a local jewelry store as an easy way to make a few bucks, things seem as bad as they can be. He's a serious jewel thief, for pete's sake! Is he going to allow himself to be reduced to smalltime crook? Oubliez lui! le Stephanois has a better idea. Rather than waste his time on a smash-n-grab, he plans a serious heist of the most secure jeweler in town. Thus, we're all set up for one of the best heist pictures ever.

RIFIFI is the grandfather of the heist genre, a wonderful high noir look at the criminal world and its denizens. There's been plenty written on it, and there are folks right here on this list who are well qualified to discuss its historic significance. I'll leave that aside and say that RIFIFI is a just plain terrific movie. Servais has a face that looks like it's been lived in, and he does a fine job of keeping us engaged in a character that is, almost any way we look at it, a very bad man. The supporting cast is equally wonderful, taking now-stock characters like "top safecracker" and imbuing them with life and individuality. The heist itself, a sequence around thirty minutes long, takes place without a word of dialogue or a note of scoring support and reminds us just how effective silence can be. This is edge-of-your-seat stuff, very well executed, and a flat-out great time at the movies. I'm glad I rented it.

A Scanner Darkly

I didn't read the book, and I'm not much of a Keanu fan, but I rented A SCANNER DARKLY because I respect Linklater and I wanted to see rotoscoping in action.

I now have no desire to read the book, I'm still still not much of a Keanu fan, and I think rotoscoping is pretty cool. So, there's that.

See, here's the problem: A SCANNER DARKLY tells the story of a bunch of people I don't care about, living in conditions I don't care to visit even in my imagination, behaving with varying degrees of despicability. The rotoscoping process makes the proceedings more interesting and gives Linklater the ability to create characters and make visuals pop in a way live action can't, but I couldn't get around the fact that I didn't want to be around these people.

I still do respect Linklater, however. He's doing difficult, innovative things with his medium. Clearly, these characters and situations spoke to him in some way. Had they done the same for me, I might have enjoyed the ride.

The Taking of Pelham One Two Three

Some bad guys have hijacked a New York City subway train, but there's one thing they don't count on - there's an undercover member of the NYPD on board.

Then again, this is the mid '70s, so maybe that's not much of a problem.

Here's the other thing they don't count on - schlubby, reliable Walter Matthau, the Transit Police Detective who happens to be on shift in the control room that day. That is a problem, because Matthau, in his low key way, keeps his head while those about him are losing theirs.

So begins THE TAKING OF PELHAM ONE TWO THREE, a thriller that appears to be mostly about people sitting around and talking. It's really about the fog of war, that gap between reality and knowledge, in which everyone must work in a crisis. The criminals, led by the imposing Robert Shaw, seek to exploit the fog, even to induce some, as part of their plan to make a great deal of money in a short amount of time. The authorities, led by Matthau in a striking example of situational
leadership and authority (He isn't the highest ranking guy involved in the situation, but he's the guy everyone defers to because he's the most capable.), spend most of their time playing catch up and trying to coordinate their response. It's great stuff.

The film's takes a workmanlike approach to casting both cops and criminals. On the side of the good guys we have Matthau, Jerry Stiller, and Dick O'Neill; on the bad, the aforementionted Shaw, Hector Elizondo, Martin Balsam. These are reliable, decidedly un-flashy actors know how to deliver. In that respect, they're like their one-liner-free-characters: they're more worried about getting the job done than looking pretty doing it. The approach, which is mirrored in TAKING's overall look and feel, works because we feel we're watching real people doing things that could happen in the real world. In a movie about the fog of war, that realism makes all the difference in selling the picture.

Joe Sargent, who recently made the wonderful SOMETHING THE LORD MADE for HBO, directs the hell out of this movie, which is tightly paced, well crafted, and pretty much seamless. THE TAKING OF PELHAM ONE TWO THREE is a winner.

The Taming of the Shrew

Liz. Dick. A young Michael York. What's not to like?

Quite a lot, actually. While the Zeffirelli TAMING OF THE SHREW looks great with its stunning sets and costumes even Joan Crawford would envy, this movie fails to take flight. I posit two reasons. First, I just couldn't buy Richard Burton's Petruchio. Burton plays Petruchio as a man long on bravado, but I never got the sense that he knew what he was doing or that he possessed the resolution and cruelty that the role requires. Perhaps it was the actor's decision to grin like a monkey throughout the production; it's hard to say. Second, the film takes too much time with its setup and not enough with the actual taming. When the last act shows us the depth of Katherine's retraining, we don't buy it because we didn't get enough of a sense of her sufferings.

I wanted to like THE TAMING OF THE SHREW. I really did. Unfortunately, Zeffirelli's is one of the less satisfying of play's incarnations that I've seen.

Once Upon a Time in the West

If you happened to be riding the Red Line this morning, you may have noticed a guy in a suit gazing into his laptop with a big, goofy grin spread across his face. The guy was me, and the goofy grin was in response to the final showdown in Sergio Leone's fabulously entertaining ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST. This is a western that loves westerns, and that love is no more evident than in this faceoff. The adversaries are perfect: the villain tall, thin, dressed in black, and evil as can be; the hero short, burly, dressed in tattered and sun-bleached clothes, utterly implacable. They're both at the top of their game, and their grudging respect for one another shows in their complete and total focus. Ennio Morricone's music swells, the camera moves, and if you aren't completely carried away in the joy of film, well then, you just plain don't like movies.

The movie starts slowly, letting tension build as a gang of toughs, led by the formidable Jack Elam, takes over a remote rail outpost and awaits a coming train. Who or what is on that train, and what will it mean? When you see, and when you see what happens next, you're going to know whether or not you're in for the rest of ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST, because if it doesn't hook you, nothing will.

This may be the most lavish of the spaghetti westerns, as Leone had Paramount's backing for the production. He used some of his money to hire first-class actors such as Henry Fonda, Charles Bronson, Claudia Cardinale, Gabriele Ferzetti, and Jason Robards. Fonda plays one of the most evil men I've ever seen on screen, and he is uttely delightful. Bronson thoroughly redeems his work in this (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CV3gA7hNItY&eurl=), and he gives Clint Eastwood a serious run for his money in the Man With No Name sweepstakes. Claudia Cardinale is beautiful, strong, vulnerable, and makes us believe in her journey from "tough but lost" to "budding grande dame." Ferzetti, a familiar face to fans of Italian media, mixes craft, cunning, and weakness into a dangerous combination; and watching him think, struggle, and think some more is a joy. Finally, there's Robards like I've never seen him before: dangerous, charismatic, noble, and fun - and he gets the best theme music.

ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST's most attractive feature, isn't its stars, however. It's its own swooning, ecstatic love for film in general and westerns in particular. This movie embraces every noble archetype, every heaving bosom, every bleak panorama, every plywood town, and every deadly bullet with a delirious joy that can't help but capture our imaginations. I loved, loved, loved this movie. It may well be the best picture I've seen so far this year.

Land of the Dead

In LAND OF THE DEAD, the zombies have won. A city full of remaining humans have walled themselves in to Pittsburgh, and they've established a brutally Darwinist social system, with Dennis Hopper at the apex.

So, the first thing LAND OF THE DEAD has going for it is Dennis Hopper at the apex of a social system. And really, it just gets better from there. The viewer could start wondering about how that's possible, but this is one movie that asks you to not ask too many questions. Once you start down that road, it isn't long before you're thinking, "How do they generate electricity?" and "What, exactly, is the foundation of their economy?" I think you're better off enjoying the jump-scares, wierding out on Leguizamo's unmistakeably ICE AGE Sloth -like vocal inflections, and admiring the creative and professional effects and makeup work.

LAND OF THE DEAD is big, audacious, splattery fun, with a helping of social commentary on the side. I enjoyed it so much, I give it four nnnnnnnnggggggghhhhhhhhssssssss out of five.

Amores Perros

I watch movies in roughly 30-minute swaths while riding public transportation. This generally works pretty well, as most movies are roughly 90 minutes long and hew to a 3-act structure. It’s like reading chapters of a book. AMORES PERROS is 150 minutes long, with three separate and intersecting stories, and it is simply not conducive to serialized viewing. It needs to be consumed in one large gulp of time, which allows it to cast a cohesive spell.

Of its three tales, the film’s first one had the greatest effect on me. It’s about a young man who’s in love with his abusive brother’s wife and hits upon a scheme to earn some quick dough and run away with her. Things go poorly.

In the second, a man leaves his family for a new love. Things go poorly, no thanks to the young man in tale #1.

The third story follows a homicidal vagrant whom we meet early in story #1. He left his family to become a revolutionary, but (say it with me now) things go poorly.

All three stories give us people swimming against the tides of their love, and wreaking varying degrees of havoc along the way. They’re beautifully done, and I think this movie could have carried me away. If only I had seen it under different circumstances.

Callas Forever

I'm not an opera guy. Yeah, I bought a few CDs in college, when I was trying to convince my (very musical) girlfriend that I was cultured (Hey, it worked: she married me.), but I've never been to a live performance. I knew that Maria Callas existed, but I'd never heard her sing: she was just another (of many) undiscovered countries. In other words, I came in to CALLAS FOREVER with a clean slate.

CALLAS FOREVER begins with Jeremy Irons handling the press at DeGaulle Airport. Now, I've seen creepy Irons, scary Irons, pathetic Irons, even silly Irons ("Throw me the rod," indeed.), but this is the first time I've seen supercool Irons. Stylishly dressed, with a pony tail that actually doesn't look silly, Irons is a music promoter who has it all together. He's worked with Hendrix, the Stones, and Callas herself, and he's in town to promote his current act, a punk bad named Bad Dream. This guy has it all together, from the way he handles a crowd to the way he prepares for a concert to the way he flirts with pretty much every attractive young man in sight. As the movie gathered steam, even adding the always reliable Joan Plowright to the mix, I kicked back and got ready to simply enjoy the man's performance.

Then Fanny Ardent enters the picture. At first, she's not much. She's a lost Callas, a ghost of her former self with a broken voice and a broken will. She's a recluse, confining herself to her (fabulous) Paris apartment and weeping over lost days. It takes Irons and Plowright to rouse her to life once again, involving her in a filmed production of Carmen with a challenging ethical twist that I'll leave for you to discover. Callas comes alive, and when we see her performing she is sizzling sex on a silver platter. It's magical to see her character transform before our eyes, to become fully alive after years of wandering in the wilderness. The sumptuous production numbers, and even Irons' extraordinary performance, almost fade into the background. This movie is all about Ardent, and the woman works magic.

Wow, did I enjoy this movie. I have got to go to the opera.

Fever Pitch

There's a scene early in FEVER PITCH in which Drew Barrymore tells the shaggy-haired guy (SHG) that someone in her office is going to get promoted (Plot Point!!). SHG does a bit in which he cracks wise about backstabbing while making whiny squeaking noises and pantomiming the stabbing motion. It's supposed to be cute, and it's supposed to endear us to his character. DB & I both reacted with, "What a loser."

FEVER PITCH is a reasonably cute romantic comedy that doesn't hold a candle to earlier Farrely Brothers efforts such as SOMETHING ABOUT MARY and STUCK ON YOU. It's drawn from a Nick Hornby novel that doesn't translate as well as ABOUT A BOY or HIGH FIDELITY and, if I had to put my finger on why, I have to say that it's the shaggy-haired guy's fault. Like Bruckner letting a ground ball slip by him, SHG is simply unable to make the plays when they matter. Poor Barrymore's acting her heart out against this guy, but he just can't pull off "endearing man-child." If ever there was a movie that demanded the presence of Adam Sandler, this is it.

Rooster Cogburn

From Wikipedia:

In the early morning of August 21, Quantrill attacked Lawrence (Kansas) with a force of 450 raiders. Though Senator Lane, a prime target of the raid, managed to escape through a cornfield in his nightshirt, Quantrill's Raiders killed between 140 and 190 men, dragging many from their homes to kill them before their families. When Quantrill rode out at 9 a.m., most of Lawrence's buildings had been burned, including all but two businesses; his raiders looted indiscriminately and also robbed the town's bank. The raid would become notorious in the North as one of the most vicious atrocities of the Civil War.

GOODNIGHT: Marshal, is your eye bothering you? I could sooth it with a poultice.

COGBURN: No, thanks, Ma'am. It's past help.

GOODNIGHT: Was it a hunting accident, Marshal?

COGBURN: You might say that. Huntin' Yankees. I lost it in the war, riding with Bill Anderson and Captain Quantrill. Times have sure changed. Now I'm workin' for a damned Yankee.

GOODNIGHT: But you're still hunting, sir.

COGBURN: I guess I like Marshalin' better'n anything I've done since the war. I like buffalo huntin', but them big shaggies is almost gone. Damn shame. I was skinnin' buffalo at Yellow Horse Creek, Texas. Pay was great, but I couldn't stand that open country.
==========

There's plenty to like about ROOSTER COGBURN: John Wayne & Katherine Hepburn are as solid as one would expect those two professionals to be, some of the jokes really snap, and the story is a comfortably predictable quest tale that makes for a pleasant evening of viewing. Unfortunately, however, the movie can't overcome the awfulness of its titular character.

It's been said that the worst kind of evildoer is the man who doesn't know that he's doing evil. Cogburn is still proud of having ridden with Quantrill, one of the most vicious murderers of the Civil War, and his only qualm about partaking in the great buffalo slaughter was that he ran out of buffalos. He's a self-satisfied S.O.B. who wouldn't know introspection if it invaded his village, burned half of it down, and slaughtered its inhabitants in their nightclothes because they opposed slavery. I get that he's supposed to be an endearingly cantankerous old man, but that only goes for audiences who don't know their Civil War or Western history. Before this revelation, the movie had had me rocking along pleasantly enough; after, I had to make a conscious effort to remain engaged.

This particular DVD presentation of ROOSTER COGBURN makes remaining engaged even harder because it looks terrible - it's like an old VHS copy of a bad print, with out-of-focus shots, poor color correction, graininess, and plenty of flecks and scratches. Clearly, Universal didn't care enough about the movie to provide it with a good transfer, and the results detract from the overall experience.

I've been in a John Wayne mood lately, but ROOSTER COGBURN, didn't quite do it for me. I think I'll try my luck with EL DORADO.

Flags of our Fathers

FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS like a cocoon that's trapping a beautiful butterfly. Wrapped around a gripping war drama with memorable characters, compelling situations, and great photography are layers of emotionally overwrought coming home and reminiscence stories. If we could just do away with that chrysalis, we'd have something to behold.

OK, that gambit failed. Here's another go: FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS is brilliant when it's on Iwo Jima. It's tedious the rest of the time.

After reading its lukewarm reviews, I hesitated to watch this movie. Nevertheless, I have a reasonable expectation of going to Iwo Jima later this year, I wanted to get some background, and this seemed like a good path to it. FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS certainly filled that purpose. Though Clint Eastwood filmed the movie on the beaches of Iceland, he manages to convey the landing and subsequent campaign in the kind of visceral way only good filmmakers can. Problem is, the movie seems only tangentially about Iwo Jima - it's about the three survivors of the flag raising and their subsequent war bond tour, and their song of readjustment and survivor guilt was better sung through the stories of THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES.

On Iwo, FLAGS gives us a stellar cast featuring favorites such as Barrie Pepper, Robert Patrick, Paul Walker, and Neal McDonough battling their way off the beach. When the action moves to the home front, however, it saddles us with Adam Beach, Jesse Bradford, and Ryan Phillippe as the three survivors. Theirs is a worthy tale, but it just isn't cinematic. How many times do we have to hear the Indian guy suffer through lousy Indian jokes before we can throw our hands up and say, "We get it"?

I appreciate the fact that Eastwood wasn't interested in making just another war movie. But I wish he would have.

Changing Lanes

Oh, how I hated CHANGING LANES.

CHANGING LANES is a morality tale about how small choices can add up to big choices and about the consequences of breaking the social compact. Consequently, it operated at a profound disadvantage: Morality tales are hard to do. The best morality tales handle their themes obliquely, trusting their audiences to divine their themes and understanding that "a-ha" moments reinforce those themes far better than any speech can, but CHANGING LANES doesn't have that kind of faith in itself or its viewers. The film has all the subtlety of a water skiing squirrel - what you see is precisely what you get.

Here's the setup: Ben Affleck is a successful lawyer. Samuel L. Jackson is a loser trying to get his life back together. They have a fender-bender, and Affleck writes Jackson a blank check and speeds off, leaving an important document behind. This makes Jackson late for a court appointment, and he exacts his revenge by later withholding the document. Affleck reacts, Jackson reacts, Affleck reacts some more, etc., and before we know it we're watching a double helix downward spiral.

Now, if you like watching downward spirals, you might enjoy this movie. If, however, watching one man have everything that matters stripped from him while the other kinda regrets his actions is your idea of a good time, knock yourself out. Personally, I found this movie so depressing, so painful to watch, that it left me wondering why anyone would create such a horrible experience, then actually put it out there for the world to see.

I only finished this movie because I was watching it with a valued friend who loves it. It's easily the most miserable time I've had this month.

Stray Dog

Toshiro Mifune was only two years into his film career when he starred in STRAY DOG.  He was still a rookie, like his character.  Like his character, he brought a total dedication and willingness to risk to his role.  And like his character, he earned the friendship and respect of his elders.
 
In the film, Mifune plays a rookie Homicide detective who's pickpocketed on a crowded train.  The detective, exhausted after an all-night stakeout in sweltering heat, is horrified to discover that someone has stolen his pistol.  Bravely, he does the right thing and immediately troops back into headquarters to report the theft, take his lumps, and get to work on recovering the weapon.  The detective, a recently discharged soldier, feels profoundly dishonored by the loss and personally responsible for the disposition of the sidearm and its bullets, and his guilt and motivation contrast with the world-weariness of both his lieutenant and the dogged veteran assigned to the case.
 
The  brilliant Takashi Shimura plays the veteran / father figure, and his resigned competence both make us hope for the future of the younger man and magnify our identification with him: now he must not only find the weapon to redeem his own honor, he must prove himself worthy in the eyes of men who have given him the benefit of the doubt.  This is a great approach to the material, as it creates a narrative drive that stems not from external forces such as criminals taking hostages or shouting captains, but the young detective's own need for redemption and honor.
 
Technically, the film is absolutely outstanding.  Akira Kurosawa, aided by 1st Assistant Director Ishiro Honda (GOJIRA) and composer Fumio Hayasaka, create a heat-stricken Tokyo that lives and breathes. But it's Mifune's show, and it's easy to see why Kurosawa saw his muse in this man. Far from the commanding lead of SEVEN SAMURAI and THRONE OF BLOOD, this Mifune is both insecure and bold, learning his craft and discovering the building blocks of wisdom. He's young; he's green; but we see his potential and we see what Kurosawa saw in him.

Y'know, I liked STRAY DOG as I viewed it, but I'm growing to love the film as I write this. It's just plain terrific and it's the kind of movie that makes me happy I haven't yet seen all of Kurosawa's ouvre. Thank goodness, there's still more to discover.