Ghost Town

GHOST TOWN is a charming romantic comedy.

I hope its makers gave M. Night Shyamalan a cut of the proceeds, because it unapologetically rips off THE SIXTH SENSE.  Ricky Gervais plays a misanthrope who wakes up from surgery to find that he can see dead people.  One of the dead people, Greg Kinnear, needs the misanthrope’s reluctant help in protecting his former wife from marrying some Baxter, and away we go.

I laughed.  I cried.  But I’m an easy laugh and an easy cry, so that’s not very interesting.  What is interesting are Ricky Gervais and Greg Kinnear, who are fantastic in this picture.  GHOST TOWN hands them the same challenge: create characters who are basically pricks, but make them sufficiently likeable so the audience will care long enough to watch them change.  I’m not sure how they do it, but they do.  It’s marvelous stuff, and great fun to watch.

Technically, the film looks blandly fine.  It’s glossy, slick, and professional: standard, high quality, Hollywood fare.  Toss in a few glamour shots of Manhattan’s fall foliage and a couple of time lapses of the city lighting up and darkening down to spice things up, and you have a nice presentation of a funny, effective film.

Will GHOST TOWN change your life?  Absolutely not.  But it does what it sets out to do and does it well.  You could do worse.

The Return of the King

I'm amazed.

I just couldn't get in to THE RETURN OF THE KING.

I think it was all just too much. Every time someone named some location, he did it so portentously that he seemed to be deliberately hamming up his exposition for the benefit of the viewer. I wanted another character to say, "Oh, yes. I've heard of it. I'm told they don't let people smoke in cafes there anymore." The battles went on and on and on, with the occasional head nod to the concepts of fear and battle fatigue, but with the characters so unaffected by their constant dances on death's doorstep that I came to suspect mental dysfunction. The emphasis on the Eowyn storyline felt even more like an example of commerce over storytelling than it had in previous chapters.

And once the spell is lost, ROTK just seems silly and overblown. I found myself wondering more about how Sauron fed and disciplined his troops than about whether the plucky hobbits would save the day. I groaned nearly every time Legolas spoke. I shuddered at the inconsistent levels of power demonstrated by various villains as the need arose.

That's not to say that there isn't some great stuff here. Peter Jackon created a sense of life in the faded shadow of a once-great empire. The meticulous care given to costuming, set design, and the craft of world creation pay dividends in the creation of an immersive land. The story appears to be told about as well as it can be told.

But once the spell is broken, it's broken. I expect that the next time I see this film, it'll be in a couple of years (when I deem my oldest to be ready for the violence). Hopefully, the experience will help me see ROTK through his eyes. I'd like to believe again.

The Two Towers

I remember feeling disappointed with THE TWO TOWERS upon its initial release.  I felt that the film suffered from the decision to make the dwarf a comic relief character.  I didn’t care about the Aragorn / Eowyn romance.  And the Treebeard stuff, well, it just pulled me right out of the picture.

This time around, I reacted differently.  I still didn’t care for the use of the dwarf in comic relief, particularly as the jokes weren’t funny.  I continue to think that Miranda Otto represents a significantly better find than Liv Tyler.  But Treebeard looks great on the small screen and I found myself marveling at the film’s seamless blend of practical effects and computer animation.

I did notice, however, that this film could serve as the foundation for a couple of pretty good drinking games.  Every time Frodo apologizes to Sam or Sam to Frodo, drink up!  Ok, maybe just the first five or ten times.  Any more than that, and the activity could go from game to contest to disaster pretty quickly.  Or how about every time Elijah Wood emotes the addicting / controlling influences of the Ring by rolling his eyes back and giving us a half-Elvis lip curl?  On second thought, that would just lead straight to disaster.

Disregarding the tedium of Sam & Frodo’s tramp through the woods, this picture delivers on its promise to return us to the carefully imagined, thoroughly detailed world of its predecessor.  It moves the story along, keeps the good guys good and the bad guys bad, and generally represents a great time at the movies.  I’m ready for THE RETURN OF THE KING.

Sweet Smell of Success

SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS, a noirish assault on Walter Winchell starring Tony Curtis and Burt Lancaster, is funny and sad and gripping and unpredictable, right to the very end.  It succeeds on every level.

Tony Curtis plays Sidney Falco, a press agent and general-purpose scumbag who reminded me of a smarter version of NIGHT AND THE CITY’s Harry Fabian.  Falco lives in fear of and subservience to J.J. Hunsecker (Burt Lancaster), the Winchell character.  And if Falco’s a scumbag, Hunsecker’s a flat-out villain.

Whoah.  Wait a minute.  I just figured something out.  I’m done with the “review” part.  It’s a great movie.  See it.  You’ll love it.  There.

Here’s the more interesting thing.  SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS was released in 1957, after Winchell’s career had gone into decline in the wake of the Army-McCarthy hearings.  See, Winchell had abetted Joseph McCarthy and had no problem slapping the “Red” label on those who crossed him.  When McCarthy’s star fell, it left Winchell vulnerable.

Vulnerable to whom?  Perhaps to a man like Clifford Odets, a playwright who had named names before the House Un-American Activities Committee and lived forever after in shame because of it.  Odets, who was called in merely to polish a script that was nearly ready to shoot, spent four months completely reworking it.  He made SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS subtler, tenser, sharper.  He wrote a film that feels like a dagger aimed at the heart of Walter Winchell.

One year later, the weakened Winchell crossed Jack Paar, host of the Tonight Show and the face of television.  Paar destroyed him, forever sealing the ascendancy of the new medium.

I don’t know which is more interesting, SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS or its place in the history of American mass media.  Regardless, there’s no denying that this is a fantastic, fantastic movie.  See it at your earliest opportunity.

Cheri

Roger Ebert talked me into seeing this movie with his elegant review, linked here.

It took me a while to settle into it. Sure, everyone loves Michelle Pfeiffer, but how could I get into watching her falling in love with some poncy French Byronesque figure who wasn't, well, me?

Because she's Michelle Friggin Pfeiffer. Don't let her beauty distract you from the fact that she's an extraordinary actress. Under the direction of Stephen Frears (DIRTY PRETTY THINGS, THE QUEEN, MRS. HENDERSON PRESENTS, among others), she absolutely shines as a woman who knows enough to know better and knows to not care.

Through her, the story's world opened to me. While I still couldn't understand how any woman could go for a man so manifestly unlike myself, I could immerse myself in Belle Époque France. I could enjoy observing the interplay of Ms. Pfeiffer and the formidable Kathy Bates. And I could catch myself up in a world of right decisions for wrong reasons and wrong decisions for right.

By the film's end, I lived in its world and cared about its people and wanted them to be ok. Even if I did think Michelle could have done better.

The Fellowship of the Ring

I saw THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING (FOTR, hereafter) upon its initial release.  I saw it again when the long form version hit DVD.  At the time, I loved it.  But it has been a few years since my last viewing.  How does it hold up?

Wonderfully.

This picture is note-perfect.  It begins with an introduction to a Middle Earth and Hobbiton that bathes in golden light, the epitome of the pastoral fantasy.  It goes from there into a series of adventures of ascending danger and importance, adventures in which we understand the actions that led to them, the people involved, and the stakes at hand.  The adventures occur in a world wholly fantastic and entirely believable, one with a history alluded, not explicated.  This is a world in which people live and have lived.  It’s a world about which we care.

And the characters, which might seem silly in less capable hands, breathe here.  Anyone can make fun of wizards and dwarves.  By playing the material straight, however, FOTR makes us believe in these fantastic people.  We sympathize with their fears and delight in their heroics.  We believe.

I loved this movie then; I love it now.  I look forward to THE TWO TOWERS.

Julia

I read the reviews. I read about the awards. I read how great a movie JULIA is.

So it must be me.

I couldn’t stand it.

Here is why.

The eponymous Julia is such a vile, self-centered train wreck of a human being that she lost me in the first twenty minutes. When the story got to Act II, I’d ceased caring for her. When it reached the halfway point, I loathed her. When it finally got around to trying to get me on her side, I’d disengaged. I so disliked being around this protagonist that she ceased to be real to me, becoming instead just another character in a film through which I was slogging because I’m a guy who likes to see things through.

I lay some of the blame on Tilda Swinton, an actress whom I’ve always found off-putting. She’s a pro; doing a pro’s job to the specs of the script, the director, and (clearly) the critical community; but there’s something about her that has always kept me from getting on her side. Most of the blame, however, lies in the script. It creates an irredeemable character, then dares us to stay with her long enough to see if she takes a shot at redemption. But there’s a word for people who stay around the irredeemable: victims. I don’t play that game.

But perhaps you do. Or perhaps you’re just a more forgiving cat. Or perhaps you won’t find some of the film’s situations so profoundly horrifying that you can’t get past them. If so, I’m told that JULIA is a first-rate thriller with a can’t-miss performance. Knock yourself out.

Gymkata

GYMKATA wasn’t as bad as I expected it to be.  Don’t get me wrong: it was pretty bad, but somehow I thought it’d be worse.

GYMKATA imagines a world in which the US Government would recruit an elite gymnast into the spy game, put him through a quick montage and set him up with a girlfriend, then turn him loose to save the world through gymnastics.  The athlete’s unique fighting style, his gymkata, comprises a potent weapon against evildoers foolish enough to stock pommel horses, uneven parallel bars, and lots of chalk in their lairs and killing fields.  After all, who can stand against a warrior so fierce his he needn’t even strike his opponents – a warrior who need merely wave his hands and feet in their general direction for their bones to snap and their bodies to go flying?

Yeah, it’s silly, but c’mon, you’ve gotta give it points for creativity.

And speaking of creativity, the people behind GYMKATA made some surprising and delightful creative choices.  Yes, beyond the sequined black cat suit worn by the love interest.  They filmed on location in Zagreb, giving the film some real beauty when I expected only matte paintings and the distinctive flora of the greater Ventura area.  They had the guts to actually set up a pommel horse in a town square so the hero could fight cannibals as only a master of gymkata can.  And they put together an extended sequence in a damned village of the insane that, while not actually creepy, tried really hard to be creepy.  Toss in some ninjas (The great thing about ninjas is that they wear face masks, meaning you can use the same five stuntmen over and over again.), a little arterial spray, and the aforementioned love interest in a cat suit, and you’ve got yourself a fun little movie.

So pay no attention to the fact that leading man Kurt Thomas while a great gymnast, made for an unconvincing actor and stuntman.  Pay no attention to the fact that the film is supposedly set in the whitest, blonded part of Central Asia.  And pay no attention to the fact that GYMAKATA’s plot is yet another recycling of The Most Dangerous Game, but with less logical consistency than many other versions. If you’re willing to take the film on its own terms as a cheap, silly, mid-‘80s adventure romp, you just might dig it.

To my surprise, I kinda did.

The Night of the Hunter

I love how THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER rocks along as a reasonably creepy thriller for forty-five minutes or so, with an interesting villain, hapless victims, and tough kids in peril. And then, whammo! Forty-five minutes in, the whole picture takes a sudden left turn into the world of German Expressionism.

I’m tellin’ ya, I half expected those kids to try and seek refuge in the cabinet of Dr. Caligari.

OK, look, you already know that Robert Mitchum’s Harry Powell ranks among the great screen villains. I knew that, and I hadn’t even seen the movie yet. What I didn’t know, and what THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER showed me, is that Robert Mitchum would have made a first-rate silent film actor. Even without the power of his distinctive voice, Mitchum’s face and frame carry so much weight, convey so much menace behind such a friendly façade, that I can picture him holding his own not only against the great Lillian Gish in this picture, but opposite her in the heyday of her silent career. Put this guy in an unreal world of portentious nature and avenging motherhood, and it’s no surprise that THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER became a classic.

In the Loop

I need to see IN THE LOOP at least two more times.  I missed too much dialogue because I was laughing too hard.

IN THE LOOP is a dialogue-based comedy about the runup to the Iraq War.  Well, the movie never specifically calls the war in question the Iraq War, but it leaves little room for doubt.  It centers on a hapless, minor British cabinet minister who, by saying the wrong thing in a radio interview, becomes a pawn of forces in London and DC.  I’d say he’s a pawn of forces he can’t imagine, but they’re right there in his face, calling him a twit (British) and an idiot (American).

Hey, I hear ya: you’ve had it with witty, dialogue-based political comedies.  I know the market’s swamped with ‘em, but I’m here to convince you to pluck this one out of the deluge.  If you’ve ever wanted to hear “Love, Actually” used as a pejorative, here’s your movie.  If you’ve ever wanted to hear someone accused of sounding like the Nazi Julie Andrews, here you go.  If you’ve always known, in your heart, that opera music is really just subsidized … foreign … vowels, haul your tail down to the video store and pick up this movie.

Now, I’m done with typing.  I need to spin this film again.

Timeline

Michael Crichton’s Timeline read like a movie treatment.  I didn’t mind.  Crichton, after all, had no qualms about his status as a mainstream writer.  He crafted marketable thrillers, which is no mean feat.  He also managed to work the fruits of his research into them, using a vehicle like Timeline to give the reader a crash course in medievalism.

The filmed version of Timeline eschews all that medievalist nonsense, other than to use it as a pretense to move from one action bit to another.  It’s aided in this by able performers Paul Walker (who earned my goodwill through the underappreciated RUNNING SCARED), Gerard Butler, David Thewlis, and Neal McDonough; as well as a Brian Tyler score that tells us exactly what to feel and when to feel it.  But action without context has no meaning.  TIMELINE the film fails to create the context that will make the audience care who’s killing whom and why.

See, here’s the deal: a team of medievalist archeologists travels back in time to France in the 1350s.  An English force menaces the village and keep of Castlegard, and the film’s intrepid heroes join forces with the Frenchmen to save the day for, uh, French stuff.  But so what?  What’s so bad about the English, anyway?  I mean, I like Newcastle Brown Ale.  Add that the English lord prosecuting this particular attack is genre favorite Michael Sheen, while the French leaders are no-names, and I’m thinking, ‘Blimey, let’s save these Frogs from eating snails and turn ‘em on to the glories of shepherd’s pie.’

Which, of course, leads us to the problem with taking sides in any feudal-era battle.  As a member of the peasant class, what do I care which nobleman is oppressing me?  Whether it’s a Valois or a Plantagenet stealing the fruits of my labor, I get ripped off either way.

Whoah, settle down, Trotsky.  This isn’t about to become an explication of dialectic materialism’s application to the medieval era.  I’m just sayin’.

Back to the movie.  TIMELINE gives me perfectly acceptable heroes, but it gives me no reason to root for them, to believe in their cause.  Neither does it teach me anything about the medieval era in general or the Hundred Years’ War in particular.  In other words, it fails to achieve any reason for existing.  Give this one a pass.

Groundhog Day

GROUNDHOG DAY is a perfect movie.

You can watch it with the sound off and it works just as well. You can watch it while distracted and it works just as well. You can put the kids to bed, dim the lights and kick on the surround, and it works just as well. It’s seamless.

Plenty of movies are seamless, of course. GROUNDHOG DAY stands apart because, in addition to being seamless and funny and quotable and all that, it’s a near-perfect depiction of samsara.

Hey, wait a minute! Somebody else already wrote what I was going to write, but better! Here’s the relevant passage from a piece on Bill Murray in The Onion AV Club:

… “samsara”—the endless cycle of birth and rebirth that can only be escaped when one achieves total enlightenment. In the film, Murray’s sarcastic, self-serving weatherman is forced to repeat a single day out of his life until he comes to terms with the Four Noble Truths: 1) Life is suffering (but that doesn’t mean you have to add to it by being a jerk). 2) The origin of suffering is attachment to desire (so don’t spend your days robbing banks, stuffing your face with danishes, and trying to bamboozle your way into Andie MacDowell’s pants). 3) There is a way out (by dedicating your time to bettering yourself), and 4) it involves following the “eightfold path,” which means revoking self-indulgence and becoming a “bodhisattva”—someone who acquires skills and uses them in the selfless service of others (like changing an old lady’s tire, saving kids who fall out of trees, and performing the Heimlich maneuver on a choking victim). As a result of Murray’s generous acts, he receives the love of the whole town—a oneness with the universe—and is allowed to evolve past the cycle of samsara to nirvana.

That is all.

Pandora's Box

Some women are trouble.  You can tell just by looking at them.  Louise Brooks is trouble.

In PANDORA’S BOX, Brooks plays Lulu, a woman who begins on top of the world.  She has a lovely apartment, a great wardrobe, and a sure-fire way to keep the meter reader happy and reporting her consumption as something very close to zero.  I wouldn’t call her a slattern, or even a hooker, really.  Rather, she reminds me of a girl with whom I once had the following conversation:

“You sleep with pretty much everyone.  Why?”

“When guys are having sex, they’re happy.  Me – I like to see people happy.”

(NB: This girl went on to develop into an exurban, Volvo-driving soccer mom.  Thanks for the update, Facebook!)

Lulu’s all about the happy.  If it should happen to net her a high standard of living, so much the better.  Problem is, the people in her life don’t see things quite that way.  For them, sex is freighted with emotion.  Before long, those emotions start doing serious damage.

Hence, my opening comment about dangerous women.  Someone like Lulu doesn’t even need to try to be dangerous.  The simple reality of her approach to sexuality in a world that sees things so very differently makes her radioactive.  She hurts people without knowing why.  People retaliate for reasons she cannot understand.  Ultimately, even her style of basic kindness turns against her.

And Louise Brooks, whose checkered personal life must have influenced her performance, brings her to life.  She captures our imagination and breaks our hearts, keeping us in her corner right to the very end.  Lulu’s someone she makes us want to get to know, even though we know she’s nothing but trouble.

I Vitelloni

Federico Fellini’s I VITELLONI (The Guys) captures the desperation and sense of stunted ambition that comes from being stuck in a small town in the middle of nowhere.

Trust me on this. I’m from a small town in the middle of nowhere.

But there’s something this film doesn’t know, and it’s something I didn’t realize until fairly recently: there’s a lot to be said for staying in, or coming back to, one’s small town. See, I got out of my town as fast as I could, making my way to the nearest metropolis I could find. In the nearly twenty-five years since, I’ve made every effort to live in or near big cities, cities alive with culture and history, cities where ideas matter, for it’s in cities where I belong. But the magic of the Internet has reintroduced me to a set of people who’ve chosen an entirely different path: the ones who stayed, or who came back.

The kids I grew up with in that small town, the kids who are now parents and grandparents, contractors and firemen and teachers (and even the editor of the local paper), share a profound sense of place, of belonging. They’ve known one another for so long that few secrets can hide among them. When you’re young and the world beckons, such a future seems stifling. Now, there’s something about it that I find very appealing (he thinks as he writes, jet-lagged, in the early morning hours. I’d probably feel the walls closing after, oh, maybe Week Two.).

I VITELLONI doesn’t know this, but perhaps it isn’t supposed to know this. It is, after all, a movie about The Guys, young men hearing the call of the great wide world but who, for one reason or another, never actually get on that train to go find it. Perhaps, in the end, they’ll be glad they didn’t.

Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs

I doubt that I can come up with even 200 words about ICE AGE: DAWN OF THE DINOSAURS.  The film; an innocuous, mildly amusing adventure tale for kids; looks fine, features professional performances, and generally achieves its goals.

If only it had bigger goals. 

This, the third film in the ICE AGE franchise, continues the series’ theme of family and fidelity.  It features exciting set-pieces that frightened and amused my children on cue.  I mean, it’s fine, really.  It didn’t make me look at my watch.  But there’s nothing more there.  There’s nothing to chew on, nothing to give the film resonance.  It just is what it is.

Yeah, 140 words.  That about does it.  Pony up for a rental of ICE AGE: DAWN OF THE DINOSAURS, and you’ll get what you paid for.  I suppose that’s a fair deal.

Terror of Mechagodzilla

TERROR OF MECHAGODZILLA (or GODZILLA XV, if you’re counting), starts poorly, then develops into one of the very best of the Showa series.

Wait – what? What’s the Showa series? Well, I’m glad you asked: pull up a chair! The Showa series ran from 1954-1975. It consisted of the first 15 Godzilla pictures, beginning with the genuinely scary GOJIRA and proceeding through a variety of entries ranging from the decent (MOTHRA VS. GODZILLA) to the lazy (GODZILLA RAIDS AGAIN) to the ridiculous (GODZILLA VS. THE SEA MONSTER). There’s also a 7-film Heisei series, which ran from 1984-1995; and a 6-film Millenium series, which featured the second-best of all the Godzilla films: GODZILLA, MOTHRA, AND KING GHIDORAH: GIANT MONSTERS ALL-OUT ATTACK.

Ok, back to the film at hand.

As I said, TERROR OF MECHAGODZILLA starts poorly. It treats us to a full ten minutes of a droning voice over recycled footage from previous entries in the series, ostensibly to bring us up to speed on the deep and complex Godzilla history. It felt like padding to me. Then we see this film’s villains: alien invaders in costumes so silly that one surmises they’re here merely to access our textile infrastructure.

I’ll admit it: I fell asleep fifteen minutes in. Not even Inishiro Honda’s name under the director’s credit could keep me up much longer than that.

But the next day, I reattacked. And I’m glad I did. Once I got past the silly costuming, I found TERROR OF MECHAGODZILLA to be a fine alien invasion yarn. It features heroic cops, mad scientists, young women torn between conflicting duties, and plenty of hot Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla action.

A note about the aforementioned action: cinematographer Sokei Tomioka TERROR OF MECHAGODZILLA nails it in this one. The monsters look monstrous (yet just fake enough to not unduly frighten the little ones), the miniatures look fantastic, and the action sequences made thematic and practical sense.

This is a fun movie that delivers everything you could want from a film entitled TERROR OF MECHAGODZILLA. See it with a 9-year-old boy.

Amreeka

Oh, the Immigration Story.  Is there any narrative more essential to the American Legend?  Someone hopes for a better life and comes to America.  They leave behind family, friends, careers, and ties.  The chemist becomes a cab driver.  The schoolteacher, a janitor.  The accountant, a waitress.  But they do it, and they struggle, and they face prejudice and discrimination, and they give their kids a better life. 

AMREEKA is one such story.  Nisreen Faour is Muna Farah, an Palestinian who wins the green card lottery and, along with her son, is granted entrance to the United States.  At Customs, she replies to the question “Occupation?” with, “Yes, we are occupied.”

Things do not begin well.

It’s hard to find a job or find your place in a new school in America if you’re an Arab fresh from the Levant.  People stare.  Your prior achievements don’t hold much weight.  And there’s a difference between studying a language and actually speaking its vernacular.

But Muna gives it her best shot and takes her lumps.  It isn’t easy, and AMREEKA gives us no assurances that it ever will be easy.  But, step by step, she and her son begin to get it.  And little by little, they begin to share their culture with Americans they come to know.  That’s how it works.

I hate to give the impression that AMREEKA is a Hallmark card about the Great American Melting Pot.  It’s too honest for that.  Instead, it stands as a fine retelling of the Immigration Story, one that reminds us of this crucial part of the American Experience.

Now I need to call my mother and thank her for working ‘til her fingers bled to provide my sister and me with the opportunity for a better life.  I need to thank her for coming to America.

Godzilla

Here's a review by my eldest son & Godzilla aficionado, Ian:

“GODZILLA (1998)" Is a cool movie. It has a good tune in the beginning of the movie that sounds mysterious, which  I think they were going for.  They used it when they showed the thing’s origin, & used it some more throughout the movie.

“GODZILLA (1998)” has a cool monster with a good “to be continued” ending.

ON TO THE  STORY: in “GODZILLA (1998)” Zilla is a mutated hybrid created from a nuclear  French test, & attacks fishing boats, then  rampages through New York city. Finally the navy kills it....Or so they thought…Anyway  the hero, & some French guys disguised as American soldiers go after the creature’s nest while the female hero and another dude follow them. Then they meet. Then after the baby Zillas already hatched, the main characters call the military to destroy the nest. So they send some pilots to bomb the nest in their fighter planes, which they succeed in doing. But then it turns out adult Zilla survived , so  it chases them. Then they hop into an unguarded taxi, & Zilla  goes after them. Then the military comes, & bombs Zilla. Then, for less than a second, Zilla looks the hero in the eye. They were probably trying to make you feel pitty for the gigantic dying creature. It ends with one Zilla egg that hasn’t hatched yet, & survived the bombing , hatching, makin’ way for the show GODZILLA THE SERIES.

I recommend watching this. I liked the monster .’Twas a cool monster, because it could sprint. Most giant monsters can’t do that.

The Merry Gentleman

Michael Keaton directed THE MERRY GENTLEMAN. Turns out, he’s good at it. Not only did he give his film a smooth, professional look, but he got some terrific performances out of his actors.

First among them we find Kelly MacDonald in the lead role. Before anyone utters the film’s first line of dialogue, we learn that her husband beat her, that she ran, and that she set up a new life in a new town far away. This matters as more than a reason to isolate her and give her character some texture, for her experience as both a victim of abuse and a woman with the courage to escape informs nearly every word she says, every thing she does. Watch her in this film. Watch her eyes and her body language. Watch the choices she makes and the way she makes them. Keaton the director was surely watching, and he showed the wisdom to follow her with his camera, to observe her as she thought and spoke and acted.

Next, we have Tom Bastounes, with whom I’m unfamiliar, as a detective who investigates a crime to which MacDonald has borne witness. He’s a large man, gone to seed and following a bottle on an inexorable down slope. But he has a ways to go, and his professional policeman’s demeanor hides a vulnerability that makes him all the more surprising when it’s time to play hardball.

And then there’s Keaton himself, playing the supporting role without which nothing else in the film would be possible. This is the best I’ve seen him, contained and mature, seeing everything and revealing nothing. Twenty years ago, I wouldn’t have believed it if you’d told me that Michael Keaton could be scary. But he can, particularly when he’s trying not to be.

THE MERRY GENTLEMAN won’t change your life. It isn’t big, it isn’t flashy, it isn’t groundbreaking. But it is a carefully told story, well performed and realized. I’m impressed.

Funny People

There are two Adam Sandlers.  The first, the guy from BILLY MADISON, is vulgar and silly and childish.  The second, the guy from PUNCH DRUNK LOVE, is smart and thoughtful and sensitive.  I don’t think the BILLY MADISON guy could have existed if the PUNCH DRUNK LOVE guy hadn’t made him up.

In FUNNY PEOPLE, Sandler plays a smart and sensitive comedian who makes vulgar and childish movies.  Then he learns that he’s going to die.  Now what?  He has no friends, not really, and he’s pushed away everyone who’s ever loved him.  Maybe he can hire a guy.

Does this sound like comic material to you?  I suppose it could be, if played broadly.  But director Judd Apatow doesn’t play it broadly.  He plays it close to the bone, eliciting one of Sandler’s best performances and surprising us with the first real work of Seth Rogen, who shows us that he’s capable of handling more than straight comedy.  FUNNY PEOPLE is, indeed, a funny movie, but it’s more a human drama set in the world of professional comedy than a laugh fest.  It works.