Searching for Bobby Fischer

Joe Mantegna.  Joan Allen.  Ben Kingsley.  Lawrence Fishburne.  David Paymer.  William H. Macy.  Laura Linney.  Anthony Heald.  Dan Hedaya.  Austin Pendleton.  Tony Shalhoub.  Even if you don’t know anything else about it, this cast should be enough to get you to queue up Searching for Bobby Fischer.

Setting the cast aside for the moment, Searching for Bobby Fischer is a wonderful film, and one I revisit every few years.  In fact, I’m surprised I haven’t written about it before.  Bobby Fischer, as you may recall, was the greatest chess prodigy of his time.  He was (and is) also a deeply maladjusted man who went on to lead what appears to be a very unhappy life.  Josh Waitzkin, who is real, was a chess prodigy whose family spared him that fate.  This is their story, based on the book by his sportswriter father, Fred.

It’s a story about Josh, and the pull he feels among the various adults who try to mold him, to teach him, to love him, to push him.  More importantly at this stage in my life path, it’s about parenthood and helping your child grow into himself without forcing him to grow into you.  Fred (Mantegna, in the role that made me a lifetime fan), you see, is awestruck by his son’s talent.  He tells a teacher (Laura Linney, just starting out), “He’s better at this than I have ever been at anything in my life.  He’s better at this than you’ll ever be, at anything.”  Joan Allen, as Bonnie Waitzkin, fears for what her husband and the men he trusts might unwittingly do to her son.  And Josh (the fine Max Pomeranc, who has not gone on to pursue a career in acting) just wants to have fun, play chess, be a kid, and please his parents.

The film cuts to the secret heart of parenting, which is that nobody actually knows what they’re doing.  All we have are our own experiences of childhood, maybe some books we’ve read, and our instincts.  We as parents have our passions and our ambitions.  We can get carried away.  Sometimes, we can’t find the line between our children’s best interests and our own.  Fred blows right through it, and Bonnie, as a good partner must, reels him back.

The film works as a life lesson, but it also works as a simple narrative.  Josh seems real, as do the people in his life.  Josh's chess education and matches feel important and thrilling, even for those of us without a deep appreciation of the game.  The conflicts build from the characters, as opposed to being inflicted on them because good screenplays are supposed to have conflict. This is a compelling film, one that has me laughing, crying, and thrilling, as appropriate,on queue.

But back to the "life lesson" stuff: Searching for Bobby Fischer offers real wisdom, and it has taught me different lessons as I've moved along my life path.  I love this movie, and I look ford to discovering what it has to teach me when I'm a grandfather.

Drag Me to Hell

DRAG ME TO HELL is everything I look for in a movie entitled DRAG ME TO HELL. It's scary. It's funny. It even has someone (perhaps more than one) being dragged to Hell.

I started out liking this movie: it had a likeable protagonist, a hammy medium, the borderline ubiquitous Justin Long, a gypsy curse, and even a slimy coworker whom we'd really like to see get dragged to Hell in place of the aforementioned protagonist. There was some great gross out stuff, good music, and general sense of a film that knew how to be scary without taking itself too seriously.

Let me tell you when I crossed over to loving this movie: the séance scene. [Oh, come on. That's not a spoiler. How could a Gypsy Curse movie called DRAG ME TO HELL not have a séance scene?] The medium did her thing. Puffs of air made the draperies in the ridiculously over the top chamber billow. Heavy objects moved around. Even ghosts appeared. And then the possession began. I swear to God, I half expected a spectral kitchen sink to show up! This is when I knew (not that I ever doubted) that Raimi was entirely prepared to go over the top, stick the landing, then come around and go over the top again.

So yeah, this is a genre film called DRAG ME TO HELL. But it's as good as genre films get, made by a guy who knows how to create a good time at the movies. It wouldn't take much to drag me back for another screening.

Redbelt

David Mamet´s REDBELT does all the things it sets out to do. Thanks, in part, to outstanding performances from Chiwetel Ejiofor and Emily Mortimer, it also manages to be one fine, entertaining film.

REDBELT is about the owner of a struggling judo studio (Ejiofor), long on honor and short on cash. Mortimer´s a profoundly wounded attorney who enters the studio by happenstance, but who sets in motion a potentially disastrous chain of events. Further on, when Ejiofor rescues a movie star (Tim Allen) from a bar fight, another chain of events, potentially wonderful, starts to roll.

We´ll see what happens.

What´s really interesting here is Ejiofor´s character, a guy whose profound commitment to doing the right thing makes for an unexpected (potentially) tragic flaw. Here´s a guy who plays by the rules when nobody else does, and we expect things to work out for him. But when they don´t, how much will he bend, how much of his honor is he willing to expend, to try and set things right?

Add Mortimer, whose supporting character desperately needs Ejiofor to do the right things, and we´re in for a character study of a good man whose circumstances both require him to be impossibly good and make that goodness impossible.

Combine this interesting story with Mamet´s dialogue (for which I´m a sucker), and you have an interesting, engaging, satisfying film. REDBELT crashed at the box office, but here´s hoping that it finds new life on DVD.

(Fun fact: I´m writing this in Sao Paolo, the hometown of Alice Braga, who plays Ejiofor´s wife in the film. Don´t ask me why I know these things.)