Sita Sings the Blues

SITA SINGS THE BLUES opens with the best credits sequence I’ve ever seen. It begins gently enough, but it soon explodes into a vibrant and exciting combination of music and animation. If the film could have found a way to maintain that level of energy throughout its run time, it could well have become one of the best films I’ve ever seen.

While SITA SINGS THE BLUES unspools to become, over the next hour and a half, a fine, imaginative, wonderful movie, it doesn’t stay on track to earn “best ever” status. But hey, whom are we kidding? Most of the movies we sit through are achingly average, so why pick nits over whether a refreshingly innovative, original, and beautiful film ascends to the pantheon of “best ever”? It’s enough that this film takes material with which most of us are unfamiliar, adapts it in a way both entertaining and illuminating, and even manages to reacquaint our culture with the artistry of a performer long-passed.

SITA SINGS THE BLUES retells The Ramayana, a Hindu myth in which the noble Rama and his beloved Sita deal with exile, war, jealousy, and the vicious power of rumor. It tells it in wonderful 2-D animation, with different styles reflecting different storytellers, stories, or stories-within-stories. And it does it to the music of one Annette Hanshaw, a popular jazz singer of the ‘20s and ‘30s, in an innovative twist on the time honored practice of making that which was old new again.

Unfortunately, filmmaker Nina Paley failed to clear the rights to Ms. Hanshaw’s music prior to putting four years into creating this wonder on her home computer. Consequently, you can’t find SITA SINGS THE BLUES on Netflix or at your local art house movie theater. You can, however, find it for free download or stream at http://www.sitasingstheblues.com/, a site created by Paley to distribute her film via a creative commons license. I’m no lawyer, but I’m going to assume it’s legal. So I encourage you to check this movie out. If you like it, flip Ms. Paley a couple of bucks through the link on her site. I, for one, would love to see what she comes up with next.

Synecdoche, New York

SYNECDOCHE, NEW YORK made me want to jump off a cliff. A 50-footer, with a sheer face standing against the swell of a royal blue sea. It made me want to stand on the precipice, feeling the sun on my face and the wind on my body. It made me want to leap forward, chest out, arms back, and feet together, and fall a perfect arc through the air before clasping my hands above my head, tucking my chin into my chest, and entering the ocean like a knife into butter. It made me want to relish the sharp contrast of warm air to cold water, revel in the sharp forces of momentum and buoyancy when I arch my back to change my body’s direction and stroke the two short meters back to the surface. It made me want to live, to revel in being alive, to bask in the joy of simple existence. And it did it because SYNECDOCHE, NEW YORK doesn’t understand what it means to be alive. Not at all.

This film is so consumed with death, so focused on the existential dilemma, that it forgets what makes life valuable in the first place. Its protagonist ignores his family in favor of obituaries, which he reads not as celebrations of lives but as harbingers of doom. When his family chooses to ignore him, he wallows in self-pity. He feels stunted and frustrated with his career putting on the theatrical Standards for the people of Schenectady. When given the freedom create his own original work, he puts on nothing for nobody, wallowing in his sense of importance but refusing ever to actually put his work out there to succeed or fail. He wants, he wants, he wants, but he gives so very little. He doesn’t get it: he never does. And the film wants us to take this journey with him, wants us to find meaning in his lack of such, wants us to feel the existential dilemma for ourselves.

But there is no dilemma. We live. We die. We like to tell ourselves that there’s more to come but, in our heart of hearts, we doubt it. We do some good, we do some bad. And we have a choice. We can run away from life in contemplation of death, or futility, or the inevitability of physical and mental decline. Or we can embrace life, embrace everything about it, do the good we can and avoid the evil we can. We can laugh and cry and love and hurt and run and fall. We can succeed spectacularly and we can fail miserably and, occasionally, we can touch a higher plane that we think does not exist but, in our heart of hearts, we know really does. And we’re gonna die. You’re gonna die and I’m gonna die. Even the Sun is gonna die, a blink of an eye on the galactic timeline. But while we’re here, while we have minds to think and bodies to feel, we can revel in the joy of existence.

SYNECDOCHE, NEW YORK doesn’t even know that joy exists, so I’ve got no time for it. I’ve got living to do.

The Band Wagon

Musical! Musical! I’m sick of these artificial barriers between the musical and the drama! In my mind, there is no difference between the magic rhythms of Bill Shakespeare's immortal verse and the magic rhythms of Bill Robinson's immortal feet. I tell you, if it moves you, if it stimulates you, if it entertains you, it’s theater. –Jack Buchanan as Jeffrey Cordova in THE BAND WAGON

He’s right.

He’s particularly right when the actor playing Bill Robinson is Fred Astaire. In discussing this film, my brilliant and insightful wife observed that it’s of a time when “People would go to the movies to be entertained. To see singing and dancing and talent and all that human beings can achieve.” She’s right about the first part, but she’s even more right about the second. For the dancing of Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse is entertaining, sure, but it’s more than entertaining. It’s the very best that we can do as a species. It’s all that human beings can achieve.

Movies like THE BAND WAGON exemplify what’s so wonderful about movies. Thanks to this medium, humanity can revel in the unbridled excellence of Astaire and Charisse for generations to come. It’s there, right there, just a mouseclick or a DVD slipcover away. Whether THE BAND WAGON is an entirely successful film or not, their performances are here to stay.

As it happens, THE BAND WAGON is not an entirely successful film. Yes, Astaire and Charisse are ably supported by Buchanan, as well as Nanette Fabray and (my personal favorite) Oscar Levant. The writing team of Betty Comden and Adolph Greene (on whom Fabray and Levant’s characters are based), who’d done SINGIN’ IN THE RAIN the year prior, deliver a fine story. But the movie suffers because not every number moves the story forward. Some just feel like old songs that MGM owned rights to and wanted to get out there.

So it isn’t the tightest of narratives. But that’s ok, because it’s a showcase for the pyramids, for Hamlet, the Apollo program. It’s a showcase for the best that we can do. And that’s entertainment.

They Were Expendable

Gungy [guhnj] (adj) gung'y Navy Slang: To be particularly, perhaps ridiculously, motivated. Filled with love for the Naval Service and afire with patriotic fervor. "I just banged out five miles. I'm feeling gungy."

When I was a plebe at USNA, Saturday morning was "gunge day." After the morning run, we plebes would be permitted to sit on couches in the upperclass wardroom, hear some brief talk about a military subject, and watch a gunge movie. Something like 12 O'CLOCK HIGH or RUN SILENT, RUN DEEP or THE SANDS OF IWO JIMA. I was the guy who never really bought it, not really. Maybe it's the German in me, but I have this deep distrust for love of institutions; and rampant, "hail to the heroes" style patriotism makes me uncomfortable.

THEY WERE EXPENDABLE pushed gunge buttons I didn't even know I had. The opening credits include the ranks of people who worked on the film, including CAPT John Ford, USNR; CDR Robert Montgomery, USNR; CDR Frank Wead, USN (Ret); LCDR Joseph August, USN; and CAPTJames Havens, USMCR (Reservists represent!). The score weaves in chanties and traditional Navy songs I learned in Annapolis. The movie's first big action sequence, a Japanese airstrike on Subic Bay, made me want to want to be Robert Montgomery, commanding a squadron of PT boats in a desperate fight (Aside: if a movie can make an aviator want to be a surface warfare officer, it's gotta be something special!).

But THEY WERE EXPENDABLE, while certainly a gunge movie (it's wartime propaganda), doesn't tell the story of victory against impossible odds. It tells a story of loss, of underequipped and undermanned forces losing to a Japanese war machine that, at the time, appeared unstoppable. People sabotage their boats. The love interest is lost in Bataan. The heroes are ordered to flee, leaving their men behind to take their chances with the Japanese. And it's mostly handled in true military fashion. Shut up and do your job, and the best epitaph a man can hope for is that he did his.

Some of the film's elements don't fit, but they make sense when taken in historical context. When the men see MacArthur leave the Philippines, the film tries to sell it as an uplifting, patriotic moment. "There goes the great man," the PT sailors seem to think. While the reality is that line soldiers and sailors saw MacArthur's departure from the Philippines as a betrayal that helped earn him the nickname "Dugout Doug," the fact is that America needed heroes in the latter years of WWII, and there's no way a film of that period was going to show the American fighting man looking at the Great General with anything less than awe. The film also goes out of its way to wave the flag for those left behind. The flag waving doesn't fit in with the businesslike tone of the rest of the proceedings, but we should recall that this film was made in a time of total war, a time when America was preparing to fight its way back into the PI and rescue those whom we'd left behind.

Robert Montgomery, John Wayne, and Donna Reed are all fine here, with Wayne great fun as a fireball junior officer and Reed acting her butt off in pretty stock role. The action sequences are rousing and awesome, particularly when we recall that they were done with practical effects. This is a fine picture, a picture worthy of preservation, a gunge picture.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have some pushups to do.

Let The Right One In

LET THE RIGHT ONE IN is either a horrifying story about two lost and lonely kids who find one another in a harsh and unforgiving world or a horrifying story about a brutal monster who throws over her old, incompetent Renfeld and seduces a new familiar. Either way, it ranks among the best vampire films I’ve ever seen.

The film, a recent import from Sweden, does everything right. It creates believable, relatable characters, some of whom are evil, and puts them in a horrifying situation. It lets events play out tightly, seamlessly, with actions onscreen illuminating facets of the protagonist’s journey without appearing to do so. It makes brilliant use of atmospherics, of sound and music, to create a tone and uses that tone to heighten and contribute to the narrative. And it does so without connecting all the dots for its audience, with a strong dose of ambiguity and empathy, and with that certain special something that sets the memorable film apart from the merely good.

Some movies you see because they’re gonna make you laugh. Others, because they’re gonna make you think, or thrill, or cry, or shudder. Some you see because they’re just plain brilliant. LET THE RIGHT ONE IN is one of these. You owe it to yourself to spin it up.

My Dog Skip

MY DOG SKIP opens with a slow pan across the knickknacks that line the shelves of a WW-II era boy’s bedroom. It’s drenched in the golden light of treasured memory, and an orchestral score glides along in the background.

It’s deadly dull. And the movie doesn’t get any better from there.

Here’s a picture about a boy who falls in love with a dog. This should speak to me. I, after all, was a boy. And I had a dog. But everything’s too precious, every memory too golden, and everything too slow. Watching MY DOG SKIP is like being stuck in a plane with some guy who’s just dying to tell you the story of his life but lacks the ability to make that story interesting. You smile, you nod, you try to change the subject (to yourself because, let’s face it, you’re far more interesting), but on he drones. And on and on and on.

Sure, the movie looks fine. Kevin Bacon and Diane Lane, as the parents, are fine. Frankie Muniz, as the boy, is fine. But I just wanted the plane to land so I could get away.

Frequency

FREQUENCY is not a great movie, but it has a great core and two central performances that sell it.

Here’s the setup: through the magic of sunspots and HAM radio, NYPD detective John Sullivan finds himself able to communicate with his father, NYFD firefighter Frank Sullivan. Where John’s sitting, it’s 1999. Where Frank’s sitting, it’s 1969. Frank doesn’t believe that it’s his son on the other end of that radio transmission. But when John tells his father all about the fire he’ll fight the next day, and about how he’ll die in it unless he goes against his instinct and zigs when he’d normally zag, Frank’s intrigued. The next day, of course, the son’s prophecies come true and the father believes.

OK, and this is where the movie gets me. Frank comes home, kisses his wife (who tells him she heard he had a close call), and goes upstairs to look in the now 7-yr-old son who, 30 years in the future, will save his life by warning him yesterday. Dennis Quaid, who plays Frank, looks at the sleeping child with an expression that captures everything I feel when I look in on my boys, then adds appreciation and respect for the man this boy will grow up to become. He goes downstairs, contacts his son on the magic radio, and tells him he loves him. “I love you, too, pop.” Then, in the 1969 timeline, the boy comes downstairs, half asleep. Quaid tells him to get dressed: tonight, together, they’re going to master the challenge of riding that bike once and for all.

Waterworks, I’m tellin’ ya. Waterworks. I get choked up even writing about it. Yeah, there’s this whole plot about a serial killer (and really, what ‘90s movie didn’t work a serial killer in there somewhere) and the unexpected consequences of messing with the timeline and chasing and shooting and all that stuff. There’s also a lot of time travel hokum that’s basically just asking the audience to believe in magic and go with it. But the core of FREQUENCY, the love between a father and his son and a boy and his dad, resonates so powerfully with me that I overlook the weaknesses and spend all my time locked into the performances of Dennis Quaid and Jim Caviezel. What man doesn’t want to be the father Dennis Quaid is in this movie? What man doesn’t want to have the father Dennis Quaid is in this movie? What man doesn’t want his son to grow up to be the kind of guy Jim Caviezel is in this movie?

This picture works, and it speaks to me in a deep and powerful way. Whenever I need to test to make sure the plumbing still works, I need only to spin this one up to make the water flow. FREQUENCY may not be a great movie, but it hits its mark.

Choke

I didn’t know that Sam Rockwell existed before I saw this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1LWg1jFp4E . It’s amazing how one video can catapult a guy into near – CDNW territory. In CHOKE, an adaptation of Chuck Pahlaniuk’s novel about a historical reenactor / sex addict / possible cloned son of Jesus Christ who, um, well, let’s just leave it at that, Rockwell seals the deal. Ok, I’ve only seen a few of his pictures, and I didn’t even particularly like his portrayal of Zaphod Beeblebrox, but to hell with it – Sam Rockwell Can Do No Wrong.

Why? Because he takes this tragic, deeply flawed, possibly irredeemable man and makes him the funniest comic character I’ve seen since Jason Segel in FORGETTING SARAH MARSHALL. And he does it not in a comedy that lurches from set piece to set piece, that works the old rhythm of setup – payoff – setup – payoff, but in a quirky and interesting character study of the kinds of people we avoid in real life but are great fun to hang out with on the silver screen. CHOKE is an adult comedy in that, sure, it has sex and profanity and all that kind of stuff; but CHOKE is an adult comedy because it operates with adult and finds its humor in people, places, and actions that it takes a few miles on the odometer to appreciate.

And Rockwell, he knows how to tread the line between villain and rascal. He knows how to be funny while acting dead serious, and here he creates a character so serious that we can’t help but laugh. I rented CHOKE on the strength of his name on the poster, and he doesn’t disappoint. This is my comedy to beat for 2009.

Saturday Night Fever

There’s this scene in SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER in which Tony’s riding in a car with his crew. His friends are complaining about how the game is rigged, about how The Man is keeping them down, about how they’ll never get anywhere because no one will give them a break. Tony’s looking out the window. He’s thinking, “I know thee not, old man.”

OK, he’s probably not thinking those exact words, even if he did take Shakespeare in high school. But he’s thinking something very much like them. You see, Tony Manero is a young man on the cusp of going from Hal to Henry, from potential energy to energy in motion, from boy to man. He’s realizing something that his friends do not know and may never know: what’s worth having is worth working for, and what’s worth working for is too valuable to want someone to give it to you.

Tony’s basically a good boy. Ignored on the street, stuck in a dull job, living at home in a quasi-functional family, he’s nobody. He’s small time. But get him with his crew, and he’s a leader. Get him on the dance floor, and he’s a god. Tony rules Odyssey 2001, the disco where, every Saturday night, he burns through his week’s wages with unfettered joy. But even here, at the beginning of the movie, he’s different. He rehearses. He doesn’t pop or snort. He poses, but he’s essentially celibate (and potentially gay. I think one could make the case for it. I think the film’s “eye” is definitely gay. If you doubt me, notice how the camera caresses Tony’s body just before he awakens in his bed.). He’s in love with dance, with the way he feels when he’s lost in the moment, about the fact that finally, somewhere, he’s the best at something.

But working at a job that gives him just enough money to spend on Saturday night isn’t manhood. Being the big fish in a small pond isn’t manhood. Tony’s got to get out there, he’s got to earn his bones, he’s got to find his way. SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER is the story of how that realization goes from vague feeling to actionable reality. It works because we believe in Tony, flawed and limited though he may be. We understand that when he does that thing he loves, he really is special, amazing. He has something that’s worth working to cultivate, something that can lead to goals worth achieving, something too pure to be sullied by begging for handouts from The Man.

Sure, this movie has issues. There are subplots that go nowhere. Tony does things that are unforgivable. Some of the ADR is downright bad. But at its heart, SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER communicates truths so universal that they speak across decades, taste, and fashion. SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER is about leaving behind childish things, and that’s a theme that speaks to me. Can you dig it? I knew thatcha could.

Soul Men

SOUL MEN asks the cinematic question, "Do you like hanging out with Bernie Mac and Samuel L. Jackson?" If the answer is yes, you'll enjoy this paper thin road movie about two worst enemies and best friends reuniting for one last show. If the answer is no, you'll hate this paper thin road movie filled with crude humor, simplistic characterizations, and so much bad acting you'll bug your eyes out.

Me, I like hanging out with Bernie Mac and Samuel L. Jackson. Mac does his Scammer with a Heart of Gold and Jackson his Angry Man schtick, but those schticks are so well worn because, hey, they work. Sure, the movie's crude and simplistic, but it made me laugh out loud, tap my foot to the music, and generally have a good time.

Destiny

Fritz Lang's DESTINY is an inventive, entertaining film that captured my imagination.

Somewhere in preindustrial Germany, a young couple sets out upon their life's journey. But Death takes the man away, and the woman will try anything to get him back. She confronts Death and begs for her husband, who responds, "I'm tired of being hated for doing God's will. I'll make you a deal: you get three chances to defeat me. If you succeed, I'll give you your husband back."

And thus the film takes us to palace of the Caliph, where a young Frenchman conspires with the sister of the Caliph to find true love's way. From there, it's on to Venice, where jealousy plays at rapiers with love. Finally, DESTINY takes us to mythic China, where the Emperor takes whom he wants, no matter whether she loves another.

DESTINY's framing device gives each of these tales an overarching urgency, but they'd work as well as stand alone short films. Lang cuts loose here, exploring film's ability to conjure palaces of the imagination, armies of magical miniatures, and the very gates of mortality as he tells the simple story of a woman trying to save the life of her one true love. This is a sumptuous film, full of lore, popular religion, and tales that could find a home in the _Arabian Nights_.

For many, Charlie Chaplin *is* silent film. That's fine, really - he served as my gateway to the era. For the person looking to explore silents outside the realm of comedy, DESTINY is a great place to start. It'll grab you early, it won't let go, and it'll make you glad you sat down with it.

Spring in a Smal Town

SPRING IN A SMALL TOWN is a quiet film, a sad film, a heartbreaking film about missed opportunities, the futility of secrecy, and the compromises of adulthood.

It’s 1948. The Japanese are out of China and the Maoists have yet to consolidate their power. In the ruins of what was once a fine home live Liyan (Shi Yu) and Yuwen (Wei Wei), six years into a marriage marked more by duty and sadness than anything else. Liyan’s teenaged sister, Xiu (Zhang Hongmei) and family servant Huang (Cui Chaoming) round out the household. Liyan’s a broken man, his (mild) tuberculosis serving as a ready excuse to flee the crumbling world around him and take refuge in his garden. But Yuwen is very much alive, though she seeks to bury her vitality in her walks and her chores. Then, Zhichen (Li Wei), Liyan’s boyhood friend, appears after over a decade away. Zhichen and Yuwen grew up together. They are clearly, inescapably, forever in love.

That’s the first fifteen minutes.

But SPRING IN A SMALL TOWN isn’t just about love denied. It’s about the sacrifices, big and small, we make to get through the day, the week, the month, the year. It’s about the hidden gesture, about intuition, about how those who love us know us better than we think they do. It’s about all those little moments that make up a life, and the big ones that shape it. SPRING IN A SMALL TOWN is beautiful, not just in the portraits it creates, but in its compassion and understanding for its subjects. It’s an unforgettable film, one worth watching.

One Hundred Nights at the Movies

Recently, a friend challenged me to list my 100 "Essential" movies. Of course, there are no such thing as essential movies. The essential things are shelter, water, food, and physical security. However, here's a suggestion for one hundred movie nights. These films; a combination of classic, genre, foreign, and just plain good; will leave you with a reasonably good feel for the medium. Have fun!



The 7th Voyage of Sinbad
2001: A Space Odyssey
All About My Mother
An American in Paris // Shall We Dance (1937)
The Apartment
Apocalypse Now
Army of Darkness
Babette’s Feast
Beauty and the Beast (1946)
The Best Years of Our Lives
Big Trouble in Little China
The Bride of Frankenstein
Bullitt
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
Casablanca
Children of Paradise
Chinatown
Citizen Kane
City Lights
A Clockwork Orange
Cool Hand Luke
The Crimson Pirate
Die Hard
Dr. No
Dr. Strangelove
Dracula (1931)
Drunken Master
Excalibur // The Fisher King
Fast Times at Ridgemont High
Fitzcarraldo
Full Metal Jacket
Galaxy Quest
The Godfather
Gojira
Gone With the Wind
The Grand Illusion
The Great Escape
Groundhog Day
Hard Boiled
Ikiru
Intolerance
It’s a Wonderful Life
Jaws
King Kong (1933)
Lawrence of Arabia
Letters from Iwo Jima
Lone Star
M
Manhunter
Mary Poppins
Metropolis
Miracle on 34th Street (1947)
Monty Python and the Holy Grail
Night of the Living Dead
Nosferatu
Oldboy
On the Waterfront
Once Upon a Time in the West
Pan’s Labyrinth
Papillon
Persona
Plan 9 from Outer Space
Point Blank
The Princess Bride
The Professional
Psycho
The Public Enemy
Pulp Fiction
Raiders of the Lost Ark
Rear Window
Ride the High Country
Rififi
Rocky
Roman Holiday
Scarface
Shaft (1971)
The Sheik
Somewhere in Time
The Son’s Room
Spider-Man 2
Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country
Steamboat Bill, Jr.
Strangers on a Train // Out of the Past
Sunset Boulevard
Super Size Me // The Thin Man
The Terminator
The Thief of Bagdad
This is Spinal Tap
Throne of Blood
Tokyo Story
Triumph of the Will // Downfall
Truly Madly Deeply
Unforgiven
United 93
Waiting for Guffman
Wild Strawberries
Wings of Desire
The Wizard of Oz
Yankee Doodle Dandy
Yojimbo // A Fistful of Dollars

Shiri

You like gunfights? I like gunfights. You like foot chases? I like foot chases. You like double agents? Me too. How about bombs with those red countdown timers that go, "beep, beep, beep?" Oh, yeah. Kim chi? Can't stand the stuff, personally, but waddayagonnadoo.

SHIRI, a South Korean espionage thriller, has all of the above. It begins with a scary and brutal training montage showing just how the North's agents become so fearsome. Then it rolls into a foot chase, we get an assassination, and the heat is on. The bad guys are OLDBOY'S Min-Sik Choi and _Lost_'s Yunjin Kim, the good guys are Suk-Kyu Han and JSA's Kang-Ho Song. Je-gyu Kang's direction is professional, delivering solid execution of a well-worn story, and the whole thing makes for a great way to while away a couple of hours on a lazy Saturday afternoon.

I'm not going to bother with a plot introduction here, because you'll see this film's every beat coming from the opening credits. What makes this film a good time at the movies are the performances and the action sequences. Good actors play the bad guys, giving them personality and flair, even if the script doesn't provide much dimension. Good actors play the good guys, giving us people we can latch onto even though we know their fates as if we had written them ourselves. This matters because, as NAKED WEAPON shows, bad acting can sink this kind of venture in a heartbeat. The chases, gunfights, and various showdowns rise above their source material as well, providing adventure, a few surprises, and an awareness of physical space that leaves us thrilled while keeping us informed both of the geography of the engagements but their impact on the relationships established in the film.

SHIRI. It's exciting. It's engaging. Lots of stuff goes boom. It'll even tug your heartstrings. Like I said, it's a great way to while away a couple of hours on a lazy Sunday afternoon.

Aguirre: The Wrath of God

If Werner Herzog had been born millenia ago, he'd have been a desert mystic, a prophet telling those with an ear to listen that all is vanity. He's of our time, of course, and his is a different medium than the Wisdom Scroll. AGUIRRE: THE WRATH OF GOD, a dark and beautiful meditation on the futility of ambition, sinks deeply into our psyche and lingers there, compelling us to ponder Ecclesiastic insights even as we dwell in memories of the stark and beautiful jungle of Herzog's film.

"All the rivers run into the sea," says _Ecclesiastes_, "yet the sea is not full: unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again." AGUIRRE: THE WRATH OF GOD, takes place upon the eternal, unnamed river. It is 1560, and Pisarro's expedition to find the legendary golden city of El Dorado teeters on failure. Exhausted and running out of options, Pisarro directs a small party to scout down the river which has already claimed one raft full of men. The party's orders? Find El Dorado, or civilization, or both. It never occurs to him that, by definition, El Dorado is civilization. He puts a trusted man in charge. He appoints, as second in command, Don Lope de Aguirre. He sends a priest, a noble, soldiers, and slaves. If they don't return in a week, Pisarro will call off the expedition and leave without them.

The men set off, afire with ambition. But the jungle, the river, is implacable. The sun bakes the men in their steel helmets. Poison-tipped darts shoot from unseen assailants on the riverbanks. The men find a village, its denizens cannibals. The fire of ambition consumes Aguirre all the more, goading him toward treason, murder, and insanity. And the sun beats down, and the birds whistle and caw, and the rodents and the monkeys claim all that vanity holds dear.

Herzog views the tale with the dispassion of the river. He extends no quarter, not even with the indigenous interpreter who laments, "I used to be a prince. Men used to be forbidden to look upon me. Now I am in chains." The royal enslaver is now slave, and all is vanity. Klaus Kinski, as Aguirre, is all the madness of human endeavour in one man. The church is the servant of the powerful and the river gives no quarter. This is life, Herzog seems to say. This is vanity.

Twilight

If you're a fan of the _Twilight_ books, you're gonna love this movie. If you haven't read 'em, you're going to be like me, asking the women in the room, "Why did she do that? What's going on with that guy?" "Why do they care about this?"

See, it isn't that TWILIGHT left me on the outside because I'm not a member of its target demographic. TWILIGHT left me on the outside because it assumed I've read the book. Since I haven't, I couldn't understand why the heroine seemed so bummed out: she had a father who loved her, lived in a cool house, and made friends easily. Further, I couldn't understand what she saw in the mousse-haired vampire with whom she's paired in biology class. Werewolf Guy seemed cool, and he could rebuild an engine. Jock Guy seemed nice enough, and he wasn't a threat to drink her blood by the pale moonlight. I mean, really, why would any woman want to be with a man who spends more time on his hair than she does?

There are many more questions that TWILIGHT fails to answer. For example: why are its vampires dressed so fashionably? I've only been around for 40 years, and I've already lost interest in fashion: give me khakis and an oxford on the East Coast, jeans and a T on the West, and I'm good to go. After a century, you'd think that TWILIGHT's undead would have roughly the same fashion sense as the far more entertaining vampires of NETHERBEAST INCORPORATED. At the very least, they could get jobs, a la NETHERBEAST. I mean, really, I know that vampires are damned, but an eternity of high school biology seems like cruel and unusual punishment even for the eternally forsaken.

But, hey, if thinly veiled parables about the excruciation of celibacy are your bag, or if you happen to own stock in a grooming products company, you might enjoy TWILIGHT. Two out of three of the adults in my room did.

Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa

I'm the only member of my family who didn't like MADAGASCAR: ESCAPE 2 AFRICA. My ambulatory kids danced along with the lion at the climax. My wife and sister in law nodded along happily. I sat there, bored at a commercial venture with as much heart as a Quarter Pounder with Cheese.

Here's the setup: a bunch of anthropomorphic animals rehash the hit song from the first movie, then get on a barely functioning airplane for their trip to New York City. The plane goes down in an African game preserve, where the Mustafah ripoff is being challenged by the Scar ripoff. It's up to our favorite beasts to save the day, find self-realization, and sing and dance.

But nothing funny happens. The film celebrates a subculture (New York and New Yorkers) that doesn't capture my imagination (Maybe if my crash pad wasn't so close to the J Train). The whole thing feels like a rote recycling of successful elements from the first film, with no chances taken and every element audience-tested.

I don't hate this movie. It's not interesting enough to engender hate. I just plan to be out of the room the next time my kids spin this one up.

Outsourced

OUTSOURCED is a slight, yet charming, romantic comedy about a driven Seattle call center manager sent to India to train his own replacement. It's the story of how the guy goes native, and it works because, gosh darn it, everyone in it is so nice that we can't help but wish them the best.

Josh Hamilton plays Todd, your basic yuppie who comes to Mombai to teach the Indians how to deal with Americans. I'm not familiar with Mr. Hamilton, but his IMDB resume indicates that he's had a long and steady career in things I've never seen. He's an agreeable fellow who manages his character's transitions well. Ayesha Dharker, who was in an episode of "Dr. Who" and ATTACK OF THE CLONES so you know she's ok, plays the bright and ambitious call center worker, and she does what she can with a role that asks her to be all that is good about India. Throw in assorted nice Indian folks, a meanie of a senior American executive who isn't really all that threatening, and you have a culture clash movie that doesn't ask all that much of you, and that wants nothing more than to show you a good time for an hour and a half.

This is a movie to fold laundry by, or recover from surgery to. It has a light touch, a beautiful palette, and a nice sense of what it is and what it's trying to do. One could do a lot worse.

My Name is Bruce

Ok, let's get this straight from the get-go: MY NAME IS BRUCE is not a good movie. It's cheaply made, poorly performed, and kinda lame.

I liked it.

Here's the setup: Guan Di, the Chinese god of war and tofu, is on the rampage in a small Oregon town that wants to be a small Tennessee town. Then the local misfit kid, who worships Bruce Campbell, comes up with a plan: bonk the washed-up bit player over the head, bundle him into the trunk of the Special, and spirit him to said small town to save the day the Bruce Campbell way. Er, the Bruce Campbell way consists of hitting on the kid's mom and running away when things get dicey with ol' Guan Di.

So what we've got is an hour and a half of Bruce Campbell making fun of himself, his fanbase, and the genre in which he has risen to some kind of prominence. Your enjoyment of the film will hinge on one thing: how much do you like Bruce Campbell? I like Bruce Campbell a lot: he reminds me of my Best Man. For me, an hour and a half of Bruce mugging his way through a silly little B movie is like an hour and a half of hanging out with my friend Joe, and that's an hour and a half I'm always willing to spend. My wife likes Joe, too: she laughed all the way through MY NAME IS BRUCE, but that could've been the post c-section percoset doing its thing.

When it comes to some movies, a picture doesn't have to be "good" to be good. MY NAME IS BRUCE is a fine example of this very thing. Enjoy it with a plate of ribs, a cold beer, some percoset, and a little tofu.

Vicky Cristina Barcelona

Vicky Christina Barcelona

Sorry, I just don’t care about anybody in VICKY CHRISTINA BARCELONA.

Look, I’ve got a wife, two jobs, three kids, a dog, a house, and the very real possibility of an airline furlough on the horizon. I find it difficult to get lost in the problems of wealthy young people with worthless educations and too many options.

The feckless rich girl must leave the wealthy artist’s household because of her restlessness? Frak you.

The wealthy artist is locked in a destructive relationship with the crazy lady? Frak you.

The aimless rich girl must choose between the wealthy artist and the wealthy banker? Frak you and enjoy his bonus check.

I mean, hey, I’m all for the glamorous rich. I love it when they dance around in Fred Astaire movies or banter with Groucho. But I just don’t have time for the sun-drenched parasites in this movie.

Next.

RocknRolla

ROCK N ROLLA is a great time at the movies.

Like LOCK, STOCK, AND TWO SMOKING BARRELS, ROCKNROLLA is a British thug drama, though drama may be the wrong word. This isn’t a film about the human condition, and it isn’t a film about real people with real problems. It’s a game, a Rube Goldberg device, a chance to set up a bunch of characters in impossible situations and see how everything works itself out. And while that kind of movie can be a grinding bore of plot machination, ROCK N ROLLA hums like a finely tuned engine.

Why? I’ll chalk it up to two things: witty and well-written dialogue, and propulsive direction and editing. The dialogue seems like the kind of stuff that I’d enjoy reading as much as seeing performed, though the performances (by “The Wire”’s Idris Elba, Gerard Butler, Thandie Newton, and Tom Wilkinson, among others, do it credit. The direction and editing, which combine for the look of the film, are alive with energy and excitement, like the kind of storyteller
who’s so caught in the moment that the words tumble out of him at nearly the speed of thought.

So here I am, four paragraphs in (if you count the lede), and I have yet to say what the movie is actually about. You know what? It doesn’t matter what the movie’s about, any more than it matters what a good storyteller’s tale is actually about. What matters is that it’s a tale from a good storyteller.

That’s enough for me.

Selling Sex in Heaven

SELLING SEX IN HEAVEN won Best Documentary at the 2006 Big Bear Lake International Film Festival. Must have been a pretty thin field.

The documentary, which originally aired on Canadian Television, is a horrorshow about sex tourism in the Philippines. As such, it follows your typical horrorshow format of introducing us to someone who lives in its milieu, then using that person’s story to take us deeper into its horrible world. By the time the film climaxes with a look into a casa, or brothel catering to Filipinos, we’re looking at a ghastly example of modern slavery and man’s inhumanity to man.

This could be, should be, powerful stuff, but SELLING SEX IN HEAVEN weakens itself by taking the viewpoint of two young Canadian interns who have come to the P.I. to change the world. When it shows us some dehumanizing facet of the sex trade, such as the mandatory weekly gynecological examinations (“For the protection of the customers, not the girls,” states the clinic’s director), it doesn’t let the scene speak for itself. Instead, it goes strait to one of the two callow young Canadians: “Ooh, all those speculums look nasty,” says one. Ok, cornfed, I’m sorry that the veil of your innocence is being lifted, but your disillusionment does not make for compelling cinema.

SELLING SEX IN HEAVEN makes another critical mistake: by misstating the facts surrounding the U.S. withdrawal from the Philippines, it calls the integrity of its research into question. The film states that the U.S. maintained a huge military presence in the Philippines for years, and that the local sex trade sprang up around it. Accurate, so far. But then, it strongly implies that the U.S. pulled out of the P.I. as a direct result of the devastating eruption of Mt. Pinatubo, which significantly damaged the facilities at Clark AFB, at the time the Air Force’s largest installation in the Pacific. The reality is significantly different. First, the government of the Philippines told the U.S. to leave the islands. Second, the U.S. submitted to the will of its host country and began its withdrawal. Third, Pinatubo blew after the withdrawal was already underway. There is no correlation between Pinatubo and the U.S. withdrawal from the Philippines, and the film’s misrepresentation led me to wonder what else it might be misrepresenting.

So here’s a film that’s supposed to document the plight of some of humanity’s most vulnerable people, but turns out to be about how two nice Canadian girls learn that the world is not a nice place. Not only does the picture miss its own point, it does so while losing credibility by botching a fact pattern that’s a matter of public record. It’s too bad, because the story of the oppressed and exploited women of the Filipino sex trade is one worth telling. If only SELLING SEX IN HEAVEN was a better storyteller.

The Day The Earth Stood Still

Y’know, I like Keanu Reeves. The guy’s a terrible actor, but he chooses such fun, interesting projects that he generates enough goodwill to overcome his handicaps. THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL, in which Reeves plays an alien inhabiting a manufactured human body, makes a virtue of its star’s woodenness while serving up a giant helping of marvelously stupid entertainment.

Here’s the setup: an alien (Reeves) and its giant robotic henchman have come to Earth to tell us that we have two options: stop destroying our environment or die at the hands of aliens who have never seen Star Trek and, thus, are unaware that the galaxy is choc a bloc with habitable planets. It’s aided in this by the formerly beautiful but now disturbingly anorexic Jennifer Connelly, an American scientist called in to consult the U.S. Government and provide some kind of outlandishly miscegenetic love interest.

The movie never overcomes the first question to occur to the viewer: why doesn’t the alien, who appears to be compassionate, offer to teach mankind how to, say, make a paint-on photovoltaic paste that’s as cheap to produce as paint, or show us other ways to stay an advanced civilization while cleaning up the environment? Why must the only two options be regression to a 17th-century energy paradigm or mass murder? For that matter, why do none of the humans think to say, “Show us how” instead of “Give us another chance to figure it out on our own.” I mean, c’mon, clearly the alien is the emissary of a postindustrial civilization: somewhere along the way, its people must have figured this stuff out. And those are just the questions raised by the premise. Wait until we get into the details. When the alien is asked what its real form is and it replies, “Telling you would only frighten you,” why does the film think that compelling its audience to imagine that Yog Soggoth works for Greenpeace does anything to generate any emotions other than fear, distrust, and revulsion? When, at the end, the alien does us a favor by not destroying the world but, instead, instantly shutting down every electrical and mechanical invention created after, say, 1870, do the moviemakers think this is a hopeful note? Have they not seen Mad Max? Can’t they imagine the horror produced by all those planes falling out of the sky, all those medical devices ceasing to function, all those pumps and valves and heating and cooling devices and various other things on which we rely to keep us alive just up and quitting? How are coal miners supposed to get out of their holes now that the elevators are down? How many submariners are going to die cold, dark, and alone? And good luck dealing with the mass starvation brought on the by the instantaneous destruction of the global food production and distribution system. You know what? On second thought, maybe the people in this movie were on to something when they chose not to ask the alien for advice. The answer, apparently, would have been, “Death. Death to all. Destroy all that you hold dear while madness fills your soul and you quake in fear before the Elder Gods.”

Thanks, but no thanks, Soggoth, you patchouli oil - smelling galacto-hippie. Go panhandle for the whales on some other planet.

Australia

If you don’t like AUSTRALIA, you don’t like movies. Here’s a movie that just screams “Movie!”, with a big story, big sets, big score, big villains, and big heroes. It has cattle drives, sunsets, air assaults, magic, and even an angelic choir. Baz Luhrmann’s motto is “A life lived in fear is a life half lived,” and here he shows that he isn’t afraid to throw everything he loves about motion pictures on the screen.

Ok, but I recently slagged off on Ed Harris’s APPALOOSA for throwing everything it loves about Westerns on the screen, decrying its lack of focus and dragging pace. What’s so different about AUSTRALIA?

Everything Baz Luhrmann touches is deep fried awesome on a stick, that’s what. When tightly wound duchess Nicole Kidman first alights on the Continent, who’s the governor eyeing her through a telescope? The dad from STRICTLY BALLROOM, that’s who. Whose is the second voice we hear? None other than that of Barry Fife, that’s who. Who’s the villain? Bryan Brown. Who’s the evil henchman? Frakkin’ Faramir. And who’s the scruffy drover who Kidman pegs as unworthy to scrape the mud off her boots? Well, it’s Wolverine. And if you’ve ever seen a movie, you know it won’t be long before the Duke’s out of the picture, Kidman lets her hair down, and we’re off to the races.

And it’s a grand race, particularly if you’re willing to delight in Luhrmann’s swooning passion for all things film. AUSTRALIA looks great, it sounds great, and it’s a great time at the movies. Enjoy.

Cadillac Records

CADILLAC RECORDS is your basic music biography, but the twist here is that it’s the biography of a company, Chess Records, rather than an individual. The film centers on two men, Muddy Waters and Leonard Chess. Muddy is the natural blues man, a gifted musician with no head for business, while Leonard is the natural promoter, a gifted businessman with an ear for quality commercial music. When Muddy plays Leonard’s club, Leonard knows he has lightning in a bottle: all he needs to do is record it. And record it he does, founding Chess Records and signing, in addition to Waters, people like Howlin’ Wolf, Little Walter, Chuck Berry, Etta James, and Willie Dixon. Everything’s champagne and Cadillacs, at least for a while, but anyone who has seen an episode of “Behind the Music” knows how things will go from there.

Sure, CADILLAC RECORDS has a familiar arc, but it has a few things to recommend it. First, there’s the music: if you don’t like the blues, there’s something deeply wrong with you. Second, there are the performances: what’s not to like about a cast with people like Jeffrey Wright, Adrien Brody, Gabrielle Union, Mos Def, and the duly beringed Beyonce Knowles? Not to mention this other guy, this guy who comes out of nowhere, Eamonn Walker as Howlin’ Wolf, a force of nature who blows everyone off the screen just by walking into a room. Third, and perhaps most importantly, there’s the history: there is no rhythm and blues, there is no rock and roll, there is no soul, there is no hip hop without Chess Records.

So, hey, if you like good music and you enjoy seeing excellent performers do their thing and you want to learn some history, CADILLAC RECORDS is for you. Think of it as reading a particularly engaging biography, and enjoy.

Slumdog Millionaire

Ok, so I’m the last guy in the world to have seen SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE. I liked it, and I don’t get the backlash.

The film has an interesting structure, both deviating from and underscoring the standard three-act format. It tells its story in flashback, using the protagonist’s run on the Indian version of “Who Wants to be a Millionaire” to give him reason to recall and reflect upon the events of his life. This framework gives filmmaker Danny Boyle freedom to tell his story in near-vignettes, leaving out much connective tissue and sticking to the read meat of his story. While doing so, SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE keeps us moored in the three-act structure by casting different people to play his lead characters during the different periods of their lives that serve as the acts of the narrative. It’s cool, it’s neat, it’s fun, and it gives our analytic selves something to enjoy while our emotional selves get lost in a story of love desperately trying to find a way.

Some folks say that SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE is manipulative. You know what? Fine. So’s a good song. I got caught up in the ride; I fell in love along with the characters; I rooted for them every step of the way. I’m a happy customer.

Belle de Jour

BELLE DE JOUR is one of those movies I fired up out of a sense of duty. It’s been around out there, hovering on the edge of my consciousness, for years. I figured it was time I finally buckled down and saw it.

Belle de Jour is Catherine DeNeuve’s hooker name. She’s a Parisienne, comfortably situated in the upper middle class, who feels that something is missing in her life, in her marriage with the reliable but new-agey husband she probably thought was a safe bet at the time. When a lascivious friend tells her that some women find part-time work in some of Paris’s more discreet brothels, she’s horrified, and aroused, and curious. And soon, she’s Belle de Jour.

But, of course, that isn’t the end of the movie. Over the next hour or so, the film explores the consequences of her choice, its effects on her psychologically and physically, and the dangers that can arise when one traffics with those who traffic in flesh. It does so carefully, and in a manner that leads us to believe in the people we’re seeing and invest in Belle’s journey. I believed in DeNeuve’s character, her motivations and needs. I wanted to see what became of her, and I still do. I may have begun BELLE DE JOUR with a sense of duty, but I finished with one of satisfaction. This is a fine movie.

Appaloosa

I was all ready to like APPALOOSA. It starred Ed Harris, Viggo Mortensen, Renée Zellweger, and Jeremy Irons in a throwback Western that promised vistas, gunfights, and romance. But the opening voiceover sounded like it was written in a self-actualization seminar, clobbering the Western mood before it could even get rolling.

Once past the voiceover, APPALOOSA tries to be the Bollywood production of Westerns. It throws in everything it can think of, from scheming ranchers to jailhouse watches to raiding injuns to barfights to showdowns on Main Street. Hell, I'm surprised they didn't throw a production number in there. Thing is, there's so much going on that it detracts from the major throughline. Actually, now that I think about it, I'm not entirely sure what the major throughline is.

There's a good movie buried somewhere in APPALOOSA, but writer/director/star Ed Harris wasn't willing to kill his babies to find it. Too bad. We could have been spared the film's maddening "tell me, show me, then tell me again because I must be an idiot" narrative style in favor of "show me and let me figure it out." Here's one Western that could've used a man of few words.

NetherBeast Incorporated

Dilbert, with vampires. Either you're in or you're out.

Me, I'm in.

Steve Burns (yes, that Steve Burns), has a problem. His boss, Darrell Hammond, has just invited him into his office. Hammond tells Burns to take over a project from a recently deceased coworker. The coworker in question is sitting in a chair across from Hammond's desk, a stake through his heart. "Not only does his project need a little work, you see, but I had to kill him," declares Hammond. "He was a vampire." And away we go with a fun and creative take on the vampire mythos.

NETHERBEAST INCORPORATED's vampires don't wear flashy clothes, they don't brood in the moonlight, and they don't gaze with romantic longing at the nubile living. They're too busy working up PowerPoint presentations, dozing through meetings, and running the most mundane business imaginable. That's its hook, but the thing that sells it is Steve Burns, whose deadpan delivery and everyman approach to even the most horrifically outlandish situations kept me chuckling throughout the film's brisk 89 minute run time. This is a low-budget horror comedy that's light on the horror and heavy on the comedy, and a it's a sweet, simple, semi-gory good time.

It's perfect for Valentine's Day, or any romantic occasion. Try it with a nice red wine.

Coraline

Walking out of CORALINE, my 8-yr-old said, "That was a different kind of scary. It wasn't scary like monsters scary, where you only lose your life. It was a scary where you can lose your existence." My response: "Is that a good scary?"

Make no mistake: CORALINE is, indeed, scary, and not in a CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON kind of way. It's as much creeping fear as horror show, and its marvelous visuals serve a tale that can send chills down the spine of child and parent alike. For while my child saw a story about a little girl who fights for souls, I saw a cautionary tale about the dangers of addiction.

Addiction - wha?

There's this episode of "The Wire" in which Sydnor is about to go undercover as a junkie. Bubbles says to him, "What's that on your hand? Take that off." Sydnor replies, "That's my wedding ring!" Bubbles: "Weddin' ring? You married to the spike now. Your wife, your kids, your job, your home - you fed it all to the spike. That weddin' ring was first to go."

In CORALINE, Coraline discovers her spike. She goes to it again again, taking what she thinks it has to give her. She doesn't understand what it's really offering and, by the time she does, she's nearly trapped. When the worm turns and she finds out who's really in charge (spoiler: it's not her), it takes everything she's got, and much that she does not, to win a chance of getting free.

It's heavy stuff, but it's wrapped up in a delightfully told, scary and sophisticated movie that entertained two people separated by a 32-year age difference. It's also scary stuff, but it's a good scary. Take it from my eight-yr-old.

The Wackness

In THE WACKNESS, Ben Kingsley counsels young Josh Peck, "Don't trust anyone who doesn't listen to Dylan and who doesn't smoke weed."

I don't listen to Dylan. I don't smoke weed. I didn't trust Ben Kingsley, either.

This is a movie about people from a different universe, one in which the rules of society as I understand them don't exist. They ingest enormous amounts of drugs. They approach sex with damaging casualness. They speak in a foreign language and listen to music that's a mystery to me. In fact, there's not one single character in this film that I could relate to, one person who didn't feel like an example of a type, but rather a complete human being. I've seen movies about murderous, medieval Huns with whom I could relate more than I could anyone in THE WACKNESS.

This movie was an audience favorite at Sundance. CHUD's Devin Faraci loved it. I don't get the appeal, not at all. THE WACKNESS does part of what movies are supposed to do, in that it takes me to a different place and time, introduces me to different people, and puts me in their shoes. But the shoes didn't fit, and the film couldn't sell them to me.

Bummer.

Bottle Shock

Movies like BOTTLE SHOCK are the reason why I read Roger Ebert. I never saw an ad for the picture, didn’t read about it in any of my other wanderings, would never have known it xisted were it not for Ebert’s review.

I just plain loved it.

Here’s a movie about the 1976 Franco-American wine competition, a promotional event organized by one Steven Spurrier (Alan Rickman, CDNW) with the expectation that the American wines would be thoroughly trounced. As it happened, the Americans won in both the white and red categories. The movie assumes you know this going in, and it bathes the entire proceeding, from Spurrier’s first inspiration for the event to the aftermath of the competition, in the warm glow of fond memory.

BOTTLE SHOCK is a “little guys against the world” picture with hints of “coming of age,” “romantic comedy,” and “slobs vs. snobs.” It’s laugh-out-loud funny, utterly charming, and delightful from beginning to end.

Thanks, Roger Ebert. Perhaps I should see this SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE of which you speak so highly.

MirrorMask

MIRRORMASK. Hmm.

Dave McKean’s unsettling ‘Sandman’ covers got me interested in this picture. What would an entire film made with McKean’s sensibility look like? Well, I’m here to tell you that it would look like a moving ‘Sandman’ cover.

Unfortunately, McKean’s vision is about all this film has going for it. MIRRORMASK is a rather conventional quest tale, set in a land very much like the Dreaming, that spends all of its time looking fantastical and spends very little time creating people we care about and giving them urgent, interesting things to do.

But hey, this is a PG movie and it’s essentially a kids’ story, so it must be ok to share with the little ones, right? Wrong. My youngest started crying about three minutes in, and I’m glad I saw the rest of the film alone. Many of McKean’s visions are nightmare-inducing, and I just don’t need to wake up to screaming children in the middle of the night.

So, there it is. Scary and rather dull, MIRRORMASK is a film I could have done without.

Traitor

TRAITOR is an excellent film.

Don Cheadle plays Samir, a Sudanese-American working his way up the ranks of a terrorist organization. He's the textbook terrorist candidate: an immigrant caught between two worlds, smart, capable, devout, and with military training. As played by Cheadle, he's also deeply conflicted. He's a man who wants to do the right thing, but the people telling him what is and is not right don't seem to be any more enlightened than he (I'm describing the character instead of the performance because, hey, it's Don Cheadle. You know he nails it.).

Guy Pearce, Jeff Daniels, and Neal McDonough are among the Americans working his case. Saïd Taghmaoui, Alyy Kahn, and Raad Rawi are the major players in his cell. Each of these fine actors sells their roles, but it's a testament to Cheadle's ability that he blows them off the screen without even trying. There's so much happening behind this guy's eyes that he's always the most interesting person in the room, no matter how skilled the other players.

The movie itself is well shot and scored, though not particularly dazzling. This is more a character piece than a virtuoso production, and its exploration of the kind of guy who can rig a suicide vest or sacrifice innocents makes an excellent counterpoint to the more hero-oriented GWOT thrillers we've been getting recently. What a pleasure to get inside the mind of a guy like Samir, a guy wrestling with big questions with important consequences. This one is worth seeing.

Naked Weapon

There's a movie out there called SO CLOSE. Corey Yuen directed it, and it stars Qi Shu, Wei Zhao, and Karen Mok. It's your basic "hot Chinese assassin" movie, and it's one of the best popcorn pictures there is. It has an interesting story; beautifully choreographed fight scenes; and Qi Shu, Wei Zhao, and Karen Mok. This movie does everything right: it's glossy, cheesy, and playful. It's the GONE WITH THE WIND of "hot Chinese assassin" movies.

And then there's NAKED WEAPON, released just two months after SO CLOSE. Directed by Siu-Tung Ching, it stars Maggie Q, Anya, and Jewel Lee. It's another "hot Chinese assassin" movie (Is this a bona fide subgenre? Perhaps I should investigate!), but it's downright terrible. NAKED WEAPON barely even has a story; its fight scenes practically define the word "lame;" and it stars Maggie Q, Anya, and Jewel Lee. If SO CLOSE is the GONE WITH THE WIND of "hot Chinese assassin" movies, this is the CANNONBALL RUN: uninspired, mechanical, and dull.
Here's the story: evil Madame M kidnaps 40 13-yr-old girls, dresses them up like Lara Croft, and puts them through five years of grueling training. Those who survive become the world's elite assassins, taking out the planet's hardest targets while bathing one another in longing gazes guaranteed to ignite the imaginations of 15-yr-old boys and bore the hell out of everyone else. But, of course, the FBI and CIA are hot on their tails, which is surprising: I had no idea that the PRC was so accomodating toward U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies.

So you've got your chases and your stunts and your fights and your sublimated lesbianism and your budding romance and all that crap, but none of it goes anywhere, none of it makes any sense, and none of it passes for entertainment. Charisma vacuum Maggie Q is no Qi Shu, and proves herself utterly incapable of anchoring a movie; even a cheesy popcorner like this one's trying to be. Siu-Tung Ching doesn't know how to make wirework look good, he doesn't know how to choreograph gravity-based effects, and he's even more in love with the windblown look than the guys who made KRRISH. Plus, he's a moron. How do you put Pei-pei Cheng in your picture and not give her a good fight?

NAKED WEAPON may -may- appeal to the aforementioned 15-yr-old boys, but I wouldn't even recommend it to one of them. If you've got a fever, and the only thing that'll cure it is a "hot Chinese assassin" movie, rent SO CLOSE. It's superior in every way. As for NAKED WEAPON, give it a pass. Watching this movie is like having your spine ripped out: you won't feel a thing.

Burn After Reading

BURN AFTER READING is a comedy with two funny lines. J.K. Simmons gets both of them. And he's only in the movie for ten minutes, tops.

The film, a misanthropic screwball comedy, is so heavy on misanthropy and so light on comedy that I spent more time marveling at the train wrecks piling before me than sustaining any kind of comic mood. Its as if everyone involved was told they were making a tragedy, with the exception of Simmons and his minion David (Sledge Hammer!) Rasche.

Many folks liked this picture, but I don't get it. How can you laugh when you're busy feeling bad for everyone onscreen?

Sunrise: A Tale of Two Humans

Emotionally captivating, visually wonderful, and technically marvelous, F.W. Murnau's SUNRISE: A SONG OF TWO HUMANS is a fitting swan song for the silent era.

Released in 1927, the same year THE JAZZ SINGER heralded the dawn of the talkies, SUNRISE proved that you don't need words to expound upon the human condition. The film tells the story of a marriage in crisis: the man, once happy at home, has fallen in love with another woman; one with expensive tastes. He's been selling the livestock to finance the affair, and now his mistress is really putting the screws to him. "Why," she asks, "doesn't your wife have an 'accident'? Then you could sell the farm and we could move to the city." It's a tempting offer. I'm not going to tell you if he takes her up on it or not.

What I will tell you, however, is that Murnau's touch is never more assured. He helps his actors and actresses sell their roles and, in the process, plays the human heart like a master. We laugh, we cry, we bite our nails, we're wholly lost in the story of these people and wholly vested in their fates. From perfectly timed comic touches like the reactions of a very proper gentlemen to the wardrobe malfunctions of the hapless woman standing beside him to scenes filled with a dark foreboding as rich as any in cinema, this is a film that knows how to work its audience.

Murnau supplements the cast's efforts through an extraordinary collaboration with cinematographers Charles Rosher and Karl Struss, men who figured out how to make their camera glide through space, use multiple exposures to create heightened realities, and even pull off some kind of trick that looks just like a modern green screen. These men's collective eye for composition and technical expertise combine to create a world sometimes simple, sometimes extraordinarily dazzling, and ever interesting. There's always something happening in every corner of the frame in SUNRISE, and I look forward to teasing out more details in subsequent viewings.

No kidding, folks: this movie has everything. It's a flat-out masterpiece, and well deserving of its Academy Awards (Best Picture, Unique and Artistic Production; Best Cinematographer; Best Actress in a Leading Role). What a gem.

Into the Wild

I was vaguely aware of Chris McCandless (aka Alexander Supertramp) before I viewed INTO THE WILD. I knew that Jon Krakauer, author of Into Thin Air, wrote a book about him. I thought the guy was basically a spoiled kid who thought he could just tramp off into the Alaskan bush with no preparation and got himself killed.

But you know what I just wrote about MONSTER? About how film can take us into worlds we didn’t know existed, into people we’d never understand otherwise? INTO THE WILD does this, taking us into McCandless’s world and into the heart of a fatally idealistic, romantic young man who wanted only what idealistic and romantic young men have always wanted: to find adventure and find the truth.

Sean Penn wrote and directed INTO THE WILD with a sure control of technical detail and an eye for character. As McCandless (Emile Hirsch, quite fine in the underrated SPEED RACER) travels America, the film wraps us in beautiful foreboding and the love of good people. It leads us to care about the young man at its center without allowing us to forget the damage he’s doing to those he left behind. It shows us that, by the time McCandless made it to Alaska, he actually was marginally prepared to be there. And it takes us on his journey with care and tenderness.

This is a beautiful film, with beautiful images, music, and performances. It’s a thoughtful film, a film that cares about ideas and emotions in a real, personal way. It’s a riveting film, one that keeps us fully engaged though we know how it will end. And it’s a great film, the kind we recommend to our friends. See it soon.

Monster

MONSTER, the Aileen Wournos story, takes us into an alien world and shows us what it’s like to live there. That’s the world of Wournos, a person who grew up in what, to many of us, is an alternate universe. Wournos doesn’t live in a place where people are basically good and things generally work out for the best. Rather, she lives in a world where people are vile and things generally fall apart. And while MONSTER never lets Wournos off the hook for her actions, it does leave us with an understanding of where she’s coming from.

Aileen Wournous was a street hooker who became a murderess, killing her customers and stealing their cars and cash. The film shows us why, and it’s a portrait of incredible sadness. As the film begins, Wournos (played by Charlize Theron) is in despair, on the verge of suicide. And then something totally unexpected happens: she falls in love, and she dares to hope. But in Wournos’s world, hope is a false promise. When the money runs out and the rope begins to fray, she’s gotta come up with something. And here’s where the movie breaks our heart, because when you’re Aileen Wournos, the list of somethings you can come up with is tragically limited.

The film has its flaws: Wournos occasionally says things that sound more like the voice of a writer than that of the character. Theron’s performance sometimes jars, as occasionally she belies her physical transformation with vocal ticks that remind us who it us under all that makeup and costuming. But these, frankly, are nitpicks. MONSTER is a very, very good picture, and well worth seeing. I’m sorry I waited so long.

Chopper

CHOPPER reminds me of SEXY BEAST. But imagine the Ben Kingsley character as the protagonist.

Here, Eric Bana plays a guy street-named Chopper. He’s a violent and charming sociopath whose ability to destroy the lives of everyone around him is eclipsed only by his self-absorption. The film, based loosely on the eponymous Australian criminal, is misnamed, however. It should have been named BANA, because its real focus is the ability of its lead actor.

This is the picture that broke Bana out, and for good reason. His Chopper is wheedling, arrogant, dangerous, needy, unpredictable, charming, streetwise but stupid, and extremely violent. Like Kingsley in SEXY BEAST, his every moment creates tension, both in the characters on the screen and the people watching. But as the protagonist of this film, Bana has to keep the tension going almost all the time. It’s amazing.

Well, here I am in my fourth paragraph, and I still haven’t mentioned the story, really. Fact is, I can hardly remember it, for the story is not Chopper’s draw: the performance is. Wow.

Die Nibelungen

Fritz Lang’s THE NIBELUNGEN, clocking in at over five hours long, is an ambitious work that had a huge impact in its day. Unfortunately, it hasn’t aged well. I slogged through the saga with one eye on the screen and one on the clock, never believing in anything or anyone I saw onscreen.

The film begins with Siegfried, a blacksmith’s apprentice who forges a blade so keen that his master declares he has nothing more to teach the young hero. Taking the sword and setting out to find his fortune, he slays a dragon, finds an invisibility cloak, and captures the treasure hoard of the dwarves. This is the best part of the picture, with a magnificently realized dragon puppet that’s over eighty feet long, great craft on Siegfried’s part, and a transfiguration effect that must have take days days to create.

But soon enough, Siegfried is in the hall of the Burgundian Kings, the titular Nibelungen. And here’s where the picture gets nasty. From here on out, the film is a feast of misogyny, racism, and general repudiation of Judaeo-Christian values. There’s deceit and counter deceit, blood revenge, cruel realpolitik, and an ultimate affirmation of the heroic woman only in terms of her cold-hearted cruelty. There’s a significant portion among the Huns that makes this proud people out as barely a step above lowland gorillas. But most importantly, and unforgivably, there’s nothing here to hang on to: the characters aren’t inherently fascinating, the pageantry isn’t particularly dazzling, and the whole thing feels rather flat.

At least, that’s how it seems to me, the modern viewer. The film made such a splash during its initial release that Goebbels asked Lang to make propaganda films for the Nazi political effort (showing great judgment, the director promptly fled to America). But while I can put myself into the mind of a person who enjoyed INTOLERANCE and THE IDLE CLASS, I can’t see the appeal of this one. It’s coming from a place too alien to me.