Clash of the Titans

My kids are going to love CLASH OF THE TITANS as much as I loved the original. Here’s a two-fisted action film set in the mythical world of ancient Greece. It brings as many monsters, as many villains, as many damsels in distress as a young boy could want.

Sam Worthington, the reigning king of green screen acting, plays Perseus. Half-man and half-god, he must save the Greek world from the ravages of Hades, who’s pissed off because he’s being played by Ralph Fiennes and that seems to be what Fiennes is up to these days. In his quest to get the gimrack that’ll help him defeat the whatsit, he fights giant scorpions, gorgons, and all manner of mythical beasts. It’s all great fun, and mom and dad even get to groove on the presence of terrific actors such as Fiennes, Liam Neeson, and Mads Mikkelson.

So, y’know, take CLASH OF THE TITANS in the spirit in which it’s given. This is adventure, straight up with a chaser, and it’s a heck of a lot of fun at the movies. I can’t wait to spin it up on the enormovision for my boys.

The Green Zone

THE GREEN ZONE does so much right that I’m almost willing to forgive it its central flaw.

Director Paul Greengrass, who made the definitive 9/11 movie with UNITED 93, knows how to craft a good thriller.  He knows how to do action and how to keep us in the audience on the ball regarding who’s doing what to whom and why.  Matt Damon, obviously, has established himself as a versatile and capable movie star.  Greg Kinnear, exceptional in a supporting role here, once again shows that he doesn’t get nearly enough respect in his chosen field.  The film clips along briskly and coherently, and it hit all its marks.

But there’s a problem: the film is all about Damon’s character unraveling the mystery of the missing Iraqi WMDs in the immediate aftermath of Operation Iraqi Freedom.  And we already know the solution to that one.  To the even marginally aware viewer, how mysterious can this stuff actually be?

So dig the faithful portrayal of Army culture.  Dig the reconstruction of the chaos in the days after the fall of Baghdad.  Dig the outstanding performances and the craftsmanship and all the rest.  If it’s enough to get you through the fact that you already know the thing this film’s hero is trying to learn, be happy.  It just didn’t work for me.

[NOTE:  The photo accompanying this brief review is not from the film.  It's just a nifty picture I found when I typed "Green Zone" into Bing Image Search.  I couldn't not use it.]

Inception

And then the street just stops and things start exploding, but not real explosions with fireballs and stuff like that, but disintegrations upon disintegrations as the very fabric of the universe comes apart. Yet noone gets hurt and noone seems to notice, except for the ones doing the dreaming and building and destroying the world and trying to figure out what’s real and what isn’t.

The girl from JUNO and the guy from “Third Rock” who did that great SNL monologue last season and the dude who played the medium in DRAG ME TO HELL and Cillian Murphy and some underwear model and that Watanabe cat from LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA and even the guy who played the good sergeant in PLATOON jump from one dream to the next, from dreams to dreams within dreams, reality shifting and colliding and rules changing. Some of them work for Leonardo DiCaprio, who has transformed into a Consequential Actor, and DiCaprio works for at least one of them, in a way, and then there’s this French woman whose character is named Mal (which either means Bad or that Christopher Nolan is a Browncoat) and she screws everything up, as French women are known to do, but we can’t know if she’s alive or dead because Nolan has written and directed his film with ambiguity in mind.

In an interview, DiCaprio likened the film to 8½, and I can see what he’s going for, because the last time my bride and I saw 8½, we had to call the sitter for extra time while we went to a café and had coffee and hashed it out again and again and again, as I imagine we will do from time to time until one of us dies. Since this film is more overtly a puzzle, however, I don’t know how much staying power the proposition has because at some point you just say, “Nolan is screwing with us” and leave it at that.

That’s the problem with ambiguity, at least in terms of plot. You, as the audience member, walk out of the film with these amazing images burning in your mind and the story you’ve just experienced coalescing to a digestible narrative, visions and characters and actors and ideas all jumbled together but slowly, as you digest them, smoothing out.

Once things do smooth out, you’re left with a puzzle, but not a thematic puzzle or a character development puzzle. You’re left with an analytic puzzle, trying to put together pieces that have been created to not quite fit. And you feel at bit let down, like there wasn’t as much there as you’d thought.

And you go on and see the next picture or go back to work and the movie subsides into your subconscious and, perhaps, into your dreams. And you think that you’ll try to see it again on the big screen and you may see it on DVD when it hits there and you’re glad you’ve kept up with the zeitgeist but the monologue keeps unspooling and there wasn’t enough there to merit night after night of consideration, nothing like a WOMAN IN THE DUNES that stick with you and reappears in your imagination even when you’re not necessarily even thinking about movies because it’s that damn good.

But you keep coming back to that exploding streetcorner and those cobblestones and chairs breaking into smaller and smaller pieces and you think, “Wow, that’s big-time summer filmmaking” and you think about the fact that even as you dismiss INCEPTION you’re still thinking about it and you respect it enough to try something completely different even though it probably won’t work and hey, maybe you’re wrong.

Maybe you’ve just seen Real Art.

Zombieland

We’ve seen the zombie horror film, the zombie action film, even the zombie romantic comedy.  What’s next?  With ZOMBIELAND, it’s the zombie coming of age film.

I’ve gotta tell ya – I like zombies.  They’re great monsters, defying all logic (How does zombie metabolism work?  What do they eat when they run out of brains?  Why don’t we ever see Harryhausenesque skeleton zombies?  Ok, that last one’s easy – because then they’d be scary skeletons, not zombies.  Work with me here, people.).  Like great monsters, artists can adapt them to nearly any kind of story.  And they’re cheap to make – get a bunch of college kids together, buy ‘em thrift store clothes, cover them in corn starch and licorice (for that dried blood look), and feed ‘em chicken wings and beer for a day, and you’ve got half your cast right there.  And I like coming of age stories.  It’s hard to find one’s place in life, and it’s easy to relate to other who are trying to do so.  Put the two together, and you have a win on concept alone.

Fortunately, ZOMBIELAND works not just in concept, but execution.  Jesse Eisenberg (also known as Michael Cera’s Michael Cera), desperately needs to find his place in the world.  Yeah, he needs to find his place in a world filled with zombies, but still.  He needs a role model, a girl friend, and someone to look up to him.  Can he do it?  Well, will college kids work for chicken wings and beer?  There you go.  The story bops along from one episode to the next, maintaining its sardonic sense of humor and its joy of zombie smashing throughout.  It never stops being fun, it never stops having fun, and it never ceases to entertain.

Yeah, SHAUN OF THE DEAD covered much of the same territory and, frankly, did much of it better.  But ZOMBIELAND does fine.  If you like zombies and you like coming of age stories, you’re sure to like ZOMBIELAND.

Salt

SALT is the best American escapist fantasy spy thriller I’ve seen since THE BOURNE IDENTITY.

The best spy thrillers I’ve seen since THE BOURNE IDENTITY are ARMY OF SHADOWS (about the French Resistance), BODY OF LIES (Iraq), BLACK BOOK (Dutch Resistance), and FLAME AND CITRON (Danish Resistance), but they were entirely different animals. They were about plausible people doing heroic things in tough situations, while SALT is about superhuman people doing heroic things in tough situations.

Angelina Jolie plays Evelyn Salt, a superhuman CIA agent whom the world has passed by. She’s a Cold Warrior, a fluent Russian speaker and #2 in the covert side of CIA’s Russia Section (You know she’s important because she shares a cubicle with #1. That’s government work for ya.), but the Cold War’s been over for a long time. What’s left? Ferreting secrets out of the North Koreans (Here’s the supersecret debrief on DPRK: its government is not acting in the best interests of its people. And it has nukes.)? But then a Russian defector walks into her supposedly secret office building, accuses her of being a Russian mole, and the game is on.

Strap in for an hour and fifteen minutes of stunts, chases, gunfights, and stuff blowing up real good. It’s well-done work, mostly practical and perfectly choreographed, anchored with a tough yet ambivalent Jolie performance that keeps us guessing as to her real allegiance. Add fine supporting performances by the reliably excellent Chiwetel Ejiofor and Liev Schreiber and a script with plenty of twists and turns, and you’re in for a good time at the movies.

I didn’t even want to see this picture – it started half an hour before INCEPTION and my wife and I were pressed for time – but SALT showed me a great time at the movies. Color me very pleasantly surprised.

Beer Wars

BEER WARS begins with a confessional: the writer, director, and star tells us (I paraphrase), “I ran Mike’s Hard Lemonade (Slogan: Helping high school girls get pregnant since 1999!) until I got tired of corporate bullshit.  Then I quit and tried my hand at venture capital, living in an ashram, and basically screwing around on my cushion of money.  I got bored after a while and decided to make this documentary about how evil big companies don’t roll over and let little companies eat their lunch.  Share my post-hippie, comfortably wealthy outrage.”

Well, la de da.

The rest of us work for a living, lady.  So excuse me if I don’t share your anger at Wal Mart (selling good stuff at low prices to people who couldn’t otherwise afford it), Microsoft (revolutionizing humanity’s relationship with information), and Anheuser Busch (Slogan: helping high school boys work up the courage to hit on high school girls since 1852!).

Watching this film, I felt like I’d just been cornered at a cocktail party by the most loathsome person within three city blocks.  Not only was her manifest self-fascination repulsive, her scattershot approach to her subject matter prevented her from building a coherent, compelling case.

Her thesis goes as follows:  Gigantic beer companies, in cahoots with legally sanctioned distributers, conspire to keep smaller companies from reducing their market share.  Ok, this could be interesting.  Make the case that monopolistic behavior is stunting entrepreneurship and call me to arms.  Dilettante filmmaker Anat Baron kills the interest, however, by wasting my time with the story of an entrepreneur flogging a poorly conceived and ultimately unappealing brand of beer (The hook: it has caffeine!  What about tasting good?).  She’d have done much better by focusing all her attention on Sam Calagione, who doesn’t get nearly enough screen time.  Calagione runs Dogfish Head Brewing Company, and he has two things going for him: he’s charismatic and he makes great beer.  I’d have learned more, and been more entertained, by following this guy around for a year.  Wanna show me how megabreweries, with armies of lawyers and harems of politicians, keep the little guy down?  Don’t squawk it at me: just let me watch it unfold as Calagione fights his legal, commercial, and political battles against steep odds.  Stay focused: that’s how you’ll entertain and inform me.

Or just sail around the world or something – whatever self-satisfied rich people do.  I don’t want to hear about it.

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs

UP has spoiled the genre of children’s animation. Where I used to be content with a mildly amusing light show to wow my kids, UP has conditioned me to expect a real, substantial film that will also wow my kids. CLOUDY WITH A CHANCE OF MEATBALLS exists only to wow my kids, so the best I could do was to kind of hum along.

Here’s the idea: a quirky inventor on a small island off America’s East Coast creates a device that turns raindrops into food. Chaos ensues, love happens, we get a few jokes, and everyone learns a Valuable Life Lesson.

That’s it, and it’s fine, but it ain’t UP. There’s nothing in this kids’ film that adults don’t already know, so mom and dad are forced to rely on spectacle to get them through. CLOUDY has plenty of spectacle and it wowed my kids, so I shouldn’t complain.

It isn’t fair, and it isn’t CLOUDY’s fault. But I want another UP.

Notes on Some Films

I don't have much time to write at the moment, so I'll submit these brief notes on the films I've seen the last couple of weeks.

ZOMBIELAND

A fun, but ultimately forgettable, take on the zombie genre. Doesn't do anything that SHAUN OF THE DEAD doesn't do better.

THE GREEN ZONE

Two hours of a guy solving a mystery we already know all too well. Nice job of capturing military culture, and look out for another great performance from the undervalued Greg Kinnear.

CLASH OF THE TITANS.

Not nearly as bad as I'd feared. My kids are going to love this.

THE GHOST WRITER

A perfectly fine, if (again) forgettable thriller.

A PROPHET

Brilliant, harrowing, nail-biting slice of life in the modern French penal system. One of the best films I've seen this year.

HAMLET 2

I chuckled all the way through this clever little dark comedy. Rock me, sexy Jesus!

MacGruber

One of my favorite forms of comedy is out-of-place vulgarity or obscenity.  I don’t know why, but the unexpected intrusion of the gutter into the world of propriety gets me every time.  MACGRUBER loves vulgarity and obscenity, but it spends so much time with them that it never creates a proper world for them to upset.  MACGRUBER only offers vulgarity and obscenity.  It wears us down and wears us out, and it does so early in the film.  Since it has little else to offer, it becomes a slog to the credits, punctuated by the occasional chuckler but not much else.

The film, a feature – length version of a recurring “Saturday Night Live” sketch mocking “MacGuyver,” brings MacGruber out of retirement to foil Val Kilmer’s evil plan to blow up Washington, D.C. (which, since I live in the DC metropolitan area, I don’t find particularly amusing).  It’s a serviceable framework on which to hang an hour and a half’s worth of jokes, when the jokes are good (Note: one joke does stand out, a REAL GENIUS sight gag that made me chuckle.  But that’s about it.).  When the jokes are bad, it’s a groan-inducing, tiresomely hackneyed plot whose only twist is its lack of a twist.  Ouch.

MACGRUBER is one of the worst films I’ve seen this year.  Save your money.

Up in the Air

UP IN THE AIR hits close to home.  The film, about a guy (George Clooney) who spends so much time on the road that he becomes unmoored, strikes me as a personal, cautionary tale of what I could become.

I'm a professional pilot.  I’m writing this in a hotel room.  I know many of the TSA agents at airports in DC and New York, I have a system for getting through airport security in the minimum possible time, and I can move into or out of a hotel room in five minutes.  I use the express lanes at car rental counters and I scoff at Clooney’s Travel Pro rollerboard, knowing that real pros go with Luggage Works.  I’m not entirely like him, however.  I don’t pick up women in hotel bars: I watch movies and Skype my family.

And there it is: family.  I’ve still got one, unlike many people in my profession, because I work to keep those ties strong and because when I’m home, I’m completely home.  But there’s always more money to make, and I make that money by going away.  If I chase too much money, if I go away too often, I could unmoore just like Clooney.  And then where would I be?  Alone in one hotel room after another, mistaking professional courtesy for actual goodwill.

Yeah, UP IN THE AIR isn’t quite so much a feel-good movie.  It is, however, an excellent one.  First, it pulls off the superhuman feat of making us identify with George Clooney.  Second, it builds a compelling story around him and his dawning realization that being unmoored is not synonymous with freedom.  Third, it personalizes the massive downsizing that resulted from our recent (and ongoing) economic turmoil.

But for me, its greatest value is as a cautionary tale.  I don’t want to be like George Clooney.  How many movies can get a guy to say that?

Daybreakers

Hey, who put the science fiction in my horror movie?

DAYBREAKERS looks like a horror movie, with vampires, crossbows, and buckets of gore. In its heart, however, it’s a science fiction movie. Why? Because it does what good science fiction does: it uses its milieu to comment on an issue of the day.

DAYBREAKERS flips over THE OMEGA MAN and gives us vampire civilization. They’ve won, and the few remaining humans are hunted or farmed, but the supply is running low. That’s a problem, ‘cause vamps gotta eat and pig blood is running low, too. Scientists labor to create artificial blood, but the work is not going well. Now what?

Sound familiar? I think somebody took “blood for oil” and ran with it. Good for them.

Narratively, the film relies on a standard “fugitive” structure, using gun battles, close escapes, and a poorly fleshed out love interest to keep things moving along. It’s effective enough, and the performances are fine, and the film does maintain a good balance of action and horror. However, as with many science fiction stories, the ideas are more compelling than the plot. What will the world look like when the oil’s about to run out? How will we adapt? This is interesting stuff, packaged for the genre audience, and delivered well.

Nice.

Notorious

How can anyone watch NOTORIOUS and not fall in love?  Ingrid Bergman is luminous and tortured and vulnerable and brave.  Cary grant is stylish and capable and conflicted and cool.  In a film that could have gotten away with “These are currently the two most beautiful people in the world.  Darwin demands that they mate,” NOTORIOUS gives these characters actual stories and conflicts and reasons to get involved.  All that and a spy thriller that turns even the details of catering into nail-biting, suspenseful business.  This is as good as Alfred Hitchcock movies get – and Alfred Hitchcock movies get very good.

 

Begin with Bergman as Alicia Huberman, the notorious woman of the title.  Her father is a felon, convicted for treason shortly after WWII.  She’s a party girl, the kind who, decades later, would feature on tabloid covers and scandal websites.  But when the government recruits her to fly to Rio serve as a honey pot to ensnare Claude Rains, she’s up for the task.  Never mind that maybe she doesn’t want to party until the wheels come off.  Never mind that maybe she’s about finished with her postadolescent rebellion.  Never mind that she’s in love with her handler and her heart breaks a little more every minute that she works at her assignment.  She has a job and she’s going to do it, even though it will probably get her killed.

Go on to Grant, the handler.  He’s an intelligence man, worldly and cynical.  He’s so cool that he’s, well, he’s Cary Grant.  He recruits Bergman, he gets her to Rio, and he sets her up to meet Rains.  Never mind that he’s in love with his agent.  Never mind that it kills him to see her and her mark together.  Never mind that he won’t allow himself to believe in her best self.  And never mind that his heart is breaking every minute she works at her assignment.  She has a job and he’s going to see her through it, even though it will probably get her killed.

These two characters must be together, need to be together.  The film’s genius lies in its manipulation of audience antici … pation, separating them through their roles in life, their senses of duty, the real danger presented by Rains and his Nazi cohort.  I dare you to watch it and not have your heart break.  I dare you to watch it and not fall in love.

The A-Team

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

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

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

The Flowers of St. Francis

Perhaps I’m lost.

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

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

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

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

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

The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call - New Orleans

I am so happy to have Nicolas Cage back.

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

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

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

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

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

Black Narcissus

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

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

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

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

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

Shutter Island

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

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

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

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

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

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

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan

STAR TREK II: THE WRATH OF KHAN is a ripping good sea yarn.

All the hands are here, in new, visually striking uniforms and a new interior of USS ENTERPRISE that looks more like a warship than it did in STAR TREK: THE ONE WITH THE BALD CHICK. We kick off a nice little subplot about aging and coming to grips with the passage of time, and then we’re off to the main show: Ricardo Montalban as Khan the Villain has been marooned by Kirk on a desert planet with limited food, but a kickass gym and a Vidal Sassoon franchise. Now he’s free, and he’s out for blood.

I know. “Yawn, another villain out for blood. We’ve seen this before.” Yes, but this is Ricardo Montalban, and he demonstrates why this type of character, when done right, has propelled film after film after film. He’s dangerous, charismatic, and just plain fun, and watching him try to outwit the Kirk/Spock team is treat.

Note that I wrote “outwit,” not “outfight.” STAR TREK II, like any good sea yarn, doesn’t culminate in a fistfight. Rather, its climax is one of dueling captains and crews trying to outmaneuver one another. Layer on the contrast between the leadership styles of hero and villain, and you have the delicious tension of watching hulls come about and wondering who’ll be first to bring his guns to bear. Oh man, this is so much more interesting than just another hand-to-hand stuntfest. Having seen the film before, I knew what was going to happen; yet it still put me on the edge of my seat.

I almost wish, however, that this film hadn’t been so successful. After retreading the “opposing captain out for revenge” angle in III, VI, NEMESIS, and the reboot, this franchise could stand to step away from II’s example. It’s not like they were ever going to top it, anyway.

Flame and Citron

1944.  The Nazis occupy Denmark and the Resistance grows fractured and weary.  The Allies will come eventually, but when?  And who will arrive first, the Russians or the Americans?

Welcome to the world of FLAME AND CITRON.  The film, based upon the lives of Danish national heroes Flamme and Citronen, begins in the dark days of the war, then gets darker.  Flamme and Citronen, an assassination team, have made a name for themselves by targeting Danish collaborators.  But when the word comes down to start going after Germans, the duo go from just another thorn in the Gestapo’s side to Enemy #1.

This film works simultaneously as a spy thriller, a study of the effect of killing on the human soul, and a showcase for some of the most beautiful cinematography I’ve seen in some time.

As a spy thriller, FLAME AND CITRON covers all the bases.  It has double and triple agents, mysterious meetings in dark niches, and levels of intrigue among different levels of an already shady command structure.  It has shootouts, close escapes, and the paranoia that comes with resistance.  And no one knows how things will turn out, because this is a true story.

While the spy thriller aspect of the film moves things along, FLAME AND CITRON also works as a character study.  What kind of man shoots people in the head during the day, then goes home and sleeps at night?  Are some men born that way?  Can others train themselves to it?  And what kinds of men pull the strings of the trigger pullers?  Can they be trusted to wield their power responsibly?  What if they can’t?

So we have a good story, one with some meat on it.  FLAME AND CITRON presents the story wonderfully well, with outstanding cinematography by Jørgen Johansson.  The film cost $10M, but it looks much more expensive than that.  Though a combination of cleverly set up shots and seamless location and matte work, this film puts us right into wartime Copenhagen.  It’s gorgeous.

Simply put, FLAME AND CITRONEN works in every way.  I’m glad I saw it.

Revanche

“Your problem,” says the pimp to the thug, “is that you’re soft.  You try to act tough, but people see right through you.”

Maybe that’s not a bad thing.

In REVANCHE, the thug loves the hooker.  The hooker works for the pimp, who is not soft.  The thug and the hooker plan to escape, but can they?  Is the thug tough?  Must he be?  And what of the aftermath?

This sounds like the premise for a thriller, but REVANCHE goes in a different direction.  Rather than twists, turns, and tension, REVANCHE offers us character.  It considers these people, cares about them, takes the time to tell their stories. 

Here’s a keen exploration of love, bravado, and unintended consequences.  By the time the credits roll, you’ll the know the people of REVANCHE not as The Thug and  The Hooker, but as Alex and Tamara.  You’ll think not only of the journeys they’ve taken, but of journeys still ahead.  And you’ll think about yourself, about your supposed weaknesses and your supposed strengths.  You’ll wonder if they are what you think, or if you’ve (perhaps) misjudged yourself.

REVANCHE is that kind of film: the kind that rewards thought.  In fact, the more I think about it, the more I like it.  Given time, it could become one of the best pictures I see this year.