Every once in a while, a movie comes along and jolts us back in time, giving us the ability to see the world through the eyes of children - and making us feel almost ashamed to be grown up. For an all-too-short while, the magical "Children of Heaven" accomplishes just that, vanquishing the cynicism of adulthood and reminding us that, once upon a time, we too were able to live, love and struggle without shame.
"Heaven" is set in modern-day Iran, though its plot and themes are universal. As it opens, nine-year old Ali (Amir Farrokh Hashemian) is returning from school to pick up his younger sister Zahra (Bahare Seddiqi)’s repaired shoes from a local cobbler.
Afterwards, a beggar inadvertently steals the shoes, leading Ali into a panic; his impoverished parents (Mohammed Amir Naji and Fereshte Sarabandi) can barely afford the rent, much less to fix his mistake. Ali devises a plan to conceal the loss from his family, in which he and Zahra swap sneakers before and after school while Ali scrambles to find the original pair.
Ali’s sometimes comic, sometimes tragic quest leads him into conflict with his father, his schoolmaster and his own conscience. He knows he has disappointed his sister, who maintains blind faith in him, and he knows that admitting the lost shoes to his father will plunge the family further into debt. Ali searches and searches for a solution – eventually finding one that might, just might, save his sister and himself.
Throughout the film, we are reminded that kids are smarter, more resilient and observant than we give them credit for. Yes, Ali is a model student and a good son, but he’s also lost in the maze of the real world – halfway in-between naivete and wisdom, he has to navigate, as we all did, the challenges of class, money and education.
While Ali finds his way, director Majid Majidi throws off anecdotal gems that tell of the ugly desperation of poverty and the hopeful, almost Quixotic attempts to escape it. In the best sidenote, Ali’s inarticulate father goes into an affluent suburb to freelance as a gardener, with hilarious – and heartbreaking – results. The poor, under-confident man cannot figure out how to interact with the upper class, even to ask them to allow him to render his services.
Majidi allows Ali, in his innocence, to cut through class differences; he doesn’t fully recognize them, which leads to a minor victory for both father and son. Children, the director argues, may bridge the gap between rich and poor in ways that adults find utterly impossible.
There’s more to the picture, much more, to the movie than a review can summarize, but I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the ending, which includes a climactic set piece that is three times as thrilling as any Hollywood actioner of the year – a little masterpiece of camerawork and editing that left me breathless with anticipation.
After it’s all over, we’re left with spent emotions and personal memories about the loss of our own youth, of our first inklings of social understanding, of joy and sacrifice. With beautiful, crystal clarity, “Children of Heaven” reminds us that winning is sometimes losing, and sometimes losing can be the most exhilarating feeling in the world.
Rating: *****
Friday, August 24, 2007
Saturday, August 18, 2007
Spider-Man 3
"Spider-Man 3" is like a 10-part edition of the comic-book series with a mountain of villains and a vacationing hero.
There are five - count 'em, five - baddies in the blockbuster second sequel, including, for a painfully long stretch, Peter Parker himself (more on this below). The others include Sandman/Flint Marko (Thomas Haden Church), New Goblin/Harry Osborn (James Franco), Venom/Eddie Brock (Topher Grace) and an amorphous black blob, none of which could carry a movie by themselves and all of which emerge as mediocre replacements for Alfred Molina's marvelous Doc Ock from "Spider-Man 2."
The real villain, though is director Sam Raimi, who, despite his Hollywood movies' increasing budgets, had always maintained a pint-sized indie integrity in the face of studio interference. This time, though, the suits won, making the flick an overstuffed, self-satisfied and flat-out lazy turkey that becomes a chore to sit through long before the dopey climax.
The movie's too convoluted to give a full summary, but the gist is that Spidey's life is perfect. Too perfect. After a series of city-saving escapades, he's fast-becoming an arrogant pencil-neck, given to kissing other women and bathing in publicity.
But it isn't enough that Peter Parker's ego has exploded - itself a good enough character device to sustain the picture. No, he also has to be infected by a giant, oozing alien (has any superhero ever been such a magnet for supernatural bites?), a chemical compund that expands the power and personality of its host.
Thus, Parker becomes an even bigger jerk, a hyper-aggressive freak - the poster boy for 'roid rage without the muscles to back it up.
No, the muscle is provided by Sandman, an escaped convict who, conveniently enough, happened to have killed Parker's uncle Ben, and who has inadvertently run into a radioactive experiment that powderizes his molecules, making him impossible to kill. Sandman can't be killed by bullets, fire or bombs. His only weakness, it seems, is his daughter, who's dying of some disease or another, and doesn't have the money to get adequate medical attention.
Meanwhile, the New Goblin, still smarting from the killing of his father (Willem Defoe) in the first movie, desperately seeks revenge on Parker via an arsenal of grenades and a gigantic flying boogie-board. After a convenient bout of amnesia, the New Goblin's alter ego Harry Osborn re-enters the good graces of both Parker and his beady-eyed girlfriend Mary Jane (Kirsten Dunst).
While Osborn turns over his green sword, Eddie Brock emerges as a ready replacement. Brock is an amateur shutterbug – an ambitious jerk whose sights are set on Parker’s newspaper gig. After getting fired for doctoring a photo of Spidey committing a robbery, the embittered Brock goes crazy, and…well, a bunch of other stuff happens, little else of which is worth reading about.
Suffice it to say that in between the lugubrious dialogue and tired Parker/Mary Jane romantic odyssey, we have to sit through interminable fight scenes – each one a non sequitur that lends nothing to the plot and has nothing to do with the consistency of the characters. "Spider-Man 3," like its spiritual cousin, Steven Spielberg's disastrous "War of the Worlds," inserts brawls between Spidey and the Goblin and Sandman which don't further the plot - which could be a benefit, given how ludicrous the plot really is.
Both of the previous installments - the competent but uninspiring "Spider-Man" and its often-exhilirating sequel, explored the stages of adolescence, from the masturbatory goo that escapes the teen Parker's wrists to the distractions of first love that were emphasized in the second installment. Now Parker (played by the 32-year-old Maguire) is entering the know-it-all late teen phase that all of us went through, a bit of unpleasantness that Raimi doesn't bother to play straight. There are 2 major problems with this:
Problem #1: No one wants to hang out with a self-satisfied jerk for 2 1/2 hours, especially if his cockiness is punctuated by displays of invincible physical prowess. (At least the puffed-up bozos we recall from our own painful formative years had weaknesses that were visible to everyone except ourselves.)
Problem #2: Raimi has no idea how to dramatize Parker's shift, except to plaster Maguire with black eye shadow and an outfit to match - he's a comic version of The Cure's Robert Smith - and has him strutting around NYC with a swagger that alternately attracts and repels women of the opposite sex. Like the Black Knight version of Larry Dallas from "Three's Company," Petey's game doesn't match his bloated self-esteem.
Except for Maguire, who’s as steady a presence as Hollywood has, the acting is uniformly terrible, with the typically reliable Church and Grace taking bottom honors. Dunst is vacant and whiny and even J.K. Simmons can’t get his line readings down. Everyone seems to be daydreaming about their paychecks, which is understandable given the lousy script (by Sam and Ivan Raimi and Alvin Sargent).
It would take two directors to pull off this movie - Raimi for the action, Paul Thomas Anderson for the angst - but Raimi himself suffers from Parker's brand of hubris, thinking he can do it all himself without an inkling that he's in far too deep. Psychodrama is, if you’ll pardon the reference, his Kryptonite.
At this point, the franchise can’t go anywhere but down; Raimi and crew are on autopilot and, given the fact that they’ve gotten away with it here without any box office penalty, why should they try at all?
Rating: *
There are five - count 'em, five - baddies in the blockbuster second sequel, including, for a painfully long stretch, Peter Parker himself (more on this below). The others include Sandman/Flint Marko (Thomas Haden Church), New Goblin/Harry Osborn (James Franco), Venom/Eddie Brock (Topher Grace) and an amorphous black blob, none of which could carry a movie by themselves and all of which emerge as mediocre replacements for Alfred Molina's marvelous Doc Ock from "Spider-Man 2."
The real villain, though is director Sam Raimi, who, despite his Hollywood movies' increasing budgets, had always maintained a pint-sized indie integrity in the face of studio interference. This time, though, the suits won, making the flick an overstuffed, self-satisfied and flat-out lazy turkey that becomes a chore to sit through long before the dopey climax.
The movie's too convoluted to give a full summary, but the gist is that Spidey's life is perfect. Too perfect. After a series of city-saving escapades, he's fast-becoming an arrogant pencil-neck, given to kissing other women and bathing in publicity.
But it isn't enough that Peter Parker's ego has exploded - itself a good enough character device to sustain the picture. No, he also has to be infected by a giant, oozing alien (has any superhero ever been such a magnet for supernatural bites?), a chemical compund that expands the power and personality of its host.
Thus, Parker becomes an even bigger jerk, a hyper-aggressive freak - the poster boy for 'roid rage without the muscles to back it up.
No, the muscle is provided by Sandman, an escaped convict who, conveniently enough, happened to have killed Parker's uncle Ben, and who has inadvertently run into a radioactive experiment that powderizes his molecules, making him impossible to kill. Sandman can't be killed by bullets, fire or bombs. His only weakness, it seems, is his daughter, who's dying of some disease or another, and doesn't have the money to get adequate medical attention.
Meanwhile, the New Goblin, still smarting from the killing of his father (Willem Defoe) in the first movie, desperately seeks revenge on Parker via an arsenal of grenades and a gigantic flying boogie-board. After a convenient bout of amnesia, the New Goblin's alter ego Harry Osborn re-enters the good graces of both Parker and his beady-eyed girlfriend Mary Jane (Kirsten Dunst).
While Osborn turns over his green sword, Eddie Brock emerges as a ready replacement. Brock is an amateur shutterbug – an ambitious jerk whose sights are set on Parker’s newspaper gig. After getting fired for doctoring a photo of Spidey committing a robbery, the embittered Brock goes crazy, and…well, a bunch of other stuff happens, little else of which is worth reading about.
Suffice it to say that in between the lugubrious dialogue and tired Parker/Mary Jane romantic odyssey, we have to sit through interminable fight scenes – each one a non sequitur that lends nothing to the plot and has nothing to do with the consistency of the characters. "Spider-Man 3," like its spiritual cousin, Steven Spielberg's disastrous "War of the Worlds," inserts brawls between Spidey and the Goblin and Sandman which don't further the plot - which could be a benefit, given how ludicrous the plot really is.
Both of the previous installments - the competent but uninspiring "Spider-Man" and its often-exhilirating sequel, explored the stages of adolescence, from the masturbatory goo that escapes the teen Parker's wrists to the distractions of first love that were emphasized in the second installment. Now Parker (played by the 32-year-old Maguire) is entering the know-it-all late teen phase that all of us went through, a bit of unpleasantness that Raimi doesn't bother to play straight. There are 2 major problems with this:
Problem #1: No one wants to hang out with a self-satisfied jerk for 2 1/2 hours, especially if his cockiness is punctuated by displays of invincible physical prowess. (At least the puffed-up bozos we recall from our own painful formative years had weaknesses that were visible to everyone except ourselves.)
Problem #2: Raimi has no idea how to dramatize Parker's shift, except to plaster Maguire with black eye shadow and an outfit to match - he's a comic version of The Cure's Robert Smith - and has him strutting around NYC with a swagger that alternately attracts and repels women of the opposite sex. Like the Black Knight version of Larry Dallas from "Three's Company," Petey's game doesn't match his bloated self-esteem.
Except for Maguire, who’s as steady a presence as Hollywood has, the acting is uniformly terrible, with the typically reliable Church and Grace taking bottom honors. Dunst is vacant and whiny and even J.K. Simmons can’t get his line readings down. Everyone seems to be daydreaming about their paychecks, which is understandable given the lousy script (by Sam and Ivan Raimi and Alvin Sargent).
It would take two directors to pull off this movie - Raimi for the action, Paul Thomas Anderson for the angst - but Raimi himself suffers from Parker's brand of hubris, thinking he can do it all himself without an inkling that he's in far too deep. Psychodrama is, if you’ll pardon the reference, his Kryptonite.
At this point, the franchise can’t go anywhere but down; Raimi and crew are on autopilot and, given the fact that they’ve gotten away with it here without any box office penalty, why should they try at all?
Rating: *
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
The Dead Girl
A shy, neurotic woman finds a body in the woods outside Los Angeles. She hesitates to call the police, although a pattern of similar murders has infected the area. A serial killer is on the loose - a madman who mutilates women before taking their clothing home as a prize.
From the moonbat who finds the body to the victim's prostitute lover, the murder creates a ripple effect as people throughout the L.A. community are touched, horrified - even soothed by the fact that the dead girl wasn't part of their family.
"The Dead Girl," written and directed by Karen Moncrieff, has a fascinating premise: It's a murder mystery that is solved halfway through and a revelatory drama that shows the killing's collateral damage through the eyes of five disparate women. They share little other than a tenuous relationship to the girl (other, of course, than the girl herself, a prostitute named Krista who’s played with brave abandon by Brittany Murphy).
The film is divided into five 15-minute segments - each one focusing on one of the tangential protagonists - that form an emotional collage of women on the verge of a melancholy breakdown.
There's the severely depressed daughter (Toni Collette) of a housebound harpy (Piper Laurie), the severely depressed sister (Rose Byrne) of another missing girl, the severely depressed wife (Mary Beth Hurt) of a shifty husband, Krista's severely depressed mother (Marcia Gay Harden), and, of course, the severely depressed prostitute whose death drives the plot.
As you can imagine, "The Dead Girl" is steeped in sadness; there's hardly a scene that doesn't involve Moncrieff trying to elicit pity from her audience. The screenplay relentlessly victimizes its protagonists in a quest to create multiple intertwined tragedies – a quest that succeeds only as an exercise in masochism.
“The Dead Girl” provides angst without understanding and a clever structure that belies a lack of depth. It's a glacier-paced jigsaw puzzle, a well-framed series of pictures that combine dazzling technical expertise with draggy, saggy emotions. It’s also a feminist equivalent of "Fight Club,” replacing physical savagery with spiritual punishment.
Moncrieff’s brand of naive misanthropy is usually the product of film school, where students are taught to worship at the feet of Kubrick and Peckinpah – masters who laced their screeds with the subversive wit. But the plot machinations of, say, “Dr. Strangelove” or “Straw Dogs” are secondary to development of the central characters (Kubrick's dreadful "A Clockwork Orange" being a rare exception).
Moncreiff, on the other hand, treats her characters like chess pieces in a larger scheme. She’s a relentlessly downbeat filmmaker, the type that is typically makes a prize pupil (film professors are easily gulled by the tragedy of the mundane). Moncrieff, whose previous experience is chockablock with TV gigs at shows like "Silk Stockings" and "Matlock," built up a steady resume in order to get funding for a one-note script she surely wrote at a tender age.
To the film’s credit, its performances are impeccable across the board; every scene is a beautiful acting exercise, starring some of the best performers around. Harden and Collette are heartbreaking, and Moncrieff is wise to limit their stories to roughly 15 minutes; further exposure would lessen their formidable impact.
“The Dead Girl” isn’t a complete waste – it’s just a chilly, unsatisfying drama that layers sadness upon sadness until the audience cries itself to sleep. It’s a grim imitation of reality where no one ever smiles and no one ever wins. The picture is as cold as Krista's body, and about half as lively.
Rating: **
From the moonbat who finds the body to the victim's prostitute lover, the murder creates a ripple effect as people throughout the L.A. community are touched, horrified - even soothed by the fact that the dead girl wasn't part of their family.
"The Dead Girl," written and directed by Karen Moncrieff, has a fascinating premise: It's a murder mystery that is solved halfway through and a revelatory drama that shows the killing's collateral damage through the eyes of five disparate women. They share little other than a tenuous relationship to the girl (other, of course, than the girl herself, a prostitute named Krista who’s played with brave abandon by Brittany Murphy).
The film is divided into five 15-minute segments - each one focusing on one of the tangential protagonists - that form an emotional collage of women on the verge of a melancholy breakdown.
There's the severely depressed daughter (Toni Collette) of a housebound harpy (Piper Laurie), the severely depressed sister (Rose Byrne) of another missing girl, the severely depressed wife (Mary Beth Hurt) of a shifty husband, Krista's severely depressed mother (Marcia Gay Harden), and, of course, the severely depressed prostitute whose death drives the plot.
As you can imagine, "The Dead Girl" is steeped in sadness; there's hardly a scene that doesn't involve Moncrieff trying to elicit pity from her audience. The screenplay relentlessly victimizes its protagonists in a quest to create multiple intertwined tragedies – a quest that succeeds only as an exercise in masochism.
“The Dead Girl” provides angst without understanding and a clever structure that belies a lack of depth. It's a glacier-paced jigsaw puzzle, a well-framed series of pictures that combine dazzling technical expertise with draggy, saggy emotions. It’s also a feminist equivalent of "Fight Club,” replacing physical savagery with spiritual punishment.
Moncrieff’s brand of naive misanthropy is usually the product of film school, where students are taught to worship at the feet of Kubrick and Peckinpah – masters who laced their screeds with the subversive wit. But the plot machinations of, say, “Dr. Strangelove” or “Straw Dogs” are secondary to development of the central characters (Kubrick's dreadful "A Clockwork Orange" being a rare exception).
Moncreiff, on the other hand, treats her characters like chess pieces in a larger scheme. She’s a relentlessly downbeat filmmaker, the type that is typically makes a prize pupil (film professors are easily gulled by the tragedy of the mundane). Moncrieff, whose previous experience is chockablock with TV gigs at shows like "Silk Stockings" and "Matlock," built up a steady resume in order to get funding for a one-note script she surely wrote at a tender age.
To the film’s credit, its performances are impeccable across the board; every scene is a beautiful acting exercise, starring some of the best performers around. Harden and Collette are heartbreaking, and Moncrieff is wise to limit their stories to roughly 15 minutes; further exposure would lessen their formidable impact.
“The Dead Girl” isn’t a complete waste – it’s just a chilly, unsatisfying drama that layers sadness upon sadness until the audience cries itself to sleep. It’s a grim imitation of reality where no one ever smiles and no one ever wins. The picture is as cold as Krista's body, and about half as lively.
Rating: **
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
The Edukators and Dirty Pretty Things
"The Edukators" is a heist movie in which nothing is stolen. "Dirty Pretty Things" is a parable about thievery in which the hero refuses to sell his soul. Both films are paeans to idealism, and in both the protagonists commit horrible deeds that the films portray as heroic.
Both films also come from across the pond, "The Edukators" from Germany and "Dirty Pretty Things" from England - and their anti-capitalist leanings are strident without ever edging into Lars von Trier territory. "The Edukators" makes its point more forcefully, and bluntly, than "Dirty Pretty Things," and becomes much more powerful in the bargain.
In "The Edukators," angry young men Jan (Daniel Bruhl) and Peter (Stipe Erceg) transform their socialist fever into perverse performance art: Their anti-capitalist protests involve breaking into the homes of the obscenely rich, rearranging their furniture into surreal shapes and leaving a threatening note, their favorite being "Your days of plenty are numbered." Their break-ins are horrifying to the victims - far more so than if they had been mere robberies. It is one thing to threaten one's earthly goods, it's another thing to threaten one's entire worldview.
Jan and Peter are naive enough to think that they are initiating a societal shift - they proudly recite newspaper stories about their attacks - but wise enough to know that greater action is needed. Jan has bigger plans for change - his nonviolent terrorism aimed at the entertainment structure of all Europe.
But Jan's bizarre plans, and his friendship with Peter, are in danger. Jan is falling in love with Peter's girlfriend Jule, and while Peter is out of town, the pair executes an impromptu invasion of the home of the industrialist (Burghart Klausner) to whom Jule owes an immeasurable financial debt. Revenge is sweet, but, as in all heist movies, the pair makes a crucial mistake - one that leads to the kidnapping of the industrialist, who is far more complex than he appears.
"The Edukators" is a brilliantly, beautifully filmed drama whose visuals perfectly match its themes of rebellion and lost innocence; Scorcese (the Scorcese of 2007, that is) could take lessons from Weingartner, who pulls off seamless virtuosity without making his shots look like overplanned paintings. The actors move with fluidity and grace, and the love triangle, which is almost impossible to pull off these days, is pitch-perfect. Even Klausner's uber-capitalist contains multitudes: In his youth he too was a socialist rebel, and he admits that he once wished to take down someone like himself.
The ambition of the “The Edukators” is breathtaking, and though its overwrought ending veers toward self-parody, the ship is righted before the final curtain falls. Weingartner has created a near-masterpiece that flexes both brawn and brain, and challenges our assumptions of terrorism, class warfare and the possibilities for social change.
"Dirty Pretty Things" contains a more subdued form of liberalism; its noble hero Okwe (Chiwetel Ejiofor) is an immigrant from Lagos who, in a former life, studied medicine in the United States, then was forced to escape to Britain. Okwe hides from authorities while juggling two jobs, one as a cab driver, another as a hotel porter - all in service of gaining the passport that will allow him to escape his life and return to normalcy.
Enter Senay (Audrey Tautou of "Amelie"), a Turkish expatriate who works with Okwe as a maid at the upscale Baltic Hotel, and who is doggedly pursued by Immigration, to the point where she must go from job to job in order to hide her employment (ridiculous bureaucratic rules provide a recurring theme in the film). Senay allows Okwe to sleep on her couch, and, in exchange, Okwe offers her something tangible to hold onto - a rock of humanity in her decidedly ugly world.
Okwe discovers that the scuzzy hotel manager (Sergi Lopez) is operating a black-market scheme that Okwe refuses to get involved in, although it will save the increasingly desperate Senay. His hesitance to break the law, which stems both from an inherent decency and the ghosts of his haunted past, provides the tenuous pivot on which the movie rests.
While technically an independent film, "Dirty Pretty Things" uses a classic Hollywood platform; The villains are loathsome, the heroes are gallant and the acting is impeccable. Ejiofor is a revelation, his huge, expressive eyes saying a thousand words in every scene, and Tautou, though stuck with an uneven "ethnic" accent (she sounds more like Borat than a native Turk), matches her partner motion for motion; these two share a fine, distant chemistry that manages to cross racial, educational and sexual barriers.
The bigger problem is one that has dogged Frears throughout his career: His insistence on needless glitz and flash. Like “The Grifters,” this is a down-and-dirty story, but he shoots it like a commercial for fine wine. Everything is held neatly in place; even the hotel garage appears to have been designed specifically to store Mercedes sedans. The sumptuous visuals are in the wrong movie - Frears is trying to portray Britain’s vicious underbelly, but he never gets down and dirty; even the assault scenes possess a chilling, surface beauty. He has made a movie for a middle-class audience that wants to pity the impoverished without actually feeling their pain.
And there is a price to be trying to please everybody. The ending is tidy beyond belief, and is entirely driven by director Stephen Frears’s need to reward good and punish evil. It doesn't twist the moral and ethical knife the way a good thriller should. It’s a cheat, a dead-end to a movie that promised far stronger ethical and moral conflicts.
In the end, idealism is not served by either "The Edukators" or "Dirty Pretty Things." In the former, the terrorist actions of Jan and Peter are a natural outflow of their characters; in the latter, the betrayal is a plot device meant to satisfy an audience that desperately wants revenge. "The Edukators" is the superior film, though "Dirty Pretty Things" is not without its own bourgeois charms. Jan and Peter would not be pleased by Frears's approach, but they would undoubtedly be excited by the possibilities: This, they would think, is a baby step toward the revolution.
Ratings:
The Edukators: ****
Dirty Pretty Things: ***
Both films also come from across the pond, "The Edukators" from Germany and "Dirty Pretty Things" from England - and their anti-capitalist leanings are strident without ever edging into Lars von Trier territory. "The Edukators" makes its point more forcefully, and bluntly, than "Dirty Pretty Things," and becomes much more powerful in the bargain.
In "The Edukators," angry young men Jan (Daniel Bruhl) and Peter (Stipe Erceg) transform their socialist fever into perverse performance art: Their anti-capitalist protests involve breaking into the homes of the obscenely rich, rearranging their furniture into surreal shapes and leaving a threatening note, their favorite being "Your days of plenty are numbered." Their break-ins are horrifying to the victims - far more so than if they had been mere robberies. It is one thing to threaten one's earthly goods, it's another thing to threaten one's entire worldview.
Jan and Peter are naive enough to think that they are initiating a societal shift - they proudly recite newspaper stories about their attacks - but wise enough to know that greater action is needed. Jan has bigger plans for change - his nonviolent terrorism aimed at the entertainment structure of all Europe.
But Jan's bizarre plans, and his friendship with Peter, are in danger. Jan is falling in love with Peter's girlfriend Jule, and while Peter is out of town, the pair executes an impromptu invasion of the home of the industrialist (Burghart Klausner) to whom Jule owes an immeasurable financial debt. Revenge is sweet, but, as in all heist movies, the pair makes a crucial mistake - one that leads to the kidnapping of the industrialist, who is far more complex than he appears.
"The Edukators" is a brilliantly, beautifully filmed drama whose visuals perfectly match its themes of rebellion and lost innocence; Scorcese (the Scorcese of 2007, that is) could take lessons from Weingartner, who pulls off seamless virtuosity without making his shots look like overplanned paintings. The actors move with fluidity and grace, and the love triangle, which is almost impossible to pull off these days, is pitch-perfect. Even Klausner's uber-capitalist contains multitudes: In his youth he too was a socialist rebel, and he admits that he once wished to take down someone like himself.
The ambition of the “The Edukators” is breathtaking, and though its overwrought ending veers toward self-parody, the ship is righted before the final curtain falls. Weingartner has created a near-masterpiece that flexes both brawn and brain, and challenges our assumptions of terrorism, class warfare and the possibilities for social change.
"Dirty Pretty Things" contains a more subdued form of liberalism; its noble hero Okwe (Chiwetel Ejiofor) is an immigrant from Lagos who, in a former life, studied medicine in the United States, then was forced to escape to Britain. Okwe hides from authorities while juggling two jobs, one as a cab driver, another as a hotel porter - all in service of gaining the passport that will allow him to escape his life and return to normalcy.
Enter Senay (Audrey Tautou of "Amelie"), a Turkish expatriate who works with Okwe as a maid at the upscale Baltic Hotel, and who is doggedly pursued by Immigration, to the point where she must go from job to job in order to hide her employment (ridiculous bureaucratic rules provide a recurring theme in the film). Senay allows Okwe to sleep on her couch, and, in exchange, Okwe offers her something tangible to hold onto - a rock of humanity in her decidedly ugly world.
Okwe discovers that the scuzzy hotel manager (Sergi Lopez) is operating a black-market scheme that Okwe refuses to get involved in, although it will save the increasingly desperate Senay. His hesitance to break the law, which stems both from an inherent decency and the ghosts of his haunted past, provides the tenuous pivot on which the movie rests.
While technically an independent film, "Dirty Pretty Things" uses a classic Hollywood platform; The villains are loathsome, the heroes are gallant and the acting is impeccable. Ejiofor is a revelation, his huge, expressive eyes saying a thousand words in every scene, and Tautou, though stuck with an uneven "ethnic" accent (she sounds more like Borat than a native Turk), matches her partner motion for motion; these two share a fine, distant chemistry that manages to cross racial, educational and sexual barriers.
The bigger problem is one that has dogged Frears throughout his career: His insistence on needless glitz and flash. Like “The Grifters,” this is a down-and-dirty story, but he shoots it like a commercial for fine wine. Everything is held neatly in place; even the hotel garage appears to have been designed specifically to store Mercedes sedans. The sumptuous visuals are in the wrong movie - Frears is trying to portray Britain’s vicious underbelly, but he never gets down and dirty; even the assault scenes possess a chilling, surface beauty. He has made a movie for a middle-class audience that wants to pity the impoverished without actually feeling their pain.
And there is a price to be trying to please everybody. The ending is tidy beyond belief, and is entirely driven by director Stephen Frears’s need to reward good and punish evil. It doesn't twist the moral and ethical knife the way a good thriller should. It’s a cheat, a dead-end to a movie that promised far stronger ethical and moral conflicts.
In the end, idealism is not served by either "The Edukators" or "Dirty Pretty Things." In the former, the terrorist actions of Jan and Peter are a natural outflow of their characters; in the latter, the betrayal is a plot device meant to satisfy an audience that desperately wants revenge. "The Edukators" is the superior film, though "Dirty Pretty Things" is not without its own bourgeois charms. Jan and Peter would not be pleased by Frears's approach, but they would undoubtedly be excited by the possibilities: This, they would think, is a baby step toward the revolution.
Ratings:
The Edukators: ****
Dirty Pretty Things: ***
Wednesday, July 4, 2007
Blades of Glory
There isn't an actor alive who's better at playing dumb than Will Ferrell.
His last three movies have recycled the same plot: Ferrell's dimwitted but inexplicably talented character - be it a newscaster, race car driver or, in "Blades of Glory," an ice skater - is fired for his stupidity, then redeems himself in spite of (and sometimes because of) his lack of self-awareness.
Likewise, "Blades of Glory" tells the story of the dopey Ferrell (the character's name is irrelevant, as Ferrell's screen persona hasn't changed in years) and Jimmy MacElroy (Jon Heder of "Napoleon Dynamite"), a pair of rival figure skaters who are banished from the sport for fighting after an Olympic competition.
Ferrell and MacElroy pay their penance by taking up day jobs for the ensuing 3 1/2 years, and then find a legal loophole that will allow them to compete once more: If they pair up as doubles, they can re-enter the Olympics and go for the gold.
The two bicker, brawl and mug for the camera as they bond under the tutelage of their coach (Craig T. Nelson) and under the pressure of besting a brother-and-sister duo (Will Arnett of Arrested Development and Amy Poehler of "Saturday Night Live"). Will they triumph? Will their coach find redemption? Will the sun rise in the east?
The plot is as ludicrous as it sounds, there's a DOA love story and the dance sequences are purposefully awful, with lots of obvious CGI and wirework.
Which doesn't mean "Blades of Glory" is bad - it's just loose and lazy; it lives moment-to-moment rather than building to a cohesive whole. I laughed a lot throughout, although I couldn’t help but wonder how Ferrell can keep up this string of identical plotlines without burning out his audience. Sure, he made the eccentric, underrated "Stranger Than Fiction," but Ferrell's bread-and-butter productions have become well-oiled machines, testaments to the actor's easy blankness and gift for improvisation. (It's unlikely that any writer, much less the four hacks credited to "Blades of Glory" could have crafted all of Ferrell's twinkling non sequiturs.)
Many critics have quite reasonably taken issue with the "Glory"s use of gay panic as a plot device, and yes, Ferrell and Heder spend a lot of time facing each other's balls and holding hands in a decidedly non-hetero fashion. Right on cue, the audience I saw it with played along with these shockers, snickering every time Ferrell and Heder were forced to rub their crotches together during a dance sequence.
The conservative pandering is indeed awful, and the crowd's Pavlovian reactions were depressing, but I was surprised at how few of the jokes revolved around homophobia. Most of the humor is character-based, and I appreciated the fact that Ferrell and company were generous to allow Arnett and Poehler to steal every scene they're in. The picture isn't likely to be endorsed by Stonewall any time soon, but its stereotyping is lighthearted enough to give it half of a free pass. (Ferrell's hetero sex addiction is portrayed as far more pathetic than his potential gayness.)
There's much else to appreciate here. I loved the opening montage detailing the main characters' backstories and the comically incestuous relationship between the Ferrell and MacElroy's sibling rivals. Especially noteworthy is a chase scene where Arnett chases Ferrell - on ice skates, no less - through snow drifts, city streets, and, eventually, up an escalator.
"Blades of Glory" isn't going to win over any new converts to Ferrell's style of comedy; it lacks the Busby Berkeley flights of fancy and deep backup cast of "Anchorman" and Heder is no match for "Talledega Nights"s John C. Reilly. It's a treading-water exercise for a comedian who isn't interested in stretching audience expectations. But, at least for now, even a sloppy Ferrell exercise is still worth a look.
Rating: ***
His last three movies have recycled the same plot: Ferrell's dimwitted but inexplicably talented character - be it a newscaster, race car driver or, in "Blades of Glory," an ice skater - is fired for his stupidity, then redeems himself in spite of (and sometimes because of) his lack of self-awareness.
Likewise, "Blades of Glory" tells the story of the dopey Ferrell (the character's name is irrelevant, as Ferrell's screen persona hasn't changed in years) and Jimmy MacElroy (Jon Heder of "Napoleon Dynamite"), a pair of rival figure skaters who are banished from the sport for fighting after an Olympic competition.
Ferrell and MacElroy pay their penance by taking up day jobs for the ensuing 3 1/2 years, and then find a legal loophole that will allow them to compete once more: If they pair up as doubles, they can re-enter the Olympics and go for the gold.
The two bicker, brawl and mug for the camera as they bond under the tutelage of their coach (Craig T. Nelson) and under the pressure of besting a brother-and-sister duo (Will Arnett of Arrested Development and Amy Poehler of "Saturday Night Live"). Will they triumph? Will their coach find redemption? Will the sun rise in the east?
The plot is as ludicrous as it sounds, there's a DOA love story and the dance sequences are purposefully awful, with lots of obvious CGI and wirework.
Which doesn't mean "Blades of Glory" is bad - it's just loose and lazy; it lives moment-to-moment rather than building to a cohesive whole. I laughed a lot throughout, although I couldn’t help but wonder how Ferrell can keep up this string of identical plotlines without burning out his audience. Sure, he made the eccentric, underrated "Stranger Than Fiction," but Ferrell's bread-and-butter productions have become well-oiled machines, testaments to the actor's easy blankness and gift for improvisation. (It's unlikely that any writer, much less the four hacks credited to "Blades of Glory" could have crafted all of Ferrell's twinkling non sequiturs.)
Many critics have quite reasonably taken issue with the "Glory"s use of gay panic as a plot device, and yes, Ferrell and Heder spend a lot of time facing each other's balls and holding hands in a decidedly non-hetero fashion. Right on cue, the audience I saw it with played along with these shockers, snickering every time Ferrell and Heder were forced to rub their crotches together during a dance sequence.
The conservative pandering is indeed awful, and the crowd's Pavlovian reactions were depressing, but I was surprised at how few of the jokes revolved around homophobia. Most of the humor is character-based, and I appreciated the fact that Ferrell and company were generous to allow Arnett and Poehler to steal every scene they're in. The picture isn't likely to be endorsed by Stonewall any time soon, but its stereotyping is lighthearted enough to give it half of a free pass. (Ferrell's hetero sex addiction is portrayed as far more pathetic than his potential gayness.)
There's much else to appreciate here. I loved the opening montage detailing the main characters' backstories and the comically incestuous relationship between the Ferrell and MacElroy's sibling rivals. Especially noteworthy is a chase scene where Arnett chases Ferrell - on ice skates, no less - through snow drifts, city streets, and, eventually, up an escalator.
"Blades of Glory" isn't going to win over any new converts to Ferrell's style of comedy; it lacks the Busby Berkeley flights of fancy and deep backup cast of "Anchorman" and Heder is no match for "Talledega Nights"s John C. Reilly. It's a treading-water exercise for a comedian who isn't interested in stretching audience expectations. But, at least for now, even a sloppy Ferrell exercise is still worth a look.
Rating: ***
Monday, July 2, 2007
Idiocracy
Right now, the most intelligent among us are too busy, self-reflective or ambitious to reproduce, leaving genetic power to the least intelligent among us, and if current trends continue, in 500 years the human race will be barely sentient.
Such is the premise of Mike Judge's righteous comedy "Idiocracy," a blistering satire of dumbed-down commercialist culture that takes us to task for allowing vapidity to dominate entertainment and news.
After a military hibernation experiment that goes haywire, Joe Bauers (Luke Wilson) wakes up in the year 2505 to find a society that can barely function; everyone is so stupid that the national infrastructure is collapsing; no one even knows how to bury the garbage.
Therefore Joe, a man chosen for the hibernation test because of his average intelligence, awakens to find that he's the smartest man alive. Joe's IQ of 105 placing him about 35 points above that of the common man, who has become addicted to TV shows like "Ow! My Balls!" (a program that, stunningly, takes "America's Funniest Home Videos to even greater depths of inanity).
Outcast as an effeminate freak, Joe, along with fellow time-traveler Rita (Maya Rudolph) must use his now-exceptional smarts to escape law enforcement and find a time machine that will take him back to 2005, a time where the public (its 2004 re-election of George W. Bush notwithstanding) is still somewhat functional.
Like all great satires, "Idiocracy" is about the present rather than the past; it's a Swiftian exercise in controlled rage - a declaration that being smart is fast becoming a cultural crime. We live in an age where "The Secret" is the most popular book in print, evolution is doubted by a majority of the populace and horoscopes guide the lives of millions. It is, Judge argues, the dawning of another Dark Ages, and the teeming masses are to blame.
After test screenings resulted in mass walkouts, 20th-Century Fox quite reasonably pulled the theatrical plug on "Idiocracy" before it could see the light of day - a maneuver that serves as proof of Judge's point (this is, after all, the same studio that released the box-office hits "Big Momma's House" and "Dr. Doolittle 2").
It's hard to blame the test audiences for walking out; Judge is spitting in the face of everything that many of them hold dear - which is exactly what satire is meant to do. It's a quick, dirty strike against the heart of America, and I loved it.
Sure, Judge over-reaches at certain points, the special effects are laughably bad and the romantic subplot between Joe and Rita is unnecessary and forced. But these are tiny quibbles alongside the film's prescient power.
"Idiocracy" is not for the faint of mind, and its laughs catch in the throat, which is right where Judge wants them. This is social observation of the highest level - a movie that would have done Voltaire himself proud.
Rating: ****
Such is the premise of Mike Judge's righteous comedy "Idiocracy," a blistering satire of dumbed-down commercialist culture that takes us to task for allowing vapidity to dominate entertainment and news.
After a military hibernation experiment that goes haywire, Joe Bauers (Luke Wilson) wakes up in the year 2505 to find a society that can barely function; everyone is so stupid that the national infrastructure is collapsing; no one even knows how to bury the garbage.
Therefore Joe, a man chosen for the hibernation test because of his average intelligence, awakens to find that he's the smartest man alive. Joe's IQ of 105 placing him about 35 points above that of the common man, who has become addicted to TV shows like "Ow! My Balls!" (a program that, stunningly, takes "America's Funniest Home Videos to even greater depths of inanity).
Outcast as an effeminate freak, Joe, along with fellow time-traveler Rita (Maya Rudolph) must use his now-exceptional smarts to escape law enforcement and find a time machine that will take him back to 2005, a time where the public (its 2004 re-election of George W. Bush notwithstanding) is still somewhat functional.
Like all great satires, "Idiocracy" is about the present rather than the past; it's a Swiftian exercise in controlled rage - a declaration that being smart is fast becoming a cultural crime. We live in an age where "The Secret" is the most popular book in print, evolution is doubted by a majority of the populace and horoscopes guide the lives of millions. It is, Judge argues, the dawning of another Dark Ages, and the teeming masses are to blame.
After test screenings resulted in mass walkouts, 20th-Century Fox quite reasonably pulled the theatrical plug on "Idiocracy" before it could see the light of day - a maneuver that serves as proof of Judge's point (this is, after all, the same studio that released the box-office hits "Big Momma's House" and "Dr. Doolittle 2").
It's hard to blame the test audiences for walking out; Judge is spitting in the face of everything that many of them hold dear - which is exactly what satire is meant to do. It's a quick, dirty strike against the heart of America, and I loved it.
Sure, Judge over-reaches at certain points, the special effects are laughably bad and the romantic subplot between Joe and Rita is unnecessary and forced. But these are tiny quibbles alongside the film's prescient power.
"Idiocracy" is not for the faint of mind, and its laughs catch in the throat, which is right where Judge wants them. This is social observation of the highest level - a movie that would have done Voltaire himself proud.
Rating: ****
Sunday, July 1, 2007
House of Sand and Fog
As I watched "House of Sand and Fog," I couldn't help but be reminded of Chris Smith's 2001 comic documentary "Home Movie," which chronicled eccentric people with outrageous homes. Smith's subjects had poured their souls into these houses, and in turn the houses had become external manifestations of their owners' souls.
The California home in "House of Sand and Fog," by contrast, is a fairly nondescript little split-level that offers a very modest view of the Pacific Ocean. This house has infiltrated the souls of its main characters; unlike the free spirits of "Home Movie," the owners of "House of Sand and Fog" find themselves possessed by the home itself.
Kathy (Jennifer Connelly) is a severe depressive, a recovering alcoholic whose husband has left her months ago. The only connection to her family is her house, which she inherited from her late father. The rest of her family, which lives across the country, does not know of her separation and subsequent mental collapse. They acknowledge her past alcoholism (it appears that she has been clean for some time), but are too distant to know about the divorce or the fact that Kathy is being forced to clean houses to make ends meet.
Kathy doesn't pay much attention to her own life, either; she has a stack of mail piled near her front door - mail that includes impending eviction notices for unpaid tax bills. The tax bills are a bureaucratic mistake, but Kathy hasn't bothered to respond to them, and before she knows it, she is kicked out of her house by county sheriffs. One of them, Lester (Ron Eldard) takes kindly to the beautiful, lost woman whose house is being taken from her; he offers to help her move and later, gives her a place to stay.
Colonel Behrani (Ben Kingsley) supports a wife and son by working a pair of menial jobs - by day as a construction worker, by night as a convenience store clerk. He's an exile from Iran - a once-powerful dignitary who, it is hinted, had to move to the United States to escape the Ayatollah. Behrani is a noble man whose family and friends have no idea that he has been forced into a life of blue-collar desperation.
Behrani finds a perfect escape hatch from his frustrating life when he spots a house that is being auctioned for a mere pittance, a house whose owner seems to have neglected to pay her taxes, and whose true value far exceeds its auction price.
Thus begins a story of obsession, desperation, greed and the humanity that binds the bitterest of enemies. It's a matter of pride between Kathy and Behrani, both of whom have staked their personal lives on this house. It's a battle between Lester (whose interest in Kathy evolves from squinty-eyed pity to romantic infatuation) and Behrani - whose mutual arrogance and intransigence leads to unspeakable tragedy. It's a parable about greed; Behrani can do the right thing by selling the house back to the county for fair market value if only he weren't so attached to the financial opportunity. It's a redemptive story about Behrani's wife Nadi (Shohreh Aghdashloo), whose maternal instincts drive her to rescue Kathy from her downward spiral.
"House of Sand and Fog" also operates on a subtle political level; we have Eldard's uniformed all-American shaking down Kingsley's downtrodden Muslim for property that by all rights belongs to him - but that the American is claiming on behalf of a tenuous moral authority. The parallels to American/Middle-East foreign policy are too obvious to be accidental, and it is a credit to director Vadim Perelman and novelist Andre Dubus III (whose novel provided the source material) that the historic undertones don't overshadow the characters or plot.
This is not a perfect movie. Perelman is a first-time director, which means we get at least a dozen ponderous shots of fog rolling through the sky, over the ground and through the exterior of the house. His utilitarian direction works well in the dialogue-heavy scenes, which allow the uniformly excellent cast (Aghdashloo being the very best among them) to interact in exclusively human terms. But his knuckle-dragging portent and full-moon obsession would look more at home in "Teen Wolf" than in a top-notch drama like this.
It was a gutsy move by Dreamworks to produce a somber drama like "House of Sand and Fog" given its rookie director and indie-veteran cast. The release paid artistic dividends - here is the rare studio movie that works on almost every level while giving full respect to a multiplex audience. It is also the finest Hollywood release of 2003.
Rating: ****
The California home in "House of Sand and Fog," by contrast, is a fairly nondescript little split-level that offers a very modest view of the Pacific Ocean. This house has infiltrated the souls of its main characters; unlike the free spirits of "Home Movie," the owners of "House of Sand and Fog" find themselves possessed by the home itself.
Kathy (Jennifer Connelly) is a severe depressive, a recovering alcoholic whose husband has left her months ago. The only connection to her family is her house, which she inherited from her late father. The rest of her family, which lives across the country, does not know of her separation and subsequent mental collapse. They acknowledge her past alcoholism (it appears that she has been clean for some time), but are too distant to know about the divorce or the fact that Kathy is being forced to clean houses to make ends meet.
Kathy doesn't pay much attention to her own life, either; she has a stack of mail piled near her front door - mail that includes impending eviction notices for unpaid tax bills. The tax bills are a bureaucratic mistake, but Kathy hasn't bothered to respond to them, and before she knows it, she is kicked out of her house by county sheriffs. One of them, Lester (Ron Eldard) takes kindly to the beautiful, lost woman whose house is being taken from her; he offers to help her move and later, gives her a place to stay.
Colonel Behrani (Ben Kingsley) supports a wife and son by working a pair of menial jobs - by day as a construction worker, by night as a convenience store clerk. He's an exile from Iran - a once-powerful dignitary who, it is hinted, had to move to the United States to escape the Ayatollah. Behrani is a noble man whose family and friends have no idea that he has been forced into a life of blue-collar desperation.
Behrani finds a perfect escape hatch from his frustrating life when he spots a house that is being auctioned for a mere pittance, a house whose owner seems to have neglected to pay her taxes, and whose true value far exceeds its auction price.
Thus begins a story of obsession, desperation, greed and the humanity that binds the bitterest of enemies. It's a matter of pride between Kathy and Behrani, both of whom have staked their personal lives on this house. It's a battle between Lester (whose interest in Kathy evolves from squinty-eyed pity to romantic infatuation) and Behrani - whose mutual arrogance and intransigence leads to unspeakable tragedy. It's a parable about greed; Behrani can do the right thing by selling the house back to the county for fair market value if only he weren't so attached to the financial opportunity. It's a redemptive story about Behrani's wife Nadi (Shohreh Aghdashloo), whose maternal instincts drive her to rescue Kathy from her downward spiral.
"House of Sand and Fog" also operates on a subtle political level; we have Eldard's uniformed all-American shaking down Kingsley's downtrodden Muslim for property that by all rights belongs to him - but that the American is claiming on behalf of a tenuous moral authority. The parallels to American/Middle-East foreign policy are too obvious to be accidental, and it is a credit to director Vadim Perelman and novelist Andre Dubus III (whose novel provided the source material) that the historic undertones don't overshadow the characters or plot.
This is not a perfect movie. Perelman is a first-time director, which means we get at least a dozen ponderous shots of fog rolling through the sky, over the ground and through the exterior of the house. His utilitarian direction works well in the dialogue-heavy scenes, which allow the uniformly excellent cast (Aghdashloo being the very best among them) to interact in exclusively human terms. But his knuckle-dragging portent and full-moon obsession would look more at home in "Teen Wolf" than in a top-notch drama like this.
It was a gutsy move by Dreamworks to produce a somber drama like "House of Sand and Fog" given its rookie director and indie-veteran cast. The release paid artistic dividends - here is the rare studio movie that works on almost every level while giving full respect to a multiplex audience. It is also the finest Hollywood release of 2003.
Rating: ****
Sunday, June 24, 2007
Stroszek
Werner Herzog's 1977 masterpiece "Stroszek" is a tragic comedy, a beautifully-rendered snapshot of Berlin slums, a heartbreaking love story, a clinical study of mental illness, a condemnation of the American Dream.
It sounds a bit much, especially given Herzog's reputed misanthropy and the preponderance of foreign films that specialize in demonizing the United States (von Trier's "Dogville" being the worst of the recent bunch).
But "Stroszek" isn't interested in the cruelty of capitalism as it is the naivete of Stroszek himself (played with tragic reserve by the troubled actor Bruno S.)
Stroszek simply doesn't fit in anywhere. A recently-released mental patient who's apparently been in and out of institutions because of his alcoholism, he quickly befriends Eva (Eva Mattes), another lost soul who can't escape her abusive pimps. Stroszek also reconnects with his seeming guardian angel - an elderly neighbor Mr. Scheitz (Charles Scheitz) who has tended to Stroszek's belongings during his self-pronounced "vacation."
The hypnotic first half of the picture paints the portrait of a seedy Berlin slum from which nothing good can emerge - but Herzog's subtle camerawork (featuring a great deal of perfectly-framed static shots) tells of an impending miracle - surely, nothing can possibly get worse.
Indeed, hope is just around the corner; Stroszek simply needs to hitch his star to the right wagon. Mr. Scheitz is planning to move to rural Wisconsin, where his nephew has promised a good life away from the gray violence of 1970s Germany.
After one last attack from Eva's pimps, the trio are off to Railroad Flats - a dismal, rural burg that is - if anything - darker than Berlin. It's a place whose few denizens bide their ample time telling stories of unsolved murders and tawdry sex jokes, a place from which just about anyone would be desperate to escape.
But Stroszek's hope, and his love for Eva, are such that he commits to the town, buying a prefabricated mobile home and an expensive color TV that neither of them can afford. But it will work out - it has to. America is the promised land, believes Stroszek - even for a non-English-speaking, alcoholic immigrant with a prostitute girlfriend.
Of course he is doomed to fail, but, unlike the programmatic "Dogville," "Stroszek" never wishes the worst for its character in the hopes of making grand Statements. It simply observes, from a distance, the tragedy of mistaken innocence. Stroszek is tabula rasa - a man who only wants to play his accordion in a public square - not to exchange bawdy anecdotes with auto mechanics.
In its way, "Stroszek" is the real-world counterpoint to Robert Zemeckis's 1994 comic adventure "Forrest Gump," where hopeful dimness is prized, rewarded, beloved - where an idiot can find salvation in rural America despite a promiscuous girlfriend and an eccentric best friend.
Herzog's vison is far more honest - he plays cynical Candide to Zemeckis's idealistic Pangloss, yet Herzog still manages to keep his sense of humor intact. Despite the tragedies, and there are many, in "Stroszek," there are surreal slices of humor that surface even during the film's great and terrible climax - which Herzog counters with langorous shots of a dancing chicken.
Theories abound about the point of the chicken, a novelty act who dances on cue when someone drops a quarter into a machine. Nonsensical on the surface, the chicken probably represents Herzog's Skinner-ian vision of humanity: Like the chicken, we are all products of operant conditioning. Like Stroszek, we are all destined - for good or ill - to follow the paths set forth from our births.
Halfway through the film, Stroszek is shown a prematurely-born baby, whose grip reflexes are so strong that it won't let go of a doctor's hands, even as the doctor yanks it into the air. Stroszek is the adult version of the baby - a confused child looking for something - anything - human to grasp onto. But no one will hold onto the poor man; his worth as a human being is disregarded by everyone save the pathetic, senile Mr. Scheitz.
In any other film, Stroszek would be rescued, validated, saved. Not in Berlin. Not in Railroad Flats. Not, Herzog might say, anywhere.
Rating: *****
It sounds a bit much, especially given Herzog's reputed misanthropy and the preponderance of foreign films that specialize in demonizing the United States (von Trier's "Dogville" being the worst of the recent bunch).
But "Stroszek" isn't interested in the cruelty of capitalism as it is the naivete of Stroszek himself (played with tragic reserve by the troubled actor Bruno S.)
Stroszek simply doesn't fit in anywhere. A recently-released mental patient who's apparently been in and out of institutions because of his alcoholism, he quickly befriends Eva (Eva Mattes), another lost soul who can't escape her abusive pimps. Stroszek also reconnects with his seeming guardian angel - an elderly neighbor Mr. Scheitz (Charles Scheitz) who has tended to Stroszek's belongings during his self-pronounced "vacation."
The hypnotic first half of the picture paints the portrait of a seedy Berlin slum from which nothing good can emerge - but Herzog's subtle camerawork (featuring a great deal of perfectly-framed static shots) tells of an impending miracle - surely, nothing can possibly get worse.
Indeed, hope is just around the corner; Stroszek simply needs to hitch his star to the right wagon. Mr. Scheitz is planning to move to rural Wisconsin, where his nephew has promised a good life away from the gray violence of 1970s Germany.
After one last attack from Eva's pimps, the trio are off to Railroad Flats - a dismal, rural burg that is - if anything - darker than Berlin. It's a place whose few denizens bide their ample time telling stories of unsolved murders and tawdry sex jokes, a place from which just about anyone would be desperate to escape.
But Stroszek's hope, and his love for Eva, are such that he commits to the town, buying a prefabricated mobile home and an expensive color TV that neither of them can afford. But it will work out - it has to. America is the promised land, believes Stroszek - even for a non-English-speaking, alcoholic immigrant with a prostitute girlfriend.
Of course he is doomed to fail, but, unlike the programmatic "Dogville," "Stroszek" never wishes the worst for its character in the hopes of making grand Statements. It simply observes, from a distance, the tragedy of mistaken innocence. Stroszek is tabula rasa - a man who only wants to play his accordion in a public square - not to exchange bawdy anecdotes with auto mechanics.
In its way, "Stroszek" is the real-world counterpoint to Robert Zemeckis's 1994 comic adventure "Forrest Gump," where hopeful dimness is prized, rewarded, beloved - where an idiot can find salvation in rural America despite a promiscuous girlfriend and an eccentric best friend.
Herzog's vison is far more honest - he plays cynical Candide to Zemeckis's idealistic Pangloss, yet Herzog still manages to keep his sense of humor intact. Despite the tragedies, and there are many, in "Stroszek," there are surreal slices of humor that surface even during the film's great and terrible climax - which Herzog counters with langorous shots of a dancing chicken.
Theories abound about the point of the chicken, a novelty act who dances on cue when someone drops a quarter into a machine. Nonsensical on the surface, the chicken probably represents Herzog's Skinner-ian vision of humanity: Like the chicken, we are all products of operant conditioning. Like Stroszek, we are all destined - for good or ill - to follow the paths set forth from our births.
Halfway through the film, Stroszek is shown a prematurely-born baby, whose grip reflexes are so strong that it won't let go of a doctor's hands, even as the doctor yanks it into the air. Stroszek is the adult version of the baby - a confused child looking for something - anything - human to grasp onto. But no one will hold onto the poor man; his worth as a human being is disregarded by everyone save the pathetic, senile Mr. Scheitz.
In any other film, Stroszek would be rescued, validated, saved. Not in Berlin. Not in Railroad Flats. Not, Herzog might say, anywhere.
Rating: *****
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
Fracture
One of the best ways to gauge the dullness of a movie is when it's easier to focus more on the product placement than on the story.
"Fracture" is just such a movie.
Marketed as a legal thriller about the perfect murder, "Fracture" is actually a somnolescent drama about a hyperintelligent psycho (Anthony Hopkins - who else?) who goes mano-a-mano with a stud prosecutor (Ryan Gosling) with a 97% conviction rate.
Gosling's character, Willy Beachum, is on the fast track to junior partnership in a ritzy L.A. law firm, but gets sidetracked by an attempted homicide case that seems like a slam-dunk. The police have a signed a confession from Hopkins's Ted Crawford - a shady millionaire engineer - and it looks like a simple guilt-and-conviction quickie.
As the movie's trailers make clear, Crawford has very deliberately shot his wife in the head for her repeated infidelities with - surprise! - the hostage negotiator (Billy Burke) who later attended to his arrest. Thanks to the negotiator's intimidating presence during his questioning, Crawford successfully gets the confession thrown out, leaving Beachum with precious little evidence to present to the court.
Following that bombshell, "Fracture" doesn't offer any more twists than an average episode of "Law and Order." Gosling wanders around for what seems like forever, searching for evidence that he can't find, while Hopkins makes taunting phone calls to his home and office. There's a ponderous love story with a senior partner in Beachum's future employer and ethical crises of conscience, both of which which gives director Gregory Hoblit plenty of time to shoot mini-commercials featuring Spint cell phones and Macintosh computers.
On the plus side, the script, by Daniel Pyne and Glen Gers, gives Hopkins a gleeful chance to ham it up, which provides blessed slivers of comic relief and the picture's best dialogue. Hopkins isn't taking this sucker seriously, and he exposes the ponderous Gosling as a talentless blank; he's one of the few Hollywood actors who can get upstaged by a laptop.
But the ending...dear Lord, the ending. I'm not hesitant to give away plot points for stinkers like "Fracture," but explaining its denouement would render such disbelief, dear reader, that I'd have to take the blame for you smashing the computer monitor you're looking at right now. Suffice it to say that the movie simply stops dead in its tracks: It's as if Hoblit realized that he'd taken almost 2 hours on a TV-movie story and immediately pulled the plug to avoid further embarrassment.
Forget the movie's murder victim: The true injured parties are Sprint and Apple, which paid a king's ransom to be associated with this crappy dirge. Right now their marketing departments have to be scratching their heads in disbelief - they may as well have cross-promoted with Halliburton.
Rating: **
"Fracture" is just such a movie.
Marketed as a legal thriller about the perfect murder, "Fracture" is actually a somnolescent drama about a hyperintelligent psycho (Anthony Hopkins - who else?) who goes mano-a-mano with a stud prosecutor (Ryan Gosling) with a 97% conviction rate.
Gosling's character, Willy Beachum, is on the fast track to junior partnership in a ritzy L.A. law firm, but gets sidetracked by an attempted homicide case that seems like a slam-dunk. The police have a signed a confession from Hopkins's Ted Crawford - a shady millionaire engineer - and it looks like a simple guilt-and-conviction quickie.
As the movie's trailers make clear, Crawford has very deliberately shot his wife in the head for her repeated infidelities with - surprise! - the hostage negotiator (Billy Burke) who later attended to his arrest. Thanks to the negotiator's intimidating presence during his questioning, Crawford successfully gets the confession thrown out, leaving Beachum with precious little evidence to present to the court.
Following that bombshell, "Fracture" doesn't offer any more twists than an average episode of "Law and Order." Gosling wanders around for what seems like forever, searching for evidence that he can't find, while Hopkins makes taunting phone calls to his home and office. There's a ponderous love story with a senior partner in Beachum's future employer and ethical crises of conscience, both of which which gives director Gregory Hoblit plenty of time to shoot mini-commercials featuring Spint cell phones and Macintosh computers.
On the plus side, the script, by Daniel Pyne and Glen Gers, gives Hopkins a gleeful chance to ham it up, which provides blessed slivers of comic relief and the picture's best dialogue. Hopkins isn't taking this sucker seriously, and he exposes the ponderous Gosling as a talentless blank; he's one of the few Hollywood actors who can get upstaged by a laptop.
But the ending...dear Lord, the ending. I'm not hesitant to give away plot points for stinkers like "Fracture," but explaining its denouement would render such disbelief, dear reader, that I'd have to take the blame for you smashing the computer monitor you're looking at right now. Suffice it to say that the movie simply stops dead in its tracks: It's as if Hoblit realized that he'd taken almost 2 hours on a TV-movie story and immediately pulled the plug to avoid further embarrassment.
Forget the movie's murder victim: The true injured parties are Sprint and Apple, which paid a king's ransom to be associated with this crappy dirge. Right now their marketing departments have to be scratching their heads in disbelief - they may as well have cross-promoted with Halliburton.
Rating: **
Sunday, June 17, 2007
Thumbsucker
"Thumbsucker" is the latest in a mini-trend of high school movies that struggle fiercely to dismantle the coming-of-age teen offerings that sustained Generation X through the '80s and '90s.
A spiritual sister to "Brick," the excrutiatingly arch tale of a baby gumshoe with a sadistic streak, "Thumbsucker" paints a stone-faced portrait of adolescence, starring ineffectual teachers and absentee parents. Both pictures aim to flatter teen audiences by portraying their peer group as hardened wiseguys and adults as self-absorbed fools - but they're so atonal and flat that it's hard to imagine teens getting turned on.
In "Thumbucker," Lou Taylor Pucci plays Justin Cobb, a morose loner who can't maintain a decent GPA, land a girlfriend or perform on his school debate team. Justin is intelligent but depressed and sexually frustrated - conditions suffered by almost everyone I knew in high school, geeks and jocks alike.
The kid is deemed an extreme case, though, and after an intervention by the principal and his debate team coach (a toned-down Vince Vaughn), Justin goes on Ritalin, which turns him into a hypercompetitive jerk. Brilliant in debate but lacking in conviction, he becomes an extroverted, silver-tongued monster: We can envision him one day becoming a talk-radio gasbag - a slicker, smarter Rush Limbaugh.
Despite its clever execution of a midstream character shift, "Thumbsucker" can't escape the trappings of its dated predecessors. Justin inevitably finds redemption by quitting his meds and preparing for college and - we are led to believe - a life of endless discovery. Little wonder he doesn't hit the prom with Molly Ringwold or confront his father over a crashed Ferrari.
The conventional message of the picture - that psychotropic drugs are unnatural and dangerous - is papered over by a dreamlike, fragmented, stoner/fugue-state narrative - one that tricks the audience into thinking that it's more substantial than it is. "Thumbsucker" doesn't quite collapse under its own weight, but the stilts that support it creak and sway, and the ending reveals the whole enterprise as an abstract feel-good comedy: Andrei Tarkovsky meets John Hughes.
Riding shotgun are the dysfunctional-suburban cliches of "American Beauty," There's a foul-mouthed kid brother, a fantasy girl who trades her body for experience and experimentation, a hippie dentist (Keanu Reeves, in Johnny Utah mode) and a mother who's obsessed with a cheesy TV actor (Benjamin Bratt).
Worse, "Thumbsucker" demands that we like a decidedly unpleasant main character: Justin's selfishness is maintained throughout, with or without the Ritalin, and his reward goes down like bitter medicine. Vince Vaughn's Mr. Geary, with his gentle idealism and frumpy clothes, is the best character in the whole picture. Too bad he spends most of the movie on the sidelines and out of the play.
Rating: **
A spiritual sister to "Brick," the excrutiatingly arch tale of a baby gumshoe with a sadistic streak, "Thumbsucker" paints a stone-faced portrait of adolescence, starring ineffectual teachers and absentee parents. Both pictures aim to flatter teen audiences by portraying their peer group as hardened wiseguys and adults as self-absorbed fools - but they're so atonal and flat that it's hard to imagine teens getting turned on.
In "Thumbucker," Lou Taylor Pucci plays Justin Cobb, a morose loner who can't maintain a decent GPA, land a girlfriend or perform on his school debate team. Justin is intelligent but depressed and sexually frustrated - conditions suffered by almost everyone I knew in high school, geeks and jocks alike.
The kid is deemed an extreme case, though, and after an intervention by the principal and his debate team coach (a toned-down Vince Vaughn), Justin goes on Ritalin, which turns him into a hypercompetitive jerk. Brilliant in debate but lacking in conviction, he becomes an extroverted, silver-tongued monster: We can envision him one day becoming a talk-radio gasbag - a slicker, smarter Rush Limbaugh.
Despite its clever execution of a midstream character shift, "Thumbsucker" can't escape the trappings of its dated predecessors. Justin inevitably finds redemption by quitting his meds and preparing for college and - we are led to believe - a life of endless discovery. Little wonder he doesn't hit the prom with Molly Ringwold or confront his father over a crashed Ferrari.
The conventional message of the picture - that psychotropic drugs are unnatural and dangerous - is papered over by a dreamlike, fragmented, stoner/fugue-state narrative - one that tricks the audience into thinking that it's more substantial than it is. "Thumbsucker" doesn't quite collapse under its own weight, but the stilts that support it creak and sway, and the ending reveals the whole enterprise as an abstract feel-good comedy: Andrei Tarkovsky meets John Hughes.
Riding shotgun are the dysfunctional-suburban cliches of "American Beauty," There's a foul-mouthed kid brother, a fantasy girl who trades her body for experience and experimentation, a hippie dentist (Keanu Reeves, in Johnny Utah mode) and a mother who's obsessed with a cheesy TV actor (Benjamin Bratt).
Worse, "Thumbsucker" demands that we like a decidedly unpleasant main character: Justin's selfishness is maintained throughout, with or without the Ritalin, and his reward goes down like bitter medicine. Vince Vaughn's Mr. Geary, with his gentle idealism and frumpy clothes, is the best character in the whole picture. Too bad he spends most of the movie on the sidelines and out of the play.
Rating: **
Friday, June 8, 2007
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