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: *
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