lion_and_boar Reviews

Rocket Science (2007)

best Asian American movie I've seen this year

[8/10 · 28 May 2008]

Seriously. I have to agree with the writer of the review at the top of the string of reviews. There's insight and brilliance in the script and in the direction. Movies about high school kids will draw comparisons to all the high school films that preceded it, from Hughes to Apatow. Americans, we take our high school years very seriously...especially after we graduate. And we all have our favorite movies that deal with those four years of our lives (mine: "Donnie Darko," "Rushmore," and "Election"). Given time, I think "Rocket Science" will settle somewhere between "Election" and "Napolean Dynamite," for me.

"Rocket Science" is unique if you're willing to look beyond the surface similarities. Yes, this movie has a young protagonist who wants to overcome the odds to get the girl, with the help of friends, with interference from an antagonistic sibling, and parents who just don't seem to understand. That's practically a classical form by now. Euripides could fill in that outline.

Already, there are 4 pages of reviews and I can only add this: the roles of the Asian Americans that writer and director Jeffrey Blitz carved out deserve comment. And that comment is: sweet! Astonishing, really. Someone mentioned "Juno" in these reviews and how "Rocket Science" achieved where "Juno" may have fell short. I skipped "Juno" but listened to at least three separate discussions on public radio and on the local AM stations about the Chinese-baby line used in the promotions. I understand that, in the context of the movie, it wasn't so bad. Nothing nearly that clumsy in "Rocket Science."

Two Asian American actors get speaking roles and their lines are often hilarious: Stephen Park as Judge Pete who is jovial for no good reason and Aaron Yoo as his son, Heston, who crosses that line from admiring muscly dudes to really admiring them. The roles are clearly written as Asian American roles. In fact, father and son are identified, specifically, as Korean American, highlighted by Judge Pete's wailing of "ummah" in a scene where the judge is not so jovial. Blitz does wonderful work in identifying the characters as Asian American while not announcing their scenes as "The Asian Scenes." The jokes come, but not at their expense. There's a funny line about the casserole they bring to dinner which I won't spoil for those who haven't seen the movie yet. The exchange says more about the mother, aptly played by Lisbeth Bartlett, and her appetite for the exotic than the Asian-ness of her guests.

Later in the film, the protagonist and Heston pair up in a speech competition, and employing a technique suggested by his school counselor to quell the stammer, Hal decides to affect an accent. The scene is brilliantly written, directed and edited. The last time I was surprised by how loud I laughed in a movie was when Bart had a full-frontal scene in "The Simpsons." There's also a scene with that same counselor speaking from home to Hal on the phone. There is a shot that includes his significant other who is Asian. It's uncanny (or is it uncannily canny). The casting: she's a good looking woman and, by most measures, he did better than his station or his looks. The composition: she is positioned in a way that suggests detachment and self-absorption, showing no interest in the conversation. She's in a bathrobe, trimming her toenails (or something similar) on the couch, displaying a level of comfort, in particular with her body, many Asians would find immodest and not-so-classy. A director with less skill would have had any Asian actress fiddling around in the background. Jeffrey Blitz creates something as precise as something Wes Anderson put on film, without the elements becoming ornamental.

Yes, there are jokes in "Rocket Science," but it's not the joke-gag-joke rabbit punches of Apatow and his bunch and none of that numbing repetitive dissonance of their adult language spoken by what we're supposed to believe are goofy high school kids. They write as if they are haunted by moments from their high school years in which they could have uttered something clever and snappy but the words came only after dinner. Another memorable scene in "Rocket Science:" Hal visits the principal's office at a private school, and while he waits there, he discusses 2nd base with a girl that could be a delinquent. The girl's final remark is hilarious. And you believe it is something that could be said by a girl who was sent to the principal's office.

Never Forever (2007)

Vera Farmiga...bless her heart

[7/10 · 17 March 2008]

Vera Farmiga is one of those rare actors that is emotionally present in roles that require vulnerability and honesty. I remember seeing her first in that short-lived TV series "Roar." She alone among all the actors in the cast that included a young Heath Ledger seemed to project real emotions in a series that was flirting close to "Xena" territory.

So Director Gina Kim could not have found a better actor to play the role of Sophie, a woman who must make difficult choices involving two men and their respective worlds. Much will be made in Asian American circles about the intimate scenes Farmiga has with men of Asian descent. Beyond the novelty of such pairings in film, these scenes underscore one of the peculiar aspects of the movie: while the men in these scenes go through the (ahem) motions, Farmiga actually acts.

That disparity is apparent in almost every scene Farmiga has with the Asian actors. While the male leads, Jung-woo Ha and David McInnis, are dutiful journeymen in their roles, they don't reach the honesty that Farmiga is able to bare. Against Farmiga's acting, Ha's and McInnis's performances come across almost as recitation.

I can see Ha's delivery fitting seamlessly in a cutesy Korean miniseries. Someone should tell male actors not to grip their hair with both hands when the scene calls for inner turmoil. It comes off as pantomime. That "someone" should have been the director. While plot and composition worked well, I found Kim's direction of the acting lacking. Perhaps she was working within the limitations of the acting abilities of the male leads. In that particular case, she should have recast those roles.

The lapses in the direction of the actors are apparent when lines are spoken by the male leads. There is an odd stiffness to the delivery that sounds "off" to native-speakers and those of us who immigrated to the States at a young age. Something in the cadence and intonation that distinguishes someone reading Shakespeare and someone speaking as Hamlet. Ha may have had an English tutor in Korea that spent too much time in-country, because he actually does a fine job with lines he speaks in Korean. I marvel at actors who can truly act in two different languages. Sidow and Streep easily come to mind.

Kim isn't a native speaker and so she will have to develop a sensitivity to the sound of spoken English as other non-native directors have had to do. That "ear" is what she will have to develop if she is going to be casting less-gifted or less-experienced talent. Ang Lee had the same problem in his early English language movies and those actors fresh out of Juilliard. It's the difference between Jean-Pierre Jeunet directing Dominique Pinon in French and Jeunet and Pinon, respectively, in English. "Alien: Resurrection" was a just an action movie and the weird delivery by Pinon and some of the supporting cast was noticeable. (Sigourney Weaver made out on her acting chops alone.)

Thankfully, this movie is centered around Sophie and so Farmiga binds the narrative with her honest performance. The role of Sophie really could have been played by an Asian actor and the story could have been a Korean-language movie about a Korean American woman. Perhaps Kim wanted to give emphasis to Sophie's isolation and to that central dilemma of the story.

There are certain elements of Korean and Korean American culture that are played to near-caricature: the cold, oppressive mother-in-law and the zealous pastor, for instance. So, I must wonder if the story came from Kim's own deliberation about her relationships and choices she has had to make as a Korean and a Korean American.

For Farmiga, it is another remarkable performance to add to her growing body of work.