GLanoue Reviews

The Oxford Murders (2008)

Bad math, bad casting, bad scripting

[6/10 · 19 September 2015]

I really wanted to like this film, thinking it was an old-fashioned, slow placed and thoughtful alternative to the usual special effects cesspool: using brains, mathematics and philosophy to track down a murderer. American graduate student in Oxford (Wood) has sex right off the boat with a beautiful nurse (Watling) and gets to lodge in a wonderfully eccentric and charming old house with a wonderfully eccentric and charming old woman (Anna Massey), meets eccentric and not so charming fellow student, and gets to meet eccentric and burnt out but still bitingly witty and narcissistic genius (Hurt), who is also the ex-lover of the beautiful nurse with the never-explained accent. We get it. Despite being allegedly built around a weird subset of logical-positivistic philosophy (badly and erroneously summed up by Hurt's public lecture at the beginning), in fact the movie is built around clichés. I don't understand how an allegedly mathematician turned writer could have written such a bad script. I mean, you wouldn't expect a mathematician to describe a sexy love scene, and in fact the lack of chemistry between Wood and Watling is amazing and really, really lust-killing, but to get basic knowledge of the world of mathematical logic wrong is really unsettling. Worse, math is dumbed down. The only thing this script could possibly have going for it is its use of math as a narrative device, yet we see Wood marking up a squash court to calculate better angles of attack. This is supposed to sell us on math? Why is Wittgenstein's Tractatus described as a series of mathematical equations? It's not. Why is Fermat's Last theorem anonymised by presenting it as Bormat's Last Theorem? Was the legal office on the production team somehow afraid that Fermat's descendants would put in a claim for royalties 400 years later if they actually used his name? Why is the real mathematician who finally solved the puzzle in the 1990s, Andrew Wiles, presented as looking like a summer-stock theatre director named Wilkes? Wiles' proof is over a hundred pages long, not something that can be scribbled on a board during a public lecture, though Wiles did give a talk in 1993 at Cambridge, not Oxford, announcing his proof, the same year in which the film is set. Are we supposed to get a secret thrill figuring out the roman-a-clef hints that it's really Fermat, as if that wasn't obvious to 100% of the math and science nerds and MENSA members who would watch a film like this? This is just dumb scripting: seductresses (Watling) have to be incredibly sultry, professors have to have Einstein hair and elbow patches, young and hungry students have to be iconoclasts, and so on. In the end, it's not about the bad math and bad scripting but the bad casting. Wood is not really believable as a would-be Beautiful Mind math genius, Hurt is a prissily theatrical stereotype of the Mad Professor, and Watling is way too sophisticated and sexy to be a believable nurse who melts into a mass of walking pheromones when she catches a glimpse of future Hobbit Wood. The backstories are either simple-minded (Hurt, Massey) or simply banal (Wood, Watling). In the end, the so-called math that is supposed to be the key to unlocking the murder mystery is way less engaging than the word games in The Da Vinci Code. In the end, we have a movie about math and serial killers in which there (SPOILER) no serial killers and no real math.

Survivor (I) (2015)

Watchable despite bad scripting

[31 August 2015]

When you pair ex-James Bond with ex-Resident Evil, it can't be all bad, or so one would hope. Jovovich as usual shows she can act competently, but Brosnan, who's supposed to be the world's most bad-ass assassin and bomb maker so mysterious the CIA and MI-6 don't know his name or his face (though his masquerading ability seems to be limited to pasting on a mustache once in a while), is just not given enough to do by the script except look sort of heavily evil and talk little like some sort of post-modern John Wayne. Besides Brosnan, quite a few other actors who are getting long in the tooth (eg. Robert Forster, Roger Rees, Frances de la Tour) are given a chance to show that old dogs still hunt, but even they can't rise above the horrible, stilted scripting and dialogue. In the end, it's just eager, bright-eyed, great looking, multi-ethnic Young Americans Who Stand Between Us and, well dirty-looking wogs (in a sort of 007 prelude that connects to the rest of the film only three-quarters of the way through) and lizard-like financial terrorists. Not a believable story line to be found. Jovovich, who at 40 still looks like she can kick butt, does so quite ably and willingly, but it is improbable that university-educated security analysts like her find out all of sudden that they are also great field agents (Harvard professor and 'symbologist' Tom Hanks, anyone?). Okay, maybe she finds time to swim a few laps in the pool a couple of times a week, but doesn't run out of breath running up 15 flights of stairs? Seriously unbelievable. Maybe the director could have asked Rees to tone down a bit the obvious shiftiness in the Romanian bad guy he plays (a General Practitioner who is also, inexplicably, the world's greatest chemist and bomb expert who seeks revenge against Americans for not giving a visa in time to save his ailing wife, as if only the American medical system can save anyone; that's really the most unbelievable script point!), but that would be too subtle for the scriptwriter. If Rees/Balan looks so obviously like a liar that even a blind ticket agent could identify him as suspicious, the terrorist 'brains' behind the plot just has to have slicked back hair, black clothes, a basilisk face and speak in unemotional tones. Brosnan manages to go off script and sneak in some passion while the writer and director weren't looking when he's killing inconvenient witnesses, though his anger at Jovovich/Abbott for spoiling the plot is a little weak even though it's way more motivated compared to eliminating witnesses. And factual errors abound: there's no way Ambassadors allow foreign interests to go after and kill one of their own, no way embassy visa clerks have that much power, no way hissy fits by foreign allies (even the Brits) can actually influence American decisions regarding visa applications, let alone a visa for a Romanian, no way even a cabinet minister would get personally involved in such a low-level visa request, and no way would a wannabe terrorist (Rees) attract so much attention to a visa request by getting political bigwigs involved. And so on. At least Liam Neeson in Taken had a backstory that he was a trained ex-CIA operative, but the writers forgot to give Jovovich even a hint of a backstory except that she's from Montana, did post-graduate work, and is 'one of the best'. Lazy. Watchable for the effects and for the interesting cast, even though their talents are wasted for the most part.

How the Universe Works (2010– )

Excellent series for science nerds and non-nerds, plus Mike Rowe

[10/10 · 20 April 2015]

A great series. I think I've seen all the science documentaries, and this is the best. Why? Not only do they take some of the better known scientific faces to present the material, they add a host of lesser known but engaging scientists who are great at explaining without undue simplification. Like other dimensions of The Culture that seem to emphasize glamour and show, the producers have found scientists that look good or look simpatico, like you could imagine yourself having a conversation with them. This, however, is not at the expense of the content. The theories are not only current, some are really quite subtle and difficult to present with mathematics, yet they manage, and without too many analogies and metaphors. You don't need a science background here, but it certainly helps. Although they have a musical sound track, it's rather muted and avoids the military/Wagnerian Birth of the Gods melodrama that just dummies down with the scientists say (In one telling interview I think at UCal, Alex Filippenko acknowledged that in other documentaries he doesn't have all the control he wanted on what came across; here, he seems more true to his scientific roots). Plus, the producers and directors try to avoid the standard self-congratulatory narrative trope that always diminishes (for me) similar documentaries: "In 1993 Nasa decided to solve this mystery and launched…. Nasa scientists eagerly waited for the results." Cut to shot of excited scientists huddling around consoles. Same scientists, twenty years later: "We couldn't believe it. It was the greatest moment of my life". Yes, science does involve egos, but it's not about egos, which (I presume) non-scientific producers seem too eager to use as a framing device. They get that the universe is much more dramatic than anything we could conjure up in a studio. True, they also use the Life on Other Planets narrative device, but usually to debunk it. Unlike other recent space documentaries that seem to play to the Trekkie desire to find thousands of alien races on each planet (put a goatee on Spock: instant alternate universe), here, the possibility of alien life is usually quickly debunked as highly improbable. In fact, what seems to be behind this series is the notion that Earth is a one-of. Things are cut hopping by brief framing shots and quick cut- aways. The graphics are great and plausible And, for at least one series, Mike Rowe narrates. Not to take away from the other narrators, who keep things interesting, a filmic structure that depends on narration needs Mike Rowe, whose offhand delivery underlines the stupendous wonders that are presented.

Avant l'hiver (2013)

Thoughtful exploration of how the past becomes the present

[8/10 · 3 January 2015]

Avant l'hiver is a charming European film driven by its complex historical subtext revealed gradually by small details of everyday life and by wonderful performances by great actors in 'small', intimate roles in which they asked to convey deeply-felt emotions while staying firmly within the social and moral limits of staid bourgeois lives. This is European film-making at its best, with intelligent people exploring what it means to be settled, successful and bourgeois. But their angst is not about grubbing for money, power and status while losing one's soul, we soon find out. Paul (Daniel Auteuil) is a long-married neurosurgeon married to Lucie (Kristin Scott-Thomas). He begins to receive anonymous bouquets of flowers at work and at home. He suspects a young woman, Lou (Leila Bekhti), who works at his local bistro. Several confrontations occur: in the street, at a florist. She denies everything. It seems inconsequential till Paul sees Lou working the streets as a prostitute around the stadium. He slowly becomes obsessed with her, even breaking into his best friend's Gérard's office, a psychiatrist who Lou is seeing, to find her address. Paul and Lou meet several times. Paul is not interested in sex. Nor is he interested in love; this is not an affair. He hungers more for her past, for her story of how she came to be what she is. Slowly, we learn that she is a French-Algerian raised in France but estranged from her self-centered parents. Paul is drawn to the narrative of her past struggles to find herself. She even at one point reveals that she does work occasionally as a prostitute, who only becomes more intrigued as he comes to see that her complicated present is the natural outcome of her complicated past. Unlike him, Lou is apparently more true to herself despite being on the low end of the social scale: she is a barmaid, a student, a prostitute (or so it seems). He is the alienated one, despite success and a beautiful wife who still loves him. We slowly piece together Paul's hunger for the past through a series of little episodes. The night before he is to operate an old woman, she reveals that she is the sole survivor of a family exterminated by the Holocaust, the daughter of refugee Polish parents who fled to France before the war but who were nonetheless sent to the death camps. She recites the names of her parents, brothers and sister, stating that if she does not survive the operation she wants at least one person to know that these people existed. The next day, he freezes during the delicate operation and is saved by his assistant, who takes over. In another pivotal scene, Paul argues with his best friend Gérard, who reveals what everyone knows: for thirty years Gérard has been in love with Lucie, Paul's wife. We learn that all three met at the same time, but we deduce that Lucie chose Paul while staying close friends with Gérard. There is never a hint of impropriety in their relationship, except one: when Paul breaks into his friend's office to find Lou's address, he finds an old photo of him, his wife and their son. Why does Gérard have this in his desk drawer? He gains access to Gérard's computer by using his son's name. Is the estranged son (Victor) really Gérard's? It seems unlikely, since Lucie is morally upright and supportive of her husband Paul despite his emotional crisis. Later, Gérard tells Paul that if he had one chance to lead his life over, it would be with Lucie. We deduce that Gérard wishes Victor were his son and not Paul's. These plot points, however, are not really about love and success, which could be explored in any intelligent American film analysing professional success and emotional failure. Here, everything pivots on the past and its role in the present. Paul, we learn, is not emotionally distant because of overwork or because he still has a teenage hormonal outlook on women (he never strays sexually from his wife, and when Lou blatantly offers to have sex, he is repulsed by her coarse language, not by the proposition). He is emotionally disconnected to those around him because he in a sense has no past. We learn that Paul is the son of an American soldier temporarily stationed in France who abandoned the family. Paul is essentially an orphan, a foreigner, a bastard, a self-made man who has created a present by hard work that, we learn, never left him enough time to connect to his own family. We also learn that Lou desperately tries to establish her real roots when Paul tracks her down (her name, history, and status as an art history student are all false). In a poignant scene, she insists he listen to an old tape of her mother singing a childhood ditty in French and Arabic. She gives him the tape, asks him to leave and, we learn later, commits suicide. We learn later that she too was an orphan, though a murderous one who sought out lonely and vulnerable men such as Paul to exploit and kill them. Finally, when the old woman survives the operation, Paul recites back to her the names of her murdered family. He smiles, he remembers. He finally has a past, after losing Lou's. The problem, though, is that it is not his. He escapes from a family barbecue to listen to Lou's tape. This I think is the major theme in the film. People who cannot connect to the past cannot live in the present, as the old woman whose past was stolen from her realises. As much as Paul cannot claim his own past, he hungers for other people's stories: he remembers the old patient's story; he is touched by Lou's fictive past; he is curiously attracted to nature and its rhythms of death and rebirth. All in all, a thoughtful film with wonderful actors, script and camera work.

Jurassic Park (1993)

Trite and overblown insult to collective intelligence

[5/10 · 2 January 2014]

It's perhaps not fair to judge a film 20 years after it came out, but on the other hand, that's how people define classics. This film fails. Yes, stunning CGI effects. Great photography. But the script is horrible. First, Spielberg's standby dysfunctional American family is in full bloom, with smart aleck kids and incompetent adults who when faced by technical challenges and alleged science seem to have an attention span of a five year old. No one listens to anyone else, no one collaborates, and the only voice of reason philosopher Dr Malcolm is played by Jeff Goldblum as a caricature. Every conceivable corny camera set up or angle is exploited, every lush note of John William's heroic score is designed to substitute the lack of human chemistry among the cast, every character reacts in a stereotypical fashion. Granted, perhaps Spielberg wanted idiot-savants (kids and adults alike) to showcase the dinos' personality, but even here we are treated to ridiculously anthropomorphised creatures instead of nature in the raw. I mean, dinos opening doors? The T-Rex was scary because it was hunting, not playing. Even the park's UNIX computer system is given a ridiculously amusing and needlessly complicated graphics Next-Generation interface to heighten the drama of rebooting the system after it is sabotaged. Not that this interface wasn't doable in 1993, but no one-of specialised system would have anything but text commands for such a massively complicated park. So, humanised computers, humanised dinos, but one dimensional humans. If it wasn't for the massive publicity campaign that let it slip that the film was 'about' hubris and so worthy of being taken seriously, this wouldn't pass muster with any but the simple-minded. In the end, the script is completely predictable, and no amount of gorgeous camera work can substitute hackneyed plotting.

Warrior Queen Boudica (2006 TV Special)

Entertaining though inaccurate history

[8/10 · 24 December 2013]

This production of the well-known British legend of a heroic queen leading a rebellion in the name of liberty against the brutal occupying Romans in 60 AD tugs at all the heartstrings, unfortunately by glossing over some facts. It tries for verisimilitude by having the Romans speak in Latin (the actors did a credible job, too), though it insists the fight is about freedom from a tyrannical occupier. It wasn't. Boudicca's husband was a client king, which Romans permitted in the interests of a peaceful transition to outright Roman rule. The king's possessions, his nation, however, were supposed to pass to the Emperor on his death, and the region would be ruled by a Procurator (most likely). The husband ignored this in his will, and tried to pull a fast one by giving only half of his kingdom to Nero, after living the high life from Roman bribes for a nearly 20 years. Naturally, the Romans put the new queen in her place, brutally, it seems, which sparked a revolt that quickly grew to a rebellion, although a lot of tribes stayed loyal to Rome or at least neutral, probably waiting to see the outcome. As in Gaul over 100 years earlier, massive mobilisation by usually divided tribal people was only effective in ambush, in wiping out defenceless towns and in seizing booty. When the Romans got their act together several months later and met Boudicca in open warfare, the result was a massive massacre. The history here seems real enough, but the continual references to liberty give the wrong impression, though quick cuts to various scholars admitting that the vengeful Iceni – Celts were just as savage in cutting down Roman civilians provides some balance. Charlotte Comer, who plays Boudicca with gusto, can't do too much with a script that turns her into a passionara. Not since Mel Gibson's Braveheart has so much ham been fed up in the guise of history, but it's not her fault. The supporting actors are mostly caricatures, but again, they are mouthing historical set pieces, though Mark Noble as Suetonius who defeats Boudicca is fine. All in all, there's enough documentary style cut-aways to give balance, despite the rhetoric. Finally, it's true that Celts did not have the Latin patriarchal tradition, but Romans did not disdain women, as it is implied here, nor is it entirely accurate that Celts had as many queens as kings, which is implied here by an explanation of the Celtic laws of succession. Most evidence suggests that they were guided by kings and priests (druids), despite reports of warrior women and a high degree of sexual freedom (compared to Rome). Still, it's all very entertaining. If you get a chance to watch this, do so. The rhetoric is a bit stilted but many historical fine details are accurate, especially the description of Roman tactics, which is often wrong in most movies. The combination of staged re-enactments and documentary style commentary is very effective. No doubt the real Boudicca was an extraordinary woman to create even a short lived union against the Romans, but be prepared for a degree of predictable myth-making with this production.

Funeralii fericite (2013)

Interesting but too theatrical for film

[7/10 · 12 December 2013]

Interesting movie, though slow paced. Maybe this is due to main actor/director Malaele's theatre background, but the film really needed another edit to speed things up. You can see its theatrical heritage by its use of broad ethnic stereotypes – drunk Russians, loud Italians, shopkeeping Arabs, fortune telling Gypsies, Soviet-style building concierge (only Eastern Europeans who lived through Socialism will get that one), African whores. Actually, this is not a bad feature. Most Romanian films I've seen are a little self-obsessed about What It Means To Be Romanian in a self-deprecating but also self-congratulatory way, so injecting 'foreign' colour (played by Romanian actors) is a welcome change, at least for pacing and comedy. The film is supposed to be about death. Not only announced by the title, but by the blurb and by the opening allegorical scene with figures from the commedia dell'arte prancing about in an almost blank stage. The film starts briskly as three friends get drunk and end up getting their fortunes told by a Gypsy, who predicts when they will die and, for the first two, that they will die unusual and even burlesque deaths. Through a series of funny events, handled deftly and quickly by director Malaele, the first two predictions come through, leaving the third (played by Malaele) to contemplate his impending doom four or five days from now. That's when the film slows down. We get the absurdist Eastern European tradition being evoked here: convinced that his fate is inevitable, our hero visits a funeral home to arrange a casket (kudos to the funeral director, a nod to Dr. Strangelove and Pall Bearer), a tailor to get fitted for a burial suit. The rest is anticlimax. While waiting, our hero drinks and gets involuntarily involved in some absurd but highly predictable events: his friends and neighbours steal his stuff that he will no longer need, and a popular media-fed campaign tries to save his life. This last detail I found irritating, an absurdist but heavy-handed blurring of the dividing line between fantasy and reality, like we're back in the 1960s with Jean-Paul Sartre and finding out that hell is just like home but surrounded with ordinary people (such as yourself – Get It?); it's not Fellini. Way too much time is spent exploring this path, with on the one hand ridiculing people's superficial emotional commitment to save him fuelled by simple mob sentimentality and by slavishly embracing the media, and on the other, our hero's drunken disdain for the mob and its efforts. So, are we supposed to think he's found his dignity in accepting his fate? These scenes of his final days are way too detailed (for example, when he boards up his apartment) and too long and self-indulgent. He's perpetually drunk, so what does his rejection of the salvation movement mean? Then why the breakdown at the end when he implores God to save him and give him a few more years? His time comes and he seems to accept death but rejoices when he survives past midnight (the Gypsy's prediction). Death comes in the guise of visit from a beautiful player from the commedia dell'arte troupe in a neighbouring apartment, followed by some musing on the meaning of life and death. It's all a little allegorically heavy and obvious at this point. I was grateful the end was coming. We know almost from the start where this theme will go. The problem is that the movie slows to a crawl after dealing with his friends' deaths in the first half or so. Up to that point the pacing and subtlety were fine, with quick cuts and scene jumps. After, though, we're being led by a plodding camera and allegedly thoughtful script. It's dealing with death, which is not the easiest theme in the world, but it would have been helped by lopping off 15 minutes in the second half and perhaps communicating the message (death is unpredictable, so live well) more by allusion and less by long drawn out soul searching. The problem is that most of the second half takes place in his sombre apartment, which makes the director's task more difficult; maybe quicker cuts? More distance between lens and hero? It's too theatrical, too slow, too focused on Malaele. Don't expect a masterpiece, but enjoy it for what it is: a non-Hollywood and non mainstream film made by people who know a lot about acting but maybe need more practice in making the transition from theatre to film.

The Eagle (2011)

Interesting historical drama

[9/10 · 8 June 2013]

This is an enjoyable film for people like me who are fans of the Roman Empire. It is pretty accurate in its details, though the premise is fiction: the 9th Legion, said to have disappeared in the Scottish highlands 20 years before the events in the film did not apparently cease to exist at this time, 120 A.D. It seems to have served another 20 or 30 years in the eastern part of the Empire. That aside, the mist, the rain, the greyness, which would have impressed a Roman from the sunny Mediterranean, are all captured with excellent camera work. Though, as with many films that don't use CGI, shots of battles are sometimes too tight and concentrate on a few individuals to hide the fact that they didn't have armour and uniforms for a full legion shot from a crane: no more DeMilles or David Leans. We therefore get an emphasis on individual, hand to hand combat, when it was Roman that gave them the edge against superior barbarian fighters. This film suffers from either an understated direction or a shallow script, I can't decide. Basically, Marcus Flavius decides to retrieve a stolen Roman Eagle (symbol of the 9th Legion) from the barbarian tribes north of Hadrian's Wall who wiped out the Legion and kept the standard as booty. The twist is that the Legion was commanded by his father. Roman honour is mentioned as a motivating factor, but Channing Tatum as Flavius just doesn't seem to have enough inner fire to convince us that he would go on such a dangerous mission. Since no one back in Rome (or in Roman York) knew how the 9th really disappeared, in fact Roman honour would not have been tainted by a defeat, which remained conjectural. People would have turned a blind eye to its disappearance. And we know too little from the script to understand if Flavius had daddy issues. This is definitely a buddy movie, which others have mentioned. However, this judgement has to be filtered though director's Kevin Macdonald's desire to be historically accurate. If anyone reads any texts from that period, you understand that people did not speak or feel as we do today. For one thing, they were not the heirs of 2000 years of Christian guilt about repressed sex; they were pagan. Second, people often spoke in a more forthright manner and did not hide their feelings (see my first point). They often did not expect to live much beyond 30 or 40 (if they were lucky), so brought more intensity and passion to their lives than we do. They also had no notion that they could control their own destinies, so there was no reason not to express love, honour and duty as they saw it, with no shame for the emotional bonds that developed: the world was in the hands of the gods, so the two things that belonged to men was their word (mind) and their emotions (heart). In this sense, I think the comments I read about the homoerotic undertones between Flavius and his freed slave Esca (believably acted by Jamie Bell; there are no women in the movie) are completely misplaced. That the two former enemies risk their lives for each other on the basis of each holding to a higher moral standard (one, Roman honour, the other, his word) that goes beyond the current movie steroeotypes of cycnical self-interest is completely believable. In the end, the lighting, the costumes, the Gaelic (which has to make do for Pictish, which people in the region would have spoken, but we have no idea what it sounded like), and the wild countryside all play a role in crafting a credible and enjoyable historical drama.

Zero Dark Thirty (2012)

Boring and self-serving

[5/10 · 16 April 2013]

Imagine the Da Vince Code without two generations of conspiracy theorists nourishing our fears that things aren't what they seem to be, or imagine a WWII movie without the subtext of moral outrage at Pearl Harbour or Auschwitz. Without the desire for payback and closure for 9-11, this movie is shallow and conventional. It cheats by hitting all the right moral triggers: Evil Mastermind Osama Bin Laden, torture is bad but necessary to Protecting Our Freedoms (yes, in capitals; it's that kind of movie). But it's not a gung ho John Wayne's Green Beret style movie. We're way too cynical for that. Director Bigelow gives a knowing wink to the audience that we're beyond old fashioned and simple minded patriotism; we get gratuitous scenes in which women and high ranking officials like Leon Panetta/James Gandolfini swear like troopers, or women talk about sex as a relaxing distraction from the job, or the head torturer saying that he's had enough not because of moral doubts but because he's seen too many naked guys: We Edgy Now. Once everybody agrees that we're hip, cynical and patriotic, all we get is a conventional Cowboys and Indians movie: the bad guys are really bad, but we're still good because our doubts about our methods (waterboarding) prove we're still on the moral high ground. The fact is that this is a boring movie underneath the documentation of all the slick CIA procedures and technology: a maverick (Chastain) insists she is right all along, and convinces her superiors by sheer strength of will that Osama is hiding out in a city and not in the mountains. The movie highlights guts, intuition, determination, and even insight, but Maya/Chastain has no real facts on which to hang her case. So, we have a gung-ho, me against the world movie that is carried by cheap Hollywood contrivances: the loner, the maverick, the hunch-player, the High Plains Drifter, and a woman to boot, so her one dimensional obsession is morally unassailable in today's political climate. Here, the outraged Chastain/Maya had the advantage, because we all know she was right all along. All the buzz is about the use of torture, payback and closure for 9-11, and a voyeuristic fascination with the SEAL team that took down Osama. It's not about the movie, which didn't deserve its nominations, hype and ticket sales. I'm not taking a pro- or anti-US position here; all I want is a better movie.

The Players (2012)

Not exceptional, but okay

[7/10 · 14 April 2013]

This is not an exceptional movie. It is not thought provoking. It offers little social commentary. Its funniest bits are unfortunately its briefest. It doesn't even have a lot of gratuitous nudity, except for a few shots of male butt. So what does it have going for it? For one thing, it's fairly well written. No character comes across as stupid or even unsympathetic, which is already a plus, given the subject. The acting is great. The French really can churn these sexy comedies out and keep a high standard of acting. In part, this is because French films are in a bit of a doldrums, so I suppose good actors are working B films and glad to get the work. But there really is a European sensibility present that might not translate too well for American audiences. For example, the therapy group in which habitual cheaters own up to their sins is a scream. For one thing, everyone talks honestly and in a straightforward manner about their situation, which makes their lack of understanding that they have a "problem" even funnier. They just don't get it, and of course, being European, no question of a butch man-hating therapist, though she recites the usual litany on marriage and faithfulness. This may be the best longer sequence of the bunch, since their naïve inability to see their problem, much less admit it, tells volumes about European attitudes that, like I said, may not translate too well for Americans. Don't get me wrong: their blindness is exaggerated to the point of parody, but it is a possible blindness, something that allows the actors and director (in this segment, it is star Dujardin, who plays about 6 roles) to adopt a lighter tone. Imagine a Woody Allen treatment of infidelity about 20 years ago. Take away the narcissism, the self-indulgent and pseudo philosophical rhetoric, and you get an idea of the scene. Another minor plus: one segment has a 50 year old dentist carrying on with a 19 year student, an affair that we are told started when she was 15. Although Americans don't portray 15 year old sex, a self-indulgent age difference is normal. Here, the cheater gets his comeuppance not from a criticizing wife but from his paramour's teen age friends, who take advantage of his wallet and mock his willingness to play a young man's game. This is what I like about the movie: an economical and not so politicised treatment of faithfulness (or not), and especially a treatment that probably could not be made in America.

The Island (2005)

Fast action, credible script

[9/10 · 24 March 2013]

I am a little perplexed why this film got panned and did so poorly at the box office. Interestingly, it earned a lot more overseas, so perhaps Europeans (mostly) have a different view of things? This story is not really new: in the near future, scientist (Merrick, well played by Sean Bean) figures out a way for rich people to grow clones for spare parts, who are given artificial memories and kept on an island until needed. One (Lincoln Six Echo/Ewan McGregor) becomes aware he and the others are not survivors of some global ecological catastrophe who are being saved to reproduce humanity; through a flaw in the programme that instills memories, he seems to acquire the memories of his biological matrix, a rich and dissolute motorcycle designer (also McGregor, of course) who needs a clone for an eventual liver transplant. Lincoln escapes with his friend Jordan Two Delta/Scarlett Johansson, who doesn't do so much in the movie, but looks great and does what she does best, which is to suggest a latent sexual power. The action is carried by a credible McGregor and his nemesis, a relentless mercenary Albert Laurent/Djimon Hounsou hired to bring back or kill the escaped clones. This movie has some of the best action scenes around, because they are entirely credible: Johansson and McGregor seem as lucky as they are proficient at running away from Hounsou, which keeps things believable. The science behind it also comes out as needed: we don't get the one colossal lecture about how things work (like in the older James Bond movies when Goldfinger or Dr. No reveals his plan for global domination). Sparse science is good in science fiction. The writers thankfully do not include details meant to convince us the science is real, as when a character tells the audience when cloning was invented, by whom, when, etc. Here, it is just taken for granted that trains will fly in the sky; technical achievements are balanced by a social dystopia: rich and poor live in different worlds; human life is obviously cheap (the mercenaries just shoot up anything that gets in their way), etc. Also, the movie has a lot of relatively funny but low-key parts: when McGregor's human friend Steve Buscemi chooses costumes for Johansson to wear instead of the island-issued jump suit, for example, or when McGregor-Evil Designer matrix realises his clone is running around with Johansson but is still a virgin (that sounds wrong, no insult intended to Ms Johansson; I should have said "running around with Johansson's character"). So, what's wrong with this movie? Well, the inevitable preachy ending, where McGregor/Lincoln returns to the island with Jordon/Johansson and frees the slaves, I mean, clones (Lincoln, get it?) after a showdown with evil genius Merrick, and when the mercenary reveals he "understands" oppression and changes sides. Okay, it had to end somehow, but the operatic choral ensemble as they walk off the island in their Rudi Gernreich Space 1999 jumpsuits (remember Barbara Bain?) reminds me of those 1990s British Airways commercials set to The Flower Duet by Delibes. Overall, it's as if they shot sequentially and had already spent most of their special effects budget for the earlier chase scenes. All in all, a gripping film. I especially liked that it avoided excessive preaching about clones and harvesting human beings. It lets its images (the mercenaries' indifference to human life) and its actors (such as a very convincing Bean as an evil idealist who thinks the clone technology will save more lives than it claims – not new, but Bean can pull this kind of fluff off in his sleep) communicate its message, such as it is. I think perhaps Americans expect huge casts and crews in this kind of film, but here it comes down to a dozen actors in chase scenes; strangely, it's a "talky" but low-key intellectual film despite the high grade action, so maybe this explains why Europeans seemed to like it more. Worth watching: fast paced, well acted, economic script.

Skyfall (2012)

Psychological terror matches the terrifying action

[10/10 · 15 February 2013]

I was almost dreading this latest instalment in what must be the world's longest running franchise, thinking the writers couldn't possible sustain yet another Bond episode. Happily, I was wrong. This proves once again that once you get past the legacy of the special effects of the 1990s and the comic book villains of the earlier Bonds, scripting and casting are at the heart of any movie enterprise. Daniel Craig proves once again that the producers were absolutely right to cast him as a youngish (at first) Bond-type (we are never sure if this is a retro-ed Bond a la the recent Star Trek) who by now is accidentally wounded by his own partner and psychically wounded by all the killing and uncertain moral standards of the contemporary world. This, BTW, is explored very well in a subplot involving M (Judi Dench, in another incredible and understated performance) facing a parliamentary hearing into the screw up that led to Bond getting shot as he's trying to recover a hard disk with the names of Western agents infiltrated in terrorist groups. Obviously, Bond survives and goes underground, licking his wounds and wondering if it's all worth it. Apparently it is, when it turns out that this is part of a larger plot to discredit and eventually kill M, by a rogue agent that she allegedly abandoned in the field to be captured and tortured. He too survived, but with a different and very malignant mindset than Bond's, whose personal loyalty to M, though tested by his knowledge that she ordered the agent to take a difficult shot that missed the bad guy and hit him, overcomes his moral disgust with the institution. Dench, Craig and newcomer to the franchise Naomie Harris who plays the field agent with a shaky aim who later decides to ride a desk under the name of Eve Moneypenny (signs of the retro-ed story, as we are clearly in the contemporary world, with modern technology and modern bad guys even though we are viewing a prequel birth of the Bond world). And speaking of technology and bad guys, the movie gains quite a bit by having a new Q, a confused young genius not at all certain about his technology (twice, M and he set off a cyber attack by trying to backtrace a cyber attack, a feint that was designed to provoke the cyber response and open the door to real attack). It also has a scaled back the technology: a gun and a radio (albeit a gun with a grip keyed to Bond's palm print). It makes the menace and especially the confusing reactions to it all the more human and believable, since the threat is not really a superweapon from space or the ocean depths, but an evil person wreaking havoc by exploiting human weaknesses amplified by current technology. And what a menace it turns out to be – Javier Bardem is the best Bond villain in decades. He combines sadism, sadness, crazy-obsessive paranoia, complete indifference to others, yet with a modern vocabulary of caring and insight. It's like talking to your shrink, except he's packing a Glock with which he'll blow your kneecaps off once your 50 minutes are up, or maybe before if you don't have enough insight. Bardem is spooky and unnerving, since he's not really undone, unlike other Bond villains, by his own ego masquerading as crazy genius, and Bond/Craig is far from an invincible superhero as he faces off against an evildoer whose talking isn't merely an excuse to show off how clever he is (how many times have we wondered why No, Dax, Goldfinger, Blofeld and the rest didn't just shut up and simply shoot Bond?). Bardem and Craig really sell the idea that it is not at all foreordained that Bond will win the climactic battle. In brief, a wonderful addition to the franchise, showing that good writing (action and characterisation) is the key to a good movie

Taken 2 (2012)

Unbelievable bad guys.

[3/10 · 10 February 2013]

If I were Albanian, I would be thinking of organising some sort of boycott for the way my people are portrayed in this sequel to the well-made 2008 hit. Not because the movie portrays Albanians as criminals, but as bad criminals. Honestly, is this the best the casting director and scriptwriter could come up with? No scary dialogue, no scary people. Just thugs with AKs and Glocks. Okay, that's scary, but basically it's surprising they don't all shoot themselves in the foot. The chief baddie out for revenge because his son was killed in Paris just looks like a tired old man with a bad haircut. He spends must of his time sitting in an empty room. Inexplicably, he suffers from the Blofeld syndrome: once Neeson and his ex are captured, he talks too much while setting up the usual "horrendous death" scenario and actually leaves the room, allowing Neeson time to escape, coordinate his daughter's rescue, and contemplate lots of scenery. His henchmen look like gorillas in track suits. This is supposed to be the cream of the dreaded Albanian mafia? And the Turks, who are wary of Kurds so are no slouches when it comes to police work, look incompetent, corrupt and stuck with old, modified Ladas as police cars. Usually, it's a bad script that's the problem in a bad movie – and Lord knows this one is no Oscar contender – but here the problem is really casting. Not only are the crooks bad, the daughter (Maggie Grace) looks like she's aged 20 years since the last film. She's supposed to be about 18 or 19, in reality the actress is 29, and she looks like 39, or maybe 29 with too much partying. Back home, she can hardly drive in an empty parking lot with an automatic, having failed her driving test twice. In Istanbul, she steals a stick shift and can suddenly outclass a Finnish rally car champion – in Istanbul, mind you. How? Liam is in fine form and has improved his horribly fake American accent slightly (which was I think the basis for a Robot Chicken sketch), but even he looks a little long in the tooth for the action sequences, or maybe he's just a bit bored playing a role that he can do in his sleep, where he's not even called on to be outraged. The beautiful mommy and ex-wife Famke Janssen doesn't have much to do except suffer; there's some sort of inexplicable deus ex machine subplot with hubby number 2 leaving her as a prelude to cancelling a reconciliation attempt that was supposed to be a vacation, all as an elaborate scheme to explain how the mommy and daughter meet Liam in Istanbul where the Albanians track them down and get to work. In brief, none of the believable bad buys and outraged father of the original – Neeson is sleepwalking, despite the high octane action sequences, Janssen is mostly unconscious, and daughter Grace transforms from alienated mall girl to 007 as soon as she gets her hands on a grenade, which daddy Liam conveniently carries around. Any positives in this mess? Well, obviously these movies are well made in a technical sense, if you don't expect any sort of character-driven plot (there isn't any, not a shred, except the old Albanian's desire for revenge). The action sequences are fine. That's it. Sappy script, wooden acting, bad casting. Watchable, but barely.

Savages (I) (2012)

Bad script, wooden leads

[6/10 · 28 January 2013]

I was a little surprised by some of the venom in these reviews, because the film is decently shot with great veteran actors (in secondary parts, unfortunately). But this is an Oliver Stone movie. We expect the heavy handed morality lesson to be told with a touch of irony, if not humour. No real irony here. There are two major problems, the leads and the script. First, the three main characters are a threesome so intimately bonded that even the otherwise mild mannered botanist-businessman Ben (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) is driven to horrible, immoral acts to rescue her after she (Blake Lively) is kidnapped to ensure that the independent pot-growing and dealing partners (Taylor-Johnson and Taylor Kitsch) will accept a deal with a Mexican drug cartel. Yet we are never really given any hint why the bond is so strong, except when the queen of the cartel (a brilliant Salma Hayek) chats with her hostage and suggests that the two boys love each other more than they love her, otherwise they would never share. This, BTW, is a pivotal scene because the love interest Lively reveals herself to be an uneducated airhead; drug queen Hayek has the best line of the movie; "Do all Americans talk like that?", addressed to Lively after she says she dropped out of community college after a semester and a half because she "didn't get along with institutions". In the end, none of the three has any real emotional depth; they script even tries to excuse Kitsch's wooden acting by implying something deep, like he's dead inside from the war, man. It doesn't work. We'd like to see a hidden, tormented self to make it believable that these three can be motivated to do anything more than catch the next wave when surf's up. Yes, I know there's a back-story that Ben makes good on his ill-gotten drug money by digging a well or two in Indonesia or some other Peace Corps venue, but it sounds really shallow and trendy instead of committed and complex. The real problem is the script. It's just horrible and shallow. Only the secondary actors do anything at all with this mess: John Travolta as a corrupt DEA agent who turns into a sort of hero, Benicio Del Toro, who's got scary whack job down to a science, and Hayek the drug queen who manages to convey that this isn't the life she would have chosen but nonetheless accepts it as a destiny that must be fulfilled and played out to its bitter end. For the rest, the pacing is pretty good; the ultra gory violence is believable and well-integrated into the script, the camera work excellent. Stone usually presents us with morally ambiguous characters or contrasts apparently evil people with an even more evil "system" (Wall Street, Natural Born Killers), forcing us to have some sympathy for the evil protagonist and eventually to call into question the morality of a system that can turn decent and even idealistic people into killers of weasels. Not here. Sure, the system is bad, but not because people deal in drugs but because they are shallow, hedonistic airheads. The three main protagonists are not evil because they are too shallow to be evil. Even when Taylor-Johnson kills the man he and his partner falsely set up as a patsy in a sting operation they ran, and then throws up apparently disgusted with himself, well, wouldn't you know that next day he's so stone cold capable of lying to the Mexican cartels and convincing them he had nothing to do with the sting. Is Stone now always to be tired and formulaic, depending on his three great actors in secondary roles, or is the sign of worse things to come?

13 (I) (2010)

Bad script, waste of talent

[6/10 · 20 January 2013]

Apparently an impressive film in the original 2005 French-Georgian version, but this remake doesn't cut it. The tension is there in the Russian roulette and duel scenes, and there are competent or even very good actors involved (Mickey Rourke is becoming a specialist at playing the down and out loser with a heart; he's terrific here), but even they can't save this from a bad script. It looks like director-writer Gela Babluani wanted to Hollywoodise his original small budget foreign-film festival winner style film not by special effects but by introducing Rain Man style back stories, in particular an illogical one between Jason Statham as a tout who, inexplicably, can raise hundreds of thousands of dollars to bet on human lives yet keeps his brother (Ray Winstone) in an asylum (Rain Man!) and takes him out (Rain Man!) to compete in these scenarios (apparently, this one is his fourth). Mommy and daddy left money to take care of him (Rain Man!) but Statham inexplicably feels the need to make his brother flirt with death and bring him wealth (Rain Man!). In the end, we are left to wonder if he kills the main character (well played by Sam Riley) for his accidental winnings or to avenge the death of his brother. There are other back stories that are just as much rip offs or, worse, just thrown in to humanise (I guess) the characters. The problem is that nearly every one has a back story, and so there is no time or place to develop any of them (except the Statham-Winstone one, with disastrous, unmotivated and unexplained results). This is a typical example where well-known and competent actors can't save a bad script. Just because we are all able and willing to suspend our disbelief and accept Wookies and vampires for an hour and half doesn't mean we suspend our disbelief in basic emotions and psychology. It's really a shame, because the premise is good, the initial set up explaining how an ordinary young man (Riley) gets involved in a life and death game is handled well, good casting (except for getting names to play bit parts and hopefully revitalise their careers, which seems a little Love Boat style to me), good lighting and camera work (I'm not sure if it was just my version, but I thought the flat lighting that made everyone's face a little lifeless and that transformed sweat into grease was well done, if intentional), but then it all falls apart from the ridiculous attempts to humanise the players. Not horrible, but a waste of talent.

2012: Doomsday (2008 Video)

no redeeming features

[1/10 · 16 December 2012]

The real doomsday isn't 21 December 2012. It's sometime after five minutes of watching this movie. Sometimes you think, nah, it can't be that bad. There must be some cosmic joke behind it if I can just find the key and laugh along. Unfortunately, there is none. It's just inexorably bad. Peoples' actions seem completely unmotivated by any known psychology. This movie looks like it was directed and then edited by people who had never seen a real movie before. The effect is a bit weird, as if we're not sure we're watching a movie or something else. Possibly, some sort of preachy fundamentalist propaganda about the End of the Days by Oral Roberts University film school alumnae? Who cares. Not one redeeming feature; even good looking actors as potential eye candy are underused here. Do not watch.

2012: Supernova (2009 Video)

Irredeemable

[1/10 · 16 December 2012]

Sometime in the 1970s, I think with Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, people discovered really, really bad movies could be fun. Maybe it was with camp in the 1960s, with the televised Batman. College kids would hold bad movie nights on campus. Lord knows there were so many bad movies available from Hammer Films and American International that it could be fun, but maybe it was the Special Movie Enhancers that people smoked at the time. Whatever. Supernova is not in that category. It is not inadvertently bad, as in people trying to make a good or at least passable movie with a high school film project budget. Supernova is just bad: as if people hired the worst actors, the worst scriptwriters, the worst set designers and said, okay, now make a good movie. This is just cheesy from the get go. There's no science. Obviously, people have no idea what a supernova is. There's no plausibility. Apparently, NASA and every other major scientific endeavour involve no more than four people in what looks like abandoned warehouses with a few dials from a 1900s power station. There's no logic. People are getting chased by Hezbollah wannabes, find a truck, get in and drive it 20 feet, abandon it and continue on foot for some inexplicable reason. There's no continuity. The bad guys are driving black SUVs, which they ditch to follow the scientist and his family. In a later scene, mom and daughter are driving what look like the same black SUVs. And BTW, mom and daughter look and act like they're the same age, physically (about 27) and emotionally (about 12). In the end, the rogue scientist saves the earth by – surprise! – blowing up nuclear bombs in the path of a supernova "pulse", whatever that is. Luckily, in this universe, space stations come equipped with dozens of atomic missiles. Back on earth, mother and daughter spend their time driving, if only to allow worried closeups while saving money on sets. Scientists blast off in the space shuttle while wearing 1950s fighter pilot helmets to reach what looks like a space station recycled from a 1970s movie set. Sexy Asian fellow scientist (is there any other kind?) turns out to be a traitor or completely crazy (the script is too bad to help us understand which). Russian scientist turns out to be a drunk hero. The real mystery here is how a movie cliché – a drunk Russian – managed to sneak enough vodka off the set to some viewers so they would give this turkey more than the minimum one star.

In the House (2012)

Script-driven film

[9/10 · 19 October 2012]

This movie works for several reasons, most of all because of the script. Germain (Fabrice Luchini) is a French lit teacher married to Jeanne (Kristen Scott Thomas), who runs a modern art gallery without much success; she insists on showing conceptual art that no one understands, or in fact that everyone understands too well as pretentious claptrap. Germain, disgusted by his students' plebeian efforts at writing, at first comes across as a kind of aesthetic purist who sees literature as occupying some sort of moral high ground; we are gently pushed to this conclusion because we can see he is uncomfortable about telling his wife the truth about her gallery, that merely slapping a picture of Hitler on a blow-up doll is not a real indictment of the tyranny of gender (or the gendering of tyranny – it works either way, and you just know that somewhere some art student has come up with the same idea and someone like Camille Paglia has praised it). Amidst the dross, he is surprised to find a short essay by one of his students (Claude) that captivates him. In crisp simple prose, Claude describes his fascination with the house and family of schoolmate Rapha and how, as a math tutor to help his nice but thick petty-bourgeois friend (tellingly, he cannot understand "imaginary numbers"), he manages to infiltrate Rapha's house and capture the "scent of a middle class woman", Rapha's mother convincingly played by Emmanuelle Seigner. He ends his vivid account with a "to be continued" (à suivre, in French, whose terseness is a bit more urgent than the English version). Germain starts talking to Claude, who until then was an otherwise unremarkable student. He begins tutoring him and encouraging him to write, although he maintains a superior attitude about the relationship (more or less: "it would appear you have some small talent"). Here is where it gets interesting. Germain becomes so entranced by Claude's treatment of his friend's ultra-conventional and boring middle class family that he begins to suggest which details to emphasise in his accounts. In other words, he starts suggesting plot lines to heighten the narrative drama, which Claude more or less puts into play by manipulating the family; eventually, the division between fantasy and reality is broached. It seems at first the film will insist on being yet another highbrow indictment of middle class banality – young Claude is smarter and better educated than anyone in the Rapha household; even Mommy Rapha's obsession with House Beautiful style decoration is belied by her very banal results. But there's a twist: amidst the semi-snide comments it becomes increasingly obvious that Claude and Germain have other agendas than merely exploring the upper reaches of high art by diving into the world of the petty bourgeois Raphas. Manipulating the Raphas becomes a power game, in which Germain can flatter his ego that was flattened by his lack of literary talent (we discover he is a failed novelist), and Claude can finally feel something because he comes from a broken home with a paralysed (!) father and a mother who abandoned the family when Claude was young (we get hints later that it was to seek love). At this point, nearly everyone is tainted and morally ambiguous: Germain's wife's gallery fails because she insists on showing highbrow conceptual art that no one buys despite warnings from the building owners (a deus ex machina represented by "twins"), but she leaves him when she realises Germain is no more than an emotional voyeur who can only live through Claude's manipulation of the innocent Raphas. Germain gets fired because he stole a math test so Claude could get brownie points with the thick Rapha junior; Claude's alleged talent is revealed to be no more than a fascination with the seedy; at the end, he seems as homeless as the by-now fired Germain. When the Raphas get their act together to take advantage of a deal in China, they unite: Mommy rejects Claude's advances and realises he's just a boy with a boy's childish destructive streak; Daddy grows a pair, stops whining about his richer and more successful partner, and launches his own business; even Rapha junior, thick headed and apparently innocent and naïve, finally realises that Claude is really more of an emotional parasite than a friend and beats him up for making a pass at his mother. In the end, the boring and conventional Raphas are vindicated, and the intellectual and artistic highbrows (Claude, Germain and his wife) are ruined. This is a script-driven film; everything is narrated, and the actors are illustrating scenes that Claude has written at the urging of his mentor and fellow emotional cripple Germain. As such, it could have been slow but the pace is quite racy; director François Ozon not only uses the "to be followed" to keep up interest, he gives a little wink to the audience when he overuses it with several hypothetical scenes are played out to get a resolution. All in all, a highly successful film adaptation of a novel, with fine actors, pacing and dialogue.

American Reunion (2012)

Shallow but fun

[6/10 · 16 July 2012]

I wanted to hate this film, with its sophomoric and forced sexual humour, but I didn't. Yes, it makes everyone look they're still in high school. Yes, there's a misogynist thread running through the film (girls are bimbos, aggressive skanks or sweet but not too bright). Yes, a lot of the plot was forced so they had someplace where they could graft the jokes. But, it works. Sometimes it happens. Formulaic writing sometimes urges actors to dial it in, but here even the sappy, "but he's our Stifler" moment, when the friends realise that the Stiffmeister is basically an a-hole but they still love him, friends-forever through thick and thin kind of thing, manages to work because the actors are mostly decent and manage to communicate some chemistry, as if they had some real fun making the movie. Stifler's Mom, Jennifer Coolidge one of the most underrated actors around, really scores some points with just a few phrases and expressions when she puts the Stiffmeister in his place (on the phone, even harder to do), and when she parties with everyone's favourite dad, Eugene Levy. Stifler's reaction to the gay couple moment is actually believable and funny (it only lasts 30 seconds or so). Rebecca De Mornay is a believable cougar (not a surprise, because she is even more attractive now than 3 decades ago). Vik Sahay as Stifler's douche boss is over the top, but that's bad writing, not bad acting. Despite these little grace notes, the story is, as I said, well, there's no other word for it, silly. Where in real life do relatively successful people on the career ladder invest so much in high school nostalgia? Didn't they go to college? The story tries to present them as adults, but ultimately it's not the idiotic hi-jinx that brand them as immature, it's the posing, the shallow addiction to feelings, the desperate need to connect in the most primordial way possible. It's as if these people can only relate to the world through their sex organs, but most of the gang are not getting any, so they're a little bit at sea. Even the so-called marital issues in Jim and Michelle's marriage can't be talked about in a mature way. On the other hand, there are genuinely funny moments between Jim and Kara, his ex neighbour he used to babysit who's all grown up and eager to lose her virginity. Funny, if you can believe that Ali Cobrin, who's got more healthy sex appeal (like a younger Cameron Diaz) in her little finger than most people do in their entire bodies, would have held out in the hedonistic atmosphere that dominates the high school, at least according to the movie. That being said, it's enjoyable on some basic level; not the best coming of age comedy, but not the worst.

Unbreakable (2000)

Even comic book heroes get the blues

[9/10 · 4 January 2012]

This underrated film is a pleasant antidote to Hollywood's emphasis on special effects. Bruce Willis is a reluctant superhero who takes years to come to grips with his powers – a form of psychic sensitivity, unnatural strength, and, of course, the fact that he is almost indestructible. Samuel L. Jackson is his antithesis – cerebral (Willis, as I said, has trouble figuring things out), physically fragile to the point of being known as Mr Glass, and for most of the film, relatively immobile and confined to a wheelchair. This film's strong points are its dark, muted colours, its lazy rhythm (long shot lengths) combined with constant slow panning, and its cast. Willis is terrific as a man psychically tortured by his strengths (he has trouble connecting with his wife, his job, and his life in general) who is trying to flee the growing realisation that he doesn't belong, while Jackson is excellent as a man emotionally twisted by his physical impotence. The dialogue is terse, minimalist, and contextualised in an intelligent way, since the thesis-antithesis plot is voiced mostly by Jackson in his character as an art dealer specialising in comic books. Appropriately, the visual imagery analysed and presented by Jackson (which is largely correct, BTW, especially the emphasis on large heads and skewed eyes on villains) acts as a counterpoint and bait to Willis, a kind of blind Argos. Willis' son communicates well the appropriate stunned look of alienation, so we understand his emotional investment in helping his father understand his destiny. The denouement is interesting: Jackson sees all, at least in terms of the comic book logic that has been his one crutch throughout his life, yet we discover that he is just as emotionally crippled as he is physically weak, while Willis slowly comes to see his role not as someone made special by his powers, but as someone whose destiny is to be conventionally honest, moral and kind. What is the message? That real heroism is facing the everyday "evil" of banality (Willis is a security guard who lives in a somewhat grotty home)? Perhaps. I don't think that other actors could have worked so well together to convey this slowly growing tension between blindness and sight, strength and weakness. Okay, Shyamalan has been parodied especially on Robot Chicken for sticking to his formulaic "twists" that seem too pat, too deus ex machina, but here it works because the underlying narrative structure of the filmic action is the simple black or white logic of comic book morality. Even for the tortured superheroes that have followed on the heels of Spiderman, a sudden twist at the end is appropriate for the war of good and evil. I don't think he chose the comic book backstory for Jackson's character by accident. Yet, despite the apparent simplicity of the moral imperatives that are its backbone, the film manages to provoke.

Barney's Version (2010)

Too ambitious for its own good

[18 November 2011]

I've long thought that Mordecai Richler doesn't adapt well to the screen. His books are complicated and his characters nuanced. That seemed to be the thread that ran through his characterisation: essentially rotten, self-serving people who nonetheless have redeeming qualities. On other words, more or less every human being on the planet. Richler was particularly good at dismantling the pretensions of the rich and arrogant, especially social climbing Jews. This movie is no exception. It's well made but just doesn't quite communicate the nuance of Richler's book. As interesting as Paul Giamatti is, the script just doesn't allow him to communicate Barney's complex personality: sort of on the hustle, but fiercely loyal to his brilliant but drunk and drugged out friend Boogie. Also, the movie gets it chronologically right but dramatically wrong: at the beginning, we see Barney marry his crazy first wife in Rome, out of a sense of guilt and responsibility because she is pregnant. It turns out not to be his child. Dramatically, it's always more interesting to see the "bad" first (Barney is a bit of a hustler) before the "good" second wife, but here we get the opposite. Barney's second wife, the Jewish Princess (Minnie Driver) also comes across as a one dimensional shrew. Why did Barney marry her, then? It's never made clear if it was for money or contacts to launch his TV production company (no, in fact). The dinner scene before the marriage when he introduces his future in-laws to his retired cop and street punk father Izzy (played wonderfully by Dustin Hoffman, which goes to show that a great actor doesn't always need rich material) already warns Barney that he'll not be welcome by the family. The book explores this paradox in more detail; the movie doesn't, so we're left a bit perplexed: the action is, as they say, undermotivated. The main drama centres around Barney's one episode of cheating on his third wife, to which he immediately and tearfully confesses as soon as his beloved Miriam walks through the door. This is psychologically inexplicable, although in the book we get a better sense of Barney's flaws and therefore of his qualities, so it is more believable that deep down, he is as Jewish family man as they get (in Richler's world) and feels guilty for the betrayal. Part of the problem is Rosamund Pike (Miriam), who plays the wife like Sigourney Weaver on valium. I think she underplayed it to take control of her native British accent, but ended up not communicating the passion that incites Barney to fall head over heels in love with her the night of his wedding reception to wife number two, the shrew. That's the problem here, that the movie tries too hard to be faithful to all the major themes in the book, but can't. No one is really at fault except perhaps the writers (Richler was always a bit heavy handed in his screenplays) for trying too much with really good but not great actors (Hoffman excepted). They would have needed more nuanced directing and acting to get the richness of the book, to get the essential Richler point that sometimes it's our flaws that inadvertently redeem us, not our angelic side. Nonetheless, in a world dominated by Twilight and Iron Man franchises, this is an honest and thought provoking movie, despite its limitations.

The Adjustment Bureau (2011)

The great mystery of life, for dummies

[12 November 2011]

This movie is supposed to be provocative and thoughtful, with its references to the eternal struggle between free will and an omnipotent God. Who's the boss? could be the subtitle of this movie. In fact, it debases the central question that has forever plagued eastern and western philosophers alike. In the end, it has little content beyond what we would hear in a high school debate. There are too many shortcuts and just not enough fleshed-out ideas for a movie that claims to be tackling The Grand Mystery of the Universe, but it takes itself way too seriously to be Monty Python-esque about it and come up with credible answers: the angels are supposed to be the enforcers of a master plan, yet they have hobbled powers; they have to wear stupid 1960s Mad Men hats in contemporary Manhattan; couldn't God have just given them key cards to open doors? Not to mention that the secret of their power is that they twist doorknobs counter-clockwise to enter their secret realm. Who would have thought? The two main characters are always conveniently single whenever they meet over the years. More importantly, John Slattery is not so believable as the head field agent in charge of making sure people stick to The Master Plan. He comes across as a little too slick, too corporate, and too efficient but without any passion. In fact, the whole Plan thing is presented along those lines: the Adjustment Bureau personnel seem to drive Miami CSI style SUVs, they are headquartered in a huge warehouse, the minions seem hard at work on The Plan in a large retro-style library. It's a little like watching Jack Lemmon's The Apartment, but colorized. Perhaps the most important thing is that Matt Damon and Emily Blunt have no believable chemistry when they are together, so it's hard to accept that two young and attractive people are saving themselves and avoiding romantic entanglements for seven years so they can eventually be together and buck The Master Plan cooked up by God Himself. Plus, it irks me that the whole movie reduces what could have been an interesting idea played by otherwise good actors to the tired American cliché that Love Will Find a Way and Triumph. Really? Two people are only mildly attracted to each other at the level of a first date (Blunt even tells Damon, at one of the climax points, that he doesn't know anything about her) in a cinematically unconvincing way, and this is supposed to be enough to come to the attention of God, halt the machinations of dozens of angels working on the case to set things back on track, and rewrite the master plan for all of humanity? Somebody seems to have given Damon novocain in his morning decaf, because he shows as much passion as a mushroom, and Blunt, while acting credibly, is just given too many bad one-liners that alienate the audience. We don't know if she's just bitchy, flippant or wary of Damon stalking her. She's supposed to be a dancer that changes the world of dance, yet the dancing we see looks like it was choreographed by high-schoolers; Damon is supposed to become a President that will change the world for the better, but the only evidence of his acumen and grit is a clichéd concession speech in which he admits to the image manipulation that lies behind political campaigns. Wow. I'm stunned. They hire consultants so his shoes can match his ties? So it's not about ideas? Thanks, Matt, that's a major revelation, which encapsulates more or less what's wrong here: we're continually told to be on the lookout for something earthshaking, and it's just, in the end, a case of lust. Yuri Zhivago pursuing Lara across Siberia, across wars and revolutions, writing poems that survive Stalinism, and in the end dying for her: that was earthshaking love. This? Pfft.

Les aimants (2004)

Confused emotionally shallow people? Original

[11 November 2011]

Unique: a romantic comedy with no sympathetic characters. This is supposed to be a movie with a clever twist, that feelings and events are revealed by notes left on a refrigerator (hence the magnets in the title). Well, it works, since the protagonists' actions and conversations come across as self-indulgent and childish, as one dimensional as the paper with which they "reveal" themselves. It's not about having commitment issues, like a lot of rom-coms, but about people not knowing that there exists an emotional and psychological domain beyond the one attached to their genitals. The characters are all written to be quirky – the male lead (Bilodeau) is a musician who tries to communicate the passionate expressions of Herbert von Karajan, but he's only playing a Theremin (it has a pair of antennae that emit a magnetic field connected to an amp that produces sounds when the player modifies the field by waving his hands; sorry for the details, but hand-waving and no metaphoric touching are what this movie is about); the women are physically unattractive, mostly because they react aggressively to almost every situation, whatever the psychological register), but dress like a cross between Gypsies and bohemians, I guess to impress us that they "really", beneath the shrewish exterior, have taste and an aesthetic sensibility. It's all a mish-mash. The only constant is an undertone of emotional whinging as people manoeuvre to satisfy their (mostly sexual) desires in the most direct and primeval manner possible. They lie, they cheat, they can't communicate, and we are supposed to buy into this because they are flippant, "artists", or simply unbound by convention? Really? I thought the 60s and 80s were over. Some people have mentioned the lighting and decor, which are technically well-executed, but it only seems to underline the emotional shallowness and intellectual impotence of the characters. It would be acceptable if the movie (and I guess this is the director's fault) didn't take itself and its themes so seriously. There is no real humour, so I don't know how this got slotted into the comedy genre, except that people weave webs of lies to betray one another. Unlike other examples, however, we can't really identify with any character. These people aren't caught between conflicting emotions. The only motivation seems to be that they only have one set of genitals, so I guess it's hard slogging getting connected to everyone. The whole thing seems like an attempt by a provincial theatrical company to play Shakespeare, except Macbeth is a horny plumber, and its Woody Allen who's being ripped off, not the Bard.

Swing Kids (1993)

The horror, without a bloated Brando

[18 September 2011]

As ridiculous as the premise sounded to me at first glance, and as self serving was the little announcement at the end that swing kids survived the war, as if they were a radical underground movement that risked death with every buck and wing, this movie was generally well made. It is a detailed study of how moral horror (Nazism) slowly becomes acceptable through a culture of fear and suspicion and through propaganda. The movie presents propaganda in its most primitive form, and we are tempted to be shocked that young and otherwise decent Germans could fall for it, just as it is perhaps hard to believe that the authorities would get upset about swing music and that it could become a focus for political dissidence. First, propaganda is still with us today in other forms, as anyone who has heard the constant haranguing about heroes amongst us can attest. This film was set only a few years after the first use of cultural propaganda, and people were less cynical and more nationalistic than they are today, and perhaps less cynical and more apt to accept ideological positions like Nazism. The movie shows, here and there, that propaganda is effective even if we don't believe it, or don't believe most of it. Second, the movie is historically accurate as far as I can tell. Remember that concentration camps existed in 1939 (they had been invented by the British during the Boer war) as a sort of detention centre, but certainly not extermination camps, which were created in 1942. Imagine this situation today: you hear some lout say, "We should ship the n******* back to Africa". You dismiss it as a stupid, hateful comment. By 2014, there is a full scale State backed plan with millions of people being "shipped" away. My point is that in 1939 even the most rabid Nazi (except for the leadership) probably never imagined that it could happen. beating up Jews and dissidents were more or less normal at the time. Jews had been victims for centuries, and Germans have had difficulty tolerating dissent since the time of Martin Luther. This movie is good because it shows us how it could have and did come about, little by little and with the complacency and compliance of most people, who acted out of a combination of fear, ignorance and cupidity. For example, at several points characters make comments about the uniforms the Nazis gave their lower class followers, and how these seem to make them important and aggressive. This is a forgotten point, in today's prêt-à-jeter dominated clothing market, but back then no one had many clothes: everyone had work clothes, one semi-good suit or frock for receiving people at home, and one good suit or outfit for Sundays and official functions. Uniforms, well, gave uniformity and crushed individuality, and the Nazis had swell ones, overall, that must have seemed pretty snazzy to most relatively poor Party followers (Nazis made a big deal of recruiting big names to their Party, but for the most part it was the anonymous lower middle classes that supported them). No one here was going to win an Oscar, but everyone was believable and decent. An unbilled Kenneth Branagh almost steals the show as the stereotypical but believable "good" German who happens to be a Nazi. Frank Whaley's crippled and idealistic swing kid and Django Reinhardt admirer Arvid also deserves kudos. His one big speech is a bit botched, but that's the fault of the histrionic writing style more apt for an after school special that lays out good and evil in simple terms. It's as if the script is good when it portrays the everyday banality of horror but is unable to denounce it without getting preachy and melodramatic. It's also fun to see today's well-known actors cutting their teeth on a pretty good story (with a few cheesy exceptions, like the ending) with nice period costumes and music, as well as Prague credibly substituting for Hamburg. Overall, if you're going to waste your time watching a meh and somewhat oddball movie, watch this one. Its pacing, acting, and design are all fine, as is the script, with the exceptions noted above.

Angels & Demons (2009)

Nice shots of Rome are not enough

[18 September 2011]

This adaptation of the Dan Brown novel of the same name tries hard to be faithful to the pseudo-erudite tone of the book but just doesn't quite make it. Ron Howard is not a subtle director; his straightforward style could have worked to simplify the book's complexities, but it doesn't. I think one of the major reasons is that it is a bad book, but the prequel Da Vinci code was so popular that the screenwriter and Howard were perhaps a bit too respectful. Howard, to give him credit, tries with a kind of chiaroscuro lighting scheme but even that doesn't seem to work. Many scenes are simply too dark, and chiaroscuro is light and dark combined. Rome is wonderfully lit at night, but nothing equals the daytime sky that inspired so many artists. Howard opted for night time scenes (like in the book) but this just muddies the images, since most are dark close ups rather than dramatically lit piazzas, churches and monuments. Light and dark only work in panoramic shots that can include both. Switching from light to dark doesn't work when the action is set at night. Second, the book insists in making John Langdon into something of a James Bond, Sean Connery style. This may be believable for some, but anyone who knows Harvard professors and "symbologists" also knows that not too many are going to be running the 100 yard dash in under 10 seconds, swinging wildly from balustrades, and hold their breath under water for 30 seconds. Most of these guys are so used to talking that the underwater silence alone would kill them, not to mention the gymnastics and their bodies toned by thousands of hours in those armchairs. In brief, it is just not credible, as neither are the clues and riddles and Langdon's solutions to them: too easy. These are supposed to be the Illuminati, the greatest assembly of geniuses the world has ever seen, able to battle the greatest spy network in the world, the Vatican. Yet it alls seems a bit lowbrow. It's like the first book: playing word games in Latin may dazzle people who haven't studied the language, but they're not too difficult to figure out if you have. Hanks tries, as always. He is very good at being earnest as he gets older. Unfortunately, the female lead was not the love interest this time around, and no one really holds our interest except Ewan McGregor as the Camerlengo, the Chamberlain who is the eminence grise in the interregnum following a pope's death. He communicates the real power and responsibility he wields behind the scenes. Hanks' Langdon comes across as a clever but preachy high school teacher, and Vittoria Vetra is not a so convincing scientist that we believe she has found the mysterious "God particle" at the heart of the plot. All in all, not a bad movie, and worth watching just for the shots of Rome (though these are not so good as a decent travelogue on the Discovery Channel), but not so interesting, and the lighting, meant to be provocative, is only irritating.