|
|
WFIU Movie Reviews
with Peter
Noble-Kuchera
Movie reviews air on WFIU Tuesdays at 10:06
a.m. and 3:10 p.m. and Fridays at 9:03 a.m. and 11:06 a.m.
2007
Reviews | 2006
Reviews | 2004-2005
Reviews
JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH
Note: The following review applies only to the 3D version
of the film "Journey to the Center of the Earth".
To see the movie any other way would be pointless..
Observing the career of Brendan Fraser is a study in frustration.
Though he has a multi-million-dollar franchise to his credit
- the "Mummy" films - and though he's been proven
bankable as a star of comedy family action films, such as
Dudley Do-Right and George of the Jungle, playing a human
cartoon makes Fraser seem desperate more often than not.
He's a good looking, buff guy, but without any danger or
sharp edges; sort of like the boyfriend you know your father
will like, but who doesn't really do it for you. What's
missing from his persona is the dark, ironic twist to the
smiles of Jim Carrey and Ben Stiller.
"Journey to the Center of the Earth" is, much
more so than the Mummy films, a perfect match for Fraser.
Rather than making us miss what the actor lacks, it matches
and capitalizes on his goofy boyishness; and on the other
hand, that he's watching out for a sullen teenager adds
an anchoring level of responsibility and maturity. Many
an actor has gotten lost in a special effects movie, but
here, the whole production rests comfortably on Fraser's
broad shoulders. The movie hits the sweet spot, a film for
tweens that uses a technique so new, it's bound to appeal
even to the jaded.
All the easy 3D gimmicks are employed here, made effective
by crisp computer graphics: the antennae of a trilobite,
seeming to poke right out of the screen at you; a floating
dandelion seed that many in my audience actually reached
for, trying to touch it; a roller coaster ride in an out-of-control
mine cart that makes your stomach lurch. The loose story
(the joke is that Jules Verne's book was fact, not science
fiction) lends itself perfectly to a string of escapes and
derring-do, each one showcasing a different aspect of what
the 3D technology does well. This is not your father's 3D,
with the red and blue gel glasses that turned everything
to mud.
Our actual experience, while watching a film in "stereo,"
is worth contemplating. Objects, even faces, don't come
into sharp focus. It's not that they look blurry; it's just
that you can't really concentrate on the details without
a lot of effort. Instead, as if gazing at one of those "Magic
Eye" pictures, your eye tends to report an impression
of objects while busily tracing their outlines, in order
to establish how they are positioned vis-à-vis each
other. This is an immersive process; in terms of the film,
you feel like "Journey" is happening to you, like
you're the fourth adventurer along for the ride.
So what does this mean for the future of the movies? It
can only herald good things. Because what we're all tired
of is the excessive use of computer graphics, which have
divorced the movies from any meaningful reality. 3D is nothing
less than the missing link. Because we can't look too closely,
fantasy worlds created by digital artists finally feel convincing.
Looking at the production pipeline, I feel confident in
stating that beginning in earnest in 2009, all the big effects
movies are going to gravitate towards stereo. (Innovative
and truly artistic uses of the medium will come much later;
and I hope some day somebody is going to realize how great
this technique would be for a horror movie.)
I hope 3D will make traditional cinema a viable alternative
again, in which you can again interrogate an image that
an honest-to-god director of photography has captured for
you with his lens. We'll all be better off when Hollywood
image makers stop trying to sell us on the rationalization
that CG looks real. It doesn't. Not ever. "Journey
to the Center of the Earth" makes no bones about its
artificiality, and that's what's adorable about it. It proves
definitively that there's room out there for two vastly
different, parallel streams of entertainment. And it's just
about the perfect diversion on a hot summer night.
BACK
TO TOP
WALL-E
Imagine that a company like Wal-Mart grew so big, it clogged
the world with garbage. Nothing could grow, and the air
is became so toxic humanity had to relocate. The hoi polloi
crowded in a great wad into a luxury liner spaceship, and
disappear for the stars.
Now fast forward four hundred years. On Earth, the only
thing moving is a little cleaning robot, model name "WALL-E".
Thousands of other WALL-Es have stopped working, but this
one has survived by his ingenuity, cannibalizing the derilects
for spare parts. He is going about his Sisyphean directive,
compacting trash into one-foot cubes and stacking them into
ghastly skyscrapers.
WALL-E is a heck of a cute little thing, a cube on treads
whose expressive binocular eyes recall the Viewmaster from
Toy Story, or Number Five from the film "Short Circuit".
His only companions, in an extravagantly lonely existence,
are romantic musicals played on an ancient VCR, and a resilient
cockroach whom WALL-E iis always accidentally squishing.
And then one day, everything changes. A spaceship lands,
and into WALL-E's world drops a small reconnaissance probe
called EVE. Her smooth, eggshell-white surfaces make her
look like an animated iPod. (This shouldn't come as a surprise,
as Steve Jobs, Apple Computer's CEO, has a controlling stake
in Pixar. In fact, every time WALL-E boots up, we hear the
Apple chime.) Eve is a mercurial career woman way out of
WALL-E's league, who almost blows the little guy's head
off with an arm laser, before befriending him, or at least
tolerating him.
Somehow WALL-E gets EVE back to his crib. She's deathly
bored by the Zippos, Rubik's Cubes, and other junk that
WALL-E has collected, until he shows her a small green shoot
he has recovered. EVE goes berserk, tucks the plant into
her belly, and enters lockdown mode. Of course WALL-E is
bereft and frantic; he tries everything to reanimate her,
but nothing doing. And when the spaceship returns, and reclaims
EVE, the determined WALL-E grabs on to the hull and hangs
on for dear life.
I'd rather not tell you where the adventure takes WALL-E;
enough has been spoiled by the trailers. I will say that
the opening act is nearly wordless, and that lends it some
real poetry. The middle passages are less organic than willed.
But that criticism is to make the perfect the enemy of
the good. Even when the film doesn't sing, there are pleasures
galore. "WALL-E" can be preachy, but how can we
begrudge it when the message is as urgent as the ecological
ruination of the Earth? In its conscience, "WALL-E"
resembles "Happy Feet", another computer-animated
film with ecology on its mind, whose underlying seriousness
sometimes seemed at odds with a too-sweet story that was
probably necessary to sell it.
Even when they don't go all the way, Pixar films usually
add up. To take "WALL-E";s meaning, contrast the
memorable villain whose name says it all - "AUTO"
- with the tiny cleaning robot, whose short stature and
name - "MO" - belie his abundance of character.
MO's directive is to follow a glowing green line on the
ground, literally to see only what's right beneath his feet.
But he looks up. He spots some grime just off his beaten
path. He concentrates, he quivers, he decides - and then
he jumps the line.
Technically, this is a glitch, as it is when Eve pirouettes
through the sky for the pure joy of it, or when WALL-E develops
a personality. It's the misfits, the artists, who hold the
key to renewal of the pre-programmed "normals"
and the damage their inattention and gluttony have wrought.
Big ideas couched in efficient commercial entertainment,
"WALL-E" is a film of joy and even genius, an
exemplar of the heights a summer movie can reach.
BACK
TO TOP
GET SMART: MISSED IT BY THAT
MUCH
Steve Carell is not Jim Carrey, nor does he try to be.
Carrey can take a crappy looking Los Angeles movie like
"Ace Ventura: Pet Detective" and make it work
by the force of his physical and facial contortions alone.
That's why Carrey makes $20 million for one of his throwaway
comedies; you don't need an expensive supporting cast or
special effects (he's his own effect). You barely need a
script. You can practically let cameras roll and take a
nap.
But Carell's comedy comes from character; and against all
odds, in the otherwise disposable comedy "Get Smart,"
he has found one. His Maxwell Smart is not (just) a clumsy
boob. He's smart (he used to be the CIA-like CONTROL's top
analyst), he's an improviser, and he can handle himself
in a fight or on the dance floor. He's not smooth - he's
a neophyte with everything to learn - but he desperately
wants to succeed at his new job. We can relate.
As they go about their various lame-brained adventures,
so much of the movie depends on Smart's gentle conquest
of his partner, Agent 99, played by Barbara Feldon in the
original '60s TV show, here essayed by Anne Hathaway. A
previous relationship with a work buddy compromised her
identity, and she underwent plastic surgery. She now has
a young face (the doctors must have kept going, because
those are the legs of a twenty-five-year-old, and she fills
out a dress as if she were poured into it and forgot to
say when). Having endured all that, you can imagine 99 (missed
opportunity: why not 69?) isn't looking to hook up again.
She has even more reason to resist her partner's advances
than Vesper Lynd did in the last "James Bond"
movie. Bond wore Vesper down; but come on, he's James Bond.
"Get Smart's" climax takes place at the gleaming
Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, one of Frank Gehry's
gravity-defying edifices. There is no wrong way to shoot
a Gehry building; any framing will yield gorgeous intersections
of planes and angles. Anne Hathaway has a face like a Gehry.
And if there's not much fire in those big, dark eyes - she
can be a bit bovine (imagine a spitfire like Rachel McAdams
in the role!) - she can be sexy by going at her own pace.
But the building and the beauty are about all there is
to look at. That climax involves the seriously shopworn
device of nuclear warheads (the world will pay some billions
of dollars or SPECTRE-like KAOS will blow it up, blah blah
blah). No irradiating all the gold in Fort Knox here. And
where is KAOS's evil base? In the center of a dormant volcano?
In a ship whose bow can split and swallow a submarine whole?
No - it's in a bakery, a set barely even dressed. The always
clever "Bond" movies were self-satirizing, and
hardly need a spoof - and what oxygen was left has already
been consumed by Mike Meyers' "Austin Powers"
flicks.
Character. Steve Carell found one, and Anne Hathaway is
at least a game and glamorous foil. But characters need
support, and it's clear from every frame of "Get Smart"
that director Peter Segal, late of three insipid Adam Sandler
movies, was on a donut break. Here's another of his tawdry
productions. Is it unfair to ask for action scenes that
are thrilling in addition to being setups for a joke? Are
we wrong to expect a feature film, for which we paid at
least $8, to look better than a TV show? If you answered
"yes" to the above, "Get Smart" will
skate by. But "The Forty-Year-Old Virgin" - a
movie that earned the hard work of its talented star - this
is not.
BACK
TO TOP
SON OF RAMBOW: NOW, THIS IS
MORE LIKE IT
I've been taking some heat for castigating "Kung Fu
Panda" last week (you'd think I clubbed a baby seal).
Just in time, I have my counter example. "Son of Rambow"
(sic) is that rara avis, a movie about kids that's smart,
original, funny, and rather true. It isn't perfect, but
compared to the rest of the landscape, what a jewel.
The film, set in an English village in the 1980s, is the
story of an unlikely friendship between two young boys.
Will (Bill Milner) is as scrawny as a wet Chihuahua, the
son of a super-religious single mother, who hides in a private
world of daydreams. We see his imaginings in animated sequences
from his point of view (more of these would have been nice).
One look at his Bible, as densely illustrated by him as
a monk's illuminated manuscript, and you know that this
kid is going to break free some day.
While waiting to be bawled out by the school principal
after a misadventure, Will meets Lee Carter (Will Pulter)
in the hallway. Or more accurately, Lee Carter beans him
the head with a ball. This is a die hard miscreant, a kid
who takes to trouble like Rambo takes to death, a kid whom
adults automatically assume is guilty, so he's pleased to
prove them right. Why do he and Will become friends? Maybe
because Lee Carter, who worships his brother, needs someone
to worship him for a change.
Lee Carter's mom is jet setting in Europe, leaving him
in the questionable care of his narcissistic loser of an
older brother. The brother has him sneaking into the local
movie theater, videotaping the movies, and making pirated
dubs on the VCRs downstairs. Will, stuck in the basement
one afternoon, watches, enraptured, as "First Blood"
is being dubbed. It's like crack.
Will is inspired: Lee Carter (Will always calls him by
both names, which, in his excited, sweet little voice, never
gets old) will use the video camera to re-make "Rambo"
in their image. "I'll save you, Rambow!" Will
shouts, grabbing his drooling, withered grandfather in a
black fright wig, the only adult he could muster.
The director of "Son of Rambow" is Garth Jennings
("The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy") who gets
excited by the possibilities of computer graphics to pull
off impossible sight gags. Will's death-tempting stunts
include a William Tell routine with a real crossbow bolt
practically parting his hair, and using a plank of wood
like a see-saw, catapulting himself twenty feet in the air.
We laugh because we know that this is a kind film, and
nothing can happen to Will, can it? But considering that
we are lulled into a reverie, an accident, occurring late
in the film, is a bit of a betrayal of trust. A child is
trapped under some falling debris, and nearly suffocates
in a pit of black oil. It's a brief scene, but it's frightening
enough to break the spell, and very young or sensitive kids
might be troubled.
Actually, this indicates the movie's only flaw. "Son
of Rambow" is content to be amiable throughout, and
it's likeable indeed. But we miss the sense that something
much is really at stake, other than Will and Lee Carter's
blood brother-ship. There's an intriguing subplot involving
Will's mom (economically made three dimensional by Jessica
Hynes), and the smarmy fundamentalist pastor who's putting
the moves on her; and a compelling scene in which she tries
to bring Will back to God instead of Lee Carter. Those family
and religious dynamics aren't explored nearly enough; they
should sting.
While an overall sense of urgency might have nudged the
film into greatness, "Son of Rambow" is still
that one-in-a-hundred film that speaks to kids and adults
without insulting the intelligence of either. In other words,
it's smarter than your (thoroughly) average bear.
BACK
TO TOP
KUNG FU PANDA: WHITE LIES,
WHITE NOISE
I feel it's only right that I should warn you: I've got
nothing against terrible movies. In fact, if you know how
to look at just what's playing in theaters right now, you
can find a lot to love in a movie that tries something brand
new and hits the wall with a pyrotechnic BANG ("Speed
Racer"); or that is repetitive and boring but has a
queasy conviction ("The Strangers"); or that is
desperately shallow, but accoutered with panache ("Sex
and the City"). As a critic, my one, true, sworn enemy
is that which most deadens the human soul: mediocrity.
Back in 1977, when director Ridley Scott was pitching the
project that would become "Alien," he told the
microcephalic, knuckle-dragging suits at the studio, "It's
like "Jaws" - but in space!" Never underestimate
the power and efficacy of an idea that can be boiled down
to five words a three-year-old can understand. That's the
kind of movie that gets made. ("Alien" was great,
by the way.) Now, imagine the dollar signs in Dreamworks
Animation chief Jeffrey Katzenberg's eyes when he heard
the magic, royal-treasury-opening words: "A panda -
who can do kung fu!"
Which brings us to "Kung Fu Panda," opening today
in Bloomington, and the subject of mediocrity. Will kids
like the movie? Sure. They'll watch the color and motion
in the same way your or I might zone out while staring at
our laundry tumbling in the drier. But will they get what
they deserve? Will the film stoke their imaginations with
the fantastic, delight and surprise them with fresh ideas?
Not hardly. This is a movie like a Lubriderm-coated White
Castle burger, designed to shoot through you without touching
the sides.
Consider the fat, clumsy Panda's lithe friend Snake, one
of four easily-merchandised but wholly undeveloped animals
gifted in the martial arts. What possibilities! How would
a snake use its sinuous spine and low center of gravity
to counter an opponent? A filmmaker with one scintilla of
inspiration would have taken off with the physics and given
us something to chew on. But in "Kung Fu Panda,"
Snake sails through the air, "Matrix"-like, hovering
there, slapping opponents around with his tail. It's embrassing.
While "Panda" isn't as shot through with the
unwanted pop culture references that often comprise the
Dreamworks Animation style ("Shrek" and the truly
intolerable "Shark Tale"), it's just as littered
with superfluous celebrity slumming in the voiceover department,
as if star wattage will transfer like ju-ju pixie dust,
hedging against the considerable financial investment being
made. Will anyone notice or care that the fighting animals
sound like Jackie Chan, Seth Rogen, David Cross, Lucy Liu,
and, of all people, Dustin Hoffman, the last of the big
name actors to cash a check for two days' work?
And those are the voices that work at all. Angelina Jolie's
voice is without timbre, and can in no way be emanating
from the throat of a tiger (she did better recently, dubbing
over her own animated body in "Beowulf"). Jack
Black, who voices the panda, is an actor who is often funny,
but who just as often gets old (for every "School of
Rock," there is a "King Kong"). Without his
popping eyes and facial contortions to distract from the
nasal quality of his voice, listening to Po is like listening
to the yappings of a nervous little dog.
So tell your kids to read a book, or go outside and play
with a stick or something. Anything. But if the marketing
spores have too fully flowered in their eager little developing
brains, and they won't stop begging you to take them, you
might consider waiting in the lobby, withholding at least
$7 from the men who are going to keep doing this to us as
long as we let them.
BACK
TO TOP
THE FALL
The camera obscura, Latin for "dark chamber,"
is the basic building block of all photography. Light from
a well-lit area passes through a small hole, and an image
of what's outside is projected, upside down, on the back
wall of a dark area. I have seen a naturally occurring camera
obscura one time in my life. A moving image of my children,
playing outside in the kiddie pool, was projected with astonishing
resolution, color, and clarity on the wall of my bedroom.
I've never forgotten it.
Considering how foundational the camera obscura is to photography,
and to filmmaking, you would think it would have shown up
in movies long ago; but I've never encountered it in a film,
until now. The Fall, the second fiction film by the
Indian director Tarsem Singh, who now bills himself by the
single name "Tarsem," has captured this magical
occurrence. A four-year-old girl, Alexandria, played by
the lovely young actress Catinca Untaru in one of the greatest
and most delicately evoked child performances in modern
movies, is in the hospital with a broken arm. In her travels
around the building, dark and filled with mysteries, she
sees, projected through a keyhole, the image of a horse
on the wall.
What is the significance of the horse? Horses are, in fact,
a motif throughout the film, including a striking, silent,
black-and-white opening sequence involving a train, a bridge,
and a drowned horse. What do they mean? Maybe nothing. Based
on Tarsem's previous film, The Cell, he clearly loves
horses, and perhaps he put them in his new film simply because
they are so beautiful.
Some critics have criticized The Fall for exactly
that reason. They complain that the film's story is thin,
and that its images are unmotivated, simply a director's
fancy, or folly. But is it folly to bring to the world images
that have never been seen before? Such as a man whose back
is riddled with one hundred arrows, so that when he falls
backwards, he is borne aloft by the shafts as if resting
in bed? Or a cluster of dead, red bodies hanging from the
ceiling, in the shape of a chandelier, slowly rotating?
Or a white sheet, stretching twelve stories high, in the
middle of the desert, slowly turning red from the bottom
up as the blood of a fallen comrade soaks upwards?
If the images I've mentioned sound grisly, I suppose sometimes
the film can be that way. The little girl is being told
an extemporaneous adventure tale by another patient, a man
named Roy, played by Lee Pace. Roy, jilted by his lover,
has lost the will to live, and is dreaming of suicide. His
own thoughts are dark; it's no wonder that the images he
conjures are tinged with death.
But the key to the film is that his word pictures, which
we see acted out, in all their exaggerated, theatrical glory,
are filtered through the mind of the little girl. What we're
seeing isn't necessarily the story the storyteller intends,
but rather the one that is received. In other fantasy films,
there is no question that the other world has an independent
existence, and a child is just a visitor. The Fall is
much closer to imagination. Tarsem is reaching for the deepest
heart of the cinema: the ability of colorful, moving shadows
on the wall to stir deep emotions within us, no explanation
needed. Asking all the images to make sense is to miss the
point entirely. This is a film of amazement.
"The Fall" is currently playing in an exclusive
engagement at the Keystone Art Theater in Indianapolis.
Even with the price of gas, it's worth the trip. Reviewing
movies for WFIU, this is Peter Noble-Kuchera.
BACK
TO TOP
INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM
OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL
Wild horses couldn't keep moviegoers from the theaters
on this, the Memorial Day opening of Indiana Jones and
the Crystal Skull. But I'll bet a lot of people come
away grumbling. How can the film possibly satisfy nearly
twenty years of salivating fan expectations?
The answer is that it can't, and I'm a little worried about
the film's long term prospects. Audiences have been primed,
by the first three films in the series, to expect breakneck
action sequences and knife-to-the-throat suspense. But the
first two action scenes in Crystal Skull, a shootout
in a warehouse and a motorcycle chase, are so limp, you
might find yourself waiting for the movie to start. Only
a much later sequence, involving amphibious vehicles, has
a touch of the old kinetic magic.
Partly, this is due to the fact that the other films contained
dazzling, dangerous, real stunt work. In the back of our
minds, we know that in this age of computer graphics, the
stunts in Crystal Skull were enacted in a warehouse
painted green, where if you fall you'll land on foam, not
stone. And Harrison Ford's stunt double, so much lither
than the 65-year-old actor, has had his face digitally shadowed.
It feels like a cheat.
But what if I asked you to change your expectations a bit?
The film's director, Stephen Spielberg, is not off his game,
he's just changed the way the game is played. An older,
wiser, crustier, seen-it-all-and-then-some Indy requires
a different kind of movie. There's some melancholy here,
the suggestion that Indy has made some wrong choices in
his life and is living with regret. There's one image in
particular that's almost haunted. Indy stands on a cliff,
in silhouette, as a mushroom cloud billows on the horizon.
This could have been played for a laugh, but there's something
strangely compelling about it. The image would look great
in a frame, hanging on a wall of the Smithsonian.
A large part of the change in tone is due to Janusz Kaminsky,
Spielberg's regular director of photography since Schindler's
List. By way of example, illustrating how the look of
Spielberg's film has changed, compare the first and second
Jurassic Park films. The first is a thrill machine,
Jaws redux, filled with bright colors and sharp lines
that leave nothing to the imagination. The second film,
shot by Kaminsky, is so much darker it's almost jarring.
The jungle becomes a truly mysterious and dangerous place
where your imagination can get the better of you.
And that's true of Crystal Skull as well. The ruins
in the film are actually scary. A little artificial town
at ground zero, peopled by mannequins, gets under your skin.
Not what you expected from an Indiana Jones movie? Well,
that's a good thing. Remember how hated Temple of Doom
was back in its day; it was dark and strange, and so
much more interesting than The Last Crusade, basically
a retread of Raiders. Temple of Doom has been
vindicated by time, and so, too, will be The Crystal
Skull.
And what of the story, finally settled on after years of
wrangling between George Lucas, Stephen Spielberg, and Harrison
Ford? It takes place in a 1950s played for menace. Godless
Russians are in for godless Nazis, headed by Cate Blanchett
as Irina Spalko, with more than a hint of the dominatrix
about her. The MacGuffin has changed from quasi-religiosity
to little green men. Karen Allen makes a welcome return
as Marian Ravenwood, Indy's old flame from Raiders;
the film makes the mistake of not bringing her in early
enough. In addition, a couple of secondary characters could
easily have gotten the axe, leaving more time for Indy and
Marian.
You might not like the story, but you have to hand it to
them: the film's makers have really tickled themselves pink.
Their enthusiasm is infectious, and seeing Dr. Jones put
on the fedora again feels like a surprise, and most welcome,
gift. Just keep an eye on those expectations.
BACK
TO TOP
IRON MAN
What’s the point of a movie review, when the film
has already opened and grossed over $200 million between
foreign and domestic? What is there left to say when the
critics have already spoken, ladling on Iron Man panegyrics
enough that you’d think the film is the Second Coming?
I think what’s left to say is this: you deserved more.
It’s common currency to excuse a lack of originality
in a film by shrugging and saying, “Come off it, man,
it’s a comic book movie.” The assumption is that
comics are a cut rate art. The fact is, some of the best
writing, and the most complex of visual sensibilities, can
be found in the comics. Iron Man is the new kid on
the Marvel block, and his mythology updates perfectly from
the Vietnam era of the comics to the Middle-East of today.
The questions the books raise are not just relevant, but
prescient.
For instance, in Afghanistan, billionaire weapons designer
Tony Stark (Downey, Jr.) is water-boarded, a practice very
much on the minds of Americans. Is the idea that all violence
rebounds on the user? How does the evolution of weapons
technology – from the bow and arrow through the chariot
and the nuclear bomb – change the way wars are fought?
Can possessing the biggest stick on the block be used as
a deterrent, or does a weapon, by the mere fact of its existence,
create pressure to use it? How would the face of war change
if a single solider had the firepower of an entire regiment,
and could employ it with pinpoint accuracy? What would this
mean for the “War on Terror”?
Big ideas for a summer movie, to be sure; but why shouldn’t
our entertainment make us think? Unfortunately, those intriguing
questions are jettisoned in favor of big metal things slamming
into other big metal things.
I suppose I should give you some more plot summary here.
The thing is, the film has already been badly damaged by
an irresponsible ad campaign that will do anything to get
you into the theater. In the trailer, the first act –
Tony’s captivity and escape, via a powered suit of
armor -- is revealed point for point. The trailer then reveals
the arc of the second act, and astonishingly, even gives
us the identity of the villain and shots from the climax.
So instead of spoiling the plot, let’s talk acting.
Robert Downey, Jr., can be a sexually ambivalent presence
(see Two Girls and a Guy). He’s often a little
fey, light on his feet, a little bit pretty. Not in Iron
Man. Here, he is quintessentially male – a boozer,
a gambler, a broad-shouldered, devilishly goateed, silver-tongued
womanizer, a connoisseur of engines, hi-tech, and the finer
things. And yet his vulnerability warms you to him. Much
of that is us projecting on an actor who has had public
struggles with addiction, and who is finally bankable; we
are ready for Downey, Jr. to have his payday. He makes a
wonderfully complex superhero in a role that seems tailor
made.
And then there’s the suit, a triumph. Post-escape,
back in the lab at home, Stark refines his armor. The Mark
II is halfway between the deco hood ornament of and the
lumbering Frankenstein’s monster of Robocop.
Iron Man fetishizes gleaming, pThe Rocketeer ainted
metal, sexy whirling gimbals and lathed, airtight seals.
It may not be the freshest idea on the stack, but the robo-suit
delivers a Steve Jobs-like, geek chic thrill (Terence Howard,
who plays Stark’s military friend, gushes, “That’s
the coolest thing I’ve ever seen.”) ILM and Stan
Winston Studios deserve the fanboy adulation they will receive.
I’ve obviously been describing an entertaining movie,
so why the sour grapes? I think it’s worth griping
when a film with so much going for it flips on the autopilot
switch for its entire final third. I have no doubt that
the inevitable sequel will settle down and improve upon
the formula. But let’s call the first Iron Man by
its true name: a disappointment.
BACK
TO TOP
88 MINUTES
The script for 88 Minutes should never have been
filmed. It's a cretinous, slovenly, and slack document as
shot full of holes as a paper target at a gun range. And
yet John Avnet, primarily a producer and only rarely a director,
saw something in it, and actually came up with a point of
view on the material. That must be how he seduced Al Pacino;
that, and the actor must have wanted to play a young man's
role one last time.
Jack Graham, Pacino's character, is a wealthy and powerful
forensic psychologist, who has made a career out of giving
expert testimony that puts serial killers away. Yes, this
is another serial killer movie, and you should steel yourself
for a scene that somehow manages to be sadistic and misogynistic
despite the fact that it's directed like a B-minus '70s
slasher flick. Anyhow, Jack also teaches college, and his
classroom is filled with beautiful, tall young things who
bat eyelashes at him like they're in an Indiana Jones
movie.
In fact, Jack's workplace is filled with even more beautiful,
tall, young things; and last night, he went home with a
beautiful, tall young thing he picked up at the bar (notice
that her naked stretch is the exact position she'll wind
up in when she's dead, several reels later - one more paranoid
detail). And this is Avnet's approach, realized at the level
of casting. It's a natural that 88 Minutes should
be claustrophobic and paranoiac; Jack's vaunted ability
to concentrate starts coming apart when he gets a cell phone
call warning him that he will die in the titular time frame.
But what works is Avnet's gloss: Jack is a womanizer and
commitment-phobe (Pacino's age actually abets this read).
All those women - including even the beautiful, tall, young
extras, whom Jack bumps into, and you can tell by their
faces he's slept with them - begin to fuse into one woman,
a generalized nemesis of femenine retribution.
This was exactly Stanley Kubrick's approach in the film
Eyes Wide Shut. It worked within Kubrick's dream-like
conception; and it almost works for Avnet, because paranoia
is another kind of dream, an irrational, walking nightmare.
But ultimately, that promising subtext isn't enough to compensate
for the whoppers we are asked to swallow.
We must believe that the killer can tap into Jack's cell
phone mid-call. That he, the killer (or, more likely, she)
somehow has the number when Jack borrows somebody else's
phone. The killer must predict Jack's every move in order
to leave menacing countdown messages on his car, on his
classroom overhead projector, etc. She blows up a car -
not even on the timeline - just so we'll have a money shot
for the trailer. Jack is wanted by the police, principally
Bill Forsyth, for the mounting murders; but they let him
run around Seattle like he owns the place, in a cab that
the cabbie lets him drive for a hundred bucks! And the movie
just keeps taking advantage of you, until you will either
cry "uncle" or walk out.
Look, David Fincher's paranoid thriller The Game was
just as outrageous; and it might even be the model here
(Deborah Kara Unger is in both films). But that film was
directed with detail and finesse, and shot in thick, black
hues that swallow the world whole. It's patently ridiculous,
of course, but fascinatingly patently ridiculous.
Avnet, on the other hand, is not just a hack, but a rusty
hack. How many high-angle shots of Jack running do we need,
especially since we know Pacino couldn't possibly keep it
up? How many times are we expected to sit like restless
children while Jack takes yet another phone call?
My favorite moment of startling incompetence involves Amy
Brennenman's character. She sees a dead body, then has a
talk with Jack. Some genius in the editing room decided
she didn't react to the body enough, so they just layered
on dubbed audio of her reaction. Like so much of this twelve
care pileup, that was not a way to go.
Reviewing 88 Minutes for WFIU, this is Peter Noble-Kuchera.
BACK
TO TOP
THE RUINS
I should probably be warning you about the lousy dialog
in George Clooney's misguided screwball comedy, Leatherheads.
Or maybe I should be telling you that Smart People,
starring Dennis Quaid as a depressed and depressing college
teacher, is anything but smart. Then again - I suppose I
just did. Instead of reviewing those movies in detail, I
find that, against my better judgment, I keep gravitating
towards a horror movie that I saw weeks ago, that I can't
get out of my head.
The film is called The Ruins. And while I cannot
in good conscience recommend it to anyone but a genre fan
- and then only to a die hard, who is willing to put up
with a bad movie just to get to the original stuff - it
contains an image so brilliant, so disturbing, for certain
seekers, it's worth it. It's not what you see, it's the
implications of what you see. All I will tell you is that
it involves the hunt for a ringing cell phone.
Killer plants have made up a weird sub-genre in science
fiction and horror movies, from the ambulatory, carnivorous
shrubs in Day of the Triffids to the surly trees
in The Wizard of Oz and the horny ones in Evil
Dead, to the blood-sucking bud in Little Shop of
Horrors. There's even a sub-sub genre of killer vines,
represented in animation by Disney's Sleeping Beauty
and a whole host of Japanese anime, and recently in
the stranglers of the first Harry Potter film and
Minority Report.
Strange that plants keep (ahem) cropping up as villains,
when they are (cough) rooted to the spot and can't chase
you. Okay, a triffid can chase you, but you take my point.
Some deep part of our reptile brain must recognize that
plants are aggressively competing living things, and we
should beware. I'm not sure if anxiety about female genitalia
isn't also a part of it, too. Scott B. Smith, who wrote
the screenplay for The Ruins and the book it's based
on, has done some thinking about how plants adapt, and the
result is a mostly-original take on malevolent flora.
I wish I could say that the characters are just as original.
Instead, let's guess who's going to be compost. Amy, Jena
Malone, is the brunette smart one who is reluctant to explore
the jungles of Mexico with only a decaying map as guidance.
My money is on her to survive this thing. Laura Ramsey,
who plays bubble-headed, blond Stacy, is asked by director
Carter Smith to get naked for no reason, which she does
spectacularly. I give her forty-five minutes of screen time.
Then there are the guys. There's uptight Jeff, Jonathan,
Tucker, Amy-the-smart-one's boyfriend, whom we see shirtless
only seconds after he's probably done 300 reps on the BowFlex.
He's going to be a doctor; chances are his medical training
will come in handy, don't you think? Eric, Stacy-the-dumb-one's
boyfriend, might just escape your memory altogether. And
there's the foreign guy, Mathias, Joe Anderson, who isn't
part of a couple, and is soon to be a double amputee.
The five friends, with the aid of that ancient map, come
upon the ruins of an unknown ziggurat deep in the jungle.
Perhaps the deadly vine that covers the edifice releases
spores that make it invisible to planes. The boys and girls
get three steps up the pyramid before they are ringed by
mysterious federales, speaking a bizarre language, wielding
machetes, pistols, and bow-and-arrows (!), and who refuse
to let anyone leave.
It may seem like I've told you too much, but I haven't.
After all, we're dealing with a variation on a theme here.
Those who are better adjusted than myself need not apply.
But for you - and if by that I mean you, God bless you -
what you need to know is that this boilerplate is crisply
shot and nicely paced. One simply unforgettable image, plus
the revolting, squiggly plant equivalent of the Guinea worm
and a generous carving of thigh meat, might make this turkey
worth it.
BACK
TO TOP
SNOW ANGELS
Snow Angels is the fourth film from 32-year-old
wunderkind David Gordon Green. It has been carefully adapted
by Green, in a style like that of Todd Field of In the
Bedroom, from a book by Stewart O'Nan. The film follows
several characters as they try to make sense of their lives
and relationships in the drab and frozen suburban wastes
of an un-named northern state (the film was shot in Nova
Scotia).
Annie, Kate Beckinsale, is a waitress at a tacky Chinese
restaurant. She is recently separated from her husband,
and is not doing so hot at taking care of her three-year-old
daughter, while fending off barbed asides from her mother
that she ought to take Glenn back.
Glenn, Sam Rockwell, is a bit of sad sack; we meet him
at the sink, popping a pimple on his forehead, creating
a wound that never seems to heal, much like him. He seems
a nice enough guy; he obviously cares for his daughter,
though he's awkward with her. Annie hints at the back-story,
though: "I've got enough trying to hold it together
without worrying whether fragile Glenn will try to kill
himself again."
We see a little of Annie's general lack of caution in the
way she flirts with Arthur, Michael Angarano, a teenager
she used to babysit, who buses tables at the restaurant;
Annie can't turn it off. That's probably how she wound up
in bed with a tattooed, mustached lout, the husband of her
best friend. But it's impossible to accept Kate Beckinsale
as reckless Annie. Her clean good looks haven't endured
Annie's heartbreaks, and no way was Glenn her first, not
this complicated beauty.
The extent of Glenn's fragility, and his death drive, continue
to unfold. He's a dry drunk, held together by a new-found,
naïve Christianity. His new boss at the factory, taking
a risk on Glenn, says, "Read Matthew. You are lost
to the fold. But you can be found." Glenn is the kind
of man who would frighten us into condemning him if we met
him later in his slide. But he sneaks in under the radar.
Sam Rockwell is nothing short of brilliant in one difficult
scene after another.
Director Green allows screen time for Arthur, the teenager
with a crush on Annie, to develop a more realistic romance
with Lila, Olivia Thirlby, who did a nice comic turn in
Juno. The pairing is quirky enough to be interesting.
Movies rarely get it right when they depict intimacy between
high school kids, but in this one, notice which of them
ducks under he sheets. We even get an abstract glimpse,
from Arthur's point of view, of his parents. These secondary
stories are there, I think, to show relationships at various
stages -- one beginning, one ending - as refractions of
the real story, Annie and Glenn. You may feel, for a time,
that the film isn't going anywhere. Hang tight.
Why is the football team called "The Red Hats"?
Why is Lila's hand covered in red paint? Why do so many
people slip on the ice? What is the meaning of a dead deer?
These are details in a film flush with them, and maybe they
are warnings, maybe not. If warnings, they are the kind
we never heed. By the third act, it finally dawns on us
that each scene in the film has been setting up the board;
and now that we know the name of the game, the game is playing
the players, and has already been lost. All that's left
is to watch the final, inevitable moves with terrible understanding
and pity. Maybe the film will help you extend that pity,
the next time you read about a domestic disaster in the
news. Though the film offers the cold comfort that life
goes on, after all, it's parting shot - a character plaintively
calling for a dog that's never coming back -- is like a
fishhook in the flesh, tugging us back to face the collateral
damage.
Reviewing Snow Angels for WFIU, this is Peter Noble-Kuchera.
BACK
TO TOP
SHINE A LIGHT
Martin Scorcese's direction on his new movie, a Rolling
Stones concert filmed in large format Imax, is largely utilitarian.
It's all he can do to keep up. He turns this into a running
gag; in the opening of Shine a Light, we see Scorcese
flummoxed at the lack of communication from the band that
makes planning impossible. Mick Jagger still hasn't approved
of the set design, even though the deadline for construction
has come and gone. He refuses to give Scorcese the set list,
so that the director can plan his shots around the songs.
Jagger even says, "I'm not sure we want all those cameras
around, distracting people. Are you going to have one of
those flying cameras?" Scorcese, deadpan: "Yes,
it would be nice to be able to movie in. You know, and out."
These are not the first difficult artists Scorcese has
had to deal with, and the results are worth it. The concert,
which took place as a Clinton benefit at the tiny Beacon
Theater in New York, starts a little shaky. Jagger seems
to be soldering through words he doesn't want to say, on
"Jumpin' Jack Flash", having sung them 10,000
times before. But his personal energy - the way he barrels
around the stage, his too-short shirt revealing his flat
belly as he wiggles his hips and shakes his butt at the
crowd - begins to astonish. You're sure that he could never
sustain that momentum, but mostly he does. This nuclear
power plant of a man is what has kept the band together
all these years. That, and each band member's obvious love
of performance. And by concert's end, Jagger has revved
himself, the band, and the audience to such a level that
when more fan favorites arrive, they are thrillingly new.
The Rolling Stones, each now in their sixties, aren't what
they once were; but it's not like that's what we want. At
the time of their four seminal albums, culminating in 1972's
Exile on Main Street, their musicianship was perfectly matched
by edgy songwriting; they were dangerous. Now, after years
of famously hard living, drinking, smoking, doing drugs,
and womanizing, Keith Richards looks like he's been ridden
hard and put away wet. He acknowledges this to the crowd:
"Glad to see you," he tells them. "Hell,
I'm glad to see anybody." Richards' guitar virtuosity
is long gone; but his magnetism has only increased. He's
a self-consciously iconic figure now, shot by Scorcese largely
from low angle, the Stones looming above us like leaning
giants.
What Scorcese is about is filming a paean to longevity.
He cuts to archival footage of Mick Jagger, when the band
had only been together for three years. "Can you see
yourself doing this in your sixties?" the interviewer
asks. "Oh, yeah, absolutely," says Jagger. History
is written all over his sinewy body, and in the deep, lost
crevasses of Keith Richards's face. Great artists get more
interesting as they age, not less.
We have Scorcese to thank for knowing that, and for capturing
the Stones at their latter day apex. That he has done so
in Imax is no mean feat; those cameras are enormous, as
is the budget required to shoot with them, and the talent
required to operate. Cinamatographer Robert Richardson,
and nine other DPs, Oscar winners or nominees all, for the
most part pulled it off. Some moments are pure Scorcese,
as when Jagger runs straight up the middle at the crowd
and a 200 pound camera flies in to meet him. It pushes you
right back in your seat. An Imax film, on a mighty sixty-foot
by eighty-foot screen, with 12,000 watts of sound amplification,
gives you a detail and vibrancy that is unmatched by any
other medium. Like the Stones, everything about Imax is
big, repudiating the idea of watching or listening on a
cell phone. As David Lynch has said, "You'll think
you're experiencing a movie on your phone, but you're not.
You're being cheated. Get real."
Reviewing Shine a Light for WFIU, this is Peter
Noble-Kuchera.
BACK
TO TOP
FUNNY GAMES
Michael Haeneke's film Funny Games is 98% a superbly
crafted (and crafty) art house horror film. It is also 2%
a deconstruction of itself. The problem is, the 2% is like
a sliver; you pick at it, crippling your reaction to everything
else. This is exactly what Haeneke has in mind. I've delayed
judgment since I saw Haeneke's French language original
a year ago. The remake has forced me finally to codify what
I think. We'll get to that.
A well-heeled family is driving up to the lake house in
a shiny SUV, towing a sailboat. We first spot them via a
helicopter shot, with classical music playing on the soundtrack.
The film cuts gradually closer, until we are just inside
the car, where the windshield should be. The mother, Ann,
is a stunning blonde with an expressive face (she's played
by Naomi Watts). The father, George, played by Tim Roth,
has a gentle manner. The tow-headed eleven-year-old, played
by Devon Gearhart, with eyes a fawn, leans forward in his
seat. He wants to be between the parents; they want to have
him there. Ann and George are switching CDs in the stereo
(the soundtrack appears to be diegetic); their travel game
is "guess the opera".
Haeneke, the director, is setting the family up for attack.
The soundtrack switches to a head banging track that the
family cannot hear, a scream of primal rage. The title "Funny
Games" slams over their faces in blood red. Haeneke
is suggesting that the family's civility and naïveté
make them helpless, and their affluence means they're asking
for it. The games have begun.
The film's next minutes are all set-up. Not a beat is wasted.
There's the white gate that whispers closed. There's the
dog, the golf clubs, the eggs, the cell phone. A young man
in his early twenties - Peter, played by Brady Corbet --
dressed in impeccable whites and even white gloves, knocks
at the gauzily translucent door. He is a golf pro, he says,
he's staying with the neighbors, he says, they sent him
to borrow a few eggs. Ann opens the door, failing to pass
the first test of eligibility for survival in a home invasion
movie.
Soon, Paul (Michael Pitt) arrives, also in pristine white.
Ann senses that something is wrong - she's in trouble. Now
George and Georgie come through the door, and all the players
are on stage. An intense life-or-death drama begins to play
out within the home, about which I'll say little. The ambiguously-sexed
Paul and Tom - are their names Paul and Tom? - are here
coldly to toy with the family's lives like two children
devastating an ant hill.
The precision of the directing, and the high quality of
the acting, achieve a fearsome gravity. But then that gravity
is pulled off center. Whenever we are most on tenterhooks,
Paul peers over his shoulder, breaking the fourth wall,
addressing us directly. "You were expecting a satisfying
plot development, right?" he asks us, slapping us out
of the movie's reality, distancing us from what only seems
to be happening.
I felt robbed of my empathy. Ostensibly, Haeneke is impugning
our voyeuristic tendency to get off on violence. He's right;
we do that. But at the same time, he has created a film
of surpassing sadism. The joke's on us. How did he convince
the actors to commit so fully, when they must have known
that he would throw their work out the window to make a
point?
I haven't seen all of Haeneke's films, but I've seen enough
to know that he is a filmmaker of great power and serious
purpose, who gravitates to emotional extremes. He is well
matched by Naomi Watts, who also produced this remake, who
has some need for her beautiful face to become puffy and
raw with grief and terror. It's tremendously difficult to
craft a good horror film; Haeneke has done it, but then
discards it as if it were beneath him. Remaking his earlier
film, shot for shot, targeting America directly this time,
also reveals his disdain. Why else do it? For the money?
What he's left us is confusion, betrayal of trust, and damage.
While some have mustered ample evidence to support the conclusion
that the film is brilliant, to my thinking, it ain't cricket.
BACK
TO TOP
THE SPIDERWICK CHRONICLES
The family film The Spiderwick Chronicles has quite
the pedigree. It was produced by superstar team Kathleen
Kennedy and Frank Marshall, who have assembled the best
in the business: Michael Kahn, Spielberg’s regular
editor; ILM for the special effects; the excellent music
is by go-to composer James Horner; the cinematography is
by Caleb Deschanel, who shot that greatest of family films,
The Black Stallion; the creatures are animated by
Phil Tippett Studios, who invented the dinosaur motion in
Jurassic Park; and the cast boasts such stalwarts
as David Strathairn and Joan Plowright, and Freddy Highmore,
of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, as not one,
but twin thirteen-year-old brothers. Everyone acquits himself
well, and if they’re slumming, you wouldn’t know
it.
My question is this. Why go to all the trouble of spending
an estimated $90 million and putting together a triple-A
team if it’s going to be led by the guy who directed
the remake of Freaky Friday? There isn’t one
thing wrong with Mark Waters direction; there just isn’t
one thing particularly right. He pulls back from the potential
ugliness of the film, not wanting to look at what needed
to be explored. He provides a woods, but they aren’t
mysterious.
There’s a foundational problem in Hollywood right
now; the wrong people are getting to direct. It’s been
that way since commercial and music video directors started
getting recruited for feature films a decade ago. Why should
Andrew Adamson, based on his work on Shrek, be entrusted
with the Narnia franchise? Why should Matt Reeves, who had
only directed the TV show Felicity, be given the
special effects-heavy monster movie Cloverfield?
In that case, Reeves himself questioned the reasoning with
producer J.J. Abrams. He was told, “We know you can
handle the character stuff. The special effects, anyone
can do.”
Well, sure, anyone can direct the special effects pipeline
if he just puts in an order and lets the animators go to
town. And that’s what’s been happening since computer
graphics took over the movies in the ‘90s: there’s
nobody at the helm, and the animators, supremely talented
galley slaves, can’t be expected to steer. Think of
what Guillermo del Toro could have done with this film.
He’s a director who struggled for two decades to get
where he is today, a developed artist who knows exactly
what he’s doing.
So The Spiderwick Chronicles is another fantasy
film that doesn’t feel so fantastic. Its hum-drum goblins,
which look like overfed toads with sharp teeth, come off
like CG blobs. The villain could be a cousin to the cave
troll from The Lord of the Rings, except for those
blessed moments when he’s in human form, and played
by a dead-eyed Nick Nolte.
The Spiderwick Chronicles is based on five book
cycle by Holly Black and Tony DiTerlizzi, unread by me.
But unlike the Potter novels, to which they are inevitably
compared, the books don’t bloat when you get to number
four. The film’s writers have crafted a trim reduction
that’s just right for the cinema.
In a nutshell: The Grace family is composed of brothers
Jared and Simon, and teenage sister Mallory, played by Sarah
Bolger, who never seems to put down her fencing sword. The
mom, Helen, Mary Louise Parker, is in a disintegrating marriage;
she and the kids are relocating to a big spooky house in
the woods.
Jared stumbles upon an old book in the attic; he opens
it; various fantastic critters are awakened in the forest,
invisible unless they want to be seen. Some are pretty,
some are friendly, and some are alarming. The usual stuff.
Luckily, there is a circle of mushrooms around the house
which creates an invisible protective barrier across which
the faeries cannot pass. That circle represents the greatest
missed opportunity in the film. It should have been mined
for its symbolism: the protective skin surrounding the nuclear
family. Late in the film, the father permeates the membrane,
and Simon holds him off with a knife. It sounds as painful
as the identical scene in the classic Shoot the Moon,
but it isn’t developed.
I know, I know, this is a PG film for kids. But nobody
is more attuned to disturbances in the family than kids;
the Walt Disney Company has built an empire on it. If you’re
going to mount a major production, give it to someone less
literal, with a proven track record in image-making. And
make sure he isn’t afraid of the dark.
BACK
TO TOP
4 MONTHS, 3 WEEKS, AND 2 DAYS
The closest thing American films had to a self-conscious
masterpiece, in 2007, was Paul Thomas Anderson’s picture
There Will Be Blood. But in that film, Anderson’s
ambition exceeded his command of technique and social criticism.
On the other hand, Romanian director Christian Mungiu has
accomplished it, creating a period piece that seems to stand
outside of time. It’s called 4 Months, 3 Weeks,
and 2 Days. It’s the real deal, all right –
one for the ages.
The film takes place in Romania in 1987, under Ceausescu
and communism. It begins as Otilia (Anamaria Marinca) travels
down colorless hallways, from one cramped room to the next,
in her block of flats, looking to obtain Kent cigarettes.
I heard the director explain this in an interview. Because
the cigarettes were all white, including the filter, they
were visually distinctive, and a status symbol. They could
open doors.
Otilia needs the cigarettes for a bribe. She also needs
money for what she plans to do, and she flits from one source
to the next like a bee pollinating flowers. She is determined
and resourceful; she has to be. The Romania depicted here
perfectly mirrors my experience of the then-communist Ukraine,
in 1989. The paint was peeling everywhere. Light bulbs were
out and not replaced. There were long queues for bread,
let alone meat, and the store shelves were mostly empty.
Everywhere, signs read, “under repair,” which
simply meant this or that was broken and would be fixed
probably never. Faces looked tired.
Otilia is, we discover, arranging an abortion for her roommate,
Gabita (Laura Vasiliu). Abortions were illegal in Romania
at the time; the pregnant woman, the abortionist, and anyone
aiding them could go to jail. And because Gabita’s
pregnancy is long term– the title, 4 Months, 3 Weeks,
and 2 Days refers to that – the abortion would
legally be murder.
Greatly complicating things is the fact that Gabita is
a twit. While Otilia scrambles to secure the resources for
the abortion, Gabita is waxing her legs. Gabita has failed
to book a hotel in advance, so Otilia has to use those Kents,
and her wits, to phenagle one. Gabita is supposed to meet
the abortionist, but chickens out at the last minute, and
it falls to Otilia. The film’s drama hinges on what
one woman is willing to do for another, regardless of whether
it’s deserved.
I use the term “abortionist” because there is
no evidence that Domnu’ Bebe (Vlad Ivanov) is a doctor.
There is a tangible menace about him. He threatens to back
out each time the two women deviate in the slightest from
his orders. But finally, in the hotel room at last, it looks
like the abortion is going to happen. That is, until Bebe
finally reveals the full extent of his sadism. This is a
man who wields power over women, and likes it that way.
I’m afraid the story might be sounding repellent,
or even exploitive. It is not. This is not a film with a
political agenda to press, though those on both sides of
the abortion debate could find ample evidence here to support
their position. Rather, this is drama, a terrifically absorbing
and affecting one. Though it is intense and sometimes disturbing,
at no point does the film go for shock. This is a true story,
after all, told to Mungiu by a friend; and while he was
making the film, Mungiu says that many of the cast and crew
approached him and said that the film exactly matched their
experience, or the experience of a friend or family member.
How does the film gather such power? It’s in the technique
almost as much as the acting and subject matter. Mungiu
sets his camera down and lets it run. He uses long shots
and long takes that involve superb timing, but feel utterly
naturalistic. His camera has a way of focusing your attention
in some cases, as when the abortionist is laying out his
tools. At other times, it causes your own eyes to do the
work; if he isn’t telling you where to look, you are
allowed to, you have to, choose for yourself. Sometimes
Mungiu picks up his camera and walks with it, even into
near-total darkness. You feel like he can take you anywhere,
and you fall into the film. 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2
Days is an experience you should have for yourself,
and one you’re not likely to forget.
BACK
TO TOP
THE SAVAGES
Hollywood films are quick to take us to fantasy land, especially
these days, when computer graphics are almost ubiquitous.
But there are some places - places we may have to face ourselves
one day - from which they shy away. Chief among these is
the end of life. We do get our share of cartoons like The
Bucket List, or vanity pieces that one critic has called
Allie McGraw disease: as in the movie Love Story,
a movie star dies slowly, becoming more and more beautiful
as she does.
But how many films can you name that explore the lives
of adult children, who are equipped neither financially
nor emotionally, trying to care for a failing parent? How
about the ignominy of bed pans and adult diapers, of your
father thinking you're one of the help, of sterile, ugly
nursing homes where the old cry out in pain and confusion?
Hollywood doesn't go there because they think we wouldn't
want to look.
A brilliant film by writer/director Tamara Jenkins - called
The Savages - has arrived in Bloomington, Indiana,
after an auspicious limited release and many Oscar nominations.
It concerns a brother and sister, played by Philip Seymour
Hoffman and Laura Linney, and their father, sinking into
dementia and raging against the dying of the light, played
with fearsome gravity by Philip Bosco.
The brother and sister, Wendy and Jon Savage, have never
been close; perhaps they have been on the run, in their
separate ways, from childhood trauma, and seeing each other
reminds them of those days. (That question is partially
answered very late in the film.) Neither sibling is flourishing.
Wendy, though she has a master's degree in English, is trapped
as a temp in Manhattan, watching the clock and dreaming
of a Guggenheim fellowship and stealing office supplies
to print and mail out her autobiographical play. She is
sleeping with a married man from up a landing in her apartment
complex, who seems to deplete her emotionally, leaving her
nervous, angry, and raw. Brother Jon went all the way to
the Ph.D. level, and is teaching theater at a small college
in Buffalo. With his patchy beard, unkempt, thinning blond
hair, and pot belly, he seems colorless and permanently
exhausted. He has a Polish girlfriend who wants to marry
him, but Jon cannot even bring himself to do that even to
stop her from being deported.
The elder Savage, Lenny, has deteriorated to the point
that he can no longer live independently. In-home care is
out; his living situation has deteriorated, too, and he's
on the street. Given that the kids are barely scraping by,
keeping Dad at home is out of the question. Wendy and Jon
travel to Phoenix to retrieve him. Alone with her father,
on the plane back, Wendy can barely navigate Lenny, with
his shuffling Parkinson's walk. And when he has a bathroom
emergency, she stands him up, and, in the aisle, in front
of the entire plane, his pants fall down around his ankles,
revealing his diaper. The look that passes between father
and daughter is so filled with pity, pain, and humiliation,
it freezes the characters in place, and us in the audience,
for what seems an endless moment.
But there's something I haven't told you about The Savages.
It's funny. Against all odds, all the way through, even
in its frequently painful moments and it's sodden, wintry
landscape, it's truly, deeply funny. There are a few overtly
comic situations, as when Jon tears a rotator cuff and must
suspend himself by his neck from a door for twenty minutes.
But how the movie maintains its overall comic tone is altogether
mysterious, almost magical. It's the deep pleasure you get
from watching three gifted actors who seem to have actually
become their characters. It's in the way Wendy and Jon are
constantly taking the measure of the other's life, and competing;
yet even when they bicker, you sense the powerful love they
feel for each other, almost as husband and wife.
Tamara Jenkins hasn't made many movies. I've seen only
one other of those, The Slums of Beverly Hills, a
coming of age movie equally bittersweet, unsparing, and
unsentimental. As good as that film was, The Savages
is on another plane entirely, a place to which few directors
aspire, or for that matter even know exists. It's such a
bracing and clarifying experience, it can make you angry
at how badly other movies let us down.
BACK
TO TOP
RAMBO
Maybe you’re old enough to remember. There was a time
in the 1980s when the Rambo movies were well-nigh
ubiquitous. Even then-president Ronald Reagan, who thought
real life was a movie, quoted the films. Rambo, with his
impossible biceps, for better or worse, here at home and
especially abroad, became a symbol of America – charging
into action unilaterally and unleashing its fury.
After the release of the sequels, I remember cartoons in
Mad Magazine that depicted Sylvester Stallone in Rocky
Nine, still in the ring but wearing an adult diaper.
Who could have guessed that the joke was on us? Last year,
at the age of 60, Stallone put on the gloves again, writing
and directing a new Rocky picture for himself. “There’s
still some stuff in the basement,” Rocky said. Now,
Stallone has dusted off the headband and resurrected his
other legendary character.
As you recall, or maybe you don’t, John Rambo is a
Vietnam vet, scarred by the war, abandoned by his country.
As was common in 80s action films, which had a weird masochistic
bent, he was tortured by one set of bad guys or the other,
gathering righteous indignation like a hurricane over the
ocean. By the end of the film, he had become an act of God,
able to mop up entire armies like French bread does a plate
of marinara.
But in this new film, gone is that wounded, self-righteous,
hangdog hero. In his place is a holy warrior who has owned
his violent tendencies. Rambo has spent the last decade
or so doing what action heroes do on their downtime, when
they’re not playing at Governor. He’s living in
Thailand, ferrying folks up and down the river in a skiff,
catching poisonous snakes and shooting at fish with his
compound bow.
Rambo has always needed a theater and a conflict to ply
his trade, such as the struggle of the mujahadeen against
the Soviets in Afghanistan. Now, the ethnic cleansing in
Burma is his new raison detre. A group of ridiculously naïve
white missionaries talks Rambo into boating their humanitarian
aspirations across the border. Their discussions –
“It’s always wrong to take a life” versus
Rambo’s “killing is as easy as breathing”
– come in dialog so painfully bad, that little boat
veers directly into the territory of camp.
After Rambo drops them off, it takes about five minutes
for the missionaries to be killed or captured. Some of them
are fed to giant pigs. Yes, this movie has giant pigs. And
rape. And pedophilia. The Burmese militia is shown to be
about as evil, and as undifferentiated, as they come. The
film conveniently tables a point it raises early on: this
is largely a conscription army, presumably made up of young
men who were forced to commit atrocities by loading them
up with drugs and holding a gun to their heads. No moral
ambiguity here, just 100 faceless dudes who desperately
need some killing.
This culminates in Rambo wielding a machine gun so big
you or I couldn’t lift the bullets to load it. As wave
after wave of army guys come at Rambo, the carnage goes
so far over the top, the bodies don’t just fall –
they explode. It’s a classic piece of bloody ‘80s
cheese that makes the 300 Spartans look like underwear models.
The message here, and it’s not a complicated one,
is that there are times when it’s necessary to beat
your plowshare into a sword, because some people just gotta
go. If we had sent Rambo after bin Laden, the job would
have gotten done. The missionaries sure change their
tune by the end; Michael, their pastor, has picked up a
stone with which to crush a skull; and Sarah, the chaste
beauty, gazes in awe upon the figure of Rambo on a hill.
“Thank you, Mr. Rambo,” she thinks but does not
need to say.
So does the movie work? It does, presuming you remember
fondly the golden era of action films, when Schwarzenegger
could pitch an entire tree over his shoulder. If so, and
if you know how to laugh, you might find, as I did, that
watching Rambo elicits a glowing glee. New heroes
may have replaced him – and he’s okay with that
– but Stallone, who has aged like a cliff has aged,
is here to remind us: there is one, and only one, Rambo.
BACK
TO TOP
Maintained by Michael
Toler
Last updated: Monday, March 17, 2008
Copyright 2008,
The Trustees of
Indiana
University
|
