Saturday, February 24, 2007

Breach

Breach (Billy Ray, 2007) - A

Details, details, details -- Ray gives away the plot with the very first shot (real news footage of AG Ashcroft announcing Hanssen's arrest for selling secrets to the Russians), and what's left is the interactions, the psychological pas de deux, the cat-and-mouse games. Stunning how thrilling all of this is despite taking place in an office and consisting largely of people walking around in suits; it's because it's so carefully observed, full of wonderfully unnecessary little bits, like the way Chris Cooper's Hanssen walks down the hallway, constantly ramming the bewildered Ryan Philippe into walls without noticing, or the downright predatory way Hanssen tells the latter to "pray more." Loved the obsessing over minutia (did he put the PDA back in the right briefcase pocket?), and the notion of a global conflict playing out on an administrative scale -- surely it actually happens this way. September 11th subtext is potent, too: the film posits Hanssen's ego as the source of all the trouble, and the notion of men's egoes fucking up international affairs seems vaguely familiar for some reason.

Saturday, February 17, 2007

Ghost Rider; Norbit

Ghost Rider (Mark Steven Johnson, 2007) - C

Johnson runs into the same problems he did in Daredevil -- all the nifty comic book conceits don't coalesce into a compelling (or coherent) mythology, so there's no sense of stakes, importance, or scale. Starts out strongly, with the sort of grand, broad-brush storytelling I was hoping for: the devil appears in the form of a black-clad Peter Fonda and immediately demands Johnny Blaze's soul (no, seriously: "Name your price," says Johnny when the devil offers to cure his father's cancer; "your soul," replies the devil); the film moves furiously for a while, and doesn't blink until Nicolas Cage shows up as Adult Johnny. Then the tone goes to hell (ha... ha...) -- Cage hams it up; the screenplay starts winking furiously and attempting broad comedy -- and the storyline sprawls in a half dozen different directions, trying to cram in as much of the comic as possible: Blaze seems to be both the devil's bounty hunter and an all-purpose avenger (he goes around smiting the wicked, kind of like Daredevil); Fonda's Mephistopheles is inexplicably dumped in favor of a generic and boring sub-villain played by Wes Bentley; Johnson lingers on Blaze's tiresome psychological crises and the obligatory journalist love interest. None of it matters, the film drains of momentum, and by the end what could have been a kick-ass geek-out becomes as ridiculous as everyone feared. A movie about a bike-riding superhero with a burning skull for a head walks a thin line, and Ghost Rider isn't calibrated right. Rent The Punisher instead.


Norbit (Brian Robbins, 2007) - D

It's not the fat suit or the mean jokes; it's not even Eddie Murphy as a small Asian man, or the unspeakably obnoxious attempts at a catchphrase ("How YOU doin'" as an expression of contempt). It's the stupidity of it that's offensive: the moron characters, the hacked-together, barely-there story, the one-note emasculated caricature that is Norbit himself. Murphy remains a talented performer, and Norbit is sometimes kind of funny (the absurdity of the monstrous Rasputia made me laugh despite myself), but it adopts a demeanor that is so aggressively formulaic and cloying that the idiocy seems almost purposeful. It made me want to shower.

Tuesday, February 13, 2007

Breaking and Entering

Breaking and Entering (Anthony Minghella, 2006) - B+

Seems, at first glance, to have been built top-down, entirely out of themes, messages, and metaphors -- there's a lot about distances: physical, emotional, socioeconomic; the film tackles gentrification, urban renewal, class divides, autism -- but the characters come alive almost despite the screenplay, and ultimately wind up driving the plot. The ending, specifically, which has been decried elsewhere as pedantic and ridiculous, struck me as precisely right, both thematically -- a selfless act closing all distances -- and narratively. Meanwhile, Minghella demonstrates why he was recruited into the big time: this is a strikingly beautiful film, and Minghella's use of the entire frame is so effective and pervasive that I pity the poor saps who watch it in pan-and-scan. Ambitious as hell, sometimes overreaching -- the Russian prostitute, though gamely played by Vera Farmiga, was probably a mistake -- but also moving and downright impressive. Ignore the bad reviews.

Wednesday, February 7, 2007

Because I Said So

Because I Said So (Michael Lehmann, 2007 ) - D+

My least favorite kind of romantic comedy: the kind where everyone is completely insane. Diane Keaton's character, who obsesses over her daughter's love life to the point of placing personal ads for her and screening potential suitors, and then showing up at her house before her dates, simply needs to be institutionalized; the daughter, played by the (still gorgeous and radiant) Mandy Moore, seems to have zero qualms about dating two people at once while trying to decide which she wants to ditch. The most interesting thing is the way antiquated notions of relationships sort of track each other: the man Mandy Moore's mother finds for her happens to be a vaguely chauvinist asshole, insisting on ordering for her from restaurant menus, and essentially telling her not to think so much. But that little thematic nugget is buried under 100 minutes of unfunny hysteria; there's also the small matter that both Tom Everett Scott and Gabriel Macht are like twice as old as Mandy Moore (her mom's okay with this?), and the question of what Piper Perabo is doing in a role with about a dozen lines, most of them about sex.