The I Inside

The I Inside (Roland Suso Richter) - D-

I haven't the slightest idea why this was in my Netflix queue. Maybe the freaky-time-traveling-mystery aspect drew me. Anyway, it's a complete embarrassment, without a single moment that doesn't ring glaringly false. This is the kind of movie that finds it necessary to do a Chinese zoom on an exit sign on a wall before its protagonist bolts for the door. Also the kind of movie that's fond of summarizing the preceding five minutes by having a character start sentences with "Let me get this straight: ..." Could have been interesting despite the stupid script had Richter established the hospital, where 95% of the action takes place and which becomes akin to a prison for the main character, as a distinctively spooky cinematic place, but it's just drab and ugly. As for the ending: I -- and probably you -- have seen this precise twist at least three times before. Maybe more.

The Dead Zone; Australia

The Dead Zone (David Cronenberg, 1983) - B+

Unlike Naked Lunch, below, there is nothing "Cronenbergian" at all about the subject matter here, but you can still feel the man's influence in the film's patience and intelligence (as well as the sudden appearance of matter-of-fact gruesomeness). Cronenberg's smart enough, for example, to let the movie develop without much of a plot, with a character arc instead of a story arc at its center; the resulting episodic feel makes it feel bigger, eerier (the application of Johnny's gifts ranges from the small and personal to the apocalyptic), and makes Johnny's journey from bitterness to resignation to embrace feel like precisely that: a journey. This is also one of the rare Stephen King movies to fully adopt the author's famous Maine setting, the haunting snowy backdrops perfectly complementing the slow-burn mood set by Cronenberg (though this isn't a "cold" movie -- there's a lot of green in the palette). And it's one of the few times Christopher Walken has gotten to be a straightforward protagonist. You may or may not be surprised to discover that he's a rather compelling leading man.

Australia (Baz Luhrmann, 2008) - C-

But for a moderately rousing 30-minute stretch halfway through, this would be enough to drive a man to drink, or possibly suicide. Three movies: a sweeping love story, a pseudohistorical drama about the Australian aboriginal "stolen generations" (see Rabbit-Proof Fence), and a standard-issue western with plucky cattle ranchers taking on a devious monopolist (the only part that remotely works). Really dire for the first 45 minutes or so, with Luhrmann's frantic, smirking, glaringly artificial style thoughtlessly plunked down in the middle of an Australian desert (the filmmaker, used to his elaborate soundstages, has no clue what to do with the vast barren expanses of his chosen setting); becomes more tolerable when it settles into a hard-to-resist underdog movie rhythm; goes to hell in the ugly, war-torn third act. Patronizing, saccharine, impossibly boring.

Naked Lunch; Bolt

Naked Lunch (David Cronenberg, 1991) - B-

This sort of pure metaphor isn't really my thing, but I do admire the fact that Cronenberg at least made an attempt to give it a somewhat coherent literal dimension. Essential for fans of the filmmaker since audio-visually it's probably the most Cronenbergian Cronenberg film ever, with characters constantly caressing fleshy typewriters and sucking addictive gooey liquids out of tubes protruding from the heads of buglike alien creatures. So there's that. Also: Peter Weller circa 1991 = James Woods + Daniel Craig.


Bolt (Byron Howard & Chris Williams, 2008) - C

You know, movies have been sending talking dogs and cats on cross-country adventures since time immemorial. Was it really necessary to contrive such a labored set-up to do so here? There's this TV show about a superhero dog, you see, but the dog actor thinks it's all real, and the producers of the show go to ridiculous lengths to maintain this impression, but then the producers decide that it's too predictable for the dog to save the day every time, so they end an episode with the dog's owner and sidekick captured by the show's villain, only the dog thinks it's all real, you see, and then the dog gets trapped in a box and shipped across the country, and now has to find his way back to his owner, who he thinks is in grave danger, but he thinks he has superpowers, you see... Complicated but largely charmless, and not very funny; the delusional hero thing is hard to pull off, and the movie doesn't make it work. I must say though that this is the best, most immersive use of 3-D that I've ever seen.

Quantum of Solace; Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa

Quantum of Solace (Marc Forster, 2008) - C

See here. Short version: If Bond films are going to be generic actioners, rather than trips to the familiar, idiosyncratic James Bond universe, they had better be good generic actioners. This one mostly sucks.


Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa (Eric Darnell & Tom McGrath, 2008) C

A smartalecky chatterbox of a movie that's essentially a rapid-fire kidflick cliche remix. Some appealing weirdness -- the first appearance of studly hippo Moto-Moto is priceless -- but not enough of its predecessor's visual wit and originality; making the central plot a parody of The Lion King may have seemed like a funny idea, but the result is that at every turn the film recalls one of the greatest animated features of all time. It looks fucking amazing on IMAX though.

Synecdoche, New York

Synecdoche, New York (Charlie Kaufman, 2008) - C

Ho hum, another recursive autocritique from Charlie Kaufman, who is becoming like the rappers who rap almost entirely about their rapping. Kaufman is the successful but dissatisfied artist, endlessly searching for truth but being tripped up by artistic pretense and the limitations of his medium; ideas keep flowing but not adding up to anything; the rest of his life melds with his art. Starts out as a depressing absurdist comedy and turns into a disturbing, disorienting fever dream -- much like the way Kaufman sees his own life, I'm sure, or else just the Plight of the Artist. It would take a second viewing for me to really unpack this, but that seems unlikely; just because the movie comments on its self-indulgence doesn't make it any less self-indulgent. Kaufman seems to have withdrawn, his cleverness now focused toward pet themes rather than storytelling, and the opaqueness becomes increasingly irritating as we realize that he's not going to give us anything to latch onto here. Some amiably goofy gags (the house that's constantly on fire; Caden's present to his daughter), but probably not worth your time; depends on how much you're willing to humor Kaufman.

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas (Mark Herman, 2008) - B

Even before the awful ending, I already thought this was one of the most horrifying movies about the Holocaust I've ever seen -- which is perverse, since it is largely about a German boy who seems never to be in any real danger. But his instinctive compassion and lack of comprehension is deeply moving, and watching the evil around him chip away at it is like being repeatedly punched in the gut. The movie is entirely unambitious and sometimes overwrought, but there's force in its simplicity: it made me physically ill. To some degree its formal banality might actually work to its advantage, since the contrast between its bland production values and its unflinching depiction of atrocity is jarring. On the other hand, the cruel, contrived irony of the last ten minutes is too much -- I was appropriately shocked that the movie Went There, but I didn't buy that it would happen like that, and it felt like the film was going out of its way to teach some of its characters a lesson. Still pretty powerful, and you haven't seen depressing until you've seen The Boy in the Striped Pajamas.

Ladder 49

Ladder 49 (Jay Russell, 2004) - C-

Wow -- I guess this can only be seen as an immediate post-9/11 artifact, when the (understandable and right) national reverence of firefighters would prompt this sort of dully worshipful, rudimentary love letter to the profession. Might have been (more) interesting had it tried to answer why people are driven to this extraordinarily dangerous job despite its toll on life and family, but it seems content with repeating that "saving people is worth it," which seems a tad reductive as insight into human motivation (and not even obviously true when "it" is a widow and several fatherless children). Formally, the film insists on the most boring version of Hollywood gloss, apt to undercut perfectly decent scenes by blaring a country song on the soundtrack, and prone to arty non sequiturs like segueing from a baptism to a water dripping on a trapped firefighter's forehead. There's a lot of firefighting action, but it's too expensive: the fancy crane shots and the lovingly observed explosions kill all immediacy, making the experience akin to watching theme park special effects. Some minor pleasures in the performances -- Phoenix is awfully good at these genial dullard roles, and it's fun to see Travolta as just a regular guy for once -- but I don't think it's possible to watch this in 2008 and not ask "why".

City of Ember

City of Ember (Gil Kenan, 2008) - B

Infuriating how people don't know a good thing when they see one. This is basically Lions for Lambs without the lecturing -- a movie about the immorality of "minding your own business" in the midst of a global crisis, an eloquent stance against complacency and blind faith. Thematically ambitious and working on several levels: the protagonists run into resistance that isn't political or even pragmatic but rather "it's not my job"; at the same time, the City at large is convinced that it is destined to thrive because it is "the only beacon of light in the darkness" -- shining city on a hill, anyone? Gil Kenan, who I am convinced is or will soon become a Burton-like visionary, folds all of this into a lovely fantasy adventure, fluid and immersive -- and also bold and abrupt when it needs to be, e.g. the opening shot and sequence. Loses it a teensy bit in the climax, which is a protracted and starts to look a bit chintzy (also, I'm still not sure what to make of Tim Robbins' bottle opener), but so the hell what. Hugely underrated.

catch-up

How to Lose Friends & Alienate People (Robert Wiede, 2008) - B-



Worth seeing for a bunch of disconnected reasons: a) Simon Pegg's hilarious physicality; b) the occasional bit of deadpan weirdness that had me rolling ("there are seven rooms"); c) dead-on supporting turns by Danny Huston, Max Minghella, Gillian Anderson, Jeff Bridges... even Kirsten Dunst, allowed to let loose a bit in an R-rated context, is more than just her usual adorable self. But Pegg's transformation from obnoxious boor to lovable scamp is less than convincing, and the whole romantic plot is a bit uneasy. Very funny though.

Quarantine (John Erick Dowdle, 2008) - B-



Okay, so the whole virus-that-makes-people-bite-one-another thing is clearly played, and this doesn't have the political subtext or technical virtuosity of, say, 28 Weeks Later to make up for it. The first-person stunt is also rapidly approaching "played" status, and creates myriad logistical problems. All that said, Quarantine provides enough decent visceral thrills for me to recommend it to horror junkies. Goes to hell in the last act, which is more hysterical than scary and resorts to infuriating exposition-by-newspaper-clipping, but even that doesn't kill the thing.

Eden Log (Franck Vestiel, 2008) - C



I like the story (i.e. what we get in the occasional bursts of exposition) and it's too bad that the movie constructed around it is so murky and boring. I've read the video game interpretation -- nearly-silent character wanders through levels dodging bad guys on his way to a big finale -- but it doesn't make the film any better, I'm afraid. Final shot verges on self-parody.

Blindness

Blindness (Fernando Meirelles, 2008) - C-

This has to be the most jury-rigged Lord of the Flies scenario ever devised. The government locks a bunch of newly blind people in a prison, with little food, no assistance, no sanitation, no communication with the outside world, and they descend into chaos and disorder? No kidding. And how, exactly, do things go downhill? Well, half of the quarantined suddenly become evil. Really? That's the great insight into human nature? By the time it turned out that the illness had just come to teach everyone a lesson -- LIVE AS A FAMILY, DAMN YOU! DON'T STEAL CARS! -- I was long past taking anything seriously. The interesting question that the movie doesn't remotely explore is why the fictional government react the way it does: just human selfishness? Or something else?

Miracle at St. Anna

Miracle at St. Anna (Spike Lee, 2008) - C-

No one runs hot and cold quite like Spike Lee. He can still make a good movie (Inside Man), or even a great one (25th Hour), but the time when he was able to tackle race head-on with a measure of nuance, restraint and moral complexity seems to have passed. This is sledgehammer stuff, preachy and obvious (black soldiers in World War II were mistreated and unappreciated, the end); he did seem to realize that he couldn't fill nearly three hours with outrage about this topic, so there's a whole bunch of general war movie stuff too, which is largely unremarkable. A few recognizable Spike Lee moments (most notably the montage involving the sultry German broadcaster trying to tempt black soldiers to lay down their weapons), and a few tense stretches, but mostly it's really freakin' tedious. Features Michael Ealy in one of the year's most irritating performances; on the other hand, having seen this and the surprisingly strong The Express, I'm very impressed with Omar Benson Miller.

The French Connection

The French Connection (William Friedkin, 1971) - A-

The quibble that knocked the grade down a notch for me: what self-respecting foreign drug dealer thinks that a good way to get the cops off your back is to get on the roof of a building with a rifle and try to snipe one of them down? Obviously a great procedural though, and when was the last time you saw cop characters who genuinely love their work -- live for it -- beating up junkies, tailing perps, chasing elevated trains, the works. Worth watching just for the little dance Doyle and Russo do after their wire comes through. The ending knocks everyone down a peg, of course, including us, but part of the reason it works so well is that the nitty-gritty of the police work is so exhilarating to begin with.

Righteous Kill

Righteous Kill (Jon Avnet, 2008) - D-

UNGGGGH! BLECH! This is the last Jon Avnet film I'll be watching. Such a narrative debacle that I can barely describe it; engages in whopping misdirection that makes everything before the "surprise" ending boring and suspense-free, and everything after it (and by extension before it) nonsensical. Someone please explain to me why the villain sits the hero down and has him make that recording, given what he does moments after? And what exactly was he trying to accomplish by beating up Carla Gugino? Ugly and poorly edited to boot, and Pacino becomes almost a caricature of himself. Astonishing that he and De Niro can't find better work than this, though I watched this right after seeing De Niro in Barry Levinson's relatively pleasurable What Just Happened, so who knows.

Hamlet 2

Hamlet 2 (Andrew Fleming, 2008) - B

Kept me on my toes for 90 minutes with an off-kilter style I could never quite pin down. Obviously intended as a parody of the Inspirational Teacher Movie, about a wacky theater instructor who bands together a bunch of (mostly gangsta) misfits and saves drama by putting on a show. But as parody, it steers a constantly intriguing middle-ground: Coogan's Dana Marschz (the "z" is NOT silent) is manifestly insane, but only some people seem to know that (it's never quite clear if his wife, played by a hilariously out of it Catherine Keener, is one of them); the movie launches a direct attack on some of the genre cliches (e.g. the parents who pull their kid out of drama class because he lives in a rough world where drama is useless) but takes others seriously. Not a model of tonal consistency, to be sure, but a) it's very funny, and b) it's actually kind of challenging if you're engaging with the film. Elizabeth Shue: best self-effacing cameo since John Malkovich.

The House Bunny

The House Bunny (Fred Wolf, 2008) - D+

In theory I could have rolled with the amiably cartoonish tone (a villain named Mrs. Hagstrom; a brothel soup joke; "I've got to meet that fucking bird!"), but the thing is so sloppy that rolling proved hard. Why is it that movies about misfits who try to be popular but learn it's okay to be misfits always make the misfits horrid caricatures instead of the types of people it's actually okay to be? (See also Sydney White.) Here I guess the message is a bit different since the characters learn moderation -- being neither the abominations they were at the beginning of the film nor the bimbos the title Playmate tried to make them (you can be beautiful AND brainy, see?) -- but that doesn't make the movie any less aggressively dumb; what purpose is served by making the "loser sorority" consist of a trailer park stereotype, a girl with a full-body brace, etc.? And come on, guys: if you're going to treat the hundred bullshit conflicts you introduce (Scheming Playboy Bunny! Unmailed envelopes! Realization that the Zetas have become what they hated!) so perfunctorily, why even bother? There are enough laughs to make it bearable (Anna Faris is very funny, and I really liked one joke in the climax), but I got the sense that the film's supposedly endearing gee-whiz stupidity wasn't an affectation. And how absurd to even pretend that the adorable Emma Stone is an unattractive outcast.

Transsiberian; Boy A

Transsiberian (Brad Anderson, 2008) - B+

Fortunate enough to see three fantastic movies in a row over the course of two days -- this, Vicky Cristina Barcelona (see last entry), and Boy A (below). The remarkable thing here is Anderson's flair for evocative bleakness, also on display in The Machinist. Everything constantly straddles the line between beauty and menace: Eduardo Noriega's good-natured drifter, Emily Mortimer's reformed bad girl (Mortimer is wonderful, by the way), but most of all the snowy, foreign desolation of the Siberian setting -- the heart of the film. Some of the plotting is a bit unlikely, and Anderson should have gone easy on the explanatory flashbacks to events we've already seen, but the plot is really just a function of the scenery, which is a moody, malevolent character all its own. A few amusing points: casting Woody Harrelson as a genial yokel, Ben Kingsley teaching Harrelson Russian pronunciation. But mostly scary and haunting; left me in a sad, unsettled funk. Anderson clearly cares more about mood and (sometimes inarticulable) emotion than about story, but he's so good I'm actually cool with that.

Boy A (John Crowley, 2008) - A-

Immensely powerful, and almost a masterpiece; the reason it's not is the overly schematic nature of the crucial subplot involving Mullan's son, with Crowley hellbent on forcing a thematic parallel to the A-story. (I kept wondering why the son was in the movie, and rolled my eyes when it became clear.) The rest is gold; a thoughtful, understated rumination on punishment, forgiveness, and the criminal justice system's (and the media's) insistence on letting juvenile convictions haunt people for the rest of their lives. Maybe the most impressive thing about it is that it doesn't pull any punches about the protagonist's crime -- he did what he did, and note that the movie provides the sexual abuse "excuse" to his psychopathic friend, but not to him. Garfield's performance is as awesome as everyone says, in a hugely difficult role. The last few minutes are a masterfully manipulative knock-out, bringing me to tears. One of the best films of the year; go see it immediately.

A bunch of stuff

Mirrors (Alexandre Aja, 2008) - D+

Really, really bad -- really bad -- and I'm stunned, since I had come to think of Aja as the most artful of the "Splat Pack," a genre wizard with an eye for genuinely haunting imagery; a horror director who actually pays attention to stuff like shot composition and the color palette. Still looks good, I guess -- the Laurie Holden jawbreaker sequence is one-of-a-kind, and the (obvious) use of reflections can be striking, though the resulting set pieces are often more confusing than Aja, I think, intended. The problem is the screenplay, which is hideously clunky and lazy: every line of dialogue is expository or explanatory, and most plumb the depths of horror flick cliches ("You think I'm crazy, don't you?" "I don't know what to think!"); several crucial story points are conveyed via conveniently placed newspaper clippings (the protagonist actually receives a package full of them at one point); worst of all, the movie never figures out what it's supposed to be about. It's got two things going on simultaneously, as best I could figure out: some sort of vague demonic possession plot, and a just-as-vague alternate universe story; the movie clearly thinks it brings the two of them together, but, uh, it doesn't. Twist ending is laughable, presenting the least creative ever vision of a parallel universe.

Man on Wire (James Marsh, 2008) - B

This is excellent, though not really for the reasons everyone says. I was struck by its portrayal of the sort of passion that can spur extraordinary collaboration -- the most stirring moments in the film aren't Petit's (admittedly incredible) tightrope walking but the footage of him and his cronies frantically, gleefully working out the head-spinning details of their WTC coup. Amazing what driven, adventurous people can accomplish. Also a surprisingly thoughtful exploration of the divide between morality and the law, and the notion of doing something illegal but not "wicked or mean"; listen for the police officer's awed response to Petit's escapades after he worked to put a stop to them, and the "punishment" meted out by the DA. Not really all that inspiring as a Portrait of an Artist: Petit comes off as infectiously enthusiastic but also self-absorbed and kind of crazy, and too much time is given over to gushing, vapid talking heads, like the girlfriend. But the logistics are loads of fun, Nyman's score is beautiful, and the insights are surprising.

Vicky Cristina Barcelona (Woody Allen, 2008) - B+

Woody Allen's more serious efforts this decade have all been about ambition in one form or another, and the contrast between the previous two, both thrillers about working-class strivers who get into trouble chasing dreams of wealth and comfort, and this one, about overprivileged Americans searching for other kinds of fulfillment, is fascinating. Allen is not, as some would have it, against commitment; rather, he's made a(nother) film about satisfaction, and the often self-destructive human tendency to grab for things beyond one's reach -- precisely the theme of Cassandra's Dream, and roughly of Match Point as well. And there's so much else that's interesting too, like the best performances of Javier Bardem and Penelope Cruz's careers, a remarkable discovery in Rebecca Hall (as the obligatory Woody stand-in), unexpectedly careful and lovely cinematography, and the droll voiceover that pointedly undercuts the film's woozy romanticism. On par with Match Point as the best Allen of the 00s.

Elegy (Isabel Coixet, 2008) - C+

Hoo boy. A touching if simple story defeated by unrestrained excess and shameless jerry-rigging. An aging playboy slowly discovers what he's been missing and learns love and companionship -- fine. But seriously, did he have to also be a world-renowned expert on hedonism (I am not making this up), just to drive the point home? Stuff like that. Still compelling for a while, exploring the paradox of how a man so devoted to commitment- and care-free living can simultaneously be so paranoid and jealous; for a while Ben Kingsley looks like he is less likely to kiss Penelope Cruz than devour her (which might be the point), but a character soon starts to emerge, and his gradual awakening is sweet. Then the ridiculously contrived, overwrought ending comes along and sinks the film -- the sort of cheap, out-of-the-blue, totally unearned stunt that can only come from the mind of a supremely arrogant screenwriter. I don't recall Coixet's My Life Without Me being this oppressive. Patricia Clarkson is still awesome.

La Dolce Vita (Federico Fellini, 1960) - B

I'm no Fellini aficionado, but this is an awful lot like 8 1/2, isn't it, with the same rambling quasi-narrative that goes off the meta-deep end in the last half hour? It's less compelling, I think -- possibly because I saw it second, but also because the Fellini/Mastroianni lover protagonist just isn't as interesting as the other movie's filmmaker/solipsist. Mastroianni weirdly goes the lovable puppy dog route, standing around looking all pouty and forlorn as he takes stock of his broken dreams, his pointless career, his empty womanizing, and the artifice that surrounds him. Some of the vignettes are pretty brilliant (I love the circus that develops around the rural Virgin Mary sighting), others just seem like showing off (the weird dungeon sequence is absurdly overstuffed); too many end on the same glibly ironic note, with Marcello calling or otherwise reconnecting with another of his women. The three hours feel more like two, and I'll keep watching Fellini, but 8 1/2 made me hope for something a bit stronger.

Platoon

Platoon (Oliver Stone, 1986) - B-

Hysterical in a very Oliver Stone sort of way, every shot filled with blood, angst and anger; the characters lament the corruption of the System ("and we're stuck in the middle sucking on it") when they're not surrendering to their bloodthirst, screaming "it's fucking beautiful!" while unloading on the NVA. Charlie Sheen seems a bit goofy here, though that may have been the point; Kevin Dillon is terrifying; Tom Berenger way over the top. Actually one of the better Stones (I'm not a big fan), though useful mostly for its admirable grasp of military logistics, and for making you ask (once again) what the fuck we were thinking fighting a war in the jungle. Features one of the laziest uses of voiceover in movie history.

Some Catch-Up

Brideshead Revisited (Julian Jarrold, 2008) - B

Catholicism is the villain, a monster capable of consuming entire families. Took me a while to realize this was where the movie was going -- I haven't read the Evelyn Waugh novel -- but then it all sort of came together. Before that I couldn't figure out if this was supposed to be a doomed love story (in which case it was an awfully languid, dispassionate one) or a Faulkneresque saga of an aristocratic clan's gradual downfall (in which case the dully good-natured protagonist was a meaningless distraction); in reality it's sort of a combination of the two, with religion as the unexpected focus, which turns out to make a lot more sense. Ben Whishaw remarkable; Matthew Goode a blank slate.

The Wackness (Jonathan Levine, 2008) - C+

Couldn't quite get behind this morose bit of 90s nostalgia, despite being intrigued by the notion of 90s nostalgia -- could this be the first avowed example of same? Too aggressive with the cultural signifiers, straining to shoehorn them in where they don't really fit, and the quirkiness seems forced; it's hard, from a screenwriter's perspective, to make a character like Ben Kingsley's "weird old guy" work, and Levine's not up to the challenge -- "weird old guy" is all he ever is. Josh Peck and Olivia Thirlby are winners, and the movie rose at least half a grade in its last five minutes. But were summers in New York City in the early 90s really this depressing?

Mamma Mia! (Phyllida Lloyd, 2008) - B-

ABBA songs + Meryl Streep = entertainment. That's about all I have to say about this one. Stupid, laughable even, but the music is great, the director seems to have had a pulse, and the cheese factor and Pierce Brosnan's inability to sing a note are part of the charm. However, it's stupid to sing "Chiquitita" to someone not named Chiquitita.

Swing Vote (Joshua Michael Stern, 2008) - C-

First of all, dreadful as a character piece -- the swing voter is an insufferable, irredeemable dimwit, and there's nothing remotely charming (or human) about him. For a while, I thought it would be serviceable as political commentary, a statement on the way modern politics makes it impossible for anyone involved with it in any capacity to hold on to a shred of dignity and principle. But then it ends with a weird bit of ass-kissing, Costner suddenly telling both candidates how much he admires them and wishes he were more like them -- what? That's your ending? Talk about pulling your punches. Also not very funny, though Lane, Tucci, Grammer and Hopper are entertaining to watch, as usual.

Iron Man

Iron Ban (Jon Favreau, 2008) - B+

Very good -- really. If I'm not creaming myself like some other folks, it's because the action never quite reaches Raimi levels of transcendence, and because the movie indulges in a few too many winks to the comic book fanboys that just play like enormous red herrings to the rest of us. (I gather that the Clark Gregg character is somehow significant to the Iron Man mythos, but I had no idea what the hell he was talking about or why he kept showing up.) At its best, though, it's actually quite moving: if Spider-Man and its sequels have been about heroism and responsibility, Iron Man is about conscience, and holding on to it even if the System would have you throw it in a ditch. Downey's ceaseless sarcasm masks a touching fragility, and the screenplay gives the protagonist time to bloom -- his conversion from cynical arms dealer to justice-seeker is about as convincing as superhero character development gets. And I'm immensely grateful for the ending, which is note-perfect and brilliantly ties together the movie's theme while setting up a sequel. Well-played.

The Band's Visit

The Band's Visit (Eran Kolirin, 2008) - C

So deliberately understated that it's almost an affectation. Lots of pained silences and awkwardness played for laughs, pushing hard on how out-of-place these Egyptians feel in Israel's version of Podunk, Ohio, though of course the Israelis have all the same problems as the Arabs and maybe they can all help each other because we're all human, etc. Draws the obvious parallels (uptight colonel's son committed suicide because dad was too hard on him; cue scene where the colonel shares a tender, understanding moment with the wild, insubordinate young recruit whom he had previously threatened with firing) and never fails to make metaphors explicit (the speech about how the clarinet player's unfinished concerto = life is really rather shameless), but there's no real insight; everything's surface-level and aggressively wistful. Miscalculates weirdly in spots -- Khaled is supposed to be charming, but he's actually creepy; the scene where he coaches a hapless Israeli kid on how to flirt is more performance art than narrative cinema -- and can't even create a sense of place: it places so much emphasis on what a downscale suburban hellhole Bet Hatikvah is, but gives us no feel for it whatsoever. Couple of strong performances, and the clean, spare compositions look nice (especially in the first half-hour), but this is a pretty bland, stereotypically "arthouse" piece of business.

Storyville

Storyville (Mark Frost, 1992) - C+

Came to this due to Twin Peaks-related loyalty to Mark Frost, and for a while dug it as a Twin Peaks fan: Frost learned a lot from David Lynch, giving his version of New Orleans an airtight and totally singular sense of place, and sustaining a tone of subtle, something-is-wrong-but-it's-not-clear-what creepiness (the ambient noise and constant whooshing of ceiling fans on the soundtrack helps). When a mysterious Asian woman lures an old-money political candidate into a darkened Aikido studio for some steamy hot tub sex, I was gleefully on board. When the plot got going and the movie turned into a sub-Grisham courtroom melodrama, complete with a climactic shoot-out, I jumped off. Fun for setting and mood, but any number of movies have done this sort of dark-family-secrets-down-south thing better.

chills

Apropos of nothing except a current obsession, here is a pretty new video for one of the prettiest songs I've ever heard. Enjoy!



An mp3 of the song is here.

Step Up 2

Step Up 2: The Streets (Jon M. Chu, 2008) - C+

Graceful people piss me off, and there are dozens of them here, exhibiting a level of physical coordination that human beings simply should not possess. The filmmaking is not nearly so prodigious; in fact, when it comes to dialogue and plotting, it's dumb as a rock. But this in-name-only sequel is well-paced, energetic, and shockingly easy to watch (it's also slightly racist, but whatever). It's smart enough to lean heavily on the dance sequences to the point of essentially becoming a revue, which turns out to be fine because the dancing is legitimately spectacular -- distinctive, entertaining, and really fucking impressive. The semblance of a story stringing the dance sequences together is predictably turgid, but less so than the first film's; I liked how no one wasted screen time agonizing over the inevitable romance, and the movie wisely never lets the characters keep talking for too long. Performances range from sweet (Brianna Evigan) to bland (Robert Hoffman) to apoplectic (Adam G. Sevani), but everyone can dance, and everyone does, a lot. I almost wrote this one off as skippable; I'm glad I didn't.

Why?

Why are the people in this movie speaking English with vaguely Eastern-European accents? Why? If they're not going to speak Russian, can't they just speak English? Are we all retarded?

The Eye

The Eye (David Moreau & Xavier Palud, 2008) - C-

Moreau & Palud are clearly most comfortable with the mode of horror on display in the first half of the film, basically amounting to mysterious blurry figures appearing in the corneal transplant patient's nascent field of vision; this is much the same territory they explored in Them, their delightfully abstract debut. They also have a knack for creepy throwaway moments that suggests a strong preference for low-key, low-budget horror (spoiler warning): Alba suddenly asking "who's that" when shown a picture of herself (a good hour into the film); a stranger sensing Alba's connection to the spirit world and pleading, "that's my Tommy, isn't it?" just before the elevator doors close on her and the ghost of her son standing behind her. But more conventional set pieces are a no go, since Palud and Moreau are either disinterested in the big scares or just inept. Among other things, they use blatant visual cheats, e.g.: we see the protagonist in the foreground and something menacing/unnatural in the background; as the camera pans and the background object passes behind Alba, it disappears! A typical device, but for the fact that Alba is looking away from the camera and at the object the entire time, so that the way the film would have it, the object disappears before her very eyes. Normally when this tactic is used, the character would walk past a post, for example, and the object would vanish behind it, disappearing for her and for us simultaneously. The Eye ignores her perspective, and the result is just bizarre; this happens a couple of times. The movie also gets dumber as it gets less subtle, with a climax that furiously pitches boring exposition and a denoument that simply makes no sense. Bottom line: talented but disengaged filmmakers barely make a dent in a useless screenplay. Alba's presence has predictable effects.

The Air I Breathe

The Air I Breathe (Jieho Lee, 2008) - F

New rule: Just because you shoehorn the line "there's no such thing as a coincidence" into your screenplay does not mean your movie will remain watchable if you then proceed to ignore all dictates of logic and decorum.

Teeth

Teeth (Mitchell Lichtenstein, 2008) - C

Tries to do two things with the vagina dentata concept: construct an allegory about a young woman learning to harness the power of her sexuality, and imply that the abstinence movement, such as it is, is grounded in a subconscious fear of sex. But the subtext is so obvious it's barely subtext, and the movie is overbearingly sarcastic and smug; Lichtenstein prefers to get laughs at the expense of his protagonist instead of taking her twisted psychology seriously, but his screenplay isn't that funny and Dawn is never convincing. Every guy she encounters is detestable in predictable ways (uber-Christian crush turns out to be a rapist; nerdy second choice a date rapist; gynecologist a pervert; don't even ask about the random guy who gives her a ride), and they all get their comeuppance in exactly the way you'd think, without question or much suspense. Not much of a horror movie -- Lichtenstein turns up the gore in the second half, but in an annoyingly self-satisfied way, trying hard to elicit horrified laugh-groans from the audience by (e.g.) lingering on a dog as it considers a severed penis (one of many in the film), picks it up, then spits half of it back out. (Eew. Why?) Everyone who's seen Teeth seems to be as enamored of its premise as Lichtenstein is, but I'm not buying. This is a huge, largely artless disappointment.

Love and Death

Love and Death (Woody Allen, 1975) - A

Not sure I've ever seen a movie that takes so much joy in absurdity, really exemplified by the closing shot of Allen and the Grim Reaper jigging across the screen. Self-serious 19th Century Russian lit is vulnerable to the introduction of anything remotely modern, and Allen's sarcastic, hyperactive schlub is the perfect poison, dismantling the genre by introducing 20th Century neuroses (thereby also rebuffing, it seems to me, the view that Dostoyevsky et al. cannot be criticized except from the (necessarily imaginary) perspective of their contemporaries). Everything hits, from the straight-up Airplane!-style silliness ("No, YOU are Don Francisco's sister") to the often non sequitur wordplay ("Are you scared of dying?" "Scared is the wrong word. I'm frightened of it." "Interesting distinction.") to the bits that play more like Woody stand-up. Not a dull minute; endlessly energetic and pretty much perfect.

Silver Linings to the Strike

The obvious one, of course, is the cancellation of the Golden Globes, a.k.a. the gay second game of the Stanley Cup Finals. But one that would have flown under my radar had I not scanned Entertainment Weekly's terrible website this morning is that the only reality show I've ever enjoyed is coming back, baby.

As to the first point -- the "suck it, HFPA" point -- check out this fascinating Variety article on the collapse of the efforts to salvage the "ceremony." If nothing else, it makes it clear why the Globes are such a scam -- the last thing they were trying to save was the parties.

The Butterfly Effect

The Butterfly Effect (Eric Bress and J. Mackye Gruber, 2004) - B+ [director's cut]

Fun to watch this again; everyone wrote it off as "goofy" three years ago, but I think people were actually responding to its brazenness, the extent to which it was willing to follow its premise to some genuinely (and perhaps incongruously) dark and unexpected places. Some of the small details are actually pretty silly (Evan's disturbing second-grade drawing looks like the work of a young Picasso; Kaylie's smooching her boyfriend just after a despondent and armless (!) Evan confesses his undying love seems a bit insensitive; Ashton Kuthcer is as intractable a presence as ever; etc., etc.) and there are serious metaphysical problems with the way the film plays out its time travel conceit (Why, aside from storytelling convenience, do all of the memories of the "newly created" Evan get "loaded" into the version of Evan that we've been following? Wouldn't his life have just continued uninterrupted all those years? The movie seems to assume that he has some sort of primary soul and that everything else is filler, which is a hell of an assumption.), but the movie's made with undeniable skill and a lot of guts; the "blackouts," in particular, are a terrific suspense device that's actually given some substance later on, and the way the script fills in the holes is neat, if not always perfectly logical. The new ending would have played into the hands of those who called the film goofy, but it packs a punch if you're willing to play along. I liked it then and I like it now.

I drink your milkshake

In an uncharacteristically half-assed rhetorical flourish, Mike D'Angelo claims that There Will Be Blood involves a "titanic battle between the worldly and the spiritual." This struck me as weirdly wrong-headed, since the spiritual never enters PT Anderson's masterpiece. It's clear to me that Anderson views Daniel and Eli as competing enterprises -- both surrender what principles they had (or claim to have had) for material gain, and then, in the film's view of capitalism, one has to destroy (or "eat") the other (hence the prophecy of the title). It's not clear whether Eli is sincere or a charlatan, and I don't think Anderson really cares, but there's certainly nothing "spiritual" about Eli as far as the movie is concerned. He's competition.

There are nuances and layers aplenty to the film, but I think the bird's eye view of it is actually a bit simpler than a lot of people are claiming. I could be wrong.