You know what happens when you see something like 35 movies in a week?
You wash away all the hype. How hyped can you be when you’re watching one movie after another like this? How much can one film overshadow all the others? You level the playing field, and each film either works or doesn’t based on its own merits.
I’ve been watching both newly released DVDs and Academy screeners, and I’m down to a handful of films before I publish my list. It’ll probably get posted over the weekend depending on how fast I can write it all, but I think I have a pretty firm handle on how things are going to shake out. I don’t think it looks like anyone else’s list this year, but then again, I always think it’s boring when the same five Oscar-ready movies get endlessly blown by a parade of people hoping that they’ll have some impact on an awards show that is, in the grand scheme of things, pointless. I don’t want to influence the Oscars. Fuck, I barely even want to watch the Oscars.
So that’s why I take my time, watch as many films as possible, and don’t struggle to publish my list before the ballots are due. This way, it’s about the films, and not about some other agenda.
One of my very favorite authors is Philip K. Dick, and one of the things that makes me saddest is the way he’s been treated by Hollywood. Not only did they wait to discover him until after he was dead, thereby guaranteeing that he never enjoyed all the option money they throw at his estate, but they also seem to love to stripmine good ideas from his work while throwing out most of what makes it genuinely special. It’s a constant source of frustration for those of us who really admire his writing.
I’m not sure why I missed A SCANNER DARKLY in theaters, but I did. I have always been a vocal fan of Richard Linklater’s, but I think I was traveling a lot when the film was screening, and then just missed it during its regular run.
Now that it’s finally available from Warner Home Video, I was able to catch up with it, and I ended up watching it three times in a week, drunk on just how right someone finally got one of his books. Even if they never get it right again, I feel satisfied that at least once, there’s a film that captures this writer’s peculiar world view with accuracy and empathy. I think the animation done by Bob Sabiston’s team is much better here than it was in WAKING LIFE, and I think it’s also used here to greater purpose. Linklater perfectly evokes the feeling of having your receptors fried from a prolonged derangement of the senses. The whole world has a crazy film over it for Bob Arctor (Keanu Reeves) and his friends, and it’s because they’re always pretty much ripped on Substance D. There’s a bit of a mystery built into the film, and it only really resolves itself in the final moments, but I find it one of the most realistic and unnerving ideas in Dick’s novel. I would be shocked if there aren’t already a few Substance D’s in the works. It seems... inevitable.
There’s a great deal of oddball comedy in Linklater’s film, and that might seem inappropriate at first, but I think Dick had a bent sense of humor, and I think he would be enormously entertained by the surreal Three Stooges quality to the scenes between Robert Downey Jr., Woody Harrelson, and Reeves. Rory Cochrane and Winona Ryder also do excellent supporting work, and I love how all of these actors seem to have fully adapted to the idea of the animation. Downey and Cochrane in particular turn in some remarkable, idiosyncratic performances that are alternately sad, silly, pathetic, and menacing. When I hear people dismiss this film by saying, “It’s just a bunch of stoners sitting around talking,” it saddens me. There are a lot of great dynamics playing out in the film, and what they’re saying isn’t necessarily what they’re talking about. There’s a palpable paranoia that builds from the very start of the film, as reality becomes more and more liquid, and there are a number of levels of reveal that take place. This may be a film about drug users, but I don’t think this is the sort of film where you should fire up a doobie and sit back to enjoy. It’s sad. Haunted, even. The break-down of personality is a terrifying thing, and by the time Bob Arctor realizes something is wrong with him, it’s way too late to change anything. The film makes it clear that Arctor isn’t the tragedy, but is instead just one more symptom of the larger tragedy, one more name on a list of names, just one more lost friend.
I wish I liked BLOOD DIAMOND more, because I hate sounding like a broken record. I don’t wish Ed Zwick any ill will. I don’t think he’s a bad filmmaker on a technical level. It’s obvious he can get some big films off the ground, and he turns in work that is quite striking when you look at it in bits and pieces. The script by Charles Leavitt (K-PAX, THE MIGHTY) has a great adventure movie set-up, and the first forty-five minutes or so were really working for me.
But then it turned into another one of those bullshit Hollywood movies where the heroic white guy helps the noble black guy. Sure, in LAST SAMURAI, he traded “black guy” out with “samurai dude,” but same difference. It’s always the white guy in Zwick’s films, coming in to save the native culture from itself and from outside threats. It’s the one Hollywood formula that pisses me off above all others, and I think it’s because of the arrogance, the insulting assumption that I can’t watch a film with a black lead or an Asian lead or an Indian lead. I don’t need a white face onscreen to empathize with someone. I just need a good film, a strong script and a good performance. Djimon Hounsou is, simply put, one of the best character actors working. When I saw him in AMISTAD, none of that film’s flaws mattered to me because of the power of his work. And it wasn’t the dialogue. It wasn’t even the scenes he played. It was the physical presence he brought to the role, the emotionally bare reality that he played. I’ve liked him in films like GLADIATOR and THE FOUR FEATHERS and BLUEBERRY and CONSTANTINE, even if I haven’t loved the films. I would compare his work throughout his career to the way Brando incorporated physicality into his early work. And given the right material, Hounsou can be amazing. IN AMERICA was another milestone for him, and I think in BLOOD DIAMOND, he does commanding work. But he should have been the lead. Relegating this incredible performer to the supporting role and miscasting Leonardo DiCaprio in the Humphrey Bogart role is a mistake, a bullshit Hollywood mistake, and it’s the sort of thing that ruins a film for me. Takes me out of it by treating me like I’m stupid. The film is well-made, and there are several large scale action sequences that are quite stunning, but even with a smiling Jennifer Connelly (a rarity these days), I can’t recommend this one.
Hey, remind me why people didn’t like MARIE ANTOINETTE.
I think Sofia Coppola is the real deal. I think she’s an interesting filmmaker with a strong personal voice. I think her first film, THE VIRGIN SUICIDES, is a tremendous debut picture. Watching it is like slipping into a familiar dream, losing yourself in this sad little collapse of a family, the atmosphere thick and languid. LOST IN TRANSLATION was her crossover hit for a reason, and the chemistry between Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson is special, something a filmmaker lucks into. Her style is evident in the way it develops from the first film to the second, and with MARIE ANTOINETTE, she takes her wafer-thin screenplay (I read it last year, and it was so slight it was impossible to judge what her film might be) and translates it into a lush, funny, wistful film, a point-of-view experience in which a girl allows herself to be married off for the good of Austria, her homeland. She becomes a royal in France, wife to a Prince, and loses herself in this insane, extravagant, disconnected way of life that is Versailles.
As with LOST IN TRANSLATION, Coppola’s first shot is an evocative work of art in its own right, and I think it sums up exactly what she’s trying to do. You see Kirsten Dunst stretched out on a couch, feet up, being attended to, pampered. She reaches out to one of several tables around her laden with pastries and sweets, and she dips her finger in the frosting of a small cake. As she licks it off, she looks directly at the camera, directly at the viewer, as if to say, “Yes... this is probably all you know about me. Spoiled. Let them eat cake. Well... this isn’t that story.” And it’s not. Maybe the French who freaked out about this when it played at Cannes couldn’t handle the notion of a Marie Antoinette you feel empathy for, but that’s what makes the film so lovely, so moving in its way. Jason Schwartzman plays Louis XVI as a clueless bubble boy, and the first half of the film (or maybe more) deals with Marie’s attempts to get Louis to consummate their marriage. This plays out over years. It’s not all about politics and skullduggery and speech-making like so much of what passes as period drama. Instead, it’s a film that observes small behaviors, scenes where there’s no overt drama, but where the way people occupy a room, the way they relate... that’s what says it all. That’s the drama. It’s hard to explain if you don’t tune in to what Coppola does, but I think she creates films that capture what it must feel like to live through something and then think back on it.
She weaves persuasive memories, and it’s such a particular filmmaking skill that I understand people who don’t appreciate it. I don’t think it’s fair to dismiss her by saying that she leans too heavily on her soundtracks. I think the way she uses music in MARIE ANTOINETTE is canny and makes poignant comment on what we’re seeing. I liked this film quite a bit, and I think it was underrated unfairly by many people this year.
I’m not sure I would recommend PERFUME: THE STORY OF A MURDERER to every audience, but I was captivated by Tom Tykwer’s wild ride through the mind of an amoral monster, a man born wrong and never loved. Ben Whishaw stars in this adaptation of Patrick Suskind’s novel, loved by many but thought to be unfilmable. I can totally see why. It’s a sensory tale, all about the miraculous nose of Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, born in the smelliest stall in the smelliest corner of the smelliest fish market in movie history. He’s literally popped out into a pile of fish guts and left for dead, and overwhelmed by that insane wall of smell, Jean-Baptiste struggles to life and draws his first breath, his world forever defined by scent. Conveying that in a visual medium is tricky business, but Tykwer proves to be more than up to the challenge. One of the things that helps is the way he openly embraces the absurdity of the piece. He injects a wicked sense of humor into things like the fates of all the people who meet Jean-Baptiste over the course of his life. As soon as he moves on, something terrible befalls each and everyone one of them, sometimes to ghoulishly hilarious effect. He also chooses to stage the climax (pun fully intended) of the film as dark, dark comedy rather than for sensual or erotic impact. Even when it is completely deranged, though, I find there’s an undercurrent of powerful sadness that makes PERFUME one of the most unexpectedly moving movies I’ve seen in a while. Great stuff.
Are you a fan of Coppola’s THE CONVERSATION? If so, you’re going to love Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s feature debut THE LIVES OF OTHERS, a sensational cerebral thriller about what happens to the people who spend their time in the shadows, watching and listening as other people laugh and love and plot and plan and live and even die. It’s about the toll it takes on someone’s soul to watch without ever being able to touch. And finally, it’s a film about how much an unexpected kindness can resonate in someone’s life.
The Cold War era continues to be a rich source of material for storytellers, particularly filmmakers who were directly impacted by it. The national identity of Germany is still struggling with various stages of its history, and digging into the surveillance techniques used by East Germany against its own citizens offers an opportunity at healing and understanding. Ulrich Muhe is a great German actor who has appeared in a number of Michael Haneke films, including his classic FUNNY GAMES. Muhe’s got one of those great movie faces, and so much of this film plays out as he’s listening in on Christa-Maria Sieland (Martina Gedeck) and Georg Dreyman (Sebastian Koch), an actress and a playwright who appear to be loyal East Germans, but who are suspected of secret sedition. He starts his assignment pleased to be spying on them, irritated by Dreyman on general principle. This is the second great role I’ve seen Koch play in the last month. He’s also in Paul Verhoeven’s blistering BLACK BOOK, playing a Nazi. Here, he manages to give Dreyman a complexity that is haunting. He wants to survive in East Germany. He wants to be free to create his art. He believes he knows how to balance his freedoms, how to get by within the system. But it takes a toll on him, and no matter how much he wants to be a good East German, it’s not easy. Fate keeps pushing him in ways that would make even the most blindly loyal person question what he believes. What I find most compelling about this script is the way it never once turns these characters into simple political symbols. This is not a movie about East Germany in a symbolic sense, and it doesn’t strain at some greater metaphor. By telling a simple human story against this backdrop, it makes its points with both power and precision. Exceptional.
Chris Noonan hasn’t directed a film since 1995’s BABE, a classic by any standard. Eleven years is a long time to wait for a follow-up, and MISS POTTER is a mild-mannered way of getting back in the game. This twee little ditty about Beatrix Potter, author of the PETER RABBIT stories, is obviously aimed square at the audience for FINDING NEVERLAND, and Noonan works hard to pack the movie with quirky little visual flourishes. But it’s ultimately very familiar stuff, and no matter how charming the cast is, the film seems way too calculated to be effective. Whimsy is one of the hardest things to do right, and the script by Richard Maltby Jr. is too thin to pull it off.
Renee Zellweger plays Potter as a slightly-dotty pampered rich girl who has done her best to defy the expectations of her mother (Barbara Flynn) and her father (Bill Paterson), society figures. Because she comes from money, she is expected to marry money, but she hasn’t liked anyone her mother has presented to her. She’s far more interested in her “friends,” the characters she creates for her books. She approaches Harold (Anton Lesser) and Fruing (David Bamber) Warne, publishers, about them releasing her books. They agree to publish her, but mainly so they can find a project for their inexperienced youngest brother, Norman (Ewan McGregor). He’s put in charge of “the silly rabbit book,” and he ends up totally smitten with Potter and her creations. The collaboration between them creates an instant classic, and they follow it up with another, and another. Potter becomes fast friends with Norman’s outspoken sister Millie (Emily Watson, surprisingly plump these days), and almost inevitably, she falls in love with Norman. The middle section of the movie, the stuff where they fall in love, is actually pretty enjoyable, and Noonan’s got a comic touch that works for the film. But it can’t sustain that level of charm, and once the requisite tragedy kicks in, the film feels like it’s going through the motions. I think Zellweger should give “plucky” a break from her repertoire. She’s done it a lot lately, and it’s wearing thin. I’m also troubled by the way McGregor seems to be going out of his way to avoid playing the lead in anything these days. Would someone figure out what the fuck to do with him already? Please?
When people go through the trouble to send out an Academy screener, you assume they actually think they have a chance at some sort of Academy Awards recognition. I’ve seen movies sent out that seemed like long shots, but I am truly baffled as to why anyone would go through the expense and the bother to send out SHADOWBOXER, a witless and occasionally repulsive thriller/drama from director Lee Daniels. It’s weird that Helen Mirren is going to win her Oscar in the same year that she makes a film as agonizingly awful as this one. She plays a hitman named Rose. She is partnered professionally and romantically with Mikey, played by Cuba Gooding Jr. The two of them are good at what they do, cold-blooded, but they have a secret no one knows. Rose is dying of cancer. She and Mikey are going to take their money and get out of the business after one last job.
Are you rolling your eyes yet?
The “one-last-job-before-retiring” hitman movie has got whiskers on it at this point, but if the film managed to be exciting or at least entertaining, it would be fine. Instead, Daniel seems unsure if he’s making a trashy thriller or a family drama. Stephen Dorff shows up as a crime boss named Clayton, and this is a scenery-chewing hambone turn by Dorff, complete with a scene where he actually pulls his pussy-slick condom-wrapped dick out of a woman and plays a scene fully exposed for no apparent reason. He wants his girlfriend Vickie to be killed, and he contracts (through a third party) for Mikey and Rose to do it. Instead, they show up just as Vickie (Vanessa Ferlito) is giving birth. They not only deliver the baby, but they take Vickie and the baby and they take off. They go underground.
And for seven years, they live as a family. Seriously. This movie takes place over seven years. It’s a rough ride, with cliché after cliché stacking up, until finally I had trouble actually watching it through to the very end. I don’t want to pick on the movie, but it really is sort of incomprehensible. After the halfway point, the ridiculousness accumulates at a crushing pace, and anyone who makes it through to the totally absurd ending deserves extra points. The only consideration a film like this deserves from the Academy is wondering how it got made.
I was a big fan of Chris Nolan’s THE PRESTIGE when I saw it, and for some reason, I avoided seeing THE ILLUSIONIST at roughly the same time because I thought it would suffer by comparison. I really enjoyed Neil Burger’s first film back in 2002, INTERVIEW WITH THE ASSASSIN. I’m sorry I missed this one in the theater now that I’ve finally caught up with it, and I can see why it was a word-of-mouth hit. It’s one of those films that builds up to a climax designed to send an audience reeling out the door, pleased with themselves for putting all the pieces together. It’s far more interested in crowd-pleasing than Nolan’s film was, and that’s fine. THE ILLUSIONIST is a tragic love story first and foremost, and Ed Norton and Jessica Biehl don’t really have any chemistry in their scenes together. Then again, I can’t think of any film where Biehl has chemistry with anyone. She’s hot, but she’s sort of a blank.
This is more about the battle of wits going on between Ed Norton as Eisnenheim The Illusionist and Chief Inspector Uhl, played by Paul Giamatti. Uhl represents the local law, and he serves as a sort of functionary for Crown Prince Leopold (Rufus Sewell in raging prick mode). When Eisenheim becomes a real problem for the Crown Prince, it’s up to Uhl to figure out a way to run the magician out of the city or shut him down. It’s a game of one-upsmanship that becomes more and more delicious as things escalate. Giamatti and Norton seem to be having a great time here, but everything’s played quiet, close to the vest. When the film finally reaches its straight-out-of-USUAL-SUSPECTS ending, it’s earned the “holy shit!” that it tries for. This may not be as much of a head game as THE PRESTIGE, but it’s a great magic trick in its own right, and well worth your time.
I wish I could say the same about THE PAINTED VEIL, the other Edward Norton film I just watched. I wasn’t much for John Curran’s last film, WE DON’T LIVE HERE ANYMORE, but I figured Ron Nyswaner’s adaptation of the W. Somerset Maugham novel sounded sufficiently different that it was worth a look. Curran loves misery, and he seems to enjoy punishing his audience and his characters in equal measure. THE PAINTED VEIL certainly isn’t a bad film. It’s quite striking thanks to the cinematography by Stuart Dryburgh (ONCE WERE WARRIORS, LONE STAR, AEON FLUX), and the performances by Naomi Watts, Norton, Liev Schreiber and Toby Jones are fine. It was particularly nice seeing Diana Rigg show up as the Mother Superior in the film. But as a piece of drama, this thing just never gets moving. Kitty (Watts) marries Walter (Ed Norton) after a truncated courtship, and moves with him to Shanghai. She doesn’t love him, but she marries him to get out into the world. She meets the mega-charming Charlie (Schreiber) and has an affair with him. When Walter figures it out, he signs up to travel to the inner heart of the country, where there’s a cholera outbreak. He forces his wife to join him in spite of the danger it poses to both of them, perhaps to punish her. The film is mainly about what happens between them as they live in this dangerous area. Some big things happen, but for whatever reason, I found the entire thing sort of by-the-numbers and lifeless. It’s frustrating to see this many elements fail to congeal into something special, but PAINTED VEIL is one of those films that refuses to add up based on all the talent involved.
I think I’ve actually finished watching films for the list at this point, so I’m going to start working on the list itself. I’m also in the process of gearing up for the return of the DVD column. Lots of good stuff to do, so I should head to bed now and work on shaking this head cold.
Drew McWeeny, Los Angeles
Drew McWeeny, Los Angeles
