Sunday, August 31, 2003

Dirty Pretty Things (IMDB) (Netflix)
If you're an illegal immigrant, your dreams are prey to all kinds of people, not just John Ashcroft. Amelie's Audrey Tautou plays a very different role, a young Turkish hotel maid in London, dreaming of going to New York but lacking the paperwork. She's befriended by Okwe, another illegal, who discovers one of the more sordid false identity scams being run by fellow hotelier "Sneaky"(Sergi Lopez). Directed by Stephen Frears, responsible for the successful High Fidelity and Dangerous Liaisons.

It's billed as a thriller, and the poster of an undressed Tautou promises other attractions, but the film is neither. Usually that kind of marketing misrepresentation is the signal for junk, but this is a case of hiding quality under a cheesy wrapper. The story is mostly Okwe's, and the actor who plays him (Chiwetel Ejiofor) is first-rate, creating a tone of dignified torment as he tries to figure out an honorable way out of his and Tautou's predicament. Lopez is the perfect opportunist, and Benedict Wong is the ideal philosopher-mortician. The tension builds slowly and the payoff is quietly satisfying. Not the slickest or quickest film, but an original one that has something useful to say.

Saturday, August 30, 2003

Open Range (IMDB) (Netflix)

One of the great battles over land use in the United States took place in the late 1900s between land-owning ranchers and free-rangers, the cowboys who drove their cattle across the prairie to market, largely ignoring property rights. In most Westerns, the cattle drivers wear the black hats, but this time it’s the ranchers, typified by Michael Gambon, who are the bad guys. Probably has something to do with Kevin Costner and Robert Duvall playing the cow punchers. Gambon adopts the-best-defense-is-an-overwhelming-offense posture, going too far and inciting Costner and Duvall to take matters into their own hands. Sortof a buddy revenge movie, with Annette Bening threatening to break up the team.

The Canadian Rockies never looked better, or rainier, and Costner hasn’t been this grubby-looking since Waterworld and The Postman. Yet the dialog is often clunky, with too many speeches, and everybody’s got such a troubled backstory that you'll think you’ve stumbled on a French Foreign Legion outpost. Paced beyond leisurely; apparently Costner was thinking he was directing an epic, or at least the sequel to Dances with Wolves. Duvall overcomes the material, and the gun battles have a messy, awkward brutality that’s refreshing. While a respectable effort, given the dearth of Westerns in the theaters, it’s a shame this wasn’t more on the money.

Sunday, August 17, 2003

Step Into Liquid (IMDB) (Netflix)
A documentary about surfing, in the tradition of The Endless Summer and The Endless Summer 2, done by the people who gave you Endless Summer and Endless Summer 2 (it's not a big genre). From California and Hawaii to less obvious locales such as Ireland's County Donegal, Vietnam's DaNang and Wisconsin's Sheboygan, we're treated to intimate, hypnotic shots of the best surfers riding the biggest waves with the latest surfing technology, and more humorous takes on the most successfully self-deluded ones (the Sheboygan guys, of course) and the kids. To the filmmakers and their subjects, surfing is far more than a sport, it's a search for higher truth and beauty that Plato would applaud.

As did the audience. Although Step Into Liquid is clearly an uncritical love letter to the lifestyle, the photography, editing, music — and most of all the subjects — make you long for its simplicity and intensity. Sell the condo, chuck the Bimmer, get a VW Microbus and head for the ocean. Other than stirring that subversive impulse, a family-friendly film.

Saturday, August 09, 2003

Seabiscuit (IMDB) (Netflix)
In 1938, the president of the United States, Franklin Roosevelt, got fewer newspaper column-inches of coverage than a racehorse. This abused, stumpy, failure of an animal had met up with three similarly damaged humans and became the focal point for the aspirations of a Depression-battered wish-they-were-working class. Based on the best-seller by Laura Hillenbrand and featuring Jeff Bridges as the owner, Chris Cooper as the trainer and Tobey Maguire as the over-sized jockey, with historian David McCullough providing the larger period context through an occasional voiceover.

It all adds up to the most noble of schmaltz that overtly lays out its themes, but with so much skill that even a cynic's defenses eventually fall away. The race scenes are nearly the same caliber as the boxing scenes in Raging Bull, and the lead performances are first class. A nice surprise was that the much-previewed match race with War Admiral isn't the film's climax, or maybe it is, with a long epilogue that's just as solid. Unfortunately, a tad too much harsh language and frisky behavior for the kids.