The Emperor's New Clothes (IMDB) (Netflix)
The emperor in this speculative fable is Napoleon (Ian Holm), chafing in exile on St. Helena, and his new clothes come from Eugene (Holm again), a seaman who becomes his double to support Napoleon's plan to escape and regain control of France. The early trading-places scenes of The Little Corporal awkwardly fitting in as a member of the proletariet, and the nebbish Eugene getting in touch with his inner emperor are clever and amusing enough, but complications ensue, and the movie quickly extends beyond a conventional fish-out-of-water comedy, and deepens into a more enduring story about understanding what and who is really important.
To hold together a character study like this, Holm (one of the busiest film actors ever with over 100 roles--he was the Ash the android in Alien) needs to be terrific, and he is, as is the new Meryl Streep of accents, Iben Hjejle, the wonderfully naturalistic Danish actress who was John Cusack's girlfriend in High Fidelity. If only she'd be co-opted by Hollywood so we'd see more of her work.
A satisfying anti-blockbuster with plenty of enjoyable little moments.
Wednesday, June 26, 2002
Thirteen Conversations About One Thing (IMDB) (Netflix)
A friend asked just the other week, "when are you going to really paste one of these movies in a review?" I explained that that would be unlikely, since I only see movies that I expect to like, and don't go in for the summary judgments you get from those professional reviewers. Then the projector started...
The title seemed so forthright and self-effacing, but what got delivered was a shining example of Tom Stoppard's "imagination without skill gives us modern art." The Sprecher sisters, Jill (director and co-writer) and Karen (co-writer), mix the multi-threaded story structure of Short Cuts and Magnolia with a dollop of the reverse sequencing of Memento (I think, I'm still not sure) to needlessly confuse and torture the audience , while an assortment of fairly miserable people whinge about why they're unhappy and how fate controls our lives ("Have a few story ideas kicking around, but none of them add up to a complete movie? No problem, just jam 'em together into one feature and call it art!"). I usually avoid reading other reviews to avoid contaminating my own blinding cinematic insights, but after reading several of the many favorable ones just now to discover what I missed, I still don't get the genius of all that is Sprecher, or the fifteen producers (go ahead, count 'em.)
There are action-driven popcorn movies and there are character-driven art films, and then you've got muddled efforts that puzzled-but-insecure viewers assume must be brilliant. Or they're a lot smarter than me--one or the other.
A friend asked just the other week, "when are you going to really paste one of these movies in a review?" I explained that that would be unlikely, since I only see movies that I expect to like, and don't go in for the summary judgments you get from those professional reviewers. Then the projector started...
The title seemed so forthright and self-effacing, but what got delivered was a shining example of Tom Stoppard's "imagination without skill gives us modern art." The Sprecher sisters, Jill (director and co-writer) and Karen (co-writer), mix the multi-threaded story structure of Short Cuts and Magnolia with a dollop of the reverse sequencing of Memento (I think, I'm still not sure) to needlessly confuse and torture the audience , while an assortment of fairly miserable people whinge about why they're unhappy and how fate controls our lives ("Have a few story ideas kicking around, but none of them add up to a complete movie? No problem, just jam 'em together into one feature and call it art!"). I usually avoid reading other reviews to avoid contaminating my own blinding cinematic insights, but after reading several of the many favorable ones just now to discover what I missed, I still don't get the genius of all that is Sprecher, or the fifteen producers (go ahead, count 'em.)
There are action-driven popcorn movies and there are character-driven art films, and then you've got muddled efforts that puzzled-but-insecure viewers assume must be brilliant. Or they're a lot smarter than me--one or the other.
Friday, June 21, 2002
Minority Report (IMDB) (Netflix)
The year is 2054, and pre-cognitive humans can foresee murders up to four days in advance, allowing the cops to arrest you before you've done anything--Attorney General John Ashcroft's recurring wet dream scenario. Tom Cruise runs the PreCrime unit, which is infallible, or so everyone thinks, but Cruise somehow is "tagged" for a murder he has no intention of committing, and is soon on the run from his own men, who have jet packs, robot spider scouts and "sick sticks" that make you puke your guts out if they touch you. It's the old find-out-who's-framing-you-before-the-cops-catch-up scam, but done with extra verve and intellectual depth.
Minority Report is based on short story by Philip K. Dick, one of the most imaginative writers of the past century, and probably one of the craziest. He wrote the books that inspired Blade Runner ("Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" and Total Recall ("We Can Remember It for You Wholesale"), plus is said to have planted the seed for The Truman Show. Dick's a good source for Steven Spielberg, who has been increasingly attracted to darker, more complex material as his kids grow up.
The film has been processed to bleach skin tones and blow out the highlights, hinting at what botched LASIK eye surgery feels like, but looks terrific. I was less enthused about the camera shaker used during the action scenes--the theater's projector seemed about have a meltdown. The reach of the CGI effects often exceeds its grasp, there are one or two plot points that don't hold water, and the endgame is straight out of the thriller screenplay pattern book, but this film has something for just about everyone: action, plot twists, creepy characters and wit (the large number of product placement bits look like my old consulting firm's scenarios about future of consumer shopping, serve nicely as comic relief, and probably funded a fair chunk of the budget). Underlying the glitz is a tender and affecting commentary on the nature of loss, and Samantha Morton is especially touching as one of the pre-cogs.
The best big movie of the year so far.
The year is 2054, and pre-cognitive humans can foresee murders up to four days in advance, allowing the cops to arrest you before you've done anything--Attorney General John Ashcroft's recurring wet dream scenario. Tom Cruise runs the PreCrime unit, which is infallible, or so everyone thinks, but Cruise somehow is "tagged" for a murder he has no intention of committing, and is soon on the run from his own men, who have jet packs, robot spider scouts and "sick sticks" that make you puke your guts out if they touch you. It's the old find-out-who's-framing-you-before-the-cops-catch-up scam, but done with extra verve and intellectual depth.
Minority Report is based on short story by Philip K. Dick, one of the most imaginative writers of the past century, and probably one of the craziest. He wrote the books that inspired Blade Runner ("Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" and Total Recall ("We Can Remember It for You Wholesale"), plus is said to have planted the seed for The Truman Show. Dick's a good source for Steven Spielberg, who has been increasingly attracted to darker, more complex material as his kids grow up.
The film has been processed to bleach skin tones and blow out the highlights, hinting at what botched LASIK eye surgery feels like, but looks terrific. I was less enthused about the camera shaker used during the action scenes--the theater's projector seemed about have a meltdown. The reach of the CGI effects often exceeds its grasp, there are one or two plot points that don't hold water, and the endgame is straight out of the thriller screenplay pattern book, but this film has something for just about everyone: action, plot twists, creepy characters and wit (the large number of product placement bits look like my old consulting firm's scenarios about future of consumer shopping, serve nicely as comic relief, and probably funded a fair chunk of the budget). Underlying the glitz is a tender and affecting commentary on the nature of loss, and Samantha Morton is especially touching as one of the pre-cogs.
The best big movie of the year so far.
Sunday, June 16, 2002
The Bourne Identity (IMDB) (Netflix)
The bad guys always rely on extreme negative reinforcement ("the price of failure is death, Number 32"), which doesn't seem like a very good recruiting or performance management strategy. Matt Damon is the man who can't remember his name or why he has two bullet holes in his back, but starts to put the pieces together with the help of Franka (Run Lola Run) Potente while fending off a bunch of hit men sent by his CIA handler, Chris Cooper, who has been ordered to clean up the mess Damon created, but can't remember.
This is an old-fashioned thriller that thankfully doesn't have a terrorism angle, special effects or more than one explosion, just lots of bent sheet metal from a Paris car chase (the vintage Mini Cooper almost steals the movie) and a creative way to break one's fall. Damon is well cast as the vulnerable-but-competent killer, and Potente compares almost favorably to Faye Dunaway's terrific performance in Three Days of the Condor (a highly recommended rental). It doesn't have the emotional depth or suspense that "Condor" had, or even the more recent "Ronin" (another rental recommendation), but there are some nice moments between Damon and Potente, and a sense of realism that very recent thrillers have missed.
The bad guys always rely on extreme negative reinforcement ("the price of failure is death, Number 32"), which doesn't seem like a very good recruiting or performance management strategy. Matt Damon is the man who can't remember his name or why he has two bullet holes in his back, but starts to put the pieces together with the help of Franka (Run Lola Run) Potente while fending off a bunch of hit men sent by his CIA handler, Chris Cooper, who has been ordered to clean up the mess Damon created, but can't remember.
This is an old-fashioned thriller that thankfully doesn't have a terrorism angle, special effects or more than one explosion, just lots of bent sheet metal from a Paris car chase (the vintage Mini Cooper almost steals the movie) and a creative way to break one's fall. Damon is well cast as the vulnerable-but-competent killer, and Potente compares almost favorably to Faye Dunaway's terrific performance in Three Days of the Condor (a highly recommended rental). It doesn't have the emotional depth or suspense that "Condor" had, or even the more recent "Ronin" (another rental recommendation), but there are some nice moments between Damon and Potente, and a sense of realism that very recent thrillers have missed.
Friday, June 14, 2002
Windtalkers (IMDB) (Netflix)
Director John Woo (Mission Impossible II, Face/Off) reaches beyond his center, which is the slick, modern-day action pic, and make a World War II movie about the Navajo codetalkers. The U.S. developed a code based in the Navajo language, which at the time had never been translated into German or Japanese, and used Navajo soldiers as human encryption/decryption machines, which resulted in an incredibly efficient and unbreakable communications system. Taking the story beyond docudrama is the screenwriters' assumption that the military valued the code so much that they assigned minders to protect it, meaning first to protect the codetalkers, but more importantly, to kill them if they were in danger of being captured by the Japanese. Nicholas Cage is the self-loathing Marine assigned to one of the Navajo and, given that a bunch of his buddies just died because he followed orders, he's not at all happy about this unsettling assignment.
As you might imagine, the battle scenes are pretty intense, although not as impressive as you'd expect from Woo (the grenade and mortar explosions are juiced past credibility, and he seems otherwise constrained by the restrictions of a period piece), it gets hokey and there's a redneck racist storyline that doesn't work very well, but Cage does a great job of riding the curmudgeon/hero ridge and his performance is one of the few things that makes this effort worth a visit.
Director John Woo (Mission Impossible II, Face/Off) reaches beyond his center, which is the slick, modern-day action pic, and make a World War II movie about the Navajo codetalkers. The U.S. developed a code based in the Navajo language, which at the time had never been translated into German or Japanese, and used Navajo soldiers as human encryption/decryption machines, which resulted in an incredibly efficient and unbreakable communications system. Taking the story beyond docudrama is the screenwriters' assumption that the military valued the code so much that they assigned minders to protect it, meaning first to protect the codetalkers, but more importantly, to kill them if they were in danger of being captured by the Japanese. Nicholas Cage is the self-loathing Marine assigned to one of the Navajo and, given that a bunch of his buddies just died because he followed orders, he's not at all happy about this unsettling assignment.
As you might imagine, the battle scenes are pretty intense, although not as impressive as you'd expect from Woo (the grenade and mortar explosions are juiced past credibility, and he seems otherwise constrained by the restrictions of a period piece), it gets hokey and there's a redneck racist storyline that doesn't work very well, but Cage does a great job of riding the curmudgeon/hero ridge and his performance is one of the few things that makes this effort worth a visit.
Friday, June 07, 2002
Bad Company (IMDB) (Netflix)
It's uneven, it's derivative and the action scenes are sub-professional, but it's got Chris Rock strapping this action comedy on his back like Magic Johnson did with the Lakers in Game 6 of the 1980 Finals against the Sixers (Kareem was injured and Johnson, a guard, played center and scored 42 points). The Lakers won the game and the series, and Bad Company manages to keep the audience in the movie, with difficulty.
Rock is the screw-up ticket scalper and chess hustler whose girlfriend is about to leave him, and to add to his problems, the CIA insists that he help them save the world by impersonating the twin brother he never knew he had and buying a suitcase nuke off of the bad guys before some worse guys do. There are the typical training scenes, some "I don't think he's going to be ready in time" hand-wringing and off course the love-hate relationship between Rock and a slumming Anthony Hopkins (Merchant and Ivory must be on sabbatical). With all that going against it however, Rock's boyish irrepressibility camouflages the film's many flaws. As one exiting patron said, "much better than Sum of All Fears."
It's uneven, it's derivative and the action scenes are sub-professional, but it's got Chris Rock strapping this action comedy on his back like Magic Johnson did with the Lakers in Game 6 of the 1980 Finals against the Sixers (Kareem was injured and Johnson, a guard, played center and scored 42 points). The Lakers won the game and the series, and Bad Company manages to keep the audience in the movie, with difficulty.
Rock is the screw-up ticket scalper and chess hustler whose girlfriend is about to leave him, and to add to his problems, the CIA insists that he help them save the world by impersonating the twin brother he never knew he had and buying a suitcase nuke off of the bad guys before some worse guys do. There are the typical training scenes, some "I don't think he's going to be ready in time" hand-wringing and off course the love-hate relationship between Rock and a slumming Anthony Hopkins (Merchant and Ivory must be on sabbatical). With all that going against it however, Rock's boyish irrepressibility camouflages the film's many flaws. As one exiting patron said, "much better than Sum of All Fears."
Saturday, June 01, 2002
CQ (IMDB) (Netflix)
In the Francis Ford Coppola family, everyone makes movies, and CQ is son Roman's first theatrical film as director. It's a meta-movie, set in late '60s Paris, with Jeremy Davies (the coward in Saving Private Ryan) as the editor of Barbarella-like sci-fi flick that's missing an ending, and Angela Lindvall as the leather-jumpsuited super spy. Davies is also making a pretentious, "honest" personal film about his life, and finds himself bouncing between art and commerce, and reality and movie reality. It doesn't help him that Lindvall, a supermodel-cum-actress, is almost perfect as the bimbosity-free sex kitten distraction, and that he becomes responsible for salvaging the film after the director gets fired by producer Giancarlo Giannini (you may not recognize the name, but he's been the premier Italian actor for four decades).
I went to this because I had just finished his dad's biography, liked the preview, and had sat next to Roman on a flight from Paris to Chicago a couple of years ago (probably while he was working on this movie). We didn't say a word to each beyond "hello" (he has that kind of face that doesn't invite conversation, and a famous person's way of not making eye contact). There are a host of themes running through the film (obsession about work, wanting an alter ego, the need for self-expression)--maybe too many, because none of them really stick emotionally, and Davies isn't able to get you to really care about his problems. For lovers of the filmmaking process and slightly campy bad-movie humor.
In the Francis Ford Coppola family, everyone makes movies, and CQ is son Roman's first theatrical film as director. It's a meta-movie, set in late '60s Paris, with Jeremy Davies (the coward in Saving Private Ryan) as the editor of Barbarella-like sci-fi flick that's missing an ending, and Angela Lindvall as the leather-jumpsuited super spy. Davies is also making a pretentious, "honest" personal film about his life, and finds himself bouncing between art and commerce, and reality and movie reality. It doesn't help him that Lindvall, a supermodel-cum-actress, is almost perfect as the bimbosity-free sex kitten distraction, and that he becomes responsible for salvaging the film after the director gets fired by producer Giancarlo Giannini (you may not recognize the name, but he's been the premier Italian actor for four decades).
I went to this because I had just finished his dad's biography, liked the preview, and had sat next to Roman on a flight from Paris to Chicago a couple of years ago (probably while he was working on this movie). We didn't say a word to each beyond "hello" (he has that kind of face that doesn't invite conversation, and a famous person's way of not making eye contact). There are a host of themes running through the film (obsession about work, wanting an alter ego, the need for self-expression)--maybe too many, because none of them really stick emotionally, and Davies isn't able to get you to really care about his problems. For lovers of the filmmaking process and slightly campy bad-movie humor.
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