About Schmidt (IMDB) (Netflix)
A rapid succession of life events (retirement, marriage of an only child and worse) cause Warren Schmidt (Jack Nicholson) to re-evaluate his life in this most solemn of comedies. Taking to the road in his RV, he comes to grips with loss, the looming horizon of mortality and in-laws---lots of in-laws, richly played by Kathy Bates, Dermot Mulroney and Howard Hesseman, plus Hope Davis as his daughter.
It's instructive that when Schmidt cries at the end, it's essentially an upbeat ending that Elisabeth Kubler-Ross would approve of. This movie walks a tonal tightrope that's realistic, touching and instructive, and Nicholson is on a streak of vulnerable performances that began with As Good As It Gets and The Pledge. Bates and Mulroney are here for comic relief (we can retire the waterbed jokes now, OK?), and Davis has a fairly brave role as the daughter who's trying to break free just when Dad needs her the most. One of the most sincere and effective films about Middle America in some time.
Friday, February 21, 2003
Intacto ("Intact") (IMDB) (Netflix)
Another Spanish flight of fantasy, featuring serious consequences. Max Von Sydow is a Holocaust survivor with incredible luck, and if that weren't annoying enough, can steal your own mojo from you. He's got some challengers for his top spot, though; they live among us and use up our precious karmic fluids for their own gain, knocking off the competition for the opportunity to "play" for the ultimate stakes with Max. It's as intriguing a premise as you've seen in a while, and almost as confusing, but hang in there, you might be rewarded.
For someone whose understanding of the vicissitudes of fate barely reaches "unlucky in love, lucky in parking," this was a challenge. You're continuously left to piece things together as you follow the story of people who survive plane crashes and attempt to run blindfolded across busy highways, and somehow use photographs of others to build up their ability to win at roulette, both the casino version and an insanely turbo-charged Russian variant. It's all very conceptual, but somehow I was drawn into this world, trying to puzzle through the rules of this world, and hooked by Von Sydow's gravitas and solemnity (his hit-man character in Three Days of the Condor has haunted me for almost thirty years). None of this is to suggest that the film's meaning is now clear, however, or that the payoff is overwhelmingly rewarding. For those who appreciate originality, have a tolerance for ambiguity and enjoy the process of solving the puzzle more than the result.
Another Spanish flight of fantasy, featuring serious consequences. Max Von Sydow is a Holocaust survivor with incredible luck, and if that weren't annoying enough, can steal your own mojo from you. He's got some challengers for his top spot, though; they live among us and use up our precious karmic fluids for their own gain, knocking off the competition for the opportunity to "play" for the ultimate stakes with Max. It's as intriguing a premise as you've seen in a while, and almost as confusing, but hang in there, you might be rewarded.
For someone whose understanding of the vicissitudes of fate barely reaches "unlucky in love, lucky in parking," this was a challenge. You're continuously left to piece things together as you follow the story of people who survive plane crashes and attempt to run blindfolded across busy highways, and somehow use photographs of others to build up their ability to win at roulette, both the casino version and an insanely turbo-charged Russian variant. It's all very conceptual, but somehow I was drawn into this world, trying to puzzle through the rules of this world, and hooked by Von Sydow's gravitas and solemnity (his hit-man character in Three Days of the Condor has haunted me for almost thirty years). None of this is to suggest that the film's meaning is now clear, however, or that the payoff is overwhelmingly rewarding. For those who appreciate originality, have a tolerance for ambiguity and enjoy the process of solving the puzzle more than the result.
Sunday, February 16, 2003
Daredevil (IMDB) (Netflix)
The latest comic book popcorn movie, but not the last (X-Men 2 opens in May, followed by Ang Lee's The Hulk, and the next Spiderman has just started filming). Daredevil (Ben Affleck) is one of the lesser-known superheroes, blinded at an early age by biotoxins that sharpen his remaining senses to such a pitch that they become both a blessing and a curse, and require a sensory deprivation chamber for him to get any sleep. It's hell on relationships. He also has the classic genre baggage of seeing one of his parents die before his eyes (so to speak), and a desire for "justice" that approaches obsession. There's also a love interest in Alias's Jennifer Garner, who has the martial arts bug in a big way, the evil Kingpin (played by Michael Clark Duncan, the deep-voiced XXXXL black dude from The Green Mile) and an eponymously tatooed assassin, Bullseye, performed by Russell Crowe manqué Colin Farrell.
You're seeing so many of these films today thanks mostly to risk-averse studios, but computer-generated imagery has gotten so sophisticated that just about anything a superhero could do on paper can now be believably rendered on the screen, and Daredevil uses all this technology to wonderful effect. The way the filmmakers depict Daredevil's "second sight" ability is the highlight of the film, which is much darker than its peers, featuring large doses of noncartoonish violence. Garner has one of the most grrrl-like roles since Linda Hamilton's Sarah Connor in Terminator 2, but the movie doesn't transcend the genre so much as burrow deep inside it, and the amount of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon-style swooping is excessive for a movie that reaches so hard for realism. Certainly not a failure, nor a standout. My money's on The Hulk.
The latest comic book popcorn movie, but not the last (X-Men 2 opens in May, followed by Ang Lee's The Hulk, and the next Spiderman has just started filming). Daredevil (Ben Affleck) is one of the lesser-known superheroes, blinded at an early age by biotoxins that sharpen his remaining senses to such a pitch that they become both a blessing and a curse, and require a sensory deprivation chamber for him to get any sleep. It's hell on relationships. He also has the classic genre baggage of seeing one of his parents die before his eyes (so to speak), and a desire for "justice" that approaches obsession. There's also a love interest in Alias's Jennifer Garner, who has the martial arts bug in a big way, the evil Kingpin (played by Michael Clark Duncan, the deep-voiced XXXXL black dude from The Green Mile) and an eponymously tatooed assassin, Bullseye, performed by Russell Crowe manqué Colin Farrell.
You're seeing so many of these films today thanks mostly to risk-averse studios, but computer-generated imagery has gotten so sophisticated that just about anything a superhero could do on paper can now be believably rendered on the screen, and Daredevil uses all this technology to wonderful effect. The way the filmmakers depict Daredevil's "second sight" ability is the highlight of the film, which is much darker than its peers, featuring large doses of noncartoonish violence. Garner has one of the most grrrl-like roles since Linda Hamilton's Sarah Connor in Terminator 2, but the movie doesn't transcend the genre so much as burrow deep inside it, and the amount of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon-style swooping is excessive for a movie that reaches so hard for realism. Certainly not a failure, nor a standout. My money's on The Hulk.
Saturday, February 15, 2003
Lost in La Mancha (IMDB) (Netflix)
Cervantes's "Don Quixote" defeated legendary filmmaker Orson Welles, and you certainly haven't seen Terry Gilliam's attempt, "The Man Who Killed Don Quixote." This documentary, which starts out as a typical little "making of" film, explains what happened to the latter project, laying out a director's slow-motion nightmare in the same way that Hearts of Darkness revealed Francis Ford Coppola's near-Waterloo, Apocalypse Now. One of my few brushes with greatness involve trying (I suspect unsuccessfully) to take a leak while standing next to Gilliam, so I feel a bond of sorts with the animator for Monty Python and director of minor classics like Brazil, Time Bandits and the Fisher King. He also was responsible for the awful Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas (only one of two times I've walked out of theater) and the financially Cimino-esque Adventures of Baron Munchausen. Gilliam has a slightly overstated rep for biting off more than he can chew, which no doubt drew the documentarians. Nothing like a disaster to spice up reality.
"Lost" sits closer to the impressive Hearts of Darkness than HBO's drawn-out Project Greenlight; we're really inside the production, and in the head of Gilliam, who encouraged the filmmakers to keep shooting as things fell apart. There's little of the back-biting that marred Greenlight, but because "Lost" hasn't been released, there isn't that instructive opportunity to compare the finished film to the star-crossed production that preceded it (you see enough to appreciate that the story was right up Gilliam's stylistic alley, however, and to wish that it had been finished). On balance, it's an entertaining lesson on what a crapshoot movie-making is, and counter-intuitively, it somewhat rehabilitates Gilliam's reputation. His heartbreaking loss has resulted in a minor delight of a documentary.
Cervantes's "Don Quixote" defeated legendary filmmaker Orson Welles, and you certainly haven't seen Terry Gilliam's attempt, "The Man Who Killed Don Quixote." This documentary, which starts out as a typical little "making of" film, explains what happened to the latter project, laying out a director's slow-motion nightmare in the same way that Hearts of Darkness revealed Francis Ford Coppola's near-Waterloo, Apocalypse Now. One of my few brushes with greatness involve trying (I suspect unsuccessfully) to take a leak while standing next to Gilliam, so I feel a bond of sorts with the animator for Monty Python and director of minor classics like Brazil, Time Bandits and the Fisher King. He also was responsible for the awful Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas (only one of two times I've walked out of theater) and the financially Cimino-esque Adventures of Baron Munchausen. Gilliam has a slightly overstated rep for biting off more than he can chew, which no doubt drew the documentarians. Nothing like a disaster to spice up reality.
"Lost" sits closer to the impressive Hearts of Darkness than HBO's drawn-out Project Greenlight; we're really inside the production, and in the head of Gilliam, who encouraged the filmmakers to keep shooting as things fell apart. There's little of the back-biting that marred Greenlight, but because "Lost" hasn't been released, there isn't that instructive opportunity to compare the finished film to the star-crossed production that preceded it (you see enough to appreciate that the story was right up Gilliam's stylistic alley, however, and to wish that it had been finished). On balance, it's an entertaining lesson on what a crapshoot movie-making is, and counter-intuitively, it somewhat rehabilitates Gilliam's reputation. His heartbreaking loss has resulted in a minor delight of a documentary.
Monday, February 10, 2003
The Quiet American (IMDB) (Netflix)
The world might really appreciate a quiet American just about now, but not necessarily Alden Pyle's (Brendan Fraser) variety, a member of the U.S. legation to Vietnam in 1952. He befriends gone-native journalist Thomas Fowler (Michael Caine), who has a Saigon mistress while the missus stays back in London, but it quickly gets awkward when Pyle declares his smitten-ness with Phuong (Do Thi Hai Yen). Pyle has other intentions as well, which ultimately challenge Fowler's role as an impartial journalist.
Based on the Graham Greene novel and filmed in Vietnam, this is a layered, textured story that taps the themes of loyalty and betrayal, objectivity and involvement, self-determination and external manipulation. Caine believes he's done his best work here, and it's difficult to disagree, and Fraser finally establishes his acting bona fides by blending the multiple facets of his complex character into an archetype of American dangerous idealism. The Year of Living Dangerously may have pushed the same buttons with more impact, but The Quiet American's restrained quality serves it and the audience well.
The world might really appreciate a quiet American just about now, but not necessarily Alden Pyle's (Brendan Fraser) variety, a member of the U.S. legation to Vietnam in 1952. He befriends gone-native journalist Thomas Fowler (Michael Caine), who has a Saigon mistress while the missus stays back in London, but it quickly gets awkward when Pyle declares his smitten-ness with Phuong (Do Thi Hai Yen). Pyle has other intentions as well, which ultimately challenge Fowler's role as an impartial journalist.
Based on the Graham Greene novel and filmed in Vietnam, this is a layered, textured story that taps the themes of loyalty and betrayal, objectivity and involvement, self-determination and external manipulation. Caine believes he's done his best work here, and it's difficult to disagree, and Fraser finally establishes his acting bona fides by blending the multiple facets of his complex character into an archetype of American dangerous idealism. The Year of Living Dangerously may have pushed the same buttons with more impact, but The Quiet American's restrained quality serves it and the audience well.
Sunday, February 09, 2003
The Recruit (IMDB) (Netflix)
Welcome to yet another movie version of the CIA, where "nothing is as it seems," as recruiter, instructor and spymaster Al Pacino never tires of telling newbie Colin Farrell. Pay attention, you'll be seeing many more of these flicks in the coming years. Farrell is a recent MIT grad; a computer geek, tops in his class and able to maintain a three-day stubble for weeks on end, but he's obsessed with finding out what really happened to his father, who died under mysterious, maybe clandestine, circumstances. Pacino exploits that baggage, and blurs the line between training and real world so much that Farrell doesn't know which way is up, or who's good or bad.
It's a competent thriller that keeps the audience guessing, and the characters are engaging enough (Bridget Moynahan is a wonderful distraction) to want to see what happens to them, but it's formulaic in the extreme, with blatant foreshadowing that results in underwhelming payoffs, and a couple critical plot points that fold under a moment's reflection. Passable entertainment for those who choose to be in an uncritical frame of mind.
Welcome to yet another movie version of the CIA, where "nothing is as it seems," as recruiter, instructor and spymaster Al Pacino never tires of telling newbie Colin Farrell. Pay attention, you'll be seeing many more of these flicks in the coming years. Farrell is a recent MIT grad; a computer geek, tops in his class and able to maintain a three-day stubble for weeks on end, but he's obsessed with finding out what really happened to his father, who died under mysterious, maybe clandestine, circumstances. Pacino exploits that baggage, and blurs the line between training and real world so much that Farrell doesn't know which way is up, or who's good or bad.
It's a competent thriller that keeps the audience guessing, and the characters are engaging enough (Bridget Moynahan is a wonderful distraction) to want to see what happens to them, but it's formulaic in the extreme, with blatant foreshadowing that results in underwhelming payoffs, and a couple critical plot points that fold under a moment's reflection. Passable entertainment for those who choose to be in an uncritical frame of mind.
Saturday, February 08, 2003
Morvern Callar (IMDB) (Netflix)
Your boyfriend has just a) finished his first novel and b) killed himself in your apartment. What do you do? My guess is that you wouldn't make any of Morven Callar's (Samantha Morton) choices, which are mostly inexplicable and off-putting.
Small, non-traditional films are often a crapshoot--there are the little gems that make you want to run out of the theater at the end to tell everyone that they just have to see it, and there are the ones that, well before the end, just make you want to run out. "Callar" is the latter kind, minimally plotted and featuring enigmatically motivated characters, a let's-just-roll-the-cameras-and-see-what-happens pacing, and a so-what point. It's also a bad sign when the character you most root for has died before the film starts.
After delivering the best performance in Minority Report as one of the "pre-cogs," Morton does what little she can with the opaque material, but this adaptation from Alan Warner's novel likely suffers from the screenwriters being too faithful to a book consisting of extensive internal dialogue and exposition that, as the movie professionals say, "won't shoot." At least, not without wholesale re-conceptualization for the screen (fellow traveler Erica Lauf lauded The English Patient for working both as a novel and as movie, but only by being two very different treatments of the same story). I stopped trying to care about Morton's character after ten minutes, and felt sorry for Scotland, which is the geographical and cultural whipping boy of the film, again for no apparent reason.
Your boyfriend has just a) finished his first novel and b) killed himself in your apartment. What do you do? My guess is that you wouldn't make any of Morven Callar's (Samantha Morton) choices, which are mostly inexplicable and off-putting.
Small, non-traditional films are often a crapshoot--there are the little gems that make you want to run out of the theater at the end to tell everyone that they just have to see it, and there are the ones that, well before the end, just make you want to run out. "Callar" is the latter kind, minimally plotted and featuring enigmatically motivated characters, a let's-just-roll-the-cameras-and-see-what-happens pacing, and a so-what point. It's also a bad sign when the character you most root for has died before the film starts.
After delivering the best performance in Minority Report as one of the "pre-cogs," Morton does what little she can with the opaque material, but this adaptation from Alan Warner's novel likely suffers from the screenwriters being too faithful to a book consisting of extensive internal dialogue and exposition that, as the movie professionals say, "won't shoot." At least, not without wholesale re-conceptualization for the screen (fellow traveler Erica Lauf lauded The English Patient for working both as a novel and as movie, but only by being two very different treatments of the same story). I stopped trying to care about Morton's character after ten minutes, and felt sorry for Scotland, which is the geographical and cultural whipping boy of the film, again for no apparent reason.
Sunday, February 02, 2003
Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (IMDB) (Netflix)
George Clooney's first directorial gig, based on the real-and-almost-certainly-imagined life of Chuck Barris, a songwriter (Palisades Park), game show producer (Dating Game, Newlywed Game and the Gong Show) and contract killer for the CIA. Or so he said in his autobiography, claiming an impressive/absurd 31 successful assignments. Making this dubious story shootable is a job for the equally dangerous screenwriting mind of Charlie Kaufman, whose Adaptation is still in theaters, and follows up the inventive Being John Malvovich.
When most actors try their hand at directing for the first time, they're pretty conservative, thinking "let's just get it in the can on time so I can do this again later when my acting fee drops." Clooney, who doesn't take a lot of risks with his own performances, goes the other way, letting his crew make some aggressive stylistic choices, and allowing the cast, well led by Sam Rockwell, to be outrageous enough to sell the material--but believable throughout its broad tonal range. Drew Barrymore is sweet as Barris's victimized girlfriend without being a doormat, and Julia Roberts makes a respectable femme fatale. In the moment of watching, the film works better as a dark comedy than the reflections of man repulsed by his low-brow success, but in the ensuing hours, burrows into the psyche. Your reaction to Kaufman's other work should be an accurate predictor of whether you'll enjoy "Confessions."
George Clooney's first directorial gig, based on the real-and-almost-certainly-imagined life of Chuck Barris, a songwriter (Palisades Park), game show producer (Dating Game, Newlywed Game and the Gong Show) and contract killer for the CIA. Or so he said in his autobiography, claiming an impressive/absurd 31 successful assignments. Making this dubious story shootable is a job for the equally dangerous screenwriting mind of Charlie Kaufman, whose Adaptation is still in theaters, and follows up the inventive Being John Malvovich.
When most actors try their hand at directing for the first time, they're pretty conservative, thinking "let's just get it in the can on time so I can do this again later when my acting fee drops." Clooney, who doesn't take a lot of risks with his own performances, goes the other way, letting his crew make some aggressive stylistic choices, and allowing the cast, well led by Sam Rockwell, to be outrageous enough to sell the material--but believable throughout its broad tonal range. Drew Barrymore is sweet as Barris's victimized girlfriend without being a doormat, and Julia Roberts makes a respectable femme fatale. In the moment of watching, the film works better as a dark comedy than the reflections of man repulsed by his low-brow success, but in the ensuing hours, burrows into the psyche. Your reaction to Kaufman's other work should be an accurate predictor of whether you'll enjoy "Confessions."
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