Cosmopoetica

Mama’s Boy is another movie I’d never have seen were it not for my daughter bringing it home… and another pleasant surprise. It may be partly a function of my exceedingly low expectations (despite thoroughly enjoying Napolean Dynamite), but I found Mama’s Boy surprisingly amusing. There’s much not to like, such as pretty much the entire predictable plotline, but Jon Heder’s role is relatively well written. That’s at the heart of the biggest problem with the movie– the cleverness of most of Heder’s lines is obscured by the inanity of the movie surrounding them, which will annoy more sophisticated viewers, while the manner of delivery and cleverness will just get in the way of those who want a typically stupid comedy.

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Public Enemies was much more interesting than I expected. I’d resisted seeing it, despite my generally high estimation of Johnny Depp, because I have such low expectations when it comes to Michael Mann films. Mann just seems unable to keep himself from ruining films with amazing potential (e.g. Ali, Heat, even Miami Vice could have at least been entertaining). Only The Insider (mostly) escapes my critical wrath.

But Public Enemies is good. Very good. Mann’s direction is disciplined (!) and the visual style– or I should say the stylish visuals– really make the film. But the center of gravity is Dillinger (Johnny Depp). The title might be plural but there’s only one enemy who really matters. Paradoxically, it’s Depp’s performance– that he is so good and the script so dialed into what is likely the most realistic portrayal of a character like Dillinger– that prevents Public Enemies from being a great film. In getting at the truth of Dillinger, that he was a hollow figure and underneath the suave machismo he wasn’t much more than a psychologically myopic killer (this whole aspect of the film isn’t helped much by the hackneyed role given the sadly under-utilized Marion Cotillard as Billie Frechette, Dillinger’s lover), the movie itself finally feels similarly hollow.

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Okwe (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a night-clerk at a London hotel, is investigating a reported problem in a room when he finds the toilet stopped up… by a human heart. “Sneaky” (Sergi López), the hotel manager, tells Okwe to forget it and mind his own business or else he might find himself in trouble with immigration. Okwe, a doctor from Nigeria who now lives illegally in London and works nights at a hotel and days as a cab driver, is unable to just let it go, particularly when a maid, Senay (Audrey Tautou), from whom he rents a couch to sleep on becomes involved. Senay is also an illegal immigrant– she’s fled the oppression of, and an arranged marriage in, Turkey. In fact, every major character in the film is an immigrant– some legal, some not– to London, including the venal hotel manager and Okwe’s closest friend Guo Yi (Benedict Wong), a night-time morgue attendant.

Dirty Pretty Things is a genre-ish film– mystery, thriller, immigrant story– that transcends and stretches each genre. On the one hand, it’s marvelously subtle, with keen insight into little details of life as an illegal immigrant: the constant struggle to get by, the fear of discovery, the casual corruptness (and small graces) of other illegal immigrants who suffer in the same way. On the other hand, Dirty Pretty Things is a mystery based on a plausible idea stretched and contorted to the point of incredulity. Each actor puts in a fine performance despite the fact that, in the end, the characters all fit loosely into a stereotype.

The acting is what makes the film work. Ejiofor is simply amazing. I’ve seen him in other movies– Children of Men and Talk to Me come to mind most readily– but this performance put him over the top in my estimation. As with many great actors, Ejiofor’s screen presence is hard to put into words. He conveys more with his silent, physical presence than most actors are able with even a good script. And Tautou, who was wonderful in Amélie, puts in a performance that capitalizes on some of the same qualities– a vulnerability paired with a hidden toughness and an indomitable spirit– in a very different role. Even the less central characters put in fine performances as well, despite each playing a role that borders on– and at times strays into– cliché, as in the case with the jovial Russian doorman (Zlatko Buric) and the hooker with a heart of gold (Sophie Okonedo).

Dirty Pretty Things isn’t a film made for the ages, but it ably filled my own regular need for entertainment that isn’t as execrable as most disposable genre movies.

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I’d heard of The Man Who Laughs many times, starting with my one and only film history class, but never had an opportunity to watch it. What a film! Made at the tail end of the silent film era (the film is, in fact, not truly silent, though there is no synchronized dialogue) and one of the last examples of the German Expressionist film movement that was to shape horror films for decades to come, The Man Who Laughs is a rich film.

The plot is surprisingly complex, but to synopsize: Conrad Veidt plays Gwynplaine, a nobleman’s son, who is disfigured—by order of King James– as a child by a sadistic surgeon as part of a punishment for Gwynplaine’s father (also played by Veidt, incidentally), who is then put to death. Gwynplaine is left alone when his captors flee the country and discovers a blind baby still alive in her mother’s arms. He rescues the baby (Dea, portrayed by Mary Philbin) and they are both saved, and raised, by a travelling philosopher and vaudeville show producer. Gwynplaine doesn’t know he is heir to a fortune and a peer of England and a former court jester, who now serves Josiana (Olga Baclanova), the Duchess who now has Gwynplaine’s rightful property, is determined to see that he never gets it. Gwynplaine, for his part, has fallen in love with Dea—who can’t see his disfigured smile and loves him solely for who he is.

Conrad Veidt is simply amazing. Not only does he convey complex emotions without the use of his voice, but he does so while wearing a face deforming device that shape his mouth into a permanent rictus and horrific dentures that basically immobilize the lower half of his face. Surely Batman appropriated this (or Victor Hugo’s original story)…

In one of the most stunning scenes in the movie, Josiana (who doesn’t yet know that Gwynplaine is not just a nobleman, but owner of the property and fortune she is enjoying, attempts to seduce Gwynplaine. Though Gwynplaine loves Dea, he is sorely tempted (and who wouldn’t be, Josiana positively drips with haughty, contemptuous sexuality and I was surprised at the relative raciness of a few scenes)… until she, too, laughs at him and he flees, in search of Dea. The amazing part of this scene is that Gwynplaine is clearly fleeing in his head well before he can flee Josiana’s bedchambers, but he is torn between the physical attraction and his growing psychological repulsion.

Another unforgettable moment occurs when Gwynplaine—who is an honest, humble and almost fatally weak man—finally takes a stand at his induction into the House of Lords, buffeted by laughter and confusion by the rest of the Peers, who think he is laughing at the Queen (and at them) when he refuses the Queen’s order to marry Josiana. “The King made me a man,” Gwynplaine shouts, “The Queen made me a Peer! But first, God made me a man!”

The sets and lighting deserve notice here as well. I don’t have enough experience to know whether they were exceptional in the genre, but they were certainly exceptional for me as a viewer.

For people like me, who don’t watch many silent movies, the mannerisms of the actors can come off as overacting and mugging… but 20 minutes or so into the film, intrigued by the sets and the fine performances that were already becoming obvious—and the classic beauty and beast setup—all that was forgotten and I was simply engrossed.

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It’s sad to see anyone lose their life in a freak accident, whether they are famous or not, but my sadness at the news of Natasha Richardson’s death is intensified by both the manner of her passing and the fact that, despite her talent and pedigree (or perhaps because of the latter), she never really received the recognition she should have. I’ll leave lengthy tributes and critical recaps to others and just note that the one film she was in that I recommend most is the one that is receiving very little mention in the press: The Favour, the Watch, and the Very Big Fish. This was the movie in which Richardson hit it out of the park, and both Bob Hoskins and Jeff Goldblum– who can annoy me in not so subtle ways when they aren’t busy being brilliant– turned in more-than-watchable performances in a dark, dry, wry film that made me laugh out loud many times. And that’s not a common occurrence.

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[photo by jazzlawyer]

I love going to the movies as much now as when I was a kid. For me, as wound up in childhood memories as it is, the big screen experience can’t be duplicated at home for any amount of money.

But the punishment I get for living in essentially a one-horse town is that there is only one local theater with 16 screens (I remember all too well  when there were only two screens) filled with the most mainstream releases. Fortunately I rarely have time to go and NetFlix remains my cinematic close companion. So I shouldn’t be surprised that, confronted with enough time to actually go to a movie, there’s hardly anything worth watching. Choices include:

• 10,000 BC (wooly mammoths, pyramids, and saber-tooth tigers as large as carnivorous dinosaurs? I don’t think so)
• Semi-Pro (Will Ferrell playing a lovable but ridiculous character? Never seen that before)
• The Eye (Jessica Alba as a musician is more believable than her turn as a scientist, but if I’m going to watch her “acting” she better be shaking it like she was in that Honey movie)
• Fool’s Gold (I’d rather cut off and eat my own legs than sit through a romantic comedy right now)
• Witless Protection (can’t that “comedian” who keeps saying “git ‘er done” just have the heart-attack he’s so clearly destined for already?)

The only promising title seems to be The Bank Job (getting good reviews… plus I’ll watch anything with Saffron Burrows in it). Maybe I’ll just go watch Juno again.

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I avoided this one as long as I could courtesy of my instinctive aversion to hype, but Chocolat turned out to be a much better film than I expected. Juliette Binoche is (as always) radiant, and Johnny Depp– a potentially great actor hamstrung by his own fame– gives a fine, understated performance. Predictable in its outlines, the film is better than it should be thanks to strong supporting performances by Judy Dench, Alfred Molina and even Carrie Moss– in possibly her least wooden performance ever– among others. There’s a bit of Amelie style magic and wimsy at work here, though ultimately this film is on a different, lower plane than that masterpiece.

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Despite being a fan of many of Bruce Willis’ performance, I’d never seen any of his Die Hard movies until watching this “DVD-TV” production of the first in the series– a film released the year I graduated from high school! DVD-TV is AMCs cinematic version of pop-up video– the film is shown in wide format while information about the production, trivia, and commentary from people involved in making it is displayed underneath. The commentary was a bit heavy on the Shakespeare references (director John Tiernan was apparently inspired by some of Shakespeare’s plays), but otherwise captivating, revealing much about the sets and artistic production, the choice of actors, the novel that informed the script, and the changes that were explicitly made to prevent it from being a film about terrorism…

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Eric Bana stars as Chopper, a renowned Australian criminal I’d never heard of before. Chopper is by turns charming and brutal, but Bana’s performance gives the character a depth that sets Chopper apart from others in the same vein. Chopper doesn’t take pleasure in his rage nor is he coldly detached… if anything he is surprised by his own actions. People simultaneously fear and are attracted to Chopper and he seems to realize that whatever he is, he is different from other peoplem by virtue of charisma and cruelty. Chopper uses this difference to great advantage, becoming an unreformed celebrity in the process. Bana is riveting, the accent and dialect nearly incomprehensible.

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Thanks to a reference by Reginald Shepherd I discovered Robert Philen’s blog. Why is his name so familiar to me? Anyway, a lot of fun reading to be had there (before I go on, a nod toward his entertaining and oh-so-true post on why punk rock is so boring). I recommend checking out his favorite books (parts one and two) and films (parts one and two) of 2007. Great capsule reviews/notes that are personal, direct, and don’t claim to place every piece in a grand universal aesthetic schema).

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• One Line Review: Watch it for the acting, but don’t expect a lot of narrative satisfaction.

• Lineage: All the President’s Men meets Law and Order and a serial killer of the realistic (aka decidedly not Hannibal Lecter) variety.

• Zodiac has pretty much everything going for it except for one critical thing (I can’t imagine this is a spoiler, but stop reading if you are really paranoid): the fact that the real-life crime under the microscope has never been solved.

• Mark Ruffalo! One of my favorite actors. Hard to believe this character is the same person that inspired the classic Steve McQueen film Bullitt. The chemistry with Anthony Edwards is good, but the cop-side belongs to Ruffalo.

• Gack! All the mind-numbing details of the realistic procedural– on the crime-solving side anyway. I suspect things really aren’t that much better today, though I had to laugh at the discombobulation when they try to figure out who has a “telefax” machine to relay some crucial information.

• The last thing the killer says to the woman he picks up– she is holding her infant in her lap– will haunt me in my dreams.

• Robert Downey Jr. can play this kind of part in his sleep and yet he still manages to bring the role to life. Downey has some fine work to his name, but oh! what could have been.

• I am growing weary of the wide-eyed innocent Jake Gyllenhaal. I prefer the Donnie Darko Jake.

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• One Line Review: I wasn’t expecting much and that’s pretty much what I got. Don’t bother unless you get high first. Real high.
• Lineage: King of the Hill (the cartoon) + Sleeper + the worst of Mad TV
• There are hundreds of funny moments, ideas, and gags in this film– almost none put to good use.
• Maya Rudolph has her moments in SNL… but an actress she is not.
• This is no Office Space. This isn’t even a Beavis and Butthead.

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• One line review: it ain’t Unforgiven but it’s good. Rent it.
• Lineage: In an experiment, the scientific spirits of Unforgiven and High Noon clone the original 3:10 to Yuma.
• Russell Crowe just annoys me for some reason. He’s really a great actor, but it take me 1/3 or more of the film to really get past the fact that it’s ol-fat-face in the role. The night-stabbing is what flips me.
• And Christian Bale– I will probably never get past the image of him swaddled in bloody visqueen in _American Psycho_, but he does a good job with a character that just isn’t quite as sympathetic as he is intended to be… see last point.
• Charlie Prince has crazy man-love for Ben Wade… if I wasn’t sure at the halfway point, I was sure by the end.
• Pretty much every single part in this film from large to small is done really well. Peter Fonda and Alan Tudyk get gold stars.
• I don’t think Ben Wqade or Dan Evans actually know why they end up doing what they do. But I enjoyed the consistency (and there is a logic to even the apparent reversals of character) right down to Ben Wade whistling for his horse at the very end.
• I’ve never seen the original, but I’m adding it to my NetFlix queue ASAP. Not because this movie is that great, but because my curiosity is piqued about how the characterization of the main characters is handled– there’s something very “modern Western” about the Ben Wade, Dan Evans, Charlie Prince trio.

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The opening credits animation sequence is freakin’ cool.

Ellen Page (who really impressed me last year in Hard Candy) is phenomenal in this role.

The single real flaw in the movie is that the first 10 minutes or so of dialogue are overwritten, leaving the characters no room to breathe (I like Rainn Wilson in general, but his lines here are the perfect example)… but there is a single moment when it all turns around: after telling her parents she is pregnant her father remarks that he didn’t think she was the kind of girl who would make that mistake and Juno looks at him for a second then says “I don’t know what kind of girl I am.” It’s a fantastic moment with Page’s complete mastery of facial expression and emotion, tone– I was floored. It’s not that the dialogue subsequently becomes more “accurate”– it’s that the humanity of the characters is so firmly in place that the evocation of this unique world that partially intersects our own is complete.

I can anticipate the complaints this film will get: the dialogue isn’t “real”, there is no reflection on women’s rights, Juno is too adult/smart/witty/etc… they are all wrong.

There are so many moving and funny moments in this film– it provokes deep emotion and high hilarity without being gaudy or obvious.

The soundtrack is like the best box of chocolates– a constant supply of treats, some different, some the same, all good. Anchored by Kimya Dawson songs, here a a few others that remain stuck in my mind: Mott the Hoople’s (was it originally David Bowie’s?) “All the Young Dudes” and The Moldy Peaches (Kimya Dawson’s band) “Anyone Else But You” and Cat Power and Belle & Sebastian…

Olivia Thirlby, who plays Juno’s best friend, should break out big after this movie. Michael Cera, Juno’s friend/boyfriend/sperm donor needs to break out of this character, which is pretty much an extension of his role in Arrested Development, but boy is he good at it.

I sure was happy to see Allison Janney again, and again she kicks a**. I miss the early days of The West Wing. These are not your normal teen comedy parents.

It’s a strange year when the two best movies I’ve seen are: Juno and No Country for Old Men.

Lineage: Love-child of Clerks and Heathers who spent a lot of time watching films like Little Miss Sunshine…

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With a plot summary like this (and Tim Roth), how can I resist?

The film opens in Bucharest in 1938, where Dominic Matei (Tim Roth), a linguistics professor in his 70s, is planning to take his own life for reasons that will become (sort of) clear later. Before he can take the poison that he’s procured for the occasion, he’s struck by lightning and nearly burnt to a crisp. As he recovers in the hospital, tended by a kind doctor (Bruno Ganz), something inexplicable happens: His grey hair turns reddish again, his wrinkles begin to smooth, his teeth fall out en masse only to be replaced by new ones. He’s getting younger.

Along with his lost youth, Dominic has gained a döppelganger, a second Tim Roth who pops up in mirrors to advise him on the pursuit of his life’s goal: to discover the origin of all human language. With his brain supercharged by the lightning bolt, Dominic masters Chinese and Sanskrit in a snap, and is eventually—I love this detail—forced to invent a new language to express the complexity of his thoughts, which he records in an audio diary.

Of course, 1938 is a tough time to be, in Dominic’s words, “a strange superman of the future.” Soon he finds himself pursued by Nazi scientist Josef Rudolf (André M. Hennicke), who wants to experiment on his radically transformed body. Despite the best efforts of a sexy Nazi spy (that swastika embroidered on her garter belt should have been a tip-off), Dominic manages to escape to Switzerland, where he waits out the war while continuing his research.

Hiking up a mountain path some years after the war, Dominic thinks he sees the lost (and now long-dead) love of his youth, Laura, in the form of a woman named Veronica (both roles are played by German-Romanian actress Alexandra Maria Lara). But just moments after meeting Dominic on a mountain road, Veronica is struck by lightning, too, and winds up in a cave babbling in Sanskrit. Italian scholars are flown in—it’s not clear at whose expense—to confirm that Veronica is either possessed by, or the reincarnation of, a seventh-century Indian woman named Rupini.

As Veronica/Laura/Rupini proceeds to regress through the history of human language, babbling first in Egyptian, then Sumerian, then something like proto-caveman, Dominic gets ever closer to deciphering the Ur-language that will complete his life’s work. But will it be at the expense of his true love’s life?

[Read the rest of Dana Stevens' review in Slate]

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Among other interesting things to be found at Tad Richards’ blog are a series of print-like illustrations he has created based on scenes and characters from classic film noir titles. I’d buy one.

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Jack Black and Mos Def directed by Michael Gondry? Be Kind, Rewind looks hi-larious…

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Helvetica is a feature-length independent film about typography, graphic design and global visual culture. It looks at the proliferation of one typeface (which is celebrating its 50th birthday this year) as part of a larger conversation about the way type affects our lives.

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At least, not being able to speak, I am spared the need to explain why every film is “overlooked,” or why I wrote Beyond the Valley of the Dolls.

I already think Roger Ebert is unfairly dismissed by cinema snobs– he is more insightful than many give him credit for, despite his popularity– but my respect for the man just went through the roof. Inspiring…

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I’m going to disagree with seemingly every critic in America and give Reign Over Me a thumbs-up. I’d probably like any movie with Don Cheadle in it, who has been one of my favorite actors since I first started paying attention to him after his performance in Devil in a Blue Dress. Cheadle gives another amazing performance here… effortless and convincing even when the script isn’t necessarily helping him. And– again unlike the apparent critical consensus– I think Adam Sandler does a hell of a job playing the emotionally damaged, PTSD suffering family man who has lost his family. I actually enjoyed Punch Drunk Love too, mostly because of Sandler’s performance, so what do I know?

I think many of the film critics problems miss the point of the movie. This isn’t an epic post-9/11 film. It’s at heart a small presentation, an observation in close-up. I guess I can see why commentators might then mistake small gestures for failed attempts at sweeping movements. Sandler’s character gets better, but not in the way you might expect. He isn’t insane and there’s nothing a mental hospital can do with his affliction. Cheadle’s character is dealing with relatively small issues, but we don’t live our lives in constant comparison to others– his problems are as real and difficult as anyone else’s. I like movies that can make me tear up and laugh at the same time, and this one does that.

The only really hollow note was Liv Tyler as the concerned (and insightful) therapist. The movie points out the obvious issue of age, but that’s not the only problem with this bit of miscasting. This is balanced out a bit by the wonderful, and until now unknown to me, Saffron Burrows, who manages to make a part that perhaps no actress could really pull off into one that works… and she looks exquisite doing so.

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