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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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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I’m not sure why this film disappeared without a trace… Edward Norton and Naomi Watts give Oscar-caliber performances of tremendous subtlety. Most of the action in this movie happens beneath the surface– Watts’ ennui leading to a more unwise-than-usual affair, Norton’s simmering anger at her and at himself for having loved her at all, and a rare, realistic look at how these emotions play out amidst the spectacle of cholera ridden, pre-revolution (just) China. Powerful and beautiful, with an ending that betrays how different our standards have become when it comes to closure in film vs literature.

Incidentally, Toby Jones– star of the Capote film I have yet to see– steals most of the scenes he appears in…

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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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[IMDB entry]

I enjoy Rowan Atkinson (except as Mr. Bean), Maggie Smith is a legend, Kristin Scott Thomas is always amazing, it’s hard to keep one’s eyes off Tamsin Egerton, and Patrick Swayze is finally making as much fun of himself as we all used to make of him… Individually these are all good things. Combine them, mutter a cinematic incantation intended to concoct a black British comedy and the result is an average movie peppered with the laughs but a few too many cringe-worthy scenes. Worth a rental fee, particularly if it’s filling out the quantity needed to get a price break…

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[IMDB link]

It feels like I’ve seen this movie before… I guess that was just some other “time-travel to thwart a crime with a resolution that simply ignores the paradox of such temporal meddling” movie.

Denzel Washington is always Denzel– he’s enjoyable enough to watch even in the middling Hollywood thrillers he’s starting (unfortunately) to become remembered for. I didn’t recognize Robin Thicke, his beautiful co-star… in fact, I spent the whole movie thinking her part was being played alternately by Halle Berry and Rosaria Dawson. What a waste of ever-thickening Val Kilmer! And Adam Goldberg, who I always enjoy, needs to be in another good movie sometime soon. This wasn’t it.

Everyone should go back in time to fix this movie, but then I wouldn’t have written this post stimulating them to travel back in time which means…

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[IMDB link]

• The chemistry (thespian, not sexual) between Morgan Freeman and Paz Vega is incredible.
• This is a film about nothing and the way that all those nothings are everything for most of us for most of our lives… if we let them be.
• In its own way this movie is as much a fantasy as Pan’s Labyrinth.
• Paz Vega is luminous– it’s almost impossible to dampen her presence down enough to make it believable that she has been stuck in a dead-end grocery store job for more than about 90 seconds.
• The movie eschews the happy ending… in fact any ending at all. It’s more an extended slice-of-life sketch. Which isn’t a bad thing.
• Freeman is… well… swishy.
• Best use of a relatively obscure Paul Simon song in a movie ever.
• Morgan Freeman is almost too charming– you have to buy that the life of a recognized actor is pretty shallow and insulated to believe that he is basically friendless.
• I wouldn’t have been disappointed if I’d paid to see this on the big screen.

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[plot synopsis with possible spoilers]

It’s hard to believe that a movie about a hard-drinking, hard-scrabble god-fearing blues-guitar playing farmer in the deep south who rescues a crazed nymphomaniac girl one-third his age by chaining her–mostly naked– to his radiator could go over the top, isn’t it?

While happily admitting that I could watch a nearly (and for a few moments here and there completely) naked Christina Ricci (Rae) for hours, even in her ostensibly white-trash incarnation, Black Snake Moan offers more than that. She’s a great actress given the thankless task of showing humanity in a nymphomaniac and trying to physically demonstrate psychological torment. Samuel L. Jackson is masterful as Lazarus, the bluesman who very nearly summons God with his playing at one point simultaneously embracing and dashing a variety of obvious stereotypes. I have no idea if he did any of his own singing, but if he did I’d buy the album. Even Justin Timberlake (J-T, J-Dog, Just Justin, whatever) is convincing as Rae’s nervous and damaged boyfriend. Until Lazarus intervenes– more out of self-protection than anything else– he’s the only one that can get inside her head and help her deal with her self-abuse. There are a couple of necessary, smaller roles that bring surprising and vital humor to the film, including S. Epatha Merkerson who many will recognize from Law and Order and John Cothran Jr. who has made a career out of portraying television lawyers, detectives, judges and reverends.

Black Snake Moan is a strange film. You have to accept the director’s sly wink. He’s made a movie that appears to be part stereotype and part absurd mockery of those stereotypes… but one that also has a heart and compassion, even to the point– and some will say well beyond– sappiness. You don’t expect a movie about a black man chaining a white woman to a radiator to be capable of sweetness, innocence, or corniness… and it has all three. It is in many ways an obvious, conventional morality tale told in a visual form equivalent to a blues song. It was nothing like I expected, and while it won’t take up residence in the pantheon of all-time cinema experiences, I’m glad I watched it.

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Written by: Brian Nelson
Directed by: David Slade
Starring: Ellen Page, Patrick Wilson, Sandra Oh^*

After three weeks of Instant Messenger chatting, 14 year old Hayley (Ellen Page) agrees to meet 32 year old Jeff (Patrick Wilson) face-to-face for the first time. She is smart and engaging beyond her years, but very clearly underage. He is a photographer who is a little too knowledgeable about the music she listens to and the authors she is reading and– despite his simultaneous protestations and flirtations– they end up at his hillside home/studio drinking screwdrivers and talking about his career photographing young (mostly underage) models.

Before long he will find himself wishing he had taken her advice to never accept a drink one didn’t mix themselves… and in a brief, blurry moment we see Hayley dancing on his couch in a skirt and bra before the movie changes into something else completely. You see, Hayley has an agenda of her own and it’s the kind of plan that years before she was born put the “fatal” in the title of the film Fatal Attraction.
(more…)

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Written by: Richard Russo and Robert Benton
Directed by: Harold Ramis
Starring: John Cusack, Billy Bob Thornton, Connie Nielsen, Oliver Platt, Mike Starr, Randy Quaid

I’m not sure how I’d define the genre of “dark comedy” other than with the reassurance that I know it when I see it. The Ice Harvest is a dark comedy. I know because I laughed at things that involved (often gruesome) violence and comedic moments involving conversations with a hit-man who’s stuffed in a trunk on his way to being dumped in a lake, discussion as to whether the trunk will fit in a good old American car or a Mercedes, and random shots fired into and out of said trunk.
(more…)

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Written by: Kevin Smith
Directed by: Kevin Smith
Starring: Brian O’Halloran, Jeff Anderson, Rosario Dawson, Jason Mewes, Kevin Smith

In Clerks II, Randal has once again left a cigarette burning in a Quick Stop trash can, this time resulting in the complete destruction of the place. Dante and Randal find themselves working at Mooby’s, a western-themed McDonald’s clone where Randal seems perfectly happy torturing Elias (Trevor Fehrman), an obsessively geeky co-worker, and still ranting about the state of the universe while Dante is serving out his last days before leaving for Florida. Jay and Silent Bob have relocated to the restaurant wall and resumed their business. Most of the conversations and scenes revolve around Clerks ViewAskewniverse style topics like Lord of the Rings vs Star Wars, bestiality, reclaiming the term “Porch Monkey” as a friendly term, and the ethics of ass-to-mouth.

But there’s been more than just a change of scenery– there’s some question of whether the center here can hold. (more…)

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Written by: Milo Addica and James Marsh
Directed by: James Marsh
Starring: William Hurt, Gael Garcia Bernal, Paul Dano, Pell James

Elvis (Gael Garcia Bernal) has just completed a tour overseas in the Navy and sets out to locate his father David (William Hurt), now a born-again Christian and successful minister in Corpus Christi. His father makes clear that he has moved on and that he doesn’t want to reveal his past or disturb his new family, though maybe they could get together at some point the future to “talk.” Elvis pursues and begins a secret affair with David’s daughter Malerie (Pell James), who has no idea Elvis is her half-brother. When David’s son Paul (Paul Dano) disappears, Elvis moves into his house– into XPaul’s room, in fact– continuing his relationship with Malerie while David and his wife Twyla (Laura Harring), who knows the secret, begin to accept him as their son.

The King is a deeply disturbing film. (more…)

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