THE U.S. VS JOHN LENNON

Director: David Leaf & John Sheinfeld (TV documentary work)
Starring: Documentary of John & Yoko Lennon and Nixon.

The United States versus John Lennon is not a very good movie. It's a solid TV documentary, but it's just not feature film quality. At its heart it exists to make aging baby boomers nostalgic for (what it suggests is) a more meaningful age, and well, to pointedly compare Nixon to Bush. The problem is that it doesn't even attempt to discern what the parallels between those two men might be much. The other problem is that it never digs deep. I'm not sure, but I might have seen every major bit of archival footage in this film on TV. This might be a good primer for a younger generation that isn't familiar with the Nixon years, but it's not a meaningful discussion of the subject.

Surprisingly, the first half of the film barely discusses John Lennon. For 45 minutes we get the cliff notes version of late 60s, early 70s America: The Summer of Love, Abbie Hoffman and the Chicago convention riots, Kent State shootings, Black Panther party.

The rest of the film then vaguely follows Lennon's fight to retain his US residency. At its heart, I think that the issue here was Nixon's mean-spirited soul. (I recommend Oliver Stone's masterpiece Nixon for some real insight into that tragic figure.) In this film we never even get a glimpse of insight into Nixon. In this film Nixon exists as a boogeyman against the ever-good John Lennon fighting for peace and love. Of course everyone knows it's more complicated than that. In some way, I'm afraid that by watering down the story, it makes it easier for some folks to disregard the crimes of our past. Nixon really was the closest thing to a tyrant America has experienced in 100 years. He actually argued in the supreme court that he had "all the powers of Louis XIV" for 4 years while in office. That's a terrifying argument. That's a terrifying thought process for a sitting president. This movie never touches on the real story, which is why Nixon believed such an insane thing. It's just "Nixon is bad, and Lennon is good. Oh, and Bush is bad". If you agree (like I very broadly do ...) than this film is a tolerable experience, but I can't claim it's a good movie in any way.

Standouts: Not much. Lennon's always interesting to listen to.
Blowouts: Not much. This film lived very much on the surface of the issues it covers. No depth.

Grade: C

MARIE ANTOINETTE

Director: Sofia Coppola (The Virgin Suicides, Lost in Translation)
Starring: Kirsten Dunst, Jason Schwartzman, Steve Coogan, Rip Torn

The young(er) Coppola is generally considered a rising star of cinema. The Virgin Suicides was a successful first film, and Lost in Translation was an even better received work. Unsurprisingly I was extremely interested to see where Miss Coppola would take us next. And that place was the story of a pampered and self-involved teenager, who just happens to be a queen. One who gets her head chopped off, although the film ends before that episode. Marie Antoinette as a film had a great deal that was unique and well done, and is a worthy next step after Miss Coppola's previous works. This is not to say there wasn't a great deal to criticize, because there was.

Antoinette sets the young French 18th century queen to a modern alt-rock score, and shows the entire court in a very modern persona. Certainly this is not an accident. Prior to seeing the film I thought it certain that this was going to be an excellent statement film about the excesses of today - our 'let them eat cake' society. After seeing the film, I'm very disappointed that it didn't live up this expectation. I actually can't help but wonder if Miss Coppola was showing quite the opposite of what I expected. I'm afraid that she was saying we should be sympathetic with her overindulged teenager on screen. I saw very little in this film that denegrated Antoinette, and quite a bit that seemed to accept and applaud her. If Coppola is saying that we should be sympathetic and understanding to the give me, give me, give me aspects of our culture, our Paris Hiltons and spoiled suburbanites, I will go so far as to say Miss Coppola is an overindulged moron. May she choke on her father's Pinor Noir.

However, this is not for certain. I may simply be misreading the film. It was a good enough (and ambiguous enough) story that I could have done so. If I am wrong, I certainly apologize. Yeah, like Sophia cares.

With the thematic issues aside, this film was quite interesting cinematically. There was an endless plodding quality to the picture (no doubt reminiscent of Antoinette's structured, plodding life while she was trapped in the marble jail that was Versailles). The most unique aspect to the story was simply the feminine viewpoint from which the story is seen (this was also quite prevelant in each of her earlier pictures). I'm not really talking about the clothes and cakes and parties that filled this film (although there is certainly a female aspect to these things). I'm thinking more of the way these things, and others, separate the Antoinette character from her husband. Marie Antoinette might just be the most femine character that has ever been filmed.

Beyond all of this, there were other unique visuals and viewpoints in this film that are quite worth seeing. Coppola has an interesting perspective in her films that I'll call "the present tense". This makes for an intriguing experience the first time you see her movies, although I fear that they aren't nearly as enjoyable the second time around. This is especially true of Lost in Translation, and I think it will be true of Antoinette as well.

On the downside, this film was simply not very entertaining. The plodding life of parties and romantic affairs, got old 30 minutes before we stopped seeing them. Really old.

All in all, Antoinette was an interesting and unique cinematic experience. It was also a bit boring, and like Lost in Translation will play better the first time you see it than on subsequent viewings. Worst of all, it may have gotten it's moral compass twisted around.

Standouts: The cinema, and visuals and unique viewpoint. I liked the modern music a lot.
Blowouts: The thematic material, and it was really quite a boring flick.

Grade: B+

THE LAST KING OF SCOTLAND

Director: Kevin McDonald (Touching the Void)
Starring: Forest Whitaker, James McAvoy, Kerry Washington

Idi Amin was a wacko. For some reason I can't quite figure out dictators often seem to be completely nuts. I'd expect that someone who's managed to enslave their entire country would be a calculating tough guy, a General Franco or some such, but no, it seems reality is quite the opposite. Many dictators are completely off the wall, professional-wrestling-weird flakes. See Kim Jung Il and his 'golf records', or Niyazov's portraits around Turkmenistan, or Mobutu Sese Seko's funny hats as examples. Idi Amin beat all of these guys though. He was the silliest and most ebullient. Yes, he was the most entertaining of mass murderers.

Forest Whitaker does an excellent job of bringing this most idiosyncratic of men to life. His Amin is both boisterous and compelling, and horrible and obscene. He very much manages to make us care for the man. That must be tough given the distaste we feel for his barbaric actions. Whitaker will get an Oscar nomination for this role, I have little doubt.

The film itself, beyond Whitakers contribution, is fairly pedestrian. It doesn't reach very high, and makes a number of mistakes. Despite these, the film remains interesting and engaging, and with the wonderful Whitaker performance actually rates as a good, enjoyable film. Yes that's right, this story of a barbaric dictator is actually "enjoyable". It's gross in parts (which was one of the movie's mistakes), but it rarely feels like a 'downer' story. In fact, it's often cheery and cheeky.

The story doesn't trust us westerners to understand the Ugandan people, or Amin, so it gives us a Scottish doctor (McAvoy) as our surrogate in the film. We get to see Amin through the eyes of a young, foolish English speaker. (How lucky for us!) I have no idea if this man existed or if he was just a story device. It's probably unimportant either way.

The doctor becomes Amin's personal physician, and eventually, closest advisor. In addition to being proxy for the audience, the doctor also serves as a nice little metaphor for how the west viewed Amin. At first in the media he was simply a foolish, fun and (relatively) harmless ruler of small African country. Eventually his whims, miscalculations and fantasy get the better of him and we see the darker side, that he is a barbarian acting on impulse. As the movie clearly shows (actually, as the doctor character literally tells us) Amin is a child. This is terrifying. A child with any kind of power is terrifying. Most every murderer, and selfish individual is in some sense a child. Children are not to be trusted. At least not with guns or armies.

At times this film played like a schlock horror movie, at others like a cheesy thriller. Luckily these were well interspersed with better scenes and with Whitaker's fine performance. It was usually interesting and entertaining, even important in some ways; a quality film.

Standouts: Forest Whitaker's best performance, an Oscar-worthy Idi Amin.
Blowouts: A few silly, gory scenes, and a weirdly tacked-on love affair.

Grade: B+

THE DEPARTED

Director: Martin Scorsese (Raging Bull, Goodfellas, Taxi Driver)
Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Jack Nicholson, Mark Wahlberg, Martin Sheen

Scorsese found fame with his gritty and intense, ultra violent character studies like Taxi Driver and Raging Bull. His partner on most of those masterpieces was Robert DeNiro. Later in his career Scorsese has found a new acting partner for a new phase in his movies, Leonardo DiCaprio. The Aviator and Gangs of New York were quite different movies from those earlier pictures. The Aviator was a fine study of a brilliant recluse, although far from Scorsese's best work. Gangs of New York was a decent, although highly flawed combination period piece/gang movie. Both of these films had their moments of focused intensity that defined his best films, but there's no denying that both pictures also yearned for mass appeal. These works were far from "sell outs", but they were a shade closer to cineplex fare then some of his earlier works. I'm not disparaging this, just noting the sort of films that Scorsese and DiCaprio are doing, because the Departed is a large step forward along this same trajectory. It is a highly entertaining, exciting crime story that is both mass entertainment and insightful character study. It's also just a damn good movie.

Although long (what a surprise from Scorsese), it is rarely dull. The plot seems more suited to a John Woo film (a la Face/Off or some such), but Scorsese indelibly makes it his own. The story follows two 'rats', an undercover police officer planted deep inside an Irish gang in Boston (DiCaprio) and a police officer (Damon) who secretly works for that same gang boss. Scorsese wonderfully shows us their contradictions, DiCaprio is forced to live in filth both literally and morally on the edge of society, while Damon is clean cut and upwardly mobile, a yuppie for the ages who's heart is still black. Nicholson is in his element as the off-the-wall gang leader searching for the rat in his organization, never knowing who to believe. He's getting older and perhaps hoping that he can find someone to trust after all of his years of lonely corruption. He takes DiCaprio under his wing in his organization, wanting to believe in him.

In the end there is so much about trust and corruption and even statements on goverment buried under the surface of this film, that it's hard to believe the surface is so enjoyable. We see how in government (and elsewhere) our every sense may tell us that an individual is to be trusted, but that his soul is dark. We also see an exciting cat and mouse crime drama with each side playing against the other. There' s gory violence that isn't overdone in the slighest. Rather it leads the film into the realm of Shakespearian tragedy (I'm serious). Over all of this there's a great deal of humor, much of it provided by Wahlberg's foul-mouthed bad cop to Martin Sheen's good cop. It's almost unbelievable how much was shoved into this story (and how much came out) and that it still works as exciting entertainment.

I do not think that The Departed is quite at the level of Scorsese's great masterpieces, but it is no more than a half step below, if that. This is an excellent film, a fine addition to the Scorsese canon. At the least this is his best work since Goodfellas and The Age of Innocence (which happen to be two of the best films of the last 15 years).

Standouts: Most everything.
Blowouts: Not too much. Certainly some things worked better than others, but it's at such a high level that can be excused. Perhaps there were *too* many stars in the film.

Grade: A