BOBBY

Director: Emelio Estevez (Men at Work, some TV work)
Starring: Virtually everyone in Hollywood. I'm not kidding.

Emelio Estevez must be friends with 90% of Hollywood. I'm not sure how, it's not like he's been starring in pictures with them lately. I mean he's only been in a handful of major films since Young Guns, and most of them had the word "ducks" in the title. Regardless, nearly every character in this film about the Robert Kennedy assassination (and there are a lot of them) has a Hollywood pedigree. There are more and more of these star-studded casts in cinema these days, and I am not a fan. Bring back the character actors, says I.

Anyhow, casting aside, the real problem with Bobby was seeminly the mighty duck himself, senoir Estevez. The film from beginning to end has the feel of a great college try, but that Emelio simply bit off more than he could chew. The end result is some decent film mixed thoroughly with great hunks of cheese. Not a lot of art in this film, and quite a lot of bad dialogue.

In construction this story is a dumbed-down Gosford Park ending with a political assassination. I like that idea. In fact I really like the general idea to the plot. The devil's in the details, though, and this film has a lot of imps causing mahem throughout. It follows 30 or 40 characters who work or stay in the Ambassador Hotel on the day leading up the assassination of Bobby Kennedy. We see hispanic busboys oppressed by "the man". We see Lawrence Fishburne as a wise Uncle Tom cook in the kitchens. We see cheating hotel managers, and drunk entertainers, and high school campaign volunteers tripping on acid. We see a super freckly Lindsey Lohan marrying Elijah Wood so he won't have to go to Vietnam. Of course every one of them is excited about Kennedy's election results and his party that evening at the hotel, hopefully to celebrate his impending nomination as the democratic presidential candidate.

Once the tragedy happens, they're all affected by this meaningless and incoherent killing by a madman. Just like everyone else in the world. We never see Sirhan Sirhan except for a couple of brief glimpes, because he's inconsequential. He's a nut who changed the world. Like I said, this story was a good idea. The problem was in the characters. Not a one of them was very well written. We'd occasionally be subjected to a cringe-worthy soliloquy, like when Lawrence Fishburne compares a hispanic busboy to a young king arthur. This was only one bad bit of dialogue among a whole lot of bad dialogue though. It's a shame because i think this could have been a very good film if a better writer had been involved. Oh well.

Standouts: Some ideas in the story, and a fair amount of good, solid acting albeit working with bad dialogue.
Blowouts: Most all of the details of the script. Poorly written.

Grade: C+

BORAT: CULTURAL LEARNINGS ...

Director: Larry Charles (TV work)
Starring: Sacha Baron Cohen, Ken Davitian

I have mixed feelings on this year's most noted comedy success, Borat, but on the whole it was so original that it has to be praised. First off, it was a very funny picture. I also have to admit that its message about American intolerance was well presented. I mean there is no doubt that only the rarest of comedies work as both humor and with some measure of substance underneath. On the flip side, I was often uncomfortable as Borat's interactions with average Americans crossed into simple childish mockery.

Cohen's Borat character (originating on his HBO 'Ali G' show) basically films his interactions with unsuspecting real people. For the world of cinema, this is new territory. It's been done on the Ali G show and John Stewart's Daily show for years now, though, and I will admit I don't really like these gotcha, mocking interviews of their unaware (on many levels) victims. I never have. At times the Daily Show would mock interview those at a KKK rally and I'd find myself feeling sorry for the nutcase klansman as the TV interviewers were so rude as to lower themselves nearly to the level of those they were interviewing. I think that Cohen understands this dilema in what he's doing. It's obvious to me that he spends quite a lot of effort trying to walk a fine line between showing the character flaws in his interviewees without rudely mocking them. At times he succeeds, at others I thought he failed.

The point of this movie is to allow Americans to voice their true beliefs (about Jews, blacks, religion, etiquette, etc) to the silly Borat character. The plot follows Borat as he's sent on a mission from his home country of Kazakhstan to learn about America. The premise is that America is the greatest country on earth and the backward Kazakh peoples can learn much from the great culture of the US of A. We then follow along as Borat encounters one fool after another across our great land. This is a great idea, and as a whole it worked.

We see how the audience at a rodeo reacts to his missteps. Like everyone else I especially liked the line where he praises Premier George Bush's 'War of Terror' and the crowd roared its approval. We see him ride along in an RV with some terrifically drunk frat boys while they slur various anti-black, and anti-women slurs. We see him go to a fundamentalist faith-healing where the true believers hop around frighteningly, wallowing in their religious ecstasy. This scene gave me a start as I personally did the same thing many years ago. Some friends and I thought it would be funny to get faith-healed on TV. I did, and it was funny. It's definitely the kind of thing you'd only do as a kid, however. I now feel far more pity for them than derision. Ah, growing up. That's the thing though, this film doesn't seem to feel this way. I didn't get the slightest sense of pity or understanding about those it showcased. It just showed how wrong they were.

Standouts: Incredibly funny at times. Great statement on Americans' intolerance and foolishness. A highly original, unique feature film.
Blowouts: The occasionally rude, mocking interactions with the unaware 'interviewees'.

Grade: A-

THE QUEEN

Director: Stephen Frears (Dangerous Liasons, Hi Fidelity, My Beautiful Laundrette)
Starring: Hellen Mirren, Michael Sheen, James Cromwell

A feature film about the death of Princess Diana seems custom-made for cheese-dom. The subject screams 'tabloid press', 'Lifetime TV', even 'Elton John'. This film is not cheesy. This film is excellent. This film touches on many of the same soap-opera subjects as the tabloids (at least in regards to Princess Diana), but is never dumb, is never mundane, and is always enjoyable. This was a fun little picture about a death. Perhaps it was as fun a picture as could have been made about a death.

Hellen Mirren stars as Queen Elizabeth II of jolly-old England and is simply superb at it. She will likely get an Oscar nomination for this performance. Her Queen is tradition-bound, and rightfully so. Her Queen is tied irrevocably to her country and dedicated to the duties of her position. She has given her life to the role and deserves respect for it. Yes, the royals are quite foolish at times (even the Queen), but they are loved in Britain, and probably for good reason.

The film begins with the death of Diana and for the first half of the film we see the conflict between the newly elected Prime Minister Tony Blair, a young liberal populist, and the traditional, conservative, and arbitrarily wealthy, royals. Blair rightly guages the mood of his country after the death of Diana and advises that the Windsors treat her death with an exceptional respect and honor. Unfortunately, the Queen and her family did not really like Diana. They think her public persona is quite different from the difficult personality they dealt with directly. What they do respect, however, is tradition, and their tradition says that this woman was no longer a royal and therefore was not to be treated as Blair suggests. As the public outpouring of grief continues for Diana, it eventual switches to criticism of the Windsors. The public sees Diana as the good "People's Princess" and the royals as the stuffy, bitter old monarchs that killed her.

These events fit perfectly with our traditional American view of royalty as silly and archaic. Why, we think, would anyone need or want a king or queen? They should just get rid of them. The second half of the film begins to show us why, as we delve deeper into the Queen and her sense of duty and honor. The British love their monarch. They love the tradition and the bits of old England that still permeate their modern culture. Eventually we get an even handed portrayal of the benefits of change, and of tradition. There are good things to be had from each. Undoubtedly. The Queen is the ultimate symbol of tradition. Tony Blair represents the great changes that have and will continue in modern society. By the end of this film we get a wonderfully hopeful and positive view that these two often conflicting forces can work together, peacefully and harmoniously. Yay. Beyond all of this, the film just plain works as an interesting story about these people, and works well. Elizabeth is interesting. Tony Blair is interesting. Even the silly Prince Phillip and Queen mother are interesting in their dotish own way. The Queen as a film is immensely interesting.

Standouts: Helen Mirren, and the direction by Frears. Well done all around.
Blowouts: Not much. This is one of the better films of 2006.

Grade: A

THE PROPOSITION

Director: John Hillcoat (Handful of lesser known Australian productions)
Starring: Guy Pierce, Ray Winstone, Danny Huston, Emily Watson, John Hurt

The Proposition is barbaric, violent and gritty. It's also operatic, poetic and coldly beatiful. It's an excellent work of minimalism, finding beauty in conflict, and in both barren souls and barren landscapes. This film, set during the colonization of the Australian outback, shows the clash of two antithetical figures, one the captain of the military police struggling to civilize the untamed wilderness, the other a cruel criminal wanted for rape and murder. Caught between these men, struggling with the moral conflict between loyalty to his brother or to society, is a fierce, grim Guy Pierce. Westerns lend themselves to these sorts of themes, but this one delivers the goods. This is the best western in quite some time.

The story has only a few main scenes, and often pauses to look at the blank expanse of the endless wilderness that is the Australian outback, but it also is punctuated by brief episodes of terrible violence. It is one of the better summations of the human conflict between animal barbarity and altruistic civilization. Yes, I'll repeat that statement because there are a *lot* of movies about that subject in one way or another. This is one of the more pointed, sharp, and beautiful films about humanity's violent nature.

The plot starts in a shootout, with the capture of Pierce and his younger (and weaker) brother by Ray Winstone's police captain. The captain gives Pierce's character a proposition: Kill your older more terrible brother, wanted for rape and murder, or your younger brother will hang on Christmas day. There is the proposition. The real proposition for Pierce is to what he owes his allegiance - to his family and himself, or to society. I'll bet if asked directly, most people will claim the answer is obvious, that we must obey the rules of society, that altruism and empathy should be our true goals. No one, and I mean no one, actually manages that, however. Actions speak louder than words, and like the booming voice of god our actions cry out that we are selfish.

The film has an excellent sense of itself across the board, and it succeeds in virtually every aspect of cinema. The visuals are stunning, with lonely skyscapes melting into never-ending plains. The dialogue is nearly operatic, with John Hurt's drunken bounty hunter a particular highpoint. The acting is intense, the plot both smart and gripping. This was a wonderful film. As a note the violence is truly terrible. There's nothing in this film that isn't in an R-rated scholck horror film, but here it's meaningful violence. These seem like real people rather than the cartoon bloodbaths in horror movies. Nonetheless, if violence is a concern, this film has quite a bit of it. Actually, the movie doesn't just have violence, it is precisely about violence.

Standouts: Visuals, story, tone, acting. A wonderful film.
Blowouts: Nothing comes to mind.

Grade: A

FRIENDS WITH MONEY

Director: Nicole Holofcener (1st feature film, TV work)
Starring: Jennifer Aniston, Catherine Keener, Frances McDormand, Joan Cusak

Friends with Money is one of those movies that seems like it should be better than it is. It has a powerhouse cast and a dry 'bittersweet' tone that's reminiscent of Aniston's quite nice picture The Good Girl. The subject is female relationships and maintaining them through money issues, and love issues, and other issues. Unfortunately, in the end the movie feels incomplete and a little shallow. Really, in the end, the movie just doesn't feel very interesting. As a comparison, Sex in the City is also about female relationships, and yet even at its worst that series never felt as weak and uninteresting as this film does throughout. It's a movie of potential, that doesn't really pan out.

The story follows 4 women in their romantic relationships, and their various personal struggles, although it primarily focuses on the financially poor Aniston and her relationship with her wealthier friends. I don't think I'll bother to go into a description of the plot as nothing seemed very important in the specifics. There were some bits about additions to homes, and donations to schools. I will say that I didn't really like the ending where Aniston finds a chubby sugar-daddy to (seemingly) solve all her problems. It was one of the bleakest happy endings I've ever seen.

At times Friends with Money is cute and funny. Unfortunately, at many others it's somewhat nondescript. It's a rather forgettable film. Certainly I will forget all about it immediately after writing this review. There ... I've done it already. It's forgotten.

Standouts: I'm not sure, I seem to have forgotten.
Blowouts: What was I talking about? Something about a movie? I don't know.

Grade: C