VOLVER

Director: Pedro Almodovar (All About My Mother, Talk to Her)
Starring: Penelope Cruz, Lola Duenas, Carmen Maura

If you're American, and you haven't had the good fortune to see All About My Mother, you probably think of Penelope Cruz as the worst kind of Hollywood actress. Or maybe you just think she's hot. Leaving her good looks aside, and mesmerizingly vapid role in Sahara, even her best American work has been pretty marginal. Captain Corelli's Mandolin, Gothika, Vanilla Sky, All the Pretty Horses; there's not much notability in that list. But she keeps getting work. And rightly so, because she is talented. I'll admit she's beautiful too, really beatiful. So I'm sure that helps. But back to her talent. It's there. And in Volver we see it. We also see the greater talent that Pedro Almodovar possesses. Easily one of the best directors working today, Volver is one of his best films.

Volver, if my understanding of Spanish is correct, means "to return", or "to go back". This title is nominally what the film is about - about how the troubles of our forefathers (or foremothers) repeat themselves again and again through the generations. Even in the plot, we have a character returning from the grave. For my money, I think an additional summation of the movie was given by a random character who notes how bad trash TV is, but that she can't stop watching. The plot of this film is awash with Soap Opera absurdity, but we can't stop watching. In this case though, I don't think it's the trash aspect of the story that keeps our attention, but rather Almodovar's mastery of telling about the lives of women, and the unfufilled in society.

As with many of Almodavar's films, Volver again focuses on women. The men in this movie are absent in every way - emotionally, morally, and they're no more than referenced on the screen at all. I don't think any man in the movie has more than 5 minutes of screen time. The story follows Cruz as a young woman living in a lower class neighborhood of Madrid. She is struggling through some desperate times (albeit melodramitically so). She begins to find some success working together with the other desperate women in her life, including her lonely sister (Lola Duenas).

Eventually, through some fun little twists we see how the problems she is facing are not hers alone - that the same problems have been plaguing women down through the generations. She, and others on screen, confronts them the same way that the women before her have done, by caring for those who need to be cared for, and holding on to those that are close to them. Almodovar loves discussing women in his films. He's definitely more positive towards them than toward the prototypical Spanish masculine male. This film in many ways continues to sum up his feelings. The film is about desperate situations, but it remains almost upbeat through the struggles. There's humor, but also quite a lot of crying. Volver is undoubtedly one of the best films of 2006. It's possible Almodovar could get an Oscar nomination for the work, as well as Cruz.

Standouts: Almodovar in his writing and directing. Cruz was excellent in her role as a struggling mother.
Blowouts: Not much, it's quite a good film.

Grade: A-

AKEELAH AND THE BEE (DVD)

Director: Doug Atchison (1st major film)
Starring: Keke Palmer, Laurence Fishbourne, Angela Bassett

Maudlin and mawkish, sappy and sweet, schmaltzy and sentimental ...

I'm running through the gamut of terms reserved for this type of uplifting film and Akeelah is all of these and more. It's chock full of 'obstacle overcoming' and 'rising to the challange', and 'underdogs making good' and much more. I'll try to avoid these words from here on out in the review, but guess what else it is? It's also a good little film. We need more positive schmaltz and less cynical snidery, more sincerity and fewer reasons to tune out on our emotions. Of course, the fact remains that this is a darn sappy flick nontheless. There will be no Oscars for Akeelah.

Our little obstacle-overcomer in this film is Akeelah Anderson (Keke Palmer), from the depths of south-central LA. The kids in her school make fun of her, and even beat her up, because she can spell. Success and talent are not encouraged by those too lazy to strive for it. But with a lot of help from Lawrence Fishbourne as an erudite college professor, and Booger from Revenge of the Nerds (Curtis Armstrong - a favorite actor of mine) as her school principle, little Akeelah makes the national spelling bee.

She meets a new crowd of friends, young rich kids much more at peace with themselves (except for the little Asian child forced to spell by his dictatorial father). She learns. She learns words. She learns peace. She learns that there's more to life that what you see around you everyday. She learns a lot.

We've seen the formula a thousand, million times before. Akeelah and the Bee puts the right numbers into the equation, however, and churns out an extrememly positive, endearing little feel-good movie, sappiness, smarminess, and smaltziness aside.

Standouts: Little Akeelah and her friend Mr. Fishbourne.
Blowouts: A tad too twee.

Grade: B

ALL THE KING'S MEN (DVD)

Director: Steven Zailian (A Civil Action, Searching for Bobby Fisher; screenwriter for Schlinder's List, many other major films)
Starring: Sean Penn, Jude Law, Kate Winslet, Anthony Hopkins

Like a house, a movie has a skeleton of structural pieces that have to be constructed correctly. Otherwise, no matter how pretty the gingerbread is on the outside, the whole building/film will come tumbling down. For All the King's Men, the builders forgot to nail in the "narrative" beam in the script. Without it, the whole film just tumbled in on itself, and it's now a pile of good looking bits and pieces, like an ugly demolition site that you hope somebody clears away when you drive by it.

This story is nearly nonsensical, it's so badly put together. It's a shame too, because each of the powerhouse cast of Penn, Law, Winslet and Hopkins were quite good in their own way. They just didn't make any sense when put together. Or rather the words that they were saying to each other didn't make much sense, no matter how well said by the actors.

The production was lavish, and at times beautiful. Moments of the story seemed interesting, or rather felt like they should have been interesting. I've heard quite a lot about how good the source book was. The screenplay was an utter failure, however. And it took everything down with it.

All the King's Men (sort of) tells a fictionalized account of Huey Long, the populist governor of Louisiana during the Great Depression. Here he's called Willie Stark, however, and Penn plays him as the loudest, most emotive rabble-rouser you could imagine. Penn always plays characters that scream in one way or another. I'd love to see if he could internalize his characters a bit, but whatever. It kind of works for this character.

Jude Law is an advisor to Willie Stark, embroiled in a (sort of) subplot with Hopkins (the man who raised him as a father figure) and Winslet (the love interest). It's not particularly clear how all of these plot points tie in with the main story about the Gov, but I may have already mentioned how not much ties together in this film. It all supposedly winds around political gamesmanship and finding the buried secrets in their pasts. It's all uninteresting, however. Every bit of it. At least when Penn starts yelling in his role it's more interesting. These characters quietly go about their roles, brooding. It's boring. So a note for Hollywood: If your script sucks, you should just film up the screen with loud things like explosions, and emoting, and whatnot. Oh, wait, I guess Hollywood figured this out years and years ago. Nevermind.

If you know the story of Huey Long, then you know he is assassinated in the capitol building he built. This should have been the big finale to this film, but there wasn't a thread of intrigue leading up to it. It just happened, and then the film was over. Not a good ending, to a not too good film. All the way through, this film has the feel that it could have been great. But like a beautiful mansion that's collapsed, it's still just a pile of rubble on the side of the road. Let's hope they clean it up.

Standouts: The actors were all relatively good, albeit with not much to work with in the script.
Blowouts: The director and screenwriters must be blamed for the mess that was the narrative.

Grade: C-

BLOOD DIAMOND

Director: Edward Zwick (Glory, The Last Samurai, Legends of the Fall)
Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Djimon Hounsou, Jennifer Connelly

With The Departed earlier in the year, and now Blood Diamond, Leonardo DiCaprio has moved into the realm of a convincing action actor. Oh, both of these films are quite a bit more than your average Hollywood action flick, but nonetheless they both required a bit of 'tough guy' acting. DiCaprio has actually delivered in both. Just a few years ago I would have seriously doubted he could have succeeded in this genre, but he has. The Departed is one of my favorite films of 2006, and while not quite at that level, Blood Diamond is a fine film in its own right.

The story centers around DiCaprio as an ex-miltary diamond smuggler in Sierre Leone, and Hounsou as a tribesman enslaved by a barbaric rebel group. The two eventually meet up and go off in search of an enormous diamond Hounsou found and buried during his servitude in the rebel-held diamond camps. For DiCaprio's character, the diamond is a ticket out of Africa and his unhappy lifestyle. Hounsou's character needs the help Dicaprio can provide finding his family who have been torn apart by the rebels.

In those few sentences, this sounds like a fairly cheesy action script. They search for the lost treasure and fight the bad guys along the way? By and large though, the film did a decent job of staying away from cloying sentimentalism and broad Hollywood swipes, with the notable exception of a sickeningly sweet phone call between DiCaprio and Connelly at the finale. Okay, excepting the whole love story between the two. The movie was generally smart and felt real. I applaud DiCaprio for much of this. He gave a truely fine performance.

At its heart, of course, this film is purely a topical movie aimed at all the Western diamond buyers in the audience. The message? Diamonds can be bad, and you've more or less been duped by De Beers marketing into believing that you have to buy one for every American fairly tale wedding. A lot of people don't like topical movies. They don't like to be lectured. They probably won't like this movie. I'll note pointedly that those people are wrong to feel that way, but it's the way it is.

For my part, I don't have a problem with "message" movies. Of course for my part, I already knew and agreed with the message of this particular film. I seriously doubt a single flick will convince more than a handful that they should try something else for an engagment present, but I applaud the effort. The De Beers company has utterly manhandled us into a trance-like servitude of the almighty diamond engagement ring. It's what you buy. It would be weird to do anything else. We believe there's centuries of tradition behind the diamond engagement ring. There's not. De Beers told us there was in the 1950s. We shouldn't feel too bad about being manipulated by marketing though. It's aimed at our most basic psychology. Freud invented it (or at least defined it), and it works very well. We're genetically programmed to be suckers. Oh well.

On this particular issue however, here's the thing: It would be difficult (nearly impossible in today's society) to buy anything that isn't in some way contributing to human exploitation. You want a plastic clothes basket? Too bad, some underpaid Chinese lady worked 80 hours last week to make it. You want a new car? Too bad, some underpaid Mexican had his wages extorted by the local corrupt union boss, or even more corrupt local government official to make its parts. You want a pair of blue jeans? Even worse, some 12 year old kid stiched them up for you in Bangladesh while his boss skimmed off his salary and smacked him around.

In the end I guess we're talking about the scale of awfulness though. The crimes being committed in Africa (and elsewhere) over precious gems are far worse than exploiting factory workers. Rape, murder, and barbarity of the absolute worst kinds imaginable happen daily by both rebel and government sponsored troops in many parts of war-torn Africa. Diamonds and other gems really do fund some of these groups. We never think about it, but we really are contributing to the horror. Yes, it's unlikely this film will help out the situation, but I also know that saying that is entirely a cop out. I do applaud the effort. This was a fine topical film, albeit generally on the "Hollywood entertainment" level. This is an action film that occasionally (okay, rarely) reaches the level of art, but that's all right. It would be supremely stupid to make an art film when you're goal is a to get a message to the masses. And that's what just what this is, a darn good bit of entertainment with a message.

Standouts: I liked both DiCaprio and Hounsou quite a bit. Well directed.
Blowouts: I didn't really like the Connelly character. Her whole storyline felt cheesy and tacked on by Hollywood - you know, to make sure there was a love interest.

Grade: B

BABEL

Director: Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu (21 Grams, Amores Perros)
Starring: Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett, Rinko Kikuchi, Adriana Barraza

Babel is the first of the 'made-for-Oscar-consideration' films of 2006. This study (for lack of a better word) of how we fail to communicate with each other has every mark of a film slotted from its inception as Oscar material. The story is 'sweeping' and the plot construction 'complex', relatively speaking. Three (virtually) separate stories about miscommunication are interspersed, one follows a terrorist shooting in Morocco, another an illegal Mexican nanny and her, uh, travails with her wards, and what I think was probably the most interesting, the story of a deaf-mute teenage girl in Tokyo. Each had something to say about how we fail to communicate with each other, and the problems that can cause. You get it, right? Babel? As in Tower of Babel? Yeah, duh.

The first story follows Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett as tourists (more or less) in Morocco, who seem to be struggling through their own relationship issues, although this is no more than hinted at. A young boy is given a gun by his father to keep jackals from poaching their goat herd. He shoots at the tourist bus for no good reason, or because he's a young boy, and not well educated on guns, I guess. The world believes this to be a terrorist attack. The boys are pursued by police. Cate and Brad struggle to stay alive.

The second (and I thought the silliest) of the stories, follows the children of Brad and Cate, taken care of by a Mexican illegal. The old woman's son is getting married in Mexico, and she is forced to take the two children to the wedding for lack of anything better to do with them. All three are then suddenly, and strangely put in a terrifying life-or-death situation which I won't give away.

Even though I didn't like the death defying sequence at the end of this story, I very much did like how it showed the differences in the cultures. I thought the portrayal of the Mexican wedding was quite true, and quite good. Gael Garcia Bernal was excellent here in a small supporting role.

The final story, which I thought had the most potential, followed a deaf-mute teenager in Tokyo. This young girl has lost her mother to suicide, and though her workaholic father is certainly well-meaning, she is virtually cut off from human contact (and communication). She must write simple messages on note paper to be understood. Unable to scream with her voice, she lashes out sexually, desperate for human connection. She is rejected time and again, until she feels she can take no more.

I liked all of these stories. In fact, they each had aspects to them which I very much liked. Unfortunately, they each had aspects which I didn't. I liked the glimpse into Moroccon peasant society. I believed that the situation presented in Morocco could have happened. This miscommunication could certainly happen. I don't believe that this miscommunication is at the heart of the troubles in the Middle East, though. It's quite a bit wider and deeper a chasm than simply not understanding each other's viewpoint.

I also liked the glimpse into the life of an illegal alien, these characters deserve to have more stories told about them than one part of one movie, that's for sure. I did not like the disaster that occurred in this story branch, however.

In the most obvious tale of miscommunication, I very much liked the ideas behind the story of the Japanese girl. Here, I did not like its execution. I absolutely did not believe what happened in this story - parts just felt false to me. As a side note I also absolutely hated the blatant rip-off of Lost in Translation in this story. At the end of her story, the young girl gives a note that we never see, and are left guessing about to the man who has helped her. Yes it may be slightly different than Scarlett Johnannson's unheard whisper to Bill Murray in Translation, but it was close enough to annoy me.

So, in the end, I think we have a film that tried for "powerful". I don't believe it quite made it there, but it probably only missed by a hair's breadth. It was a fine film. Although it was longish, and generally slow-paced, Babel was never dull. Although I've heard many describe the film's construction as complex and hard to follow, no one I know agreed with that. We all followed the film perfectly throughout. Although I don't necessarily agree with every thematic item in the movie, I certainly learned something from this film. Although I didn't like every plot point, or character in the film, much still felt perfectly "real" and touched me deeply. This was a fine picture, but it probably didn't reach quite as high as the filmmakers might have hoped. There's enough going on in this movie for me to like some bits and dislike others. That right there means there's much more happening in this film than in most movies. It will probably be why some don't like the film, however.

In some ways this film is similar to Crash, last year's best picture winner. This film was better than Crash in nearly every way. It's smarter. It's also much sadder. It's a sad, sad situation after all, this inability to understand each other.

Standouts: Much of the direction, story, theme and characters. It's complexity.
Blowouts: Other specific aspects of the direction, story, theme and characters.

Grade: A-

FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION

Director: Christopher Guest (Mighty Wind, Waiting for Guffman, Best in Show)
Starring: Catherine O'Hara, Harry Shearer, Parker Posey, a cast of thousands

Guest has made his career in recent years with his series of 'mockumentary' ensemble comedies. Waiting for Guffman, Best in Show and Mighty Wind are three of the most lovely little comedies in recent memory. They're all three smart, and sweet, and touching, and darn funny. Other than a few scattered (albeit quite good) comedic roles in movies like The Princess Bride or This is Spinal Tap, Guest will be remembered for this series of comedies. At least he'll be rembered more for them than for directing Almost Heroes, the Matthew Perry vehicle you didn't see.

I'm sad to report that For Your Consideration is the weakest of the series of mockumentaries. In fact, I don't think I can accurately call it a mockumentary as Guest has done away with the faux documentary style in its entirety for this film. The movie has its moments, but by and large it's a step behind its precedants in almost every area. It's not (quite) as funny. It's not (quite) as clever. It's not (quite) as cute, or well constructed, or endearing. It's just not quite there.

The story follows the cast of a small independent film as an internet rumor links the production with an academy award. The hype swells to a crescendo until Oscar nomination day where ...
where I'm not going to ruin what happens.

Apparently all it takes is a simple spark (like a Hollywood gossip column claiming an actress deserves Oscar consideration) and the Hollywood marketing machine cycles into gear and transforms the movie and those in it. What starts as a (strange) southern family drama, "Home for Purim" (Yes, Purim, the Jewish holiday), is transformed into "Home for Thanksgiving" once the corporate suits sense that the film might actually sell tickets. The actors struggle with near-fame. The agents, and suits, and entertainment magazines (including a quite funny Access Hollywood type TV show) grab hold of the little production and spiral it out of control, and everyone else associated with it.

It's a fine little idea, and the film shares most of the same fine sensibilities as the other Christopher Guest films, but it just doesn't work as well. The film is sweet. The film is at times quite funny. I especially loved Jane Lynch as the co-host of Access Hollywood/Entertainment Tonight type show. Her role was brief, but her costumes and the simple way she stood up were hilarious. I'm not kidding. Her "stance" was really funny. As I said, though, it never really came together as well as the previous films. Mostly to blame, I think, was the script (assuming there was one, as much of the film seemed improvised). The story never really reached a climax. It just continued on for a while, and then stopped.

Standouts: The high point of the film was probably the various actors' hair and clothes. I'm serious. That and Jane Lynch's stance.
Blowouts: The story arc was weak, and it was only occasionally funny.

Grade: B-

CASINO ROYALE

Director: Martin Campbell (Goldeneye, Verticle Limit)
Starring: Daniel Craig, Eva Green, Judi Dench

James Bond is dead. Finally. It's been a zig-zagging path to the grave for 007, but I think he's finally been buried. Sean Connery, that's the James Bond we'll all remember. Roger Moore was also defintely bond, even though his plots became more and more ridiculous over time. He might have been a step behind Connery, but he was still Bond. I won't even mention Dalton. And Lazenby who? Anyway, Brosnan seemed like he should have been Bond, but the scriptwriters determined he needed to be updated for our "modern" times. They were wrong. The same goes for Craig, he seems like he should be Bond, but the script said otherwise. This time scriptwriter Paul Haggis (et al) turned Bond into every other action star out there today. This script was completely interchangable with Mission Impossible III and The Bourne movies. This was not Bond. Bond is dead.

However, despite the lack of Bond, Casino Royale is still a thoroughly entertaining action/spy flick. It's a pretty darn good Mission Impossible or Bourne Supremecy movie. Nonetheless, I miss Bond. I liked him. He was the familiar mysoginist, charming, rugged and suave, that we all want to be (deep deep down). This guy in Casino Royale they kept calling James Bond, well, he actually fell in love with a pretty girl. He wuvved his wittle woman. Bond doesn't do that. He also got his, er "manhood" tortured by the bad guys (I'm not kidding. It was quite possibly the most NOT BOND scene I could have imagined.) Surprisingly, he's also some kind of Crouching Tiger/Hidden Dragon nearly-flying superhero able to leap tall buildings while chasing an even more dextrous bad guy. This was a very good almost Matrix-like action scene to start off Casino Royale. But it wasn't Bond.

The plot of Casino Royale is a retelling of how James Bond got his start. He begins as an egocentric spy who (eventually) has to play the bad guy in a high-stakes poker match. Helping him along (as the hot British treasury official) is the extremely hot Eva Green. I'm not giving anything away by telling you they fall in love. Ahhh. All of this is periodically punctuated by hyperkinetic action sequences. I won't bother with the rest of the plot details. They're not important. There are some twists I should mention, but not give away, and in the end we see how Bond comes to no longer trust women, or anyone for that matter. This is a story that's supposed to tell us why Bond is a womanizer in his later life. I don't believe a word of it though. This story doesn't tell me anything about Bond, because it's not Bond.

In the end though, if you're able to separate yourself from the notion that you're supposed to be watching a Bond picture, you'll see a very good action/spy movie. It's quite entertaining, alternating between action sequences and the quiet intesity of the poker game to the twists at the end. I liked it. I liked it a lot. I still wish it was a Bond movie though.

Standouts: A very solid effort across the board, except for the script claiming this guy was James Bond.
Blowouts: Not too much, really. It was an entertaining little pic.

Grade: B+