Monday, January 29, 2007

LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA

Director: Clint Eastwood (Unforgiven, Million Dollar Baby, Mystic River)
Starring: Ken Watanabe, Kazunari Ninomiya, Tsuyoshi Ihara

It's unfortunate (and unlikely for me) that I managed to miss Flags of our Fathers, the matching bookend to this World War 2 film set on the lonesome, barren Pacific island of Iwo Jima. Of course all of the talk is that these films are intended to show war through the eyes of the combatants on either side. I assume the end result is to show that war itself can be ridiculous, and that there is a big difference between those fighting in war and those who actually start them.

Morally speaking it's more than obvious that not all wars are wrong, and I assume Mr. Eastwood chose World War 2 as the setting for his movie(s) because there are few clearer examples showing the "good guys" and the "bad guys" in recent history. Japan was an expansionistic and ruthless power that barbarically ravaged many of their conquests (see China). The US had to stop them, especially after it was itself attacked by the Japanese.

The unique joy of this film is seeing how within this broad (albeit quite accurate) framework of good and bad there are still many shades of gray. The joy is in seeing that even though Japan was one of the "bad guys" in WWII, the Japanese were not necessarily so. Every culture is a million individuals, and generalizations, while valuable, are still just generalizations.

Letters from Iwo Jima follows a handful of Japanese soldiers, and their supreme commander (Watanabe), through the days leading up to, and through, the US assault on the tiny Pacific Island. These Japanese men are part of the most group-oriented culture in the world, but they're still individuals underneath. Each has their own attitudes and morality. Each struggles through the battle in their own way.

Watanbe is made commander soon before the battle. He likely knows that this is a suicide mission, but he takes on the role nonetheless. Once he fully realizes that this battle is not winnable, he formulates a strategy that will delay the inevitable, and kill the most Americans in the process. He has his men dig miles of tunnels throughout the island, which forces the attackers to move slowly, cave by cave across the small island. As he understood, there was no chance of victory in this battle, but he still fought it. For him, this battle was worthwhile if only to postpone the day when a foreign army would be bombing his children in Japan. I think that reasoning is understandable to most, regardless of ethnicity.

The Japanese soldiers struggle through dysentary, lack of food and water, and a horrible American bombing campaign even before the battle begins. In the end they lose, but they fight bravely. Through it all we see how each man reacts to the horrible circumstances differently. Many of the survivors are ashamed and offended by the defeat and choose an honorable suicide. Many do so from a terrifying passion of duty, bordering on religious. Some simply choose to do so for their own honor. A few are too scared, or simply have different beliefs on what that sort of sacrifice really means, to do so. In the end, these men are simply men, caught up in events that may or may not have been of their choosing. Whether the individuals were right or wrong in their beliefs on the war we don't really know, we only see them as men struggling through difficult times, worth knowing and respecting. This was one of the better films of 2006, and I'll certainly go out and see Flags of our Fathers to better see how this film relates to Eastwood's take on the American perspective of the battle.

I hope someday we'll figure out some better method of solving differences than war, but given our nature, I'm not optimistic.

Standouts: The direction, writing and acting was all superb.
Blowouts: Nothing failed per se, although at times the film did drag on slightly. The worst for me was sitting next to some guy who felt the need to talk to his wife during every scene. "I think it's the kid, honey." "He's gonna do it." "He wasn't meant to die." Those are real quotes and there are dozens more. I hated him.

Grade: A-

Tuesday, January 23, 2007

PAN'S LABYRINTH

Director: Guillermo del Toro (The Devil's Backbone, Hellboy, Blade II)
Starring: Ivana Baquero, Sergi Lopez, Ariadna Gil

Pan's Labyrinth has been on my radar for months and months now, and I'm glad to say that it didn't disappoint. This story which is generally a defense for escapism and imagination, quite successfully married the horrible reality of war with truly fantastical dream worlds. It's an excellent film, easily one of the best of 2006, and probably the most creative by far. It deserves to be seen. You deserve to see it.

In some respects this film can be seen as paired with The Devil's Backbone, Del Toro's ghost tale set in an a republican orphanage in the final days of the Spanish Civil War, although the stories are entirely separate and unique. In Pan's Labyrinth, also set in the last days of the war, a young girl (Baquero) moves to a remote facist outpost with her mother, where her new father is the terrifically menacing Captain. The father has been charged with stopping the bands of republican partisans that are hiding in the mountains, and he does so brutally and unwaveringly. The girl is terrified of the life she is forced to live, and as the horrors of the war and her father-in-law grow more present she escapes into a fantasy world where she is a princess.

In her dreams she is a princess who must perform a series of fantastical tasks to reclaim her throne, and more importantly her true family. She is led on these imaginations by a fawn, a mythical creature that finely walks the line between "wonderful" and "unsettling". Each of the tasks is stunning and creative in its own way, especially one involving a creature with eyeballs in its hands. (That thing is something I won't forget for quite some time.) After each escape into her imagination, however, the reality of the war returns, more violent and closer than ever. Eventually both the war and her fantasy world collide in a thrilling and emotional climax.

As I said, this story is about the power of escapism, and our need for it. It's a defense of all the silly little children who love ghost stories and Tolkein books. It might be a defense of religious mythology, or rather a defense of those who believe in such things, but the film doesn't overtly touch on organized religion. For certain it's an attack on the horrible realities of our war-ridden nature. It shows a little girl suffering much more than any should, and using her imagination to find the most hidden bits of hope that still inhabit her soul. It's a wonderful movie that I recommend. I should note that it is violent, but as a movie about the horrors of war it's rightfully so.

Now for all of the praise I've heaped upon the film, it does have flaws. Del Toro's films are always about fantasy worlds, and the reality of his Spanish Civil War is not perfect. At times the Captain felt unreal to me as did the events of the war. I also didn't feel like the basic premise of the story, that the mother needed to marry this barbaric fascist, was truthful. They certainly didn't seem like a good match. But in the end these are very small complaints compared to the success of the film as a whole. It's a wonderfully creative and powerful movie. With this movie Del Toro moves into a higher category of directors, instead of just being the guy who did Hellboy, Mimic, and Blade II.

Standouts: The director's vision, this world is entirely Del Toro's creation.
Blowouts: Aspects of the "real" world didn't feel real to me, although since the story was told through the eyes of a little girl that can easily be explained away.

Grade: A

Monday, January 22, 2007

NOTES ON A SCANDAL

Director: Richard Eyre (Iris)
Starring: Judy Dench, Cate Blanchett, Bill Nighy

Despite Truffaut's auteur theory on cinema, I believe that film is a team sport. Like a football team, the best films usually have the most individuals stepping up in their roles - the director, editor, actors, cinematographer, production designers, composers. Maybe the director is the quarterback, and can have the most effect on how the game plays out, but it's obvious it can't be done alone. To press on with this annoying sports analogy, you can still have a good game even with big flaws in the team, especially if you have a star player. Notes on a Scandal is a very iffy team, but with a couple of hall-of-famers running the huddle. I'll call it 2006's film equivalent of the Kansas City Chiefs, a frustrating team with a great running back and ...

Okay, I'll stop now. For your sake and mine.

So, Notes on a Scandal? To begin, this film had a cheesy, cheesy story. Actually, let me add some emphasis to that: A CHEESY story! The film follows the disasterous (and tabloid headline grabbing) affair between a young bohemian art teacher (Blanchett) and her 15 year old student. Throw in a romantically carniverous lesbian confidant/stalker (Dench), and you've got a story that would bring a ratings boost to any number of cable channels, or soap operas. What this script does have besides the cheese, however, is some meaty writing for Dench's character. She is fully formed in a way that TV never approaches, and runs the gamut of emotions from sly puppy love, to raging, rejected anger, to wicked, pitiful lonliness. I'm sure this is what attracted Dench to this role. It's a plum role, and Dench gives a peach of a performance. She will be nominated for an Oscar, I have no doubt.

Blanchett's role is a bit less realized in the script, but there's still enough to intrigue. She's asked to give a young wife and mother who fools around with a child some measure of gravitas. It's a hard sell. I found Blanchett to be quite a good salesman, but in the end the product still sucked and I didn't buy it. I don't believe that that's what this character should be like. So I give Blanchett kudos for her effort (very much so in fact!), but I didn't believe in the character at all.

Dench plays a curmudgeonly old secondary school history teacher who narrates the tale through her diaries. She is alone, regrettful, and unstable. She longs to be loved. She has become tough (or maybe she always was), but she wants to be soft. Blanchett as a young art teacher certainly is soft. She's wild and sweet and loving and trusting. She is married to her one-time college professor (Nighy), and is a wonderful mother to a child with Down's syndrome. Despite this, she's still filled with a youthful exuberance for life that Dench desperately wants to feel.

Eventually, Blanchett's lust for life leads to a ridiculous affair with a 15-year-old boy. Dench's character finds out about this and (in effect) blackmails the young woman into a sort of relationship. It creepily borders on romantic for Dench, and grows more terrifying for Blanchett over time as she learns of Dench's true intentions.

Despite my aversion to the basics of this story, I did find the details intriguing. I mean, how many juicy roles like this are there for two woman these days? Not many, that's for certain. I did like much of the Dench character. She was extraordinarily well rounded. Blanchett's character, as I've said, was a less well-written role, but nonetheless I very much liked what the actress did with it. As a whole, I think that these two actors probably lifted this film more than a whole grade for me. They turned a fairly silly bit of story-telling, into a touching and creepy character-study.

Standouts: Dench, and to a lessor degree Blanchett, don't just stand out, they protrude.
Blowouts: The basics of the story were just silly.

Grade: B

Tuesday, January 16, 2007

LITTLE CHILDREN

Director: Todd Field (In The Bedroom)
Starring: Kate Winslet, Patrick Wilson, Jennifer Connelly, Jackie Earl Haley

Little Children is an often hilarious, often unsettling look at adultery, and relationships in general, set in the most suburban of upper middle class neighborhoods. It starts quite strongly with laughs and intrigue as the sexual tension between Kate Winslet's marvelous young mother character and her sweet, soft-spoken, ex-quarterback soon-to-be-lover mounts. Once all of the action begins to crumble around the main characters, however, the film begins to lose some of the momentum and intrigue it started with.

The film uses a documentary style voice-over describing the characters, their motives, and their hidden desires, as if they were a herd of antelope on the Serengeti. It's often distant (quite purposefully) at these times, but the distance allows us to see past their desires. It allows the story to boil it all down into the simple basic drives of these animals, I mean children, I mean people. First and foremost, the film is funny. I laughed out loud more often in this film than in most comedies I've seen this year. Secondly, the film is often unsettling and edges into uncomfortable territory with masturbation and a weasley little man who exposes himself to children as main points in the story. I like this. I like the risks taken, especially because I found some of the suburban characters to be rather obtuse, perhaps even unbelievably simplistic. Although I very much enjoyed the film, at times it felt as if it was degrading toward some of its characters, perhaps stupidly so.

Of those that felt oversimplified, Patrick Wilson's ex-jock who can't pass the bar exam was probably the most egregious case. He's a sweet, simple, good-looking guy that misses the better days of his childhood when he was the quarterback, and he could spend his days having fun. Now he's a stay at home dad, failing the bar exam over and over again. At the local playground he meets up with Kate Winslet's young mother watching her daughter. She's a bookish one-time English literature grad student now stuck in the burbs, not fitting in with the other young mothers. She wants more. They both want more. In the end, of course they get quite a bit more.
An important subplot follows a disturbed man who has been branded a sex-offender by the community (and the police). The film doesn't quite know what to make of this man (of course neither does anybody else ...) It has sympathy for him, but it also clearly shows that he cannot be trusted. What to do with him? Luckily the film isn't dumb enough to try and give us an answer which would undoubtedly be wrong. In the end the man (Jackie Earle Haley) decides to take his problem into his own hands.

I was quite a fan of In The Bedroom, Todd Fields other deceptively simple narration on middle-class America. This film is even more entertaining to watch, however. It times it's funny and fun, creepy and concerning, interesting, shocking or thrilling. At times it feels smart, at others perhaps a bit watered down, but it succeeds so often that the failures can more than be excused. Through all of this Kate Winslet gives the best performance of her career. When watching her in a movie, I usually feel as if I am simply watching Kate Winslet. This time her
character felt new and unique, not Kate Winslet. She was quite good, and I imagine will get an Oscar nomination for her efforts.

Standouts: Kate Winslet shines, and I very much enjoyed Todd Field's script and directing, although ...
Blowouts: ... a few of the characters were perhaps a bit narrowly conceived in that script and direction.

Grade: A-

Monday, January 15, 2007

THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

Director: Gabriele Muccino (The Last Kiss, Remember Me, My Love - rising star of Italian cinema)
Starring: Will Smith, Jaden Smith, Thandie Newton

My advice for those planning to see The Pursuit of Happyness is to hold on to your heart strings, because the tugging is about to commence. And the tugging is long. And the tugging is hard. And the tugging won't stop until the last credit rolls. And damn it, this film is so earnestly single minded in its pursuit of heart string tugging that if you're not weeping with joy at the end of this film I wouldn't be surprised if a theater manager has been contracted to come out and physically make you weep. (For my part I managed to jump out of the theater while a couple of burly ushers brushed by me and set their eyes on a stone-faced boyfriend obviously seeing the movie because of his date for the evening.)

Yes, this film is a joyful cryer. And I saw a few folks tearing up in their seats when it was all over. (That's "tearing up" like crying, not "tearing up" like ripping their seats apart by the way.) The film follows a struggling salesman (Will Smith) while his marriage and financial life nosedive into oblivion. He takes sole custody of his child (Jaden Smith) and grabs hold tightly to a dream of a new career. He has a dream to become a stock broker, because it's a better life than the one he has. He never attended college, but he's smart. He doesn't have the time or money to attend a 6-month unpaid internship program for brokers, but he does it anyway. His prospects for the future and day-to-day circumstances sink lower and lower while he single-mindedly focuses on becoming a broker. He and his child go from living in a run-of-the-mill low-rent apartment to a one-room efficiency, to a homeless shelter, to sleeping in a subway restroom.

Family services would have a field day with this guy, but somehow he slips through the cracks. He makes his kid sleep on a subway train, but it's all so he can have a 1 in 20 chance of becoming the broker selected from his internship program. On the surface this seems hard to swallow, but the film generally makes it work. He is single-minded in his pursuit of a better life for his child, in his pursuit of happiness. He has to go through hell to find happyiness, but that's the whole "pursuit" part of the famous phrase. When I sit down and think about this plot, it certainly feels maudlin and overblown, but in the end I think it really does work. I refuse to be overly cynical on this one - although I think others may feel differently.

Eventually, Smith gets rich of course. He (and his child) acheive happiness. I've heard the notion that "money can't buy happiness" before, but guess what? It's quite wrong. I think anyone who actually believes that is either jealous of rich people or already rich themselves, because money is one of the biggest hurdles in the pursuit of a happy life. It's not the only hurdle, by no means, but it's one of the big ones. They've even done scientifically controlled studies, and poor people who become rich are some of the happiest people on the planet. (The bastards.)

Director Muccino has done a very good job with this weepy material in his first American production, but the real credit goes to Will Smith. He is eminently likable throughout, but he still manages to cross the range of emotions from anger and despair to tender joy. He will quite likely be Oscar-nominated for this work, and I think he's got a great shot at winning. His top-notch performance was certainly intense at times, but it's also very approachable, as is the film itself. Surprisingly, Smith's son was also quite good in this film. Although as a child, he mostly just had to act like a child. This was a very accessible, tear-inducing flick, although quite good.

Standouts: Will Smith, movie star.
Blowouts: It's perhaps a bit too "emotional".

Grade: B+

Thursday, January 11, 2007

DREAMGIRLS

Director: Bill Condon (Gods & Monsters, Kinsey, Candyman II)
Starring: Jamie Foxx, Beyonce Knowles, Eddie Murphy, Jennifer Hudson

Dreamgirls is a very successful screen rendition of the 1981 Broadway musical. With great singing and production, it remains at its heart the big, glitzy entertainment of a major musical, but the great filmmaking and acting manages to get enough story across to work as a feature film. Condon has done an excellent job with this film, but the two highest notes on the scale of Dreamgirls are undoubtedly Eddie Murphy and Jennifer Hudson (of American Idol semi-fame). Murphy's ultra high energy portrayal of James "Thunder" Early, a James Brown-esque entertainer is top notch. It's upbeat and over the top at all the right times, and actually acheives pathos when the times are bad. He's the very definition of a scene-stealer when he appears. By the way, you did read me correctly. I just wrote that Eddie Murphy has acheived pathos - definitely a sentence I never figured would erupt from my keyboard.

As surprising as Murphy is, Jennifer Hudson is even more of a shocker in this film. Even though the film is nominally centered on Beyonce Knowles and Jamie Foxx, her character is the real rise/fall/redemption arc of the story, and she succeeds at every turn. She's also quite a talented singer, I think, perhaps even eclipsing Miss Knowles. At least here she did.

As you probably already know Dreamgirls is a thinly veiled account of Diana Ross, the Supremes and the rise of Motown music. Certainly there is quite a bit of creative license, but this story more closely follows the real events than most Hollywood films claiming to be "based on a true story". Here three young singers known as the The Dreamettes (led by Hudson's belter) are co-opted by an up-and-coming producer/songwriter team (Jamie Foxx and Keith Robinson).
Their first break is as backup for Eddie Murphy's soulful entertainer, but eventually Foxx sees an opportunity to take the girls mainstream and sends them off on their own. Hudson is kicked out of the group, and Beyonce Knowles' character is installed as the lead, a shier personality but no doubt a prettier face. The group takes off with this more marketable, but perhaps less soulful mix.

Fox, Knowles and friends churn out hit after hit while Hudson crashes down into unemployment and shattered dreams. Eventually she is redeemed despite the vindictiveness of Foxx. And eventually the young miss Knowles character confronts the same domineering producer for control of her career and her life.

As I said this film works as a film, but it's definitely still a big entertaining musical through and through. As such there are big, broad, loud moments galore, where characters sing cheesy lines to each other, and songs suddenly materialize that don't always seem to fit. But by and large it all works well. It's big, glitzy entertainment. It's really fine singing and music. It's even got enough story to fill in the spaces between the musical numbers. (The music, incidentally, sounds like some amalgum of Motown and showtunes. At first thought that doesn't seem like it should work, but it does.)

This was a really fine film. The revival of the movie musical continues here in the early 21st century.

Standouts: The filmmaking, acting, and production were all quite good, butt Murphy and Hudson standout the farthest.
Blowouts: Not much really failed. I occasionally felt Knowles wasn't quite up the level of the other actors, but she was nonetheless a good casting choice as the dominated, mousy character on screen.

Grade: A-

Monday, January 08, 2007

CHILDREN OF MEN

Director: Alfonso Cuaron (Harry Potter & Prisoner of Azkaban, Y Tu Mama Tambien, Great Expectations)
Starring: Clive Owen, Jullianne Moore, Michael Caine

No matter how good science fiction gets, it's almost always a little overdone, even silly in its reach. When an author has to invent a world from scratch I imagine it's difficult to find the hidden insights down deep, they're spending all their time making up the big picture. The stories are always about all-encompassing ideas like the 'fate of the universe' or the 'end of mankind'. They're about societies, not people. And no, this isn't necessarily a bad thing, I'm simply observing. Children of Men at the least fits this observation. It's a futuristic nativity story about society crumbling. We've got Christian symbolism, governments and societies collaspsing, changing morality - religion, society, government, ethics: all those 'big picture' parts of a good science fiction story.

Despite all these big themes, Children of Men is at its heart a chase picture. The main characters spend most of the film running away from the bad guys. The body around that heart is a beatiful thing indeed, though. Cuaron has made a viscerally engaging picture that I thoroughly enjoyed. It's infinitely smarter and better made than V for Vendetta. I think it's even more engaging than Minority Report, the fine Spielberg bit of science fiction. In the end, the message is perhaps a bit overdone, but that hardly matters. The filmaking is excellent and lends itself to the big themes.

Children of Men begins with a wonderful premise: In its science fiction world (20 or so years from now) humanity has lost the ability to reproduce. We don't know why, but we just can't have babies. Rather than a cataclysm killing off mankind, we see the impending end of our species creep up on us as the last remaining peoples get older and die off. It's a trainwreck in slow motion. It's a wonderful setting.

Clive Owen's character is not particularly important, except by chance. He happens to become entangled with a girl who managed to get herself knocked up. She's not particularly special either, except for the baby thing. Of course in a world without babies what could be more special? We then follow these two as they are chased. In the film's world England is one of the few societies that still mostly works, while others around it have completely collapsed. Illegal immigration has become overwhelming. England's police state spends huge amounts of resources keeping immigrants locked up and out of society. A mystic-political faction called "The Fishes" - hmm, just like those little Christian decals on the back of cars - hopes to use the girl and her baby as their personal Jesus and Mary. For her part, the girl just wants to get out of the country and into the hands of a supposedly benevolent group of scientists (and we assume non-religious rationalists) called "The Human Project". No one knows if this group even exists. There's just the hope.

The excitement in this film isn't really with the themes, although they certainly don't hurt. The joy here is in the slightly twisted world that's been created, and in the moment to moment action and events. There are wonderful glimpses of a ragged future. There are engrossing and terrifying battle scenes. There's stunning thrills and even quite a bit of comedy. There's just a lot that's interesting in this film. The story is completely engrossing from beginning to end. I've noted that the direction is marvelous, but the acting deserves a bit of praise as well. I don't think any of the acting was quite Oscar quality, but Moore, Caine and especially Clive Owen were all quite good. Owen's character, while dreary and almost faceless in a way, remains interesting and holds the movie together. He's an anti-hero that becomes a hero hero.

Standouts: Cuaron's direction was exceptional. I could imagine an Oscar nomination for this work.
Blowouts: I'm not sure if I liked the occasional imagery and plot points that tried to make the movie "relevant to the here and now". I.e. Topical a la Iraq and Bush.

Grade: A-