December 2007: 15 Mini Reviews
December 4, 2007
The last fifteen films I’ve seen.
American Gangster (’07): Ridley Scott’s by-the-books crime epic, about the meteoric rise and fall of Harlem’s drug warlord Frank Lucas during the Vietnam era, has become one of the biggest hits of the season, despite it’s slow pace and familiar genre trappings. Once you get past the clichés though, the same drug kingpin stuff that was a cliché back in Al Pacino’s “Scarface” period, you get a solid procedural about a self-made gangster (played to Oscar-bait ferocity by Denzel Washington), a family man to boot, and a dogged rundown narcotics detective (Russell Crowe, always reliable), the only honest cop in New York (cue “Serpico” allusions), hot on his trail, which leads from the fields of Cambodia during the war to the streets of Harlem and jonesing ex-soldiers. There is a bit of an ironic discourse about Lucas running throughout the film, that he was a ruthless killer but took good care of his family, and dimed on crooked police officers, so it’s all good, which makes the film, despite good storytelling and great performances, a piece with a confused message about a larger-than-life figure.
No End in Sight (’07): There have been a score of incendiary documentaries detailing the current Iraq war and the mishaps of the Bush administration, but none of them have been as compelling, or as believable about the facts as this sleek and devastating film from director Charles Ferguson, produced by Alex Gibney, the man behind the brilliant “Enron” documentary. I guess depending on where you stand on the war is where you’ll stand on the content of this film, but even neutral, it’s hard not to feel moved by some of the testimony, whether it be from returning soldiers, or the ex-generals who botched the initial reconstruction under Paul Bremer, and realize that this is sobering current affairs documentary filmmaking at its very best.
Robinson Crusoe on Mars (’64): One of the great early Sci-Fi films to deal with space exploration, supplanting the basic tale of Daniel Defoe’s famous novel (man lost on unknown surface, fends for himself, befriends dude named Friday, all is well) to Mars, with issues ranging from thinly oxygenized atmosphere to slave labor and mining aliens. Criterion’s DVD release is notable more for the new print, which makes director Byron Haskin’s and cinematographer Winton C. Hoch’s deep reds and yellows look amazingly beautiful, than for its few extras (including a recycled commentary track and short featurette about the science of the film), but it’s still great to see this somewhat lost Sci-Fi classic restored to its original glory. Plus, it features a monkey in a spacesuit, and I can’t think of anything funnier, and more adorable, than that.
Breathless (’60): Another legendary masterpiece, another important, detailed release from Criterion, this time presenting Jean-Luc Godard’s New Wave classic with the best restoration it has ever received, making Godard and Raoul Coutard’s brilliant tracking shots of Paris, and those rapid fire jump cuts, look sparkling in all their rough black and white beauty. I’ve seen this film so many times I think I could recite the dialogue in my sleep, an I’m pretty sure I don’t know a lick of French, so seeing the luminous Jean Seberg and the Bogart worshiping Jean-Paul Belmondo frolic in the legendary 30-minute bedroom sequence, talking about existentialism and the paintings of Picasso and Renoir, with jazz music on the soundtrack, in a print this gorgeous is as fresh a viewing experience I’ve had in months, and currently ranks as the best DVD issue of the year. The lengthy extras, including two documentaries, but without a scholarly commentary track, will help the uninitiated and hardcore cinephiles alike better appreciate why this film was so important, and still is so important, in the advancement of on-the-fly low budget filmmaking and editing. In a very long career, Godard’s first film is still his best, and film schools for the rest of time will be suggesting just the same.
Killer of Sheep (’77): Independent filmmaker Charles Burnett’s masterpiece has been virtually impossible to see for years, but after a restoration and a short theatrical run, it’s presented on DVD for the first time from Milestone, a much needed release that gives the landmark film, and its important director, a proper platform for all to finally appreciate. Episodic in form, shot for cheap on the fly with a hand held camera, Burnett’s highly poetic film examines life in L.A.’s Watts Ghetto, one of the poorest and most dangerous areas in the country, following a hardworking slaughterhouse man whose daily struggles are symbolically paired with the sheep whose blood he washes from the factory floor. The black and white images are unforgettable, the dialogue could only be truer if it were a documentary (which at times it feels like), and the underlying message of hope within a crushing environment is, remarkably, both devastating and uplifting. Credit Milestone for a Criterion-like release, which also includes numerous Burnett short films and a feature commentary track.
Under the Volcano (’84): Forsaking much of the inner monologue and crucial symbolism that makes Malcolm Lowry’s 1947 novel so memorable, and difficult, John Huston instead focuses on the novel’s bare story, about the last day of the life of a bitter alcoholic, whose estranged wife returns to see him hit rock bottom in an unforgiving Mexico on the Day of the Dead. The great novel had always been labeled “unfilmable”, but Huston does just fine telling a story of regret, the ravages of memory, and the end effects of life in a bottle, with the help of photographer Gabriel Figueroa and an Oscar nominated performance from Albert Finney as Lowry’s drunk alter-ego, Geoffrey Firmin. Included in the packed new Criterion release is a brilliant documentary on the troubled life of Malcolm Lowry, who spent ten years writing his masterwork, and never came close to equaling it, and an hour long on-set documentary, focusing on Huston, late in his life and career, still a master storyteller, behind and in front of the camera.
Late Autumn (’60): Nobody reworked their own films better than Yasujiro Ozu, who reformats his black and white 1949 classic “Late Spring” to color, and to a younger generation, with this heartfelt comedy-drama about a group of busy old men who take the task upon themselves to marry off a dead friend’s widow and daughter, played so wonderfully by Setsuko Hara (the daughter of the original, now the mother) and Yoko Tsukasa. Following “Floating Weeds”, which is arguably his best “remake”, this modern story of parents, children, and marriage wouldn’t be Ozu’s last foray into such weighty material, his last film “An Autumn Afternoon” two years later would retread virtually the same plot, but with an echo of sadness from a man who probably knew his time was coming to an end.
The Bow (’05): To appreciate the artistry of Kim Ki-duk, arguably South Korea’s most acclaimed young director, you have to understand the concept of poetic minimalism, where characters speak hardly any words, plot and characterization are developed with very little detail save for a few exposition sentences and facial expressions, and long takes of inactivity and picturesque landscapes symbolically represent what we don’t get in words. This film, about an old seaman who raises a lost child on his boat so he can marry her when she’s of age, is even more spare than the director’s previous films, “3 Iron”, and “Samarian Girl”, which were more urban stories than his previous masterpiece, “Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter…and Spring”, and like these former films, what is lost in the characters’ vocal representation of themselves is more than made up with pantomime and beautiful, poetic filmmaking.
Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead (’07): Like every great director who has stayed active for over 50 years, Sidney Lumet has a list of clunkers longer than a list of classics, but remarkably, exactly half a century after his groundbreaking debut with “12 Angry Men”, the man has made one of his ten best films with this stunning family drama. Philip Seymour Hoffman and Ethan Hawke head an impressive cast as two grown up brothers who terribly botch a robbery on their father’s (the great Albert Finney) jewelry store, with tragic repercussions that spin out slowly in a brilliant back-and-forth editing structure that fills in the pieces all the way up to the devastating conclusion. The film’s slowish pace is because it has so much plot to fill in, and by the end it all makes perfect sense, a riveting narrative pulled together with precision craft from an old school master.
I’m Not There (’07): This jumbled experiment from Todd Haynes, trying to represent the man lives of Bob Dylan through various actors and various styles, was one of the films I most wanted to see this year, and though it had me scratching my head numerous times, it was just coherent enough, with enough sampling of Dylan’s eclectic musical canon, that I was more thrilled than bored, but not enough to entirely recommend it to anyone beyond Dylanheads like myself. The film is at its best mythologizing the first two Dylan periods, his early New York folk period (played by Christian Bale), and his post electric folk rock period (played masterfully by Cate Blanchett in the style of “Don’t Look Back” Dylan), but loses some footing shifting between an actor (Heath Ledger) experiencing a painful breakup with his artist wife (Charlotte Gainsbourg, modeled after Dylan’s first wife Sarah), and a sometimes incomprehensible Richard Gere story that takes place, I think, during the time of Billy the Kid. The music is great, Haynes’ experimental filmmaking (echoing everything from “8 ½” to a basic music doc approach) is interesting, and the entire piece is not without tremendous effort, but for a suggestion to the Dylan uninitiated, Martin Scorsese’s “No Direction Home” is an easier, more thorough introduction.
No Country for Old Men (’07): After bumbling across a botched drug deal in the middle of the desert, lone hunter Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) makes off with two million in stolen drug money, but that doesn’t go over well with the money’s potential owner, psychopathic killer Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem), who sets off on a rampage to retrieve his loot, with precision tact, and an air powered cattle gun. The Coen Brothers have adapted Cormac McCarthy’s pseudo-western novel into a dry two tiered existential cat-and-mouse chase, as Bardem chases down the crafty Brolin, executing innocents at will with his makeshift air gun, and seen-it-all local Sheriff Tommy Lee Jones tries to wrangle them both from a step behind. With gorgeous cinematography by Roger Deakins (as usual for a Coen’s film), another sturdy guiding voice performance by Jones, who provides the moral of the brutally violent story, and a scarily funny, Oscar worthy performance by Bardem as the insanely deadpan killer Chigurh, this isn’t only the Coen Brothers’ best film since “Fargo”, it may be the best American movie of the year, and what a year it’s been.
Le Petit Soldat (’60): Jean-Luc Godard’s second feature was banned in France for three years because of its depiction of torture tactics, from both sides, during the Algerian war, and even by today’s standards, the lengthy scene where our hero is unflinchingly beaten is hard to watch. If “Breathless” was something of an existential Film Noir, than this film, about a French photographer who is commissioned by a radical French military unit to assassinate a high ranking Arab enemy, could be considered an existential political thriller, where the plot halts on a dime for Godard to pontificate on art, cinema (his famous line, “Cinema is truth at 24 frames per second”, originates here), photography, and the beauty of his future wife, Anna Karin, in a crucial role as a spy. I’d suggest like most of Godard’s post “Breathless” features, the film is a mixed bag, refreshing to look at, with a few brilliant sequences, but at times slow and confusing, recommended only for Godard buffs and fans of curious torture sequences.
The Blood of a Poet (’30): Jean Cocteau has admitted the faults of this legendary hour long experiment, namely a lack of plot and primitive special effects, but is always forgiven for the sheer genius of the images, which starts and ends with the destruction of a smoke stack, and features in between an hours worth of stunning visual tricks and artistic choices, some of which he’d use again more developed in “Orpheus” twenty years later. At the time the film was delayed because of Cocteau’s association with Bunuel, whose “L’age D’or” was produced by the same man, but there’s nothing offensive or anti-religious about the film, it’s pure poetic imagination, and just one of the mesmerizing works in the great, and varied, canon of one of France’s primer artists.
The Verdict (’82): Paul Newman lost the Oscar in ’82 to Ben Kingsley, whose portrayal of Ghandi was the year’s sympathetic vote, but looking back it seems like Newman, playing a beat down drunk of a lawyer who takes a dog case and turns it into his own personal redemption, delivered what may be the finest performance of his career, and probably deserved the Oscar. 25 years after “Twelve Angry Men”, director Sidney Lumet makes a different kind of courtroom film, taking the action out of the claustrophobic jury room and into the soul of his star, whose boozing has left him broke and tattered, and sees in a case defending a girl in a coma due to medical malpractice a chance at picking up the pieces of his broken life, against heavy odds. Of course there is a big courtroom scene, and it’s further proof of Newman’s value to the role, but it’s the final scene that’s the knockout, as Newman ponders his future, a ringing phone from his troubled past blares to black screen, and an uncertain conclusion to a riveting character study.
Juno (’07): A sweet and funny film from Jason Reitman (“Thank You For Smoking”) about a spunky and cynical teenager (Ellen Page) who hastily gets pregnant and decides to give it up for adoption, with supporting help from her loving dad (J.K. Simmons), step-mom (Allison Janney), sort of boyfriend (Michael Cera), and best friend (Olivia Thirlby). The first half hour of this film is a bit of a head rush, as the snarky language of Juno and the whip-smart screenplay (by first timer Diablo Cody) are aggressively cynical, but as the character’s pregnancy progresses, and we get to know the adoptive parents (Jason Bateman and the Oscar worthy Jennifer Garner), the film’s hard edge softens, and it becomes a real heartfelt charmer, with a sterling soundtrack and dynamite performances from all involved.
by Adam Suraf