September 2007: 20 Mini Reviews
September 23, 2007
The last twenty films I’ve seen.
Police Story (’85): Often a strong contender amongst fans when asked to nominate Jackie Chan’s all time best film, this entertaining cops-and-crooks yarn finds Jackie driving cars through a mountain shanty town, cascading down electric poles, shattering hundreds of panes of glass in a shopping mall, and hanging off the side of a speeding double deck bus. The plot is nominal, those aforementioned action set pieces, painfully choreographed by Chan and his brilliant stunt team, are what counts, and they are simply amazing.
Ridicule (’96): In an attempt to secure funds for his failing town, a commoner infiltrates the court of Louis XVI with the only skill the decadent aristocracy knows, biting and brutal wit. With lush visuals, a wicked screenplay, and plenty of satirical wordplay, French master Patrice Leconte presents a pre-revolution France full of spite, shameless snobbery, and plenty of contempt for the common man.
Shame (’68): One of Ingmar Bergman’s most accessible films is also one of his most complex studies of marital strife, as couple Liv Ullmann and Max von Sydow personally attack one another while a brutal civil war rages around their poor country farmhouse. As always, Bergman’s difficult material is brought to stunningly realistic life by the great cinematographer Sven Nykvist, whose tracking shots through this war torn hell (both physically and psychologically) are equally haunting and poetic. Coming off of the often-incomprehensible horror symbolism of “Hour of the Wolf”, Bergman’s devastating anti-war commentary is a welcome return to the realm of realism, and how (badly) humans interact when faced with unusually difficult situations.
The Legend of Drunken Master (’94): I like this Jackie Chan martial arts comedy, a pseudo remake of his famous 1978 “Drunken Master”, but because of poor distribution, I’ve only been able to see the dubbed English language version, and for that, I don’t think I can fully appreciate Chan’s brand of goofy humor. Of course with Chan the dialogue usually doesn’t matter, it’s all about the stunts, and he’s at the top of his game, but until a definitive DVD is released with the original Cantonese audio track, I’ll have to refuse to watch, and pass ultimate judgment on, this entertaining action comedy again.
The Lives of Others (’07): When this intricate German drama, about the audio spying of the East German secret police before the collapse of the Berlin Wall, won the Best Foreign Language Oscar last year I was a bit bitter, having just seen and adored “Pan’s Labyrinth”, but after closer inspection Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s film was every bit a deserved winner, and still currently ranks as possibly the best film to open in American theaters this year. Von Donnersmarck’s muted colors, precision framing, and themes of human miscommunication, mistrust, and paranoia draw hefty comparisons with the late, great Krzysztof Kieslowski, while Ulrich Muhe’s performance as the repressed spy who changes his ideology while watching the open lifestyle of a playwright, is all the more touching and accurate considering he went through much the same in real life. Penetrating and beautifully composed, an instant classic, and arguably the best German import of the decade.
Hollywoodland (’06): A fine cast, including Adrian Brody, Ben Affleck, and Diane Lane, and former TV director Allen Coulter’s (“The Sopranos”) Noirish storytelling, highlight this Hollywood drama about the death, and subsequent investigation, of former television Superman George Reeves. A lot of the trappings of your basic Hollywood expose are present here, including the high powered studio exec (Bob Hoskins) who appears implicit in the death, and the moral degradation of selling your talents short (Superman, on TV in the ‘50’s, was quite lame), but because of the duel storytelling devise of showing Reeves’ life with his death’s troubled investigation, the film is a potboiler.
The Terminator (’84): Any list of the greatest action films of all time has to place James Cameron’s 1984 breakout clear near the top of the pack, what with its state of the art special effects, brilliant storytelling, which puts the fate of the world in the hands of a frazzled diner waitress, and iconic performance by Arnold Schwarzenegger as the nearly indestructible Terminator machine sent back from the future to exterminate said waitress. The debate continues amongst fans as to whether 1991’s much more expensive sequel is the better film, and it’s close, but I always go with the original, if just for Arnold’s police station annihilation, and Linda Hamilton’s puffy ‘80’s ‘do.
Days of Glory (’06): Standout war drama about the unjustly ignored soldiers of North Africa during WWII, who enlisted with the French army to free the motherland from Nazi oppression, but faced discrimination from their own side. Having recently re-watched “Band of Brothers”, which may be the best depiction of the closeness of soldiers in battle ever made, this Oscar nominee from Algeria treads similar territory, but the political message is born both out of respect for these soldiers, and anger at the way they were treated during the war, and forgotten after. A fitting tribute, and a well made war film.
Jet Li’s Fearless (’06): Jet Li claims this stylish and well choreographed fight film, about the legendary Wushu master Huo Yuanjia, is going to be his last Martial Arts film, the genre that made him a superstar, but based on the reception of his first post announcement film, “War”, can we still hold him accountable for it? If it holds, than what a good way to go out, for “Fearless” finds Jet in peak physical form, losing hardly any of the lightning fast movement that for years he’s so memorably utilized in such genre classics as “Once Upon a Time in China”, “Fist of Legend”, and “Hero”.
Terminator 2: Judgment Day (’91): Of course Arnold would be back, he as much as told us so in 1984, but little did we know that he’d be back, in a brilliant twist, as the hero, this time sent to save young John Connor from the T-1000, a metal shifting landmark of villainy and computer effects wizardry. The action is heightened, thanks to a hefty budget, and Arnold’s funny and heroic performance solidified his box office clout for the next five years, while James Cameron’s ascension to the top tier of directors was almost complete (“Titanic” in six years time would do it), it’s still the morphing T-1000 (played by Robert Patrick), and the breakout CGI used to create the effect, that remains potent today.
Tsotsi (’05): 2005’s Oscar winner for Foreign Language, about a tough street kid in Johannesburg who steals a car, with a baby in the back seat, and through a series of encounters with “good” people, receives a kind of spiritual comeuppance. Well meaning and impressively acted and shot, but slightly melodramatic, and it’s hard to root for a kid who is so bad to begin, even when his difficult back-story begins to unravel. First time director Gavin Hood has since hit the big time, landing one of the fall’s most anticipated jobs, Reese Witherspoon’s “Rendition”, and to come the “X-Men” spin-off “Wolverine”.
The Widow of Saint-Pierre (’00): Unique period drama from Patrice Leconte, concerning the execution of a murderer who as time bides, waiting for a guillotine from Paris, a small French ruled Canadian town comes to cherish as a local hero, not the misunderstood killer of before. The condemned (great Yugoslavian director Emir Kusturica) finds a mentor in the Captain’s (Daniel Auteuil) lovely wife (Juliette Binoche), and eventually becomes a respected part of the small community, but an example has to be set, and the boorish town elders favor beheading, rather than arguing with the powerful French courts. Taken in view with Leconte’s other period piece, “Ridicule”, the director certainly favors the lower class over the pomposity of the ruling class, suggesting that the history of French leaders goes far below the glories of Napoleon, Danton, and the Revolution.
The Passion of Anna (’69): Bergman’s go-to couple for psychological relationship drama, Max von Sydow and Liv Ullmann, play a pair of emotionally broken lonely souls who match up with the help of equally troubled spouses Erland Josepheson and Bibi Andersson, in a probing drama that says more about maintaining compatibility – and erasing past demons - than it does about the joys of falling in love. In the end, the examination is so complete, so devastating, that the film, as well as von Sydow’s crippled Andreas Winkelman, literally disintegrates before our eyes.
Night on Earth (’91): Director Jim Jarmusch’s fragmented comedy-drama about five separate cab rides in five of the world’s biggest cities, in the middle of the night, is heavy on talk, but charming and at times profound, not your usual midnight taxi drive. Of the five vignettes, Jarmusch saves the best for last, paying homage to the great Finnish Kaurismaki brothers as three drunken, depressed laborers learn of their driver’s personal anguish, as they ride home on a bitterly cold Helsinki night. Many thanks yet again to the Criterion Collection for releasing a beloved modern independent classic for the first time on DVD, along with Jarmusch’s earlier, equally as loved “Stranger than Paradise”.
3:10 to Yuma (’07): Solid and exciting remake of Delmer Daves’ 1957 Glen Ford western, with Russell Crowe taking Ford’s place as brash outlaw Ben Wade, and Christian Bale in Van Heflin’s role as the poor farmer Dan Evans, who spies a monetary opportunity by wrangling Wade to the titular prison train, if only Wade and his posse weren’t so intent on the opposite. The action scenes, including an opening stagecoach robbery, and a very long mid afternoon shootout, are naturally great, but the meat of this film is the play between Crowe and Bale, both at the tops of their games, as Wade psychologically torments the weaker Evans, but in a way respects his position and courage. We don’t get too many westerns on the big screen anymore, so when they come around, to have one of this caliber, directed by “Walk the Line’s” James Mangold, is a sight for sore eyes.
The Wind That Shakes the Barley (’07): Master British director Ken Loach and his screenwriter Paul Laverty present a detailed, political, and emotionally devastating story about split factions in early 20th century Ireland, where the anti-British IRA fight a guerilla rebellion, but face a painful civil war when a peace treaty is met with differing views. As always with Loach, the film is painfully realistic, with long scenes of political dialogue that helps the viewer to better understand the conflict at hand, but it’s also heartbreaking, especially when the IRA splits and two brothers (Cillian Murphy and Padraic Delaney) join different sides, both thinking their side is right for Ireland’s immediate future. When Murphy is sent to the countryside to assassinate a young boy who has been caught as a spy, a boy he’d grown up with, the emotional impact of the moment, and Murphy’s reaction, is what makes Loach’s film so great, and in turn, so hard to watch.
In the Valley of Elah (‘07): The Iraq War is starting to make its way onto our screens, with varying political purposes, and this drama from Oscar winner Paul Haggis seems less inclined to criticize the administration than it does to condemn the military for permanently scaring the young men it sends over there, with relentless murder tactics and little psychological preparation. Tommy Lee Jones stars as a retired officer who gets involved in the mystery surrounding the brutal death of his son, just back from the war, where fragments of the son’s cell phone video suggest a kind of violence and hell that no 25-year-old should be subject to. The mystery is less interesting than the Jones character, who takes the death of his son (his second military related death) with a kind of painless expression that speaks volumes for what this man has been through in his life, and though Haggis’ political commentary is nothing new, it does raise awareness about our soldiers, and the future they face in their post war home lives.
Hot Fuzz (’07): The filmmaking team behind “Shaun of the Dead” does to cop films what they did to zombie films with this slick action spoof, a combination of clichés and set pieces that both pokes fun at, and pays homage to, the crappy action blockbusters of American cinema. Depending on your mood, you’ll either find this film, about a London cop (the always funny Simon Pegg) who is transferred to a sleepy country town that is more dangerous than it seems, extremely witty, with many British in-jokes, or you’ll find it repetitive and obnoxious. I’m in neither category, and in both, which means it’s not as funny as “Shaun of the Dead”, but the finale works on all cylinders, and the humor is just smart and crude enough to offend neither a high brow or low brow audience.
Cries and Whispers (’72): Ingmar Bergman’s simple concept, two sisters and a nurse watch over a third sister in her final stages of cancer, is molded with extreme precision by masterful filmmaking and brilliant performances, into perhaps the most painful, symbolic, and utterly haunting film about death ever made. Bergman and Sven Nykvyst’s use of red, as both a trigger to the sisters’ separate flashbacks, and as the deeply symbolic color of blood (or the soul, as Bergman has written), is just one of the many filmmaking devices that makes this their most visually effective collaboration, and as the sisters, Harriet Andersson (equaling her performance in “Through a Glass Darkly”), Ingrid Thulin, and Liv Ullmann, represent the barest essentials in human personality; distant, lonely, and longing for something that has been missing for so long. In a film almost entirely about death, repression, and regret, Bergman gives us a final moment of beauty, as the sisters walk through a lovely sunlit garden in happier times, a brief moment of hope in an otherwise unforgiving world.
My Best Friend (’07): A slight comedy drama from Patrice Leconte, concerning the attempts by a distant art collector (Daniel Auteuil) to forge a friendship with a friendly cab driver (Dany Boon), for the purposes of winning a bet. Naturally, the two men become close friends, and when the motive is revealed the conflict presents itself, but Leconte isn’t concerned too much with the drama, he’s more concerned with the nature of human interaction, how hard it is to get close to people, and how even harder it is to maintain that level of intimacy for a lifetime. Of his recent works, including the masterpiece “The Man on a Train”, and the psychotherapy drama “Intimate Strangers”, this is a lesser effort from Leconte, who is arguably France’s best director right now, but still, the two leads are charming, and the script is witty and observant.
by Adam Suraf