Secret Knowledge

I want to give you two film synopses.

1) A man receives a letter from a former lover of his. She wants to be his sugar mama. There is no return address. So, he travels to several of his former lovers searching for the one who sent this letter.

2) A man receives a letter from a former lover of his. She says that they have a son. There is no return address. So, he travels to several of his former lovers searching for the one who sent this letter.

The latter synopsis is from the movie Broken Flowers (2005). It was a small, independent movie starring Bill Murray and was directed by Jim Jarmusch. It was very well-received. I read a number of glowing reviews. But at the end of each one, I felt something was missing. This plot sounded so familiar to me, but no one mentioned it. I wanted to know what movie I was thinking of, but I couldn't remember.

I eventually figured it out. Anyone care to take a guess?

--------------------------------------------------------------------
So, no one did care to take a guess. That's cool. I'm not wounded.

To satisfy apparently no one's curiosity, the first plot description belongs to...The Ladies Man!

Perhaps no critic felt it necessary to bring up the similarities, but my guess is that very few of them had seen both. This may be more accurate considering that there are twice as many reviews for Broken Flowers as there are for The Ladies Man on Rotten Tomatoes.

Anyway, I feel I'm part of a very special class of moviegoer who has seen both. That's basically what all this has been about.

When I grow old, I want to be Robert Mitchum.

Sorry. I've been in rehearsals and unable to write any reviews or anything. Soon, and very soon.

In lieu of a new blog, please enjoy Ebert's interviews with Robert Mitchum.

I haven't laughed this hard at anything on the internet since Afro-Ninja

Find it at 15 Minute Lunch.

5 Things

Tracy tagged me with this a while ago.

List 5 things that certain people (who are not deserving of being your friend anyway) may consider to be "totally lame," but you are, despite the possible stigma, totally proud of. Own it. Then tag 5 people to do the same.

1) Part of the reason I don't get a lot of sleep is because I think looking tired is cool. A friend/coworker told me the other day that I looked like I had returned from an alcohol fueled binge in Sierra Leone. Compliment? Check.

2) I am proud of my Netflix queue. Recently, I had He-Man and the Masters of the Unvierse, Battlestar Galactica (2000's), and Ingmar Bergman's Fanny and Alexander at home.

3) My DVD collection is alphabetized...by director.

4) When I am in a store and things are out of order on the shelves, I am always tempted to correct this. I sometimes follow through.

5) When I was young, and we're talking elementary school here, I would daydream about being married. My daydreams changed a little bit with the onset of puberty, but that desire was still there.

I'm going to tag Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., Johannes Brahms, Tom Cruise, and Mickey Mouse.

Tom Cruise vs. Philip Seymour Hoffman

11/21/07
by Scott Cupper

OK. So this isn’t really a title fight. In fact I won’t crown either one of these actors victorious. Which is probably shocking to some. Isn’t it apparent who would win? We are talking about acting, right?

Indeed we are talking about acting, and if it comes right down to it, yes, Philip Seymour Hoffman is the better actor. OK, I guess I did just crown a winner. But I’m exploring something here.

When it comes to actors, there probably aren’t two more disparate in the public mind. Philip Seymour Hoffman is often viewed as the paragon of actors: someone able to disappear into a role. Each time we see him in a movie, he is not much, if at all, like he was in his previous role. Tom, on the other hand, is criticized for being the same in every role. What I want to explore is this: Does it matter that Tom Cruise is the “same” in every role?

There’s a moment in the movie Magnolia that I love. Yes, I love Magnolia from beginning to end, so to those who know me, that probably sounds kind of…meaningless. Be that as it may, if you are to ask me what my top seven moments in Magnolia are, Jason Robards’s monologue would be at the top, but a bit of acting by Tom Cruise is right up there. He plays Frank T. J. Mackey, founder of a self-help conference that promises men the ability to get in any woman’s pants they wish. When we meet Frank, he’s onstage at one of these conferences, backlit, Richard Strauss’s Also sprach Zaranthustra playing (familiarly known as the theme from 2001: A Space Odyssey). It’s a performance. He wears a shirt that’s too tight, pumps his chest, threads his speech with derogatory terms for women. He is what he preaches. During a break, he’s interviewed by a woman who probes a bit too deep for his comfort. When he comes back to the conference, he’s barely holding it together. He starts to talk to the men again and goes off on these tangents, one of them about women, how men are programmed to worship them. And in the middle of this monologue, he whispers the word “Woman.”

I can’t describe how it affects me every single time. It’s surprising. It’s odd. Frank’s been screaming at us since he appeared on screen and suddenly we barely hear him. And this word, this reading of this word, springs from everything that we know about this character. It is perhaps the most revealing thing Frank says.

And it all came from Tom Cruise.

You can’t write in the script:

MACKEY
(whispers)
Woman.

Well, you can, but you’re not going to get what Tom did. You could line up a thousand different actors and they couldn’t have arrived at that reading. It came from the actor, from the situation, from a set of circumstances so specific, that it can’t ever be recreated. If there is more footage of that scene, I’m sure it doesn’t read the same, yet each time I watch the movie, that moment hits me.

We get distracted by the chameleons of the trade. People like Phil, like Dustin Hoffman, like Daniel Day-Lewis, they come with all these trappings: accents, dress, movements, walks. I take nothing away from them. Daniel Day-Lewis is the best actor working now and may be the best actor ever, but what makes him so brilliant is not how he immerses himself in a role. It’s how this immersion affects his understanding of the character that affects his performance that affects us. If his performance as Hawkeye in The Last of the Mohicans was based solely on how he, Daniel Day-Lewis, learned to track animals, the women I know would not swoon when I mention the movie. All they can think about is him underneath the waterfall telling Madeline Stowe that he will find her.

Here’s a drastic example. Imagine Philip Seymour Hoffman showing up as Truman Capote in Along Came Polly. There’s no other way to describe this except wrong. Hoffman’s performance as Capote has no reason being anywhere but in Capote. Phil understands this, so he adapts to his roles. Tom understands that he is not as good at adapting to roles, so he chooses roles that don’t force him to adapt. But this does not make his performances lesser than Phil’s

Acting is creating truth in imaginary circumstances. That’s all, and by this standard, in my opinion, in both of the films that Tom and Phil are in together (Magnolia, Mission: Impossible III) they are equals.

The problem for Tom is we see his films. He releases one, we see it, he releases another one in a few years’ time, we see it, and he hasn’t changed. This doesn’t foster objectivity. Cary Grant never won an Oscar. I tell people this and they react as if it’s a travesty, and it is, but when he was working, the same thing happened. People saw his movies year after year and never saw him change. So they dismissed him. But history is the great thresher. It lets bad movies fall away and the good ones rise to the top. So we see Cary Grant now in His Girl Friday and Notorious and Bringing Up Baby and Philadelphia Story and we can’t believe he never won.

You know why James Dean is as revered as he is? He made three films and all of them have lasted. That’s all we’ve got to work with, three artifacts.

I’ve used Tom Cruise to make a point, not to turn you on to Tom Cruise. I don’t think he’s flawless. I don’t think he’s very good in The Last Samurai. I don’t buy the change to hero. Something strikes me as false about it. But more often than not, I think he’s very good if not excellent. So if you’re around me and criticize Tom or another actor for being the same in every role, just be forewarned, I’m going to ask for more.

NOTE: I first had this conversation with my former roommate and still friend Marisa. You can read her thoughts here.

Hey Chicagoans, check this out

Not only does NYC's public transportation run better, apparently the entire state cares about it. Read here.

Remarkable, huh?

Got it

As I was leaving work yesterday, my phone rang. They were calling to let me know that I'd gotten the part.

Wa-hoo!

I'm stoked. I'm going to get paid and I felt I really nailed the part which he essentially confirmed, so this should be fun.

More details to follow.

Thanks, everyone, for all of your support and encouragement.

Oh this just pisses me right off

I found this on IMDb. I never thought about smoking a pipe. Probably because I'm aware that Cookie Monster is not human so what did I care if he did? How is it kids are often smarter than adults?

Read on.

Scott


Early 'Sesame Street' Deemed Unfit for Today's Kids

DVDs of early seasons of Sesame Street bear a warning to parents that they may not be appropriate for small children, the New York Times observed today (Monday). Carol-Lynn Parente, executive producer of Sesame Street noted that in the early days of the show, a regular feature was a parody of Masterpiece Theater, featuring Alistair Cookie, played by Cookie Monster, who appeared with a pipe. "That modeled the wrong behavior," Parente observed. Oscar the Grouch appeared too grouchy. "We might not be able to create a character like Oscar now," she said. The Times also noted that in the DVDs (Volumes 1 and 2) Cookie Monster can be seen "in his former inglorious incarnation: a blue, googly-eyed cookievore with a signature gobble ('om nom nom nom')."

Lucero

Went to a concert recently. Hadn't been to one in a while.

The band was great. Lucero. A friend turned me on to them. I don't know what you'd call them. Southern rock funneled through punk? Vice versa? I listen to them and it's immediately summer and the window's down in the car. They make me want to hit the road without a clue of where I'm headed. They played for about 2 hours. Their encore consisted of them looking at each other and wondering what songs they knew to play. At one point, they started playing until they realized they had played it before.

It was the most rock star concert I've been to. Copious amounts of alcohol both on stage and off. Tattoos galore. Good music. Yes, I suppose there were things missing. There was no disdain for the audience, no destruction, no nudity. Well, I take no nudity back. There was a random girl who walked on from backstage and made donuts with her tummy for the benefit of the lead guitarist. And then there was the smashed couple. They were fun to watch. The girl made like she was going to take her shirt off for the benefit of her man who looked too drunk to know what was going on.

I'd forgotten just how drunk people can be. There was one dude who was probably 6'5'' who loved the band and since he was drunk and that tall, could go anywhere and profess it. It was fun to track his progress through the crowd. He looked like he was wading in the shallow end. There was also an all-out brawl. It took 5 guys to separate the two.

Two other bands played that night. The first was fine. They played country/rockabilly (?). They were a little too unaffected by it all. All their songs sounded about the same, which could be worse since it's a good style, but come on. What annoyed me most was the rhythm guitarist. He would sing backing vocals but wasn't harmonizing. This kind of music needs that.

I was a little apprehensive when the second band trickled on stage: a keyboardist who had enough facial hair to make a wookie feel inadequate, he wore a beret; a girl with a bari sax; a fairly normal if linebackerish drummer; a guy in a dark pinstripe suit with a red tie and net hat with "DANGER" handwritten across, crazy, curly hair sticking out. Their appearance screamed irony and pretension. I saw Chuck Prophet open for The Old 97's and he annoyed me all to heck. I was prepared for the same: an act like they didn't enjoy being onstage that would comment on the rock and roll lifestyle.

Imagine my surprise when they opened with "Valentine" (not the Old 97's song), a song they had played with regularity on XRT about a year ago. I didn't remember who sang it before, but I will now: Bobby Bare, Jr. From the chorus, I gather it's a song about a guy who killed his Valentine. It's catchy. But most importantly, they played it without irony. Their whole set, too. It was strange. Cognitive dissonance. But they were good. Great songs, consummate musicians, but most importantly for me, they were enjoying themselves.

I can't stand when bands pretend or are truly not enjoying themselves. You're playing rock music in front of adoring fans. You're providing a vicarious experience. Don't rob us of that.

Anyway two good bands that understand. Check 'em out. Lucero comes around to Chicago every November

No Country for Old Men

****
11/17/07
by Scott Cupper

Sheriff Tom Bell…………...Tommy Lee Jones
Llewellyn Moss…………….Josh Brolin
Anton Chigurh……………...Javier Bardem
Carla Jean Moss……………Kelly MacDonald
Carson Well………………..Woody Harrelson
Wendell..…………………...Garret Dillahunt

Written & Directed by Joel and Ethan Coen
Based on the novel by Cormac McCarthy

Rated R
Runtime: 2 hrs. 2 min.


Here is a movie that makes you lean forward and listen. As the opening credits rolled in silence, my ears were drawn to the sound of people digging in their popcorn bags. The movie does not come and get you, it draws you in. This makes the chase aspect of the movie more effective. So much of the suspense hinges on what is heard and not seen. You become attuned to listening to beeps and phones ringing and things scraping against one another and boots treading the floor. When I walked out of the theater, I heard the sound of my feet hitting the sidewalk.

The importance of sound is established in an early sequence that introduces Llewellyn Moss. Josh Brolin’s portrayal of Llewellyn is that of a simple man for whom bad impulses are still too familiar and good ones too new. We follow him across the Texas countryside as he tracks a deer he has shot. Blood on the ground leads him in a new direction. When he arrives at the carnage of a shootout where he finds heroin, he correctly guesses that there must be money. He finds it in a bag by the dead man who ran away with it. Llewellyn takes it. There is no dialogue except when Llewellyn meets a man who asks for agua. The only other words spoken are whatever Llewellyn deems worthy of uttering to himself. The crunch of his boots on the rocky ground, the straps on his binoculars and gun, the wind howling, these are his only accompaniment. We become as aware of what Llewellyn sees and hears as he is.

The man sent to retrieve the money, Anton Chigurh, has already been introduced and killed two people. One with an air tank that has a hose attached, a device we learn later is used to kill cattle. It’s also very useful for blowing locks off doors. Javier Bardem plays Anton. He is a terrifying figure, a man for whom killing is simply an act, perhaps even a sexual one. With his goofy smile, strange haircut, dark polyester clothing and voice that sounds like it got swallowed on the way up, we might think Chigurh stands outside the movie, an embodiment of death, if the havoc he wreaks wasn’t so devastating.

The cat and mouse chase between these two is so good because they are evenly matched. Both are men driven by their own codes of honor, Llewellyn’s more recognizable, involving a love for his wife Carla Jean he finds easier to express in action than kind words. They are also matched in intelligence. Initially, it seems far-fetched that Llewellyn is able to survive when facing Chigurh’s almost supernatural abilities until we learn Llewellyn is a Vietnam vet. Each man plots his next move, adapting and improvising as their plans fail or succeed.

Caught in the middle is Sheriff Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones). What seems like a typical Tommy Lee Jones role of a man driven by obsession quietly isn’t. The movie begins with his voice over shots of Texas landscapes, telling a story about a teenage murderer he caught who said he’d been looking for someone to kill. Bell wonders what the old-timers would have done with the world he lives in nowadays. The question he’s really asking is, “What am I supposed to do?”

He seems more interested in answering this question than solving the crime. He avoids DEA agents who keep calling and asking him to come down to check out the sight of the shootout. His deputy is more likely to find him at the diner than at the office. He makes some attempts at investigating, but it’s never quite enough. He can’t figure out what weapon Chigurh is using, but when he mentions it in a story he tells Carla Jean and doesn’t make the connection, we realize he’s out of his depth. Or isn’t interested in getting in too deep.

No Country for Old Men has suffered the same criticism leveled at Michael Clayton. It’s effective but is there anything more? Yes. No character in the movie meets an end that we expect. The movie is interested in questions of fate and destiny. Perhaps this is why Chigurh is so different: he sees himself as fate. In one of the best scenes of the movie, he flips a coin and asks a gas station attendant to call it. Everyone involved understands that the man is calling his life. But even Chigurh, who seems to feel beyond the reach of fate, has this game cleverly turned on him by Carla Jean.

It’s happened that I’ve seen a couple of movies recently that have successfully addressed problems another movie was guilty of. Lars and the Real Girl answered problems that The Darjeeling Limited had. Now No Country for Old Men answers the problems found in American Gangster. The Coen brothers trust the story they are telling and don’t feel the need to move things along at a pace that isn’t necessary. The slowness of some scenes is agonizing, but that agony is part of the scene. The Coen brothers are master filmmakers. Their recent movies have been entertaining if not successful at every point. They never lose their footing here.

Dallas

I have the theme to Dallas stuck in my head. Don't know how. But it's there. Firmly lodged. Probably right in between the cure for cancer and the best script anyone ever wrote. Can't get to either of 'em, however, because the Dallas theme is in the way.

And supposedly, if I finish it, I could get it out of my head, but who the hell knows how it ends? Does it even have an end?

All day!

This sucks.

Big Day

I've been getting up at 5 a.m. to write for an hour. So that's when my day began yesterday. I've got a schedule I'm following. We'll see how it goes. That's not what this is about.

This is about an e-mail I looked at yesterday around 6 a.m. informing me that I had a callback that night. I haven't auditioned for anything. My friend Carol was invited as well, so I'm guessing that they saw Spacky. Anyway, the e-mail mentioned paying for the run of the show.

I have never been paid to act, and as much as I love what I do and as much as I feel that people like what they see when I'm onstage, it would be incredibly validating to get a lone dollar for treading the boards as they don't say anywhere anymore.

But nothing is simple. I was supposed to be presenting Wit last night, the show I will be directing in the spring at my church, to the church elders. Wit will run the last two weekends in April, with rehearsals beginning the end of February. The show I auditioned for runs from beginning of February to the beginning of March.

As Tracy and I discussed yesterday, when things are this close together, they happen at the same time in my mind. I don't know why, but scheduling is impossible. So the next time you try and schedule something with me and it looks like I had a mini-stroke, it's just me trying to figure out if anything happens close to it and if this proximity would cause them to aggregate.

The morning was spent in phone calls: calling the auditioner, calling my producer for the show I'm directing, calling a friend for wisdom, recalling everyone when the information changed. This stresses me out to no end. I hate making phone calls. As you can see, I'm not a business person.

Finally, I realized I could make it work. I could take the audition, do the show if I got it, and then direct.

Since it was a callback, I only had to do a coldread. Which is awesome. I actually have fun at coldread auditions. Monologues freak me the [bleep-boop] out. But with coldreads, you just have to make a choice, go on stage, and show it to them. So I did. They laughed.

I feel good about it. Great, actually. I was reading for Billy, and they only saw each of us once. No switching around to read with different people. No, "Can you do it again but like you're a tiger?" In my mind, this means they saw what they wanted from someone. I got it, or I didn't.

Either way, I got pizza afterward. Usually I get a beer, but man was it an exhausting day.

Rehearsals start in November, so I'll know soon. Keep checking back.

American Gangster

***1/2

11/15/07
by Scott Cupper

Frank Lucas……………….Denzel Washington
Richie Roberts…………….Russell Crowe
Josh Brolin………………...Detective Trupo
Huey Lucas………………..Chiwetel Ejiofor
Mama Lucas………………Ruby Dee
Laurie Roberts…………….Carl Gugino
Eva………………………...Lymari Nadal
Dominic Cattano…………..Armand Assante
Nicky Barnes……………...Cuba Gooding, Jr.

Directed by Ridley Scott
Written by Steven Zaillian
Based on the article by Mark Jacobson

Rated R
Runtime: 2 hrs. 37 mins.


Much of the thrill of American Gangster is watching it answer the question “How?” How did Frank Lucas, a black, low-level gangster, become the most powerful man in New York City, the mafia answering to him? How was Richie Roberts, a cop who could get nothing right in life, able to bring him down?

Frank Lucas (Denzel Washington) begins as an aide to Bumpy Johnson, the ruler of Harlem. Frank is a calculating man, doing Bumpy’s dirty work to be close to him. In an early scene, Bumpy is handing out turkeys on Thanksgiving. Bumpy waves Frank up, but he is content to stand in the back and observe. Later in the movie, we see Frank handing out turkeys.

This calculation serves Frank well. When Bumpy dies, the reins are not handed to Frank. He had no power before, none is granted him. He has to take it. The Vietnam War provides his means. A news report on TV about drug use in Vietnam leads to Frank’s revelation. The drugs are more pure. If he gets them from the source, they will be better and cheaper. The drug’s success is immediate. He brands the drug, calling it Blue Magic. In one of the movie’s many excellent scenes and supporting performances, Frank has to explain this concept to a buyer, played by Cuba Gooding, Jr., who is cutting it.

The purity of the drugs is not something the junkies are used to and a lot are OD’ing. The slew of deaths raises the interest of the cops, particularly Richie Roberts (Russell Crowe). Russell Crowe is a rarity in Hollywood: a leading man who is a character actor. The public persona of Crowe is that of a gruff, in-control guy, but he manages to make us believe in his characters, even when they are out of their depth as Richie is. Throughout most of the movie, Richie is learning how to be in control because most of his life isn’t. He has no stable relationships and his ex-wife (Carla Gugino) is trying to prevent him from seeing their son. He can’t do the policework he loves because his fellow officers ostracized him after he found $1,000,000 in a car he was tailing and turned it in. He had to. His honesty is the only thing he has to hold on to and it compels him. The feds take note of his interest in the drug case and his reputation and offer him the chance to lead a drug taskforce.

And so the pieces are set in place. These stories are inherently fascinating, but I sensed that the filmmakers didn’t trust them or us, the audience. The movie begins at such a quick pace and maintains it for so long that it almost outstrips these stories. People have complained that it is too long. That only happens when you don’t use the time effectively. Ebert is fond of saying that no good movie is too long and no bad movie is too short. It’s true. Here’s a movie that might have felt shorter if it had been longer and taken its time. However, when the stories and pace finally synch, it is masterful.

While the movie is trying to run away with itself, the performances by the leads anchor us. I’ve already mentioned Russell Crowe, but Denzel Washington is just as good. Denzel is a leading man, infusing each of his characters with his intelligence and likability. He is no less an actor, however, and when these two finally meet, their scenes are electric. Both are able to bring all of the history of these characters to this scene and play every nuance.

Steven Zaillian’s script contains a number of excellent scenes like this one that feel like mini plays. Even a clichéd relationship like Richie and his ex-wife’s resonates. All the actors are up to the challenge. Denzel and Chiwetel Ejiofor as Frank’s younger brother Huey have a scene about the outfit Huey is wearing that is as good as anything DeNiro and Pesci did in Casino. Ruby Dee is Frank’s mother. For most of the movie, it seems she is there for name recognition only until a scene where she confronts Frank. It is fierce and I hope people remember her when it comes time for nominations. All I could think watching it was, “She’s still got it.” And Josh Brolin as a crooked cop has the best reaction shot of the year.

Even with all of these wonderful scenes, they aren’t enough. While American Gangster understands the family component that is vital to organized crime movies, it doesn’t trust how far it can involve us. With Nicholas Pileggi (writer of Goodfellas and Casino) on board as a producer and these movies as fine examples, and with The Godfather: Part II demonstrating that a movie can leave a storyline for more than 2 minutes at a time and hold our interest, this movie could have been much more. Steven Zaillian’s script may be to blame for the pace issues, but it’s Ridley Scott’s job as director to see this and fix it. It’s incredibly frustrating that he didn’t. With most Ridley Scott movies, I feel like he just missed making a good movie. Here, he just misses making a great movie, which is all the more heartbreaking.

Blade Runner: The Final Cut

***

11/11/07
by Scott Cupper

Rick Deckard…………………Harrison Ford
Roy Batty……………………..Rutger Hauer
Rachael……………………….Sean Young
Pris……………………………Daryl Hannah
J.F. Sebastian…………………William Sanderson
Zhora………………………….Joanna Cassidy
Bryant…………………………M. Emmet Walsh
Gaff…………………………...Edward James Olmos
Elden Tyrell…………………..Joe Turkel

Directed by Ridley Scott
Written by Hampton Fancher and David Peoples
Based on the novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Philip K. Dick

Rated R
Runtime: 1 hr. 57 min.


My first viewing of Blade Runner took place in 2001 or 2002. A friend discovered I had never seen it and lent it to me. When I returned it and told him that I thought it was fine, he was a little surprised at my ho-hum response. I was too. I had expected to like it, but something about it left me cold. I refrained from writing it off, however, since so many people hold it in such high regard. I wanted to see it again before I cast judgment. So I was excited when the opportunity presented itself to revisit the movie on the big screen. I have to say, though, that I left the theater with the same, cold feeling.

Now, I’ll be the first to admit that few movies have had as great an impact on filmmaking. Blade Runner’s dystopian vision of the future, overrun with grime and pollution in all its forms, is still affecting movies more than 20 years after its first release in 1982. Any film set in the future pays homage whether it adheres to the template Blade Runner created or ignores it. This influence even stretches beyond sci-fi. A friend mentioned The Narrows, the island that houses Arkham Asylum, from Batman Begins. If you’ve seen the movie, I think you’d agree. But what about the other elements of Blade Runner?

I don’t want to leave anyone behind who may not have seen the movie, so let me catch you up. Blade Runner is set in Los Angeles in 2019. The story hinges on androids called replicants that resemble humans so closely, only a series of tests can determine whether they are human or not. Replicants were created by the Tyrell Corporation for slave labor on other planets that have been colonized (collectively known as Off-World). A group of replicants became unhappy with this arrangement and revolted, killing humans in the process. This resulted in the banishment of all replicants from earth. The Blade Runners of the title hunt replicants and retire (kill) any found on earth.

Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford) is just such a Blade Runner. Here’s where I might describe some of his circumstances to give you an idea of him as a character, but there aren’t any. When we meet him, he’s being asked to return to the force. A group of rogue replicants has found their way to earth. No clue as to why he left or was asked to leave. It’s a testament to Harrison Ford that we care about Deckard at all and makes you wish he had challenged himself in his roles a bit more. Ford lends Deckard his “gee whiz” attitude with the cynical edge. The kind that makes Deckard drink a lot and alone, often at his piano that is covered with black and white photographs of people. His family? We don’t know.

The leader of the replicants Deckard is hunting are led by Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer). It’s a performance that made my friend question why he hasn’t gotten better parts. I concur. Roy Batty appears at first to be completely evil, but we learn his violence has a purpose. When replicants were created, their inventors correctly theorized that they would develop emotions, so all replicants were given a 4-year life span. Batty is looking for the fountain of youth. Or at least a life.

This makes Batty the more interesting character, or would if the movie weren’t slavishly devoted to its genre conventions. Batty spends so much of the movie being villainous that it never gets around to exploring his drive until it’s too late. The whole movie has this tendency to focus on the wrong part of a storyline. The noir elements are glazed over. Deckard’s search for the replicants lacks focus and urgency. The clues are not only weak but also convenient. But then it’s decided that a femme fatale is needed, so Rachael (Sean Young), a new version of replicant, is introduced. Which presents some interesting questions, or would if she stuck around after the movie asked them. The editing is similarly misguided, often cutting abruptly which creates a jarring experience.

I’ve been presented with various theories in an attempt to reconcile all of this (Deckard as a replicant; the editing as subjective, representing the sensory equivalent of how the young replicants view the world). While each is able to tie up some ends, some are always loose.

So I’ve pretty much bashed the movie for most of the review but given it three stars. Part of it is its influence, but honestly, it’s not a horrible movie. I’ll probably end up watching it again. It’s the movie’s potential for greatness that is so aggravating. It’s like director Ridley Scott got frustrated with a Rubik’s cube when a few more twists would have solved it.

Before the Devil Knows You're Dead

****

11/9/07
by Scott Cupper

Andy………………….Philip Seymour Hoffman
Hank………………….Ethan Hawke
Charles……………….Albert Finney
Nanette………………..Rosemary Harris
Bobby………….……. Bryan F. O’Byrne
Dex…………………...Michael Shannon

Directed by Sidney Lumet
Written by Kelly Masterson

Rated R
Runtime: 1 hr. 57 min.


Here’s a Rube Goldberg Movie that works. You remember Rube Goldberg, right? He was the cartoonist who drew complex contraptions to perform simple things like getting olives out of a jar. There are a number of movies that I label this way: House of Sand and Fog, A Simple Plan, In the Bedroom, and most recently, The Brave One. These movies all take their average, everyday characters and move them toward an outlandish, often violent, conclusion. I like some of these, others not so much, but none do I feel really work. I always felt that the script was a contraption that the characters were being forced to use. Before the Devil Knows You're Dead lets the characters create the contraption and observes as they use it.

Characters are often pawns, but these characters live and breathe. They make choices that are irrational. They reveal themselves with their words and movements. Their past is as tangible an element as the present. It’s this attention to the past that is a large part of the movie’s success. In the grand scheme of things, we knew little about Jodie Foster’s character in The Brave One. In Before the Devil… we feel that each character has been dealt their part and we’re here to watch them as they reach the inexorable conclusion.

Why do I suspect a playwright when I witness this care for character in a movie? And why am I correct? Screenwriter Kelly Masterson is a playwright. This is his only produced screenplay and I found no evidence that he has more coming. I imagine that will change. Much has been written about what a movie and what a play can accomplish, but none of it convinces me that such a dichotomy exists. Certainly not Sidney Lumet’s career which is sprinkled with play adaptations (12 Angry Men anyone?).

So when am I going to get around to talking about the movie? It’s difficult. There is so much to mention about the movie that it’s easy not to deal with any specifics, particularly when I don’t want to reveal, well, anything. But to give an idea: Andy (Philip Seymour Hoffman) and Hank (Ethan Hawke) are brothers, both in need of money. Though the movie jumps around in time, the plot is fairly straightforward. Andy and Hank hatch a plan to rob their parents’ jewelry store. They know the layout, the people involved, it should be easy and safe. Naturally, everything goes awry.

It may feel like I’ve revealed too much. I haven’t. A bank robbery in another movie would be the climax. It is nothing more than a catalyst here and is almost incidental. It’s when we meet Albert Finney as the father that we realize this isn’t a heist movie at all. It’s a family drama.

The performances in this movie are nothing short of amazing but I don’t want to go into detail. The joy of the movie comes from discovering who these people are, the dynamics of their relationships and how these elements propel them. Let it suffice to say that any and all of the leads deserve whatever award nominations they receive.

I was surprised that the performances elicited some chortles from the audience at parts that were clearly not meant to be humorous. I believe that the rawness of the performances made them uncomfortable. An actor friend of mine told me a story about a non-actor he knew who decided he would take a small role in a production. A bit into the rehearsal process, he confessed to my friend that he had thought that acting was getting up and saying things in a cool way, but he found it to be a lot more than that. It’s a lesson these audience members could stand to learn. There is nothing cool about these characters. They are ugly people in ugly situations doing ugly things. The actors are perfect.

There’s a voyeuristic thrill to Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead. Writer Kelly Masterson has tied these characters into a Gordian Knot and shown Sidney Lumet the end which he relishes pulling slowly. When you begin with a robbery, it’s hard to believe there’s anywhere to go, but Mr. Masterson shows us that the bottom is a lot deeper than we think. It is a gruesome journey, but I dare you to look away.

Sharks and a Priest

Mr. Vaughn, what we are dealing with here is a perfect engine, an eating machine. It's really a miracle of evolution. All this machine does is swim and eat and make little sharks, and that's all. -- Hooper from Jaws

I love sharks. For a good third of my life I wanted to be a marine biologist and study them. They are fearsomely perfect. They move so effortlessly, their streamlined bodies almost seem to separate the water, their tails need move little to propel them. And then an awe-inspiring display of violence. The force with which a shark attacks is nearly as terrifying as the mouth that opens to show row upon row of teeth and an abyss.

This is how I feel about the New England Patriots. They devour opposing football teams. They are incredible to behold. A lot of people are down on them. The Colts-Pats match up was being touted as a battle between good and evil. Well, I've got to say, when evil looks so damn good, who cares? I want 'em to go 16-0 and win the Super Bowl. All this much to the chagrin of Tracy, my girlfriend. The game this past weekend was a strain on our relationship. I just wanted to see a good game. Bonus, the Pats won. She wanted the Colts to win, and more specifically, the Pats to lose.

The Pats have been called soulless. There is a certain detachment about them. They don't seem to enjoy winning, but perhaps this is part of their secret to success. Living in Chicago, there's a lot of talk about our team needing to be fired up. Many bemoan the loss of Mike Brown for the season, the emotional leader of the team. What if we didn't worry about that? What if we just went out and decided we needed to win? Because being fired up isn't always going to be there. It's not something you can rely on. It's something we actors talk about a lot. Sometimes, you're going to go out on stage and you're not going to feel it. Well, you need to anyway.

I get this sense from the Patriots. Like a shark that decides it needs food, the Patriots were down in the fourth to the Colts and attacked. There was a need for touchdowns and they got them. No fire. No whooping. A simple need and 11 men went out onto the field and went to work. It's the same thing I saw from Vince Young in the Rose Bowl when he scored the touchdown to put the Texans in striking distance of USC. The crowd was ecstatic. He didn't celebrate. There was still work to be done.

Now, don't get me wrong, I like a good story like the rest of you. Have you been keeping an eye on Priest Holmes? This is pretty incredible.

In 2005, Priest Holmes, running back for the Kansas City Chiefs, was involved in a helmet-to-helmet collision that injured his spine. He was never paralyzed, but the injury was severe enough that he did not play last season and it was a question whether he would ever play again.

Then, shortly before training camp begins this year, 2007, he lets the Chiefs know he wants to play. Why? He had a dream.

I believe in visions. But it's not something that happens very often, so I was skeptical. I haven't had a vision. But I came across this article on ESPN.com. There's something about the way the journalist Elizabeth Merrill captures Priest that made me think. His humility, his devotion to his kids, his disregard for the money, his perseverance. Something. And in my head I thought, "Maybe."

There's a pretty simple way to test a vision: sit back and watch. So I have been. Read the titles of these articles. They tell a story. If Priest was going to play, there were a lot of obstacles. But one by one, circumstances kept changing and the obstacles kept evaporating. Until we arrive at this Sunday. Larry Johnson probably won't play. So it's up to a rookie and Priest. I'll be keeping an eye on this game.

Lars and the Real Girl

****

11/2/07
by Scott Cupper

Lars……………………….Ryan Gosling
Gus………………………..Paul Schneider
Karin……………………...Emily Mortimer
Kelli Garner………………Margo
Dagmar……………………Patricia Clarkson

Directed by Craig Gillespie
Written by Nancy Oliver

Rated PG-13
Runtime: 1 hr. 46 min.


After having seen The Darjeeling Limited, Lars and the Real Girl was a breath of fresh air. Darjeeling is laden with the cynicism that has invaded our culture. It wants to cut through this, but never quite succeeds. Lars circumvents this by being without cynicism. It has no ambivalence about its characters. It loves them unconditionally as do we. It has been criticized for being unrealistic. I’ll admit, cynicism is inescapable in the world we live in, but should that stop us from imagining a world with it?

Lars (Ryan Gosling) is alone. By circumstance, by choice? Both. Lars lives in the garage adjacent to the family house where his brother now lives, but his sister-in-law has to tackle and pin him to get him to come over for dinner. And forget romance. When a woman at church hands him a flower and tells him to give it to a nice girl, he launches it into the woods when the next girl he sees says hi.

His sister-in-law, Karin (Emily Mortimer) thinks he needs help. His brother Gus (Paul Schneider) thinks he doesn’t because Lars says he doesn’t and that’s good enough for him. As it usually turns out, the woman is a bit better judge of this sort.

Lars goes into work one morning and his cubicle partner asks him to check out something on his computer. Lars immediately averts his eyes and asks if it’s porn again. Well, kind of. Anatomically correct dolls. A few days later, Lars gets a call from Karin telling him a large box arrived for him. That night, he invites himself over for dinner to his brother’s house with a guest. Gus and Karin are thrilled until they meet Bianca, one of the dolls from the website. Lars informs them that they met on the internet and she’s returned from Russia where she was doing missions work.

This could be a broad comedy, mining every moment for all the humor there is and isn’t, but that would just turn it into a 1½-hour SNL sketch and we all know the success they have with 5 minutes. Writer Nancy Oliver doesn’t ignore the humor, but it’s clear she’s interested in much more. There’s nothing sexual about Lars’s relationship with Bianca. As the family doctor tells Gus and Karin, Lars needs the doll and will until he doesn’t.

Patricia Clarkson plays Dagmar, the family doctor. She encourages Gus and Karin to go along with the doll. Naturally, they’ll have to get the town do the same. The trepidation with which Lars and the town approach each other is the heart of the movie. Roger Ebert has said something along the lines that it’s not bad things happening to people that moves him, but people doing good. Lars and the Real Girl is full of people doing good. They adopt Bianca as a newcomer to town, even letting her borrow clothes and styling her hair. I particularly like when Lars goes to a party at a coworker’s house. What could be unbearably awkward becomes a time when everyone involved learns of what they are capable of being.

Lars is on a journey of his own. Dagmar begins therapy sessions with him under the pretense of passing time while Bianca receives treatments. Lars is a fly, ready to take flight at the slightest gesture toward him. But watch the way Ms. Clarkson eats her sandwich. It epitomizes her performance. She doesn’t force anything, creating a safe atmosphere that is actually anything but.

Gosling’s performance as Lars is at the crux of the success of this movie. Lars’s mannerisms and costumes are all Gosling’s, but it’s his commitment to the role that really sets it apart. Lars treats this doll as if she is real, arguing with her and even falling in love with her. If we felt Gosling was winking at us at any point, the movie would crumble at the more emotional moments, exactly when we most need to believe, but he doesn’t.

Emily Mortimer and Paul Schneider are both excellent and create a real screen couple. Ms. Mortimer may be familiar from Match Point but my guess is this movie will introduce a lot of people to Paul Schneider. He is equally excellent in a small movie you may have missed called All the Real Girls. If you have missed it, I would suggest you rectify that. Many actors force themselves on us but Mr. Schneider simply exists on screen. It’s his very comfort that makes him compelling. It’s not a showy performance and will probably be ignored come awards season, but watch the scene when Gus confesses what he feels may have been his part in creating Lars’s current condition. This is one of the best performances of the year.

I don’t know if I’ve done Lars and the Real Girl justice. I’ve tried to pull back the quirk just enough to show you what’s underneath. All I can hope is that you’ll go see the movie.

The Darjeeling Limited

**

10/29/07
by Scott Cupper

Francis…………………..Owen Wilson
Peter……………………..Adrien Brody
Jack………………………Jason Schwartzman
Brendan………………….Wallace Wolodarsky
Rita………………………Amara Karan
Alice……………………..Camilla Rutherford
Patricia…………………..Anjelica Huston
The Businessman..……… Bill Murray

Rated R
Runtime: 1 hr. 31 min.


There are a lot of people who love Wes Anderson. I appreciate that he has a distinct style, but I feel the praise he receives from some is a little much. I like Rushmore a lot. That was released in 1998. Now here’s The Darjeeling Limited nearly 10 years later. Its camerawork is even more self-indulgent, the acting even more mannered, and the characters are still trying to grow up. I expect filmmakers to mature but I feel that Wes Anderson might actually be regressing.

The Darjeeling Limited of the title is a train in India. Francis (Owen Wilson) has invited his brothers to join him on the train. They haven’t seen each other or spoken in a while. When Peter (Adrien Brody) arrives, he asks Francis what happened to his face. Indeed. Francis looks like an elephant that got his ears and nose done, bandages wrapped around his head. He was involved in a motorcycle accident and landed face first.

This experience was the impetus for the journey. I mentioned that they haven’t seen each other in a while, since their father’s funeral a year ago to be exact. Which they nearly missed. And their mother didn’t attend. Because she’s disappeared. As expected for a Wes Anderson movie, issues abound. But this trip is going to bring them together. At least, this is Francis’s hope and he’s going to do everything in his power to make sure it happens including dictating rules for them like saying yes to everything, no matter what and having Brendan (Wallace Wolodarsky) onboard making laminated itineraries.

Peter is skeptical, but we learn that’s pretty much par for the course. He’s been in a long-term relationship with Alice (Camilla Rutherford) and is going to have a child with her but just isn’t sure about it. Why? Couldn’t say. The youngest, Jack (Jason Schwartzman), is at the whim of the others and the world. Sex with the stewardess presents itself, and he obliges. But he hacks into this ex-girlfriend’s voicemail whenever a phone presents itself.

Francis has plotted a course visiting as many holy places as possible. I will credit Wes Anderson with making India a character. He and his co-writers Roman Coppola and Jason Schwartzman toured India beforehand and the research is evident.

The movie is at odds against itself. One night, the brothers have a heart-to-heart-to-heart around a campfire. The moment inspires them to participate in a spiritual ceremony that Francis learned about. They all go to different corners of the screen and come back and find that only Francis did it correctly. It’s an amusing moment, but one that deflates the emotion that came before. This type of humor only works when the characters are laughing, too. Not just us.

This is indicative of the movie as a whole. Wes Anderson’s style has become so pervasive that it is what the movie is about. Every moment of pathos is undercut like this with humor or exaggerated color or a too-symmetrical shot. The movie is as emotionally stunted as the characters. Mr. Anderson has his actors be so unaffected by anything we’re not really sure when anything happens. Maybe that’s why when there finally is enlightenment, we are informed that it has happened with slow motion and a hip soundtrack blaring. Catharsis replaced with Hollywood magic.

I don’t know. There’s a lot about the movie that may reveal itself on multiple viewings. The movie is rife with symbolism; the most obvious is the father’s luggage that they cart through India. And I’m sure there are plenty of Wes Anderson apologists who would be ready and more than willing to explain it to me. How having the movie avoid emotion like the characters creates a subjective experience. But I couldn’t help feel that Wes Anderson and his actors like these characters and wanted me to like them, too. And if the movie fails at that, well, I’m not on board.

Note: The weekend after I saw The Darjeeling Limited, the short film Hotel Chevalier, which acts as a prologue, was being run before the film. That is why I made no mention of it here.

Gone Baby, Gone

***1/2

10/23/07
by Scott Cupper

Patrick Kenzie……………….Casey Affleck
Angie Gennaro………………Michelle Monaghan
Lionel McCready…………….Titus Welliver
Beatrice McCready…………..Amy Madigan
Helene McCready…………….Amy Ryan
Jack Doyle……………………Morgan Freeman
Remy Bressant……………….Ed Harris
John Ashton…………………..Nick Poole

Directed by Ben Affleck
Screenplay by Ben Affleck & Aaron Stockard
Based on the novel by Denis Lehane

Rated R
Runtime: 1 hr 54 min

Gone Baby, Gone opens with a masterful sequence. Patrick Kenzie (Casey Affleck) narrates as we watch slow-motion shots of a poor neighborhood in Boston. Not a few movies have begun this way, but the interplay between these pieces quickly makes something that seems rote, original. They depend on each other for their depth, at times complimenting one another, at other times, commenting on the other. It is the cinematic equivalent of a fugue. All the while, it is gradually focusing us, zooming in from the streets of Boston to the front porch of the home of a 4-year-old girl, Amanda, who is missing.

From here, we enter Patrick’s home whom we learn from his narration is a missing persons investigator. Patrick is in the kitchen with his partner Angie Gennaro (Michelle Monaghan) who prepares breakfast, the TV turned to the news coverage of the missing girl. A nice little commentary about the saturation of the media is made here. We cut from this scene to more news coverage. When we cut back to Patrick and Angie, they’re still watching, but they’re in bed, ready to turn in.

The next morning they are awoken by someone pounding on their door. It is Lionel (Titus Welliver) and Beatrice McCready (Amy Madigan), the uncle and aunt of Amanda. They know Patrick finds people and they’d like to hire him. Patrick is willing and wants to meet with the mother, but Angie, also his business partner, is reticent. He promises that if they meet the mother and she still feels this way, he’ll decline.

The mother, Helene McCready, is belligerent and uncooperative. She’s played by Amy Ryan whom you may have seen on The Wire. Nothing she did on that show can prepare you for the performance she gives here. Angie’s still not sure about taking the case until Beatrice shows her a picture of Amanda. I liked that Angie's care is never explained. She and Patrick don’t have any children, but it’s never clear whether this is by choice or not.

The rest of the movie is Patrick and Angie trudging through every turn this case takes. The always-reliable Morgan Freeman is policeman Jack Doyle who specializes in missing child cases. He assigns Remy Bressant (Ed Harris) and John Ashton (Nick Poole) to assist them.

The movie is not short on fine performances. I’ve already mentioned Amy Ryan, and Ed Harris is as good as always. I missed The Assassination of Jesse James…in the theaters, so I was anxious to see Casey’s performance here. I’ve enjoyed watching him in his smaller roles. His characters are always vibrant, creating something where a lesser actor couldn’t. He is very good here.

I’ve always thought Ben Affleck was a talented actor. Yes, he’s been adequate in some very bad movies, but he’s never been bad in a very good movie and that is an important distinction. I was excited to see him step behind the camera and he proves to be a capable director. Boston comes alive as it hasn’t even in movies as good Good Will Hunting and Mystic River. He handles the layered plot well, giving it the time it needs to develop. There are a few times where he plays up drama, but for the most part, it’s a sure hand that guides this film.

This assurance is particularly evident in a scene where Angie makes an impulsive decision. Where other filmmakers would linger on her face in the moments before she acts, Ben Affleck barrels right into it, trusting that her character has been established. It is the right choice. I hope he makes many more of them.

Eastern Promises

****

10/21/07
by Scott Cupper

Anna……………………...Naomi Watts
Nikola……………………Viggo Mortenson
Semyon…………………...Armin Mueller-Stahl
Kirill………………………Vincent Cassel

Directed by David Cronenberg
Written by Steven Knight

Rater R
Runtime: 1 hr 40 min


Eastern Promises is set in London, but the subject is the vory v zakone or the Russian mob. It begins with that favorite fluid of Cronenberg’s: blood. We see two scenes. First, an Eastern European man enters a barbershop. His intention is to get a haircut. Instead, he has his throat slit. Then, a 14-year-old, Russian girl who is pregnant enters a pharmacy. She is bleeding on the floor. Slowly, the connection between these scenes is revealed.

The girl from the pharmacy, Tatiana, is brought to a hospital. The baby is saved, but Tatiana passes away during childbirth. Anna (Naomi Watts) is a midwife at the hospital and is on duty when Tatiana comes in. She finds a diary on the girl. This personal touch, the death of the girl, and the orphaned child lead Anna to search for Tatiana’s home and hopefully a home for the child.

Anna is English and can’t read the diary which is written in Russian, but she finds a card for a restaurant, Trans-Siberian, in the diary. There she meets the owner of the restaurant, Semyon. Armin Mueller-Stahl plays Semyon with just enough kindness and grandfatherly touch to make us uncomfortable.

Outside of the restaurant she meets two other Russians. We learn that they are Kirill (Vincent Cassel), Semyon’s son, and Nikolai (Viggo Mortenson). Everyone refers to Nikolai as the driver. But when we see his method of disposing bodies, we know that he’s much more than that. And so, what begins as a good deed eventually involves Anna and those close to her with the Russian mob.

Eastern Promises works on a number of levels. It is a beautifully structured story written by Steven Knight who wrote the equally fluid screenplay for Dirty Pretty Things. The actors are all excellent and the script asks some complex moral questions. But it is not beyond the voyeuristic thrill that is inherent in all organized crime movies, particularly when the subject is less familiar to us. As one might suspect, the Russian mob is dourer than its Italian counterpart. Its signature is that tattoos tell where you’ve been, and there’s a great scene where a group of men tell Nikolai his life story as he sits in his boxers.

You have probably heard about the fight scene that takes place in a bath house. The choreography is brutal and it is shot well, but if this is all you’ve read about it, avoid all other notices. Several reviewers have said that this fight scene has set a benchmark in fight scenes. It is true.

David Cronenberg apparently has asked reviewers not to reveal the plot. I didn’t get this memo (not on that circulation list yet), but I feel I’ve obliged him. I believe that Cronenberg’s concern is with the big plot twist that comes three-quarters of the way into the movie. I was certainly surprised, but at first it felt hollow. I accepted it, however, because Cronenberg had earned my trust. My trust was rewarded in the final scene. It hinges on who holds what information and the choices people make. The surprise makes it a richer scene. And a richer movie.

Michael Clayton

****

by Scott Cupper
10/18/07

Michael Clayton……………George Clooney
Karen Crowder……………..Tilda Swinton
Arthur Edens………………..Tom Wilkinson
Henry Clayton………………Austin Williams
Marty Bach…………………Sydney Pollack

Written and Directed by Tony Gilroy

Rated R
Runtime: 1 hr 59 min


I had my doubts as to the validity of the title of Michael Clayton. How could a thriller be named after the main character? After having seen the movie, there is no better title.

Michael Clayton is a character study cleverly disguised as a thriller. It’s a rumination about family and where family fits into life when we’re all so busy running around doing our jobs. And what are our jobs anyway? Do they define us? But I promise you, it’s a thriller, and an incredibly effective one, but one where only the cops have guns, and nary one of them is fired. After having seen The Brave One which hinges all its drama on a normal citizen up and buying a gun, it’s refreshing to see a movie that doesn’t rely on guns to create drama.

Very few thrillers have room for any sense of character development. There’s plot to churn out so they better get cookin’. Michael Clayton circumvents this problem by speaking in grace notes.

When we are introduced to Michael Clayton’s (George Clooney) son, Henry (Austin Williams), we see him in an apartment. It is tight and crammed with housewares. His mom chastises him on his way out the door for not eating breakfast. The stepfather rolls his eyes begging her to let the kid be a kid. He feeds another child who is in a hi-chair. He is bald and rather plain. Henry walks outside and we see George Clooney waiting for him. In that brief scene, we learn Michael Clayton is divorced. His wife probably left him because she never saw him. So she found a guy who earned less and wasn’t as flashy, but could give her the stability to have another kid. We don’t see her again. The movie is full of these moments that infer more than tell.

So who is Michael Clayton? Michael Clayton works for a prestigious law firm as a fix-it guy. If there’s a problem, he cleans it up. As it would happen, a big problem happens when one of their litigators on a huge case, Arther Edens (Tom Wilkinson), strips down in a deposition.

And that’s all I want to say. I’ve seen plenty of movies in my time. Not as many as I’d like, but enough, and it’s hard to keep me guessing. I didn’t have a clue as to how this movie was going to resolve until it did. But it’s a fine line to travel. Not only are we following Michael Clayton and discovering things as he does, we’re also discovering who Michael Clayton is. The movie never gives us firm footing.

Certainly not in the first 15 minutes. We are thrown into this movie. Scenes of sterile New York office buildings are set against Arthur’s voice as he patters on in a mad ramble. We follow a courier in one of these buildings into a room with 50 people all doing very important things but without a clue as to who they are or what they’re doing. Michael Clayton is sent to speak with Mr. Greer who left the scene of a hit-and-run.

Here is another example of the economy of this movie. Casting director Ellen Chenoweth found people whose very appearance onscreen tells you who they are. Denis O’Hare’s performance as Mr. Greer is pitch perfect. Now watch his wife (Julie White) in the background. Again, we know everything we need to know about this man and his wife.

The leads as well are perfect. I’ve been a fan of George Clooney’s before it was cool to be a fan. This is his best work. Clooney is expert at playing calm, cool and in control. He begins this way, but through the movie, fissures begin to show. Clooney shows his commitment in a scene with Tom Wilkinson in which the only thing he has left is desperation. It is a brave performance.

The other standout is Tilda Swinton, and I will let you discover how she fits into this puzzle. An English actress, she is little known on these shores, but this performance should change that. We see her running through a speech that she will be making later. She tries different words, expressions and we see a woman who doubts herself and knows that she has no choice but to believe in herself. That contradiction is evident in every single word she utters.

Sydney Pollack, the man you get when you need the head of a law firm, also does his best work here. He’s played this character before, but there’s often a sense that he’s trying to justify why he’s there. There is no sense of that here.

The movie is written and directed by Tony Gilroy, best known as a screenwriter on the Bourne movies. This is his directorial debut. Clooney had originally wanted to direct. I believe Clooney is as skilled a director as he is an actor, but he prefers long takes and fluid camera work. The precision and exacting detail that Tony Gilroy brings might have been lost. Michael Clayton is quite a statement from a first-time director. I can’t wait for more.

The Brave One

**1/2

by Scott Cupper
10/17/07

Erica Bain…….…………….Jodie Foster
Detective Mercer……………Terrence Howard
David Kirmani………………Naveen Andrews
Detective Vitale…………….Nicky Katt
Carol………….……………..Mary Steenburgen

Directed by Neil Jordan
Screenplay by Roderick Taylor & Bruce A. Taylor and Cynthia Mort

Rated R
Runtime: 1 hr 59 min


The Brave One suffers from the same problems a lot of other movies of this type do. You know, the kind of movie in which a normal, everyday, average, run-of-the-mill person murders someone. I have a problem with these kinds of movies. They think that a character can be moved from Point A (not killing) to Point B (killing) through a number of situations and that at the end, we’ll believe that this person can be a murderer. I was talking about this with a friend and he made the remark that they work like a Rube Goldberg drawing. Well, Rube Goldberg Movie it is. But I, for one, have yet to believe it.

Jodie Foster plays Erica Bain. She has a great job (radio show host) and a great fiancé, David Kirmani (Naveen Andrews). Life is great. And maybe the movie has already gone wrong. But I’ll digress later. One night, Erica and David are walking their dog through Central Park. They are harassed by some hoods who end up attacking them. It is a brutal scene. In the end, David is dead and Erica nearly so.

At this point, we get the obligatory scenes of recovery, the police questioning someone and not being sympathetic to the fact that they’re still grieving, and depression. I sound like I’m belittling this. I’m not; I’ve simply seen it before. I will say that Erica’s fight to get out of her building is excellent. The soundtrack comes alive at this point. Subtle animal noises are added to sounds like cars passing. Every footstep behind her becomes a new threat. This must be what it feels like to return from war.

The Rube Goldberg portion begins at this point. The first place Erica goes after leaving her house is to the police station to check on the progress on her case. They are no help, so she goes across the street and buys a gun off the black market. Yes, her fiancé died. Yes, she almost died. Yes, the streets are scary. Yes, the police won’t help. But if she’s been waiting that long, I think she might have waited a little longer. And why does she get the gun? Protection? Vengeance? It’s only later when she’s cornered that she uses it.

It seems that the powers that be in Hollywood don’t think that we can handle an everyday person becoming a killer. Erica can’t simply awaken after being beaten nearly to death and desire to kill someone. That’s not sympathetic. She has to be given hoops to jump through. A similar thing happened with the Michael Douglas movie Falling Down. He couldn’t simply start shooting people because he couldn’t handle the daily grind. No, they had to give him a history of violent tendencies. While this makes the movie easier to swallow, it also castrates it. What could be social commentary becomes a run-of-the-mill thriller.

There’s a scene where two men sexually threaten Erica on a train and she shoots them. I went to see the movie with my girlfriend and a female friend of ours and they really responded to this scene. They’ve been in similar situations, not as dangerous, but as violating in their own ways, and they appreciated a woman protecting herself. It’s the scene I felt was the most true. If a regular person is going to kill, it will either be an impulsive choice or come from a lifetime of injustice. I said at the beginning that giving Erica a wonderful life might have been a mistake. It seems like too far to go. Perhaps if her dog had been the only thing she had, I might have believed it more.

Jodie Foster is in this movie. She doesn’t do many. I wish she did more. While I never believed what the script gave her, I always believed her. It is a very raw performance.

Terrence Howard is as good as Detective Mercer who is investigating the murders and also gets to know Erica on a personal level. Their scenes together are the best part of the movie. He suffers the same fate as Jodie Foster and the movie again doesn’t always know what to do with the fact that he doesn’t know she’s the killer he’s looking for but she knows. But it is a joy watching two actors who are so skilled at their craft. If either of them are nominated for Oscars, I would not complain.

Nicky Katt plays Detective Mercer’s partner. His morbid humor at the crimes scenes is hilarious, but having his character there for comic relief only is a mistake. It’d be much more interesting if Terrence Howard were given those lines.

The whole movie is muddled. Is this a revenge movie or a psychological study of someone recovering from trauma? By not choosing either, The Brave One blazes a trail down the wide line of mediocrity. The director, Neil Jordan, is best known for The Crying Game. He generally goes his own way, but with this one, I felt like he was in a Tug-of-War with the studio, but not a very exciting one. Some Tug-of-Wars go back and forth. This is the kind where nothing really happens until someone’s in the mud. I’ll let you decide who.

Note: If there're a way to give this movie a positive review, Tracy did it. You can read her review here. Also, if you don't know who Rube Goldberg is, go here.

Shoot 'Em Up

***

by Scott Cupper
10/15/07

Smith…………………….Clive Owen
Hertz…………………….Paul Giamatti
Donna Quintano…………Monica Bellucci
Baby Oliver……………..Sidney Mende-Gibson
Lucas Mende-Gibson
Kaylyn Yellolees

Written & Directed by Michael Davis

Rated R
Runtime: 1 hr 26 min

Sorry I've been out of commission. Been busy. Hopefully will get back into the swing and actually see a movie this week. Reviews for The Brave One and Eastern Promises will be coming shortly.

In life, there’s what I call the Rule of Three. It goes like this: you are presented with Item A. You have an initial reaction to Item A. Then you become bored with Item A because it’s there. Then you go back and look closer at Item A because it’s still there. This phenomenon is most often encountered on TV shows filmed before a live studio audience. Say an actor lands a good joke well. First comes the initial laugh. The actors wait. The laugh dies down. The actors still wait. That’s when the second wave of laughter comes in.

I feel like we’ve reached this point with certain genres: Westerns, action movies, horror movies. We’ve seen the originals; we’ve seen the rehashes. Now we’re at the reimagining. A more learned review would probably define this as post-modernism. Bah.

This can be handled in many ways. A prime example is Scream, which simply pointed out the clichés. Others choose the punk approach, boiling the genre down to its core components. Unforgiven added psychological complexity to the Western. And others simply blow the doors off of what we’ve seen before. Shoot ‘Em Up, the best-titled movie of the year, chooses this approach.

Consider Donna Quintano, the female character. Is she there for any other reason than there are always sexy women in an action movie? And she is played by whom? Monica Bellucci, the woman you get because Marilyn Monroe is dead, Sophia Loren is old, and Salma Hayek is pregnant. And if you see the movie, think about her profession and, er, special talent. Might the director be making a commentary about the relationship between these characters and the audience?

All this is serious stuff about a movie that doesn’t take itself seriously at any point. Consider that the opening fight contains a shot of spent shells bouncing off a pregnant tummy.

Before we meet the pregnant girl, however, we are presented with one of the great faces of modern cinema: Clive Owen. Yes, ladies, I understand that’s he’s fun to look at, but that’s not what I’m talking about here. Certain people have faces that tell you a story without the owners even uttering a word. Bogart comes to mind. And now we have Clive Owen.

We first see Clive (playing a character only known as Smith) in close-up, chomping on a carrot. A woman (possessor of the aforementioned pregnant tummy) walks past him clutching said tummy, screaming in pain, into the alley. Clive chomps on his carrot because life is hard. A man crashes a car, screams misogynistic jingles after the woman, and follows her down the alley. Clive, hoping that the burden of life doesn’t kill him, rises.

And so Shoot ‘Em Up begins and doesn’t stop. There’s a plot and it might actually be a commentary on America’s love of guns, but every time I tried to figure it out, people started shooting guns. The complexity might be a commentary on plot itself, but there I go again.

The movie mixes gunplay into every aspect of life. Yes, even childbirth. And of course, death. But what makes this movie so much fun is how it relishes the gunplay. Every time you think they’ve topped themselves, they top themselves. In everything: choreogrphy, violence, imgination. I’m thinking back over the movie, trying to figure out which sequence to mention, but I don’t want to ruin any. So, if this sounds like fun, go see it.

I should mention the other players. Paul Giamatti is there as the villain, Hertz, and relishes his role. It’s nice to see great actors simply having fun. I believe that most actors get into acting because they want to handle a gun in a big action movie. I think Giamatti’s earned this bit of fun, don’t you? The other performance of note is Oliver, (the baby from that tummy) played by three babies. He often gets laughs simply because he’s there. If only all comedic acting were that easy.

I had a great time at this movie. Some of the actual jokes don’t land quite where they should like most of the bullets fired in the movie, but I appreciated director Michael Davis’s imagination who animated his storyboards to show people what he wanted this movie to do. If you’re tired of overbloated Jerry Bruckheimer productions (Pirates of the Caribbean anyone?), this is the perfect antidote.

Marcel Marceau: 1923-2007

We've been cheated by mimes most of our lives, seeing street performers trapped in boxes or people attempting it without any training. All the while, we are unaware of its full potential.

Thank God for Marcel Marceau. And what a tragedy his death is.

I am blessed to have seen Marcel Marceau perform a full two hours of mime. He came to Indiana Univserity while I was going to school there. I don't remember much about it except I was never lost, nothing was unintentionally ridiculous and I was always entertained. But it was at the lecture he had given a few days before that he demonstrated the true power of mime.

I don't remember how I heard about the afternoon lecture and I don't remember if I arrived early or late, but the auditorium was full. I stood at the back with my girlfriend at the time as he was being interviewed. I remember little of this except his humor and how lithe he was, simply sitting there. After the interview, there was a Q&A that he ended by saying he would perform the story of good and evil.

This is all it was: for two minutes, a man stood on a stage, and with one hand representing evil and the other representing good, he showed their struggle and good's eventual victory. But I tell you, it was the most amazing performance I have seen in my life and I believe I will die without seeing anything to surpass it. I cried and as I cried I laughed that a man could make me cry by moving his hands.

I am grateful for that moment and am saddened by his death.

Resigned

If you see me today, you might suspect me to be depressed. Not so. You see, I haven't been involved in Bears culture very long, but I understand that this is how it goes. You are given a year of brilliance, and then it is gone. That's pretty much true for Chicago sports in general. The Bulls of the 90's? An anomaly. And so I'm resigned. I'm resigned to the fact that it's going to be a long Bears season.

Now Rex could wake up, but will he stay awake? I'm not holding out hope. I was a big supporter of Rex last year. It was his first full season. He was making first season mistakes. He showed flashes of absolute brilliance. But it's become too much. One more game. That's all I think he should get.

And if he's benched, would that save our season? The grass is always greener on Griese's side. But is it? He hasn't had the greatest track record. Looking at his stats, he's been fine his entire career. And maybe that's all we need. Someone who is fine. Someone to be a game manager.

But where's our great quarterback, huh? Don't we deserve one? I'm sorry. I'm whining. It's just that the only quarterback of note in regards to talent is Sid Luckman. Who? Yeah, I didn't know until I got here either. Mostly because he played from 1939-1950.

So here I sit. Resigned. But you want to know the cool thing about Chicago? There is hope. Always hope. We bury it. Pretend it isn't there. But in the end, heck, it's got to be our turn sometime.

Why I love Devin Hester.

I always have. Well, not always. I don't remember watching any University of Miami games and seeing him. So I should say I've loved him as long as he's been a part of the Bears.

And not just because he's an amazing return specialist. That's a given. It's how exciting he is. Do you remember Barry Sanders? I do. I loved watching him. Every time he got his hands on the ball, you never knew what was going to happen. He made things happen that shouldn't have happened. He actually kind of ruined the running game for my brother and me. We'd watch and wonder why some running back would run up the gut into a wall. Barry didn't do that.

As I began to watch football more and more, I learned about blocking assignments and routes, etc. But I began to wonder where the excitement was. Touted running back after touted running back and I'm looking and not seeing Barry. I thought maybe it was my youth. Like when you go back to your school and it looks so much smaller.

And then along came Hester. I realized that Barry hadn't been a fluke. That excitement I remembered is valid. Hester is the most exciting player since Barry Sanders.

Superbad

***
by Scott Cupper
8/30/07

Seth…………………Jonah Hill
Evan…………………Michael Cera
Fogell………………Christopher Mintz-Plasse
Officer Slater………Bill Hader
Officer Michaels…...Seth Rogen
Becca……………….Martha MacIsaac
Jules………………..Emma Stone

Directed by Greg Mottola
Written by Seth Rogen & Evan Goldberg

Rated R
Runtime: 1 hr 54 min.


This is perhaps my easiest review to write. Let me ask you this: Do you want to know the mind of a high school boy? If you’ve answered no, then don’t see Superbad.

For those who are sticking around, let me give you some other reasons to see Superbad.

It’s not the premise. It’s pretty simple. Seth (Jonah Hill) and Evan (Michael Cera) are two high schoolers who have thus far failed at women. Evan with Becca (Martha MacIsaac), the girl of his dreams, and Seth with every attractive girl, the only kind he’s interested in. This being their senior year, time is quickly running out, so they make it their quest to succeed. Or more accurately, Seth makes it their quest.

Fate shows it their friend when Seth gets invited to a party that night by Jules (Emma Stone) who is friendly. And attractive. This provides Evan the opportunity to invite Becca to the party. How can this fail? Then Jules drops the bomb: And, oh, can you bring the liquor?

Luckily, Seth and Evan’s faithful sidekick of a friend Fogell (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) is getting a fake I.D. that very afternoon. Fogell’s that friend that you wish you hadn’t had, but when you had so few friends to begin with, can you really turn one down? Particularly one who is providing you the key to your dreams? Until Fogell proudly hands over his fake I.D. with his chosen alias: McLovin’. Just McLovin’. Oh what are these boys to do?

A lot actually including getting punched, shooting guns, getting run over, stopping crime, cops, singing, running all in the quest for procuring alcohol. Basically, general craziness prevails for this section of the movie. I got the impression that when Seth Rogen (who co-wrote and plays a cop) and Evan Goldberg (just a writer, thank you) wrote this when they were 13, they realized they were going to have a 45-minute movie if they kept it up at this rate. So they put in a whole bunch of obstacles. A few are genuinely funny, some are amusing, and the rest are simply plot.

The biggest problem with this stretch is that Seth and Evan are separated at times. I don’t want to take anything from Christopher’s performance as Fogell. He has a unique energy that is a wonder in its own way. It’s just that Michael Cera and Jonah Hill are so, well, funny together that it’s lunacy that the movie keeps them apart at all. I’m trying to find words to describe how it is that they work so well together and I’m having a difficult time. Yes, Cera’s “Aw shucks” perverseness and Hill’s desperation complement one another well. But what it boils down to is that you believe their friendship. The conversation flows so naturally between them that you feel like a voyeur.

When’s he going to mention how raunchy it is? Well, yes it is, but that’s dismissive. The first 20 minutes is long, extended scenes that rely solely on dialogue. We follow Seth and Evan as they begin their day and all they do is talk. Sure, the movie is not above using a curse word so much that that’s the joke, but it’s also interested in how these words are used. If you’ve seen a Tarantino movie, he does the same thing. And the jokes are not all simple either. When Seth makes an analogy comparing his sex life and Orson Welles’s career, that’s a joke that takes some smarts to make the some smarts to get.

I said that Superbad gets a lot right about high school boys. For me, the biggest things that are how much they think about sex (constantly) and how much sex they actually have. I’ll leave that for you to discover.

Storms

If you're not in the midwest, you've probably read about our string of severe storms. If you're in the midwest, you've undoubtedly experienced them. And string is right. We've got an assembly line stretching from Michigan to Northwest Texas. Apparently we're right on the edge of a bubble of hot air. And neither is moving.

It's been crazy. Severe thunderstorms every day. And night. Yesterday was the worst. Tornado warnings for all of Chicago. 310,000 people without power. My workplace lost power so we went home early. 2,400 trees damaged in some way and not a small number down. Traffic lights down. Over 2 inches of water in an hour. Viaducts flooded. The Edens (essentially I-94 after it diverges from I-90 north of the city) was closed because it was flooded. Yes, flooded. Lake Shore Drive was gathering water.

But it was the wind that was the most amazing. Gusts of 74 m.p.h. That's the windspeed at which a Tropical Storm is upgraded to a Hurricane. I've been up most nights at some point because I have two huge trees at either of my bedroom windows and I have never seen trees blowing so hard. So I get up and move to my living room in case one of those trees should decide it's tired and needs to rest in my bed. Watched an episode of the The West Wing last night. President Bartlet had to make a tough decision about the Defense Minister (I think) of Qumar. Riveting stuff at 1 a.m.

One more day. Oh yes, that's right. We could get another severe storm today. But the weekend promises nice weather.

The Bourne Ultimatum

***

August 10, 2007
By Scott Cupper

Jason Bourne…………….Matt Damon
Pam Landy………………Joan Allen
Noah Vosen……………...David Strathairn
Simon Ross………………Paddy Considine
Nicky Parsons……………Julia Stiles
Ezra Kramer……………...Scott Glenn
Desh……………………...Joey Ansah
Dr. Albert Hirsch…………Albert Finney

Directed by Paul Greengrass
Written by Tony Gilroy, Scott Z. Burns, and George Nolfi
Based on the novel by Robert Ludlum


Jason Bourne is awesome. Faster than a computer. More powerful than crashing cars. Able to size up any situation in a single glance. It’s Jason Bourne!

Therein lies the problem of The Bourne Ultimatum. Now don’t get me wrong. I love to watch Jason Bourne being awesome. And Matt Damon is awesome at making Bourne…awesome. But by simply being awesome, the series has lost something along the way. In the first Bourne outing, The Bourne Identity, Jason Bourne was bewildered by what he could do and we were in awe. We were discovering together. Lately, though, he’s all about revenge.

It’s a natural progression, I understand this. At the end of Identity, he was content with what he knew about himself and was trying to live happily ever after on a secluded island with his girlfriend. But the CIA wasn’t happy, so they killed his girlfriend. Now, that would mess me up somethin’ awful. The funny thing, though, is that we no longer really care about his plight. We’re more interested in fights and big things go boom.

Jason Bourne has become more machine than man, going about his business as if he was programmed to do so. And forget about anything else. Sex seems to be a thing of the past. The movie wants us to believe that he loved his girlfriend, but when Bourne learns that he was in at least one other relationship, he reacts as if he’s been told he once owned a vacuum cleaner.

Ultimatum understands that this has happened, so it gives us something else to care about while Bourne is traveling from clue to clue. Joan Allen returns as Pam Landy, but she is no longer heading up the Bourne case. That job has gone to Noah Vosen (David Strathairn). And like any superiors must, they butt heads. Pam is trying to understand Bourne. Noah is trying to eliminate him. These are two fine actors and their interplay is a highlight of the movie. If Jason Bourne’s pursuit wasn’t so loud, this would feel like the main plot of the movie.

Ultimatum gets the ball rolling with a newspaper article that’s coming out. Reporter Simon Ross (Paddy Considine) is about to break the story on Treadstone and Blackbriar. I was a little hazy on this, but I think Treadstone became Blackbriar. Our hero was the first of the new program. That Jason Bourne, he’s such a good sport. So, anyway, Jason gets wind of this article and meets with the reporter.

The meeting was one of the movie’s best action sequences. Bourne, being the cunning fox he is, knows that this reporter is most likely being followed. So he slips him a cell phone and tells the reporter how to avoid all the security. It a skillfully crafted sequence that plays the right notes of Bourne’s knowledge verses the reporter’s fear.

I’m not in love with Paul Greengrass’s direction like everyone else is. Yes, his handheld style is kinetic, but it sacrifices a lot. It was very effective in Bloody Sunday. Here, however, the action scenes are a great deal more confusing than they need to be and at some point it’s even hard to tell exactly what’s going on. There’s no need for it. The pleasure of seeing this kind of movie is what the actors are doing. We want to see cool fights.

It probably sounds like I didn’t enjoy the movie. I did. It’s fine. It’s effective. It’s a good time. If you liked The Bourne Supremacy, you’ll like this one. It’s just when something starts with such promise, it’s hard to see it settle for the common denominator. At least it goes for the jugular.

Ratatouille

****

Remy…….…………….Patton Oswalt
Linguini……………….Lou Romano
Chef Skinner…………..Ian Holm
Colette…………………Jeneane Garofalo
Django…………………Brian Dennehy
Gusteau………………..Brad Garrett
Anton Ego……………..Peter O’Toole

Directed by Brad Bird
Screenplay by Brad Bird
Story by Brad Bird, Jim Capobianco, and Jan Pinkava with additional material by Emily Cook and Kathy Greenberg


Ratatouille is one of the most effortless movies I have seen. It goes about its business likes it has no desire to aspire to anything other than entertaining you. It’s only afterward that you realize how much the movie was saying, which makes its ease all the more remarkable.

It begins as the story of Remy (voiced by Patton Oswalt), a rat who has an exceptional sense of smell and takes great delight in food. This passion gets him in trouble with the humans where the pack is living and they have to leave.

Remy ends up in Paris. The people there share his passion for food, but feel generally the same about rats. He can’t help himself, however, and ends up in a restaurant where he saves a hapless garbage boy named Linguini from ruining the soup.

And from there, the movie just goes, introducing one wonderful character after another: the head chef Skinner (Ian Holm), the female chef Colette (Jeneane Garofalo), the critic Anton Ego (Peter O’Toole), and many more, all of whom have their moments whether they be singular or shared with many. The plot is a delight as it twists and turns and wends its way always landing where it should but never overstaying its welcome.

You can’t talk about a Pixar film without talking about the animation. There are many action set pieces in the movie. One of my favorites is after Linguini decides that Remy is going to help him cook. Neither knows how this is going to work and their first attempt is hilarious. In the end, there may be a few too many set pieces and they may go on too long, but each one is so ingenious that I can’t fault the movie for it.

Linguini (Lou Romano) may be my favorite creation by Pixar yet. He is a perfect blend of animation and voicework. He’s still not sure how to use his legs and arms and Lou Romano makes him talk as if he’s never said the right thing in his life. I’ve met people who would talk and move like this if they were animated.

The movie gets it right in even the smaller moments. When Remy talks about food, the visuals and sound design they use creates one of the best representations I’ve seen on film of how an artist views the world.

And I’m not a traveler, but Pixar movies are the ones that make me want to go places. Finding Nemo made me want to visit Sydney, Australia and now I want to go to Paris.

I’ve become a big fan of director Brad Bird (The Iron Giant and The Incredibles). He has his own stories that he tells in his way, eschewing standard formulas. In any other Pixar movie, the reuniting of characters who have been separated is usually the point. Mr. Bird separates and reunites two characters but he’s interested in something else: What if the issues they had before haven’t gone away? It’s one of the many ways that this movie has more on its mind.

Much has been made about America’s view of animation as child’s fare. The issue is larger than whether we can accept animation for adults. That too is limiting. Animators don’t have to worry about the real world. They have more tools at their disposal than any live action director does and Brad Bird is utilizing all of them. Ratatouille evokes smell and taste better than any live action movie I’ve seen. It is what animation is capable of.

Rescue Dawn

****

Dieter Dengler……………………….Christian Bale
Steve Zahn………………..………….Duane
Jeremy Davies………………………..Gene
Toby Huss…………………………....Spook
Teerawat ‘Ka Ge’ Mulvilai ………….Little Hitler

Written and Directed by Werner Herzog

Rated PG-13
Runtime: 2 hrs. 6 min.


Few of us know what true survival is. We talk about surviving different tribulations in our lives, but it’s hyperbole. Our life may have changed drastically, but we were never in any danger of losing our lives. I had this thought when I was watching Rescue Dawn. It is about men who know nothing but survival.

The movie is based on the true story of Dieter Dengler (Christian Bale). For reasons better left to Christian Bale’s monologue to detail, Dieter came to the United States from Germany to fly. We first meet him in the bowels of an aircraft carrier being briefed on a top secret mission to bomb targets in Laos before the Vietnam War has begun.

I want to take a moment to talk about Christian Bale’s performance. In many movies, we learn who a character is throughout the movie. Not so here. In these opening scenes, Bale makes Dieter charming, cocky, and forthright in a way so as to be slightly awkward. These are traits that are consistent throughout the movie. We therefore know him immediately and so we join him on this journey. It is Bale’s best performance that I have seen.

Dieter is shot down during the mission and gets captured by the Viet Cong and eventually arrives at a camp where he joins 5 men who have already been imprisoned for two years. Immediately, his only thought is escape, and his enthusiasm eventually inspires the other men to try.

The relationships that these men develop in the camp are the heart of the movie. They become a surrogate family: they bicker, they support each other, they laugh. It was the laughter that amazed me. Not that it happened. I believe you would have to laugh. It was that the movie was able to make the laughter so genuine. Usually, the audience laughs at characters onscreen. Here, it is the characters who laugh and we are allowed to laugh with them.

I’ve already mentioned Christian Bale, but Steve Zahn also gives a memorable performance as another fighter pilot, Duane. What I remember are Steve Zahn’s eyes. Duane’s desire to be as strong as Dieter is all right there as is the toll the camp has taken on him. It is an incredibly vulnerable performance.

It is after the escape that the jungle itself becomes a character in the movie. I had heard a lot about the men fighting their way through the underbrush, but I wondered how bad it could be. It is one of the most memorable images of the movie. It is a testament not only to Herzog’s devotion to filming on location, but also to the devotion of the actors.

In another director’s hands, this could have been an oppressive movie with graphic torture scenes and amped up music and the prisoners screaming at each other. But it is not. It is gentle, even subdued. Shocking things happen, but they are not emphasized. Herzog trusts this story and his actors, and in the end, us.

Are You Sure You're Ready for Your Closeup?

"All right, Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my close-up."

When Norma Desmond utters this famous line in Sunset Boulevard, it's understood that this imaginary closeup is in a movie about her and this is the moment where we are to experience what she is experiencing. This is what closeups are meant to do. They reinforce a subjective moment. But I've noticed that closeups are being used incorrectly. Directors are unwittingly creating objective moments when they're striving for the exact opposite.

My father, of all people, noticed this trend first. I had seen the The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring and been unimpressed when everyone else was going ga-ga over it. When it came to a second-run theater, I figured I'd give it another shot and asked my dad if he wanted to go. When we were walking out of the theater, I asked him what he thought. All he mentioned was the amount of closeups of Frodo and his big eyes. I had wanted a little more of an answer so I kind of dismissed it at the time. It was only when I was watching The Two Towers and felt as apathetic as I had to the first film that I began searching for words to describe my experience. Claustrophobia came to mind and I recalled my dad's words. When I began looking for closeups, I realized my dad's answer was the more I had wanted 'cause there's a ton of them. Rather than creating the expansive feeling that these movies deserve, I felt like I in Bilbo's house in Bag End.

A slightly different problem is that action movies are being filmed in what might be called a cinema verite style. Paul Greengrass's Bourne Supremacy is an example of this. Cameras are handheld and are close to the subject creating an entire movie of closeups. When I saw the movie in the theater, several people I was with had to leave because they were nauseous. Much of Batman Begins, as great a movie as it is, is filmed in the same way. And yet at one point in that movie, it is the perfect choice.

The first time we "see" Batman being Batman is in the warehouse. An exchange of goods between criminals is being made. One by one, Batman is taking out hoods. Growing paranoia sets in among them because they don't know what's going on. Finally, the big showdown comes. This is one of the best scenes of the movie. Batman comes from above and sets down among a number of men, promptly dispatching all of them. At no point do we ever see him completely. It's a hand here, a foot there, a bit of cape. Sometimes we only see a body fall.

Now why does this scene work so well when all of the other fight scenes seem so confusing? It is because in that scene, we are the hoods and not Batman. We are seeing things through their eyes, and to them, it is confusing. We intellectually know that they're being attacked by Batman, but from the moment we step into the warehouse, the movie is from the point of view of the hoods. In all of the other fight scenes, we are Batman.

Now, I don't know about you, but if I got into a fight, I don't think I would have any idea what would be going on. It would be a flurry of fists, pain, and maybe a little joy if actually managed to land a punch. But to fight effectively, as Batman does, you need to counter the person you're fighting. You need to know what is going on in the fight. But all of Batman's fight scenes are filmed in such a way that we can't know what is going on. We are left to guess. And if we are guessing, we are not Batman, and if we are not Batman, then the movie has failed.

The same can be said of Bourne Supremacy. I think it is a very good movie, and perhaps could have been better than Bourne Identity, but Identity understood that Jason Bourne knows how to fight, and so we should have that experience as well. But Supremacy's fight scenes are a jumbled mess. Again, we have been separated from the character we are meant to be with. We are not involved in the fight. We are watching it.

Asian cinema, which has been dealing with intricate fight choreography a bit more than its Western counterpart, seems to understand this. Perhaps it only came from a desire to show the choreogrpahy, but the lesson is still there and the Wachowski brothers certainly learned it. Can you imagine The Matrix without seeing Neo cartwheeling through the air?

The failure of The Lord of the Rings is slightly different. While it's fight scenes have the same problem, it's the true closeups that are its biggest flaw. Peter Jackson doesn't understand how we feel about these characters. The books are large and sweeping and the movie should feel the same. The characters are archetypes, the quest has ramifications on the world. This is not a John Cassevetes movie. But Peter Jackson seems to think he can make the movie something it is not.

Closeups are a trait of his. They show up in King Kong but here they work because he sees this movie as a relationship between a woman and a large ape. Though the movie is a grand adventure, every time it focuses on their faces, we are a part of this relationship.

It's disheartening to see this coming from such fine directors who make so many other great choices. I haven't seen United 93 but I hope that Paul Greengrass used this style for that movie as he did so effectively with Bloody Sunday. I want to be with those people on that plane.

In the end, these directors have two choices. They can either follow directors as varied as Alfred Hitchcock, Martin Scorsese and Paul Thomas Anderson and find stories that fit their styles. Or, they can follow Steven Soderbergh and Gus Van Sant and find styles that fit the stories.

So what's it going to be, guys?