Monday, October 29, 2007

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.

Tuesday, October 23, 2007

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.

Sunday, October 21, 2007

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.

Thursday, October 18, 2007

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.

Wednesday, October 17, 2007

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.

Monday, October 15, 2007

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.