Anton's Celluloid Cottage

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2005-09-16T07:49:00.000-04:00

Here's the latest batch. Thank goodness someone took my "anti-Bushies" bait... I was afraid it had been wasted.

Report #4 Recap

2005-09-15T08:02:00.000-04:00

Yesterday was one of those completely schizophrenic festival days I usually love. First off: I'll be interviewing Sammo Hung towards the end of the fest, so if you've got any questions for him post 'em in a TB or shoot me an email.

I also popped in on a luncheon celebrating the launch of Norman Jewison's new book, This Terrible Business Has Been Good To Me. He's such a sweetheart of a man - I'm glad I got a chance to shake his hand and say thank you. I haven't had time to do much more than flip through it, but when you open to a random page and find him chatting with Bobby Kennedy about how important In the Heat of the Night is gonna be (this before Jewison had even landed the job)... well, I suspect it'll have some great stories in it.

And then I go out and have one of my worst film days ever. The specific reviews are coming later, but it was like my instincts had gotten cross-wired - everything I thought had the potential to be a hidden gem, uhh, wasn't.

And THEN I get to wake up and hear about Robert Wise. To quote Slim Pickens, I am depressed.

Review: Romance and Cigarettes (2005, directed by John Turturro)

2005-09-13T23:35:00.001-04:00

Walken does Tom Jones' Delilah.

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What, you need more? Are you kidding me? Those five minutes were worth festival priced tickets on their own, forget the rest of the awesomely, sweetly silly film around them, and easily landed this thing in my fest top ten (and probably higher). Let me repeat myself: WALKEN DOES DELILAH. Sings along with Tom. Acts out the song in a crazy musical fantasy sequence (one of many throughout the film - Romance and Cigarettes is, in its own deeply demented way, a musical), then does a dance down the steps after stabbing her at the door that can only be described as Walkenesque, before doing a Busby Berkeley style bit with the cops.

I mean, the rest of the movie is fantastic too. Everybody gets their moments to shine, from James Gandolfini and Susan Sarandon as the fractured couple at the film's heart to Aida Turturro (oh man, her "statement of feelings" speech slayed the entire crowd at the Elgin), Mandy Moore and Mary-Louise Parker as their daughters, to Steve Buscemi as Gandolfini's best friend (holy Christ, the hospital scene between him, Gandolfini and solid gold Broadway vet Elaine Stritch as Gandolfini's mother was unreal) to especially, especially, incredibly Kate Winslet as the world's sexiest, crudest bint.

You know, forget the Walken thing. Go see this film for Winslet. Her performance is so... I mean on the one hand it's so ridiculously over-the-top (the scene where she eats fried chicken in bed is going to be burned in everyone's heads forever) and yet she makes this completely fabulous character seem so completely natural that it's a work of sheer genius on her part. Regardless of what happens in February Winslet, here, gave the best performance by a supporting actress of 2005. It won't even be close. And of course it won't get recognized because the movie is a crazy comedy/musical/love poem to New York, and the Academy never recognizes comedy performances unless they let an old man misread the teleprompter. God the Oscars suck.

Where was I? Oh yeah, Winslet. No, wait, on third thought go see it for the musical numbers. The film isn't afraid to let the actors sing themselves (whether they can sing all that well or not), but gives them all the help they need to sell the song, whether it be in the form of dancing garbagemen or a big church choir when Sarandon tackles Janis Joplin. The musical sequences are glorious, and fully understand just how silly they are. This isn't an attempt to revive the musical; Romance and Cigarettes instead trades off people's nostalgia for musicals to make an emotional point. Beyond the Sea, this ain't.

You know what? Just go see it. You can thank me later.

Link

2005-09-13T23:35:00.000-04:00

I fired this one off before my doting mother pointed out the typos. Eep.

Review: Stoned (2005, directed by Stephen Woolley)

2005-09-13T23:34:00.000-04:00

A tired retread of Performance with cliches replacing Nic Roeg's more interesting observations on human nature, Stoned attempts to recreate the final days of founding Rolling Stone Brian Jones. Despite getting the surface details more or less right, the film completely misses in almost every other respect, from its slavish devotion to the Rock Star Myth and British class stereotypes, to its total failure to portray Jones musically as anything more than a guy who happen to know both Mick and Keith before they became big. About the only thing that does work is Monet Mazur's performance as Anita Pallenburg (and not just because she's naked a lot), a woman inpressive enough to get both Jones and Richards to fall for her. But even that just unbalances the film further - while we have no trouble understanding what they would see in Anita, the only reason really offered in the film as to why she would be drawn to Jones is that he's famous and has a big cock.

Let me sum up the film thusly. When Jones goes off on his first acid trip, the song that kicks in on the soundtrack is... White Rabbit. You know, the only psychedelically-themed song recorded in the '60s.

White. Fucking. Rabbit.

Brian Jones deserves better.

Report #3 Recap

2005-09-13T12:47:00.000-04:00

Here's some interesting line buzz I picked up second-hand: Jason Statham has apparently started shooting a flick in L.A. for Lion's Gate (or is about to), a pretty cool-sounding action/martial arts riff on DOA called Crank -- the plot basically has him posioned, and the only way to keep himself alive until he finds the guy with the antidote is to flood his system with adrenalin peridoically... heh heh. Besson's team doesn't seem to be involved though, which is a shame.

More reviews, including an absolute must-see for every single person who visits this site: six hours of bloody Danish mayhem called the Pusher Trilogy.

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2005-09-13T09:43:00.000-04:00

That silly bugger Quint forgot to chop off the signature from my email when he posted my second set of reviews... fortunately the song lyric quoted is strangely appropriate. I'm dying to see if any of the TalkBackers get it.

Review: Why We Fight (2005, directed by Eugene Jarecki)

2005-09-13T09:41:00.001-04:00

Here's a question for the peanut gallery: if the pro-Bushies (or "right wing", to use the quaintly obsolete term) are so correct in their worldview, why can't any of them make a decent documentary defending their position? Leave Michael Moore out of the equation for a moment; from Outfoxed to the Corporation, the last few years have seeen plenty of shots taken (with varying degrees of accuracy, granted) at the Bush administration, its allies and the very underpinnings of its New American Century-derived philosophy. What have you got in the opposite column? A couple of amateurish hatchet jobs of Fahrenheit 9/11, and one glorification of Bush's post-9/11 "heroics" that would have made Stalin grimace at its clumsiness had it been about him.

Well, if you don't like the way those scales are tipping, don't worry - Why We Fight pretty much breaks them entirely. The film looks back at President Eisenhower's farewell address, the prophetic speech in which he gave the military-industrial complex its name, and skillfully examines the rise of the M-I complex both on the largest (the sweep of US foreign policy after WWII) and smallest (the struggles of a retired NYPD sergeant who lost a son when the towers fell, or the pilots who dropped the opening salvos of round two of the Iraq War) levels. It also tries to come up with an answer to the question in the title, an answer which has grown far more complicated since Frank Capra's day.

Covering as it does US history since Eisenhower, the film gives every modern president a deserved smack, regardless of party. Each one, after all, found an excuse to use our might, found some little country somewhere worth invading or bombing or sending troops into for one reason or another. But the current administration, along the current situation in Washington, get dissected to the bone. Eisenhower's warning went unheeded, and as a result the US government has effectively been taken over by the unelected and unelectable. The cycle is now locked in: the war machine begets think tanks to justify its use; the think tanks beget politicans who tow their policy line; and the politicians beget the war machine through the ridiculous defense budget. Rumsfeld, Cheney, Wolfowitz, Bill Kristol, Richard Perle et al are just the devolved bastard by-products of a process that has been churning for decades - removing them from power would simply be attacking the symptom, not the cause.

At its core, Why We Fight is not an "anti-This Guy" or "anti-That Party" doc. It's a terrifying clear portrait of a democracy in crisis, a democracy that is teetering on the brink of irrelevance, rot and collapse (which is pretty much the order Rome had them in too). It's also one of the best films of the year, doc or otherwise.

You may now resume bashing Michael Moore, if it makes you feel any better.

Review: The Quiet (2005, directed by Jamie Babbit)

2005-09-13T09:41:00.000-04:00

At this point, dystopian visions of suburbia have become a genre unto themselves (one that's probably ripe for a Zucker-style parody, come to think of it.) After the Ice Storm and American Beauty and Far From Heaven and, heck, Serial Mom, there isn't a whole lot left to say about abouty the decaying, tranquilized souls of the American middle class.

There are, however, still some interesting ways to say it.

The Quiet tells the story of Dot, a teenager who went deaf and mute at the age of 7 after her mother died. Orphaned when her father also passes away, she's taken in by her godparents the Deers (indie stalwart Martin Donovan, and Edie Falco in top form, plus Elisha Cuthbert as their daughter.) If you'll forgive me for lapsing into reviewerese for a moment, "Dot's role as passive observer becomes threatened when the full details of the desperate torture of her new family's routine are revealed to her."

While its great to see Cuthbert prove that she can in fact act, and then some (Goddess knows they never gave her much to work with on 24...), and Camilla Belle as Dot marks herself as a talent with a bright future, the real revelation here is director Jamie Babbit. I'm not a fan of her first feature, But I'm a Cheerleader - it struck me as John Waters Lite, with half the fun and none of the calories - but aside from some fetching uniforms on Cuthbert and her closeted best friend, this film is nothing like that one. In fact it's a huge step forward. The look of the Quiet is very neo-expressionist, all cool desolate blues and streetlight creeping in like smoke through half-drawn venetian blinds, while the soundscape expertly conveys and plays with Dot's deafness. Combine those with excellent performances all around and you have a smart, sophisticated piece of work that proves Babbit is clearly someone to watch. If she makes a similar exponential jump with her next movie she's going to be demanding some attention from Oscar.

(Oh, and the sneaky Matrix reference was a nice touch... see if you can spot it.)

Link

2005-09-12T07:32:00.000-04:00

Quint finally got around to posting my first set of reviews... can't say I blame him, what with all the QT funness going on down there.

Review: Pusher Trilogy (1996/2004/2005, directed by Nicolas Winding Refn)

2005-09-11T01:33:00.000-04:00

Man, I would have loved to have been in the room the first time Quentin Tarantino saw these...

The Pusher trilogy (Pusher, With Blood on My Hands: Pusher 2, and I'm the Angel of Death" Pusher 3) is one of the most dynamic, explosive, sadistic, adrenalized bundles of cinematic fun in recent memory, and the second-greatest trilogy about organized crime ever. And no, that definitely isn't a back-handed compliment.

The first installment tells the story of Frank, a small-time drug dealer. Already in debt to Milo, a somewhat bigger fish in their dank little pond, Frank scrapes by from one deal to the next, getting drunk and high with his buddy Tonny and never quite committing to a relationship with his hooker girlfriend Vic. A big opportunity presents itself when a Swede he knew in prison looks to make a big buy, but the only person he can get that amount of product from is Milo - when the deal goes south Frank is left with neither cash nor smack, and he's got just a few short days to come up with enough money to keep Milo from letting his henchman Radovan bring the pain...

In the second film, Tonny is just out of prison. Never the brightest bulb anyway, the beating he got from Frank near the end of the first movie rendered him almost functionally retarded. In fact the only thing keeping him alive is likely the fact that his father is big-time crime lord the Duke, although even the Duke despises him. Tonny's one chance at redemption in his father's eyes (given the Duke's own pressing fatherhood issues) might be the newborn son Tonny didn't even know he had until he got out. Hooking back in with his dad's organization, Tonny becomes buddies with coked-up paranoid loser Kurt the Cunt, who's only the brains of their little two-man outfit because they both mistakenly believe he's the smart one. When Kurt fucks up a completely routine buy, he gets Tonny in too deep by coming up with increasingly convoluted plans to keep his partner off his back - without telling Tonny who that partner is...

In the third (and hopefully not final) movie, Milo takes the lead. Past his prime and trying to kick his dope habit, he's drifting towards semi-retirement, worried far more about cooking for his daughter's massive 25th birthday party than he is with his organization's latest dealings. When a bad batch of sarna lays all his henchmen low with food poisoning, Milo is left at the mercy of the various young Turks (and Albanians) looking to make names for themselves on the street, especially if it comes at the expense of a legend like him. Clinging by his fingernails to the wagon, Milo has nothing to defend himself with but his wits and his instincts - and a convenient hammer, and a favor called in from an old friend...

As a whole, the Pusher films play out like Cassavettes' adaptation of Balzac's Human Comedy, only with lots of plastic sheeting laid down for easy clean-up afterwards. There's not a single weakness in any of these movies. Every film has its own distinct atmosphere and feel, even though they all take place in the same milieu - #3 is basically an extremely black comedy that deals intelligently with the racial issues boiling away in Denmark, while #2's dedication to Hubert Selby Jr. makes perfect sense once you've seen it. The acting is brilliant, top to bottom, beginning to end; the dialogue is hilariously banal at times, chillingly so at others. The propulsive, grinding rock music on the soundtracks fits as perfectly as Goblin did for Dario Argento way back when. The restless handheld camerawork works exactly the way restless handheld camerawork is supposed to, letting you into the lives of these people without shaking the onscreen images into incoherence. And you're never allowed to forget for a moment, no matter how occasionally charismatic or sympathetic one of the characters might seem, that these are society's dregs you're watching, the absolute lowest of the low. There's no honor among thieves, and apparently no self-respect either, and not a whole lot of intelligence. When the end comes for them - and it comes for an awful lot of them, whether it's at the end of a gun, a corkscrew or down a garbage disposal - it feels like nothing more than an inevitability.

The Pusher films are astoundingly good, astoundingly vicious and bloody, and astoundingly fresh. There's probably too much depravity and viscera for them to get a chance in North American theaters, but they're eventually going to get over here on DVD.

And when they do, they're going to spread like wildfire.

Day One Recap

2005-09-10T12:04:00.000-04:00

Toronto - Day One

Greetings, starkinder! Sorry I've been maintaining radio silence, but I just haven't been able to come up for air. Unlike previous years, when the festival took a day or so to gear up, this time it started at full throttle and hasn't slowed down yet. I've got plenty of reviews backlogged already (including Tideland, which is... gaaah. Holy fuck. I still can't form a coherent thought about it.)

I know what you really want to know though... who's in town? Who will win the coveted Belle of the Ball title in 2005? This year there are only two real candidates, and unless Elisha Cuthbert has a previously unrealized talent for swearing like a sailor with Tourette's I gotta think Sarah Silverman will take home that prestigious taffeta sash and year's supply of corn chips.

I'd tell you about party stuff, but Copernicus got to hang with Bono at the Tommy Chong afterparty and I'm rather jealous.

Anyway, to the reviews...

Review: A History of Violence (2005, directed by David Cronenberg)

2005-09-10T11:00:00.000-04:00

There are two distinct types of Cronenberg films -- the ones in which a character or world's sickness is expressed externally (Videodrome, the Fly, Naked Lunch etc.), and the ones in which that sickness is locked inside, without Cronenberg's signature visuals to set them free (the Dead Zone, for instance.) Occasionally the two will intersect (most effectively in Dead Ringers, but also to an extent in Crash) but with his last two movies, it really felt like he was putting that first type of Cronenberg film behind him. eXistenZ at times bordered on gleeful self-parody, while the Cronenberg of the '80s might have used something far stranger than string to build those webs in Spider.

If A History of Violence is any indication of where Croneberg is going from here, I don't think anyone will miss that first type of filmaking at all.

The film opens with menace - two Bad Men on a crime spree, preparing to move on to the next backwater town. It then jumps to a scene that's almost ludicrously saccharine - a little blonde moppet of a girl wakes up from a nightmare, worried that there are monsters in her room. First her father (Viggo Mortsensen), then her teenage brother, come in to comfort her with earnest platitudes and cliches. Last her mother (Maria Bello) joins the impromptu hug-in, her gentle, loving sarcasm providing the only hint of depth to the emotions being expressed. You half expect to see Norman Rockwell in the corner of the room doing some preliminary sketches, the scene is so off-puttingly cornball.

Two scenes into the movie, and Cronenberg has already placed a seething ball of dread in your stomach... damn, the man is good.

From there A History of Violence proceedes towards a seemingly inevitable intersection. Life in the Stall family's small town appears to be everything life in a small American town should be. Dad Tom (Viggo) runs a diner and greets everyone by first name. Son Jack gets bullied at school because he's smart and unathletic. Mom Edie finds the kids a babysitter and surprises Tom with her old cheerleading outfit. It all seems to be exactly what it seems to be... and yet, it feels wrong.

Then the Bad Men show up, and Cronenberg flips everything on its head. You see, there are Ban Men, and then there are BAD MEN. And Tom is one of the latter.

Y'know, this is going to be considered a 'spoiler'-type movie by a lot of people, but it isn't in the least. Once Tom's forced into action and his face gets on the news, and long before the roaches start crawling out of the woodwork of his past, his identity is never in any doubt. It's written so clearly in his body language and in his eyes that this is a man with a history, something terrible he wishes he could escape or unwrite, that Ed Harris calling him Joey is almost redundant, just someone slipping off an innocuous dust jacket to reveal the book that's actually underneath. Tom/Joey's past is tangible, haunting every frame of film right up until the moment it ceases to be his past and becomes his present.

One of the great strengths of this movie is the performances. Viggo's got a lot of his plate here, playing a character almost constantly at war with himself, and he nails it. There's no stupid tricks here, where he changes his hairstyle or something when he goes back to being Joey. It's all done with the set of his shoulders, and his walk, and the look in his eyes, and it's chilling. Bello is the perfect foil for him, a smart confident woman who thought she was the strong one in the relationship. Her reactions to having her world ripped out from under her feet feel completely true. And the sex scenes between the two of them... whoa. Expect to have your heart rate at least doubled watching them, and guys? Don't plan on standing up or anything right afterwards.

(Speaking on which... at the end of one of those sex scenes, Cronenberg throws in the most political two seconds of his entire career. Not that the MPAA is a tough target, mind you, but it's still a tremendously brazen 'fuck you' directed at their institutionalized hypocrisy. I applaud you, sir!)

The other outstanding performance comes from Ashton Holmes as Jack. He's got almost as much going on under the surface as his father does, and provides an excellent counter-point to Viggo's walking time bomb act during the middle portions of the film. Here's another kid with chops - there seem to be a lot of those this year.

Above all though, this is Cronenberg's show. He's constructed a masterfully evil film here, one as riveting as it is unclassifiable. As with the Proposition, there's no showy action movie-style ass-kicking here. Violence is a sudden, brutal thing in Cronenberg's hands, and its echoes can reverberate for a lifetime.

A History of Violence is a masterwork from a master director, that can be read on any number of levels. (One could, for instance, construct a powerful argument that the film is a metaphorical illustration of the intelligence community's principle of "blowback".) Well worth seeing, as soon as possible.

Review: Banlieue 13 (2005, directed by Pierre Morel)

2005-09-10T03:51:00.001-04:00

A reasonably entertaining trifle from Luc Besson's adrenalin factory, Banlieue 13 has exactly one thing going for it, the new "urban" "extreme" sport of parkour. The stunt work on display here is extraordinary, which makes sense when you realize that parkour basically involves people doing for fun what Jackie Chan does for a living.

Beyond the awesomely fun stunts and foot chases, the fight scenes are fairly meh, and the rest of the film is distinguishable from Gymkata only by its production values. It does feature the quickest heroin withdrawl in film history, though, which I guess counts for something.

There's nothing really wrong with Banlieue 13. It just got made too late. A few years ago, it might have been considered revolutionary. In the wake of some of the other efforts from the Besson team, like the Transporter, that have come out recently - much less Ong Bak! - Banlieue 13 just feels like it's playing catch-up, not blazing any trails.

Review: Tideland (2005, directed by Terry Gilliam)

2005-09-10T03:51:00.000-04:00

Great films have exactly one thing in common -- they have the capacity to surprise the audince, whether in terms of story or theme or visuals or whatever. Somewhere in every great film is a jack-in-the-box that makes people shriek or giggle when it bursts open.

Make no mistake, this is a great film. But you're going to hear an awful lot of shrieking over it.

Tideland follows young Jeliza Rose through a few ugly days in her ugly life. Her mother's on methadone and her father, well, isn't, and relies on his little girl to cook up his smack and prepare his needles. When Mama dies, daddy and daughter flee to the house he grew up in, abandoned since his mother died. With only one other house, populated by its own train wreck of a family, within miles Jeliza Rose is essentially left to fend for herself in a place where civilization is just a big, clumsy word.

One of the things that makes Tideland so surprising is that it's really a Gilliam film turned inside out. The normal Gilliam aesthetic is to create a universe in which a pool of wonder hides an undercurrent of darkness. Tideland inverts that formula, presenting a universe as black as cancer with a thin little trickle of fantasy to relieve the despair. Jeliza Rose's world is hellish; Things happen around her and to her that Should Not Be. What's worse, she doesn't even realize it. The way things are for her is the way they're always been. Unlike the child heroes of Time Bandits or Baron Munchausen, Jeliza Rose has no frame of reference from which to put what's going on in perspective, and no home to which she can return once the madness subsides. Tideland makes explicit the message that's always gone unstated -- a Gilliam universe is a nice place to visit, but you wouldn't want to live there.

More than that though, what makes Tideland great is the complete honesty with which it shows that universe through Jeliza Rose's eyes. The things she sees, the way she reacts to them, are presented totally without judgement, despite the fact that from the audience's perspective they are unquestionably WRONG. Little girls, especially darling little girls played with such incredible, dazzling intelligence and skill (note to Hollywood: Jodelle Ferland just made Dakota Fanning obsolete) that you can't help but want to scoop them up and give them a big hug and protect them from the darkness, should not be subjected to the things Jeliza Rosa is subjected to. Darling little girls should also not do the things Jeliza Rosa does, in her efforts to adapt to her surroundings. But they do, and she does, and there's nothing we can do but watch, and pray that she somehow survives it all.

The fact that the film is transgressive is not what gives it such impact. It's that lack of condemnation that's going to create that chorus of shrieks. By playing it straight, by not making any moral judgements and simply letting Ferland's performance carry the film, Gilliam has crafted a film that strips away all defenses. The empathy I felt for Jeliza Rose blasted away any distance I had from what she was going through, and I suspect most people will feel the same. And a lot of them are going to be very uncomfortable with that feeling. Add to that the number of people who are going to feel betrayed because they expect Gilliam films to be psychedelic, feel-good bits of whimsy... well, let's just say this one's going to generate some pretty strong reactions.

There's no doubt in my mind that, eventually, Tideland is going to be seen as one of the high points of Gilliam's career. It may take a while to get there, though.

Review: Takeshis (2005, directed by Takeshi Kitano)

2005-09-09T13:41:00.000-04:00

Usually when a director makes a "doubles" film, it's for one of two reasons -- to either delve into a philosophical discussion of fate and free will, or to use really cool split screen effects so that you can have TWO Jean-Claude Van Dammes fighting side by side. In Takeshis, Kitano does neither, instead using the doubles theme to deconstruct his own persona and mythology as a Japanese media icon. And by deconstruct, I don't mean "analyze in an effort to subvert meaning and assumed truths", I mean "gleefully bash apart with a tire iron".

Kitano, in his 'Beat' Takeshi persona, plays himself, one of Japan's most recognizable faces, a show biz vet best known for his bloody, stylish yakuza films. While at a TV studio one day to finish production on yet another crap-ass gangster story, he bumps into Mr. Kitano (also played by 'Beat' Takeshi), a struggling actor forced to play a clown and a dead ringer for 'Beat'. Takeshi and his entourage muse a bit about what life must be like for the like-a-look, and from there the film launches into a series of overlapping dream sequences, with 'Beat' fantasizing about Mr. Kitano's life of drudgery and quiet humiliation, while Mr. Kitano fantasizes about what life must be like as 'Beat' Takeshi - or at least, what life must be like as the type of big screen character 'Beat' Takeshi is notorious for playing.

Confused yet? It goes deeper. A 'Beat' Takeshi stalker mistakes Mr. Kitano for the star, and gives him a present - a homemade 'Beat' Takeshi bobblehead. (Or did that happen in a fantasy sequence?) The members of Takeshi's entourage, and people from the TV studio, all plays roles in the dreamed-up life of Mr. Kitano (or is it the other way around?) Signature Kitano 'bits' - the interlude on the beach; a tap dancing sequence; his real-life, near-fatal accident - become muddled up in one and/or both sets of dream lives. If it all sounds hopelessly insular it's not. Kitano is far too accomplished a director, and his show business instincts far too ingrained, to let self-indulgence get in the way of entertainment. Even if you don't grok why samurai would be charging up a beach to get gunned down by a bleach blonde Mr. Kitano, it's still a weirdly cool visual, and something else equally weird and cool will come along in a few moments to distract you from it anyway.

If Takeshis has any message in it apart from the obvious "I'm not the person you see on screen, dummies!", it's that the yakuza period of his film career is over. You really get the sense that he's putting the final nails in the coffin of the hard-ass gangster archetype he already lampooned in Kikujiro. It may be that Kitano never makes a film like Sonatine or Fireworks again, and this is his way of saying goodbye.

If so, Takeshis is a fitting send-off.

Review- Sarah Silverman: Jesus Is Magic (2005, directed by Liam Lynch)

2005-09-09T13:39:00.000-04:00

A film for the nasty people, Jesus Is Magic is a concert film that captures the radiant glory that is Sarah Silverman. Songsmith, thespian, artist, seeing Silverman live proves to be an overwhelming experience simply due to her inescapable talent, and that feeling you get in the pit of your stomach that says "Hey, worm, what makes you good enough for Sarah to share her gifts with you? What makes you so special? Nothing, that's what, you pathetic joke. Why don't you just quit wasting air that Sarah might wanna use someday, loser."

Of course some folk think she's a comedian, but I don't see it myself. Hearing the anguish in her voice as she describes the mistreatment of the union workers who debone Ethiopian babies to retrieve the jewels from their tailbones, you can't help but be moved. Silverman is many things -- heroine, trailblazer, visionary, J.A.P. -- but a lowly comedian? That's just insulting.

I mean really. When she expresses in song her understanding of the plight of porn stars whose livelihood depends on the place where the doody comes out, you know that this is a woman whose compassion transcends all boundaries, and who will take you into her heart no matter who you are, unless you're black.

Director Liam Lynch deserves some props too, although I can't imagine how incompetent you'd have to be to make a winning creature like Sarah look bad. The sketches and musical numbers scattered throughout are tight and sharp (not unlike Sarah's you-know-what, come to think of it) and flow naturally from the concert footage without overshadowing them.

In the end though, this film is all about Sarah. And when we leave her at the end -- spotlight gone, masks dropped, making out with herself in her dressing room mirror -- we realize that even a celestial presence like hers in rooted in human soil, and there is hope that perhaps some small flower might bloom in you as you bask in her sunlight.

Assuming that, y'know, you're one of *them*.

Review: Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang (2005, directed by Shane Black)

2005-09-09T13:20:00.000-04:00

A love letter to hard-boiled, two-fisted detective stories, Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang is a great comeback for one of the men who arguably defined Hollywood in the '80s, and a damn fun film even if you don't know who Shane Black is.

Of course if you do know who he is, it's that much sweeter...

KKBB (hmmm, maybe 2K2B? I could go either way on that one) tells the story of Harry Lockhart (Robert Downey Jr.), a not very bright burglar who stumbles into an audition while trying to escape the cops. He gets the job and is whisked out to LA, where he hooks up with Gay Perry (Val Kilmer), the detective-consultant (not consulting detective, mind you) on the picture whose job it is to get Harry's feet wet in the ways of the private dick. Faster than you can say "Red Harvest" Harry is up to his eyeballs in corpses, shopworn plot devices from old pulp novels, and beautiful dames, with only his natural, stupid stubbornness to see him through to the end.

Downey Jr. and Kilmer are both hysterical here, and have a chemistry that smacks more of Lewis and Martin than anything, with Downey as the motormouth and Kilmer as the suave one. Michelle Monaghan matches them pretty much quip for quip too as The Girl, the three of them making Black's dialogue crackle.

His script being a live wire is no surprise; what does come out of nowhere is how good Black's direction is. The movie isn't just narrated by Harry, it's seemingly edited by him as well, and he's more than willing to stop the action and jump back to another scene if he screwed up explaining something and has to fill in a blank.

There haven't been too many real popcorn movies this year, films that had no goal other pure entertainment. 2K2B will rectify that lack the moment it hits theaters.

Review: The Well (2005, directed by Kristian Petri)

2005-09-08T20:10:00.000-04:00

For the most part, trying to solve "the mystery of Orson Welles" is a mug's game, even moreso than it would be for more common folk. The riddles of a person's life are obscure for a reason. You might, in the end, figure out what Rosebud was, but figuring out what it means is pretty much futile. The best you can do is learn something about yourself in the attempt.

Fortunately, Kristian Petri knew all that before he made The Well. On the surface, the film is about Petri's quest to find out who "the real Welles" was by retracing his footsteps through Spain, one of the great loves of the great man's life, and interviewing those who knew him best there (an odd assortment of folk it is too, ranging from Oja Kodar to Jess Franco to some Scottish ex-rugby player who was Orson's drinking buddy and fellow matador groupie). In reality the film is about Petri himself, as seen through the lens of Welles' legend and staggering creativity. The Well isn't so much an examination of what Don Quixote meant to Welles as it is an adaptation of the story, with Petri playing the Don and Welles playing every other role, especially those of the sheep and the windmills.

There's plenty here for the Orsonista too -- Franco's anecdotes are a riot, and some of the newly uncovered footage (Welles doing Shylock, or explaining the appeal of bullfighting as "a tragedy in three acts... with the bull as the hero"), as with all uncovered Welles footage, makes you long for an afterlife that features a DVD shelf containing all his unfinished and bastardized masterpieces, restored and pristine.

The doc isn't without its flaws. Petri aims for a languid pacing in keeping with a Spanish aesthetic, but ends up with a film that simply drags in spots. And while his adherence to a first-person perspective is admirable, there's only so many shots of the road ahead taken through a car windshield that we really need to see. Still, as a way to spend a couple of hours with one of cinema's titans, The Well sure beats listening to Bogdanovich relive the good old days yet again.

Review: Citizen Dog (2004, directed by Wisit Sasanatieng)

2005-09-07T07:50:00.000-04:00

A Thai take on Amelie with a male blank slate for a hero and the surrealism cranked to 11, Citizen Dog (from my Western perspective anyway) gets hamstrung by its omnipresent narration. Unlike in Jeunet's films the narrator here adds very little, instead recapping what you just saw ten seconds ago. Granted, what you just saw might have been really strange in a cute, candy-colored way sort of way, but it wasn't inexplicable - the narration feels like someone didn't trust the audience's ability to keep up.

Still, a lot of the imagery is gorgeous, and any movie with a foul-mouthed, chain-smoking teddy bear can't be all bad.

Fest Preview

2005-09-05T07:30:00.000-04:00

My quickie festival preview is up at AICN.

Review: Brothers of the Head (2005, directed by Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe)

2005-09-03T17:02:00.000-04:00

20-odd years after its birth, the mockumentary is finally starting to grow up a bit. There's no shame in its late development; if any genre needed an extended adolescence it was the one kicked off by This Is Spinal Tap. But you could see the first hints of maturity in the Mitch & Mickey storyline in A Mighty Wind - the humanity in their relationship was a far cry from exploding drummers and a man with two left feet.

Brothers of the Head ups the ante considerably. Based on a novel by Brian Aldiss, the film uses 'archival footage' and 'present-day interviews' to tell the story of twin brothers, plucked from obscurity by an unscrupulous but sentimental promoter and show biz lifer, who formed the heart of a band called the Bang Bang that became an underground legend and, like the Monks (not the Drugs in My Pocket guys, the other Monks) and the MC5, a key link in the early evolution of punk.

Did I say twins brothers? Of course I meant siamese twin brothers, because the band is initally all about the gimmick. Joined at the stomach, Tom is able to use both his arms and is trained as the lead guitarist; Barry, forced by anatomy to live his life peering over his brother's left shoulder, is the lead vocalist.

Make no mistake, Brothers of the Head has some, uhh, gut-bustingly funny bits in it, particularly the footage from Ken Russell's unfinished biopic Two-Way Romeo. But the film also doesn't shy away from the glimpses of darkness inherent in any rock 'n' roll tale of burning out and not fading away. The boys' manager physically abuses one (yes, just one) of the brothers to try and keep him in line. Birds, booze, pills and powder are everywhere, and take their toll on Tom and Barry. And their deaths, coming as alone as they could be and out of the spotlight, are nearly as poignent as the passing of any real-life Johnny Thunders or Nick Drake.

The other thing the movie gets exactly right is the music. The tunes off the Bang Bang's one and only album is perfect, raw and roaring and just on the edge of catching the lightning bolt Johnny Rotten and the boys rode into history. Hearing songs like Doola and Dawla, My Friend (You Cunt) and Two-Way Romeo reminds you of the first time you heard the Stooges or the New York Dolls - they're so spot-on perfect that it's impossible to tell which one was co-written by the Buzzcocks' Pete Shelley without peeking at the credits.

Special mention has to be made of the kids in the leads. Luke and Harry Treadaway are fantastic, probably the best portrayal of fucked-up twins since Jeremy Irons and Jeremy Irons. Tom and Barry are complete individuals, yet creepily intertwined (and not just at the waist) in that way all the greatest movie twins seem to be.

Brothers of the Head is dynamite, a look back at a band (and Ken Russell film) that never was, but probably should have been.

Review: The Proposition (2005, directed by John Hillcoat)

2005-09-03T17:00:00.000-04:00

The thing everybody forgets about faustian bargains is that somebody is going to lose their soul. If the bargain is between a human and the Devil, the loser is easy to spot. When it's between two humans, though...

John Hillcoat, working from a Nick Cave script, has fashioned a very Aussie Western here. Not just in location - although the brutal heat of the OUtback is almost a character unto itself in the film - but in theme and feel as well. The Proposition is really the first Western I've seen to pick up the gauntlet Unforgiven threw down. There are no heroes here, only damaged people draped in shades of dark gray, with enough innocent bystanders around to make every choice they make a hard one.

Ray Winstone stars as Capt. Stanley, a policeman who, along with his wife (Emily Watson, radiantly fragile), moves to Australia to try and start a better life. Lost in a sea of lawlessness and moral uncertainty, he strikes a terrible bargain with Charles Murphy (Guy Pearce), the middle of three outlaw brothers. With his younger, naive sibling locked in a jail cell and awaiting the gallows after the gang brutally rapes and kills a townswoman, Stanley offers Charles a deal. He'll let both younger Murphy brothers go free, if Charles will track down his older brother Arthur (Danny Huston), the gang's black heart, and kill him.

The film follows two parallel tracks. Charles sets out into the heart of darkness to find his brother, never certain what he will do once he finds him. Meanwhile Stanley, desperately trying to keep his deal a secret from the enraged townspeople howling for Murphy blood, begins to disintegrate as the weight of the bargain he's struck bears down on him.

The Proposition is a taut, tight, messy, nasty piece of work, from Cave's excellent script on up. The stink of bodies rotting in the sun nearly wafts off the screen. No festering wound of human relations -- English/Irish, white/abo, male/female -- goes unpoked and unsalted. The performances are all top-notch, including John Hurt in a small role as a bounty hunter, although from my perspective Huston's work might be the most noteworthy (as I expected the least from him). Hillcoat's direction is brutally effective. No slow-motion violence here. Gunfire comes suddenly and shockingly, and tears apart a man's head when it does. This is truly not a film for the faint of heart.

Anyone with more than a passing interest in the evolution of the Western should see this film post-haste.

Review: Look Both Ways (2005, directed by Sarah Watt)

2005-09-01T12:25:00.000-04:00

Yet another lives-of-loosely-connected-strangers flick, Look Both Ways is distinguishable only by its Aronofsky-wannabe montages that stand in for the leads' internal fretting about death. It's the kind of movie that tells you in an opening news broadcast that it's the hottest weekend in memory, but then doesn't bother making any of the actors look remotely uncomfortable from the heat, or even a bit sweaty.

If you dig dialogue scrubbed free of subtext, or cliches played off as deep insights into the human condition, this one's for you.

Review- Going Upriver: The Long War of John Kerry (2004, directed by George Butler)

2004-10-01T10:27:00.000-04:00

In an alternate reality (one in which, perhaps, the Gore/Powell ticket is seeking re-election) Going Upriver could have been a fascinating documentary. Kerry's service during Vietnam, and his actions after his tours of duty were over, could have brought into sharp focus American definitions of patriotism and honor.

But we don't live in that reality, alas. We live in this one, and in this one a documentary about Candidate Kerry's formative political years will either be hagiographical or borderline slanderous. The degraded level of discourse allows for nothing else.

Going Upriver is the hagiographical version.

The doc tells us of Kerry's heroic service as a swift boat commander, and then his heroic struggle to stop the Vietnam War once he got home. As a campaign ad, it's very effective. As a documentary, though, it fails. There's nothing compelling here. No new information is uncovered, no new perspectives offered. Anyone likely to see the movie likely knows this story already. Going Upriver preaches to the choir, and makes no attempt to disguise it.

About the only truly interesting bit of footage here is Kerry's actual testimony before the Senate Armed Forces committee. You'd never know it from the fragment that gets quoted out of context to smear him, but Kerry's statement before that committee is arguably one of the 10 greatest political speeches of this century, a notch below Dr. King and Churchill, but right there with Goldwater.

Going Upriver does exactly what it sets out to do. I just wish it could have set its goals a little higher.

Non-Review: The Libertine (2004, directed by Laurence Dunmore)

2004-09-21T01:03:00.000-04:00

Like the Hurricane a few years ago, The Libertine is a rough cut, a work in progress that it isn't really fair to review.

That doesn't mean I can't talk about it, though...

As a movie, the Libertine is going to live or die on Johnny Depp's performance, and to that extent it's in good hands. Johnny isn't doing anything he hasn't done before, but he rips into the tale of the Earl of Rochester with relish, playing the charismatic cad to the hilt. The supporting cast, particularly Samantha Morton, is also quite good.

What I'm less certain about with the eventual finished product is Dunmore's direction. He's a first-time helmer, and it shows. His visuals have some power (particularly an orgy scene that looked like the bottom corner of a Bosch painting come to life) but he's clearly in love with them, re-using a couple of key images as short-hand for Depp's internal demons. Trying to construct a visual equivalent to the leitmotif is one thing, but using the same damn shot a dozen times over two hours is just self-indulgent.

The Libertine could use about twenty minutes trimmed from it, but based on Dunmore's post-screening comments that doesn't seem likely. Ulp.

Review: Gunner Palace (2004, directed by Michael Tucker and Petra Epperlein)

2004-09-20T23:38:00.000-04:00

A companion piece of sorts to Fahrenheit 9/11, Gunner Palace is a ground-level view of US troops in Baghdad, specifically the crew stationed in Uday Hussein's old pleasure palace. Their life during wartime is surreal. They patrol the streets by day, conduct raids at night, live with the justifiable paranoia of an occupying force, and then come home to a swimming pool and putting greens.

There's no attempt to show a bigger picture here. Gunner Palace concerns itself exclusively with who these troopers are as people and as soldiers, and how they deal with the madness around them. Although there's no overt political agenda to the film (although, to be fair, it does open with a jab at Donald Rumsfeld), politics inevitably joins the party. As the film rolls forward the mood darkens. Baghdad becomes more dangerous, average Iraqis become increasingly hostile, former allies turn on the Americans, and the death toll among these kids who you've been getting to know so well, who are so obviously just like the kids working at the 7/11 and coming home from college with a bagful of dirty laundry, gets both heartbreaking and infuriating. The question hangs in the air, unasked and unanswerable: what the hell are these kids dying for?

Gunner Palace is one of those films that future historians are going to use as proof that the entire country didn't all go crazy early in the 21st century, that a few people managed to retain both sense and perspective.

Review: A Dirty Shame (2004, directed by John Waters)

2004-09-20T23:13:00.000-04:00

Thanks, John, I was in the market for a new mantra.

A Dirty Shame is John Waters' best film in a long, long time. Not that movies like Serial Mom didn't have their charm, but they were like Waters Lite. This, on the other hand, is Waters XXXtra, a throwback to the Pink Flamingoes days when it wasn't enough for him to simply say nice things about the freaks, but instead it was his mission to warn the normals that their days were numbered.

Tracey Ullman plays Sylvia Stickles, a Baltimore (where else?) housewife with a bit of a problem. Her daughter (Selma Blair) is an exhibitionist with the world's largest implants, her husband (Chris Isaak) is a hound dog who actually wants to do 'it' during daylight hours, and her neighborhood is rapidly filling up with perverts. Fortunately, her perspective changes when a shovel handle poking out of a passing truck cracks her on the head, and she is delivered into the hands of Ray-Ray (Johnny Knoxville), a sexual messiah who turns Sylvia on to the glories of the libido unleashed.

The whole premise of the movie, that head trauma leads invariably to sexual deviancy, is inspired. The montage sequences when anyone gets bopped and switches between their 'neuter' and 'sex addict' states are worth the price of admission alone. But it also gives comedians like Ullman, Knoxville and (apparently) Isaak to let it all hang out, and go as far as they need to go to get the laugh. Ullman's hokey pokey will go down in history, of course, but just about everyone in the cast, from Mink Stole straight on up to Blair and Knoxville, gets their moment in the sun.

More importantly, Waters seems energized by his return to his roots. A Dirty Shame is positively giddy at times, and by the end of the film, as Ray-Ray's disciplines rampage through the streets revelling in their fetishes, it resembles nothing so much as a zombie flick where the zombies are the good guys.

If you're a pervert, or simply aspire to be one, A Dirty Shame is the movie for you.

Review: Ray (2004, directed by Taylor Hackford)

2004-09-20T21:05:00.000-04:00

I hope Jamie Foxx is already working on his acceptance speech.

Ray is of course the nick-of-time biopic of the late Ray Charles ('nick-of-time' because Charles was able to record new performances for the film's concert sequences before he passed away). As Hollywood biopics go, this is about as good as it gets; it's a little too slick, and all the threads of Charles' life tie together a little too neatly, but it's got energy and purpose and keeps the focus of the film squarely where it belongs, on the music.

And that music is one of the film's aces in the hole. Too many people have forgotten, but Ray Charles isn't just a genius; he's arguably THE genius, the man who invented entire genres off the top of his head. And as a showcase for that music, Ray (the movie) is a more than fitting tribute to Ray (the man). Charles' hits are as important a character in the film as Ahmet Ertegun. And the performances... oy. Charles was transcendent in his 70s, and you can only imagine how much of a religious experience it would have been to actually be in the room the first time he ripped off What'd I Say?.

The other ace in the hole, of course, is Foxx. It would have been so, so easy for him to simply slap on some sunglasses, rock his head back and forth and let sentiment do the rest. Instead he cranks it up another couple of notches from Collateral, making Charles a necessarily tough son-of-a-bitch hiding more than just his eyes. It's an acting job that matches the music note for note, and finally pays off the potential Foxx has been showing since he was one of the only two good things about Any Given Sunday.

And just to be clear, I'm not saying Foxx's is the best performance of the year, although it's both better than what he did in Collateral, and certainly one of the best of 2004. I'm saying that given how good the performance is, given that it's his second great performance of the year, and given that he'll have that massive 'R.I.P. Ray' sympathy surge behind him... I honestly don't see how he can't win Best Actor in February.

Interviews To Be Transcribed

2004-09-18T10:29:00.000-04:00

This post will serve as a constant reminder to get off my ass and transcribe the following:

- Lukas Moodysson
- Johnnie To
- Selma Blair
- Mark Wexler
- John Leguizamo & Sebastian Cordero
- Ken Burns

Review: 9 Songs (2004, directed by Michael Winterbottom)

2004-09-17T18:07:00.000-04:00

An experiment that doesn't quite work, 9 Songs is (much as he might deny it)Winterbottom's attempt to create an artistically acceptable form of porn.

The premise is simple: a relationship is recalled in flashback, and traced exclusively (more or less) through music and sex. The music is good (Primal Scream, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, even live Michael Nyman) and the sex blisteringly hot, so at least to that extent Winterbottom gets it right. He even works in a money shot, appropriately enough at the climax of the film.

Where the film struggles is with its pretentions. The framing sequences, for instance, don't really work. Like most narration it's superfluous, and the real purpose of it all seems to be to have an excuse to open the movie with a shot of a fire-engine red airplane set against the white expanse of Antarctica. It's a wonderful shot, but not worth all the droning reminiscence.

Even with the framing device to mudge it along though, the story is stagnant. Since the only plot events are sexual encounters and concerts, there's almost no forward momentum. The state of the relationship can be judged through the couple's pillow talk, but that's a pretty thin reed with which to support a film.

I also have one major complaint about the film's politics. Contrary to what Winterbottom seems to think, women (especially randy 21-year-old women) masturbate even when they are satisfied with their sex lives. Implying that a vibrator is just a substitute for a cock is an insult to both vibrators and cocks, not to mention naive and a tad chauvanistic. This is a couple who experiment with bondage and role playing. You're telling me she's not going to introduce some hardware into that equation as well?

If all you want is porn you can justify to your partner as art, then 9 Songs is the movie for you. If you're looking for something more (or less, for that matter), then this is probably going to be a disappointment.

Review: Old Boy (2004, directed by Park Chan-wook)

2004-09-17T15:20:00.000-04:00

A nasty, evil, sadistic take of revenge, Old Boy doesn't just kick ass and take names, it dynamites ass and erects monuments to the assless. This is not a film for the faint of heart.

The movie opens with Oh Dae-su in a police station, having gotten drunk and disorderly on his daughter's birthday. He's bailed out by a friend, but when that friend uses a payphone to call home Oh vanishes into thin air.

What happens next (the long slow torture inflicted on Oh, and the revelation of childhood transgression that set everything in motion) I won't spoil, but suffice it to say that no matter how black your soul is, you won't be disappointed by where the story takes you, and the final hammer-to-the-balls plot kink will leave you wincing. The true power in Old Boy lies not with the story though, but the way that story is told. Park's direction is masterful and relevatory, the soon-to-be classic hallway battle sequence being a perfect example. While there are certainly echoes of other films in it (most obviously Godard's '60s landmark Week End), it's genius is pretty uniquely Park's. He's got a vision all his own, a propulsive style that is equally at home in the pop culture and arthouse worlds. For instance, you can see all kinds of metaphors in Oh's desire to eat a live squid... or you can simply appreciate the site of tentacles frantically trying to cling to his nose as he chomps down.

Old Boy is a must, must, must see. This is Park's audition piece for a spot on the
'must see his work no matter what' list, and he easily makes the cut. Park's got to be mentioned in the same breath as Kim Ki-duk and Takeshi Kitano after this one.

Review: The Overture (2004, directed by Itthisoontorn Vichailak)

2004-09-17T14:47:00.000-04:00

Thai cinema has been evolving in leaps and bounds the last few years, giving voice to a unique blend of Eastern and Western sensibilities. That mixture has never been more in evidence than in the Overture, which is... look, you're not going to believe me when I say this, but...

The Overture is kinda the Thai historical drama version of 8 Mile, only with wooden xylophones instead of rap.

The film, inspired by (as opposed to based on) a true story, takes place in two distinct time periods. Sorn, the last living xylophone master, is on his deathbed as the Japanese attack Thailand during World War Two, and reflects back on his youth at the tail end of of the 'King and I' era we're all familiar with. As a young man, Sorn was a true prodigy and the bad boy of his village, even getting busted down to gong player by his teacher/father on the eve of the big competition against the regional governor's ensemble. As the old master, Sorn has grown wiser but not less rebellious. When the government, in an attempt to Westernize and 'civilize' the country to help strengthen it against the Japanese, starts banning all forms of traditional Thai culture, it is Sorn who leads the resistance.

The plot is formula, but the execution is solid. This being Thailand, the scenery and young lead actors are all gorgeous. The humor has just the right touch, and there are some moments of quiet beauty (as when Sorn's son has a piano delivered, and after just a few seconds of hearing the new instrument father and son slide into a piano/xylophone duet.)

Really, it's the music that sets the film apart. Young Sorn's development as an artist gives ears unfamiliar with Thai music a chance to grow with him, so that by the time the climactic xylophone showdown at the imperial palace occurs, the audience can appreciate how great the playing truly is.

Oh yeah, did I mention there was a climactic xylophone showdown at the palace? And that it rocked something fierce? The great thing about Thai xylophone playing is that it is visually, as well as musically, beautiful, with mallets flying around almost faster than the eye can follow. Watching two titans of the rack going head to head, sweat flying off their brows, notes gathering in the air like a swarm of fireflies on a summer night... it's a trip and a half.

Review: Zebraman (2004, directed by Takashi Miike)

2004-09-17T14:37:00.000-04:00

The year is 2010. Lime jello aliens are running amuck, possessing people and sending them on violent sprees. In Earth's darkest hour only one man ahs the power to save us, a striped avenger leaping from the annals of an obscure late '70s TV show straight into our hearts.

He is... ZEBURAMAN!

This is hands-down the best Miike film I've seen since Audition (since he makes 83 or so a year, I might have missed a couple). In fact, in a lot of ways Zebraman reminds me of Kung Fu Hustle. Both films raucously spoofi and affectionately embrace their inspirations, but while Stephen Chow's film used the Shaw Brothers era as its touchstone, Miike's source material is Ultraman, the Power Rangers and their ilk, with all the cheesy trappings intact.

It's also one of Miike's most accessible films. His characteristic strangeness, instead of being given full rein as in Gozu or Ichi the Killer, pops up at odd moments to great effect. Plus the whole enterprise is just so infectiously silly. I mean... a zebra??? What the hell kind of superhero is that? Who's his sidekick going to be in the sequel, Meerkat Lad?

Miike lovers will love Zebraman. Heck, there's an excellent chance Miike haters will love it. And given the subject matter and Miike's increasing profile in the West (side note: after a chance meeting at the Venice fest last week, Miike apparently has something cooking with QT involving Go-go Yubari's twin sister...), there's even a possibility Zebraman could get distribution stateside.

Easily the best Midnight film so far this year.

Review: Saint Ralph (2004, directed by Michael McGowan)

2004-09-16T13:39:00.000-04:00

Every year there're some movies that, after reading the description in the festival book, I put on my 'Never See in a Million Years' list. Saint Ralph was one of those, looking to be a cloyingly sentimental (strike one) Canadian (strike two... no offense to my hosts, but Canadian film has sucked the last few years) period piece kid's movie (yerrrr out!), some sad little Breaking Away meets A Christmas Story wannabe.

And every year, I stumble into a couple of those and get totally blown away by how good they are.

Saint Ralph is on that list too.

How the movie managed to avoid the pitfalls it could so easily have fallen into, I have no idea. The plot revolves around a 14-year-old Catholic school misfit, Ralph, who's mother lies dying in a hospital and whose father never came home from World War II. Ralph, an oddly charming schemer and unflappable optimist, is supposed to be staying with his best friend, but instead he's made up fictional grandparents to be his custodians and lives alone at home. After one run-in too many with the head priest at the school (played by money-in-the-bank Canadian vet actor Gordon Pinsent) Ralph is consigned to the Nietzche-loving Father Hibbert's (Campbell Scott, in yet another great performance) cross country running team to learn discipline. A joke by Father Hibbert about the Boston Marathon, combined with a worsening of his mother's condition, produces a crazy idea in Ralph's head. If he can miraculously win the Boston Marathon, then his mother will be miraculously healed.

See? It should be cloyingly sentimental, and it's not. Instead, Saint Ralph is damn funny. Everyone plays off each other beautifully, including Ralph's love interest, a wannabe nun. The film is sweet without being saccharine, heartwarming without being manipulative, subtle not obvious, honest not fake. It's certainly the best Catholic coming-of-age comedy I've ever seen, and maybe the best film about running since Chariots of Fire.

Wait, hang on, Chariots of Fire is overrated. Make that the best film about running since Marathon Man.

Saint Ralph is not a good 'family' movie. It's a great movie, period, regardless of your age and cynicism level.

Reviews Pending

2004-09-16T13:34:00.000-04:00

In some order or other...

Moolaade
~~Gunner Palace~~
ThrowDown
~~A Dirty Shame~~
~~Ray~~
~~9 Songs~~
Cronicas
~~The Overture~~
~~Saint Ralph~~
Millions
~~Going Upriver: The Long War of John Kerry~~
Holy Girl
Be Here To Love Me
Palindromes
Mysterious Skin
A Way of Life
Calvaire
~~Old Boy~~
P.S.
Land of Plenty
~~Zebraman~~
Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson
Omagh
Somersault
Vital
Rahtree: Flower of the Night
~~The Libertine~~
The General
Jiminy Glick in Lalawood
Saw

Total reviews published on AICN so far: 28
Total movies seen: 49

Review- Casuistry: The Art of Killing a Cat (2004, directed by Zev Asher)

2004-09-15T18:17:00.000-04:00

ca·su·ist·ry n. Specious or excessively subtle reasoning intended to rationalize or mislead.

(It might be a cliche to begin a review with a dictionary definition, but in this case it's absolutely essential. Until you understand what the title means, you can't understand the film.)

A few years ago in Toronto, an art student named Jesse Power had the vague notion to do a project dealing with the inherent hypocrisy of meat-eating. To that end, he and two friends videotaped themselves butchering a cat, which Jesse planned to eat on camera later. A housemate called the police; with a skinned, beheaded feline in the fridge (not to mention the tape) arrests were inevitable. The case became a cause celebre among animal rights activists, and one of the two friends/accomplices, Matt, fled to Vancouver.

Casuistry traces the story of that incident. The infamous video itself is never used; instead, director Asher (who did the Nihilist Spasm Band doc a few years ago) uses a court transcript of the video to great effect. In fact, what the use of the transcript most reminded me of was post-lawsuit versions of Negativland's U2, where the source material's absence just reinforces its impact. That transcript is mixed through the film with interviews from all the principals along with with other odds and ends, including some shocking prologue footage I'll get to in a minute.

The picture that emerges in Casuistry is not just one of Jesse the rationalizer. Everyone in the film, to some extent, seems to cling to unsupportable justifications. The lead detective on the case paints Power as a borderline cult leader. The animal rights crowd can't seem to differentiate between the relative values of human and feline life. One of Power's supporters, local art wanker Jubal Brown, comes off worst of all, spewing platitudes about the nature of art but shifting uncomfortably in his seat when asked why he didn't go to court the day the video itself was aired, and disavowing any responsibility for his gallery's showing of some of Power's work prior to the incident.

Casuistry's greatest strength is its ability to provoke questions rather than provide answers. The relationship between art and artist, artist and audience, art and morality all get put under the microscope. Asher, though, saves the biggest question of all for first. The doc opens with a video piece by Toronto artist Istvan Kantor from the early 1980s, a video which seems to feature two cats being gutted and worn as hats. Unlike Power's 'rough cut' though, the video looks like an art piece, and was shown in an art space to an art crowd.

Kantor received one of Canada's highest awards for cultural achievement in 2004.

Review: Silver City (2004, directed by John Sayles)

2004-09-15T17:35:00.000-04:00

A sprawling, scathing jeremiad aimed at the heart of American politics, Silver City (with cinematography, coincidentally enough, by Haskell Wexler) doesn't quite measure up to the best of Sayles' work - but then again, what does?

The film moves on two parallel tracks. Dickie Pilager (played by Chris Cooper) is a gubernatorial candidate in Colorado, the son of a senator and scion of a political dynasty. Dickie's a dim bulb though; a constant malaprop factory with a string of failed businesses behind him, Dickie's got a lead in the polls only by virtue of his religious faith, his last name, and the power of the Pilager machine...

Hmm. Doesn't that sound familiar.

The other half of the story follows Danny (Danny Huston), a former investigative reporter whose career got flushed after a source failed to corraborate an expose he wrote. Danny now works as a private eye, and after Dickie hooks a corpse while fishing for a campaign TV spot, Dickie's political guru Chuck Raven (Richard Dreyfuss) hires Danny to find out who the dead guy is, and whether or not the body was planted as an act of sabotage.

Hang on. Chuck Raven... Karl Rove...

Nah, must be a coincidence.

Anyway, Danny's investigation fires up his old newshound instincts, taking him deep into a Rocky Mountain heart of darkness, as he uncovers a mining scandal and potential environmental disaster, not to mention murder. Needless to say, the powers that be are none too pleased by the direction Danny's nosing around takes.

Silver City ultimately feels unbalanced. The bulk of the plot lies in Danny's hands, but it's Cooper's spot-on turn as you-know-who that's the most interesting part of the movie. Cooper owns the first half of this film, and his virtual absence from its conclusion sticks out like a sore thumb (or, for that matter, a dead fish floating in a lake.) Cooper has come on in the last decade or so as perhaps Hollywood's finest character actor (Lone Star, American Beauty and Adaptation being the best-known examples) Here he is utterly merciless in skewering the outgoing president, making him not a clown but a sad little man, a puppet in way over his head. This seems to be my fest for handing out Academy noms like candy, so here's another one - Cooper for Best Supporting Actor. It's too good, and too true, a performance to ignore.

And in the end, an Oscar-caliber performance is exactly what Silver City needs to make it hold together even as well as it does. This is no Lone Star; the disparate plot threads never quite get woven together to form a whole, but then again they rarely do in real life either (just watch Fahrenheit 9/11.) You can't help but think of Rumsfeld's "known unknowns" here. At the end Danny knows, but can't prove, and the wheels will just keep on turning with or without him.

In the end, Sayles' message is clear: Dickie, like Dubya, like all of his ilk, is not a cause but a symptom. He's the dead fish floating in the lake.

Not the poison in the system that killed it.

Review: Kung Fu Hustle (2004, directed by Stephen Chow)

2004-09-15T03:59:00.000-04:00

Forgive my lack of professionalism, but: nyah-nyah-ny-nyah-nyah, we saw it fir-irst, nyah-nyah-ny-nyah-nyah...

Getting its world premiere in Toronto, Kung Fu Hustle is both a glorious tribute to and gentle spoof of classic Hong Kong martial arts movies. Con artist Stephen Chow stumbles into trouble when he instigates a confrontation between the residents of Pig Sty Alley (every second one of which seems to be a kung fu master) and the evil, lethal and impeccably choreographed Axe Gang, but the ensuing war helps him to find his true destiny.

There's no way to adequately describe how insanely over the top the fight sequences are in the film. Yuen Wo Ping and Sammo Hung helped stage them, but then crazy effects that put films like Storm Riders and Volcano High to shame are added on to create something hilarious and magical. From the first confrontation in the Alley, to the attack of the world's second-best assassins, to the final sprawling battle with the Beast, each one ups the ante and kicks more ass than the last.

But the film also shows a comedy master at the height of his powers. Chow's timing is genius as always, his supporting cast great, the dialogue sharp, and he even remembers to include the obligatory no sequiter film quote (in Shaolin Soccer it was Jurassic Park... here it's, of all things, The Shining).

It's been a long, long time since I've seen a film as purely entertaining as this. Four fests ago I saw Crouching Tiger and predicted a couple of Top Six Oscar noms and $100 million plus in North American box office. Kung Fu Hustle won't get the noms of course, but I see absolutely no reason why it can't easily hit nine digits at the BO.

This is the one that will finally break Stephen Chow in the USA. And it's about damn time.

Review: Dead Birds (2004, directed by Alex Turner)

2004-09-14T09:04:00.000-04:00

Dead Birds feels like a movie adaptation of a video game that doesn't exist, something like a prequel to the 7th Guest, or maybe House of the Civil War Dead III.

And we all know how good video game adaptations tend to be.

The plot is basic. A band of deserters rob a Union payroll deposit, massacring the guards, bank employees and one young innocent bystander. Fleeing into the wilderness, they camp out for the night at an abandoned plantation.

Shocking no one in the audience, Things begin to Stir.

Now on the technical side there's nothing much wrong here at all (although the sound on the gotchas was cranked way, way, WAY too high, almost like an admission the story and visuals alone weren't going to do the trick.) The effects are good, the monster designs fairly twisted.

What the movie lacks is a heart. None of the characters are fleshed out well enough to become sympathetic, which makes the whole production an exercise in waiting for the cast to drop one by one. It's certainly not the actors' fault; they just don't have much of anything to work with. I simply didn't care whether these people lived, died or got stuck in between, and that always spells doom for a horror film.

Dead Birds is certainly more stylish than a good chunk of the horror being released in North America today, so at least it's got that going for it. Just don't expect anything more than style if you see it.

Review: A Hole in My Heart (2004, directed by Lukas Moodysson)

2004-09-14T08:47:00.000-04:00

This has been one of the more challenging reviews I've ever had to write. Sorting out, in my head, what I felt while watching the movie is tough enough, but getting it down on paper (or pixel) too? Impossible.

Still, I've got to try. After all, I knew the job was dangerous when I took it.

A Hole in My Heart is about three people who hates themeselves, a fourth who isn't sure yet what he sees when he looks in the mirror, and the lengths to which they go to try and feel like they belong.

And by lengths, I mean every form of nasty amateur porn short of scat and snuff.

It would be very, very easy to dismiss the movie as shock for shock value's sake, but it would also be wrong. Moodysson is simply not that lazy a filmmaker, and clearly lays the groundwork for the nastiest elements of the movie (note, for instance, the way he plays with the blurring of product labels, eventually in one sequence reducing the characters themselves to labels by blurring their faces). What really makes the film so difficult to handle is the pure honesty of the performances though, especially Sanna Brading's awe-inspiring turn as Tess. There's really no way for the audience to escape the choices Tess makes (although I'm sure the Andrea Dworkin types would argue with me about whether they were 'choices' at all), but it's Brading's choices as an actress that snap the trap shut.

(Yes, I know I'm being vague on the details, not letting you in on the blow-by-blow of the 'depravity'. Like I said, Moodysson doesn't just toss them into the film, he earns the right to do so, and for me to just say 'so-and-so did such-and-such' wouldn't be anything more than reviewer porn. If you really want to know, go watch the movie.)

The other stand-out in the cast is Bjorn Amroth as Eric, the observer who wants nothing more than to shut his eyes. But really all four actors (Thorsten Flinck and Goran Marjanovic round out the cast) are amazing.

Glamorizing nothing but somehow celebrating everything, A Hole in My Heart is an astounding film, Moodysson's best yet. It's too bad so many people, including US censors, aren't going to be able to see past its NC-17 content.

Review: Tell Them Who You Are (2004, directed by Mark Wexler)

2004-09-13T21:17:00.000-04:00

Copernicus hinted at the elaborate lengths to which we went to score tix for this movie, but if anything he understated the intricate series of cons and triple-crosses we engineered to get into the screening. I can't tell you everything (it would sour the bidding war on the screenplay) but it involved a steamer trunk full of counterfeit Action Comics #1's, not one but two sets of twins, and five identical briefcases (only three of which shared the same combination).

And the amazing thing is, all that zany madcap fun still paled in comparison to the film itself.

Tell Them Who You Are is the story of a father and son, one of whom (guess which) happens to be a Hollywood icon and inascible old son-of-a-bitch. if you don't know the name Haskell Wexler, just check the credits of your favorite movies. The odds are good his name will be listed as cinematographer. The doc is resolutely not about his career though (a renaissance for Haskell's film Medium Cool is clearly overdue, however). His son Mark's film is, as he himself, says, an attempt to find out who Haskell the father (not the filmmaker) is.

It's no easy task. Their relationship is, to be polite, prickly, and Haskell isn't the most open person in the world. Plus he keeps sniping about what a lousy job Mark is doing shooting and making the film, which actually puts mark in good company. Every director gets abuse from Haskell on a shoot. (Goddess knows what young George Lucas got heaped on his head during American Graffiti).

The dynamic between the two is fascinating, as the two spar with each other as star and filmmaker, father and son, and even protagonist and antagonist. Haskell's charisma makes him a naturally sympathetic character, which at times forces Mark into an uneasy adversarial role. It's hard, for instance, not to see things like Mark's 'gift' to his ultra-leftist father of a framed picture of Mark meeting George H. W. Bush as little more than petty button-pushing. But as the film progresses their relationship evolves and matures as each starts to understand the other, and Tell Them Who You Are's final scene (Haskell finally signing his release form), which could easily have been played for a laugh, is actually quite moving.

I gotta agree with Rajah on this one. Tell Them Who You Are is a slam-dunk Oscar nom, and deservedly so. Hopefully it'll win too, so they can release a two-disc special edition DVD which includes that killer Jonathan Winters interview Mark teases us with.

Rumors! Damn It!

2004-09-13T21:14:00.000-04:00

Hot rumor du jour: Stephen Chow ain't coming, supposedly because he won't be allowed in the country due to his 'mob connections'.

If everyone with 'mob connections' were stopped from entering Canada, what percentage of the Hollywood contingent would be absent? 20%? 40%?

Stupid Canada. Stupid, stupid Canada.

Linkies

2004-09-13T06:42:00.000-04:00

Day three coverage here.

Day two here.

Review: The House of Flying Daggers (2004, directed by Zhang Yimou)

2004-09-12T17:01:00.000-04:00

Zhang Yimou's follow-up to Hero, House of Flying Daggers is a spectacle much like its predecessor, yet more intimate and romantic. Essentially an epic love triangle, the movie stars Zhang Ziyi as...

No, wait. What's the word that means an order of magnitude greater than 'stars'?

Look, I can't pretend to be objective about Ziyi, the fragile luminous goddess. Her place in my pantheon was assured the first time I saw her on screen, just as it was with Audrey and Grace and Anjelina, due to her unbeatable combo of talent and beauty. But great as the direction and cinematography are, great as Takeshi Kaneshiro (from Wong Kar-wai's Chungking Express and Fallen Angels) and Andy Lau are, great as the story itself is... she is this film. I don't think House would work anywhere near as well with someone else playing Mei. I mean, of course two of the greatest warriors of the age would betray everything they hold dear just for a chance to fight for her heart - it's Zhang Ziyi. Of course the landscape is so beautiful it makes your eyeballs ache - it's reflected in her eyes. Of course the fight scenes leave you gasping and on the edge of your seat - she might get hurt! That 15th guy might get a blow in while she's kicking the asses of the other fourteen!

Ahem.

What I'm trying to say is that House of Flying Daggers is a very good film elevated to something more if, like me and everyone with a modicum of taste, you are completely head over heels for Zhang Ziyi.

In a just, sane world, Clean will get released in North America in the same Hollywood year as House of Flying Daggers, so Ziyi can go toe-to-toe with Maggie for Best Actress. But not to validate their achievement, mind you. To let America in on what they're missing. (Just don't ask me to pick between them if that does come to pass, though.)

Review: Final Cut: The Making and Unmaking of Heaven's Gate (2004, directed by Michael Epstein)

2004-09-12T16:38:00.000-04:00

Michael Cimino's doomed epic gets the Hearts of Darkness treatment here, and while Final Cut is nowhere near as good as Hearts (of course) it's still a solid, at times fascinating look at the end of a couple of Hollywood eras.

Following the release of the Deer Hunter Cimino was the new Sun God in town, duly annointed as such by no less than the industry's artistic priesthood, United Artists, the studio founded to be a haven for the talent by Chaplin, Fairbanks, Pickford and Griffin. Cimino's next project was every bit worthy of UA's blessing too; he wanted to make nothing less than the greatest Western ever. What he got instead was more like Shakespeare, only played out behind the cameras instead of front of it.

Heaven's Gate has two main problems. The first was the studio. UA was not what it was, having undergone a shakeup that left it essentially leaderless and rudderless. The second problem was with Cimino himself. Assured by all of Hollywood that he was a genius and given a blank check by UA to be their standard-bearer, Cimino decided the film could just be great, it had to be perfect, in every detail and every frame of footage. (The soliloquy pretty much writes itself, doesn't it?)

Final Cut doesn't do much more than skim the surface of the story behind Heaven's Gate, but with that kind of material it doesn't need depth to be entertaining. Interviews with former UA execs, actors from the film like Jeff Bridges and Kris Kristofferson, crew and journalists piece together the deadly momentum of the schedule and budget-breaking shoot, the politics and the increasingly bad press. And despite its relative even-handedness, what Final Cut makes clear is who is ultimately to blame for the film's legendary failure at the box office.

Cimino.

Now I will always, always take the talent's side in any battle between art and commerce. But that isn't what happened. By the time Heaven's Gate was released the publicity surrounding its production practically guaranteed a critical savaging. The movie got a one week run in New York around Christmas at which point Cimino, citing the rushed editing job, asked that it be pulled so he could recut it.

And he listened to the critics when he did, chopping out an hour or so. Cimino, to be blunt, lost his nerve.

His confidence failed him, and he betrayed his vision.

Certainly he's never been the same since (Desperate Hours???). UA died as an independant entity following the disaster, getting bought up by MGM for its catalogue (which, given what MGM has suffered through since, might start developing a rep for being cursed). Even Hollywood was never the same, as the reign of the accountant began.

As for Heaven's Gate itself? Was it crap, or just ill-fated? Well, the French like it, for what that's worth. But the marketplace has already spoken. And if there's one lesson to be taken away from Final Cut, it's this:

In Hollywood, the marketplace is the one true master.

Review: I (Heart) Huckabees (2004, directed by David O. Russell)

2004-09-11T16:30:00.000-04:00

I have been wracking my brains trying to think of a cool-yet-sophisticated way to open this review, something that indicates my level of erudition to prove that I got all the jokes.

But screw it. I've had two hours sleep and the honest truth is that I didn't get all the damn jokes. Naomi Watts tossed off some line about a cave and I was all, "Duh, that's, uhh, Plato, right?" Not that the movie feels like a quiz... more like some sick French game show's lightning round, with Ben Stein and the Jeopardy Guy doing commentary.

No, actually, it's nothing like that. I'm going to start again.

I (Heart) Huckabees... wait, how do I get a little heart symbol? Am I betraying the film if I misrepresent the title with '(Heart)' instead? The map may not be the menu (or the meal the territory, for that matter) but if I misstate the title, how do I even know I've got the right menu? Maybe they printed a new one that I just didn't get to my mailbox, and now the prices have all changed and they've stopped making the General Tao chicken.

(I seem to have gotten sidetracked. I'll start again.)

David O. Russell's latest is a return to the full-out comedy stylings of Flirting With Disaster, only this time the humor comes not from geneology but from philosophy. Lily Tomlin is back for another round, as is Richard Jenkins in a small supporting role. Joining them are Jason Schwartzman, Dustin Hoffman, Mark Wahlberg, Jude Law, Naomi Watts and Isabelle Huppert. Odd that Huppert is in it. Her career resurgence (8 Women, and the Haneke double feature Le temps du loup and La pianiste) comes just as Heaven's Gate gets thrown back into the pop culture consciousness. Is this a coincidence? Are there coincidences? Shania Twain's in the film too, and she's been holistically stalking me ever since I saw it. I pass a storefront... their radio is playing Shania. I walk down the street... two women going the other way are talking about Shania, and not in the context of the movie either. LEAVE ME ALONE, DEVIL WOMAN! Your songs are banal, and not real country anyway, just pop music with hints of Nashville. Leave me be!

Sigh.

You see what I'm up against trying to write this thing? I'm a Bob Wilson groupie, for pity's sake, I should be used to this shite. Normally when a review doesn't want to be written I just write about writing it, but it's fighting me on even that! Clearly the film is exerting some sort of evil influence on me. Maybe it's pissed off that I got the joke in the fact that both the Jaffes (Hoffman and Tomlin) and their nemesis Caterine Vauban (Huppert) don't actually live by the philosophy they claim to espouse (whatever the Jaffes are spouting ain't existentialism, and Vauban's dark natterings ain't nihilism). Maybe I'm being punished for seeing through Tommy Corn (Wahlberg)'s petroleum paranoia, and thinking that the science behind 'fossil fuels' is just one more scare tactic by Them to keep Us down (I mean come on... dead dinosaurs? Are you kidding me? Why not just tell us the Oil Ostrich visits good sheiks in their sleep, and leaves new deposits under their wells?) Maybe I was supposed to feel ashamed for think Naomi Watts looked damn hot in her Amish bonnet, stuffing her mouth with brownies.

This is one of those movies I'm probably never going to figure out exactly why I like it. I suspect most critics are going to feel the same way, which will be box office death times two for the poor thing. I mean, I appreciate the meta-irony in the fact that the stereotypical 'middle American' would probably hate it for making them feel stupid, when one of the messages of the film is that even a model or firefighter can grasp essential philosophical truths without too much effort, but unless I go and see it 80,000 during its theatrical release that isn't going to make a damn bit of difference.

Or will it? Perhaps the positive vibes I'm radiating out regarding Huckabees will be enough to make it a minor hit. Perhaps my not being able to express why it's good externally will lead to an internal expression of praise that taps straight into the collective unconscious, and bumps the film up a few spots on the Zeitgeist Index.

Or maybe me saying that just queered the whole deal.

Dammit, now my head hurts. If you'll excuse me, I have to go do something less mentally taxing, like read Plato's Republic.

Selma Blair Interview Scheduled

2004-09-11T16:21:00.000-04:00

FYI -- I'm interviewing Selma Blair tomorrow.

Yes, I know I'm not the biggest fan of hers. Oh well -- she's pretty darn good in A Dirty Shame, and I am allowed to pander to my 'audience' from time to time.

Also might be getting Patrick Fugit and Henry Thomas on Tuesday, but nothing's confirmed yet.

Review: Creep (2004, directed by Christopher Smith)

2004-09-11T04:13:00.000-04:00

Whoar! This is a nasty, nasty piece of work.

Creep is one of those maximum-jolts-from-minimum-plot concepts everybody loves. Kate (Franka Potente) is a bitchy London party girl who falls asleep on a bench and misses the last train of the night from Charing Cross Station. Needless to say there's a Thing loose in the tunnels. Blood and carnage and mayhem ensue.

Is it predictable? Sure, and in a couple of places Smith even winks at you to let you know it's intentional. Creep isn't trying to reinvent the wheel (or the iron maiden, for that matter), and there's (almost) nothing ironic or pomo about it (to be fair, Franka does do a lot of running). It's just a savagely gory film. Period.

Think of Creep as the horror equivalent of the Hives, if grungier and not as well-dressed. If your point of comparison is the Stones/Halloween then sure, it ain't gonna measure up. But if your reference point is more reasonable or if (here's a kooky thought) you take the flick on its own merits, then Creep, well, rocks. And what more can you ask for?

Review: 3-iron (2004, directed by Kim Ki-duk)

2004-09-11T03:58:00.000-04:00

In discussing Kim Ki-duk with a couple of people, one of them (Jason on my PDF fame) pointed out that Kim is on a roll like no other director on the planet. He's brought to Toronto, in order: The Isle; Address Unknown; Bad Guy; Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter, Spring; and now 3-iron, which is every bit as good as the previous four. Dude is now five-for-freakin'-five, and all of them are home runs. Who else can claim that?

The plot of 3-iron is deceptively simple. A young man posts restaurant flyers on doors, not so much to earn a living and to scope out potential residences; after a day or so if a flyer is still there he knows no one is home and it's safe to break in. He's a very conscientious burglar, however. He steals nothing but a little food, and pays for it by doing laundry and repairing small appliances. He's like the Vacation Fairy, keeping your home tidy while you're gone.

One day he breaks into a house that isn't, in fact, empty. Hiding in a corner is a young woman, a former model who is a prisoner in her own home thanks to her abusive husband. Suddenly the young man is forced to make a choice: continue in solitude, or reach out and connect with someone who needs it as much as he does.

What follows is, like so many great movies, completely surprising and utterly inevitable.

Kim's sheer confidence in his ability is breathtaking. I never want to curse a film by calling it 'perfect', but I'll be damned if I can find a mis-step in 3-iron. All is genius, from casting (including a totally dialogueless performance by Jae Hee in the lead almost reminiscent of Johnny Depp at times) to pacing to framing... just astounding.

3-iron is an early contender (hell, early favorite) for best film of the fest, and Kim Ki-duk just stepped up to challenge Kitano as my favorite living filmmaker.

Review: Les revenants (2004, directed by Robin Campillo)

2004-09-11T03:49:00.000-04:00

Ack. This was one of those movies where going in I knew I would either love it or hate it. I mean, it's a French art house zombie flick... there's going to be no middle ground here.

Hoo boy, was there no middle ground.

The plot of Les revenants is simple. One day, the recently dead are not so deceased, and shambling back into town. There's no brain-eating though, just loved ones with fuzzy minds and memories who nobody is quite sure how to deal with.

Therein lies the problem. It's a neat conceit, but that's all there is. Vast swaths of the film are taken up with bureaucratic meetings on how to deal with the 'returnees'. The whole thing feels like a zombie movie made by government committee. It does occasionally tease becoming interesting (hey, the living are starting to get paranoid, something might... nah. Oh look, things are blowing up, surely now it'll... guess not) but that just makes the resulting fizzle that much harder to swallow. Les revenants even squanders an opportunity to nod in the dircetion of Night of the Living Dead's classic ending, but instead it snootily turns up its nose at such a gauche trope. (On second thought, maybe that's why I hated it so much. The whole thing feels like making an actual zombie movie would have been beneath the filmmakers. It's insulting.)

Les revenants: proof that ideas aren't worth spit without decent execution.

Interviews

2004-09-11T03:44:00.000-04:00

Now there's two tomorrow: Johnnie To (for my mother's sake I will direct your attention here) and Lukas Moodysson (ditto, before she asks).

I couldn't stick around for the Q&A after Hole in My Heart though, which is a shame.

Early review: Everyone hates it but me.

Day One on AICN

2004-09-10T07:05:00.000-04:00

Here.

Interview: Johnnie To

2004-09-10T04:18:00.000-04:00

I'll be interviewing Johnnie To Sunday afternoon. Yippee!

Review: Ghost in the Shell II: Innocence (2004, directed by Mamoru Oshii)

2004-09-10T03:52:00.000-04:00

This is the most beautiful anime ever made.

Japan has produced some amazing work recently, don't get me wrong, and Miyazaki was still a god last time I checked, but Ghost in the Shell II leaves them all gasping in terms of pure spectacle. In fact, I'll go one further. Not only is it the most beautiful anime ever, it's the first cyberpunk film whose visuals can match grand-daddy Blade Runner's. It's that sumptuous to look at, from the opening shot to the closing. The CG and hand-drawn still aren't seamless, mind you, but the sense of disconnect between the two dovetails so nicely with the film's themes it can't not be intentional.

And what are those themes? I was afraid you'd ask that. While the look of GITS II makes you try and come up with new synonyms for 'gob-smacked', the plot is barely coherent. Bits of the first film, Phil Dick and William Gibson are tossed in a blender and pureed, essentially. Besides, it's all really just an excuse to muse about humanity and identity, in a very long-winded fashion.

(Bonus points though for the constant barrage of quotes every character pulls out of their... external memory at will. I know some folks in the audience thought it was a stupid conceit, but in a world where everyone has instant access to every classic piece of writing from Milton to Confucius, why would you ever use your own sad little phrases?)

Who really cares though? The fight scenes are sudden, brutal and dazzling. The mind games are trippy. And there's a very real argument to be made that humanity evolved eyesight just so it could eventually watch this movie.

Ghost in the Shell II is an incredible piece of art. It's not to be missed.

Review: Letters to Ali (2004, directed by Clara Law)

2004-09-10T03:37:00.000-04:00

How much criticism do you level at someone who fails at an impossible task?

Letters to Ali is Clara Law's (Goddess of '67, Temptation of a Monk) first stab at a documentary, but the story is right up her alley. Australia, her adopted home, has a refugee policy that is beyond reprehensible. Using public safety as a thin mask for racism, asylum seekers are tossed into camps that have far more in common with jails than temporary homes, tossed away and forgotten. The film centers on the plight of Ali (not his real name), who as a young boy fled the Taliban, eventually winding up alone in a camp on Australia's north-west coast. A doctor, Trish, gets his ID number from a protest website and writes him a letter without even knowing his name. What follows is a friendship and a struggle, both for Ali's freedom and for the rights of all those imprisoned.

The problem with Letters to Ali is not the narrative, obviously; Ali's is a tale begging to be told. The problem is the materials available to tell it. The film almost feels like it was Obstructed. Due to the legalities and realities of Ali's situation, Law never shows his face or uses his voice. In fact the only real footage she has to work with are scattered shots from a protest, and a three-week road trip she takes with Trish's family across the continent to visit Ali. This leaves a whole lot of screen time to be filled up with text, voice-overs, and politicians droning on about social policy.

Clara Law has an impeccable sense of the visual, but she can't work miracles. There's just no film here, no matter how well she milks Ali's absence for all its metaphorical power, and no matter how personally she's invested in the subject matter (Law, too, befriended Ali during shooting.)

Ali's story needs to be told, and if this movie gets him his freedom one day sooner it will most definitely have been worth it, but until he is capable of speaking for himself this may not have been the best vehicle for telling it.

Stargazing

2004-09-10T03:36:00.000-04:00

Harry hasn't put it up, so here it is...

Suddenly I wished I spoke Cantonese. Or Mandarin. Or some sort of pidgin blend of the two.

This year’s star-studded Toronto film fest lineup has the usual Hollywood types of course, but given these probable attendees, who cares?:

Maggie Cheung (of course Maggie’s here. I’m sure at this point someone’s TOLD her about my many futile attempts to meet her, and she’s just tormenting me by coming to Toronto all the damn time. Devil woman!)

Johnnie To

Zhang Yimou

Zhang Ziyi

Stephen Chow

Add in the likes of Joan Chen, Clara Law and honorary Asian Chris Doyle, and my language skills are sadly lacking.

Here’s the gwai lo (and non-whities too!) in attendance:

Directors with that Vision Thing: Istvan Szabo; Agnes Varda; Catherine Breillat; Olivier Assayas; John Waters; Alex de le Iglesia; Paul Cox; Claire Denis; Bill Condon; Wim Wenders; Antoine Fuqua; Ousmane Sembene; Volker Schlondorff; Amos Gitai; Bille August; Alejandro Amenabar; John Sayles; Ken Burns; Sally Potter; James Toback

Young Whippersnappers: Shane Meadows; Asia Argento; Lukas Moodysson; David O. Russell; Danny Boyle; Gregg Araki; Todd Solondz; Alexander Payne; David Gordon Green

The Menfolk: Don Cheadle; Sean Penn; Jeremy Irons; Kevin Spacey; Bob Hoskins; Matt Dillon; Brendan Fraser; John Leguizamo; Patrick Fugit; Henry Thomas; Rhys Ifans; Orlando Bloom; Bill Paxton; Stuart Townsend; Nick Nolte; Dustin Hoffman; Jason Schwartzman; Mark Wahlberg; Jeff Daniels; Liam Neeson; Joseph Fiennes; Al Pacino; Andy Garcia; Chazz Palminteri; Paul Walker; Topher Grace; Jamie Foxx; Aidan Quinn; Danny Glover; Javier Bardem; Kevin Pollack; Doug E. Doug; Michael Imperioli; Ziggy Marley; Paul Giamatti; Chris Cooper; Thomas Haden Church; Billy Crudup; Kevin Bacon; Mos Def

Let’s Not Forget Those Ladies Y’all: Annette Bening; Kate Bosworth; Jennifer Jason Leigh; Sandra Bullock; Jennifer Esposito; Selma Blair; Helen Hunt; Penelope Cruz; Sigourney Weaver; Laura Linney; Natasha McElhone; Susan Sarandon; Ellen Barkin; Hilary Swank; Kelly Preston; Connie Nielsen; Virginia Madsen; Maria Bello; Joan Allen

Funny Folk: Johnny Knoxville; Martin Short; Jan Hooks; Tracey Ullman; John Goodman (don’t ask him about his new sitcom!); Lily Tomlin; Joe Flaherty; Eddie Izzard

The Locals (and by ‘Locals’ I Mean ‘Canucks’): Bruce Greenwood; Sandra Oh; Maury Chaykin; Don McKellar; Liane Balaban; Bruce McDonald; Guy Maddin; Hugh Dillon; Graham Greene; Jennifer Tilly; Colin Firth; Neve Campbell

Belle of the Ball: There will be no Belle of the Ball competition this year. Not because of the overwhelming protests, mind you, but simply because it is no competition this year at all. Zhang Ziyi wins hands down (sorry, Selma slaves.)

My interview targets this year: the aforementioned Miz Zhang; Stephen Chow; John Sayles; Chris Cooper; Danny Glover; Johnnie To; John Leguizamo; Lukas Moddysson; Ken Burns.

Don’t hold your breath on any of those. I sure ain’t.

Fest Preview Up

2004-09-09T07:52:00.000-04:00

Here. Man I hate typos.

Review: Innocence (2004, directed by Lucile Hadzihalilovic)

2004-09-08T20:18:00.000-04:00

Wow, what a perfectly odd movie.

Innocence is a very weird film about a young lady's passage into womanhood, sort of a Girl's Own Suspiria. It opens with a coffin drifting through water and dank tunnels, with the soundtrack all viscous and chthonic (imagine a Shoggoth loose in the Mines of Moria and you have some idea of the extraordinary noises accompanying the uber-retro opening credits.) Eventually the coffin arrives at its destination: a ordinary-seeming sitting room. Five young girls cluster around it before the eldest pulls a golden key from her pocket and unlocks the lid. Inside, just waking up, is an even younger girl, the newest member of the household.

From there, the movie gets strange.

Idyllic, exciting, dark and melancholy, the way all good films about childhood should be, Innocence simply refuses to take a straight line to any of its destinations. The residents of this most unusual boarding house certainly act like normal girls, showing all the accustomed delight, jealousy and yes, innocence, but the circumstances of their education/captivity are anything but normal.

I don't want to give anything away here. Innocence is a film that treasures its secrets, and I respect that. Technically, it's magnificent. The camerwork is gorgeous, the cast (including Marion Cotillard from Jeux d'enfants and Big Fish) excellent. And the final shot, giddy with joy and revelation and not a little bit of fear, might just land on my list of 10 favorite film endings ever (just behind O Brother Where Art Thou?, the undisputed champ, and jostling for position with Now, Voyager and Lone Star), all the more impressive for being the debut feature from Hadzihalilovic.

Go. See. Enjoy. Especially if the names 'Coraline' and/or 'Roman Dirge' mean anything to you.

Review: The Writer of O (2004, directed by Pola Rapaport)

2004-09-08T07:08:00.000-04:00

Some things in a documentary I can forgive. The pretense of objectivity for instance, sham though it might be, can have its uses.

There is one transgression however which I can never overlook, one unforgivable sin that, in my eyes, forever damns the filmmaker to the abyss. That one inviolable law is simply this:

Thou shalt understand what makes your subject special.

Every subject is special of course (Joyce proved that nearly a century ago) but if a filmmaker given me no confidence that they understand, in some fashion, why, then the resulting film feels like a cheat, a surface skimming barely worthy of A&E. And if your subject is an artist or a work of art, the hollow finished product will seem even worse in comparison.

All of which is a roundabout way of saying that the Writer of O is barely worthy of A&E.

The pieces were in place for this movie to work. By combining archive and contemporary footage with recreations of scenes from the Story of O, plus the fact that Dominque Aury (the author) hid behind a pseudonym for 40 years, the opportunity existed for all kinds of explorations of identity and self-image. The book itself, one of the landmarks of erotic fiction, is one of those rare works deserving of being called 'revolutionary' and the milieu of its creation (the Paris of Camus and Miller, Burroughs and Paulhan) is hardly a boring one. Not that you could tell much of that from this movie. Those names and words get mentioned in passing but almost as grace notes (by the way, Tropic of Cancer!) rather than as clues to illuminate.

The worst is the recreations though. Every single contemporary who talks about the Story of O in the film makes it clear that the power of the book comes from its honesty and lack of artifice, its clear precision. If an ass was being penetrated, Aury never flinched away from the language. She told you an ass was being penetrated. Which is why the recreations, featuring cut-aways to birds in flight and, Goddess help me, A TRAIN ENTERING A TUNNEL, aren't just insulting. They are a betrayal of the text.

It's nice that someone made a movie about Aury and all, but the Writer of O is not a fit tribute to her legacy.

More Proof of My Mentalness

2004-09-05T17:59:00.000-04:00

My lovely and talented friend Jason has taken my psychotic pre-fest schedule and posted it online in PDF form for the whole world to see. Eep.

An Explanatory Note

2004-09-05T09:50:00.000-04:00

In the Spider Forest review I express some mock surprise that it contains sex.

If you've seen the full schedule for this year you understand why. It almost seems like the theme of the whole damn fest. Sex sex sex sex sex sex. 9 Songs (Winterbottom), Kinsey, The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things (Asia Argento), A Dirty Shame (Waters), The Writer of O, A Hole in My Heart (Moodysson), Mysterious Skin (Araki)... that's off the top of my head.

Why yes I am planning on seeing all those films, why do you ask?

Dirty Little Secret Revealed!

2004-09-05T09:46:00.000-04:00

Yes, TIFF does early screenings of a number of the films. What, you think I actually see five movies a day at the fest? (OK, well some days I do. But not every day.)

In previous years I always tried to run my AICN reviews on the day a film was actually showing, regardless of when I saw it. With the blog, not so much. Kind of defeats the purpose.

Review: Clean (2004, directed by Olivier Assayas)

2004-09-05T08:56:00.000-04:00

There's an inherent, nearly insurmountable obstacle to making films about recovering addicts -- recovery is boring. Good and necessary, sure, but compared to the rush and the crash, the bare-bones living pales both for subject and observer. It's just not cinematic, dig?

Which is why you cast someone like Maggie Cheung to live it.

(Incidentally, my quixotic quest to meet the divine Miz C so far remains unfulfilled, so imagine my shock when I realized a certain scene in Clean was shot around the corner from where I was staying at the time, with me completely oblivious to the whole proceeding. That mocking laughter you hear is the universe's, and it's meant just for me.)

Maggie plays Emily, a tiny little light in the pop culture firmament, a former French TV presenter and singing semi-sensation (think Nico by way of 'Downtown' Julie Brown). She's married in all but name to Lee, another didn't-you-used-to-be whose music career peaked a lifetime ago. In a dingy motel room they fight like stray dogs over the carcass of their fame; she storms out after one such blow-up and nods off down by the lake. He stays behind and ODs.

Not so much hitting bottom as dipping her toes in it, Maggie (never really getting a chance to mourn) starts to vaguely sort of try to put her life back together with one goal sustaining her, that of rebuilding a relationship with her young son Jay. It's easier said than done. All of their former friends quickly turn out to be his former friends, and shun her; Lee's parents, Jay's guardians, keep him far away from her (not that they don't have cause); and all of them hold Emily responsible for Lee's death. What's a woman to do?

Pills, of course. And weed. And chug her methadone like the secret of life is hidden at the bottom of the bottle.

Clean is a fine little movie. Olivier Assayas' direction is smooth and secure. Nick Nolte, as Emily's father-in-almost-law, plays slightly against type as a quiet, good-hearted man sorting through the detritus of his son's crazy life. And Maggie of course is radiant and superb. For the most part...

The film has one glaring Achilles heel. Its English dialogue, for whatever reason, is... well... bad. Nearly Titanic bad. And it certainly doesn't help her performance when contrasted with scenes where she's speaking French, a language she seems far more comfortable in (to her credit Maggie tries to build on this, using the distance the clumsy words force on her as one more expression of her insecurity and emotional withdrawal). I suppose it could have been an intentional choice by Assayas for exactly those reasons, but it's a major distraction and detraction, especially when even native speakers like Nolte and Don McKellar stumble through the clunky text. In fact I'm sure Clean plays far better if you don't speak English at all, if you can simply let Maggie's pure performance shine through, and her best actress award from Cannes this year backs me up on that.

Much like its heroine, Clean is a good movie struggling mightily against a flaw that might have killed a lesser film dead. (Hmm. Maybe I should give Assayas more credit for knowing what he's doing with that dialogue...)

Review: Spider Forest (2004, directed by Song Il-gon)

2004-09-05T08:46:00.000-04:00

(Y'know, for a movie called Spider Forest, there weren't that many spiders in it. Not that I was expecting some low-budget South Korean Arachnophobia knock-off but dammit, when you're making a film about hauntings and murders and things that go bump in the head shouldn't you be looking for any excuse at all to throw the creepy little buggers in when you can? I'm just sayin'...)

Anyway, this one's nothing special, nothing you haven't seen dozens of times before, although there are some nifty dodges tossed into the middle of the story. Heck, even if you haven't seen it before, you'll probably be able to tell where it's going well in advance, but that's not a problem with the movie so much as the evolution of the genre. The Twist is so ingrained into the thriller that, really, it ceases to be a twist at all (are you listening M. Night?) If you know the ride you're on is a Moebius strip, then only a straight line will be unexpected.

Not that Spider Forest is bad. Competent is the word, I think. There's the requisite grue, slightly more than the requisite sex (shocking for this festival year, I know.) Bona fide scares, as opposed to mere creeps, are a bit lacking but again that could be the tension-sucking non-twist at work. In the end Spider Forest, sadly and not a little bit ironically, simply isn't memorable.

I Am Mental

2004-09-04T13:26:00.000-04:00

So I've started putting my schedule together for TIFF. Apparently I'll be starting out slowly on the first day, only seeing the six films.

The best part is, thanks to overlaps, I don't even know what six films they'll be yet.

Le Test

2004-08-30T09:06:00.000-04:00

The emergency broadcasting system, she is being tested.