Films Seen - December 2003
[Pre-'96 films not included.]
LOVE ACTUALLY (14) (dir., Richard Curtis) Hugh Grant, Colin Firth, Emma Thompson, Bill Nighy, Alan Rickman, Liam Neeson, Martine McCutcheon [Things I Believe (but Richard Curtis doesn't): (i) "All You Need is Love" is the worst Beatles song of all time; (ii) There is nothing funny, or cute or heartwarming about Ozzy Osbourne, or the notion of broken-down old rockers representing some kind of cracked, addled honesty in a shiny corporate world; there is no upside to the triumph of mediocrity; (iii) It's a fine line between charming self-deprecation and a kind of forced complicity that's smug and false, as when characters talk of the "total agony of being in love" and the film invisibly pokes you in the ribs to add 'but not really!' (indeed, so fine is this line no-one should ever try for charming self-deprecation, unless they are Hugh Grant who does it brilliantly); (iv) Christmas is a plastic, pointless holiday, birthing only skin-deep togetherness; (v) The stiff-upper-lip as a mark of heroism - e.g. Emma Thompson laughing and joking with her kids to conceal how deeply she's been hurt - went out with General Gordon (though self-sacrifice can still be touching, if done with dignity); (vi) People who feel the urge to deflate big emotional moments, e.g. with casual profanity, probably need to get in touch with their emotions. Obviously never a prime candidate for my Top 10 list, but I wasn't prepared for how inept it is: thought I'd be angrily brushing back tears (angry at the manipulation), but in fact Curtis manages to wreck pretty much all his climactic can't-miss moments, mostly through overkill - the little boy coming back from the departure gate with a smile on his face is just right, the little girl following him is too much; Firth proposing to his beloved in a crowded Portuguese restaurant could still work, being heckled by her fat sister and the rest of her family could not - ending on a montage of thundering banality. Which reminds me: (vii) The hugs and kisses at the arrivals lounge of Heathrow Airport - often insincere, always based on an idealised conception of a person one hasn't seen in a long time, usually forgotten (or regretted) by the time one has walked with said person to wherever the car is parked - are a pretty dodgy indicator of Love Being All Around in my opinion.]
CONFIDENCE (38) (dir., James Foley) Edward Burns, Dustin Hoffman, Paul Giamatti, Andy Garcia [Empty calories, served in the best (or only) possible way, i.e. smothered in flashy style to camouflage how utterly fake it is. Blotches of red and green, pounding score, ordinary conversation in outdoor café shot from all angles with cars wiping frame as the characters talk ; con-man slang ("the mark", "the mope", "the shill") and Andy Garcia with amusing facial hair - at least till you realise the tough-guy talk is hollow, and the scams actually quite simple, and the twists don't really make sense, and the whole thing could've been written by a computer program input with the words "Mamet", "tricksy" and "motherfucker". Using HOUSE OF GAMES DP Juan Ruiz Anchia is at least honest, but the jewellery-store scam is still a blatant rip-off of the bus station in that film.]
ELF (43) (dir., Jon Favreau) Will Ferrell, James Caan, Zooey Deschanel, Bob Newhart [Will Ferrell as the Demographically-Tested Elf : a film for kids, and their Frank Zappa-loving parents too! Not a lot to talk about in between an animatronic bear's warning not to eat the yellow snow and a bi-i-ig Christmas climax at the end, except Ferrell's holy-fool comedy (reminiscent of Tom Hanks in BIG) and stream-of-consciousness ramblings ("I saw a dog today ... Why is your coat so big? ... Francisco. That's fun to say, Francisco"). Fun when it's being deranged but more manufactured than it likes to let on, trying to have its Christmas cake and eat it too. Climax finds a perfectly adequate (and quite clever) resolution, MIRACLE ON 34th STREET-style, when a boy proves Santa exists by reading names from his list on live TV (cut to those named, looking flabbergasted) - but someone obviously decided it wasn't feelgood enough, so they ruin it with La Zooey leading the entire cast in a massive, Christmas-spirit singalong. I hate singalongs.]
THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE RETURN OF THE KING (61) (dir., Peter Jackson) Elijah Wood, Sean Astin, Viggo Mortensen, Ian McKellen, Orlando Bloom [Behold! First (i.e. seventh) hour is a snooze, but I guess the idea is a lull between Helm's Deep and the final battles; Death is the Special Guest Star, explained by Gandalf, craved by Boromir's father and proving (allegedly) glorious on the battlefield, but the real problem - here as in TWO TOWERS - is that the Frodo-Gollum-Sam strand is so much more interesting than anything else going on (Elijah Wood is so perfect I strongly suspect he's CGI). Stirring stuff nonetheless, with lyrical touches and spectacular climax not-quite ruined by endless epilogue. Biggest Unintentional Amusement: dangerous obsession and inability to let go being cast as the main villains - Gollum, Frodo, Boromir's dad, even briefly Pippin - when obsession and tenacious tunnel-vision are precisely what got it made, and what drives its army of fanboys. Biggest Intentional Problem: the whole righteous-war angle, with thousands slaughtered (not much strategy to any of these battles, just charge and hope for the best) and wizard-turned-warlord Gandalf at the head of the troops. Doesn't he know any magic at all?...]
LOONEY TUNES: BACK IN ACTION (60) (dir. Joe Dante) Brendan Fraser, Jenna Elfman, Steve Martin [No real rhythm, except (of course) the rhythm of a Looney Tunes cartoon, rat-a-tat procession of gags giving the sense of being forever thrust into the middle of a scene without beginning or end; it worked in short form, and it worked for the Marx Brothers even at feature length - they also piled gag on gag, and also played 'themselves' with a wink to the audience - but the difference is perhaps that the gags here don't even cohere as gags, each one bearing only a passing resemblance to the ones before and after. Some satirise Hollywood - LETHAL WEAPON with babies (tag-line: "Nap time's over!"), an exec out to "leverage your synergy" - others name-drop favourite films (like the 50s-sci-fi lab), others undercut the cartoon world DUCK AMUCK-style (Bugs on Daffy: "Never misses a cue"), others are farcical (Steve Martin doing a poor man's Dr. Evil and/or Mugatu from ZOOLANDER), others - like the chase through the Louvre - are just surreal. A joke-album that amuses but never gets off the ground, esp. since they've made Daffy too much of a hyperactive pest like the annoying John Leguizamo thing in ICE AGE, and both the PSYCHO spoof and product-placement gag are about 3 times longer than they should be. Rating likely to rise on second viewing, as the non sequiturs are savoured for themselves rather than being shoehorned into a non-existent whole. Possible favourite: "Guess I owe you five bucks".]
THE SLAUGHTER RULE (57) (dir., Alex and Andrew Smith) Ryan Gosling, David Morse, Clea DuVall, Eddie Spears [Solid regional filmmaking (Montana, actually), though it doesn't really start to get going till about 20 minutes in, when Morse appears and grabs it by the scruff of the neck - a backwoods preacher type with dangerous smile and a breathy hoarse ramble of a voice. Superb for about an hour after that, once you accept the usual American Heartland trappings - reticent dialogue, strummed guitar and folksy C&W on the soundtrack - with tense undertones of threatened masculinity (great scene in the motel room) and evocative detail like the umpire chasing chickens off the field so a football game can begin; would've made a tight, sour 85-minute movie - but they let it go on too long, and lose the tension in bilious showdowns and bathetic symbols (still not entirely sure what the "slaughter rule" is supposed to signify, though it possibly links up with the mercy-killing our hero tries and fails to perform). Tries for squalid in the 70s manner, with used condoms and a girl on the toilet - but of course no nudity, which is silly really. Do we blame the MPAA, or is it just political correctness and actors deciding they no longer want to be 'exploited'?]
WHALE RIDER (34) (dir., Niki Caro) Keisha Castle-Hughes, Rawiri Paratene, Cliff Curtis [Iiiiiiiii caaaaaan speeaaak whaaaaaaale. Thiiiiiiiiis iiis a fiiiiiiiilm abouuuut the Maaaaoriiiiiiis. Theeeeeey liiiike to preeeeeeeeeess ... oh forget it, they like to press noses when they greet each other, and they eat a lot and say "eh" like Canadians. There's a bossy little girl who tells people off for smoking and asks precocious questions like "You know how we all came on a whale? Where did the whale come from?"; then there's her grandpa, who lets tradition get in the way of their love because she's a girl and not allowed to be the Whale Rider. Cosy ethnography side-by-side with Girl Power, briefly hinting at the problems of the Maori community (unemployment, absent Dads, general inertia) only to wish them away in a burst of New Age fairy dust; borderline-offensive, not to mention dramatically dopey - turns out the grandpa could've been reconciled long before, when the girl retrieves the magical whatsit from the ocean bed (proving her Whale Rider credentials), but the wise Maori grandma says "He's not ready" and prefers to tell him when it's almost too late, when the girl's about to drown and all he can do is stand on the shore and berate himself for his narrow-mindedness. Good job wise Maori grandma. Goooood joooob wiiiiiiiiise Maaaaoooriii graaaandmaaaa...]
INTOLERABLE CRUELTY (46) (dir., Joel Coen) George Clooney, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Geoffrey Rush, Cedric the Entertainer, Billy Bob Thornton [Bricks Without Straw Dept.: Clooney tries hard (almost but not quite too hard), the Coens smuggle in their usual subtle baggage - self-sufficiency (hero's legal mastery, heroine's "independence") not enough, happiness requiring risk and making oneself vulnerable (becoming "exposed") as in BARTON FINK and MAN WHO WASN'T THERE - but they still need halfway-decent material and a viable female lead as opposed to the deadly Zeta-Jones and a sub-standard script, its wit seldom rising beyond alliterative names (Rex Rexroth), spit-takes and cartoonish touches like a horse-faced old lawyer saying "sexual pro-clivities". Not entirely depressing - there's the "who's on first" dementia of "Have you ever sat before her?", and of course Richard Jenkins is a god (ditto Billy Bob) - but staleness settles over it like a damp fog, and the more it tries to punch its way out the more it misses that easy elegance that made these things work back in the day. Also, when did geeky Grant Heslov become a producer? Also, why do the Coens always overdo the big-palooka lugs like the boxer in MILLER'S CROSSING and Wheezy Joe in this one? Also, what's with all the attempted hits on spouses in their oeuvre? Look out, Frances...]
FINDING NEMO (65) (dir., Andrew Stanton) With the voices of Albert Brooks, Ellen DeGeneres, Alexander Gould, Willem Dafoe [Pixar's epic - their SULLIVAN'S TRAVELS, their TEN COMMANDMENTS, designed to encompass and contain everything they're good at - and like all epics it loses a little in charm what it gains in scale. Slight sense of hard-sell (dare we say theme-park?) in between the thousand climaxes - the sharks and the whale and the abyss and the jellyfish and the crabs and the seagulls and the deep-sea monster and the filter and the trash-can and the net and the current and the dentist's psycho niece - though most of them are smartly done and often gripping (it works as action flick as much as comedy). As so often in these things, the message - freedom over control, "letting go" over trying to micro-manage - is rather at odds with the meticulous craftsmanship, controlled to within an inch of its life - but what else can you expect from a society that puts such a premium on leaving kids free to find their own way without restrictions while also protecting them more ferociously (or paranoically) than any society in history? Bonus points for dappled light on the ocean floor, and those multi-coloured fronds sure look pretty...]
HOLLYWOOD HOMICIDE (52) (dir., Ron Shelton) Harrison Ford, Josh Hartnett, Lena Olin, Bruce Greenwood, Master P [Shelton tries to do for the cop movie what he did for boxing in PLAY IT TO THE BONE and baseball in BULL DURHAM - not so much subvert the swaggering guy-talk (the film is still quite macho) as flesh it out, add a foundation of weary matter-of-fact professionalism, underplay (but make a point of showing) the caramaderie Hawks-style, and tone down the characters' grasp to their true small-time dimensions. Cop-movie clichés cheerfully tweaked (old cop and rookie are already partners as the film begins) and/or skewered by e.g. cop's second job as a real-estate agent taking over an interrogation when the suspect admits he's looking for a new pad; quite refreshing for a while - breath of fresh air after "NYPD Blue"-style self-importance - but the trouble is that Shelton (or the studio) wants to keep the genre layer going as well when it's clear he has little love for it - PLAY IT TO THE BONE had a kick because it revealed itself as a boxing fan's valentine to the game (its climax only made it richer) but the cop stuff feels increasingly rote in this one, the offbeat touches increasingly forced, and the whole thing increasingly perfunctory. Totally worth seeing for the loose vibe, little moments and real-world touches - the constant buzz of cellphones, or a cop's plausibly horrified reaction as he realises he miscounted the bullets in a perp's gun and almost got himself killed during a bust (movie cops never seem to dwell on these near-death experiences) - but no, it doesn't work. Line That Says It All (grumpy Ford on his latest case): "It's a mess".]
SCHUSSANGST (38) (dir., Dito Tsintsadze) Fabian Hinrichs, Lavinia Wilson, Johan Leysen [Seen in a state of extreme exhaustion, so I may have missed some of the nuances, but mostly came across as the usual tale of urban alienation - title means "fear of shooting" (i.e. a gun), standing in for all the hang-ups and indecisions that hold us back in daily life - told with rather unattractive detail. Starts off earthy and determinedly unromantic, takes a turn into quirky comedy - arms dealer quoting Goethe, eccentric neighbour who's obsessed with North Korean 'Dear Leader' Kim Jong-Il - lurches into genuinely painful scenes (old lady wailing for her dog as she's being carted off to a home), finally lapses into mere monotony; theme is half-life, people living on even though they're hurting - like a dog with part of its head blown off - and it's kind of a half-movie, watchable but inadequate. Sample plotting : heroine meets hero by slipping him a note reading "Help Me" in the subway, and they end up getting together - yet he never asks her why.]
THE TRIALS OF HENRY KISSINGER (53) (dir., Eugene Jarecki) [Bit of a missed opportunity, not to say a rip-off : there are real questions at the heart of this - how far can human-rights law be used as another branch of law, given its inflexibility and narrow focus? should e.g. national security count as a mitigating factor, like self-defence in murder cases? what should be the standard of proof? - but they're simply ignored, the film basically using the whole war-criminal angle to regurgitate lots of juicy (if fascinating) anecdotes about Mr. K's duplicity and callousness, seemingly assuming its case has been made (news flash: politicians lie, and will often make decisions based on - gasp! - strategic aims rather than the decent thing to do). Final impression is that Kissinger's celebrity status and bizarre Dr. Strangelove mien have once again conspired to put the focus on himself, obscuring the issues in the process. Also, Christopher Hitchens appears permanently hung-over. Also they should at least have mentioned Cyprus, that s.o.b. really screwed us over in 1974. I mean jesus.]
MASTER AND COMMANDER: THE FAR SIDE OF THE WORLD (75) (dir., Peter Weir) Russell Crowe, Paul Bettany, James D'Arcy [Hushed and majestic as the H.M.S. "Surprise" herself - this "little wooden world" - as she glides through the water, but it's the ideas that make this more than just well-crafted Oscar-bait. Captain Aubrey, in a word, is God (or at least the idea of God), everything around him explicitly created in his image - his ship (an "aged man of war" like himself), his enemy (who pulls the exact same sneaky trick he does at the very end), even his men, "all God's creatures" (he's forever telling some young midshipman how much the boy reminds him of himself at that age). Maturin, in a word, is Man, or at least Modern Man - a reminder that 1805 was a time of conflict between the old religious hegemony and new ideas of the Enlightenment - trying to shape his own destiny: an existentialist who prefers to cut into his own flesh than leave his fate in another's hands, a naturalist (anticipating Darwin, hence also the Galapagos connection) harking to the wider world outside the ship, beyond the narrow world of "seamanship" ("Did something nautical and fascinating just happen?"). It's the film's bold contention that God is essentially a childish notion, Aubrey himself just an overgrown child - "Tell me that wasn't fun!" - whereas Maturin is mature, as befits the name; but it's also its touching conclusion that the two can co-exist in a symbiotic friendship, one providing leadership, the other perspective. Aubrey's macho code is found wanting in many ways - "Men must be governed," he says, but his harsh punishment only leads to tragedy - and it's significant that he inspires one boy with tales of "king and country" while Maturin inspires another with science and method (guess which boy ends up dead?), yet the two men's relationship is equable, founded on mutual respect and immensely satisfying; Crowe evens things out, imbued with more natural authority than anyone probably since the older Lee Marvin, not just machismo but that sense of finer feeling bottled up in the name of strength. Beautifully made, with the feel for ethereal moments that may be Weir's only spark of genius as a director, though it does plod occasionally. Key exchange: "Does God make them change?"; "Certainly. But they also want to change themselves".]
MATCHSTICK MEN (59) (dir., Ridley Scott) Nicolas Cage, Alison Lohman, Sam Rockwell, Bruce McGill [Hugely unconvincing - Lohman as the pizza-munching brat, the sudden change of plan that brings her into the heist, Cage's many tics and Scott's eruptions of flashy style - but mostly entertaining; bit of a con-job, giving the sense of having been made for a lark, but that's obviously appropriate. Scott showers it with weird angles and fast-motion tricks, throws songs on the soundtrack (Frank Sinatra? George Formby???) pretty much at random, likes to light the outside of a room so there's blinding white light through the curtains while the people in the room are indistinct and underexposed; theme, such as it is - parenthood as a form of honesty, neurosis as a form of self-doubt, always pretending to be someone else - pokes its head through occasionally, then withdraws; have to say I saw the twist coming (very unusual for me), partly because I knew a twist was coming but mostly because there wasn't much else going on. Fun nonetheless, esp. when Cage gets flustered: "Oooh! Oh! Oh! Oooooohhhh!"]