Films Seen - January 2004
[Pre-'96 films not included.]
SOMETHING'S GOTTA GIVE (46) (dir., Nancy Meyers) Diane Keaton, Jack Nicholson, Keanu Reeves, Amanda Peet [A resounding 'You go, girl!' for the Life-battered middle-aged woman that almost becomes something more, then thinks better of it. Laugh-lines go for the jugular - "Thank God men die younger than us, it's the only break we get!" - but then it builds to our crushed menopausal heroine having to choose between Jack Nicholson (who tells her: "You're not like anybody else") and Keanu Reeves (who says: "You're incredibly sexy"). Gets interesting when it moves to Jack having to accept getting old - as Diane implicitly has already, thanks to Society's Double Standards - as the price for a truly adult relationship, and the three of them sitting round the same table with rivalry and longing in the air (in Paris, for added sophistication), but it doesn't last very long, giving way to absurd fluffy ending. Throughout, the biggest problem is the way it yo-yos from easy laughs to raw emotion and back again - heroine crying real tears ("I thought it was closed for business") just a couple of minutes after the blood-pressure gag. Diane does what she's always done, only more - kind of weird that she's getting props for playing 'vulnerable', given how coddled the character is - Jack's stuck in slow-burn ABOUT SCHMIDT mode. Predicted (though obviously not hoped-for) exchange in the not-too-distant future: 'Omigod, Jack Nicholson's had a stroke!' 'How can they tell?'...]
THE BARBARIAN INVASIONS (70) (dir., Denys Arcand) Rémy Girard, Stéphane Rousseau, Marie-Josée Croze [Haven't seen THE DECLINE OF THE AMERICAN EMPIRE - which is probably a good thing, meaning I wasn't put off by the complacent feel of the characters' reunion (Arcand's obviously banking on audience goodwill) and could see them for what they were, viz. terribly flawed. It's a fascinating film, seemingly wholly sympathetic to the hero - a middle-aged history professor dying of cancer - yet also exposing his inadequacies, as though a little voice inside Arcand were forcing him to be honest despite himself : Rémy's a "sensual socialist", standing for hedonism against his son's (and the younger generation's) puritanism, ideals against money-worship, books against videogames, the whole Canadian transformation of the 60s from devout Catholicism to sexual liberation (Ines Gorsini to Françoise Hardy, as he puts it) - yet he's also a failure, unloved by his students, estranged from his kids, dying without ever having fulfilled his promise or left any lasting legacy. The film gives him all the best lines - "Living grows on you," he smiles sagely - and the sharpest observations, not to mention a sense of History (refuting the old canard about the unprecedented bloodiness of the 20th century); it celebrates his friends, and seems to agree with him that "intelligence has disappeared", the barbarians have invaded; yet we also see his son - the invading barbarian - getting things done, knowing the ways of the world, living cleanly and without fuss, even using his money for compassionate ends (Rémy's ideals look a little silly when money is in fact buying him happiness, and he doesn't even know it) - and we see the father at a loss for words, the film fading discreetly to black, when his son's girlfriend affirms her faith in marriage for the sake of the children, part of the generation that's been scarred by divorce just like Rémy's part of the generation that did the scarring. Hugely touching elegy for a life of missed opportunities and small accomplishments (bad or good? that's up to us), and also for a generation - the Me Generation, as in Rémy's plangent cry: "I won't be here! Me!" - that lived for -isms and ideals, and the sensual pleasures, yet also lacked something vital (compassion? humility?), too self-absorbed to amount to much. Constantly turns you around, like all good movies - though it's also soft-centred and a little self-indulgent, and visually drab. Anti-American digs are gratuitous, even by Rémy standards; the point about the historical significance of 9/11 is well-taken, though.]
THE LAST SAMURAI (47) (dir., Edward Zwick) Tom Cruise, Ken Watanabe, Tony Goldwyn, Timothy Spall [Here's what I wrote for the "Cyprus Mail", just to speed things along (doesn't seem to be on their website, for some reason). One more thing: though the battle scenes are great, it occurs to me it's probably much easier than it seems to make these look good - more a question of coverage, i.e. constantly having something to cut to, than actual inventiveness. Just throwing that out and whatnot...]
IN MY SKIN (60) (dir., Marina de Van) Marina de Van, Laurent Lucas, Léa Drucker [Not that great, to be honest, apart from the restaurant scene - a classic of mounting dread, perched on the edge of insanity, with a heroine-fights-her-own-hand bit that's like something out of EVIL DEAD 2 - and Ms de Van herself, with her stretched-tight pale skin and big, opaque eyes (she looks like a Hammer heroine), though there's gratifying shock value to a close-up of a bloodied, mottled leg suddenly intruding on what seems at first like another talky French drama. Final section is in fact completely wordless, though also self-indulgent - more like performance Art than a real movie, though it could be just the knowledge that the star is also the director. Explanations not really offered, but the deadlines and pressures of being a career woman obviously relevant (deliberately hurting oneself is so gloriously irresponsible) plus a kind of nameless alienation - title may well be a riff on the French phrase 'être bien dans sa peau' (lit. to feel good in one's skin), which the heroine obviously doesn't; then again, are explanations really necessary for this kind of Cronenbergian body-fascination? Anyone who's ever picked at a scab should identify.]
THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED (37) (dir., Kim Bartley / Donnacha O'Briain) [Tabloid journalism, and it doesn't (or shouldn't) make any difference that it errs on the right (i.e. left) side - the side of democracy and people-power, against oligarchy, Big Business, the Bush administration and the free market (always a handy bugbear). Footage itself is intriguing - even if the camera is seldom in the inner chambers where decisions are made, mostly out in the corridor waiting for things to happen - but an inside look at an attempted coup deserved to be more than a mash-note to President Chavez, simplistically portrayed as a popular hero and champion of the people even though he's always been a lot more controversial: "In Venezuela, the currency is crashing," warned "The Economist" a month before the coup, and Chavez faced a two-month general strike just a few months later - meaning all workers stayed at home in protest, not just "the prosperous part of town" which the film portrays as his only enemies (bottom line is he seems to be a decent man who's not very good at his job, i.e. running a country). Full of short-cuts and manipulation - my favourite: the coupists looking worried in the Presidential Palace as the filmmakers cut the sound and replace it with the noise of a demo from outside, so it looks like they're worried because they're listening to the noise (second favourite: quick gratuitous glimpse of Jesse Helms, clinching the case for the prosecution) - and so slippery you have to watch it every minute: "The overwhelming majority of support for Chavez comes from the very poor," it announces piteously, "who make up 80% of the population". Well ... yes.]
JEEPERS CREEPERS II (50) (dir., Victor Salva) Ray Wise, Jonathan Breck, Eric Nenninger [First one was ragged, with some truly scary parts; this one's more polished but the shocks aren't really there (the Creeper looks like Freddy Krueger on a hang-glider), and it's more a creature-feature than a horror movie in any case. Salva's got to be a candidate for future auteurist worship, though, because he does exactly what the theory calls for - works within a genre (and a disreputable one) which he totally imbues with his own preoccupations, most obviously a rampant homoeroticism (shirtless high-school jocks sunning themselves on the roof, then going off to pee en masse). He also pays attention to psychology - the concept of the team coming under strain in a crisis, tensions rising as the kids divide into those looking out for the whole and those thinking only of themselves - as well as latent racism and homophobia, so it's still a good movie even if you don't particularly care that the monster represents Gay Panic ("Is it looking at me?"). Spare and B-movie tight - set over a single day and night, like the original - which is also part of the style (the extended climax feels tacked-on); not too scary, though.]
THE STATION AGENT (53) (dir., Tom McCarthy) Peter Dinklage, Patricia Clarkson, Bobby Cannavale [Hard to say why I didn't go for this - hopefully not just because 'nothing happens' (because that would be wrong) or because it's small-scale, but possibly because it wears its small-scale status with such pride, like a badge of honour. Its people live in stasis and quiet desperation, but that's all they do - they don't really have a life as human beings, or develop as characters; it's a lot like "The Shipping News" (the book, and presumably the movie), blending misfit characters and a sleepy rural place with a touch of quirky humour, and just letting it simmer. Guess I just don't like the genre, possibly because its artless naturalism seems contrived - both in the details (e.g. the meet-cute between hero and heroine) and the whole situation, conveniently pared-down people with nothing to do but bond: it's like doing a jigsaw puzzle where all the pieces are perfect squares - still amusing, but definitely easier. Well-acted and fairly well-crafted, but the only time I perked up was when I thought Clarkson's attraction to the titular midget might be because she saw him as a kind of semi-conscious surrogate for her dead child - a bitter reminder that physical oddities always trump their various compensations (a clever charming midget is still a midget), as well as perverse and nicely twisted. Way too twisted, alas...]
BAD SANTA (76) (second viewing: 74) (dir., Terry Zwigoff) Billy Bob Thornton, Tony Cox, Brett Kelly [Note-perfect comedy of sad-sack misanthropy, Thornton bringing rueful melancholy to a fairly repellent man ("Not much of a talker, are you?" asks the girl, and he sighs and mutters "No, not really"). Some of it is just crapping on Christmassy sweetness-and-light - and what's wrong with that? - but it actually goes way beyond that, positing Santa as a kind of blank slate that means different things to different people: for the girl it's a bizarre sexual fantasy, for the (so-called) "Hindustani troublemaker" a target for vitriol tying in with some obscure grudge, for the kid an all-purpose father-figure and a symbol he believes in blindly (though he knows it isn't real), probably a throwback to the normal childhood that's been taken away from him. The film's beauty lies in Bad Santa's gradual realisation of his true importance, realising he's caught up in something bigger than himself - not expressed in dialogue, more in the awe that occasionally threatens to engulf Thornton's surly mug - though it's also superbly modulated, not least in parceling out the bond with the kid: easy to overdo this and almost as easy to underplay it (e.g. KIKUJIRO), not so easy to hit the feelgood notes and keep your balance (Thornton doesn't 'change' - he gets moments, little rays of light before crawling back into his shell). All of a piece, with the consistency of dark fantasy, because everyone seems enclosed in their little world - everyone's extreme (incl. John Ritter as the anti-Bad Santa) and even the kid seems unreal, as if made of dough, like the lecherous infant in the "Honeymoon Hotel" climax of FOOTLIGHT PARADE (it's a measure of its fierce originality that I have to go back 70 years for an analogy). Very last gag is weak, last 5-10 minutes inadequate (*); a small price to pay.]
(*) The main reason why it went down slightly on second viewing, though on the other hand I'd totally forgotten how awesome the 'negotiation' scene between Tony Cox and Bernie Mac is. Also, one quibble: the Lauren Graham character should (presumably) have been a fat girl - but I guess they chickened out.
STUCK ON YOU (54) (dir., Peter & Bobby Farrelly) Greg Kinnear, Matt Damon, Eva Mendes, Cher [Looks like the Farrellys are turning into the John Sayles of comedy - decent, humane, intelligent, undoubtedly personal, just not very exciting to sit through. Improves in the memory, because it's so many possible things : a plea for tolerance and inclusiveness - where freaks meet celebrities, and find out they have lots in common - a wry self-portrait of its sibling directors, a metaphor for the mutual neediness in every relationship, not to mention the first (albeit coded) love affair between two men in a big-studio comedy (that it jokes about the subtext - "You fag!" - only confirms that the subtext is there; how can this not be defined as a film about the joys of one man joining his body with another?). Add to that the gag about the TV sitcom trying to keep the 'other' twin just out of frame in every shot - translation: the entertainment industry is in denial about real-life problems - and the diner full of blue-collar patrons rising to defend our heroes against an obnoxious yuppie, and it's clear the Farrellys are out to create a Comedy of Authenticity, ranged against both glossy Hollywood values and the ideological airbrushing of political correctness; all very fascinating - but the film is still flat and poorly paced, with a dreary second half more suited to a Frankie Muniz kidpic (underdog success followed by temptations, etc). Best gag (as well as least likely to be found in a Frankie Muniz kidpic): "What's a four-letter word meaning 'snatch'?"...]
BIG FISH (56) (dir., Tim Burton) Ewan McGregor, Billy Crudup, Albert Finney, Helena Bonham Carter [What if Baron Munchausen came back - and ended up being treated for Munchausen's Syndrome? Whimsical fantasy didn't really need the doubting-Thomas angle, except that it allows terminally hip director and writer to shake off some father Issues ("I didn't see anything of myself in my father"); Crudup's segments slow it down, partly because it's so obvious where that's going - wouldn't it be nice, or at least refreshing, if the dreamer gave way to the sensible materialist for once? (See BARBARIAN INVASIONS for a more shaded treatment of a similar dynamic.) Otherwise deceptively simple, an odyssey with echoes of "The Odyssey" - the carnivore giant like a gentler cyclops, the Spectre townsfolk very much like Lotus-Eaters - and a strange, primeval emphasis on purification through pain: hero takes a beating, pointedly walks barefoot through the forest's thorny paths, sees his own death in the first of many morbid undertones. Marked as a Tim Burton movie (as opposed to, say, FORREST GUMP) mostly by the absence of moralising, a penchant for taking people as it finds them: a circus-owner moonlights (so to speak) as a werewolf, but can still be a good guy; a poet ends up wheeling and dealing on Wall Street, and that's all right too. Visuals subdued, but maybe Burton's just outgrown the bells and whistles.]
GOOD BYE, LENIN! (39) (dir., Wolfgang Becker) Daniel Brühl, Katrin Sass, Maria Simon, Chulpan Khamatova [Communist nostalgia - who'da thunk it? Presumably works better for German viewers - esp. those disillusioned with the miracle of reunification - and the Michael J. Fox-ish hero is very amiable, but plotting is thin and the one joke seems to run out long before the end, making the various irritations all too glaring : fast-motion montage to the strains of the Radetzky March, twee voice-over with a leaden (dare we say German?) sense of humour ("several thousand people went for a walk" = massive anti-government demonstration; "huge and unique recycling campaign" = fall of the Berlin Wall), baby's reaction-shot held just that little bit too long (to allow for audience "Awww"s). One good idea - that our heroes' simulacrum of East Germany ends up being better than the real thing ever was (a sly comment on the socialist paradises that could've been, had ideals not bowed before human frailty) - doesn't quite make a decent movie, especially when it just repeats itself after the one-hour mark. Best bit: "It's the cut from 2001!".]
MYSTIC RIVER (73) (dir., Clint Eastwood) Sean Penn, Kevin Bacon, Tim Robbins, Laura Linney, Marcia Gay Harden [Clint's best since UNFORGIVEN, which actually pulls much the same trick - offering the audience liberation-through-violence from increasingly unbearable tension (i.e. playing to their bloodlust) while simultaneously asking 'Is it right?' and 'Was it worth it?'. Works in two structuring metaphors, one narrative, the other stylistic: the narrative motor is Silence - in the mute boy, in Bacon's estranged wife who tries to talk but can't form the words, above all of course in the silence of the unspoken, and the trauma of child abuse unaired and allowed to fester (it's implicit in the film's macho, blue-collar atmosphere that the Robbins character was never allowed to talk about his pain; at one point, someone refers to our hero admiringly as "a real old-school man", and that may be as close as the film gets to a villain). The stylistic motor is Light and Darkness - another kind of silence - the Robbins scenes notably murky, the dichotomy made plain in the final scene with the Woman of Light / Woman of Darkness device - Linney and Harden on opposite sides of the street, near-identically framed except one is blond and bathed in sunlight, while the other is dark and deep in shadow. It's the film's genius to keep the two sides - light / dark, active / passive, good luck / bad luck, strength / weakness - in equilibrium, tying in with the earlier bit where Penn muses on how tiny moments can decide your whole life: what the final scene (the ballsiest ending in years) is asking is 'how does it all fit together? how is it decided who ends up on the dark side of the street, and who in the light?' - facing up to the chanciness of Life, all those lucky breaks and tiny moments encapsulated in Penn's weary philosophical shrug, then soaring away in search of perspective (and the Mystic River just keeps flowing along). Elsewhere the pace may be a little too deliberate, there's some crude or tendentious detail - the whole notion of abuse as a Conspiracy of Silence is kind of talk-show-ish - and Penn gives a very poor performance (the scene where he cries for his dead daughter is the main thing holding this back from Top 10 status), but all around him is excellence, from Bacon's quiet strength and the sad set of his eyes as he looks at the woman he knows is lying, to Robbins as a kind of human disease, reduced like an animal to fight-or-flight, rearing up when threatened (e.g. in the police station) but too racked by fear and guilt for the daily business of living normally. A sombre film with a reserved, watchful presence and steady rhythm, seemingly objective and empirical despite the descent into chaos, Eastwood's godlike camera seeking (and providing) perspective: and the Mystic River just keeps flowing along.]
AMERICAN SPLENDOR (49) (dir., Shari Springer Berman / Robert Pulcini) Paul Giamatti, Hope Davis, James Urbaniak, Judah Friedlander, Harvey Pekar [AGREEMENT made this _____ day of _____, 20__ by and between Film Critics in the US and Europe (hereinafter called "the Fanboys") and Comic-Book Geek Heroes (hereinafter called "the Idols").
Witnesseth:
WHEREAS, the Fanboys identify with the Idols and/or still feel the thrill of being comic-book geeks from their misspent youth;
WHEREAS, geekery has become a religion with the advent of the Internet, and/or films like CRUMB and GHOST WORLD, and/or otherwise, taking the approximate place held by religiosity in 50s America when the "New York Times" put movies like A MAN CALLED PETER on its Ten Best list;
WHEREAS, the Idols long for movie glamour while the Fanboys see them as a symbol of indie anti-glamour,
NOW, THEREFORE, in consideration of the foregoing and of the mutual promises hereinafter set forth, it is agreed:
1. The Fanboys will furnish the Idols at the execution hereof with unconditional love (hereinafter called "the Love"), romanticising and/or sentimentalising their status as neurotic, lonely, horny, desperate or otherwise inadequate guys, without reference to the nauseating self-pity inherent in such romanticisation as aforementioned.
2. The Love will be distinct from the condescending attention paid to the Idols by the mainstream corporate Establishment, as represented by Music Video Television ("MTV") and Hollywood films like REVENGE OF THE NERDS, which both parties shall explicitly acknowledge as being phony and exploitative.
3. The Idols, through their agents in the filmmaking process (hereinafter called "the Filmmakers"), will facilitate the furnishing of the Love by disguising the process with meta-games and/or pre-emptive irony and/or winks to the audience, as when Robert Crumb appears and the voice-over (hereinafter called "the Voice-Over") notes, "They made a movie about him too". PROVIDED THAT no-one shall ask impertinent questions like "Just how talented is Harvey Pekar, anyway? He can't draw or write - all he does is mine his life for material".
4. The Idols, or their agents the Filmmakers, will furnish at least one (1) instance of congratulating the Fanboys and/or other audience members on their hipness, such congratulation to be phrased as: "If you're looking for romance and escapism, you've got the wrong movie", or "Why does everybody have to be so stupid?", or as set out in Schedule D hereto.
5. The Filmmakers will pretend to objectivity, allowing the Fanboys to cloak the Love in the guise of truthful social comment. The Filmmakers will make the Idols' geek friends look ridiculous for the amusement of the Fanboys and/or other audience members, then furnish interviews with the real geek friends to show they are equally ridiculous in real life. The Fanboys will claim this complicates the audience response (hereinafter called "the Response") while secretly feeling relieved there are people even geekier than themselves.
6. The Filmmakers will furnish the Idols with a happy ending, even while insisting it is "not a happy ending". The Fanboys will furnish the Love despite such hypocrisies and inconsistencies.
In witness whereof, the parties hereto have entered into this agreement the day and year first above written.]
COLD MOUNTAIN (57) (dir., Anthony Minghella) Jude Law, Nicole Kidman, Renée Zellweger, Brendan Gleeson, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Jack White [And the point of this movie is ...? Thought I'd spotted quite a neat emotional arc, namely War as the making of the great romance between hero and heroine - one of them waxes as the other wanes, and they meet each other halfway : the proud Southerner who cites the view from the window (i.e. the land itself) as a reason to go to war becomes increasingly alienated from his fellows ; the aloof outsider who admits she can't name a single stream in the county gets to know and love the land her man is fighting for - making a purely romantic notion of Love ("I hardly know her") tangible and substantial. Alas, the ending makes a nonsense of that whole theory, leaving only the theme that War Is Hell - which I'm sure it is, but the point was made more subtly in the same context by RIDE WITH THE DEVIL, which trod very similar terrain without the heavy-handed ironies (one soldier helps a crying baby, another ignores it - but both are killed, because War knows no morality ; bonus detail for maximum irony - the 'good' soldier is shot by the baby's mother). Individual scenes work but the whole is less than the sum of its parts, and mentioning God every 20 minutes isn't quite the same as a spiritual dimension. Please note the ending where Nicole takes the wool from a dead lamb to wrap another newborn lamb and protect it from the cold, what this is Saying is that out of Death comes Life in my opinion. You are welcome, readers.]
TIMELINE (9) (dir., Richard Donner) Paul Walker, Frances O'Connor, Billy Connolly, Gerard Butler, David Thewlis [Not morally repugnant or anything - I can see it being kind of hilarious if you're in the mood - but I wasn't in the mood, and there's only so much slack you can cut before resentment takes over at well-paid professionals turning out something so incredibly incompetent. Biggest howler is perhaps Anna Friel, as medieval French peasant, speaking French with an English accent, but there's also Billy Connolly - and his heavy Scottish brogue - as supposedly the Dad of SoCal surfer dude Paul Walker (biggest unintentional laugh: "No offence Dad, but I'm nothing like you"), and the bit where our heroes carbon-date an artefact, strenuously insisting it's 600 years old, and the computer duly confirms their suspicions with a big message reading "600 years" even though the date in the corner clearly says 1361 (shouldn't it be 642 years? or would that confuse the morons in the audience?), and bafflingly unimaginative production design so a newly-opened medieval crypt just looks like a big tunnel and the 14th century is mostly forest (second-biggest unintentional laugh: "This is France 1357? It could be my parents' house in Oregon!"); Time-travel turns out to be a simple matter of consecutive dissolves, and various people yelling at the camera from different angles. Did I mention how our heroes are cool archaeologists - like the tornado experts in TWISTER - yelling "Be safe!" and high-fiving enthusiastically as they climb down a hole? Did I mention how the film tries - against all possible odds - for emotional resonance, stopping the plot for literally a few seconds at a time so Frances O'Connor can deliver lines like "I killed that man; I've got to live with that" - then back to the action? To quote Mr. Walker: "It sucks big time".]
L'AUBERGE ESPANOLE (62) (dir., Cédric Klapisch) Romain Duris, Judith Godrèche, Audrey Tautou, Kelly Reilly [Klapisch back in multi-culti WHEN THE CAT'S AWAY mode, different nationalities sharing an enclosed space (more or less) in harmony - only this time moving from Paris to the EU in terms of what's being symbolised (the better to nab those script-development subsidies). Filmmaking is cruder now, but he's always trying stuff (split-screen, fast-motion, maps that move, photos that talk), and there's usually an inspired choice - joyful disorientation of a dawn after a night of clubbing - for every inane one (Erasmus appearing - why? - in the flesh); warm-hearted and shambolically lively as student life itself - hugely enjoyable, actually - though there's obviously a wagging finger in the EU being equated with the titular 'auberge' (what you get out of it depends on how much you put into it, explains the narrator) and the English once again identified as the black sheep unable to move with the times. Feelgood ending is crap, unfortunately.]
BASIC (49) (dir., John McTiernan) John Travolta, Connie Nielsen, Samuel L. Jackson, Giovanni Ribisi [A guilty pleasure, though also Hollywood at its most corrupt and jaded - though also lots of fun, shot so luridly half the shots seem to be lit up by flashes of lightning (the other half just get filters, and a thrusting camera). You could say A FEW GOOD MEN in the style of RASHOMON, or a trashier COURAGE UNDER FIRE, but in fact it's closer to IDENTITY, and the current fashion for piling on the total-mindfuck twists in lieu of actually resolving the plot and characters. Driving rain, metallic-blue light, "There are degrees of Truth", Connie Nielsen in warrior-babe mode; Travolta makes it clear he's never taken anything seriously in his life, and doesn't intend to start now. Maybe it's all for the best...]
FREAKY FRIDAY (60) (dir., Mark Waters) Jamie Lee Curtis, Lindsay Lohan, Mark Harmon [Never saw the original, so I don't know if it pandered quite so shamelessly to its target audience; does pander pretty shamelessly, though - uptight Mom discovers high-school isn't as easy as she thought, gaining a new appreciation of teenage life and garage-band rock music, while delinquent daughter cuts a happy swathe through Mom's life making everything better and cooler (the adult world is shown in silly comic terms, beeping cellphones and childish needy patients - Mom's a shrink - not as real, or implicitly important, as teenage problems). Hard to take, yet it's about as blithe and airy as it could be, sassier than the usual Disney pap and even flirting with political incorrectness in such details as the half-senile grandpa and screechy Chinese restaurateur. Alterna-bands on the soundtrack and a loose, funky sensibility ; totally soft-centred, but what can you expect?]
POLITIKI KOUZINA / A TOUCH OF SPICE (28) (dir., Tassos Boulmetis) Georges Corraface, Ieroklis Michaelides, Renia Louizidou [Biggest Greek production in years ("Ever!" claim the posters), making every effort to go Hollywood from the use of CGI and 3-D animation to such details as a credit for the casting director right after the actors; hopes to join the 'food porn' brigade - LIKE WATER FOR CHOCOLATE and its progeny - on the international arthouse market (Sony Classics / Miramax division), but in fact it qualifies only on the surface. Drips with the fake 'poetry' that's long bedevilled Greek movies (possibly because the culture itself is heavy, mired in ritual and much given to pompous speeches) - maxims, aphorisms, repeated motifs, ironic reversals: "There are two kinds of traveller," intones our hero in V.O. "Those who look at the map before setting out, and those who look in the mirror"; "Life, like food, needs a pinch of salt," counsels his rascally grandpa (cinnamon, he adds with a twinkle, is "both bitter and sweet, like all women", the word 'cinnamon' being female in Greek); there's a sailor uncle, eccentric relatives, picturesque old coots. Whole thing is self-consciously 'sensitive', but without the feelgood kick required nowadays: turns instead into a tale of Loss, but a loss that doesn't quite translate - the Greek melancholia over losing Constantinople (not Istanbul) to the heathen Turk, though the film is too much in the spirit of the New EU-Friendly Greece (and New Harvey-Friendly arthouse genteelness) to go into the sordid details of ethnic cleansing. International audience may well find it falls between two stools, may wonder why a cutesy jape with a touch of MY BIG FAT GREEK WEDDING goes all sullen in the final stretch, or why our hero's life is so marked with dissatisfaction, or why the Turkish childhood sweetheart never looks back as she leaves him at the station - or indeed why the food isn't properly fetishised, just a couple of passes over a meze-laden table. Will this be the much-vaunted breakthrough for Greek cinema on the global scene? Doubt it, somehow.]
BIKER BOYZ (56) (dir., Reggie Rock Bythewood) Derek Luke, Laurence Fishburne, Djimon Hounsou, Orlando Jones [Starts as one thing, ends as another. Early scenes are vroom-vroom - like the opening of 2 FAST 2 FURIOUS - burning rubber, roving camera following the wiggle of a girl's behind, double exposures, ECU of eyes, amusingly literal effect to illustrate the tunnel-vision required of all good racers; climax, on the other hand, has the spare lines of a Western showdown - taking place on a farm, away from the fizz of urban culture - pitting father and son against each other, the crowd melted away. Starts flashy - though the night-time photography glows - builds towards gravitas (Jeremy sees ambivalence more in the milieu than the racing sub-culture, but I'm not so sure; most of the examples cited - the tattoo, the bike wash, the videogame - are played light-heartedly, set against the bikers' solemn business); interesting tone though transitions are a little shaky, young hero looking for his coming-of-age - "The difference between men and boys is the lessons they learn" - but then going off the rails, "Biker Boyz got their own rules" etc. Middle section lost me, overwrought for no good reason, and Mr. Luke isn't overloaded with charisma; Fishburne, on the other hand, now matches danger with elder-statesman mien, and is ready for those James Earl Jones roles. Any idea why the Biker Boyz are so pointedly multi-cultural - hence presumably progressive, revolutionary - if they end up being just another biker gang after all?]
MAN ON THE TRAIN (47) (dir., Patrice Leconte) Jean Rochefort, Johnny Halliday, Jean-François Stévenin [Two men - a piano and a slide-guitar - each of them wanting what the other has: bedroom slippers (i.e. comfort, security) and a life of adventure, respectively. Vaguely promising, though in fact we barely get to see Halliday's inner life - he's Movie Presence as opposed to Rochefort's ordinary presence (or his gardener's non-presence), a mysterious man in black getting off the train as the film begins (with that slide-guitar on the soundtrack); it starts like a Western, but Wyatt Earp is later name-dropped just to make sure we get it - which is partly the film's problem, underlining its one point (two kinds of men, the Planners and Adventurers; thank you, we get it), though it also veers off course by bringing Mortality into it, becoming a film about Life moving on which is not quite the same as Life settling down. Basically a good joke weakened by muddled telling - maybe I missed something, but what do the robbery and the operation have in common that we should cross-cut between them (except of course that they end similarly)? Rochefort's laid-back eccentricity saves the day, and Leconte always has a sense of humour. Wish he were a bit more visually dynamic, though...]