Films Seen - January 2007

[Pre-'96 films not included.]

IRAQ IN FRAGMENTS (81) (second viewing: 72) (dir., James Longley) Aren't today's documentaries amazing? How do you get both the helicopter flying by and the man's thoughtful reaction? (Reaction shot staged later? Two cameras and a lot of quick thinking?) How do you get right in the middle of a baying crowd, so close you're showing hands reaching out for pamphlets - or else looking down, towering above them - without anyone turning round or scowling at the camera? Longley sees all and knows all, which is partly why the fragmented contradictory message comes across as wisdom rather than cop-out; those arguing that America only wants to "make a military base" and take Iraq's oil will find some support here, those arguing the invasion was doomed from the start find support, those who feel things were better under Saddam find support, those who feel that "if America leaves, these people [Islamist militants] will be like the return of Saddam" also find support; Shias say "America is the enemy of God", Kurds say "God brought America to Iraq" - and the film itself self-consciously fragments (as Iraq doubtless will) in the final third, voices no longer attached to their owners, brutal facts and crowded streets giving way to open spaces and the dreams of children, free-floating voice-over backing images of idyllic beauty (recalling the very first line: "It was beautiful"). Definitive primer on Iraq becomes something (even) more, moving beyond petty politics, reaching out to the only constant amidst - and beyond - sectarian divisions. Impeccable. [Second viewing, June 2008: Much the same film; visual beauty seems a bit less striking, Message a bit more obvious, but it's not hugely different - it's just that Iraq has become a less pressing matter in the 18 months since. Simple as that. (I also spent most of 2007 cutting my own documentary, which may have opened my eyes to how much trickery is involved in the illusion of Truth - but Longley still does it better than I ever could.)]  

THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE: THE BEGINNING (56) (dir., Jonathan Liebesman) Jordana Brewster, Taylor Handley, Matt Bomer, R. Lee Ermey First half close to first-rate, doing something quite unusual for this genre - cross-cutting between murderous hicks and prospective victims (instead of dwelling on the latter, trying to turn them into identification figures), allowing us to make connections between the two, esp. since it's set at the time of Vietnam (or Iraq) and our hero used to be a soldier there; when he says "You'd be amazed, the things you can get used to", it could easily be paterfamilias Ermey talking about cannibalism or even Leatherface about chainsaw massacres (the parallels between war and the family's brand of dehumanisation - people as meat - are obvious; they also stand for red-state values, ranging themselves against the "hippies"), and of course cross-cutting also makes the clan more sympathetic, tapping into the original TCM's brand of black comedy (sample joke: Pa prepares to sample human stew, Ma looks shocked - but not, it turns out, at the meat: "Say grace!"). Second half turns into torture-porn, mostly repellent and amoral, but Liebesman's visual sense is still impressive - the final shot, Leatherface tottering away into pitch-darkness (a variant of riding off into the sunset) as he prepares to embark on his reign of terror, is almost as striking as the low angle silhouetting him against a sky full of clouds - and though it may seem decadent to treat such material as a photo-shoot the film also does well by the dramatic moments, notably the zoom-out from the front door into open space (freedom!) as our heroine ponders her terrible dilemma - to escape, or try to help her friends? Surprisingly strong, though also of course completely worthless. 

BLOOD DIAMOND (41) (dir., Edward Zwick) Leonardo DiCaprio, Djimon Hounsou, Jennifer Connelly "T.I.A." (This Is Africa), where the red earth - coloured, so they say, by the blood of the dead - gets under your skin, and regular carnage is a boon for the enterprising filmmaker; one good burst of violence - a village overrun by the rebels, or an urban shoot-out with civilian deaths and rocket-fire - will keep your audience sweet for at least 20 minutes of improving educational stuff like a discussion of Good vs. Evil (is Man the former or the latter? in the end, our actions will define us), Western complicity in the conflict-diamond trade or the thorny question "Were Africans better off under the whites?" (it's controversial, but it needed to be asked). Violence can also be used to further the plot, forcing characters to take decisions (don't worry if you need to do a touching father-son reunion, the gunfire will subside then re-start as soon as the scene is over), which is just as well since the film is notably lame in its exposition, using a conveniently talkative rebel to bring our heroes together. The rebels do a lot of evil laughter, though "Commander Zero" also asks for a satellite dish so he can watch "Baywatch" (when did that old chestnut first appear? was it SPY GAME?); they also cut off villagers' hands so they won't be able to vote, meanwhile explaining in English that this is what they're doing. (*) Hounsou is the proud African, so proud he answers in his native tongue when his son asks something in English (he and his wife also speak in African dialect, except when they say something too important to be left to subtitles; "They took him!" she yells when the boy is kidnapped - then gratuitously yells it again in English, just to make sure), Connelly the crusading reporter who bristles with righteousness and gazes sadly at a refugee camp ("An entire country made homeless..."). And what of DiCaprio's character? A mercenary? "How about 'soldier of fortune'? Or is that too much of a cliché?". Perish the thought. 

(*) I'm not sure I believe a word this guy says, but the thought that Foday Sankoh and his band of monsters were just a fiction perpetrated by the "international community" is still pretty scary. Three sides to every story, etc... 

NOTES ON A SCANDAL (58) (dir., Richard Eyre) Judi Dench, Cate Blanchett, Bill Nighy, Andrew Simpson Deep down, an old fogey's film, aghast at chaotic modern schools with their policy of "reform through nurture" and the awful permissiveness of "bourgeois bohemia" (even in CLOSER, there was something fogeyish in Patrick Marber's insistence that people are rotten to the core; he's like the Theodore Dalrymple of Oscar-bait pictures); very comparable to LOVE AND DEATH ON LONG ISLAND, another fundamentally fogeyish film that was also about lust leading to self-delusion, and disguised its affinity with its hero by making him look silly (but finally protected him, just like Dench gets the last scene in this movie). The difference is that Giles De'Ath came from a place of contentment (even complacency) whereas Dench's character comes from deep loneliness - so deep the "accidental brush of a bus conductor's hand" can set her off - and deep-seated envy of "the privileged" with their trendy politics and lack of inhibitions (she's closeted, of course); Eyre decides to treat it as psychodrama, a troubled woman's spiral into insanity - the visuals are oppressive, Philip Glass's score relentless - whereas sly comedy may have been more appropriate (there's some of that, but there could've been more). Dench is great, casting off the Weinstein-approved cotton wool to get some venomous hatred in her regal aloofness; Blanchett seems to lack something, possibly a streak of vulgarity. 

TALLADEGA NIGHTS (47) (dir., Adam McKay) Will Ferrell, Sacha Baron Cohen, John C. Reilly, Amy Adams, Michael Clarke Duncan Massive demerits for putting itself in a position to take sides in polarised America's values debate and cravenly copping out, de-fanging Cohen's character and de-polarising the situation to create complicity rather than antagonism (it's all right, there was never any conflict; he wants to be defeated). Maybe no coincidence that the jokes also decline, though of course humour is subjective and so forth - but all the laughs (for me) came in the first half, whether Ricky saying grace (to baby Jesus), the TV ad urging people "never to travel to Tijuana", or someone opining "That idea ain't worth a velvet painting of a whale and a dolphin gettin' it on". Also, it's official: Tom Cruise is the new Michael Jackson.

SWEET LAND (59) (dir., Ali Selim) Elizabeth Reaser, Tim Guinee, Alan Cumming, John Heard One thinks of Malick, the Richard Pearce movie called HEARTLAND (which I've seen) and the Hanson-Nilsson NORTHERN LIGHTS (which I haven't), though it's unusual for those films that aim to recreate the rural past to also try for (genteel, slightly goofy) comedy. Resulting awkwardness actually adds to the old-world feel though Alan Cumming almost wrecks it, playing a farmer with nine kids as a mincing pierrot (he's one of the producers, which explains why they let him get away with it); often distinctive, commercials director Selim resisting the lure of easy visuals - with exceptions like the shot of the couple outside the church, glimpsed through the doorway in the far distance - but every time it comes within reach of greatness it throws it away with a lame bit of business (e.g. the priest saying "I still think your coffee is too black" as he takes his leave). Most intriguing detail is perhaps Cumming's "tin whistle" joke (which no-one gets) as his farm is about to be repossessed; is the film mocking him for trying to meet disaster with wordplay, or holding up Language as a way to keep one's dignity in the midst of hardship? Given its pernicious role in the main plot - words divide, only actions unite - probably the former.

FLANNEL PAJAMAS (62) (dir., Jeff Lipsky) Justin Kirk, Julianne Nicholson, Rebecca Schull Any film purporting to show an entire relationship is playing a game - we know it can't show everything, so everything it does show becomes Significant - so all credit to this one for playing smart, sidestepping the obvious. It's good e.g. that the opening-scene revelation of Hero's job - he lies for a living, fabricating back-stories for Broadway shows - doesn't turn out to be Significant presaging of his role in the relationship. It's good that he starts off obnoxious, so much so that you wonder how the girl can fall for someone so slimy, only to end up arguably the more sympathetic (more functional, more committed) of the two. It's good that the phone number quoted at one point isn't a '555' number. It's good - very good - that Nicholson has something of the young Shirley MacLaine, that combination of elfin and grounded. Still gets self-conscious, like an off-Broadway play - there are cute scenes, and talk over action (the falling-out-of-love section is the skimpiest, maybe because it's the hardest to verbalize; boredom, unlike passion or active dislike, tends to still the tongue), and the open ending is transparently (if rather awesomely) an Open Ending. Doesn't quite transcend the material, but then you can't really show an entire relationship. Even Bergman (or Stevens, or Cukor) had to finesse that.  

DAVE CHAPPELLE'S BLOCK PARTY (45) (dir., Michel Gondry) Sorry Dave. Diligently sat there, patiently waiting to be transported, but it never happened - not a huge surprise, given that (a) rap is pretty low on my list of musical genres (my general take is embarrassingly close to the geezer who says "I don't hear it well enough to catch the words", one reason why I tend to prefer the bands - e.g. OutKast - with striking musical flourishes), and (b) I've never seen Dave Chappelle's TV show and he means almost nothing to me, making it hard to sympathise with his - big-hearted, racially right-on - attempt to connect with 'his' people (plus I'm not entirely sure how this is different to J. Lo's much-derided "Jenny from the Block" phase). I guess it's nice that all these celebs know each other from way back, and Mos Def seems like a cool person. Um, that's it really. 

THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS (68) (dir., Gabriele Muccino) Will Smith, Jaden Smith, Thandie Newton Sounds daft to say so, but the mind goes to BICYCLE THIEVES - put-upon, single-minded Dad accompanied by wide-eyed, trusting little boy - and the comparison isn't totally nuts (*) because this is also a dry-eyed weepie, bristling with dignity, albeit with wildly different values. THIEVES was in essence socialistic - playing up the victimised humanity of the Common Man, implicitly calling for the state to intervene and help the poor - but this is unabashedly Republican fantasy: Big Business wears a human face (and is apparently colour-blind), the taxman (i.e. state intervention) is the main villain, hippies are dismissed as a nuisance, the poor should be allowed to help themselves - if they can do it - and Reagan appears exactly once, not to be mocked or seem clueless but to offer sensible talk about the recession. I somehow doubt that people who despise such values could embrace the movie, but it works for the character; getting a job as a stockbroker isn't my idea of happiness (or even happyness) but for this pushy, determined, high-achieving man - complaining about graffiti, the neighbours, his son's day-care, constantly pushing for excellence, living by a simple credo: "You want something? Go get it. Period." - it makes perfect sense. Smith makes him sympathetic but not soft (you can see him turning into a real dick as a middle-manager), plays on presence more than expression and nails that tear-jerking climax into the ground; the kid is used lightly and discreetly, and even his jokes - the one about God and the boats - are on-topic. Exemplary, if a little scary.   

(*) Actually not nuts at all, and I now discover it's been made by loads of other critics (Google gives 36,900 hits for the two film titles together). This is what I get for never reading reviews...

THE GOOD GERMAN (53) (dir., Steven Soderbergh) George Clooney, Cate Blanchett, Tobey Maguire Never less than luscious to behold, but something of a dog's-dinner of visual styles. The template is apparently 40s noir, but Blanchett's first appearance is decked out like Dietrich in a Von Sternberg movie, there are lots of wipes as opposed to dissolves (also very 30s), but then some of the scenes - e.g. Clooney in Beau Bridges' office - also have a more expansive late-50s / early-60s feel; the camera's further back than the tight 40s framing, you see more of the room, see the desk as well as the guy behind it, etc (it doesn't feel noir, more like the interiors in e.g. PATHS OF GLORY). Some scenes are self-consciously pastiche, e.g. when Clooney and Maguire are in the car (with rear-projection) and we cut very stiffly to whoever is talking, but then e.g. there's also voice-over by different characters, which is unusual and by no means a noir cliché; whole thing gives the impression of a talented filmmaker who watched a lot of b&w movies in preparation for this project but doesn't really know (or care) enough to tell them apart. Story is weak, though there's a neat conjunction between collective German guilt - the notion that no-one is innocent - and the use of sex and swearing to puncture the pristine Old Hollywood surface, punching holes in its carapace of 'innocence' (final revelation of US warmongers as the real villains also works in this vein). Guy Maddin-esque, though a lot more prosaic. 

LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA (70) (dir., Clint Eastwood) Ken Watanabe, Kazunari Ninomiya, Tsuyoshi Ihara Victors' justice in a way, the unspoken message being that America won the war because of its values - because its soldiers weren't tyrannized, weren't treated as second-class citizens vis-a-vis the officers,  were permitted to think for themselves instead of "running with the herd"; in short, because We Have Democracy - but it also elevates the Japanese into tragic figures, dwarfing the dilemmas in FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS; soldiers in that film worried about War-as-showbiz and the fear of being dishonest, but soldiers here have the ruined desperation of men on a suicide mission (lending retrospective irony to the line in FLAGS about why the Japs aren't shooting: "Maybe they're all dead"). There are cringe-making lapses - not just the American soldier's letter from his mother but the Lessons Learned as a result ("I thought Americans were savages...") and the Japanese commander using her words to inspire his men - but it's hard to shake the image of that greenish-grey underground prison, or the smoke and barren rocks and blasted trees outside; Clint deserves credit for the scope of the project, but Tom Stern may be the true MVP. Totally missed the glimpse (it's there, apparently) of the Marines from FLAGS putting up their flag way in the background of one scene - a testament to the gripping thoroughness of its claustrophobia. 

FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS (66) (dir., Clint Eastwood) Ryan Phillippe, Jesse Bradford, Adam Beach, Barry Pepper Beautifully done, except the battle scenes are over-familiar so the film sags each time we go back to Iwo Jima, which is kind of the opposite of what should happen. Also tends to repeat itself, going on about how we create heroic narratives to make sense of War (if Clint were more of a Beach Boys fan he could just have called this and IWO JIMA "Heroes" and "Villains" respectively, obv. with scare-quotes attached); structured so it's forever looking back, as if trying to eke out some meaning, though the film's own conclusion - that War is all about camaraderie and dying for one's buddies - seems a bit bathetic. Otherwise, muted colours, check; elegiac narrative, check; dignified classical storytelling, check; sophisticated view of the conflict, check. I don't even know who the actor is, but that lengthy rant about the country being broke, the dollar going into free-fall and war-weary Americans refusing to contribute any more money in bond-drives - sound familiar? so much for a Good War - may be the most jaw-dropping Big Speech of the year.  

LITTLE CHILDREN (47) (dir., Todd Field) Kate Winslet, Patrick Wilson, Jennifer Connelly, Jackie Earle Haley Very sub-Updike - the hero's even a former jock, like Rabbit Angstrom - with a narrator on hand to add wry distance from the characters' troubles ("Brad showered quickly, sensing a rare opportunity to have sex with his wife"), though those troubles seem a tad obvious; what can we say, except that bored suburbanites wished they felt "more alive", marriages grow stale (y'know, like Madame Bovary) and we can't change the past but the future is a different matter, to quote (loosely) from the thunderingly banal ending. As with IN THE BEDROOM, Field is more adept at emotional paradox, the road to hell paved with good (or understandable) intentions - the gradual realisation that the central couple are sensitive but immature (and their kids secretly sense this, disdaining them for more reliable caregivers), and almost throw their lives away in pursuit of self-delusion and a quest for "possibility" - than the plot mechanics, which seem laboured; he also has a weakness for melodrama and grotesquerie (the perv's night out is downright Solondzian) which comes off more oppressive than cathartic, but maybe it's just me. Also, is Jennifer Connelly supposed to be a self-centred ball-buster or a concerned wife and caring mother? Could be either, in my opinion.  

THE HISTORY BOYS (46) (dir., Nicholas Hytner) Richard Griffiths, Stephen Campbell Moore, Frances de la Tour One of those films I really don't get. Why is it set in the 80s, instead of the 50s (its natural home, given the artefacts quoted and such details as the long-drawn-out negotiations involved in having it off with a local lass)? Why does it have, like, three endings? More importantly, why is the new teacher set up as being a liar - he lies about his past, lies about his sexuality - when his philosophy isn't really about lying? Revisionism for its own sake may be glib - e.g. blaming WW1 on the British arms race instead of the Germans in order to stand out from the crowd - but History can be viewed through all kinds of prisms without being 'wrong', and why e.g. does the film show de la Tour's feminist view of History at face value if it's against the new guy's moral relativism? (Aren't they doing exactly the same thing?) Griffiths and Moore are shown as opposite sides of the same coin - both equally closeted, for one thing - but is their only difference that one appreciates knowledge/culture for its own sake while the other believes in actually using it? Doesn't seem to be more - in e.g. their Holocaust debate it's actually the younger man who seems the more engaged historian; his relativism, if that's what it is, isn't a cop-out or a case of style over substance - but then the whole thing becomes no big deal, a tempest in a teacup (the only real villain is the headmaster, who veers into caricature anyway). Couple of funny lines, plus the sad truth that literature is "mostly about losers" - "a consolation" to the losers who write it - but too much staginess, some dishonesty (Griffiths is built up as a teacher, as opposed to a jester - in the "Drummer Hodge" scene - just as he's about to be victimised), and such a fanciful tone I assumed Bennett and Hytner were aiming for fantasy, or at least stylisation. A class of 18-year-olds not even sniggering as one of their number croons "Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered"? With piano accompaniment? In 80s Yorkshire? I mean come on.

THE QUEEN (56) (dir., Stephen Frears) Helen Mirren, Michael Sheen, James Cromwell, Sylvia Syms "Something's happened [in England circa 1997], there's been a change ... Some shift in values". That's right, don't beat about the bush - get those themes out in the open where they belong. Apparently Blair also has a bit of a Mummy complex vis-a-vis the Queen, and Prince Charles' moderniser impulse stems from a deep-seated fear of his future subjects; we know these things because they're spelled out, in so many words (if this thing wins the Best Screenplay Oscar it'll be a travesty). Still goes down extremely smoothly, which is partly a function of knowing where it's going to go - that's one reason for the popularity of these true-story movies; you don't have to tax your brain trying to keep up - but also because of Frears' fluency and skill as a storyteller (he worked similar magic in MRS. HENDERSON); interesting that it should've been made now, with New Labour discredited in the UK and totems of Britishness (like the Royal Family) poised to make a comeback in the aftermath of 7/7 - certainly it shows Diana-mania as irrational, and implies the Queen was treated shabbily - though Blair himself comes out okay; he and the Queen each have a more extremist sidekick (Cherie and Philip) representing the clash of New and Old, while PM and Majesty bond because they're somewhere in the middle. The film is so MOR it hails the virtues of compromise and moderation, with the Royals affectionately shown as bourgeois (worried about "extravagance", calling each other "cabbage", sitting around watching TV like a sitcom family). Mirren is fine, though it's hard to see how a decent actor could fail at this role once you get the physical mannerisms right.    

SAW III (30) (dir., Darren Lynn Bousman) Tobin Bell, Shawnee Smith, Bahar Soomekh, Angus Macfadyen Not as actively stupid as the first two, nor as unabashedly callous; indeed the Big Idea is that Jigsaw is cruel to be kind, the message being explicitly 'Thou shalt forgive' and 'Thou shalt not kill' - which was also the Big Idea in the others but short-circuited by snarkiness, e.g. the fact that he never offered a real choice (the victims were doomed anyway). That gets toned down here - the first murders, which do indeed deal in sadism, are supposedly the work of a copycat - but the pious sentiments still sit badly with the relish in violence (those forgiven die horrible deaths anyway, lest the audience feel cheated) and plotting is as incoherent as ever; I have no idea what happens in much of the second half, though one cryptic scene seems to be a flashback to the first SAW. Also notable that I saw it just days after JACKASS 2, which appears to have the exact same underlying theme - extreme violence as a way to feel more alive, putting people through pain to make them appreciate their lives more. Is it Western culture that's so pathetically bored, or just the idiots in Hollywood? 

JACKASS NUMBER TWO (49) (dir., Jeff Tremaine) Johnny Knoxville, Bam Margera, Steve-O (as themselves) How are we supposed to take the "Jackass" antics? The musical finale posits extreme stunts as a kind of carpe diem, living the moment to the hilt in a tame, cotton-wool world (Luke Wilson stops by long enough to say that getting hurt makes him feel "energized"). The STEAMBOAT BILL, JR. reference right at the end links them to the most fundamental cinematic impulse - the slapstick of bodies in extremis - and perhaps nostalgically to an age of innocence (some stunts, like the tire race, play on memories of childhood). The inclusiveness - bringing in the camera guys, etc - suggests that it speaks to universal human experience, pain being the thing (way more than laughter) that we all understand in much the same way. The insistence on community, having the whole team around - doing it "for the bros" - as well as details like people announcing who they are before each stunt (not unlike name, rank and serial number) implies a camaraderie akin to wartime - a very male enclave, and it seems pointless to speak of homoerotic overtones when they're so overt (when Bam takes a dildo up the ass he might as well be Matt Stone's "I don't want to sound like a queer or nothin'" guy from ORGAZMO). Endlessly fascinating, but the candid-camera interludes are tedious, many of the stunts simply gross - except the ones involving snakes, sharks, etc - and it gets repetitive before it's even started. Simply put, I have been here and done this. 

THE PRESTIGE (74) (dir., Christopher Nolan) Christian Bale, Hugh Jackman, Michael Caine, Scarlett Johansson, David Bowie Lest I be accused of being a Meaning whore, let me note the use of shallow focus, darting camera (esp. in the early scenes) and artfully underlit interiors; this is a superbly-shot movie, emphasising uncertainty and isolation (the opposite of most period dramas, which emphasise certainty and community) - not to mention the foggy mountain peak where one finds Tesla's lab, one of the year's most haunting locations. As to Meaning, it may be apt to start - as with MEMENTO, another film that seems to be about twists but is really about philosophical underpinnings - with an act of denial, in MEMENTO our denial of unpleasant things via selective memory, in this one our denial of obvious common sense in order to appreciate Magic; "The audience knows the truth. The world is simple and miserable, solid all the way through" - but they still applaud a trick's happy ending (The Prestige) when the disappeared reappears, even though they know each lucky dove must have an unfortunate "brother". We "want to be fooled", we don't want to know the secret which is surely "disappointingly obvious", and in fact there's a double denial - we deny not just the obvious cheat in the trick but the "sacrifice" it presumably involves, the sacrifice of the dove (or the "man in the box") and the sacrifice of the magician's life, literally or just metaphorically (making it look easy is the essence of Magic, making coins appear with a flick of the wrist; but how many days, months, years of practice does it take to learn that flick?). Thought I spotted an anti-Science slant, which sits oddly with the rest of it - there does seem to be a Borden/Angier dichotomy, contrasting Borden's 'natural' cloning with Angier's man-made, scientific approach; Borden ends up with symbiosis ("half of a full life, which was enough"), Angier with paranoia and murder - but Science isn't really to blame, Human Nature is; Tesla's point (isn't Bowie great, btw?) is he knows that Science, unlike Magic, offers no happy endings, that it strips away denial and forces people to see things as they really are, even to see how un-special their own identity is (like a cable, they conduct electricity; like a hat or a cat, they can be replicated); that's why Science gets reduced to a tool, Edison-style - to stave off the truth - that's why Tesla begs Angier to destroy the machine. Most interesting is perhaps how this dovetails with the 'magic' of the cinema, e.g. in the way Nolan shoots the scene with the Chinese magician (the symbol of ultimate sacrifice): when he first makes something materialise Nolan uses a cut, so we're unimpressed - it's the classical way of filming a magic trick, though it would've worked just fine in the old days when audiences were less savvy - then, when he makes the goldfish bowl materialise, there's no cut, yet we're still not impressed because we assume it must be CGI; part of what Nolan (a director of blockbuster fantasies when he's not making philosophical enquiries) is asking is how a director can still create magic in an age without "sacrifice", when audiences assume anything is possible with the right software - and wondering (as in MEMENTO) if denial, "wanting to be fooled" (the very opposite of Making-Of documentaries and special-effect deconstructions), may in fact be inextricably human, even a way of dealing with Death ("Making something disappear isn't enough..."). A near-great film, except that much of the plot is a little tedious qua plot; the magicians sabotaging each other's acts is laboured, Scarlett Johansson's role is flimsy and there's quite a lengthy patch in the middle which is just set-up, and drags a bit (esp. on second viewing). Still profound and beautiful, and the very opposite of a magic trick; knowing how it's done only increases one's respect.  

STRAIGHT STORY (42) (dir., Vladimiros Kyriakides) Christos Hadjipanayiotis, Vladimiros Kyriakides Notable mainly for its plot - in a world where all couples are gay, the 'perverted' love between a boy and girl causes scandal - possibly laying the groundwork for Spanish-style official acceptance of gay marriage in Greece; the ending makes explicit its not-so-hidden agenda as a Message movie (or propaganda) but a lot of it actually plays as simple relationship drama - the obstacle facing the couple is heterosexuality, but it could just as easily have been that one was married, or their families didn't approve or whatever. A few funny bits along the way - hairdressers are pointedly straight in this world, and theatre-goers watch Tennessee Williams' powerful gay drama "Tomcat on a Hot Tin Roof" (all the more amusing given how that play's gay content was bowdlerised back in the day) - but the gimmick is half-baked and never more than a gimmick, and production values are pretty awful; hard to pay attention to a dialogue scene in a restaurant when the background - the sunlit patio behind the restaurant's glass window - is a solid wall of burned-out white light. 

THE NIGHT OF TRUTH (65) (dir., Fanta Regina Nacro) Moussa Cisse, Adama Ouedraogo, Rasmane Ouedraogo An African country in the aftermath of genocidal war, the dead still walking among the living. Graffiti murals recall the atrocities, horror stories are told - exaggerated into myth with the other side dehumanised into monsters - and meanwhile politicians try to forge a fragile peace. Stunningly tense for a while, mapping out a situation where the centre clearly cannot hold and the first misstep will lead to a bloodbath - or maybe it's just refreshing to find an African film using its timeless village setting for menace and horror instead of ethnography - but the climax is badly fumbled, flat execution letting down the good idea of taking off into Grand Guignol; those invoking Shakespeare have a point, e.g. the human pie in "Titus Andronicus" (the somewhat misogynist ploy of blaming all on the madwoman also recalls Lady Macbeth or the evil schemer in RAN), though there's also the infamously 'African' linkage of cannibalism and political abuse, see e.g. Amin and Bokassa. Talky but worthy, with an eye for the featureless disquiet - a visual absence, potentially enfolding a moral void - of the African landscape.   

SEVERANCE (45) (dir., Christopher Smith) Danny Dyer, Laura Harris, Tim McInnerny, Toby Stephens Can we just keep giving the benefit of the doubt? HOSTEL wasn't just nasty-minded, it was 'clearly' about European anti-Americanism, but is this also about the War on Terror - which does get name-dropped - and the absurdity of "humane" weapons, in the way of "smart" bombs or a "good" war? Or is it the opposite, the references to real-world subtext being like the jokey references to old-style suspense - the spider crawling up the heroine's back, or the bit where everyone looks into the woods and says "What was that noise?" - which get spoofed or red-herringed because the new ultra-violence is too Punk to care about build-up, just like the new ultra-violence doesn't care about politics or the War on Terror? If such films mention such things, it's not to incorporate them but to sweep them away in a pointed show of nihilism - even more nihilistic in this case because it's supposed to be a comedy (the pre-credits sequence segues from a corpse gushing blood into the Small Faces' cheeky "Itchykoo Park"). Alas, the comedy gets increasingly irrelevant, as though they started out with the horror-comedy concept and got saddled with it (I'm thinking of half-hearted scenes like heroine calling for help and being put on Hold in the midst of all the mayhem) - and the new ultra-violence has requirements which aren't really met so it falls between two stools, neither funny enough nor gross enough. Rating was higher - the first half isn't bad, featuring the pie with mystery-meat and Danny Dyer seeing a pack of Danny Dyers - but when I sat down to write I found I'd forgotten all about it.  

FEARLESS (50) (dir., Ronny Yu) Jet Li, Shido Nakamura, Betty Sun Looks like HERO was par for the course, or maybe its Strength = Unity nationalist message was so popular in China others are following suit. Here's another one, with Jet Li initially using his martial-arts skills for personal gain, thinking only about winning and individualism, indulging in conspicuous consumption - in short, behaving like a nouveau-riche capitalist - but subsequently seeing the error of his ways, cured by a spell of "working in the fields" (which sounds a bit Cultural Revolution, but whatever), and helping to create a united China, the better to fight the foreigners who want to humiliate her. Super-didactic, though even a Jet Li novice like myself can see how much it's a valediction, and how clearly it contains his personal philosophy on martial arts; the fights are great, though a little too fancy for the old-fashioned context - one set on a stage at the top of a high tower, another fought with swords and a raging storm outside - and Yu likes his slo-mo and occasional eyeballs in close-up. Obvious (if scary) question: How long can Chinese nationalism keep making its case so firmly without translating into Chinese expansionism?  

BE WITH ME (38) (dir., Eric Khoo) Theresa Chan, Elizabeth Choy, Seet Keng Yew Three tales of unrequited love, basically (ugly security guard obsessed with pretty girl; husband pining for dead wife; girl jilted in lesbian-accented schoolgirl romance), calling up the fluffy quip from THE HOLIDAY about unrequited love being like being handicapped "without the advantage of a great parking space" - except that there's a handicapped person too, a (real-life) blind-deaf woman whose tale of strength in suffering inspires at least one unrequited lover to move on. Occasionally poignant, esp. when it seems about to lift the lid on a whole tapestry of unhappy lives, but muddy-looking, made in a pedantic style and studded with sickly aphorisms ("Love disappears only when you don't understand what it means"). Its rave reviews in (some) critical circles are baffling, but may be put down to three misconceptions: (a) sparse or non-existent dialogue makes for Pure Cinema; (b) having a person play themselves brings a film closer to Truth; (c) focus on the artefacts of 21st-century communication (emails, texts, chat-room conversations) = statement on the emotional dislocation of Modern Youth. 

AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH (51) (dir., Davis Guggenheim) Al Gore, celebrity mandarin, throwing a bunch of numbers out there with the airy assurance of one who knows he's unlikely to be challenged, let alone disbelieved; few sources are cited, even fewer mentions made of possible controversy - just the "so-called skeptics", who apparently look at the figures Al cites and say 'So what?' (that's their argument, in its entirety). Maybe it's because every indication suggests Mr. Gore is on the winning side in this debate, empirical evidence having now caught up with theory, yet the truth is that even as everyone accepts global warming as a real problem there are still conflicting opinions on its scale and how best to solve it (seems to be a question of who should bear the cost, both which countries and which generations); or maybe the airy tone is to keep things upbeat, setting up the can-do conclusion - because every politician knows his job is to make people happy, or at least to inspire rather than depress, and Gore is nothing if not a politician. The whole thing - transparently, and rather embarrassingly - is a political campaign ad, burnishing the speaker's "political will" as well as brandishing his bona fides with the Chinese, the scientific community, the Kyoto accord and other celebrity mandarins. "My friend, the late Carl Sagan..."

HAPPY FEET (47) (dir., George Miller) with the voices of Elijah Wood, Robin Williams, Brittany Murphy, Hugh Jackman Impossible to Please Dept.: I rail against the plague of cookie-cutter kids' cartoons, with their predetermined structures grinding out the standard Be-Yourself formula, then when something comes along that's actually original and breaks with formula ... well, I'm grateful, but I wish they'd done more to smooth out the structure. Two songs (penguin "heartsongs") clash over the opening credits and two plots clash later on, Plot A - the one in the trailer, about the little penguin (a "funky little fella") who was "different" and faced discrimination - comprehensively hijacked by Plot B, an apocalyptic thriller about the end of penguin-dom altogether (with such touches as a terrifying dream sequence wherein Pingu sees his Mom disintegrate screaming into dust). Hopefully Miller showed execs the first half then, having mollified them, went back in the studio and cranked out the shocking second half - but in fact things are slightly incoherent from the get-go, veering unsteadily from cute singing penguins to pursuit by a seal with JAWS-like chompers that's the stuff of kiddie nightmare (just as it veers from the usual cartoon anthropomorphism to a final ironic dig at said anthropomorphism: humans love the hero's "happy feet" - therefore help the animals - actual penguins think he's weird). Possible Message, trying to reconcile the two warring halves: Let's put our differences aside and save the planet. Also: Don't eat fish, little Tyler or Madison!