Films Seen - June 2006
[Pre-'96 films not included.]
SHOPGIRL (51) (dir., Anand Tucker) Claire Danes, Steve Martin, Jason Schwartzman [Careful, sensitive romance, far from awful but mired in self-consciousness. Both of the heroine's swains are self-conscious - Schwartzman terminally awkward, with his "Two things" and "I'm an okay guy, by the way" and "You have officially been on a date with Jeremy", Martin self-conscious in his seduction (as when he moves from "date questions" to "date comments") and self-conscious in his self-awareness (that he's too old for her, that he loves her but can't get close, that he only wants a certain thing from her, etc). The film itself is self-conscious in trying for detachment, adding an "omniscient voice" at intervals to talk about what the characters are feeling, and even more self-conscious in what it is - Martin's change of image and more than that, Hollywood people making an anti-Hollywood 'small' film with a bittersweet ending ("It was Life," explains the voice-over). Feels like watching a man tell a joke while trying to balance a full glass of water in the palm of his hand - he's impressive but he can't relax, so the joke can't be funny - though it threatens to get interesting when it strays into anti-depressants and "the sensation of being alive", as if about to craft some insight on Existence itself (it doesn't, but you see how it might've done). Ms. Danes is very likeable, considering how little is asked of her.]
SILENT HILL (38) (dir., Christophe Gans) Radha Mitchell, Sean Bean, Laurie Holden, Alice Krige, Deborah Kara Unger [Guess I've got a sweet-spot for over-ripe absurdity 'cause I think it's at least a little awesome that a film based on a videogame should end up resembling a 60s Hammer horror, with a burn-the-witch finale and the heroine joining with the Dark Side to fight Alice Krige (possibly channelling Mercedes McCambridge in JOHNNY GUITAR). Old-school bits throughout - an orphanage? with nuns? - with special effects to match, monsters looking unexpectedly primitive; goons move like vogue dancers (it's supposed to be scary) while the chief thingummy has a pyramid-head like a prosthetic anvil. Strangely, most of the IMDb comments praise it for being faithful to the game (maybe it is; I've never played it), but then many of the gamers also warn it's convoluted and hard to follow, which it isn't - just excessively long, and full of bits where the heroine chases every shadowy figure and goes into obviously unsafe places (she's also handcuffed, but makes no attempt to free her hands by taking off the cuffs before she goes traipsing around). Most of the film - which is tedious; only the climax is vaguely awesome - has her trying to find her little girl, possibly trying to make up for her years of parental neglect living in a house right next door to a Niagara-sized waterfall (must be the same estate-agent as the house beside the freeway in PET SEMATARY), not the best idea if you have a child who sleepwalks so she toddles all the way to the edge of the falls before being snatched away at the last moment. Put a fence or something round the house, people, I mean jesus.]
RUNNING SCARED (68) (dir., Wayne Kramer) Paul Walker, Cameron Bright, Vera Farmiga, Chazz Palminteri [A surprise, given how much I disliked THE COOLER - but maybe it's because that tried (or seemed to try) for pathos, whereas this skews towards the baroque. Starts as RESERVOIR DOGS clone, ends as fractured fairytale - and if it sheds some points for a disappointing climax and stupid final twist (the kind that makes a nonsense of the whole movie) it wins them back with the eerie animation over the closing credits, re-casting the whole thing as kiddie cartoon for troubled kiddies. What-the-fuck moments abound, from the 'whoosh' effect when the boy is grabbed to the bit where he literally sees a flashback, as if it were physically in front of him ("Take a look," says Walker) - and of course there's the Weirdest. Twist. Ever, adding to the Lemony Snicket Factor - but the whole thing is so amped-up, soaked in sex and violence and stylistically fervid, anything seems possible. Unfortunately watched it in three instalments (damn World Cup) missing the hurtling, long-night-of-the-soul effect it presumably has, set over a single crazy night - but it's interesting how many stories are told in the background (the John Wayne story, the revenge-with-baseball-bat story, the Russian mom's story), reinforcing the sense of smuggled fairytale. Major guilty pleasure, and more.]
THE FAR SIDE OF THE MOON (57) (dir., Robert Lepage) Robert Lepage, Anne-Marie Cadieux, Marco Poulin [Lepage thinks in visual coups - transitions, for instance: the moon becomes the mouth of a washing-machine, a goldfish bowl morphs into the Earth, an astronaut's lifeline becomes an umbilical cord - but his themes are too on-the-nose (the two may actually emanate from the same sensibility, a creative mind consciously applied to making complexity lucid and unambiguous). "Space exploration is motivated by narcissism", just like the concept of filming home-videos to send into space for aliens to peruse, just like the concept of creating God in our image. How to reconcile God and Man, how to reconcile moons and washing-machines, the eternal and sublunary - or even our twin-brother heroes, embittered academic and philistine weatherman? Only by removing the bitterness - just like Soviet and American astronauts were reconciled in outer space at the time of the Cold War - and removing the taint of narcissism from Science and Art, because (as our hero explicitly learns at the end) our ego-driven sense of self is behind all humanity's greatest achievements; both brothers are narcissists, both the high-flown intellectual and the lowbrow materialist - both the moon and the washing-machine - and making the connection solves both their problems, allowing them to get on with their lives. Very fluid filmmaking, sliding effortlessly into dream and whimsy - but also pre-conceived, like a thesis, sitting oddly with the style. At the end of the (magical) opening credits, I hoped for a masterpiece; at the end of the closing, I wondered how long I'd even remember it. Not very long, it turns out.]
WASSUP ROCKERS (54) (dir., Larry Clark) Jonathan Velasquez, Milton Velasquez, Francisco Pedrasa [Clark's teenage demi-mondes often struggle with the placing of Clark himself, responsible adult or nostalgist-fetishist; KIDS and BULLY had a touch of whither-our-children alarmism, which seems hypocritical given Clark's obvious solidarity (to put it mildly) with his heroes. KEN PARK was probably a turning-point - a comedy, and a case of 'how I learned to stop worrying and embrace my inner 16-year-old' - and this is more of the same, only lowering the age and extinguishing the adult perspective altogether; it's the kids' own story, 'their' lives, 'their' music - and probably 'their' fantasies, because it certainly isn't realistic. Hard-boiled neighbourhood detail - like the title appearing over a blood-spattered wall after a drive-by shooting - reeks of self-conscious teen machismo, like the kid who later introduces himself to Beverly Hills hotties by announcing "I'm from the ghetto" - and in fact the trip into 90210 territory is packed with caricatures, the kind of things (glitzy parties, hostile cops, a fight with whiter-than-white preppie types, sex with the slumming hotties, a drunken rich bitch who takes in one of our heroes and gives him a bubble-bath) which the kids themselves might've come up with had Clark told them to imagine a day out in Beverly Hills (as indeed he may have done). It's a moot point how useful - or healthy - this kind of thing is, turning fringe-dwelling youths into heroes in their own urban fairytale, but a certain honesty remains in the glimpses of the boys' rapport - getting drunk, telling stories, playing "homey battles" with their action figures, tapping each other on the ass, skating and often wiping-out (LORDS OF DOGTOWN this isn't). The camera acts as sympathetic outsider, crediting every story, however wild - the kid who repeatedly tries to drown himself by sticking his face in the bathroom sink feels like something that sort-of happened (maybe a kid thought about doing this and maybe stuck his face in the water for a couple of minutes, till he ran out of breath) but only got fleshed out and made 'real' for the movie. After some banter with girls, one boy looks at the camera self-consciously, as if wondering for the first time about Clark's role in all this; and then we cut.]
ELECTION (66) (dir., Johnnie To) Simon Yam, Tony Leung Ka Fai, Louis Koo [A life of crime: middle-aged men - the "Uncles" - sit around smoking and talking in dim, cosy rooms, their faces dark, their voices low and civilised. As in THE GODFATHER - an obvious reference-point, though the guitar-music score makes it feel oddly like a Western - crime wears the lineaments of community, not to say family; the Triad has its ways, its sacred oaths ("If I rob a brother, may I be killed by five thunderbolts"), though traditions are threatened by filthy lucre, some trying to buy the election - and of course "the Triad is democratic", unlike Hong Kong's new masters in the past decade. Plotting flags in the third quarter but this is a cool entertainment in steel-grey colours, setting its pace not to violent action but seductive intrigue - and hypocrisy, the Triad chiefs demanding hoods when they're arrested so the Press won't see their faces. Crime has a veneer of respectability just like violence carries a veneer of the calm and businesslike but the point being made isn't the flashy one of thugs in suits, nor is To holding back (as Coppola did in THE GODFATHER) to make the outbursts of violence more satisfying - the point is that crime really is a business, because the alternative would be unimaginable. The ending (showing said alternative) seems jarringly out of character, but it has to be that way - not Coppola's operatic finale, making the violence as knowing and stylish as the refraining from violence, but something messy and traumatic (the kid's face says it all), showing the Triad as a complex defence mechanism instead of a true community. Or maybe there isn't much difference.]
POSEIDON (46) (dir., Wolfgang Petersen) Josh Lucas, Kurt Russell, Emmy Rossum, Richard Dreyfuss [The "Cyprus Mail" review should be enough in this case; it's POSEIDON, for heaven's sake. Note my Theme of the Week was clichés (reviewed with IMAGINE ME AND YOU), which is why it starts off that way.]
IMAGINE ME & YOU (37) (dir., Ol Parker) Piper Perabo, Lena Headey, Matthew Goode, Anthony Head [You know that (annoying) English thing where they compliment someone by saying the exact opposite, e.g. "This is ... absolutely revolting" when a friend cooks dinner for you? Why do they do it? Because giving a compliment would be 'boring'? Because being witty is more important than being straight? Because they live in fear of embarrassment, whether through being uncool or showing their feelings too clearly? All that and more in this romantic comedy, which includes the "revolting" line and avoids clichés relentlessly in its relentlessly bright dialogue - even tiny things, like Goode saying "I wouldn't put you through that for all the coke in Colombia" instead of "tea in China" - except the whole thing is a cliché, a glorified sitcom with clear signs of having been workshopped and over-developed (example: the gratuitous auction scene, meant to show the Perabo character has "no limits" and render her character arc - she's a married woman falling head over heels for a lesbian - more convincing, except the scene is so obviously a plant it only calls attention to its own incongruity). You could go through the whole thing with a laugh-track, inserting canned hilarity in appropriate places - e.g. Horny Bachelor to Newly Married Friend: "I look at you now, I see what you've got - the stability, the trust - and I think ... I'm glad I'm not you!" - and the characters pretty much stick to their first designation (90% of the horny bachelor's lines have to do with being a horny bachelor); it's also obsessed with sex even while rolling its eyes at it - it's that British-opposites thing again - makes its men pathetic in the 'charming' Hugh Grant manner, and makes appallingly twee use of a precocious little girl. Obviously steeped in Hollywood - did I see that football-game set-up-and-payoff coming? I admit I didn't - though also Richard Curtis with lesbian cachet, fewer belly-laughs but often smarter lines ("How do you feel?" "You know when you're holding a cup of hot coffee and you realise you're about to sneeze? That's how I feel"). Also, I guess it's great that the world is now not-homophobic (homophilic?), but the pendulum - based on this movie - has swung wa-a-y too far in the opposite direction. No way would a love triangle with another man (as opposed to woman) have been resolved so blithely and simplistically.]
OVER THE HEDGE (55) (dir., Tim Johnson & Karey Kirkpatrick) with the voices of Bruce Willis, Garry Shandling, Steve Carell, Wanda Sykes, Eugene Levy [DreamWorks goes Pixar, borrowing the two-heroes template of TOY STORY - cautious, established leader vs. brash newcomer - and (thankfully) losing the pop-culture in-jokes and fart-and-poo gags of SHREK and its progeny. The result is smart and funny, spoofing - e.g. the pre-heist convention of "The traps are here ... here ... and here" - instead of just name-dropping, full of amusing incidentals (firefly ideas, chips falling from the sky, the exterminator's comb-over, "rabid, not rabbit", a hedge named Steve) though it doesn't bear much thinking about. For all the suburban satire - and apparent eco-Message - the old ways are quietly forgotten, junk-food being obviously preferable to tree-bark for breakfast, and issues of natural vs. man-made (all the corruption implicit in the kids saying "Anything that tastes this good has to be good for you!") get swallowed up into being alone vs. being with Family - the latter a somewhat woolly concept, apparently applicable to any small community, but making everything all right if repeated often enough (insert sardonic point about family-values as a Trojan horse used by developers and corporations to take over the world while disguising their rapaciousness). In other news, studio animation continues to pretend it's live-action, not just dropping any "voices of" credit (reality check: this film does not star Bruce Willis and Garry Shandling, it stars a raccoon and a turtle) but also including focus-pulls, crane-shots and even a dream sequence; no surprise, in a film where a skunk becomes a cat and everyone - despite the ostensible anti-conformity theme, and the fascist home-owner who wants everyone's lawn the same length - ends up becoming more like everybody else.]
THE OMEN (45) (dir., John Moore) Liev Schreiber, Julia Stiles, David Thewlis, Pete Postlethwaite [Here's my "Cyprus Mail" review, just to save time and etc. Also including, as a kind of website Easter egg, my comments on DA VINCI CODE, which I didn't see to the end but wrote about anyway (shhh, it's a secret). That would probably get a 47, had I watched the whole thing - but it was getting late, and I felt I'd seen enough. Sorry, relentless hype machine.]
FIREWALL (41) (dir., Richard Loncraine) Harrison Ford, Paul Bettany, Virginia Madsen [Harrison Ford stopping by on his rounds to solve an intractable computer problem at a single stroke - "Let's try an IPS signature that black-holes the pattern" - in order to prove he's a cyber-whiz is almost as hilarious as Richard Gere stopping by on his rounds to sniff at a casserole and say "Turmeric" (in order to prove he's a master-chef) in AUTUMN IN NEW YORK. Otherwise absorbing, uninspired hokum, with Ford in AIR FORCE ONE mode and hints of an amusing subtext with everyday technology - iPods, cellphone cameras, GPS sensors - used to foil the baddies (amusing because everyday technology is now so sophisticated; whatever happened to the days of cobbling bombs together with a box of matches and a magnifying-glass?). Ford being patently too old for the fisticuffs in the action climax isn't offensive; what's (slightly) offensive is Bettany groomed by the studio - or Ford's agent - to tell the world ad nauseam how tough his opponent was, and how he almost got knocked out by a greying senior-citizen in real life as well. You're not fooling anyone, you know...]
SHE'S THE MAN (60) (dir., Andy Fickman) Amanda Bynes, Channing Tatum, Laura Ramsey, David Cross [Amanda Bynes makes me laugh. Is that so wrong? Nabobs of negativity - e.g. on the IMDb - seem to have a problem with the football/soccer angle and the Shakespeare ("Twelfth Night") angle, and it's true that both are rather half-baked (low point: a pet spider named Malvolio). But Bynes is such a clown - e.g. when she follows various people around aping their behaviour, now doing a pimp-roll, now chattering away on an invisible cellphone - her disguise as a boy so hilariously transparent, her kooky energy so irrepressible, and the film itself also teems with energy, right from the opening credits. Bonus points for wacky principal Cross and probably the first screen Eunice since WHAT'S UP, DOC? - though that football/soccer angle is pretty shaky. Substituting players then allowing them back on the pitch, what's up with that?]
LAST HOLIDAY (56) (dir., Wayne Wang) Queen Latifah, LL Cool J, Timothy Hutton, Gerard Depardieu [Folks say Wayne Wang has turned into a total hack, but I'd say he's found a fairly distinctive niche with this and (the equally underrated) MAID IN MANHATTAN. Once again the main setting is a grand hotel, once again the heroine is poor and ethnic-minority, once again she's contrasted with a less admirable relative (heroine's defeatist mother in MAID, heroine's promiscuous sister here), once again the main dilemma is whether to hold back or 'go for it', once again - this time implicitly - that gets linked to breaking out of one's class, engaging directly with the gap between haves and have-nots (a.k.a. First Class and Economy); there's an unfortunate shopping montage to the strains of Gwen Stefani singing "If I Was a Rich Girl", but Latifah also stands up for the Working Woman (a wronged masseuse), chides a Senator who's lost touch with the People, and vanquishes a venal millionaire with little more than sass-power. The theme is proletarian revolt but the tone - again, as in MAID - is closer to THE PRINCESS DIARIES, with American plain talk meeting European pomp and circumstance - and it's typical of the film's (relative) delicacy that Latifah doesn't get the uptight hotel staff boogieing on down, à la BRINGING DOWN THE HOUSE, but in touch with their lost humanity; a chilly receptionist notices a beautiful ceiling, and it's almost touching when the sourpuss housekeeper melts at the discovery of our heroine's true situation. Doesn't sound great, the self-repressed woman who likes to cook but doesn't like to eat, Finding Herself when she opens up to Life - it wasn't great in MOSTLY MARTHA - but the sweetly zany tone keeps it afloat. You've got to credit the director for that.]
PRIDE & PREJUDICE (63) (dir., Joe Wright) Keira Knightley, Matthew Macfadyen, Brenda Blethyn, Donald Sutherland [I'm proud of having never bought into the Keira Knightley hype, writing her off as a bland little actress shamelessly plugged by the studio machine - but maybe I was also slightly prejudiced. At first, when she's girlishly giggling, this looks like it could be a grotesque performance - Knightley has a bubbly, elfin laugh that seems all wrong, far too modern and sensual for the prim, cerebral Lizzie (sometimes she seems on the point of purring and arching her back, like a contented cat) - but there's also a spirit there, and she does come across as a girl who won't settle. The film itself similarly takes a while to surmount its considerable obstacles (it's just so unnecessary), though in fact the opening shot sets the mood: a meadow at sunrise, with birdsong, which the vast majority of films would have either cut away from or ruined with voice-over - probably the book's famous opening line: "It is a truth universally acknowledged..." - but this one simply holds on to, watching the sun come up; Wright's long takes manage, at best, to evoke the languid rhythm of a more unhurried time (esp. the early shots wandering round the Bennet home), though sometimes it looks like he's just trying to avoid period drama-itis. Grace-notes aplenty, from the majestic dolly-out as Lizzie walks away from the ball to the glimpse of Darcy flexing the hand that helped her to her carriage, as though still trying to feel her touch between the empty fingers - speaking of which, Macfadyen turns out to be quite a convincing Darcy, not aloof like Colin Firth but actively mopey and "miserable", the better to frame his innate decency. Elsewhere, 'improvements' alternate between clumsy (the pun on "intercourse") and inspired (the final scene), though nothing can improve the snobbery implicit in this much-degraded genre, a distasteful pact - offering a world more genteel than our own but also more hidebound and class-ridden, so you can still feel superior while revelling in the period trappings - bespeaking a taste for stately homes, manicured gardens and meaningless well-spokenness (as if people in the 18th century really said "That savours strongly of bitterness" or "It is incumbent upon me to hint that..."): one scene comes perilously close to having Lizzie change her mind about Darcy because of his fine-art collection and the nice view from his picture-window. Bottom line? A pleasant surprise, but please - no more Austen adaptations; and no more Judi Dench in Haughty Regina mode either.]
X-MEN 3: THE LAST STAND (39) (dir., Brett Ratner) Ian McKellen, Patrick Stewart, Hugh Jackman, Halle Berry [How to reconcile the two competing strands in this superhero movie? On the one hand, a proposed "cure" for mutants, raising the ire of Storm and the armed resistance of Magneto. On the other, Professor Xavier's attempt to control Jean Grey, deliberately putting her out of touch with her own powers ("He's tamed you!" sneers Magneto). Some X-fans say it's a false symmetry, Jean's extraordinary powers making her impossible to cite as a symbol for anything, but it's unavoidable - conceptually the two strands are near-identical, and they also express the Magneto/Xavier dichotomy that's defined this franchise since Day One; and of course the "cure" also fits the gay subtext most apparent in X2, tying in with misguided parents fearing for their mutant kids - "You think your daughter is sick?" Magneto asks Jean Grey's parents incredulously - and fears of what'll happen if and when a 'gay gene' is isolated (for all the talk of "choice", it's clear the cure will be used as a weapon at the slightest provocation, effectively wiping out mutants as a political force). Clearly, the film has to take a stand - but it doesn't, either not seeing a contradiction or coming out in favour of a cure (Magneto is increasingly unsympathetic; Jean must eventually be "tamed") without working through the implications. That leaves only an action movie, and not a very good one: plotting is generic, the action scenes devolve into punch-ups - shouldn't special powers enable mutants to fight with their minds? - Hugh Jackman is reliably dull as Wolverine, and I've never really seen the point of Storm: Why is controlling the weather such a useful power? (What're you gonna do, make the sun come out and go to the beach?). Also, how ironic is it that Ian McKellen is a gay-rights activist in real life? Pretty ironic, really.]
FAILURE TO LAUNCH (51) (dir., Tom Dey) Matthew McConaughey, Sarah Jessica Parker, Justin Bartha, Zooey Deschanel [Girl and Guy thrown together by some kind of deception, think you can handle it? Sure, no sweat, do it all the time; just make sure we get a constant stream of random quirkiness to grease the wheels, distract from the void in the centre - otherwise you get, I dunno, HOW TO LOSE A GUY IN 10 DAYS or something. Start with some hot-button topic to kick things off; the modern phenomenon of adult kids still living at home - the French already used it for comedy in TANGUY - there's a good one; I know there's a name for it, I read it in the Sunday supplement (failure to something-or-other). The leads can be bland, not a problem - maybe introduce them with a quirk, like e.g. she likes to spend her lunch-hour relaxing in the Furniture Dept. of a local department store, then tone it down - just make the friends and roommates quirky. Add lots of slapstick, like a gratuitous paintball sequence or various animals constantly biting our hero. Maybe a little something in a Japanese restaurant? Oh, and the roommate has a pet iguana ... no no no, not quirky enough! Wait, I know, she's being driven nuts by a mockingbird that sings outside her window (so she wants To Kill ... A Mockingbird!). Okay, I think it'll work - long as there's enough thoughtful stuff about the various "steps" in a successful relationship (first they bond over a crisis, then he has to "teach me something") so the girls in the audience smile knowingly, like when they're reading Cosmopolitan; and a happy ending, of course, preferably in public so you get a crowd cheering them on. Wait, it's no good - we need a smart-aleck kid! So put a kid - but make him quirky. Like, I dunno, black or something. "Why are you making it so complicated?" wonders Zooey (as the roommate with "bizarre and violent mood swings"), "If you like him, just tell him you like him" - but she's clearly too awesome to have ever focus-grouped a romantic comedy. Brightly written, meaning I look forward to these writers' next movie; assuming they have something to write about next time.]
BRICK (79) (dir., Rian Johnson) Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Nora Zehetner, Noah Fleiss, Lukas Haas [I wish this weren't so keen on physical violence - not because it's excessive (far from it), just because it makes it look adolescent. Then again MILLER'S CROSSING also had a taste for cartoonish violence and still managed to riff on noir conventions, not to mention tweak the notion of the noir hero, the Bogie-like loner with a touch of misanthropy; in CROSSING, Tom Reagan was the rationalist who finally learned to believe in hats, while Brendan in this one is the too-cool-for-school dude who lunches alone and finally, at the height of his send-Mary-Astor-to-the-gallows moment - "Now you are dangerous," he says earlier, in a direct reference to THE MALTESE FALCON - learns that his controlling nature cost him not just the girl but his own happiness, indeed (in the literal, biological, gene-perpetuating way) his own masculine triumph; his self-reliant existentialism ends up hurting even himself. The film's magic seemed mysterious on first viewing, home-made and sketchy, set in a forgotten America of empty spaces and almost oppressive tranquillity - like on a stage, keeping real life at bay, and amateur dramatics duly make an appearance in the narrative - but second viewing reveals it to be slicker (and more skilful), leaning heavily on a memorable score (starting with Em's theme, a lilting lament seemingly played on shards of glass) and making creative use of its low budget by framing tightly on specific objects; only once or twice does Johnson succumb to trickery - e.g. the juddery effect when battered Brendan tries to crawl back in the action - mostly maintaining tension through eye-catching detail (a girl's shoes peeking at the bottom of a frame) and expert cutting. The 'noir in high-school' tag does it no favours, since both noir and high-school are used almost abstractly, familiar sets of rituals to be shuffled through like a deck of cards in a card-trick; nor is it really script-centric - as some people claim - Johnson's control being far more important than the dialogue or narrative (which resolve into dense witty patois and tortuous McGuffin, respectively); best seen as a mood-piece, as lost in its world as its own intractable hero, finally puncturing his cerebral shell - he does get into violence but self-consciously, taking off his glasses first - as a warning against living too obsessively in your own head. On this evidence, Rian Johnson can make his next movie about whatever the hell he wants.]
DOWN IN THE VALLEY (64) (dir., David Jacobson) Evan Rachel Wood, Edward Norton, Rory Culkin, David Morse [What the hell happens to Evan Rachel Wood in this movie? Not that she's a better actor than Edward Norton (far from it), but their romance in the first half is rich and multi-layered, a clearly dangerous relationship - she's too young to see what he really is - that still radiates a singular mix of laid-back charm and amour fou; it'd be one thing (and over-familiar) if he seduced her by being a punk or a rebel, but it's different when the road to hell is paved with courtly manners and Joe Buck naivety (it's staged so she does all the work in the relationship - even all the thrusting when they make love!). Having him play cowboy by himself in the motel-room may be the turning point - marking him out as a clearly disturbed fantasist, and answering Evan's friend's question ("Are you for real?") before the film is half over; then she disappears altogether (Evan, not the friend), he turns into Travis Bickle and the film sinks into 'Daddy issues', reality/fantasy motifs (the Wild West film set) and a battle for the soul of a troubled young boy. First half is superb, however.]