Films Seen - March & April 2007
[Pre-'96 films not included.]
SHEITAN (44) (dir., Kim Chapiron) Vincent Cassel, Olivier Bartelemy, Roxane Mesquida, Ladj Ly Cassel makes a great psycho yokel - we look forward to his middle-aged Depardieu roles, where he'll play a Life Force and swig bottles of wine - but CALVAIRE did this better, from the final-act leap into dreamlike surrealism to the strained relationship between city boy(s) and too-friendly inbred local(s). The ending is telegraphed with half an hour to spare and some things - the nasty-pussy flashback, or matching shots of crows and humans stuffing their faces - are non sequiturs. Two things to be thankful for: truly creepy scene at the hot springs (esp. the manically-laughing nympho) and the fact, unlike in some American horrors, that irreverent atheism - "religion is bullshit", as well as the fact that Sheitan turns out to be a rap group as well as the name of the Devil - isn't twisted into EMILY ROSE propaganda. Otherwise, pretty incoherent; actively bad, in fact.
SHOOTER (48) (dir., Antoine Fuqua) Mark Wahlberg, Michael Pena, Danny Glover, Kate Mara, Ned Beatty, Elias Koteas Antoine Fuqua, American bellwether. Four years ago (in TEARS OF THE SUN), round about the time Dubya was claiming victory in Iraq, he called for robust intervention in the Third World, but now - though he still 'supports the troops' - he's convinced nothing can be done till the rot is stopped on the home front, weeding out the liars (WMDs are gratuitously mentioned), miscreants (Abu Ghraib ditto) and venal Senators who've betrayed the people. Red-state disillusionment writ large - a case, like his patriotic hero, of a "belief system collapsed" - and the red-state locations prominently featured here, tiny little towns in Kentucky and Montana, act as a kind of rebuke even if (presumably) not all Americans agree that Wild West-style justice is called for, dished out by a cold-blooded hero with red-blooded values (the girl stops him when he awkwardly tries to express sympathy for his dead buddy: "He knew what he was getting into"). In itself, well-made, impersonal and kind of pointlessly exciting (insofar as the visuals excite but there's no human element), with the attitudes and random information - sugar is good for treating gunshot wounds, etc. - redolent of gun clubs and military-hardware mags; also, at least one action climax too many. "I don't think you understand. These boys killed my dog."
GOYA'S GHOSTS (51) (dir., Milos Forman) Javier Bardem, Natalie Portman, Stellan Skarsgard Mildly satisfying, in the way of a hefty 19th-century novel (plot lurching "15 years later", a mother desperately trying - and always just failing - to be reunited with her lost daughter), but Forman's grip on his themes and characters is pretty tenuous. Goya comes across as a lightweight, a silly man who laughs a lot and butters up the rich and powerful, but he's also shown as valuing Truth, e.g. when it comes to the Queen's portrait - presumably he's meant to be canny, complimenting the King on his awful violin-playing so he can paint the Queen as she is (i.e. ugly) with impunity, but the contradiction is never addressed so it's never clear if he's self-aware or slightly in-denial (esp. since he seems quite different in the second half). Bardem's righteous priest is both opportunist and true believer, and it seems for a while that Forman's point is precisely the transience of ideals, the fact that only power changes - the Church can be as cruel and hypocritical as the French Revolution - but then the priest doesn't "repent" to save his skin at the end (like a good opportunist would), so he ends up just being puzzling. Ideas float around - Spirit vs. Flesh, Religion vs. Science - but there's no focus, and a lot of it is just campy, esp. when Goya goes deaf and we keep cutting to his roly-poly interpreter (Forman doesn't seem to realise how comical this man is, or indeed how comical it is when he fills the screen with an ECU of someone's lips moving followed by an ECU of Goya's eyes widening as he reads what the guy is saying); also kind of baffling when we get a detailed sequence showing how Goya does his etchings (gravures, whatever) just at the point when our heroine's being tortured by the Spanish Inquisition - we literally leave her hanging there and go off on our Famous Artists documentary interlude (*). Handsomely-produced Euro-pudding, but be ready to snigger occasionally.
(*): Geoffrey Macnab in "Sight & Sound" has another reading here, namely: "Goya's printmaking, in which we see the artist stretching and flattening images, is slyly contrasted with the way the Inquisition treats the bodies of its suspects, pulling and wrenching them every which way"; thus, the juxtaposition "show[s] the mechanics of terror". I admit that never even crossed my mind while watching, mostly because one isn't primed to see a parallel when we go from a girl being tortured to an Artist creating his Art - but maybe I missed some visual cues or something. Makes it a little less baffling, in any case...
A GUIDE TO RECOGNIZING YOUR SAINTS (65) (dir., Dito Montiel) Shia LaBoeuf, Robert Downey Jr., Channing Tatum, Rosario Dawson, Chazz Palminteri Still not sure whether this is an authentically poetic coming-of-ager with a vivid sense of place or just a slick commercial job where the saxophone wail of "Baker Street" segues into the sound of police sirens, but I'm willing to give it the benefit of the doubt. Certainly, the 'first-time filmmaker' tag seems a little strained when you can get Eric Gautier to DP and Tellefsen to do the editing, not to mention a starry cast (a major distraction); certainly, too, the alienation effects - printed dialogue appearing onscreen in lieu of a scene, or Adult Narrator self-consciously giving away plot points in his intro - are so much pretension. Still a real sensibility at work here, and a lyrical one - standing on the roof at night with a train passing below, slipping out a casual declaration of love at the bedroom window washed by the lurid lights of an all-night grocery, hanging out in subway carriages (a trite scene redeemed by some nifty Time-shuffling), street corners, the corridors of cramped houses; LaBoeuf has real charisma, Palminteri does something even more poignant - his macho banter always a bit too slow, the rusty creak of a man who's left fatherhood too late. Somehow unique without being remotely original; Spike Lee must be flattered by the tribute, ditto the 'Rahad's pad' scene in BOOGIE NIGHTS.
THE NUMBER 23 (40) (dir., Joel Schumacher) Jim Carrey, Virginia Madsen, Logan Lerman "It's this number! This fucking number. 23! It rules my world!" Intensely silly, semi-deliberately so in the first half - with our hero going through elaborate mental contortions to find the number 23 in every nefarious event and talismanic villain, from Hiroshima to Al Capone - but simply out of control in the second half, though it does confirm the meme that seemed so startling in ANGEL HEART 20 years ago but is now a commonplace (from MEMENTO to STAY and beyond) as the world grows more solipsistic: Everything leads back to the self. Most absurd bit of plotting may be when Jim finally finds the man he's been looking for, but the man is dying - so his wife says "Take [our son] and go home while I take this man to hospital" and he simply does, thereby missing all the crucial information the dying man is about to impart. Most irrationally funny line may be "Your maiden name is Pink" (don't even ask), most unlikely antagonist has to be the momentous dog who's actually "the Guardian of the Dead". Most puzzling detail: 9/11 also adds up to 23 (9 + 11 + 2 + 0 + 0 + 1), which I thought from the trailer would be the film's ace in the hole - but, though they obviously thought of it (it's briefly glimpsed among the hero's scribbled gibberish), it's never actually mentioned. Surely a film so ludicrous wasn't afraid of being 'offensive'?
THE GOOD SHEPHERD (73) (dir., Robert De Niro) Matt Damon, Angelina Jolie, William Hurt, Billy Crudup, Robert De Niro No surprise that Dad's suicide note - surreptitiously lifted, but never read, by our hero in boyhood - mentioned in the opening act, turns up as emotional payoff in the final one, but it is a surprise that the letterhead on the note (a ship) subtly and unspokenly links up with Hero's hobby of making model ships, a hobby he's meanwhile passed on to his own troubled son as the only way he knows to connect with an absent father. Everything fits in a film so meticulous it might've been made by its own recessive anti-hero - and Damon's shell of a man belongs with his hollow-eyed Ripley in TALENTED MR. RIPLEY though the film as a whole belongs with stuff like THE REMAINS OF THE DAY, another piercing study of not just repression but institutionalised repression, repression as a choice and a way of life. Political point-scoring on the evils of the unaccountable crypto-State (obv. relevant to our time and place) is actually just gravy, the film's real concern being the soul-deep mendacity at the heart of the System. These men speak the language of secrets, of being "careful" and being "safe", making sure that everything is coded; "There's a stranger in our house, sir," is the formulation for a traitor in the ranks, not just rhyming subconsciously with Homeland Security but also invoking trust (never trust a stranger) and the importance of being 'one of us', even more important (perhaps) for De Niro, an artist's son with a name that ends in a vowel. These men operate in cabals, lodges, secret meetings, invitation-only parties, from Skull and Bones to the CIA - the WASPy essence of America, the true core of power in the country of Bush vs. Gore (the camera avidly takes in grand buildings with heavy oaken doors, cosy clubs with fireplaces and red velvet curtains) - and of course the cabals are men-only, and men often call each other soulmates and kindred spirits, and our hero is first seen in drag, and the KGB calls him "Mother", and Angelina Jolie asks if perhaps he has "a problem with women", making you wonder if there may be another coded secret haunting the depths of the movie. Much of the plot machinery is banal (fortunately, there isn't very much), De Niro is poor in his small role and the theme - "Get out while you still have a soul" - is disappointingly stated in so many words, but the film is hypnotically well-made, "precise" as our hero's college poetry, full of things half-glimpsed, artfully concealed and louring in the background. In its hushed, shadowy way, it may be the best-looking film of the year.
THE ROAD TO GUANTANAMO (64) (dir., Michael Winterbottom & Mat Whitecross) Riz Ahmed, Farhan Harun, Waqar Siddiqui Not quite believable that this near-apolitical trio ended up in Afghanistan on a lark, looking for "really big naan" - they're made to seem much more British than Pakistani, turned into identification figures (they get sick, get scared of bombings, etc), their criminal records never hinted at till late in the game - though it's quite believable that they stumbled around, never took part in any fighting and ended up in Guantanamo anyway. Indeed the camp is now so discredited, part of the litany of Bushite tyranny and/or incompetence, you kind of wonder what the larger point is - often a problem in Winterbottom's political films (see also WELCOME TO SARAJEVO), the indignation whipped up by his breathless style bumping up against the trite, narrow point being served - but the style (see also IN THIS WORLD) is indeed virtuoso, exotic locales brought to organic life without the sense of anything pointed up or lingered over (the hyper-speed comes across as capacious - trying to fit everything in - rather than obfuscatory), and when it turns into a military-prison movie it belongs with the likes of THE HILL, duels of hammer-like oppression vs. reed-like resilience. In the end it works best as simple description, highly convincing with a striking sense of detail e.g. the fact that prisoners aren't allowed to make eye contact with the guards - obviously to cow them into submission but also, on an unacknowledged level, because the camp is secretly ashamed of itself, literally unable to look its victims in the eye. Powerfully-done, despite the flaws and agitprop. Not as funny as the rest of the ROAD movies, though.
SMOKIN' ACES (60) (dir., Joe Carnahan) Ryan Reynolds, Jeremy Piven, Ray Liotta, Andy Garcia, Ben Affleck, Alicia Keys Take out the final twist and you have a splendid auto-critique of the Guy Ritchie fun-with-violence genre, key pieces of evidence including Jason Bateman - in the year's funniest scene - as a self-loathing lawyer telling a trio of hitmen he'd "much rather be like you guys" instead of his "piss-poor physique", prep-school education and tiny penis; a 12-year-old boy getting an erection as he talks gangsta, practises fight moves and plays with his nunchucks; and "Aces" himself, who goes looking for something "real" (i.e. fun, violent, exciting) and gets into all sorts of trouble - the point, as in NARC, being the lure of criminal machismo, men's attraction to violence and the damage they do as a result. The final twist isn't irrelevant per se - it's about affirming the value of a single life - but it doesn't quite fit, and muddies the waters; before that, however, smart variations are played on the theme of easy violence vs. the hard painful business of actually taking a life - one hitman asks and 'receives' forgiveness by moving his (dead) victim's lips and making him talk, ventriloquist-style, another guides a victim through the difficult process of Death ("Am I really dying?"; "We're all dying"), and there's two scenes where the choice must be made whether to kill or just move on (one is played for laughs; the other isn't). Not entirely original to include a splash of moral questioning amid breezy style and extravagant violence - can we say PULP FICTION? - but it adds a little heft to the jump-cuts, bulging colours, cocaine-streaked faces in ECU, etc. Question: What kind of accent is Andy Garcia supposed to have in this movie?
FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION (52) (dir., Christopher Guest) Catherine O'Hara, Harry Shearer, Parker Posey, Christopher Guest, Eugene Levy Solid near-bull's-eye with a low Degree of Difficulty. Since it doesn't satirise actual moviemaking - none of the film clips feel like they belong to a film one might see today - has little visual sense and even dispenses with Guest's usual mockumentary format (meaning it doesn't have to pretend to be living in the real world), all that's really left are jokes at easy targets like infotainment shows and vapid, narcissistic or otherwise ridiculous Hollywood types, many of which are indeed quite funny ("Inside every actor lives a tiger, a pig, an ass and a nightingale..."); the underlying message, that Culture is being supplanted by superficiality, Shakespeare usurped by vacuous media journalism, is also familiar but surprises with its virulence in the final act, an unexpected razor-blade in the film's candied-apple sweet-and-sourness. "Do you know how tight my aperture is right now?..."
THE SCIENCE OF SLEEP (63) (dir., Michel Gondry) Gael Garcia Bernal, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Alain Chabat, Miou-Miou A hard one to rate, since its virtuosity doesn't necessarily make it very enjoyable; the combination of a drippy hero, sweet-souled surrealism and cutesy bits like GGB demonstrating "how dreams are prepared" in the style of a TV chef making a recipe (throw in some random thoughts, add a dash of reminiscence) tends to leave one with the feeling of having eaten a whole box of chocolate animals at one sitting - and they're not even normal animals like dogs or horses, but gryphons and unicorns. Gondry's vision is self-consciously freewheeling - "Randomness is very difficult to achieve"; "Death to organization!" - and madly creative, at one point literally using creativity as a form of foreplay; its hero is dysfunctional (not least sexually), only really finding himself in his dream-life - which is often narcissistic, a power-trip where he gives celebrity interviews to imaginary journalists, and since Gondry explicitly includes filmmaking as part of the power-trip the film may be (even) more personal than it seems. Animated bits recall Svankmajer (objects coming to life, water pouring out as strands of cellophane, etc) but this vision is quirky and good-natured - maybe Gondry is closest to another Frenchman, René Clair - dealing in magic and porcelain baubles and optical illusions, and when the hated boss jumps out a window he lands safely on a street with toy cars ambling in the background. Like its hero (and writer-director?) it's rootless - English becomes a common language, like the language of dreams - romantic, and not exactly dislikeable but a little immature and self-centred; may work best on second viewing, without plot getting in the way of its fertile imagination and zany sense of humour. "The brain is the most complex thing in the universe. And it's right behind the nose." (Drumroll) "Fascinating!..."
SNAKES ON A PLANE (56) (dir., David R. Ellis) Samuel L. Jackson, Julianna Margulies, Nathan Phillips Looking back, I always thought the concept was cool (snakes on a plane!) but never really asked myself what kind of film I envisaged. The best idea might've been the most impractical, viz. apeing a straight-to-video action flick as it seems to be doing in the prologue, before we get on the plane - the kind of film with flat lighting, hardly any coverage, wooden acting and dialogue mostly along the lines of "Let's get out of here" and "What the hell's going on?". Alas, that would've required it to be actively bad, alienating viewers and baffling New Line execs - so instead we get CGI snakes in a film that plays much closer to AIRPORT-style disaster movie (albeit with some moments of unpleasant mayhem), generally strong though not quite distinctive enough for cult status. "All praises to the PlayStation!" (can we say pandering?), though no praise to the PlayStation-weaned online geeks who stayed home with their downloads instead of turning out at theatres - making the film a flop, ensuring it never opened in a small market like Cyprus, and forcing me to watch at home instead of in a multiplex packed with excitable teens. For once, it might actually have helped.
MUSIC AND LYRICS (46) (dir., Marc Lawrence) Hugh Grant, Drew Barrymore, Haley Bennett, Kristen Johnston, Brad Garrett Maybe it's not having seen one of these for a while (or maybe it's having seen HANDS ACROSS THE TABLE a couple of days ago), but I'd forgotten how debased the rom-com genre has become. They don't even try for coherence now: Drew's character is initially a fluttery hypochondriac in Meg Ryan mode, turns into a supportive best-friend kook in standard Drew template, then suddenly gets Integrity even though she knows how much the "pandering" will mean to her lover's career (it doesn't make sense; this character's way too nakedly emotional to hurt a person she loves for the sake of a point of principle) - and meanwhile she's still doing loveable-kook things like bringing cookies to a glitzy showbiz party. There's also a married sister, for no good reason except it domesticates Drew and allows for a cute shot of Grant dancing with the kids, and a (memorable) spoiled-star diva who also mutates - for no good reason - to fit plot requirements; our heroes argue in front of the inevitable bemused clerk, other minor characters are (inevitably) glimpsed doing their thing in the big musical climax - and a vaguely classier film is also glimpsed, one that drops words like "moribund" and cracks jokes about Cole Porter. Then it's back to the cheesy 80s music videos.
HOLLYWOODLAND (48) (dir., Allen Coulter) Adrien Brody, Diane Lane, Ben Affleck, Bob Hoskins, Robin Tunney One half sub-CHINATOWN shamus-noir, with wearily snappy dialogue - "D'Artagnan, you couldn't nail me with roses and a trip to Vegas!" - and shady motivations, plus a miscast Brody as the J.J. Gittes-like detective delving where he shouldn't with a smirk and a cynical chuckle (he keeps the marks of a beating over several subsequent scenes, possibly in tribute to Gittes' wounded nose); one half Hollywood tittle-tattle in the revisionist style of GODS AND MONSTERS, AUTO FOCUS etc, laying most of the emphasis on how the Dream Factory spits out the ageing, weak or unlucky, aimed at an audience that doesn't really know who e.g. Eddie Mannix or Harry Cohn were but retains some vestigial awareness of Old Hollywood - hence the heavy little ironies like everyone assuming the "Superman" TV show would sink without trace because who cares about a guy in a cape anyway (how naive they were in the 50s! yet somehow ... innocent?). The two heroes are both on the fringes of Hollywood (Brody's dad used to be a gate-guard at Warners) so their stories are supposed to be related though in fact they barely dovetail - just go on in parallel, at frankly excessive length capped by a trite coda with Brody setting out to be a Better Person. Solid but monotonous, feeling more like an episode from a TV mini-series than a movie; no surprise to learn (which I didn't know till later) that Coulter hails from "The Sopranos".
IDIOCRACY (57) (dir., Mike Judge) Luke Wilson, Maya Rudolph, Dax Shepard, Terry Crews Stuff I need to know: (a) Has this film been racially cleansed for DVD? I looked but couldn't see the profusion of black and brown faces everyone was citing as proof that Judge had mentioned the unmentionable and racially profiled his Dumbassland future - indeed, most of the idiots our hero meets are white. (Then again, I probably lack the heightened sensitivity to race which Americans absorb with the rest of their culture - at least when looking at American landscapes - so maybe I just didn't notice.) (b) Is it subversion or just insecurity that prompts Mike Judge to collapse into innocuous conventionality in the final stretch of his satires? OFFICE SPACE was bad enough, but it simply makes no sense here when the film veers into monster-truck action climax and sappy happy ending - is it trying to ingratiate itself with precisely the audience it's been mocking for 50 minutes? It's like some part of Judge refuses to align with the bi-coastal elites, stubbornly holding on to 'his' people. (c) Wtf actually happened here? The flimsy running-time is one thing, but there seem to be whole sub-plots which are set up and never arrive (e.g. it seems clear Upgrayedd the pimp - or one of his descendants - was supposed to make an appearance at one point). Also I guess (d) Why, despite all these problems, is it as defiantly worth seeing as any comedy this year? Maybe it's the Orwell vs. Huxley thing - "1984" has a stronger plot, greater seriousness of purpose and way better writing, but "Brave New World" got it right. A scarily plausible future: Rampant consumerism, corporate takeover, sex with everything, "Ow! My Balls!".
MARY (58) (dir., Abel Ferrara) Forest Whitaker, Juliette Binoche, Matthew Modine Obviously personal, a key film for Ferrara freaks and as striking as any he's made - slo-mo shot through a subway tunnel is probably my favourite - but it's hard to make out what it's saying and what I did make out wasn't very inspiring, something about getting in touch with the God within (all of us products of the same Divine Spark, etc). Ferrara's flamboyant reputation often obscures the fact that his cinema is one of introversion, men (it's mostly men) bogged down in barriers and psychological dead-ends, often going nuts as they try to fight their way out, dramatic tension formed in the duality of external violence and internal frustration - and duality features in all the best bits here, notably the question of Craving vs. Soul, "how to be a spiritual being inside of Society" (asked of a Benedictine monk, who admits his calling demands a combination of solitude and "mission"). Fittingly, Ferrara seems to have spread himself between two characters, Modine's brash, controversy-courting filmmaker and Whitaker's tortured celeb who admits - like the Bad Lieutenant - that "I've done so many bad things" and tries to pray when things go wrong, despite having previously admitted that "I can't speak to God"; neither seems to be very successful - unlike Binoche as the possibly insane actress who ends up straddling two worlds (duality again, and it's even in the opening shot when we find ourselves in a dark cave with the light - or Light - teasingly outside). As a finally ambivalent statement by a believer who Craves too much - and doesn't think he'll ever get to God, but intends to keep trying - it's quite powerful, as a madman riff on DA VINCI CODE it's even better, as a Good Friday viewing choice (good job me) it's clearly awesome. Loses focus, though - and did I just misunderstand, or is it saying at one point that Palestinian bombers "hate without cause"?
300 (26) (dir., Zack Snyder) Gerard Butler, Lena Headey, Dominic West Hear me! I am Leonidas, King of Sparta, ranged against the sand-niggers, boy-lovers, freaks of all descriptions. My land is a strange land. Men's blood runs black though their cloaks be crimson, our sea is grey but our sky is semi-permanently yellow. A narrator appears unbidden, spelling out our thoughts while we stand there looking moody. We don't care, because we are Spartans! - a warrior caste, a master race. "No room for softness, no room for weakness! Only the hard and strong may call themselves Spartans. Only the hard! Only the strong!". I, Leonidas, am hard, and grow harder still when I think about my queen - she of the fiery temper and firm erect nipples - yea though I also like to josh with my men on the battlefield, and exchange lingering ambiguously gay looks before we set off to slaughter some Persians. Some might say it's downright irresponsible to be making this kind of brash (albeit campy) martial fantasy, with the world in the state it's in, but to them I say only: "SPARTAAAAAA!!!!"
THE ILLUSIONIST (51) (dir., Neil Burger) Edward Norton, Paul Giamatti, Jessica Biel, Rufus Sewell Skill over substance, so well-made it's a shock when you realise how dumb it actually is. The visual style is so rigorous, such a strong evocation of some dim Mitteleuropean past (smoky darkness, candles, sallow skin tones), it's a shock to realise how wilfully clueless the film is about values and mores in a 19th-century class system, the Crown Prince unmasked like a Scooby Doo villain and the cop chief - a butcher's son! - saying he's notified the Emperor about this, "he won't leave his crown to a murderer" (oh please). Giamatti is such a fine actor, so inventive and beautifully calibrated, it's a shock to realise his (apparently) complex character has actually been conceived as a naive idealist, happy to do his job even at the expense of his career. The plot is so loaded and slyly parceled-out, it's a shock to realise how meagre and obvious the twist in the tail is. (Norton doesn't help, being the kind of tricky actor who's not quite convincing in grief-stricken mode.) Most damagingly - though it's not really the film's fault - the underlying theme posits Magic (hence Art) as a latent political tool, setting up Cinema in particular as a route to social revolution (the magician's supernatural tricks apparently involve projected images, though it's never entirely explained) - which is all vaguely interesting but it comes just a couple of months after a much richer film, one that posited Magic not just as an instrument of class revolt but a mirror of the human condition, crystallising both our everyday denials and stubborn need to believe in something inexplicable. That picture is called THE PRESTIGE.
APOCALYPTO (60) (dir., Mel Gibson) Rudy Youngblood, Dalia Hernandez, Raoul Trujillo Prompts the thought, among other thoughts, that the liberal worldview - or not even worldview but tendency, the premise underlying a fondness for welfare programs and equal rights - is fundamentally sanguine, resting on a vision of Man as a compassionate creature, held back from kindness and nobility only by social inequalities which the State should therefore rectify, whereas the conservative tendency is fundamentally pessimistic, looking on the world as a jungle - or free market - where hunters and hunted are the natural order and each fish is programmed to eat a smaller fish before being devoured by a larger fish, with God as the biggest fish of all in the Strict Father model - as e.g. in this action flick, which is actually a pretty awesome action flick when it's not prompting such thoughts (and even when it is). Gibson really ought to turn himself into a big-studio action director, he does it so well - but of course they'd make him tone down his red-in-tooth-and-claw sensibility, with its relish in pain and suffering (kids in jeopardy? can do! severed head rolling down the steps? no problemo!), though they might also cut down on self-indulgence; the film wallows in familiar Gibson masochism, both in the Mayan-city middle section with its grotesque lepers and malign midgets - the overall effect is of people leaning into the camera making faces - and the dogpile effect of the final act with its Job-like catalogue of tribulations capped by hero's wife having to give birth (!) with the waters rising and pursuers closing in, etc etc. Opening quote is rather odd, since there's no evidence of the village being a corrupt civilisation (it can only refer to the Maya, but their decline only becomes an issue at the very end), but it fits both with the film's latent moralism and its emphasis on death and extinction, down to the sub-plot with the friend who can't have kids. Best scene: the early stand-off in the forest, unexpectedly strange and unsettling.
DREAMGIRLS (37) (dir., Bill Condon) Beyoncé Knowles, Jamie Foxx, Jennifer Hudson, Eddie Murphy, Danny Glover "Move, move, move / Right out of my life..." "Get your married hands off me!" You don't own me, etc. Female Empowerment simmers in the background of this bland, bloated musical like a doctor's note for a lazy pupil, ditto the commodification of music - heroine's mother turns up just long enough to tell the impresario "You make her sound like a product" - and of course the Black Experience, notably the need for black America to reclaim its music which the whites appropriated (stole) and diluted; we shake our heads at the uptight (and racist) white punters unable to handle voluptuous Afro-sensuality - which is all a bit ironic since the film cloaks its theme in the glitziest kind of synthetic Broadway dancing, synchronised chorus lines with fingers pointing skyward and so forth, not to mention a score that fights shy of anything memorable (like actual melodies), smothers everything in the same smooth production and features - to paraphrase James Agee - about as much R'n B as could be safely displayed in a Bergdorf Goodman window. (The other irony, that our heroine is finally Empowered via the less-than-noble route of snitching to The Man, is too pathetic to even worry about.) Astonishingly limp and half-assed, with characters barely established and songs invariably sung in the strident, big-voiced "Pop Idol" fashion that's someday going to seem as misguided as stage-trained actors aiming their lines at invisible Dress Circles in early Talkies; I literally failed to realise the Foxx and Hudson characters were supposed to be in the throes of a passionate affair (this is like a major plot point), though I'm willing to accept that was just me. Hudson reinforces every half-buried stereotype of the big Black Momma - brassy, obstreperous, victimised, reckless, irresponsible, better at singing than making something of her life - and won an Oscar for doing so.