Films Seen - September 2006
[Pre-'96 films not included.]
BANDIDAS (44) (dir., Joachim Roenning & Espen Sandberg) Penelope Cruz, Salma Hayek, Steve Zahn, Dwight Yoakam [Seems to me the Luc Besson factory operates best with cheerfully OTT action comedies like BANLIEUE 13 and THE TRANSPORTER, falls down most obviously when it tries for pathos, esp. when it's doing so as part of a perceived Hollywood recipe (UNLEASHED is a special case where it actually tries for tragic force in the midst of action, and fails honourably). The scene where the two very different 'bandidas' finally confess mutual affection behind their de rigueur bickering - "It's been good to have you as a partner"; "It's been good to have you as a friend" - is unwatchable, both because it feels rote and because their characters have been flattened by the film's over-busy style - and the style also (more importantly) scuppers a larger kind of pathos, the spatial integrity of Westerns and the memories summoned up by the genre. Hyperactive from the first scenes, shuffled fast with cute transitions - X in one scene saying "One more person you have to convince" straight to Y in another scene saying "I'm convinced!" about something else altogether - and harping on the girly-girl factor (for the benefit of Besson's young-male demographic) as Hayek brushes her hair in between bank robberies, Cruz looks fetching in low-cut dresses and they both practise kissing on hilariously-overwhelmed Steve Zahn - but the kissing lesson gets accompanied by the "Habanera" from "Carmen", overstating the joke, a catfight is cut too fast and staged too frantically, and the stately iconic rhythm of Westerns (even spaghetti Westerns) gives way to a twitchy, anything-for-a-laugh cartoon bittiness. Settles down once the heists begin - you can almost hear Besson and his gang behind the scenes, going "Okay, this we can do!" - with comic disguises and elaborate contraptions, though even this is erratic (can't believe they forgot to use Hayek's hiccup problem in the final heist; you won't find Hollywood dropping the ball on such an obvious set-up), and creative nervousness has to be assuaged with major explosions and bullet-time effect at the climax. A change of pace for the factory, trying to expand and defensively fighting its European corner with blatant (and gratuitous) digs at the transatlantic rival; "In Europe we have a different perspective on the American definition of friendship," notes Hayek icily - the villains are Yanks, at one point calling for the Stars and Stripes to be flown over a Mexican bank so it'll look more American - and Cruz delivers the final blow: "Your country always finds a reason to interfere in other people's affairs". Even my multiplex audience got that one.]
YOU, ME AND DUPREE (48) (dir., Anthony & Joe Russo) Owen Wilson, Matt Dillon, Kate Hudson [I actually think this "Cyprus Mail" review is surprisingly okay, given the limitations and dumbed-down style. At least I got the film's more interesting side (comment on the death of machismo, etc) in there somewhere. Also, the Career Day speech belongs in the Owen Wilson time-capsule along with Hansel's video from ZOOLANDER and just about any random scene from THE BIG BOUNCE.]
MY SUPER EX-GIRLFRIEND (47) (dir., Ivan Reitman) Luke Wilson, Uma Thurman, Anna Faris ["I hate my clingy needy ex-girlfriend"; "Just eat the vegetables then". "What do you do if you miss your clingy needy ex-girlfriend?"; "Reload and try again". "Take my clingy needy ex-girlfriend - please!". I don't think it's so offensive really, a cheesy men's-magazine joke about Women in Control (help!), already a threat long before she turns into a clingy needy ex-girlfriend - in the way she takes charge of everything, takes his number without giving hers, makes it clear there won't be any sex on the first date, tells him he's "using [his] tongue all wrong", finally insists on being on top when they get into bed - par for the course in a world where men are stifled, bullied and constantly harassed (it says here) over sexual harassment. She's a superheroine but also a woman, hence jealous, insecure and estrogen-addled (if the same people made a male variant it might e.g. have Superman falling down on the job because he's too busy spying on chicks with his X-ray vision) - then again, she's a woman but also a superheroine, and the stereotype gets a clever nudge when she does become a clingy needy ex-girlfriend because she gets to have precisely what that species sadly lacks, namely power (flashbacks paint power as the source of her trouble; everything might've been okay if she'd only stayed a nice geeky girl with braces). Uma wallows in KILL BILL dominatrix mode, Luke Wilson is predictably convincing as a "very forgettable person"; has its moments, though it does jump the shark with the CGI shark.]
CARS (43) (dir., John Lasseter) with the voices of Owen Wilson, Paul Newman, Bonnie Hunt, Larry the Cable Guy [How ironic that this should've been paired - in Cyprus and, I assume, the rest of the world - with "One Man Band", a short about a pair of street musicians vying for a little girl's penny, their ever-more-elaborate attempts to entertain her finally backfiring in spectacular fashion (Moral of the Story: Simpler is Better); clearly Pixar don't have the nous to recognise themselves in the street musicians, even as their product gets increasingly bloated (TOY STORY, 81 minutes; CARS, 112) and weighed down with baggage. This fails on any number of levels, most basically because cars are harder to make anthropomorphic than animals or fish, let alone cartoon people - but also because it's slower and more laboured, its set-ups more obvious (an 8-year-old could've told you that backwards-driving scene is only there to be used at the climax), and also because it's so cumbersomely loaded-down with Values. Pixar have always stood for conservative thinking - TOY STORY went for sensible cowboy Woody over flashy spaceman Buzz, THE INCREDIBLES steered close to fascism in its hierarchy of the special and not-so-special - but this is downright regressive in its nostalgia for an idyllic Mayberry, a time "before the Interstate" when people (I mean cars) were nicer to each other, though the problem isn't nostalgia per se but the package it's wrapped up in. Pixar's closing credits used to be accompanied by outtakes but now they're accompanied by a thinly-disguised Greatest Hits, a shameless attempt to strengthen the brand-name so even tiny tots will know the bouncing table-lamp above the title spells Excellence (and hopefully pester their parents for the DVDs); in short they've gone corporate, mischievous edge replaced by a benign softcore Republicanism that's pro-business as well as pro-community - the people (I mean cars) of the town teach our hero Friendship, he in return helps them make the town a going concern - prizing respect for the old order (Pixar is now an institution), keen to stress that Winning Isn't Everything though of course mapping its narrative in terms of success and failure (and of course the CEO finally "respects" our hero's decision to decline the big money and stay true to his sponsors, part of the reassuring myth that capitalism always finds room for integrity, just like Mr. Big always turned out to be a sweetheart in office comedies of the 50s and 60s). Tired and patchy, with the minor characters - the hippy car, the military car - often feeling perfunctory, only exception being the Ferrari-loving tire merchants (one of whom bears a passing resemblance to Beaker on "The Muppet Show"); corporate branding is all very well, but Pixar should recall that "One Man Band" ended with the little girl turning from passive consumer into capricious tyrant.]
ADRIFT / OPEN WATER 2 (36) (dir., Hans Horn) Susan May Pratt, Richard Speight Jr., Niklaus Lange [Known as ADRIFT when I saw it but the official (IMDb) title seems to have been changed to OPEN WATER 2, which is typical of both its confusion and bandwagon-jumping opportunism (not that OPEN WATER offers much of a bandwagon). Actually plays like a TV reality show, its people - young, loud, obnoxious - thrown into a tense situation where they bicker, do stupid things (e.g. throwing away the cellphone in a fit of temper) and turn on each other, eventually moving on to earnest speeches and tearful confessions. Needed better writing to be at all convincing, and maybe better staging - the way it's shot, it looks like the swimmers could easily have climbed onto the boat if they'd just stood on each other's shoulders (even when a single person jumps, he almost makes it) - but the real clincher is the child-in-jeopardy angle, which is both inept and exploitative. There's a baby on board, left on its own after Mom falls in the water, but her first thought isn't for the child as you might expect from a new mother; only once the situation's established does she start freaking out, and the film keeps cross-cutting - absurdly - to shots of the infant sleeping peacefully in the yacht while Mom struggles to survive, like an action film that keeps cutting back to the countdown on a time-bomb. Once the kid wakes up, it's implied, something terrible will happen (maybe it'll ... cry!). BLAIR WITCH, this is your fault.]
Toronto International Film Festival, September 7-16 (45 films)
LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE (37) (dir., Jonathan Dayton & Valerie Faris) Greg Kinnear, Toni Collette, Steve Carell, Alan Arkin, Abigail Breslin, Paul Dano [Guess the idea is for the climax to confront kiddie pageants with the truth about themselves - the little girl does a strip-show, making the paedophilia behind such pageants obvious instead of latent, hence unacceptable - tying in with earlier scenes debating whether one should be honest with children about Heaven, suicide, etc, but if honesty is the film's abiding theme it's a shame that it deals in a particular kind of dishonesty, the kind where everyone acts eccentric long enough to mark them out as 'freaks' then reverts to acceptable style so a point can be made about the freaks triumphing by just being themselves - except of course they weren't being themselves, because the film de-freaked them after that first impression in order to fit feelgood parameters (thus Kinnear magically stops being obnoxious when it comes time to lead the family, the junkie grandpa turns sentimental - "I'm proud of you" - instead of cranky and foul-mouthed once his character has been established, etc). It's really one of those god-bless-America movies, coming out in praise of the go-getter - Kinnear's win-at-all-costs mentality, initially mocked, turns out to come in handy when the family need to get from freeway to hotel lobby with minutes to go - notable for completely ignoring its most obvious conflict, the ego-monster vs. the tortured intellectual; you'd expect Carell's gay depressed Proust scholar to be chiming in all the time, perhaps to point out that beauty pageants are exploitative and the standard capitalist meme of Following Your Dream ignores the intrinsic worth of the Dream being Followed, etc etc, but in fact he's conspicuously silent, as if the film felt it was already being transgressive enough in having a character who's gay, a Proust scholar and played by Steve Carell. There's a twist, of course, because Following Your Dream doesn't necessarily mean you should go through the usual channels - in fact, it's better if you don't - in the age of self-esteem and designing one's life to one's own specifications (be yourself, that's the most important dream); "The Odd are About to Get Even" to quote the tag-line of OPEN SEASON, and you know offbeat has become the new mainstream when even kids' cartoons are getting in on the act. All a bit depressing, and equally depressing that the only female (adult) character is also the most undeveloped, but I guess you can't mess with Mom too much; it makes people uncomfortable.]
THANK YOU FOR SMOKING (51) (dir., Jason Reitman) Aaron Eckhart, Maria Bello, Cameron Bright, Katie Holmes [At a time when the nanny-state do-gooders are digitally removing cigarettes from old Tom and Jerry 'toons (which the anti-smoking Senator in the movie actually proposes, and calls "improving History"), Reitman's libertarian message couldn't be more timely, or valuable; unfortunately it's not much of a movie, going down a wholly predictable arc albeit with cartoonish fun along the way (the only reason for the irrelevant kidnapping sub-plot must be to distract from the hero's predictable downfall, which comes immediately after). Silver-tongued lobbyist hero is allowed to keep his delusions - and, more importantly in a 00s American film, the love of his son - thinking he's engaged in "the beauty of argument" when he's actually dealing in spin and damage-control; he's like a lawyer whose defence of his client consists entirely of questioning the credibility of the witness who saw him do the deed, not so much mounting an argument as playing the System - his vanilla/chocolate ice-cream analogy makes an ingenious scene, but really needed the addition of overwhelming medical evidence that vanilla ice-cream leads inexorably to lung cancer to be truly accurate (hence, the delusions). Still, I'm on his side (I think he should've been more ambivalent, but I'm on his side), and it's clearly no surprise that Hollywood can sympathise with "moral flexibility" - or indeed that the film's funniest scenes have to do with satire of Hollywood super-agents. Brave but insubstantial, Eckhart surrounded by gallows humour (even his kid goes to St. Euthanasius) but remaining blithely untouched by the death all around him. Also, thanks for spoiling SANDS OF IWO JIMA Reitman, I mean jesus.]
A PRAIRIE HOME COMPANION (66) (dir., Robert Altman) Garrison Keillor, Meryl Streep, Lily Tomlin, Lindsay Lohan, Woody Harrelson, John C. Reilly, Kevin Kline [Writing this a month after the event, so can I just say that (a) yes, it's pretty obviously about Death, why are people offering this as a reading like it's some subtextual thing they've painstakingly pieced together?, and (b) I assume it's partly my lack of familiarity with the show that made this so startling, both in daring to come up with something so plotless and allowing master-of-ceremonies Keillor his emotional coldness (he admits as much) as a Midwestern given. Unlike any recent American movie I can think of - more like FRENCH CANCAN or something - though many of the non-singing, non-performing bits don't work at all, notably Kevin Kline as a sub-noir detective and Virginia Madsen as a resolutely unmagical angel (exception: her first appearance, walking through a doorway that's composed in the shot so she looks like she's walking out of a photograph). Altman's possible epitaph, prickly and unsentimental to the last: "The death of an old man is not a tragedy."]