Basterds of a New Color

Attention all cinephiles: have no fear. The 2009 movie year has officially begun. If you're like me and you've been trying to "make do" or pretend to be satisfied with the summer's current offerings, Quentin Tarantino's audacious Inglourious Bastards will rescue you from your movie blues. The premise is essentially a fantasist's vision of the second world war.

A group of Jewish Yankee soldiers, led by Lt. Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt), land in German-occupied France and proceed to take the lives and scalps of as many Nazi soldiers as they can. Before long, word spreads throughout the Reich, earning the men mythic names such as "the Bear Jew" and "Aldo the Apache." This is only the beginning of Tarantino's labyrinthine story which also involves a German actress spying for the allies, a Jewish film projectionist who was orphaned by the SS, her ebony lover and a particular effete Joseph Goebbels. Rounding out the cast are an almost unrecognizable Mike Meyers and Rod Taylor as British General Ed Fenech and Winston Churchill respectively -- just two of Tarantino's many in-jokes. Special mention is also owed to Christoph Waltz, in an Oscar-worthy turn as they oily, machiavellian Col. Hans Landa.

"Basterds" will no doubt have many detractors. It is easily the most reckless and irreverent war film I have ever seen. Some will find it crude, disrespectful and without redeeming virtue, but these are the very same traits that make it provocative, relevant and very fresh. Tarantino fans will not be surprised by the violence in the film, but they may be taken with how unglamorous it is. Although previous Tarantino films have aimed to titilate us with their criminality, I believe the writer/director is after a different game here. Inglourious Bastards is an anti-war film. Thankfully good old QT is just too sly to admit it.

The biggest challenge audiences will face is defining the moral objective behind the film. Unlike the countless scores of tributes we have seen to soldiers of the great wars and their sacrifice and struggle, the filmmakers dare to examine the issue from all sides. Both the allies and the Nazis are portrayed as complicated creatures, sometimes gallant, sometimes cruel. Tarantino understands that war is merely a collision of egos, ids and super-egos. It's often morbidly funny and without redemption for any side. That's what the ending is intended to signify (for those who leave the theatre scratching their chins in puzzlement). The picture is a mockery of war and the films that celebrate our battle-frought heritage and yet it also pays homage to our favorite war films. This is no small task and if it sounds contradictory it is.

Tarantino has created a war film for people who have become desensitized to the structure and meaning of conventional war films. He goes for broke and gleefully sidesteps the pratfalls of the genre. He doesn't try to inspire us with sweeping vistas and noble ideals. He doesn't try to make pacifists out of us with harrowing battles and cruel violence. Instead, he boldly lampoons everyone and everything onscreen, while simultaneously holding us in his grip.

There are so many flourishes and textures in a Tarantino picture that it may be easy to overlook his brilliance in creating (yet again) two strong, memorable, female roles in a genre that rarely honors our mothers and daughters. The female leads, Shoshana Drefyus (Melanie Lawrence) and Bridget Von Hammersmark (Diane Kruger) are nothing short of extraordinary. Bastards also features several trademark QT scenes, including a standoff at a tavern that ratchets up the tension as only he can. Some scenes run so long that they begin to overstay their welcome, until just as our eyes begin to glaze over the story takes a turns and surprises us.

In certain circles, I'm sure these heavily padded scenes will be dismissed as indulgent and unfocussed, but this is missing the point. Regardless of whether the film jives with your personal taste, Inglourious Bastards assures Tarantino's status as a master filmmaker in complete control of his story at all times. He plays with structure, style and rhythm to keep us gloriously off guard (no pun intended) and he packs his film with layers of meaning, ambiguity and bravura filmmaking -- not to mention in-jokes. This is Tarantino's most triumphant entertainment since Pulp Fiction. It's a movie for anyone who loves the movies. It is also a delirious, imaginative, masterpiece--provided that you're willing to accept that war is one big, fat, joke.

**Note: The B&W film clip denoting the flammable properties of nitrate film is from Hitchcock's Sabotage (1936), from a screenplay by Charles Bennett, Ian Hay & Helen Simpson, and E.V.H. Emmett, based on Joseph Conrad's The Secret Agent.**

The Sound of Gunfire: Michael Mann's Public Enemies

Michael Mann is fascinated with the mythic nature of society and the power struggles between men. His Public Enemies bristles with the excitement of these myths, which he celebrates through style, texture and explosions, and yet the film does little to reveal meaning behind our myths. Mann is a brilliant craftsman and stylist. Students of film will appreciate his dizzying camera and terse editing. There is life to almost every frame, especially when the cops and robbers are shooting it out, using big, loud, guns, but there is also a gaping hole at the center of the movie where there could have been so much more.

John Dillinger was a man of the people, a national folk hero during the Great Depression, known as much for his gregarious personality and charisma as his criminal efficiency. Unfortunately the three writers credited with the project (including Mann) couldn't figure out a way to work this out. Johnny Depp's Dillinger is cool, remote and sociopathic. We see nothing of the community support he worked so hard to earn. We never get a sense of the exhiliration behind his bank heists and as a result he is mainly joyless to watch.

This Dillinger takes pleasure in nothing except for his 'moll' Billie (Marion Cotillard), who is either drawn to his charisma or threatened by his ruthlessness. Either way, she's along for the ride. Their romance is the only beacon of humanity in the film but it has no weight or credibility. Most of the time Dillinger just floats through scenes like a badass automaton.

Fighting for the other side is Agent Purvis (Christian Bale), a stoic and meticulous lawman who leads the manhunt for Dillinger. Their cat and mouse interplay never really catches fire. Mann is too preoccupied with the manly bravado and macho posturing of his leads, to dig beneath the surface as he did so brilliantly in Heat. There isn't a single scene that shows us Purvis in his private life outside of the job, and if there had been his epigraph might have had impact.

What ultimately makes the film work is the crackling soundtrack and the ending. There's something profoundly unsettling about the way the manhunt for Dillinger comes to a close. Public Enemies may be the first gangster film in which the villain is gunned down and somehow the police come off as the guilty ones. If only the writers had worked a little harder to bring us to this point. Like so many recent and inscrutable movie protagonists (think Benjamin Button or Harvey Milk), this Dillinger drifts through history without actually impacting it.  As a consequence, you may leave Public Enemies remembering the sound of the gunfire more than anything else, but what dazzling gunfire it is.

Remembering Holiday

George Cukor's Holiday is an enchanting, old fashioned, romantic comedy with a premise as irresistible today as it was when it premiered in 1938.  Cary Grant is a free-spirited dreamer, engaged to Doris Nolan, an upper crust socialite from one of Manhattan's wealthiest families.  When he makes a killing on the stock exchange and announces his intention to retire from law so he can sail around the world, he draws rancor from Nolan and her family.  The question then becomes whether he will compromise by taking the desk that his would-be father in law has offered him, or pursue the life he truly wants.  Enter Katherine Hepburn, Nolan's sister, a very modern woman hemmed in by her stuffy, elitist family.  Hepburn responds to Grant's youthful ideals and quickly makes it her mission to hold onto him -- on her sister's behalf.  

It's plain to see that she and Grant belong together, but Donald Ogden Stewart & Sydney Buchman's script is truly a crash course on how to write your characters out of a potentially unsavory triangle.  Somehow Hepburn manages to steal her sister's beau without betraying her trust and Grant wins our sympathies after quitting his fiancee in favor of her sister.  Cynics may dismiss this as romantic pablum, but fans of the genre will be hard-pressed to find a film that is as funny and genuinely romantic as this one.  Cukor keeps things moving, Grant somehow makes even the clumsiest acrobatic flips look dashing and gallant and Hepburn tugs at our heartstrings without resorting to maudlin theatrics.  Watch for peerless character actor Edward Everett Horton and Jean Dixon as Grant's closest friends, who realize before anyone else that he and Hepburn are made for each other.  Sparkling and timeless.  

Popcorn Trek

JJ Abrams' giddy new Star Trek reboot is an occasionally exhilarating, cleverer than usual, summer popcorn spectacular, which is a nice way of saying it is easily digested and ultimately forgotten.  The story re-imagines the "origins" of Captain Kirk, Mr. Spock and the Starship Enterprise.  When this became an obsession of the mainstream is beyond me, but it seems the studios believe that we have a tireless desire to learn more about how our icons became icons.  

Inevitably, this line of inquiry results in the revelation that sweet Jiminy, these guys are just like us!  The only problem is, I don't want to know that Captain Kirk (Chris Pine) was a shameless horn-dog, or that Spock (Zachary Quinto) was teased as a boy because of his "mixed" parentage.  These things are fair enough as entertainment goes, but I would rather face the mystery of how these men became who they are than have the explanation spoon-fed to me.  

I have never been a Trekkie, so maybe this is new ground broken.  Maybe I should just shut up and enjoy the eye-candy, but when I go to the movies I don't want cleverer than usual, I want genuine undeniable wit and originality.  Delivering this with a movie as heavily branded as Star Trek, isn't strictly necessary because it already has such a huge built-in audience, but I hoped for more based on the movie's reviews and J.J. Abram's prodigious reputation.  

As for the film itself, the story concerns an angry Romulan (Eric Bana), whose native planet was destroyed in a supernova.  Now he has figured out a way to travel back through time and enact his revenge on the starfleet -- who he blames for failing to save his dying people.  Circumstances bring Kirk and Spock together with Uhura (Zoe Saldana), Scottie (Simon Pegg), Chekhov (Anton Yelchin) and Bones (Karl Urban) to combat this evil foe and defend the galaxy. 

The casting of these archetypal roles is spot on, although Uhura is underwritten as is commonplace for women in this genre.  She's basically a post-feminist woman, content to kick butt in go-go boots and not beyond shedding a tear or two -- but she isn't hard on the eyes so all is fair.  Bana's villain lacks potency and fades into the background of the busy plot.  The real show is Kirk and Spock, butting heads and yet hurtling towards an inevitable reconciliation.  This is the most winning ingredient of the movie and Pine and Quinto perfectly inhabit their parts.  

The movie has a slick, colorful, eye-popping aesthetic.  The opening scene is so effectively thrilling and heart-wrenching all at once, that I was reminded of vintage Spielberg, but then the picture settles into a more complacent rhythm.  Complacent in following the same overstuffed, over-manufactured mantra that drives the current crop of summer movies.  Abrams works hard to dazzle us and he succeeds for the most part, but the picture is too busy.  

The special effects are too loud and too frenetic to follow at times.  Like most modern blockbusters the action lacks a tactile quality and therefore overcompensates by trying to elicit a visceral jolt.  The effect is kind of like a Bourne film married with one of the recent Star Wars films.  It stirs us up well enough.  We just can't seem to remember everything we've seen -- particularly during the climactic jumble that passes for a third act.  

I feel obliged to point out that in spite of these flaws, the film is a fun ride and fun is a precious commodity that seems to be lacking in many of the other more morose and ponderous summer offerings.  Perhaps all this-nitpicking is ungrateful of me.  The movie happily delivers all of the key ingredients we look for in summer movies.  I more or less got what I paid for.  I just wish it hadn't seemed quite so familiar.  

The State of Documentary

When it comes to documentaries, I can be a bit of a counter-snob.  Ever since my parents dragged me kicking and screaming from E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, I've been aware of the debate between the so-called "intellectuals" who profess a slavish devotion to non-fiction and those weak-willed dreamers, the "escapists," who blindly champion the art of make-believe.  Off the record, to be perfectly blunt, I am a fiction guy.  There is nothing I find more exhilarating than the human imagination.  The giddy rush I get from a triumphant piece of fiction has no analog.  Probably because great fiction always has a strong point of view.  My favorite documentaries have this same fidelity of vision -- which isn't to suggest that they can only be interpreted one way.  As far as I'm concerned, a movie's point of view can be completely ambiguous, so long as there is an organic cohesion between image and text, rhythm and tone.  Unfortunately, point of view is sorely lacking in the three films I've seen thus far at Toronto's Hot Docs International Film Festival. 

When We Were Boys, directed by Sarah Goodman, is an observational, verite-style documentary designed as an intimate portrait of pubescence, that purports to make us a fly on the wall at an all-boys private school.  Although the movie is entertaining, the rug is quickly ripped out from under its promise of daring expose.   Ultimately the film lacks shape and fails to enlighten us with any key revelations.

In contrast, Rembrandt's J'Accuse by Peter Greenaway, has too much shape and too revelatory a tone to qualify as entertainment or enlightenment.  The movie presumes to teach us about visual literacy, by uncovering the 31 "mysteries" behind the conception of Rembrandt's famous painting "The Night Watch," which hangs in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.   My party, who had eagerly awaited the screening beforehand, managed to sit through the solution of the first six before leaving the theater for greener pastures.  

Greenaway's cerebral history lesson is constructed using a combination of beautifully photographed art stills, strangely inert dramatizations and scrolling text which looks like a CNN newsfeed, rendered in Lucida Handwriting.  Worst of all is the ill-conceived narration.  Greenaway stacks his images so we can both hear and see his narrator, using a picture-in-picture conceit that would be more at home in a bar-mitzvah video.  There is a fine line between ambition and indulgence and Mr. Greenaway should have known better.   

Art & Copy, Doug Pray's history of the advertising industry is the slickest product of the three and by far the most enjoyable, but it still suffers from overlength and a reverence for its subject matter that isn't entirely deserved.  Unfortunately for Mr. Pray, the same rules that apply to fiction film also apply to documentary.  Namely, not to overdress a simple tale with a lot of phony, razzle-dazzle, smoke and mirrors. Apart from a few hilarious vintage ads, the best parts are actually the talking heads.  The film's fascination belongs to the mavericks who re-invented advertising from the ground up.   

Do not construe any of this as a dire warning about the state of documentary in general.  For now, let's just agree that documentaries have to try harder than narrative films to overcome the limitations of reality and achieve that perfect symbiosis of form and content, enlightenment and entertainment.  When they succeed the results can be truly glorious.  Just not in this case...

Lovers Triangle

Two Lovers, directed by James Gray and written by Gray and Ric Menello, is a haunting, subtle, film about thwarted dreams, broken hearts and the finite limits of redemption.  It stars Joaquin Phoenix as Leonard Kraditor, the lonely neurotic character who brought him out of retirement.  Initially his story smacks of C.C. Baxter in The Apartment.  Leonard's in love with his damaged neighbor Michelle (Gwyneth Paltrow), but she's involved in a hopeless relationship with her married boss.  His parents (who he lives with) would prefer he date and ultimately marry Sandra (Vinessa Shaw), for the sake of their business merger with her parents.  But Leonard is a man on the edge.  

In the film's dizzying opening, Leonard tries to commit suicide -- unsuccessfully.  Later we learn that the root of his malaise is a failed relationship.  We as an audience see early on that Leonard's fragile heart will be safer with Sandra, but as their relationship deepens Leonard can't keep his mind off Michelle.  Leonard shares a frank chemistry with both women, but only Sandra sees him through a lover's eyes.  Michelle in contrast refers to Leonard as her "new best friend."  With each passing moment, Leonard's infatuation pushes him deeper into a full-fledged obsession with Michelle. Even as pressures rise for him to propose to Sandra.  At varying times, it is impossible to know precisely what the characters are thinking.  The writing is wonderfully nuanced and the cast acts out the full spectrum of human emotions.  

These emotions are articulated in wonderfully authentic, often contradictory terms.  Leonard's obsession with Michelle teeters on the edge, precariously charged with the question of whether he'll eventually charm her or self-destruct trying.  Phoenix's simultaneous vulnerability and volatility is frightening to watch.  We never quite know what he'll do next.  His every action is infused with a repressed combination of violence and sweetness.   When he finally makes a choice between the women in his life, the end result is far more ambiguous and inscrutable than one might expect.  The movie's offbeat tone is nicely expressed in the music, which features a sparing combination of lyrical harp and opera.  Silence is also bravely used to great effect.  

The central relationships unfold messily.  As in life, everything is not spelled out and the things the characters don't say are more important than the things they do.  We never know what Leonard did to hurt himself.  We never know what truly binds Michelle to her married lover.  And we never know for certain if Sandra is aware that she's the consolation prize.  Two Lovers contemplates the imperfections of love in ways that few modern romantic dramas are willing to do.   This may all sound overly bleak and portentous but the movie sings with the same melancholic wit that jazzed up some of the best of Billy Wilder's work.  The end result is hypnotic, provocative and strangely reassuring.  We see ourselves in the characters and we accept that like them, it is never too late for us to make a change.  

Gomorrah: The Real Godfather

Gomorrah is to The Godfather what last year's American Teen was to The Breakfast Club.  It strips away all the style, flash and romance, of the genre to comment on a real world community that has become inextricably linked with the movies it inspired.  Early crime pictures were fashioned as a reaction to the pervasive growth of organized crime.  Now, the real life members of said "families" are well acquainted with their cinematic counterparts and their behavior can be seen as a reaction to the movies that are based on them.  The reflexive nature of gangland violence is a relatively new phenomenon and something that Gomorrah elucidates remarkably well.      

The title is derived from the word Camorra, which denotes the Neapolitan mafia.  This is the subject of the film, but it also inexplicably calls to mind the interpretive section of the Jewish talmud.  Even if this second allusion is not intended it fits in an odd way.  The serpentine mechanics of the plot and the convoluted ethical conundrums of the characters have confounding philosophical implications that could keep even the greatest Rabbinic scholars busy for many fortnights.  

The movie deftly juggles five different story-lines that highlight the pervasive violence and corruption in the region.  There are a pair of teenagers (pictured above) who dream of being players.  There is a young errand boy who delivers drugs for the mob.  There is a tailor who betrays his employer by soliciting his designs to a Chinese factory.  There is a businessman who oversees the disposal of toxic waste in the countryside and finally there is a middle-aged money carrier who winds up trapped between two rival gangs.  

What makes the movie work are the raw hypnotic performances and the script, which drifts in and out of the various stories and documents the mounting predicaments of the characters with startling authenticity.  Many writers attempt to capture the fly-on-the-wall spontaneity of everyday life unsuccessfully.  Gomorrah, in contrast, is a stunning achievement.  The movie bristles with uncertainty and suspense in every frame, without relying on the conventions of movie suspense to engage us.  

The only occasional false note is Matteo Garrone's direction.  In the context of hundreds, maybe thousands of modern verite-style films, his camerawork and mise en scene sometimes feels lazy and unfocussed.  Characters pass in and out of the frame but the camera is slow to catch up to them.  It would be easy to dismiss this as a deliberate conceit, if not for the very essence of verite -- a style that is supposed to render the camera invisible and immerse us in the events unfolding onscreen.  Mr. Garrone's camera often moves without motivation .  It has a mind of it's own and as a consequence it reminds us that we are watching a film.  

Still, there is no disputing the breathtaking impact of the picture as a whole.   In the end it leaves us no comfort.  No easy answers.  The movie is so disarming and relevant, that Martin Scorsese has attached himself as the North American distributor.  Sadly, in a season of generic movie-theatre filler, Gomorrah deserves attention that it probably won't get.  The small audience I saw it with was clearly unprepared for the experience.

The man directly ahead of me took a brief bathroom break and on his return he slid right off his chair and hit the floor with a loud thud.  Later, he continued to hemorrhage coins onto the floor at inopportune moments -- perhaps he had holes in his pockets.  In contrast, the genius who was sitting behind me was engaged enough to offer his own unique commentary, while the film was still rolling through the projector.  His recurring refrain: "this is a strange movie," helped me to appreciate it even more.  Maybe in retrospect I was the one who missed the point.  

The Lost Art of Adventure

What happened to the adventure films of yesteryear?  The Man Who Would Be King (1975), is a Rudyard Kipling short story engagingly stretched into a feature-length narrative by director John Huston. Watching the film, I grew nostalgic (as I often do) for movies that credit the audience with having the patience to be told a story.  It seems to me, the assumption has become that mass audiences will not fork over their 12 dollars unless they are assured a precise number of whizzes, bangs and ka-booms.  There are no modern day adventure films.  Like the Western, they have gone the way of the dodo and why?  Because adventure films, like Westerns, emphasize the journey over the final destination, they emphasize character over plot and they depend on our willingness to imagine there are places we haven't even heard of.  Our willingness to transport ourselves to a simpler time.  Nowadays, in Hollywood, the phrase "period film" carries about as much cache as a carton of milk that's past the expiry date.  

The problem is, we're so accustomed to the relentless tempos of the modern action movie that a picture like this almost feels too quaint.  Special effects have modernized movies so much, that now movies without them seem less special and movies with them rarely have any residual impact.  We as an audience have consumed so many stories that we're preconditioned to anticipate the rhythms, sound effects, music and pyrotechnics of even the most dazzling popcorn epics.  Big scenes are followed by small scenes which are followed by even bigger scenes and so on.  It takes a picture like The Man Who Would Be King to remind us that spectacle can be special -- to remind us that modern effects have the power to exhilarate so long as they are placed within the context of a story.  

In this regard, The Man Who Would Be King is exemplary.  Sean Connery and Michael Caine play Daniel Dravot and Peachy Carnehan, two former British soldiers and grade-A con artists who run out of people to swindle in India and set out on a journey to Kafiristan, in the hopes that they can dupe the natives out of a fortune in gold.  When they arrive, a string of chance coincidences convince the natives that Dravot (Connery) is actually a god descended from none other than Alexander The Great.  Dravot is only too happy to entertain this fallacy, until the power begins to go to his head and he and Peachy are faced with the dangerous consequences of overplaying their hand.  To say any more would be unconscionable, but this is the real deal.  For fans of old-fashioned adventure, the settings are spectacular and Connery and Caine's comedic chemistry is tough to beat.  The Man Who Would Be King is one of the last of the great adventure films.  It retains its ability to delight, nearly 35 years after its initial release.  

The New Bond : Spotlight on Quantum of Solace

An interesting thing happened last year when Quantum Of Solace arrived in theaters: it was critically trashed.  Popular opinion, on the other hand, was favorable and now that it's available on DVD I would encourage you to take a second look.  Those of you who know me are well aware that I do not take Bond lightly.  It's hard work being entertaining and nobody knows this more than the Producers of the James Bond franchise.    This Bond, the 22nd, represents Bond's 47th year in cinemas -- making 007 the longest running series in film history by a long shot.

For many,  the previous entry (Casino Royale) represented the freshest take on the character since Connery made it his own in From Russia With Love and Goldfinger -- and deservedly so.  Daniel Craig redefined the role by going back to the roots of the character in Ian Fleming's novel and connecting with the idea that Bond's suave exterior is a front to disguise the brute animal, the "blunt instrument" as M calls him.  Bond's uncanny grace under pressure and his knowledge of the finer things have always been at the core of his appeal, but Craig is the first actor to make us understand that 007's stylish exterior is a carefully constructed mask to hide behind.  His feelings for the women he beds and the enemies he kills are more complicated than his suave persona would let on.  

Quantum Of Solace picks up minutes after Casino Royale leaves off and instantly hurtles us into a visceral, high-speed car chase.  Bond is on a mission to avenge the death of Vesper Lynd, his lover who tragically betrayed him at the end of the last film.  His mission finds him pursuing a mysterious organization called Quantum that takes him from Sienna, Italy to London, to Port Au Prince, Haiti and ultimately Bolivia.  Quantum, like the SPECTRE of the Connery era, is a secret organization with powerful, high-ranking, operatives working in various government agencies around the world.  So clever are they at covering their tracks, that initially Bond finds himself going undercover to infiltrate their ranks, without even knowing who he's supposed to be impersonating.  

On his journey, Bond meets Camille (Olga Kurylenko), who is more than just a pretty face.  Like Vesper, she is a canny heroine who we learn is out for some vengeance of her own.  She introduces Bond to Dominic Greene (Mathieu Amalric), the sinister tycoon who is also the slippery mastermind behind Quantum's latest scheme.  A scheme that implicates the U.S. government, providing ample opportunity for fireworks between Bond and series regular Felix Leiter (played to perfection by Geoffrey Wright).  

Compared to the exhaustive character development of the previous film it is easy to overlook how much character this new film actually has.  But, for true aficionados of the series there are many engaging touches, including an especially prominent role for Judi Dench's M, a surprise twist in which the Americans actually turn against Bond and a wrenching death scene where Bond loses someone very close to him.  The key to appreciating the film is in the close-ups. 

Mark Forster's frenetic direction has invited unfavorable comparison to the Bourne trilogy -- the critical assumption being that the wildly imaginative action sequences somehow diminish the subtler innovations of Casino Royale.  But, writers Paul Haggis, Neil Purvis and Robert Wade, continue to push 007 in a new direction.  The only difference here is that they do it organically, revealing new layers of his psyche through action rather than exposition and Forster is the right director to bring it off.  His close-ups never let us lose sight of the characters amidst the carnage -- an innovation few modern directors have the patience to cultivate.  Quantum of Solace is the best action movie of last year and one of the best of the franchise.  It delivers more than a quantum of satisfaction.  

Coraline: The Third Dimension of Animation

Henry Selick's Coraline, based on the novel by Neil Gaiman, is a powerhouse of visual invention, filled with the wonder, freshness and singularity of vision that distinguishes only our most beloved fairy tales.  Seeing it in 3-D, in particular, will be one of the great cinematic experiences of your life, provided that you remember the following things:

1) It is not for young children.  The film is fraught with Freudian imagery disturbing enough to rival Un Chien Andalou.  

2) The humor is corrosive enough to bore a hole through a block of steel.

3) This is a movie of subtle wonderments.

This last point is what shocked me the most and instantly made Coraline one of my all-time favorite animated films.  Every other 3-D animated film I have seen (The Polar Express, Beowulf, etc.) has sent me from the theater with a mallet in one hand and a pack of advils in the other -- whichever could do the job of satiating my headache quicker.  In contrast, I went into Coraline already nursing a headache and emerged feeling refreshed.  

The director Henry Selick is famous for creating eye-popping stop motion features like The Nightmare Before Christmas and James and The Giant Peach.  The visual design of Coraline is a perfect cross and arguably his best.  It is as macabre as Nightmare but it isn't as grotesque.  It is as fanciful as James and The Giant Peach, but it is also more sophisticated.  There is something wonderfully tactile about the characters and the production design.  

The story concerns a little girl (voiced by Dakota Fanning), who is unhappy at home and one day opens a portal that transports her to an alternate universe where she meets her "other" mother and father.  Unlike her real parents, Coraline's other mother and father pay attention to her and basically live to satisfy her every whim.  Everything else in this other universe seems to follow suit, until Coraline learns that in order to stay there permanently, she will have to let her other Mother sew buttons over her eyes and this is where (as they say) the plot thickens.  

I wouldn't dream of giving anything else away.  The movie needs to be seen to be believed and probably even to be understood.  Let's just say there are many provocative symbols and meanings hidden beneath the imagery in Coraline.  Enough to get even the most jaded adult reflecting thoughtfully.  Ultimately the movie is a revelation not because of its dazzling visuals or it's taut pacing, but rather because of its subtlety.  

I can't remember the last time I saw an animated film that was this understated yet effective at the same time.  This is the real, untapped, third dimension of animation.  Selick is a director who intuitively understands the dynamics of storytelling and his gifts are instructive in showing us the importance of building to big moments.  Not every moment is a climax.  Instead there is a pace and a structure to the plot and this makes his set-pieces all the more thrilling.  Selick values silence and anticipation as well as he does old-fashioned razzle-dazzle.  As a result Coraline is more enchanting than any other 3-D film you may have seen prior.  It dangles the carrot of imagination in front of us, instead of smacking us over the head with it.  

Costumed Loneliness

If you're reading this you probably already know that Zack Snyder's Watchmen is based on the so-called greatest graphic novel of all time, written by Allan Moore and illustrated by Dave Gibbons. Like the book, the movie is dense, ponderous, fascinating and ultimately frustrating. It posits an alternate reality in which America "wins" the war in Vietnam thanks to Dr. Manhattan (Billy Crudup), their ace in the hole, a physicist who accidentally blows himself up but is miraculously reborn with the power to teleport through time and space. The story is set in 1985 with Nixon as President for his fifth consecutive term. America teeters on the brink of nuclear war and the only thing preventing a Russian attack is the existence of Dr. Manhattan, the shiny blue man with the power to obliterate whole countries. At least, that is until he cracks and exiles himself to Mars.

Anyone familiar with the book will be aware that this is a superhero story for adults. In early press for the film, Snyder promised a very R-rated picture and he makes good on his promise. This is not a movie for children--which makes it all the more baffling why the couple in front of me smuggled in their two toddlers, who looked to be no more than eight years old combined. Once the film gets going, there are severed limbs, split heads, broken bones and splattered blood galore. I especially enjoyed watching the Mother ahead of me try to explain all of this to her infant son, during the graphic sex scene between Nite Owl and Silk Spectre.

The text is justifiably famous for freshly re-imagining the entire context of comic book heroism. The masked avengers known as the "Watchmen" are heroes borne out of pain and ultimately shunned by the world they vowed to protect. In their heyday they were relevant, but they have all hung up their capes now to embrace a mandatory retirement imposed by the government. All except for the demented Rorshach (Jackie Earle Hayley), the victim of a particularly cruel childhood who now enacts his rage on the guilty. Watchmen is the first comic book story to ever explicitly address the loneliness of the costumed hero. Their power is so great that there is nobody to share it with and nobody to trust. At least no one except each other. This is why the "Comedian" reaches out to his arch-nemesis Moloch, hours before his death. It is also why Dr. Manhattan, touched with the power of the gods, finds it increasingly difficult to relate to anyone on earth.

Our heroes receive a sexual charge from the costumes and personae they adopt that masks repressed depths of despair. Dan Dreiberg a.k.a. Nite Owl II (Patrick Wilson), finds himself unable to "perform" in the heat of the moment with the radiant Silk Spectre (Malin Ackerman), until they agree to re-adopt their superhero alter-egos. The heroes in the film get off on their powers. They get off on the violence they inflict on the criminal element. But, when the fighting stops and they have served their larger purpose, they are painfully remote -- incapable of connecting on a meaningful human level, which in turn makes it hard for us to connect with them.

For the most part the book is artfully rendered for the screen. Snyder is a director with a uniquely fetishistic visual style that alienated me in both his Dawn of the Dead remake and the insanely popular 300. Here his overwrought visuals are largely justified by the text. His action scenes are slowed down, lingering on the spectacle of movement and carnage. His keen eye for color and composition evokes the graphics of a comic book frame, but Watchmen like his other films suffers from over-length. His hyper-stylized visuals grow repetitive and over time begin to wear thin. The movie is visually spectacular to be sure and it is consistently exciting to watch, but eventually it starts to feel like a plodding exercise in aesthetic gimmickry.

Despite being original and refreshingly contrary to genre conventions, the movie is rarely ever fun. Provocative? Yes. Eye-popping? Indeed, but the spectacle lacks focus or emphasis and the end result leaves us with a particularly unsavory aftertaste. Admittedly, the source material is equally grim and Snyder deserves credit for achieving such a credible and coherent adaptation with his writers David Hayter and Alex Tse. But, whereas the graphic novel toted a strong message of anti-violence, the big screen Watchmen uses brutality to titillate.

The action scenes offer us thrills that don't feel thrilling, because of the ugliness behind them. If I'm going to watch a cleaver driven into a criminal's head, once is my limit. Three times or more is overkill. This is the dark side of the super-hero genre. Watchmen is a movie to appreciate, but not a movie that is easy to like. It wrenches our most fearless icons from us and replaces them with fearsome, damaged, souls. I can only wonder what those poor kids thought as they were leaving the theatre asking Mom and Dad what it all meant. At least their parents got their money's worth.

The Best of 2008

It may seem a little late, but a top 10 list, like fine African cacao, takes time to grow.  It needs to be cultivated, nurtured and ultimately proffered without regrets.  Besides, if Roger Ebert -- the only film critic to have ever won a Pulitzer prize -- couldn't even narrow his list down to ten films this past year, I still feel like I'm ahead of the curve.  The ten best films I saw last year are:

10. The Wackness

Ben Kingsley and Josh Peck generate fireworks as a psychiatrist and teenager trading therapy for marijuana.  Writer/Director Jonathan Levine keeps us constantly off-balance, lacing every moment of his odd-couple story with the humor and pathos of the unexpected.  

9. White Night Wedding

Chekhov's Ivanov becomes the inspiration for the biggest local box-office hit in the history of Iceland.  Straddling a fine line between comedy and tragedy, the story follows a professor who leaves his wife to marry his student on a strange island where the sun never fully goes down. Watching the various townsfolk react to their new visitor makes for some of the funniest moments of any movie this year.  The climax is shattering yet buoyant.  

8. American Teen

Nanette Burstein's knockout documentary American Teen transports us to a small Indiana town in the Midwestern United States and grants us unprecedented access to a group of teens dealing with uniquely contemporary problems.  The teens share their innermost feelings with disarming candor.  Marketed as "the real Breakfast Club," this one packs a punch.

7. Tell No One

Gritty, authentic and stylish.  This unlikely French adaptation of the Harlan Coban novel by the same name is a roller-coaster ride of twists and turns anchored in the suspense of the human heart.  Dr. Alexandre Beck believes his wife to be dead, until he receives an email with evidence that she is still alive.  Whether or not she is actually alive forms the basis for one of the best post-Hitchcock thrillers ever.  

6. The Visitor

Richard Jenkins stars as an emotionally remote College Professor who arrives in New York City for a conference and finds two strangers living in his apartment.  He also finds redemption in the unlikely friendship he forges with them -- learning to play the drums and relearning how to let others into his heart.  It may sound maudlin, but it is the most subtle and understated drama of the year.  

5. Wall-E

This artful, endlessly imaginative meditation on ecology and society's future is visually arresting and narratively elegant.  For 80 percent of the movie we are held spellbound without a single line of dialogue, as the last robot on earth searches for his electronic soul mate.  

4. Changeling

Angelina Jolie is just one standout in a triumphant ensemble cast, as Christine Collins the real life mother whose son was kidnapped in 1928 Los Angeles.  When the police "found" her boy, she insisted he wasn't hers -- instigating a relentless chain of events that are all the more harrowing because they are true.  Director Clint Eastwood's characteristic mixture of bluntness and restraint are put to fine use in this, one of his most accomplished pictures.  

3. Slumdog Millionaire

The feel-good movie of the year is also a stylistically daring, high-adrenaline juggernaut that has the audacity to sell us a fairy tale message laced with unflinching brutality and stark social critique.  The movie has become a phenomenon and deservedly so.  It will be remembered for many years to come.  

2.  The Wrestler

Bracing honesty, raw emotion and the poetry of suffering, fuel this complex and unforgettable character study.  The actors are the show here.  Mickey Rourke inhabits and owns the screen as Randy "the Ram" Robinson.  Marissa Tomei continues to reveal new layers of vulnerability and depth as an actress.  Evan Rachel Wood embodies the Ram's tragic past effortlessly.  Ranks with the very best of American Independent cinema.

1. The Dark Knight

The biggest hit of the year is also one of the greatest popcorn epics of all time.  I don't use the word "masterpiece" lightly, but TDK inspires such praise.  No other film since The Godfather has found such profundity in a mass entertainment.  

Honorable Mention  

At any given moment, there are thousands of little Joe Frankels in my head, making last minute insertions and substitutions to the above list.  Each of these fierce iconoclasts might make a case for the following films:

Quantum of Solace: the best action film of the year.  Critics complained that Bond was trying to imitate Jason Bourne.  Ludicrous.  This film builds on the legacy of Casino Royale with an equal reverence for Ian Fleming's original conception of the character -- and better stunts.  

In Search Of A Midnight Kiss: epitomizes the reckless, youthful, spirit of no-budget Independent filmmaking, with sharp dialogue, evocative on-the-fly visuals and offbeat casting. Current without being trendy.  This one is a gem.  

Vicky Christina Barcelona: Woody's favorite themes are put to fine use in the most entertaining picture of his late career.  Sly, witty and unexpectedly exotic.  

Gran Torino: Clint's second movie of '08 is also one of the year's best, offering a complex meditation on old age, gang violence and racial discord.  Juggling a variety of disparate tones with surprising grace, Gran Torino is a jazzy, elegiac, reflection on a lifetime of playing Dirty Harry.  

Rachel Getting Married: Jonathan Demme's best movie in years, unfolds like a series of home movies and invites us to be a fly on the wall during a tension filled weekend in the life of a dysfunctional family.   Anne Hathaway delivers the best lead performance by an actress this year and the movie lingers in the memory long after the end credits have rolled.    

JCVD: Arguably the most memorable movie of the year for those who saw it.  Jean Claude Van Damme reinvents himself by playing...himself.  Nobody saw it coming, but the man can actually act!  The movie plays like Jean-Luc Goddard crossed with Luc Besson and it's delightful from start to finish.  

24 Day 7 - 6:00 - 8:00

After six and a half seasons of harrowing twists and countless surprises I can say with absolute certainty that episodes 10 and 11 of this seventh and latest season of 24 are the best two hours of 24 ever.  When I started this blog I had one rule and one rule only: to write about movies exclusively.  Nobody can therefore be more surprised than me that a program on the "boob tube" has inspired me -- like Jack Bauer -- to break my rule.  Sorry dear reader.  If you're disappointed, all I can say in my defense is that the show has always looked more like a movie than anything else on TV and I have been vehemently trying to recruit viewers ever since it started.   

To bring you up to speed on this season: America has been under attack from African militants who hope to prevent US intervention in their civil war.  CTU (for all you newbies this means Counter-Terrorist Unit) has been disbanded and super spy Jack Bauer is stuck in the Senate's crosshairs after years of breaking protocol and employing inhumane tactics to interrogate prisoners in the war on terror.  But Bauer is pardoned by the President herself -- yes her, Tony-winner Cherry Jones -- and asked to lead a covert task force to root out a fleet of traitors who are working within the highest government agencies. Last week, Jack succeeded in unearthing a list of all the government conspirators.  

This is where the spoiler thickens...

Tonight's double-header centered on a mind-blowing incident: an invasion of the white house.  Is this strictly plausible?  No, and that's precisely why I felt compelled to say a few words.  Sometimes the most improbable situations give rise to the most entertaining results.  24 has never been a show that can be categorized as strictly "plausible," but this was an hour for those of us who are willing to indulge in the question: "what if?"  What would happen if a militant group were actually able to infiltrate the White House?  Those viewers like me who are able to suspend their disbelief to get onboard with an occasionally ludicrous premise will witness the unimaginable efficiently imagined.  

Sometimes cleverness and daring are more rewarding than safe adherence to the facts and this week's back-to-back episodes succeeded on the basis of this principle.  They succeeded because the writers have carefully drawn us into the life of a female President who is confronted with an attack on her country her husband and ultimately her estranged daughter, all on the same day.  The writers have drawn us into the life of Jack Bauer, the most doggedly determined hero in the history of television, who persists in ignoring the orders of his superiors and the maxims of his government in order to do what is necessary.

Here Jack is sanctioned by the President herself, while torturing a terror suspect within the very walls of the White House.  Moments later, the terrorist attack takes place and the show asks us to consider the shortcomings of a system that would value human rights over homeland security.  All of this is wrapped up in a package of exhilarating gun fights and white knuckle, sweaty-palm, suspense as the terrorists close in on the President and her daughter.  It works for a variety of reasons.  Subliminally we find ourselves responding to a shift in story structure.  Whereas every episode up to this point has engaged us with multiple alternating plotlines, this week's final hour from 7:00 - 8:00 pm traps us inside the siege without any reprieve.   For the first time I can ever remember seeing on this show, time stands still.  The White House is the show and the intensity is non-stop.  

In the final breathless moments, the President and Jack Bauer are trapped inside a panic room together, as the terrorists capture her daughter and try to leverage her out.  Despite Jack's protests, the President surrenders and Jack becomes a hostage along with many others.  TV was invented so we could occasionally enjoy writing like this.  There's a word for it in every culture.  For now, let's just call it compelling.  

Circle of Doubt

Suspicions whether founded or not can have a profound impact.   This is the idea behind John Patrick Shanley's Doubt, adapted from his Tony winning play by the same name.  The story deals with an aging nun's crusade to expose a priest in her parish as a child molester.  The question of the priest's guilt is planted in her head by a naive young nun who witnesses a series of circumstantial encounters between the father and the boy and -- driven by feelings of inadequacy, voices her suspicions to the elder sister.   

As the story unfolds, we learn that the boy Father Flynn is accused of corrupting is the only black student at the school -- a child whose real father beats him in response to his confessions of homosexuality. We are also told that the boy's race might put him in serious jeopardy, if not for the special interest Father Flynn takes in protecting him.  The evidence that points to their illicit relationship is inconclusive and when the net begins to tighten, we watch as Sister Beauvier foregoes due process and her sacred vows in order to weed out the truth.  Although she insists she is certain of his guilt, she later admits to having doubts about her own accusations and yet she continues to push, pry and bully -- even when it isn't rational.

The three central performances by Meryl Streep as Sister Beauvier, Phillip Seymour Hoffman as Father Flynn and Amy Adams as the naive Sister James are brilliant, but the screenplay lets them down.  The problem with the movie is it asks you to engage with a debate rather than a story.  On a thematic level, the insightful Mr. Shanley could not find a better milieu to explore. He uses the catholic church, circa 1960's New York as a perfect junction point to address the growing debate between tradition and change, religious duty and social progress.  The movie and the play challenge us to consider which of these values is more important.  On top of this, we have a mystery.  Is the father guilty and if so what does this mean?  

These are provocative moral dilemmas but the characters are schematic.  They are merely envoys to articulate Mr. Shanley's debate.  When a play is adapted to the screen, there is a presumption that it must be 'opened up,' to accommodate the story's movement through a greater variety of locales, on a bigger canvas.  This is the approach that Mr. Shanley has taken and ironically it undoes everything he has so carefully conceived.  Material like this demands greater introspection from the characters and greater layers of intimacy between them as their beliefs and barriers are stripped away.  

The most powerful scene in the movie is a conversation between Sister Beauvier and Mrs. Miller, the boy's mother (played to perfection by Viola Davis).  In this scene, Mrs. Miller connects with the issues surrounding her son and makes an unexpected emotional plea.  The movie needs more moments like it.  Moments where the characters grasp the enormity of their choices.  We as an audience need to see the impact that the issues have on each of the characters outside of their confrontations, when they are alone.  Instead Doubt just circles the debate.  It never fully brings us inside it.  

Oscar turns 80 Again

The 81st Annual Academy Awards are over and the results are in: Slumdog Millionaire is just as big a winner as everyone had predicted (winning eight awards for picture, director, adapted screenplay, cinematography, editing, musical score, original song and sound mixing).  Equally predictable were awards for Kate Winslet, Penelope Cruz and the late Heath Ledger.  Many including myself had presumed that in light of these shoe-in victories, this would be the most boring Oscar show in recent memory, so the end result was a welcome relief.

This year's show had many enjoyable elements.  Hugh Jackman was an affable host, conjuring up as much razzle-dazzle as he possible could with a pair of dancing shoes and some spirit fingers.  The humor was largely left to the presenters with Steve Martin and Tina Fey offering the show's wittiest repartee while presenting the awards for best original and adapted screenplay.  Fey: "It has been said that to write is to live forever.  Martin: "The man who wrote that...is dead."  Ben Stiller and Natalie Portman also generated laughs when Stiller marched out in a fake Joaquin Phoenix-esque beard and feigned complete disinterest in his presenting duties.  Frequent cutaways to a shiny and somewhat manic Danny Boyle were almost as amusing.  Unfortunately, despite these bursts of inspiration the show still suffered from a saggy mid-section that was devoid of energy or momentum of any kind.   Ask any fan what they are willing to tolerate and they will most likely tell you: excess is welcome.  Tedium is not.  

So why is it that none of the show's producers seem capable of mustering up any creativity for the presentation of the so-called "smaller" awards?   It stands to reason that the award for best costume design should include a live presentation of the nominated costumes.  And if you buy that, imagine the comic possibilities of dressing the presenters in the garb of the nominated films.  Next, assemble the money shots created by the cinematography nominees.  Why we didn't see the nominated work onscreen is beyond me.  If ever there was a time for a montage -- this would be that time.   And finally, in the future please only appoint one group of presenters per category.  Any time that presenters are left onstage to introduce multiple awards, the show loses momentum.  Witness Jennifer Anniston and Jack Black or the usually incisive Bill Maher.  Even Will Smith was boring -- and ditto for the musical medley which was awkwardly patched together from a surplus of eras and genres with no overriding rhyme or reason

Other highlights included a heartfelt acceptance speech from Penelope Cruz, thanking her mentor and friend Pedro Almodovar and waxing philosophical about the arts as our "universal language."  Heath Ledger's family mounted an understated tribute that left everyone in the house teary-eyed and Sean Penn showed humor and restraint accepting the best actor award for his performance as Harvey Milk -- but don't get me started on Mickey Rourke losing what was rightfully his.  Bravo to retiring Academy President Sid Ganis for agreeing not to deliver a speech this year -- this was a stroke of genius.  And, bringing back past award winners to introduce this year's acting nominees was a touch of class, but next year the match-ups ought to be a little more coherent.    Best of all, Slumdog Millionaire, the feel good movie of the year, walked away with eight major awards, lifting indie spirits everywhere.  There may be no such thing as a perfect awards show but the 81st Annual Academy Awards demonstrated a marked potential for improvement.  It was almost as if instead of acting his age Oscar turned 80...again. 

Oscar Profile: Milk

In the eleventh hour, a mere two days before Oscar night, I finally got out to see Gus Van Sant's Milk.  I have now seen all the picture nominees and  I can safely say that Oscar got it right, sort of, with this one.  Milk is based on the true story of gay activist Harvey Milk's crusade for equal rights in San Francisco during the 1970's and deals with an important debate that is especially relevant today.  What Van Sant has made is a political film, but he is savvy enough as a filmmaker to sidestep the traps of more generic Hollywood biopics that would sermonize about their subject or pay tribute to their central character without grasping his/her flaws.  Thanks to a brilliant performance by Sean Penn, Milk is never maudlin or predictable.  We are given the full scope of his vision and ambition, but we are also provided with a context for his social failures and the bridges that he burns.  

Penn's performance is arguably the best of his career, because unlike so many of his other roles, Harvey Milk is a man of good humor even in difficult times.  Milk's sly double-entendres and ability to laugh at himself, gives Penn new room to play as an actor and I will admit that this is probably the first performance I have ever seen from him, that didn't keep me at a distance.  The other characters don't fare as well.  As the end credits roll, we are introduced to photos of the real people that the film is based on and I realized that I hadn't really gotten to know any of them.  There aren't a lot of characters to connect with in the film, because this isn't a picture about people.  This is a picture about a movement.  

The period of the film is seamlessly recreated with vintage cars, costumes and hair design.  The film is shot on ultra-grainy stock to mirror the texture of so many 70's pictures and everything in the atmosphere of the film is completely authentic.  Van Sant's story is cleverly constructed using what looks like super 8 film, actual and simulated newsreel footage, photographic stills and variable camera speeds that -- while stylized -- only add to the authenticity of the film.  Milk never feels less than authentic as a portrait of a movement that galvanized Northern California at a specific point in time and yet, despite all of these considerable virtues, the film is overlong and sometimes difficult to access.  

It may seem a strange comparison, but as I was watching it I found myself thinking about Martin Scorsese's GoodFellas -- a film that also tells a story about a group of people who changed America during a specific period in history.  GoodFellas is 20 minutes longer than Milk, but it is full of propulsive energy and we really get to know the central characters.  That doesn't happen here, despite the canny chemistry between Penn and James Franco -- his primary love interest.  Josh Brolin also delivers a powerhouse performance as the mysterious and contradictory city councilman Dan White, who becomes Harvey Milk's sole political adversary, but there is something strangely aloof about the way their rivalry plays out.

Is Milk one of the best films of the year?  I would say yes, but it is not one of my favorites.  It is accomplished, clever and provocative, but it asks you to engage with the idea of the film rather than its characters.  I point this out, not as a statement of it's flaws but rather as a declaration of where my personal preference lies when I go to see a film.  Some people respond to movies with their heads and others with their hearts.  I think the truly great films force you to do both.  Milk is hard to connect with emotionally and you may find it doesn't stick with you for that reason.  

Liam Neeson Wants Justice

Pierre Morel's Taken, based on a screenplay by Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen is a slickly packaged, by-the-numbers, thriller that succeeds in generating major thrills thanks to a riveting performance by Liam Neeson.  If you take the time to think about it, questions start to creep in and you might ask yourself if it's even possible that Neeson could get as far as he does without so much as a scrape.  But, as Hitchcock would say: this is a question for "the plausibles" -- that segment of the audience who would rather dissect what they're watching than sit back and be entertained.  Taken  is not a movie for the plausibles.  Taken is a movie for people who like to believe that super-spies like Liam Neeson exist, to preserve the order of civilization and defend the innocent against insidious unseen evils.  If you get onboard with the concept, the movie will sweep you away and leave you breathless for 90 rapidly paced minutes. 

The story centers on Brian Mills (Neeson), a former-spy who has retired and moved to Los Angeles in order to be closer to his estranged daughter Kim (Maggie Grace).   When Kim asks him for permission to fly to Europe for the summer he reluctantly agrees, weighed down by apprehensions based on years in the field.  The early scenes between Mills, Kim and his ex (Famke Janssen) are overwrought, as the Mills family dynamic is mapped out in broad strokes, but it turns out Mills is right.  Within moments of stepping off the plane in Paris, Kim and her friend Amanda are seduced and ultimately kidnapped by an efficient female slave trafficking syndicate.  Mills is on the phone with Kim as she is taken and even under pressure he is resourceful enough to record the call as he promises her kidnappers: "I don't know who you are...but I will find you and I will kill you."

From this point on, the film kicks into overdrive as we follow Mills to Paris on a private jet and he proceeds to systematically attack and pursue every clue with ruthless determination and brute force.  All of this would be utterly ridiculous if not for Neeson's grounded performance.  He anchors the film and keeps us emotionally invested until the film's feverish final minutes.  Taken brings to mind relatively recent kidnapping yarns such as Roman Polanski's Frantic  and Ron Howard's Ransom, but this movie is significantly better thanks to a fresh and irresistible hook.  In Taken the kidnappers mess with the wrong family.  Even as the story probes dark material, we are exhilarated by the chase and by Neeson's determination.  The movie isn't just about the payoff, it's about watching bad people pay for their sins and there's a genuine catharsis in that.  

Oscar Profile: Frost/Nixon

I finally got around to seeing Frost/Nixon this week.  It often comes down to the week before Oscar night for me to make time to review those more esoteric, self-important, picture nominees that seem to have been created solely to win Oscars and Frost/Nixon is a perfect example, but I'm pleased to say that it actually exceeded my expectations.  The movie is about as solid a mainstream entertainment as Hollywood is making nowadays and the two central performances breathe new life into this vintage story.  Political corruption is not the big news that it was back in 1977 when the original interviews took place, but Ron Howard and writer Peter Morgan do a nice job of building tension around the potent game of one-upsmanship that prompted Richard Nixon to confess his guilt over Watergate on national television.  

The movie is certain to have an added fascination for viewers who lived through the event.  For today's generation the hook will be watching both men as they desperately try to keep their feelings in check, under intense media scrutiny.  The Frost/Nixon interview was a prime early example of the media's increasing influence over the collective consciousness.  Is the movie truly relevant today?  Although uniquely timed to coincide with the end of Bush's tenure as President, it is not a particularly memorable or groundbreaking film.  Just solid, and I will take solid over a lot of the other movies out there.  

The performances -- particularly Frank Langella's, are stellar but one doesn't feel the director expending his heart and soul on this material.  The docudrama approach with cutaways to talking heads of name actors playing real people grows increasingly tiresome and artificial as the movie rolls on.  It is almost as if the filmmakers began to insert these arbitrarily in order to maintain their motif, but they undermine the power of the unfolding story.  

Curiously, the film's biggest virtue: the cinematography by veteran commercial DP Sal Totino has been overlooked.  The film is cleverly shot with a camera that slowly drifts in and out of focus, mirroring the inner states of the two leads as their own focus wavers during the exhausting interview proceedings.  Production design and lighting is all suitably understated.  Technical aspects earn top marks.  Worth a look, but there were better films this year.  

Nick & Norah's Infinitely Indulgent Playlist

The problem with Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist, the "hot" new release on DVD this week, is that many adults will go and see the film hoping for another Juno.  But Juno this isn't.  It also isn't Adventures In Babysitting, Ferris Bueller's Day Off or any of the other myriad of 80's teen comedies that center on adolescent rebellion and hold a place of nostalgia for the generation of 30-somethings who were weaned on Atari, Lite-Brite and Kool-Aid.  I say this because the movie is clearly intended to trigger this nostalgia, starting with the grainy, high contrast film stock on which it's shot and carrying over to its kitschy production design and eclectic underground-style soundtrack.  

Having grown up in the 80's, I really wanted to like this movie.  The story centers on Nick (Michael Cera), a goofy, endearingly low-rent teen musician who cannot get over a recent break-up with his girlfriend Tris (Alexis Dziena) and demonstrates this by sending her mix-CD after mix-CD of his favorite underground artists.  In one fateful night, he meets Norah (Kat Dennings), the daughter of a famous record producer who is suffering through an on-and-off relationship with a boy she knows is just using her to win favor with her father.  In one of the movie's few palatable contrivances, Nick learns that Tris has been pitching his mix CD's into the trash, but Norah has been rescuing and listening to them approvingly.  

Nick and Norah meet after Nick completes a set on stage with his all gay band "The Jerk Offs."  Neither of them really fit in with their friends and so they discover an offbeat symmetry together.  The rest of the movie is a tribute to those endless nights of excess and self-discovery that many of us would like to forget from our teenage years.  Nick and Norah set out to find "Fluffy" an underground rock band who are performing at a mystery location circa 2 am that night.  In the process, their drunken friend Caroline goes missing and drags them off course as they scour the city looking for her.  None of what ensues is as funny as the filmmakers think it is, as we the audience are subjected to a relentless onslaught of vomit sequences designed to make us guess whether or not lost, drunken, Caroline is going to lose her dinner in an awkward place.  

Interspersed with this is the love story -- if you can call it that.  The names Nick and Norah are an allusion to Dashiell Hammet's witty detective couple Nick and Nora Charles in The Thin Man.  They were known for their witty, urbane banter and elegant fashion sense -- something that will never be remembered about Cera or Dennings.  Still, the two of them have considerable pseudo-grunge charm together and there's something sweet and genuine about watching them find themselves in each other.  

The benchmark for this film is really the 80's gem The Sure Thing, starring John Cusack and Daphne Zuniga as two warring college sophomores who are stuck on a cross-country road trip to California at Christmas time.  That movie was endlessly inventive and a model example of teen romantic comedy.  This one doesn't come close and in the end, even the music lets us down.  Fluffy's climactic performance is not the revelation we've all been waiting for and in fact the entire soundtrack is disappointingly unmemorable.  I guess we'll have to wait a little longer for a teen comedy that lives up to its own hype.