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.