Films Seen - February 2000
[Pre-'96 films not included.]
SUMMER OF SAM (40) (dir., Spike Lee) John Leguizamo, Adrien Brody, Mira Sorvino, Jennifer Esposito [Lee can never make a boring movie ; crass and overheated, though, is another matter. Might've worked better with Son Of Sam totally unseen, a spectral presence hovering over the characters' lives, pulling them in unexpected directions ; instead the film turns him into just another character, giving him the same emphasis (giving everything the same emphasis), intermittently mutating into a horror movie so it can show him wailing and slobbering in his squalid apartment, spelling him out hence reducing his impact - leaving us only with a lot of yelling, a sub-BOOGIE NIGHTS soundtrack, some flashy montages and a buncha big Italian guys named Joey. Lee's magpie mind is usually a good thing but he seems to be reaching out blindly here, throwing in anything for effect - it's absurd to quote the NAKED CITY catchphrase ("There are 8 million stories ... This has been one of them") when the film's messy m.o. is exactly the opposite, mixing in lots of different stories. Meets wit exactly once (when the blond wig Sorvino wears to camouflage herself from the killer looks like inadvertently solving her marital problems), fails to recognise it and moves on. Leguizamo's quite the bundle of energy, though.]
SITCOM (52) (dir., Francois Ozon) Evelyne Dandry, Francois Marthouret, Stéphane Rideau [Funny, for a while - not quite Bunuel, but perhaps a more dirty-minded Etienne Chatiliez : easy satire with a deadpan touch, tending to use sitcom conventions (the brassy Latino maid, e.g., or the father's Mr. Brady-like aphorisms) without quite transcending them. Bourgeois gormlessness raises a smile - dinner-table chit-chat, the mother's eternal in-denial cheerfulness - but it runs out of steam somewhere between the son's "group sessions" and the inevitable incest scene ; symbolism (the "rat" that destroys the family equated with the father's benign neglect, or the parents wearing ear-plugs and night-masks as they go to bed, blissfully oblivious to all the dysfunction) either tongue-in-cheek or incredibly heavy.]
NOT ONE LESS (45) (dir., Zhang Yimou) Wei Minzhi, Zhang Huike, Gao Enman [People play 'themselves', most of it looks improvised, much of it is set in a remote Third World village where everything is simpler (i.e. 'purer') than our own modern world ; so why is there so little inner life to this faux-Kiarostami rip-off? Hard to say, but a possible clue is the momentary change of expression on young Huike's face when an angry grown-up yells at him to "Come up here right now!" : you can see (or anyway, I could see) a flash of doubt, as if wondering if he's really in trouble - because he's obviously been directed to pretend it's all a game, whereas Kiarostami's dry, dignified children always seem to be treating everything with the utmost seriousness. It's typical of the generally superficial approach, playing up the 'picturesque' setting for the benefit of Western audiences, who also get a couple of obvious reference-points to make them feel at home : one of the pupils goes off to a training school for women runners, though this makes a nonsense of the whole "not one less" business (but the Western viewer will doubtless have heard of the Chinese women runners of the mid-90s, who, under the dictatorial Ma Junren, smashed any number of world records) ; another scene has the kids drinking Coke, possibly for the first time, and unsure how to open the cans ("Imagine that!" says the Western viewer fondly). Cynical and patronising, though its portrait of a bureaucratic, money-minded China is certainly interesting (and brave, given Zhang's prickly relationship with the authorities) : the fact that these schoolkids sit in decaying classrooms learning absolutely nothing - except propaganda songs glorifying Chairman Mao - clearly qualifies as barbed political comment, and may have had something to do with its (otherwise undeserved) Golden Lion. Then again, I didn't like STORY OF QIU JU either...]
BRINGING OUT THE DEAD (57) (dir., Martin Scorsese) Nicolas Cage, Patricia Arquette, John Goodman, Ving Rhames, Tom Sizemore [I just don't think it's enough anymore, basically - the whole stylistic-overload-to-denote-a-world-gone-mad business, and the notion of the city as hell-on-earth through which our hero plunges, reaching for a state of grace. Maybe we're just jaded - certainly NATURAL BORN KILLERS, recalled by the presence of Sizemore and DP Robert Richardson, has set the bar impossibly high for this kind of visual maelstrom - though I like to think a less mechanical film might still be able to make it work. The theme of compassion as an active force, powerful as Death (or as the violence Travis Bickle used to solve his problems), is an interesting one - there's a great moment when Arquette turns, weeping, to a deranged street-dweller and he instinctively comforts her (then backs away, amazed and horrified by his own sensitivity) - and there's pockets of good dark humour as well ; but familiar sentiments are too-baldly trotted out ("This city ... It'll kill you if you're not strong enough") and the structure seems rather airless, arranging its three discrete acts in ascending order of intensity, all a bit schematic and preconceived. Kind of an E.R. meets PLAZA SUITE, the self-contained neatness of the latter scuppering the eclectic, all-human-life-is-here messiness of the former (though E.R. itself certainly isn't immune to the same problem) ; or maybe it's just that this is a Quest where - for the audience at least - there's nothing to discover. Been here, done this, heard the bluesy urban soundtrack, seen the neon-lit streets and drug-induced fantasies.]
THOSE WHO LOVE ME CAN TAKE THE TRAIN (66) (second viewing: 59) (dir., Patrice Chéreau) Charles Berling, Pascal Greggory, Jean-Louis Trintignant, Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, Vincent Pérez [Bit of a show-off, this one, with its soundtrack of cuts from some tragically hip CD collection (Jeff Buckley, Bjork, Everything But The Girl) and its glamorous characters' problems invariably involving sex or drugs (I'd like to have seen more of the rather dumpy woman whose main concern seemed to be collecting everybody's ticket money) ; and of course the dizzying style has an element of show-off too - but at least it's used intelligently, even self-deprecatingly. The early scenes on the train are exhilarating - everyone rushing around, the camera catching things on the fly - but it's only when the train (and the camera) stops that the truth begins to emerge ; and there's sly, perceptive moments like the pull-back from a nervy tight shot of Berling hurrying through a cemetery, looking for his mother's grave, to an extreme wide shot of the whole cemetery, with its thousands of graves (nervous energy is all very well but we get too caught up in problems, lose the bigger picture). Reminiscent of stuff like THE CELEBRATION, but it probably thinks of itself as a lot more profound (certainly it's a lot less irreverent) ; trouble is, there's no coherent theme tying it all together - something about Art defined as originality, tying in with the transsexual character who re-invents himself, i.e. creates something original (surely a coincidence that the soundtrack includes so many cover versions?), something about middlebrow middle-class values vs. violent emotional extremes, but nothing really to take away. I probably need to see it again ; then again, it's good enough to make that a reasonably happy prospect.] [Second viewing, September 2009: Well, I did see it again - nine years later - and liked it less, though I think I may have found the "coherent theme tying it all together": Duality is obv. important - very different twin brothers, the pre-operation transsexual who (as Chéreau makes gratuitously clear) has both male and female parts, the pivotal dead-artist figure having been bisexual (though admittedly mostly gay) - and of course there's also duality in the bifurcated structure, freewheeling first half vs. static second. Still not sure what it means, unless just the dual nature (male/female? gay/straight?) of everything. First half not as exciting as it once seemed, second still pretty soapy, whole thing showy but impressive. Whatever happened to Valeria Bruni Tedeschi?]
XIU XIU: THE SENT DOWN GIRL (50) (dir., Joan Chen) Lu Lu, Lopsang, Jie Gao [Underwhelming, basically (I thought Skander was being facetious, but there really is very little to be said about it). Some good moments in the gentle middle section, the burgeoning relationship between Xiu and the herdsman, and a couple of magnificent vistas - the river snaking through the steppes is a gorgeous shot - but the third act, Xiu seen by the town as a 'fallen woman', is both too much and not enough, i.e. both melodramatic and insufficiently developed (hardly even an act, more an extended sequence really). I didn't buy this ending (or variation thereof) in A SIMPLE PLAN, and I didn't buy it here either - even, or especially, with the "Romeo And Juliet"-ish gloss.]
RIDE WITH THE DEVIL (66) (dir., Ang Lee) Tobey Maguire, Skeet Ulrich, Jeffrey Wright, Jewel, Jonathan Rhys Meyers [Overlong and messily structured ; doesn't really work, in the basic sense that you don't really feel much of anything at the end, when the music swells up and the hero rides off into the distance. Still the work of a major film-maker - beautifully shot, nobly acted, powerfully evoking a time of chaos and atrocity, striking and memorable in its combination of brutality and high-flown language ("it makes me notable by the loss," says the hero when he gets his finger blown off). As to the vexed question of what exactly it's "about" : the corruption and degeneration of a fatally flawed culture and, of course (nobody reads opening crawls anymore), the perils of being "caught in the middle" - immigrant Maguire seduced by the grace and courtly manners of antebellum society, happy to proclaim himself "as Southern as they come", gradually realising that the good manners merely conceal the cruelty of a culture founded on injustice, finally affirming his outsider-dom by aligning himself with ex-slave Wright. Easy to see how Lee would've been attracted to the theme of being caught between two cultures, but the real news is that - aided, as in ICE STORM, by Frederick Elmes' stark woodland compositions - he's become adept at conveying psychological unease via physical texture, as well as continuing to be a terrific director of actors. Jewel finds a spark and humour here she'd do well to remember next time she ventures into a recording studio.]
THE SCHOOL OF FLESH (61) (dir., Benoit Jacquot) Isabelle Huppert, Vincent Martinez, Vincent Lindon [Guess I'm just not beautiful and sophisticated enough to appreciate the pathos of beautiful and sophisticated people chasing after "a bit of rough" - which is what this is, basically, Martinez' edge of violence (he's an amateur boxer), surly demeanour and poor table manners (he picks up the fish with his hands!) making him apparently irresistible. Superb emotional nuance within that rather hokey context, La Huppert supported by a soulful Lindon and the irresistibly owlish gravitas of Bernard Le Coq, plus Jacquot's silky cinematic shufflings - incl. further proof (see also LE GARCU, IRMA VEP) that the French are masters of the abrupt-cut ending. "Who was that young man?" asks her 'respectable' new friend when she runs into the boy again, on the street, months later ; "I'll tell you someday," she replies - and instantly cut to black, closing credits and a haunting song (translation : she never will). Stunning.]
THE STICKY FINGERS OF TIME (51) (dir., Hilary Brougher) Nicole Zaray, Terumi Matthews, James Urbaniak [Pleasantly scrambled Hal Hartley / BACK TO THE FUTURE hybrid, mixing comic-book sci-fi and mundane reality - time-travellers bickering over who's going to make dinner, stuff like that. Some have found it moving (come back, cbf!), I just found a quietly amusing, cod-intellectual jeu d'ésprit - with, yes, a certain heart-tugging undertone. Urbaniak's crushed, rueful air of suspended snarkiness pretty much sums it up.]
MUMFORD (39) (dir., Lawrence Kasdan) Loren Dean, Hope Davis, Jason Lee, Mary McDonnell, David Paymer, Ted Danson, Jane Adams ["Are you always this sunny?" someone asks the hero. My thoughts exactly. Kasdan's relaxed, low-key approach is appreciated, but didn't he used to offer insights as well, or at least something more substantial than "psychotherapy is all about listening to people"? James Stewart might've made something of the title-role, but Dean is just a handsome blank (and what exactly is the relevance of his character's "secret life"? why dwell on the details so much? what's the point of this film, anyway?). Excellent supporting cast stymied by lines like "These days my idea of a hot date is a long shower", though some of them (Lee and Paymer esp.) still make an impact. And it's certainly good to see Kevin Tighe again, albeit in a tiny role. Where's he been, anyway?]
THE MESSENGER : THE STORY OF JOAN OF ARC (11) (dir., Luc Besson) Milla Jovovich, Dustin Hoffman, John Malkovich, Vincent Cassel [Bit of a cheap shot to pick on a foreigner's bad English, but we have to start somewhere : listening to this film makes the heart sink (and of course distracts from the story, keeping it at arm's-length). The dialogue is at best clichéd - "We've got visitors," says the English captain, watching the French forces mass - at worst nonsensical : Joan's lengthy recounting of her visions, with special emphasis on the "strange wind" she felt every time God spoke to her ("suddenly, there was that strange wind again") induced bouts of schoolboy giggling, and at least one exchange seems to have been lost in translation ("You mean we won?" asks Joan after the battle is over. "We didn't just win," replies a General excitedly ; "This is a victory!"). More surprisingly, visuals generally match the lines, as overstated as the early montage showing Joan's carefree, idyllic childhood by having her scamper through a field of poppies - following it up with a field of cornflowers and a field of unidentifiable brown flowers, followed by assorted scamperage down hills and across streams. Hint of an interesting idea towards the end, debunking Joan's heroism by offering alternative explanations for her deeds (via ghostly inquisitor Hoffman) - but we haven't really seen her do anything, except run around the battlefield affirming her devotion to God in hysterical tones ; Besson seems to realise Joan's triumph had everything to do with superstition and mass hysteria - and he's too irreverent to play the battle scenes straight anyway - but he never shows her leading, or even taking over a scene (mostly she's a kind of screechy, rather ludicrous regimental mascot ; the various Generals do all the real work). Staggeringly inept film-making too, even on the most basic level of what to show and what to leave out : Joan's fame grows entirely offscreen (we have no idea why the peasants seem to worship her even before she's fought her first battle), yet when she first visits the Dauphin - a dramatically vital scene, our first real look at the adult Joan in action - the film keeps her waiting, unseen, in an antechamber for five minutes, introducing us at length to various minor characters instead. Malkovich comes out of it relatively unscathed, BJM having given him a lifetime supply of viewer goodwill : I had to laugh when the Dauphin says, "Sometimes I wish I were someone else". Can we ever look at him in the same way again?]
THE BARBER OF SIBERIA (24) (dir., Nikita Mikhalkov) Julia Ormond, Oleg Menshikov, Richard Harris [Probable back-story : Mikhalkov's original (six-hour) cut was mini-series-like, featuring lots of different strands ; when it came to cutting it, however, rather than cut everything judiciously, he preferred to cut almost everything completely and leave one strand (the love story) intact. Result? A three-hour film in which hardly anything happens, beyond a superficial, underdeveloped love story that was never intended (surely) to carry a film all by itself. The rest is all hints of things that never materialise or turn out to be irrelevant (all the stuff about the special powers of the titular invention), lots of empty spectacle and a great deal of padding : vague local colour, "old Russian customs", Russia repeatedly extolled as an "extraordinary country" (Mikhalkov's quite the patriot), broad comic relief taking up a goodly portion of the running-time - fat ladies, whiskered gentlemen, lots of falling about. Its pretensions to being another DOCTOR ZHIVAGO are derisory (if there's a 1965 film it resembles it's probably THE GREAT RACE - only that was meant to be a comedy). Lots of pomp and pageantry, though - the expensive scenes (e.g. the cadets' swearing-in, with Mikhalkov himself as Tsar Alexander III) kind of work, in a vacuously pleasant way ; but no more. And Menshikov is about 20 years too old for his role.]
GUINEVERE (46) (dir., Audrey Wells) Sarah Polley, Stephen Rea, Jean Smart [And this year's What The Hell Went Wrong? Award goes to ... Starts off brightly, Polley doing insecure / vulnerable without pity or condescension (put this performance next to her cold-eyed babe in GO, then tell me this girl can't play anything) ; round about the seduction scene, doing mental long-division on the couch as Rea's hands come ever closer, I was thinking maybe "indie Rohmer". Then it all goes wrong, though I'm not sure why - good-times montages set to bouncy Irish music have something to do with it, but the biggest problem is perhaps that Rea proves in the end too unworthy, collapses far too easily - all it takes is one not-particularly-original speech (surely he'd have worked out some sharp retort to cradle-snatching charges after all these years) ; I realise this is partly the point, but it makes the film schematic (the roles don't have to be reversed ; she could just outgrow him) and takes away both from his dignity and her transformation. Increasingly crude and charmless ; the mawkish, vaguely distasteful final scene is perhaps the worst ending of the year.]
DETROIT ROCK CITY (52) (dir., Adam Rifkin) Edward Furlong, Sam Huntington, James DeBello, Lin Shaye [Isn't the basic appeal of rock (esp. heavy rock) intertwined with suffering - an escape from bullies, social inadequacies, oppressive parents? There's a touch of genius about this film, in identifying this near-masochistic appeal and playing up to it so relentlessly, putting its heroes through a painful journey to the dweeby-adolescent nirvana of a Kiss concert (did characters ever suffer such profound humiliations for a cause so picayune?). Not a lot of genius in the execution though, lively but mostly uninspired teenage hi-jinks (incl. one of the grossest vomit gags I have ever seen). Attempt at retro style (split-screen effects, etc) fizzles out early, incredibly overstuffed soundtrack rocks (producers Kiss obviously calling in a few favours), dialogue is occasionally - albeit shamefully - amusing. Overheard in a high-school : "As they say in the tampon biz, see you next period..."]
DR. AKAGI (65) (dir., Shohei Imamura) Akira Emoto, Kumiko Aso, Juro Kara [Alternative title : "They Blinded Him With Science". That's the theme, anyway, Science in the service of tireless humanism (good) vs. Science in the service of a portentous Higher Purpose (e.g. the atom bomb ; bad, obviously). That it isn't quite that simple is because characters and atmosphere are (at least) as important as the theme, and because nothing is ever that simple in Imamura's wide-ranging, multifarious moral universe : military men are the villains, but Akagi himself is very much a nationalist, refusing to accept that the war is lost (his persistence in fighting disease actually stems from the same source as Japan's unhealthy militarist culture of fighting to the bitter end) ; the heroine vows to stop selling her body, but her moral triumph is undermined by a poignant note from her little siblings ("Dear Sis, we're starving. Please go back to whoring"). Funky small-town atmosphere with surreal touches and jazz on the soundtrack. Good stuff.]
THE END OF THE AFFAIR (64) (dir., Neil Jordan) Ralph Fiennes, Julianne Moore, Stephen Rea, Ian Hart [Never read the book, but the major change (according to the review in "Sight & Sound") seems to be that the couple do get back together after the "miracle" that destroys their relationship - thereby writing out God the jealous lover keeping them apart and replacing Him (a point the "S & S" reviewer seems to have missed) with a punitive God who sends down His wrath on the very night the heroine breaks her vow. Not unreasonable - and predictable, given Jordan's more full-blooded, lurid worldview - but the real problem is that God, and specifically the hero's view of God, barely features in the film's opening two-thirds, making the fervent hatred of the final act rather puzzling : Fiennes, with his cold eyes, certainly suggests a rationalist rather than a believer, but that seems irrelevant, the film being rather an (entirely secular) tale of obsessive jealousy (can a film not be about obsession when it has a Michael Nyman score?). Pleasures abound, from the bleak, unhealthy-looking visuals to Rea's haunted cuckold and Hart's dogged, dog-eared snoop ; but it never really comes together. Truth is, it would probably have made little difference had it ended half an hour earlier than it does, with the sly, malevolent cosmic joke - turning everything we've seen on its head - of Bendrix leafing through his beloved's diary...]
PRINCESS MONONOKE (72) (dir., Hayao Miyazaki) With the voices of Billy Crudup, Billy Bob Thornton, Claire Danes, Minnie Driver [I'm not one of those Disney-hating types (and of course I realise Disney released it in the US), but watching this epic eco-fable really brought home what a strait-jacket the 'accepted' Disney style is becoming : hardly hardcore manga, it's nonetheless unimaginable in the mass-market - not just for its couple of decapitations and reference to "brothel girls", but more importantly because of its complexity, set in a world where people do bad things for good reasons (destroying a forest in the name of 'progress', hoping it can cure disease) and where demons can also be gods, to be appeased and respected rather than killed. Visually breathtaking, whether it's an action scene or the stillness of a forest glade, but it also has the old-world fatalism - and occasional barbarism - of true folk-art, from the days when the folk lived in violence and superstition. Can't do pacing as smooth as the Disneys, though : the final section, once we lose sight of the Prince's quest, is impossibly diffuse.]
MYSTERY MEN (44) (dir., Kinka Usher) Ben Stiller, Hank Azaria, William H. Macy, Janeane Garofalo, Geoffrey Rush [To quote Garofalo (in sarcastic mode) : "How delightfully eccentric - while simultaneously being a complete waste of our time!". Wannabe cult movie doesn't pan out, making for embarrassingly misplaced wackiness ; the Sphinx's Yoda-isms wear out their welcome, and the disco-henchman stuff thuds worse than anything this side of Fat Bastard. The eccentricity is nonetheless delightful, albeit patchily - it's the kind of film where you're bound to love one gag, even if you groan at twenty others (I like it when the others try to goad Mr. Furious into unveiling his superpowers via gratuitous insults : "Your penmanship is atrocious" ; "You dress in the manner of a male prostitute") ; still, it'd probably work better if it was more cruddy-looking - the BATMAN-pastiche look is a cool idea, but there's something depressing about expensive sets being built (and DP Stephen Burum's art deployed) so a couple of guys with funny accents can argue about the plural of "nemesis". Intermittently fun, generally stillborn. Favourite line : "We've got a blind date with Destiny! And it looks like she's ordered the lobster..."]
LA CIUDAD / THE CITY (35) (dir., David Riker) Jose Rabelo, Silvia Goiz, Cipriano Garcia [Good, honest working-class faces. Noble faces. Immigrant faces. "The pain you go through," says someone, "to start a life in this country!". Pious suffering and bitter ironies - all in b&w, with strings on the soundtrack. Kind of heartening that films like this are still being made, but the characters are so fetishised it's almost exploitative ; how Owen Gleiberman can lump this together with the pitiless ROSETTA is beyond me.]
MR. DEATH: THE RISE AND FALL OF FRED A. LEUCHTER, JR. (79) (second viewing: 77) (dir., Errol Morris) [Structurally a bit disjointed, though the first section is obviously vital - not just in setting up the main story but also in highlighting the strain of narrow-minded objectification (and self-delusion) in Leuchter's personality : he makes his "humane" electric chairs guided by a spurious efficiency-based rationalism, losing sight of the human element, essentially losing sight of what he's doing ("there's no difference between a life-support system and an execution system"). Yet he's totally sincere, genuinely believes in his work, does it to the best of his limited abilities - he's a fubsy little man, a book-keeper type with no sense of passion or human empathy, who unfortunately strays into an arena where those very qualities are absolutely vital, and gets utterly destroyed. You can see it as a cautionary tale, but the film's unforgettable triumph lies in making it a tragedy : Leuchter is a fool, but at least he's honest according to his lights - for me at least, the film's true villains were the self-righteous monsters who reflexively brand him an "anti-Semite", and the neo-Nazis who use him while privately calling him a "simpleton" (closest thing to a hero was the thin-lipped chemist who calmly and dispassionately shows why Leuchter's findings are hopelessly flawed). The film lacks the sense of mystery and wonder in FAST, CHEAP or GATES OF HEAVEN, that sense of evoking the unknowable and inexpressible - its themes are right out in the open - but it's probably Morris's most complex examination, miraculously compassionate and frighteningly relevant (I saw it right in the midst of all the fuss over Austria's Freedom Party, with everyone - at least on this side of the Atlantic - trying to decide what was worse, the prospect of a far-right party in power (whose leader, Jorg Haider, says he refuses to apologise for the Holocaust) or the EU's hysterical threat of isolating Austria because of it, thereby guaranteeing Haider public sympathy - just as arrogant and misguided as Leuchter's enemies in the movie). Works as a fascinating documentary, works as a film as well - Caleb Simpson's score is irresistible, Morris's sly sense of humour always discernible, many of the images superb (esp. the approach to Auschwitz, forked railway tracks with the main building hulking greyly in the background). The electrocuted elephant probably the most affecting such image I've seen since the giraffe in SANS SOLEIL.] [Second viewing, July 2025: Surprisingly similar reaction - always thought this was quite a fringe opinion - 25 years later. Felt the disjointedness more this time, not just disjointedness but a sense that the film doesn't have enough material for its length; it seems to sag in the middle, before the second half gets going. Even more struck by the magnificent visuals, though - the "additional photography" by Robert Richardson seems to be most of the movie - and extremely impressed and moved by the way Morris - a deeply intelligent man - plays fair with the buffoonish Leuchter, not even anything as banal as the 'banality of evil' (or even really Dunning-Kruger - since he is an expert engineer - though that comes closer) but an honest scientist according to his lights, merely lacking any sense of empathy or the bigger picture. I really like how Morris shows Leuchter is wrong (this time) by calmly countering his arguments through other scientists, not just resorting to name-calling. Also have to say it hits differently at this point in time, with the enormity of what's going on in Gaza now clear but some in the US and Israel still refusing to accept it: "The Nazis were the first Holocaust deniers. Because they denied to themselves that it's happening".]