Summer Break 2003

Brief (and unfortunately not-so-brief) comments on films seen while this site was on hiatus.

DADETOWN (69) (dir., Russ Hexter) [Knowing the twist makes all the difference here (stop reading now if you don't know what it is), making me see actorly tics and tricks in every line of 'natural' dialogue (see esp. the three plump ladies in the park, and their slightly too-ready suggestions for what 'API' might stand for). Obviously extremely well-made - or just a reminder that all talking-heads documentaries tend to move at the same rhythm - but it'd probably seem a bit too on-the-nose even if it were just an ordinary doc, the language turning pointedly more foul as the Norman Rockwell idyll turns sour and the messages (tradition vs. gentrification, most notably) getting spelled out in a way that'd make you shake your head and opine that fact is stranger than fiction, at least if it was fact. Constantly inventive, but much of the joy in documentaries comes from playing detective, working out people's secret thoughts by reading between the lines, and it knocks the point out of it when you know the filmmaker's put that subtext there deliberately; clever, ingenious and - to be honest - a little dull.]

COWARDS BEND THE KNEE (65) (dir., Guy Maddin) Darcy Fehr, Melissa Dionisio, Amy Stewart [Maddin, meet Avid. HEART OF THE WORLD seems to have been a bad influence, turning him on to those flurries of one-and-two-frame, blink-and-you'll-miss-them cuts which look cool but don't really fit the delirious high romanticism of his faux-retro style - for my money, what he does best are still goofily baroque shots like the lovers in CU on either side of the frame with ice-hockey players flitting across a rink in the distance behind them - especially since the theme in this case is so clearly critical of novelty for its own sake: "The joy, joy, joy of meeting someone new!" tease the intertitles (twice) as our 'cowardly' hero leaves one woman for another, not apparently caring that the second "new" woman is in fact the same one he left the first time (everything old is new again, which might also be Maddin's motto) - not to mention that the villain is a woman called Meta. Bit of a 'Guy Maddin's Greatest Hits' feel to it all but the sense of humour remains delightful, from throwaways like the "Maroons" puffing away like chimneys just before a big game to joke intertitles ("A Queer Prank"), a murder taking place unnoticed amid the players' post-match celebrations - what better time to commit a murder? - and another aborted when the MAD LOVE-type killer hands get horny instead of homicidal, in their own killer-hand kind of way (the chapter is called "Fisty"). Maddin is in danger of becoming a brand-name rather than a sensibility (plus his plots still sag in the middle, even at 64 minutes); maybe he was never much more than a joke - Silents go po-mo - to begin with, but who cares as long as it's funny. Baz Luhrmann for depressed introverts.] 

WHAT A GIRL WANTS (30) (dir., Dennie Gordon) Amanda Bynes, Colin Firth, Kelly Preston, Oliver James [Peculiarly narcissistic star vehicle, wherein American teen goes to England to find herself - "my turn", "my story" - and finds everyone is just like her except the unpleasant people, who are different; she's looking for a father to complete her, but what she actually does is make him conform as much as possible to who she already was, drawing out his bike-riding Cocoa Puffs side from the stuffy All-Bran surroundings. Things only start to go wrong when they try to change her, making for a dull second half and cruelly exposing Bynes' limitations - but she's such a bright-eyed, chipmunk-cheeked thing before that, it's hard to hate too much even if she does represent something rigid and reactionary, the high-self-esteem teen brushing aside alien points of view beyond her safe, self-absorbed little world. I see her going the Reese route, radiating bounce and confidence with a touch of silly-me goofiness - or maybe she can suffer heartbreak and end up like Teri Garr, her cheerfulness a kind of pathetic resilience. Either way is fine, really...]

NATIONAL SECURITY (38) (dir., Dennis Dugan) Martin Lawrence, Steve Zahn, Eric Roberts, Bill Duke, Colm Feore [Weird that a Rodney King-type situation can now be played for laughs - and with its original moral import apparently reversed: the Lawrence character, who makes "It's because I'm black, right?" his constant refrain, nonetheless takes unfair advantage of his blackness, framing Zahn for police brutality when he's done nothing wrong. Black separatism and its victim culture seem pretty much discredited, pop-culture-wise, what with this and UNDERCOVER BROTHER's Conspiracy Brother (then again, that was already a joke with Doug E. Doug in HANGIN' WITH THE HOMEBOYS a decade ago), the message being that those who cry Victim are likely to be unreliable and untrustworthy - yet audiences still flock to the blatant segregationism of BRINGING DOWN THE HOUSE (and, out in the real world, cops still brutalise and courts still discriminate). Lawrence, like Adam Sandler, seems to embody the theory that populist comedy comes from the contradiction between social-liberal education - calling for compassion and helping the weak and victimised - and the caveman primitive id baying for blood (he's like the medieval court jesters, funny because he makes himself contemptible); elsewhere, cars explode, fly off a bridge and zip across the roofs of other (parked) cars, Eric Roberts dyes his hair blond and Steve Zahn purses his lips from beneath an impressive moustache. What da problem is?]  

BRINGING DOWN THE HOUSE (32) (dir., Adam Shankman) Steve Martin, Queen Latifah, Jane Smart, Eugene Levy [A modest proposal: to mark next year's 50th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, maybe Hollywood could declare a moratorium on comedies where the laughs depend on characters' being black or white, seeing as it's frankly racist and whatnot. The get-out clause is they're 'celebrating black culture' - uptight white people vs. "natural black" ones - except even that isn't in the 70s blaxploitation way, where the culture was exclusively black, but in an 'inclusive' theme-park way where white people also speak 'hood in amusingly inappropriate ways, like tourists in a strange land, and black deprivation (the 'hood itself) looms in the distance like a particularly scary ride you shouldn't even think about trying straight after lunch; plus of course you have to wonder how healthy this kind of party-gangsta culture is anyway (sample line: "You can't dance from your brain!"), and whether it's a consequence of social disenfranchisement or in fact a cause. As a comedy, lazy and perfunctory: no-one behaves like a human being - random example: why does Martin try to pass Latifah off as a nanny instead of simply saying 'Oh, she's just a client'? are we suggesting no white big-city lawyer could have a black client? - and plotting is the kind where either nothing happens or too much happens, but there's enough lively stuff going on to make it bearable, at least if the concept weren't so ugly. Also, no way is that girl 15 years old. Also, no way is Joan Plowright from the South. Also, that hanging-from-the-balcony apology with the camera turning 180 degrees is totally lifted from A FISH CALLED WANDA. I mean come on...]

SPUN (43) (dir., Jonas Akerlund) Jason Schwartzman, Mickey Rourke, Brittany Murphy, John Leguizamo, Patrick Fugit [REQUIEM FOR A DREAM re-made by the unlikely team of Harmony Korine and Tex Avery (music by Billy Corgan), except they play it for laughs and lose track of where they're going halfway through, so it just becomes a hanging-out movie with only the occasional shot of a dilating eyeball. Kind of fun but also kind of boring, because it's all the same and it goes on and on, its media-filtered self-conscious trashiness increasingly tedious and juvenile. Possible best moment: Mickey Rourke stands Patton-like before an American flag to intone an Ode to Pussy: "I take the pussy seriously"...] 

MY LIFE AS McDULL (59) (dir., Toe Yuen) [Cultural issues no doubt playing a part in the patchiness of this patchy comedy: McDull's mother's life as a videogame is a nice gag (she races ahead of supermarket shoppers, knocks people out the way to catch the subway before the doors close, scoring points all the way), but her cookery show 5 minutes later - and generally the fondness for jokes involving buns (the edible kind) - is just baffling. Not even sure who it's meant for, kids being unlikely to appreciate the references to Tony Leung and various satirical touches (e.g. HK schools that offer "white teachers for English class"), let alone the remarkably depressed tone: McDull's childhood is a catalogue of disappointments, his dreams come to nothing and the ending is a pure hit of wry, poignant Life-has-no-meaning-ness that'd send the Disney kiddies running to their shrinks. Whole thing is just bizarre, with the animation pitting fanciful characters in a 'cute' blobby style (our hero is a little piggy) against cramped, often ugly, 'realistic' urban backgrounds, and zany content often underlain with a sickly Joe Hisaishi-style score. Strange and original, and the ending definitely got to me, but the tone just seems curdled and there's really nothing funny about buns. Even the edible kind.]  

MAY (56) (dir., Lucky McKee) Angela Bettis, Jeremy Sisto, Anna Faris [Certainly effective - esp. if you go in (as I did) not realising it's a horror movie - but there's something uncomfortable in the way it sees the title-character, alternating between needy and grotesque: the obvious comparison is CARRIE, but Carrie just wanted to be normal and that's how the film saw her (till she took an appropriate revenge on a world that insisted on casting her as a freak) - whereas May is a bona fide weirdo who wants to be loved, making her a Grand Guignol figure of pathos (the film is best described as a version of FRANKENSTEIN where the Monster is also the Doctor). McKee overloads it with giggly Gothic, like a darker Tim Burton - May's creepy doll looks like something from THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS - and does actually manage a fine balance between horror and humour (passer-by to heroine, as she's dragging a cooler full of freshly-harvested body parts: "Got any cold ones in there?"), but it's painful to see May looking so pathetic in über-geek glasses, or thrown a scornful glance by a couple kissing in an elevator, or giggling Bjork-like in her own little world. Genuinely twisted nonetheless, and Anna Faris is surprisingly great: what with this and HOT CHICK, I'm starting to think she could make a possible partner for Zooey - more sanguine and conventionally pretty, but giving off the same sardonic glee at the world's mixed-upness. "What's a scupel?"...]  

MYSTERIOUS OBJECT AT NOON (69) (dir., Apichatpong Weerasethakul) [Key scene: a woman tells the sad story of how her father sold her to her uncle as a child, breaking into tears as she does so; as she finishes, with the tears not yet dry, an equable offscreen voice (presumably the director's) chirps, "So - are there any other stories you'd like to tell us? They can be real or fiction". All stories are of equal value here - the act of telling a story is all that matters - which is both liberating and a little terrifying; something very scary about this egalitarian post-modernism - not least because it seems to reject the possibility of any true emotional response, which would make one story 'better' than another - but it's also true, as the film makes clear, that everything is valid and anything can happen: a "mysterious object" can turn into a star, then a child, then an alien; narrative can digress picking up various people, each one a story waiting to be told; the film itself can develop qua film (i.e. the making of the film is itself a story), with the linear script getting more sophisticated (flashbacks are added), fourth wall broken, director calling for a second take, etc. Sounds academic, but it isn't at all - might be something jaded in the concept (or the critics who admire it) but the film is humorous and free-ranging, filled with the childlike glee of storytelling, not without its hidden message about the imported stories taking over kids' imaginations (note the impish bit where a law is passed enjoining Thai people to "honour the Americans"). Closing credits as amusingly misplaced as the opening credits of BLISSFULLY YOURS; don't leave till you're absolutely positively sure it's all over.]

IDENTITY (38) (dir., James Mangold) John Cusack, Ray Liotta, Amanda Peet, Clea DuVall, Alfred Molina [Lurid but lively version of AND THEN THERE WERE NONE - freeze-frames, flashbacks, garish green and yellow neon, sudden loud noises and 'boo!' moments, peals of lightning to accompany every Shocking Revelation (why does the cop have a bloodstain on his shirt? what is the significance of the Indian burial grounds?) - undone by Donald Kaufman-esque twist (Charlie Kaufman must have heard rumours of this script while writing ADAPTATION) which (a) kills the tension, because nothing's at stake anymore, and (b) doesn't even make much sense (why are the doctors so convinced he's cured? don't they realise the countdown isn't over? don't they wonder why there's 11 people and only 10 keys?), and that's not even getting into physical plausibility. Not as clever as it thinks - or maybe it is, and should've been less clever. Half-Hearted Subtext Dept.: guess we're supposed to infer witnessing endless violence is what turned the kid into a psycho in the first place, huh.]

KANGAROO JACK (48) (dir., David McNally) Jerry O'Connell, Anthony Anderson, Estella Warren, Christopher Walken [Omigod, I'm back in the 80s! Look - it's a "plethora" joke, like in THREE AMIGOS! Listen, it's "Down Under" on the soundtrack! A breakdancing kangaroo, for crying out loud! What's this - a kids' comedy without media in-jokes and pop-culture references (except an obviously tacked-on bit at the very end)? A car chase, set to jokey music! Playground insults and incredibly cheesy gags (O'Connell: "Bingo!"; Anderson [looks around frantically]: "Bingo? Where?"). Or how about this one: lost in the desert, our hero starts seeing mirages ("It seemed so real"); suddenly he's rescued by a girl - but he thinks she's another mirage, and starts feeling her up! So she slaps him! I love this movie. But where's Bobcat Goldthwait?...]

LAWLESS HEART (45) (dir., Tom Hunsinger / Neil Hunter) Bill Nighy, Tom Hollander, Douglas Henshall, Sukie Smith [Add a few points to the rating if you've never seen or didn't care for BARRY LYNDON, which practically owns that Schubert Piano Trio (hearing it in the opening credits predisposed me against the film, unfair but true). Add a few more points if you like the "Six Feet Under" worldview and tele-visuals, where uptight homophobic middle-aged types are mocked for not being 'in touch' with their feelings ("I suppose I have emotions, but I don't make a meal of it"), wild-child types are the true heroes - however selfish and inconsiderate - and soulful gay men go through life looking strait-laced and put-upon. Add yet more points if you liked THE HOURS, with three stories linked only in a vague undemanding way - the same exhortation ("Go for it!") recurring in all, even though the "courage" required of the characters isn't really comparable and "the walls" around their lives are so different they only make sense under the general rubric of Repression - and the actors doing a masterclass in tics and glances. That explains the acclaim, I suppose - though it is cleverly detailed, and more generous than you might predict from the opening half-hour. Hey, it's something...]

FINAL DESTINATION 2 (48) (dir., David R. Ellis) A.J. Cook, Ali Larter, Michael Landes [Impressive sequel, but oh the callousness! Build-up to the accident (a terrific scene) makes it seem like it's going to be a FRIDAY THE 13th-type morality, where the naughty kids get killed and the virtuous ones survive - heroine surrounded by drunk drivers, weed-smoking teens, people who don't buckle up (she, on the other hand, pointedly wears her seat belt) - but in fact there is no morality, Death pouncing just as sadistically on the obnoxious and sympathetic (yes, I do know it's like that in real life as well - but the film delights in making characters more likeable just before they die a messy death). Operates on a kind of queasy paranoia, key shot being perhaps when our heroes look around nervously at a typical city street, noting all the things (trucks, gas tanks, power cables) that could suddenly turn against them - making it the perfect horror flick for a post-9/11, terrorists-round-every-corner America, an "unseen malevolent presence" ready to strike at good and bad alike. More mechanical than the first film, and the final gag - demented can-you-top-this slapstick in the first FD - is just unpleasant here, plus you have to wonder what the point is of these premonitions if there's really no escape for the survivors (just added sadism, I guess). Michael Landes = poor man's Wes Bentley.]

JUST MARRIED (33) (dir., Shawn Levy) Ashton Kutcher, Brittany Murphy, Christian Kane [The honeymoon from hell, which might've made a saucy sex comedy in other hands (think Glenda Jackson in A TOUCH OF CLASS, and her lover's back giving out on their dirty weekend), except this one seems to be targeted at 12-year-old girls, saccharine and weirdly pre-sexual: "Do you feel like ... it?" asks heroine coyly on their wedding night, leading to an awkward discussion on whether they should or they shouldn't (on their wedding night!). Usual sitcom shorthand when it comes to the couple - he likes sports, she's more 'romantic' - with TITANIC-style rich girl / poor boy angle to distract from the actual mechanics of the relationship (non-existent, for the most part); lots of slapstick - heads banged, people falling down - inevitable fart and gross jokes, 12-year-old girl's idea of "Love" as catch-all get-out-of-jail-free card (dramatically speaking). Peculiar emphasis on populism, with heroine's snobby parents trying to derail the lovebirds with "It takes more than love to sustain a marriage" - but happy ending triggered by hero's salt-of-the-earth Dad, who tells him it's important to work at marriage (i.e. 'It takes more than love'). Guess a salt-of-the-earth Dad makes all the difference.]

RIPLEY'S GAME (24) (dir., Liliana Cavani) John Malkovich, Dougray Scott, Ray Winstone, Lena Headey [Ripley should be Esther Kahn, disconnected from the world, but he's more like Hannibal Lecter - the psycho-as-culture-vulture, turning on those who offend his aesthetic sensibilities - in this one-dimensional thriller. Badly structured (the scene with the doctor in Berlin adds nothing at all), unimaginatively set up - Scott drunkenly insulting Ripley at a party, not realising he's in the room, is just lame: the snub should've been something really subtle (illustrating Ripley's paranoia), or else a clear moral snub, like refusing to shake hands in THE AMERICAN FRIEND (hence the nature of Ripley's revenge, bringing the virus of moral corruption) - and the plot qua plot is so unbelievable it's almost comical. Only notable for fun scenery-chewing by Malkovich - at various points baking a soufflé, playing the piano, sniffing a truffle and apparently embroidering a silk robe - and Winstone as his unabashedly vulgar cohort; otherwise flat, and, when it leaves "the game" behind to become a buddy movie in the second half, incredibly stupid.]

2 FAST 2 FURIOUS (59) (dir., John Singleton) Paul Walker, Tyrese, Cole Hauser, Eva Mendes [I suspect I liked this sequel more than the original TFatF because I dislike cars in real life, so I don't especially mind when their macho mystique gets played for comedy (soundtrack erupts in little moans of pleasure when our hero first sets eyes on his new set of wheels) and spectacle, Singleton cutting fast and wild with the racing scenes, abandoning the gritty drive-in-movie look for STAR WARS hyperspace effects and extreme close-ups of eyes and pedals and speedometers. Meanwhile, Walker - whose toothy smile, moussed-up hair and Bermuda shorts give him the look of a vacationing student - and Tyrese are bickering like little kids ("Shut up!" "You shut up!"), Cole Hauser as the pretty-boy villain shows off a connoisseur's taste for torture, cars are made to do things no car should ever have to do, and the flimsy plot builds to a climax that makes little sense (our heroes' plan depends on something happening - the local cops intervening - which they had no way of knowing would happen). Cheesy pop fun, all the more weightless for the absence of a Vin Diesel.]