Films Seen - January 2001

[Pre-'96 films not included.]

GIRLFIGHT (46) (dir., Karyn Kusama) Michelle Rodriguez, Santiago Douglas, Jaime Tirelli [And it's Rodriguez in the middle of the third, jabbing charisma at the Army of Clichés as they gang up around her. Caught in the stomach by sensitive bro's dreams of art-school ("Learning how to draw!" snorts Dad ; "Where's that gonna get you?"), slammed against the ropes by the sexist environs trying to force her into stereotyped ideas of 'femininity' ("Would it kill you to wear a skirt once in a while?"), dodging a barrage of lefts from the painful contrivances forcing her into the ring against her boyfriend with disdainful Dad watching from the sidelines, momentarily stunned by the third-act revelation of Dad's abusiveness towards late lamented Mom (below the belt!). And the clichés are closing in now, landing a flurry of punches to the brain - irrelevant fitness-test scene, big fight coming out of nowhere for the climax - dodging Kusama's occasional bits of intriguing inner-city milieu ; a left, a right and she's out for the count. "Classic fight!" squeal B. Ruby Rich and the Sundance jury. Buzzes like a bee, stings like a butterfly.]

RATCATCHER (62) (dir., Lynne Ramsay) William Eadie, Tommy Flanagan, Mandy Matthews [Opens with a lyrical slo-mo image - a boy spinning dreamily, wrapped in a net curtain - interrupted by a slap and angry yell ("Look at the state of my curtain!"), which pretty much sums up its grimly down-to-earth m.o. : moments of beauty glimmering amid rats, lice, piled-up rubbish and a general feel of urban detritus. The 'movie' moments stick out (60s pop songs used as sweet relief, the hero smiling for the first time in the very last shot), which is something of a tribute to its quiet excellence and lived-in quality ; it creates a different-yet-consistent world, which is why it works so well as it's unfolding ; must say I'm surprised how quickly it seems to have drifted from my memory, though...]

BRING IT ON (58) (dir., Peyton Reed) Kirsten Dunst, Eliza Dushku, Jesse Bradford, Gabrielle Union [Bring it on! Teen lingo, rah-rah energy, social comment, even an annoying little brother out of SIXTEEN CANDLES ; loses its way near the end - too much cheerleading, not enough cheerleading-as-metaphor-for-something-else - but the emphasis on winning, Fascist undertones (everyone in formation, leaders promising to "whip them into shape"), microcosm-of-Society angle and the way it's all about being popular (public humiliation as the big nightmare) are all nailed pretty accurately ; and did I mention that it's great fun? Sharp and ebullient, with an ear for pungent dialogue ("We were flying ignorami, for sobbing out loud!") ; like the man said, "any sport that combines gymnastics, dance and short skirts is OK by me".]

O BROTHER, WHERE ART THOU? (77) (dir., Joel Coen) George Clooney, John Turturro, Tim Blake Nelson, Holly Hunter [First things first : this is an upbeat, often joyous entertainment with a couple of the year's corniest crowd-pleasers, and would be cherishable simply for its jokes and tunes (and just as an oddball, outlandish thing, with its bleached look and medley of references from Homer to Sturges to THE SPY WHO SHAGGED ME). Looking for subtext seems at first perverse - it's such a raucous, flippant-seeming film, adolescent verging on puerile (the Soggy Bottom Boys?!) - yet you know the Coens don't choose anything without a reason, least of all their titles : anything named after Sullivan's abortive magnum opus clearly invites high seriousness even as it seems to be deflecting it (those who accuse the Brothers of making airless, predetermined films may well be right - yet they never accept the corollary, viz. that no-one plans every single detail of their films without also planning a definite theme beyond random facetiousness). This reading is absolutely crucial, but a second viewing also unlocks other possible approaches - making it clear, e.g. how betrayal is a recurring theme (the Sirens, the Cyclops, Everett's wife, Everett himself, Pete's cousin, Pete himself, all proving false), hence perhaps the miraculous hydroelectric New South of the final scene as a betrayal of the old spirits and superstitions (expressed both in the music and God-fearing, instinctively spiritual Pete and Delmar, both significantly absent from the epilogue) : it's a bittersweet ending, acknowledging that change had to come (Death, quite literally, would've been the only alternative) yet insisting that something was lost - wry nostalgia for a magical, mythical South where ghosts dwelled in the glades and cobwebby tree-tops, music salved despair and the Klan would've swooned to know how philosophically close they were to their victims (singing Death, just like in the old Negro spirituals). Whatever else, a film of constant pleasures, from the songs to Clooney's charisma and Nelson's inspired, touching turn, from "bona fide" Vernon's beaky look of startlement to the Cyclops giving thanks for the "conversational hiatus". Definite longueurs, narrative-wise, but you'd probably have to go all the way back to BLOOD SIMPLE for a Coen film that didn't flag in the third quarter ; even MILLER'S CROSSING goes a bit cartoony when the Dane finally gets his comeuppance...]

TIME REGAINED (71) (dir., Raul Ruiz) Marcello Mazzarella, John Malkovich, Vincent Perez, Catherine Deneuve, Pascal Greggory, Emmanuelle Béart [I feel such a pseud recommending this, seeing as I didn't even know who was who half the time ("All these new faces!" exclaims Malkovich. "One feels a bit lost") ; yet it really doesn't matter - indeed, may even be a necessary part of the experience. Proustians will of course have an advantage, but the last line makes it clear that a full understanding is impossible in two-and-a-half hours - besides, a feeling of being slightly lost is a good approximation for the hero's sense of dazed, passive wonder as he moves among those invariably richer and more charismatic than himself. Writing thus becomes an act of creative homage (or revenge), with Memory the rich, fertile jumble nourishing the act of creation - sparked off by all kinds of random things, from a coffee cup to an advertising billboard (everything has associations, though non-writers usually ignore them) ; the film is on one level nostalgia, limning the aristocratic way of life wiped out by WW1, but also feeds off our own nostalgia for a certain type of lush European art-film (esp. Visconti, the last aristocratic film-maker), and - by implying its hero as film-maker, putting his young self behind a camera - shows how storytelling can transcend nostalgia altogether (the old man looking back might equally be a character in the boy's film about the future : Art rescues the self-indulgent act of remembrance, making it timeless). Elegant, wry, altogether gorgeous ; takes a while to set its rhythm, but flows majestically once you get caught up in it ; special mention for Malkovich's note-perfect study in world-weary decadence, and Greggory's virtuoso display of how to deliver a complicated speech while simultaneously devouring the hell out of a thick steak.]

URBANIA (63) (dir., Jon Shear) Dan Futterman, Alan Cumming, Lothaire Bluteau, Matt Keeslar [Very urban, as per the title - slick, full of talk, aggressive both in style and content. Stage origins show, but it's a strong piece - a gay man's revenge not only (or even mainly) on a homophobic world, but against his own guilt and all the compromises and self-delusions attendant on being gay. Someone speaks disparagingly of American kids, who "can't be a second without entertainment", but the film seems to have been made with them in mind : the ending's over-tricksy, the whole urban-legend strand is unnecessary noise, and the jazzy score fills those rare moments when someone isn't ranting, flashbacking or wisecracking. Then again, I say that like it's a bad thing...]

LIES (62) (dir., Jang Sun-Woo) Lee Sang-Hyun, Kim Tae-Yeon [Playful, knowing tone is the main asset here, from the self-referential underminings (e.g. breaking the fourth wall during a particularly 'realistic' fight scene) to the way it quietly sends up the coy notion of anonymous sex with anonymous protagonists ("Excuse me, do you know 'Y'?" asks "J" of someone in the street). The point is that the whole idea of sex-as-liberation is fatally flawed : the S+M-loving duo want to escape the lies of the world but their relationship is also fraught with lies, above all the claim that "roles are unimportant" - a fake equality that instantly collapses when "J" goes from 'top' to 'bottom', literally upending the whole relationship. Otherwise patchy and about 20 minutes overlong - when our heroes, having descended through progressively seedier motels, are finally forced on the road like a modern-day Humbert and Lolita, it's obviously time to call a halt. Still, the more I see (and hear) of Korean cinema, the more my first exposure - Hong Sang-Soo's thoughtful DAY A PIG FELL INTO THE WELL - seems an aberration : this is white-hot, devil-take-the-hindmost stuff, not so much about "purification" as making waves and pushing buttons. Fun.]

THE WAY OF THE GUN (53) (dir., Christopher McQuarrie) Ryan Phillippe, Benicio Del Toro, James Caan, Juliette Lewis [Is this actually 'about' something? Might it be about Justice - references to a "natural order" (implying a natural justice), Caan as a King Solomon figure deciding which of two women gets to keep a baby, not to mention all the babble about "adjudication"? Could it be about the quest for substance in a world of posturing - "it's not what you say anymore, it's the way you say it", "everybody wants to be criminals more than they want to commit crime", the Russian-roulette death positing Death as the ultimate no-bull Experience? Does it matter that birth in the midst of death is a recurring theme, that the plot begins at a sperm bank, that a son becomes a father and an abortionist brings a child into the world? Does it make a difference that the main characters' surnames are the real names of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid? Does it take brains to appreciate this riff on 60s Westerns and 70s Don Siegel? "To tell you the truth, I don't think this is a brains kind of operation," replies Del Toro - and he's probably right : themes and subtexts never really gel, but the two splendid set-pieces (a minimalist car-chase and maximalist, OTT final shoot-out) compensate for the rather muddled hour-and-a-half in between. Not exactly delicate, but nor is it without a certain rugged elegance - besides, political incorrectness is always bracing. Pretty weird seeing Phillippe in this kind of role, though ; must be the Reese influence...]

TRAFFIC (74) (69 - second viewing) (dir., Steven Soderbergh) Michael Douglas, Benicio del Toro, Erika Christensen, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Don Cheadle [Thoroughly simplistic, thoroughly Hollywood - and thoroughly riveting, confirming Soderbergh as a director of unbounded confidence if hardly any intellectual substance. In scope and methodology (if not quite in quality) it's something of a GODFATHER for the 00s - "a big, comfy movie", to borrow Kent Jones' phrase, juggling strands and milieus, seemingly definitive though in fact rather superficial, co-opting just enough unusual technique (colour-coded stories and jagged camera moves taking the place of Gordon Willis' underexposed images) to wow an audience into thinking it's seeing something different and a little daring while in fact making handsome use of the usual clichés, from king-size signposts in the dialogue ("You're starting to sound like your husband") to Douglas breaking down as he tries to read his prepared speech at the climax (how much better if he'd gotten through it without a hitch, only the audience recognising the doubt and pain behind his tormented expression!). It could've seemed a con-trick, which is why it's such a major achievement : Soderbergh blasts through the contrivances, overlaps dialogue for that edgy feel and gives the whole thing the rat-a-tat briskness Hollywood specialised in back when its practitioners were Ben Hecht types steeped in journalistic deadlines ; above all he makes it clear it's meant to be an overview - a Bluffer's Guide to the drugs problem - both in the overall punchiness and such scenes as drug-czar Douglas peppered with arguments by assorted lobbyists, touching all the bases in the drug war (including the all-important 'demand' argument). A perfect project for a cool, technocratic director who gives the impression he couldn't preach if his life depended on it ; pace is superb, the ensemble immaculate and a joy in the medium constantly apparent (aggressive cutting with dissolves instead of cuts captures the restless yet woozy feel of stoned debates on Changing The World ; a wide-shot of traffic at the Mexican border has the washed-out look and tinkly-percussive score of a 70s thriller, down to the accompanying zoom). Not profound, but it summarises well and catches the attention, which makes it just as valuable ; slight anti-Mexican bias and such details as a white girl's ultimate humiliation being sex with a black man may perhaps be put down to 'speaking the language' of the middle-class viewer.] (All still true on second viewing, but the glib, superficial, unconvincing (Oscar-winning!) script really gets in the way - ditto the "slight anti-Mexican bias", with condescending baseball coda suggesting what they really need is to be a little more American. Soderbergh still directs the daylights out of it, and it's fun to see lots of clever actors - Cheadle, Luis Guzman, Dennis Quaid, Miguel Ferrer - zipping through the dialogue, with Benicio the resident Soulful Tragedian. You have to accept it's shallow, though; otherwise you'll hate it.]

DR. T AND THE WOMEN (62) (dir., Robert Altman) Richard Gere, Helen Hunt, Kate Hudson, Laura Dern, Liv Tyler [Could've been a sitcom (the climactic twist is right out of "Veronica's Closet"), ends up closer to the loose-limbed, mordant chaos of a Larry McMurtry novel. Those who complain about the silly, chattering women - a ditz, a tippler, a hypochondriac - have a point, but the actresses are clearly having fun with it, and why must women be paragons of good sense anyway - why can't they goof off and let their hair down? (CHARLIE'S ANGELS operates on a similar post-feminist vibe.) Besides, the tone is an accurate reflection of Dr. T's own view of women, at once protective, affectionate and (yes) somewhat condescending - a man who declares that women are "saints by nature" and dedicates himself to looking after them (they should've just conflated Truffaut and Hitchcock and called the film "The Man Who Loved Women Too Much") ; needless to say, his view is limited, though the film generously allows that he means well, transporting him in a magic-realist ending to a less complicated place where his caring skills can be more important than his inadvertent sexism. Something of an elegy for the old notions of gallantry (Gere is fine but it might've worked even better with someone like Robert Redford, a handsome prince from another age) ; as a film, lively rather than witty, and so dishevelled you suspect Altman's nodded off ; but then he does something like the date between Gere and Hunt (carefully observing them through chit-chat, dinner, foreplay) and you realise he still cares - if only about the people.]

NURSE BETTY (47) (dir., Neil LaBute) Renee Zellweger, Morgan Freeman, Chris Rock, Greg Kinnear [The good and bad thing about this is it gives everything (heroine's obsession with soap star, hitman's corresponding infatuation with heroine, acolyte's developing relationship with hitman) exactly the same emphasis - meaning, on the one hand, that you're never quite sure where it's going, or what you're supposed to be paying attention to ; but also, on the other, that it doesn't really go anywhere and there's not a lot to repay your attention, except incidental bits and pieces. What's intended seems to be a modern screwball comedy, with soap-operas in the kind of role played in the 30s by being Extremely Rich - giving characters an excuse to be eccentric and blurring the line between real and fantastic (hence, e.g. the soap-opera staples - amnesia, a revelation of paternity - popping up in the 'real-life' narrative) ; yet it works in bizarre, graceless ways, building a scenario (Betty thought to be 'auditioning' after she meets her idol) so obviously far-fetched it can only be enjoyed in the pixillated way of farce then shooting it down cruelly and angrily, as if we were fools for going along with it in the first place (Kinnear's outburst is a mean, ugly scene). LaBute's sour streak very much to the fore, only less appropriate than in his earlier work (why this is being touted as a departure is beyond me), and his poor visual sense more of a problem : none of it even looks like a soap-opera - some of that inorganic sheen and peculiarly stiff framing (see e.g. the Buenos Aires scenes of STARSHIP TROOPERS) might've made the joke worth telling. As it is, the point seems to be that dreams are only natural, Life is harsh but valuable, and we're all of us looking for that special something ; pretty dull stuff for such a conspicuously original movie.]

UNBREAKABLE (49) (dir., M. Night Shyamalan) Bruce Willis, Samuel L. Jackson, Robin Wright Penn [Definitely SIXTH SENSE-ish, except SENSE, for all its hollowness, was about something potent and profound - memories of childhood fears, as expressed in H. J. Osment's shivery performance - whereas this is about ... comic books? Hardcore comix fans may appreciate the ending more (I was underwhelmed), and Shyamalan's faith in stillness, gloom and atmosphere (information revealed by a focus-pull within the shot instead of a cut or camera move) is remarkable in a blockbuster context, bringing arthouse trappings to ordinary filmgoers - except that ordinary filmgoers aren't stupid, and may well conclude that arthouse trappings are merely a cover for having nothing to say. Feels like it was written in a rush, lazily using coincidence (David's wife as Elijah's physiotherapist) to further its plot and spinning its wheels once the premise is established ; the abiding impression is of a film-maker who adores tricks - surprise twists, of course, but also trick-shots like reflections in mirrors or an upside-down motif (a boy watching TV while standing on his head), with the blue-grey colours and saturnine moodiness just another canny gimmick, acting as a kind of hypnosis. As with any conjuror / con-man, it all comes down to self-confidence - from casting his nerdy-looking self as a drug-dealer to plunging recklessly into utter silliness, hence the tabloid hysteria of the murderous stepmother in SENSE or the serial-killer here (not to mention the jaw-droppingly absurd scene that culminates in the line "If you shoot me, I'm leaving"). It's the kind of film you feel might've benefited from a little humility - writing more drafts, asking for a second opinion ; but I guess that's what it takes to have come so far so fast in the Hollywood machine.]

EAST-WEST (42) (dir., Régis Wargnier) Sandrine Bonnaire, Oleg Menshikov, Sergei Bodrov Jr., Catherine Deneuve [Two hours devoted to the proposition that you Can't Trust Those Commies : the State represses, the human spirit somehow survives, music creeps in poignantly whenever someone starts telling their sad story, and the whole thing - while quite handsome - is seemingly endless, especially once the "[Insert number] Years Later" captions start piling up. Note to M. Wargnier : you can't introduce voice-over in the last two minutes of a film just because it's convenient - it has to be there from before ; I know it's a nuisance, but there it is. Note to Messrs. Menshikov and Bodrov Jr : are you in fact the only Russian actors in the film business?]

SNATCH (56) (dir. Guy Ritchie) Jason Statham, Alan Ford, Brad Pitt, Vinnie Jones, Dennis Farina [To use a suitably testosterone-laden metaphor : Guy Ritchie can keep it up for almost an hour (though it goes limp eventually). The appetite for people is what sustains this raucous LOCK, STOCK re-tread, found and savoured in all shapes and sizes - Turkish, whose parents met in a plane-crash, arch-villain Brick Top, looking like a seedy academic, big Tyrone the "silly fat bastard", Boris the Russian, "bent as the Soviet sickle and hard as the hammer that crosses it" - seasoned with random jokiness (captions reading "Earlier" or "Back In London"), marinated in the kind of style that begs to be indulged, like a tall tale you might hear down at the pub, linking to a whole tradition of 'colourful' storytelling (the voice-over is the most important character here ; it wouldn't exist without the voice-over). Goes wrong when it runs out of plot (as opposed to plot twists), starts repeating itself and takes refuge in overstretched, Tarantino-lite convoluted speeches, as when Jones spends a full (and unfunny) minute comparing a crim and his two henchmen to a penis and its two testicles ; and of course it is mostly posturing, its empty flashiness (and basic cowardice) typified by the scene cross-cutting between a man being tortured and a pack of hounds closing in on a rabbit (except the man gets it while the rabbit gets away, so what's the point?). Laddish to the max, but plotting and (especially) dialogue have a certain gusto ; and will there be a more compulsively quotable catch-phrase this year? Not if ... (pause) ... "Ze Germans" have anything to do with it.]

HAMLET (72) (dir., Michael Almereyda) Ethan Hawke, Kyle MacLachlan, Bill Murray, Julia Stiles, Diane Venora [Year's most creative act of monkeying around, riffing on a very great play to unearth (among other things) a tale of youthful alienation, referencing both James Dean and the likes of REALITY BITES (via Hawke's presence and the whole concept of disaffected slacker vs. corporate environment) ; "to be or not to be" becomes both an echo of adolescent self-pity in its suicidal funk, and - because "to be means to inter-be" - a question of socialisation for those on the brink of adulthood (to join the System or do your own thing, that is the question). Works in all kinds of ways, as the thinking person's ROMEO + JULIET (borrowing the same TV-as-Chorus device for its coda), as a re-imagining, sending up the play's fustier elements - Rosencrantz and Guildenstern greeted with hilarity (Steve Zahn does Shakespeare!), Fortinbras not even bothered with ("So much for him!"), Lewis Klahr interlude replacing the tedious play-within-the-play - as a sleek, great-looking triumph of modernist design, as a constantly inventive parade of updated business (even if the cuts are pretty brutal, reducing it to a glossary of Famous Quotes). Major props for making the material fresh and funny after all these years, though narrative-hounds like myself would still rather watch an original script than a story we already know. Nice to see Paul Bartel popping up in his final role, though hopefully the DVD will also reinstate Jeffrey Wright as the Gravedigger.]

THE YARDS (61) (dir., James Gray) Mark Wahlberg, Joaquin Phoenix, James Caan, Charlize Theron, Faye Dunaway, Ellen Burstyn [Lingering looks and muttered conversations, with sepia-toned images and an elegiac score : the opening sequence - a family reunion full of telling detail - raises hopes of an under-rated gem, but shopworn plot devices and a general second-handedness finally sink it. Gray is good on the big ideas, not so inventive on the actual storytelling : it's the kind of film that starts and finishes on a subway train because trains are its central thread (and possible metaphor - journeys, derailing from a chosen path, etc.), but also features characters standing around unnoticed (presumably for hours) in a hospital corridor waiting for a sentry to leave his post, or happening along just in time to overhear a vital conversation. That Gray apparently insisted on the ending - which wrecks much of the film's moral ambiguity - is unbelievable ; that he can do moodily autumnal atmosphere is undeniable. Great cast mostly wasted, but Wahlberg contributes another of his soulful inarticulates ; while Dunaway and Burstyn playing sisters is one of those casting decisions we've literally waited decades for.]

BEST IN SHOW (53) (dir., Christopher Guest) Christopher Guest, Eugene Levy, Catherine O'Hara, Fred Willard [Seriously shoddy even as mockumentary - the camera peeks into bedrooms, eavesdrops on private conversations, generally gets way more access than makes any sense - even before you get to the dumb-redneck jokes and gay hairdressers ; mostly a matter of letting people ramble on then cutting when they say something outlandishly stupid, which doesn't exactly make for affectionate joshing. Major laughs nonetheless, mostly courtesy of Willard's donkey of a commentator blithely spouting too-much-information ("Look at the size of that cup! I've taken sponge baths in smaller bowls than that!"), but something of a blunt intrument - you just know the Shih Tzu isn't going to pass unnoticed, and indeed it doesn't. Plus, no offence to Mr. Levy - whom us SPLASH devotees are delighted to see carving out a big-screen niche in his middle age - but we really didn't need the insert of his cross-eyed teenage self to know he's being economical with the truth when he brags of being "quite the Casanova" in his younger days.]

KEEPING THE FAITH (51) (dir., Edward Norton) Ben Stiller, Edward Norton, Jenna Elfman, Eli Wallach [OK people, listen up! We've got nothing much to say, but we're going to say it with zip and zest and energy and we're gonna knock 'em dead, you hear? OK, Ben, you do your loveable-chipmunk thing, Jenna honey, you be sharp and diamond-hard like you always are, and Ed - Ed, I want you to take it easy on the acting and just concentrate on directing the hell out of this thing, okay? I want song montages, I want fast-motion coming out of nowhere, I want a superfluous flashback structure - give it all you've got! Just remember, folks are gonna cut you lots of slack because you're such a great actor and you've never done this before : hell, you can even have a glaring continuity error in the basketball scene and nobody'll care! Oh, and don't worry about the religion, 'cause we're making that all slapsticky and homogenised, and having the rabbi bring a gospel choir to synagogue and wacky stuff like that, okay? We are not here to preach, we're here to entertain! Just remember, everyone, the point is for Ed here to convince the suits he can direct this fluffy sitcom thing, so maybe later he gets a chance to make something worthy of his talents, okay? Sure, it's gonna suck a little, but like Ben's character tells the bar mitzvah kid it's all about "sucking with style. Embrace the suckiness! Just say 'I love that I suck! I love that I suck!'". Say it! I love that I suck! ... Everyone got that? Somebody say hallelujah...]

CRIMINAL LOVERS (61) (dir., Francois Ozon) Natacha Régnier, Jérémie Renier, Miki Manojlovic [Closer to an exercise than a real movie (like both the other Ozon films I've seen), and goes slack at the end, leaving an unsatisfying taste (ditto), but nicely perverse and unpredictable three-quarters of the way, juxtaposing diametrically opposite views of childhood - youth-run-wild, thrill-kill sensationalism on the one hand, Hansel and Gretel-style, child-as-victim fairytale on the other (with surely a nod to THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER as the skiff floats slowly downriver). Links between the two remain implicit - killer kids reflecting their own traumatic experiences? - but intriguing, especially with sexual identity also in the mix : like Bonnie and Clyde, these criminal lovers aren't really lovers at all, the 'problem' once again lying with the boy (albeit in this case latent homosexuality rather than impotence). Precise dynamics still a bit unclear - partly it depends where you lay the emphasis (Owen Gleiberman's negative "EW" review seems to concentrate on the sub-NATURAL BORN KILLERS aspects, which I found something of a red herring) - but maybe it's a case of the ogre (Manojlovic) showing the boy his true nature by humiliating him into a purer, childlike state (akin to the woodland animals he traps and kills), stripping away the need to prove his manhood which is the source of the girl's power over him ; though that still doesn't explain if the film is downbeat or triumphant - a tale of self-destruction or self-discovery? - or perhaps a coded celebration of gay S & M, or if the girl's dream (the ogre strangling her boy as he kisses him) is a reflection of the truth or just her jealousy at losing him. Open-ended, stylised, possibly misogynist and (yes) quite pretentious, a film to talk about even as you concede that watching it isn't always very compelling ; I just want to see it again, really...]

POLA X (63) (dir., Leos Carax) Guillaume Depardieu, Katerina Golubeva, Catherine Deneuve [The story of a man who's drawn to darkness over light, secrets over openness (he can't handle it when his secret identity is revealed), moving from the sunlit spaces of an old-money mansion to a dark forest and the shady lives of immigrants, torn between two women (one light, one dark) ; like Hamlet, he prefers ambiguity to exposure - "The time is out of joint" are the first words we hear - tending to linger in a world of shadows. Visuals tell the story, darkness creeping into the edges of the frame, found in dreams and suggestions (a hidden room, a stalker in the background), tinging a perfectly eerie shot of the chateau at twilight, finally bursting through in the extraordinary forest sequence ; great film-making, and Carax gets a couple of flamboyant coups de cinéma in there as well - the opening montage, or the breathtaking tracking shot through a vast warehouse swooping up to reveal a full orchestra as they burst into sound ; narrative falters badly, though, and the film doesn't really grip as it should in the final third (though remains intriguing for the echoes of its maker's own bizarre, self-destructive career). Arty, mopey, guilt-ridden, doom-laden stuff ; not for everyone, but your inner Goth should love it.]

THE FAMILY MAN (49) (dir., Brett Ratner) Nicolas Cage, Téa Leoni, Jeremy Piven, Don Cheadle [More darkness (see above), but it doesn't mean anything this time ; I thought at first it was meant to represent the dark satanic mills of capitalism, but it stays the same pretty much throughout (long after the film has abandoned Wall Street) so I guess it's just Dante Spinotti doing his burnished-visuals thing like he does for Michael Mann ; besides, if there was any light / dark significance going on, believe me, we'd know about it - this is not a subtle movie. Everything is over-explained, Cage savouring the taste of fine wine again after his time in the sticks accompanied by the wholly needless line "God, I miss that taste!", and it's even contrived - none too convincingly - so our hero literally has to choose between his two lives (he looks thoughtful, glances at the photos of his cute little kiddies, sighs meaningfully...) ; in fact, I can think of no earthly reason why I kinda liked it, except that its unabashed hokiness may actually be an asset - it doesn't shilly-shally (as the more sophisticated ME MYSELF I did), lays its cards right on the table as a hymn to the ordinary man and the pleasures of the simple life. Many will of course sneer, wondering how long the various Hollywood players behind it would actually last working in a garage in New Jersey, but the vibe is actually a bit more wistful, more like all these various over-achievers thinking of the life they've never had and never could have - or maybe it's just because of Cage, who actually seems to be trying for the first time in years : he may not be sincere but he does manage to fake sincerity, which is also a kind of acting. Still preposterous, of course, if only on dramatic plausibility - in the real world, obviously, if you lost all your bowling skills overnight or suddenly forgot where your office was you'd be put away (if the film had a million bucks for every time someone looks concerned and asks "Are you okay?", it wouldn't need any box-office) ; but it isn't set in the real world, and that may be its saving grace. Plus of course Ms. Leoni laughs and sparkles (and takes a shower behind a glass door), and that's got to be a good thing.]

SNOW DAY (40) (dir., Chris Koch) Chevy Chase, Chris Elliott, Mark Webber, Jean Smart [Just enough apple-cheeked anarchy to gladden the heart of any right-thinking 12-year-old without quite straining the indulgent smiles on adult faces ; it's a little shocking how kids wrecking property and pelting their Principal with snowballs has become middle-of-the-road entertainment, but I guess it's all for the best (or at least an inevitable consequence of kid-dependent niche channels). That said, I still think kidpics would work a lot better if adults were authority figures rather than buffoons, teenage nerds stopped pursuing the most popular girl in class, work-obsessed parents didn't always see the error of their ways and pre-pubescent gangs didn't always include a fat kid ; but at least you get Chase in amiable doofus-Dad mode and a funny gag about talking superhero dolls - not to mention Iggy Pop in a cameo as a dorky DJ obsessed with Al Martino. Who saw that one coming, back in the days of "Search & Destroy"?...]

BLACK AND WHITE (45) (dir., James Toback) Robert Downey Jr., Brooke Shields, Ben Stiller, Mike Tyson, Method Man, Elijah Wood [You can't take it seriously : the improvisations lead nowhere, insights on race in America are (ahem) skin-deep - though it's good to see someone skewering the appropriation of black culture that has rich white kids going "Yo whassup" - and it ends up resembling less a satirical tract than a straight-to-video gangsta flick. Best seen (preferably through a haze of drugs or alcohol) as a party movie, and at least there are more - and more interesting - folks at this one than the equally disposable TWO GIRLS AND A GUY. Toback's freakshow exploitation of Mike Tyson's beast-within persona is probably reprehensible (esp. given how exploitation is one of the movie's themes), but he's unlikely to care : this is film-making as extension of Identity (another of the movie's themes), and Toback's films function almost entirely as untrammelled self-expression. As his teenage characters put it : "I can do whatever I want! I'm a kid in America!". James Toback is 56...]

COMMITTED (37) (dir., Lisa Krueger) Heather Graham, Luke Wilson, Casey Affleck, Mark Ruffalo [Flippant on the surface, painfully sincere underneath, not quite smart enough to hide the joins ; strains for kookiness ("597 Days Later") while the voice-over throws in none-too-subtle statements on faith lost and restored (basically the journey of a naturally committed person from an unworthy object of commitment to a larger spirituality). Hard to hate, but the lines thud to earth like stricken birds and the whole thing falls apart after the double meaning in the title becomes apparent ; random annoyances include Affleck, Ruffalo (closer to Tony Danza than Marlon Brando, at least in this case), the forced Significance of our heroine's impulsive act of charity (featuring Everclear frontman Art Alexakis), and dialogue exchanges like the following : "You make the whole thing sound so spiritual - like he's from Tibet or something" ; "Well, I've never been to Tibet..."]

YI YI (76) (dir., Edward Yang) Wu Nien-Jen, Elaine Jin, Issey Ogata, Jonathan Chang [It's the nagging sense of a piece missing in your life, like the feeling you get when you come into a room and forget what it was you came in for. It's the sense of always being able to see "only half of the truth". It's the way everything in Life is relative - a young boy can be old (or at least older), a lucky day can also be defined as unlucky, waking up in the morning can herald the same old routine yet a brand new experience ("we never live the same day twice") : everything is in how you look at it, and who can survive that kind of existential relativism? The only constant is Yang's detached, never-judging camera, tying in with the motif of "seeing" - eyes as windows of the soul? - by providing visual correlatives for the characters' states of mind (is there any greater shot this year than the jumble of disparate reflections mirroring Min-Min's tortured psyche just before she leaves?), though the film's true glory lies in its echoes and connections, tracing patterns in a seemingly random whole : think (for instance) of how the brother-in-law's astrology glances off the wife's quest for spiritual fulfilment by surrendering herself to a Higher Power, or how clouds and music are separately cited (in very different contexts) as proof of Life's beauty, or how the shock-cut suggesting the evil influence of computer games is anticipated an hour earlier by the seemingly irrelevant (but equally disjunctive) defilement of an unborn baby's ultrasound image. Loses its exquisite balance slightly in the second half - some characters under-emphasised, others (like the Japanese designer) too convenient, the final scenes too didactic - but emotional effect is undeniable : the very last shot is still haunting me, days later. Something of a thinking person's weepie, but we need them too, you know?...]

CHUCK AND BUCK (57) (dir., Miguel Arteta) Mike White, Chris Weitz, Paul Weitz, Lupe Ontiveros [Creepy and unusual, though not really that big a deal. Key scene is perhaps not the sex (though it works as a kind of exorcism) but the bit soon after, when Buck finally works up the courage to admit to Beverly that "I'm afraid of so many things" and she instantly replies (much to his surprise) that "So am I" - an affirmation that he may be a mess but he's "normal" after all, needn't be ashamed anymore (we cut straight to him retrieving his bizarre Mom-and-Dad collages from the trash) ; discussion of sexual politics may obscure the fact that it's actually rather a simple story ornately told, a man in denial about his identity - seeking a cure for "the way I am" - trapped in self-loathing, finally able to escape. Staging is rather one-note, visuals perfunctory, nor do the characters expand (you could watch just the first and last half-hours and miss almost nothing) ; memorable turns by Weitz, P. and Ontiveros, though, and White's lollipop-sucking Buck, manchild and holy fool - cribbing both from Tom Hanks in BIG and Peter Sellers in BEING THERE - is among the year's enduring creations.]

THE CONTENDER (49) (dir., Rod Lurie) Joan Allen, Gary Oldman, Jeff Bridges, Sam Elliott [I love this stuff - back-room deals, the ebb and flow of power, smiles hiding fangs, politics as a game of poker ; I love it best when the square-jawed, idealistic Senator protests that "If we do that, we're no better than he is", and the old Party hands smile at her naivety and reply, "We are no better than he is" ; and I love it least when said Senator is being made a symbol for all the Causes espoused by the writer-director, from gun control to affirmative action, as in most of the second hour of this thoroughly tendentious movie (I kept wishing Bridges would slip into Lebowski mode and say, "Well, that's only just, like, your opinion, man"). It's not a question of Lurie's beliefs being good or bad - a political movie should be about the exercise of politics, preferably as it's carried out in the real world, not the promotion of any particular agenda (the name for that is propaganda), nor should it get distracted in gratuitous debates on specific issues like abortion or Monicagate (unless it's actually about those issues) : it feels very much like the film-maker (ab)using his position to blow off steam when he should be thinking of the movie. No surprise that the film itself peters out, getting hopelessly muddled ; Allen, stuck with playing a saint, is the chief casualty, but whoever thought of the have-it-all-ways ending - seeing no great difference between idealism and Macchiavellianism, and basically saying that refusing to play dirty is in fact political suicide in America unless you have someone else to play dirty on your behalf - needs their head examined. But what can you expect from a film that kicks off with a diabolical AOR mutilation of "Ring Of Fire"?...]

JESUS' SON (68) (dir., Alison Maclean) Billy Crudup, Samantha Morton, Jack Black, Dennis Hopper, Denis Leary [Narrative ellipses, gallows humour, the feeling of having "wandered into some sort of dream" ; inventive detail anchors it (the skydiver floating by outside the house - "That's my wife," says Denis Leary - the rehab-clinic speeches accompanied by sign language), every scene seems to feature something clever or amusing, whether a good line or a little bit of business. Low-fi visuals and the underpopulated look make it feel like a grunge-era indie - MY NEW GUN, or perhaps DRUGSTORE COWBOY - though the vibe also echoes picaresque 70s fare (I kept thinking of John Huston's WISE BLOOD, and this may indeed be the kind of stuff Flannery O'Connor would be writing, had she been born later and more secular). Not a lot to say, really, except I liked it ; entertainingly unmoored, and Crudup offers dreamy self-destructiveness without a smidgen of self-pity. Isn't it weird how split-screen suddenly seems to be making a comeback, though?...]

QUILLS (47) (dir., Philip Kaufman) Geoffrey Rush, Joaquin Phoenix, Kate Winslet, Michael Caine ["Conversation, like certain portions of the anatomy, always runs more smoothly when it's lubricated". Naughty bon mots flow like fine wine (or average wine in fancy bottles) here, ditto handsome period detail and unimpeachable Messages : trying to 'protect' others from the world is doomed to failure ; authoritarian censors are invariably hypocrites ; pornography has social value, acting as a "purgative" for our bestial desires ("If I wasn't such a bad woman on the page, I couldn't be such a good woman in life"). Hard to quarrel but it's all a bit simple-minded - Caine's double-dyed villain is just silly, but even Sade (whom at least they have the nous to make thoroughly unpleasant) seems much reduced : even us non-scholars might suspect, for instance, that the French Revolution traumatised him more by its socio-politics (aristocrats like himself terrorised and humiliated by the sans-culottes) than because it was all gross and gory, as suggested here ("I've been to Hell," he intones, sounding like the stock Vietnam vet). Phoenix is the only real bright spot - what a year he's having! - his passage from urbane idealist to tormented soul somehow managing to remain unpredictable (it's one of those performances that could've stopped anywhere and still rung true) ; otherwise the pace lags, the well-spokenness shades into verbosity, and the tone varies wildly from genteel to grotesque (though it's actually a Good Thing that it goes unexpectedly apeshit in the final reel). Plus I definitely don't understand why it uses the lunatics so hysterically : isn't the fact that Sade's plays incite these people to commit rape and murder an argument for censorship? Doesn't it undermine all the film's precious bromides about how "it's only a play" and "no-one's forcing you to listen"? I'm confused...]

THE ROAD HOME (42) (dir., Zhang Yimou) Zhang Ziyi, Sun Honglei, Zheng Hao [As in NOT ONE LESS, it's the little things that ruin it : how can you pretend to an artless simplicity when there's a dirty great poster for TITANIC on the wall behind an old woman as she weaves the traditional funeral cloth on the traditional loom (kept in-frame for the whole sequence, so even the laziest viewer can get the point about globalisation killing the traditional life of the Chinese village)? Gorgeously shot by any standards, but also shot through with condescension - the voice-over ("There were two wells in our village. People called the new well the Front Well. And they called the old well the Back Well") is ingenuous and unthreatening as baby-talk, the past a laundered, reassuring place where she simpers becomingly and cooks mushroom dumplings while he buys her pretty things to wear ; and the film's dramatic choices are downright bizarre - it's to be commended for avoiding sentimental epiphanies, but did the key dramatic payoff have to happen offscreen? And why mention the old teacher's students gathering from far and wide for his funeral, GOODBYE MR. CHIPS-style, if you're not going to use them? Seldom offensive - though I hated the tourist's-eye pause for a bit of pottery repair by the picturesque local craftsman - but terribly thin and easy, with unfortunate echoes (like the JU DOU-style red banner) from a time when Zhang was creating sensual and complex female characters. Nowadays their only real traits are tenacity and determination, which could be a metaphor for China resisting Western ways, or Chinese people's stoic tenacity in the dark days of Mao (when the film is set) ; or it could just be a metaphor for Zhang himself, left with nothing but his own blind persistence, trudging forward grimly even while he knows he's got nothing left to say.]

MEET THE PARENTS (60) (dir., Jay Roach) Ben Stiller, Robert De Niro, Blythe Danner, Owen Wilson [Went in with low expectations, not really taking it seriously (partly because I start humming the "Flintstones" theme every time I hear its title) ; pleasantly surprised, and the ethnic-minority subtext (which I'd been rather dubious about) is definitely there - Stiller's just too swarthily out of place, and his Jewishness remarked on once too often, to be accidental. Best of all is that it's even-handed : key scene is perhaps our hero meeting his girlfriend's teenage brother for the first time and piling on the "phat"s and "it's all good"s, apparently unaware he's sounding like an idiot - he tries too hard, is the point, and is partly the author of his own misfortunes (minorities shouldn't be so obsessed with assimilating, should be more secure about their identity : that's the best way to combat the inevitable discrimination). Only with that in mind does the film really make sense - the gag about saying grace, for instance, is just ridiculous unless you factor in the hero's over-determination to impress ; jokes are generally mild, often undeveloped (the wrong-suitcase gag is completely wasted) ; a single sequence in LITTLE MURDERS - Elliott Gould meeting his girlfriend's parents - pretty much said it all 30 years ago. But there's good details in the banter - the way everything's a minefield for a prospective son-in-law, from dogs vs. cats to the roast beef being slightly undercooked - and it's one of the few recent Hollywood comedies that actually gets better as it goes along ; basically a film you feel confident in recommending to anyone, albeit only just. Fans of late-80s comedy will be excited to find Emo Phillips' name among the credits ; fans of STATE AND MAIN will note he's merely an associate producer.]

THE 6TH DAY (56) (dir., Roger Spottiswoode) Arnold Schwarzenegger, Michael Rapaport, Robert Duvall [Spent most of the first half silently begging them not to blow it - though I knew they would, and indeed they do (and how!). It's Arnie's DEMOLITION MAN, wherein a fading action star acts the good sport while his so-called star vehicle disappears all around him, taking off into irresistible sci-fi satire - and the various details of a genome-mapped future tap the same rich vein of scary-funny extrapolation as in that mid-90s action comedy (or something like STRANGE DAYS, if without the stylish pyrotechnics). Trouble is, even as we chuckle at virtual girlfriends, nacho-flavoured bananas, a creepy animatronic doll (the "SimPal") worthy of Joe Dante and cloned pets you can colour-code to match your drapes - all held together by Arnie's cartoonish presence - we're already groaning at a car-chase where the cars zoom through somebody's house (cue bewildered-looking guy in living-room) and our hero making his escape by diving off an approximately 300-ft. waterfall, landing with no more than a gentle splash ; the dumb stuff gradually takes over ("Enough philaasophy," sez Arnie), the film turns uninspired, then bloated, overlong and finally just unpleasant. Still enough good stuff to make it worthwhile, but you really have to wonder "Whither Arnie?" : he's tried the dark grungy route in END OF DAYS, breezy self-deprecation here (even flexing his ageing body-builder biceps in front of the mirror, a sly reminder of glories past) and nothing seems to work. Can the paunchy stubbly COP LAND-style re-invention be far behind?...]

WONDER BOYS (55) (dir., Curtis Hanson) Michael Douglas, Tobey Maguire, Frances McDormand, Robert Downey Jr., Katie Holmes [Wouldn't it be great if Hollywood made more films like this one? Just not this particular one. The list of debits starts with Douglas, Oscar-baiting to the max (hair unkempt, limping around in an old dressing-gown, even prone to fainting spells for added pathos), thinly disguised as a 'brave' performance, and extends through Maguire doing the idiot-savant-as-symbol-of-purity to such minor irritations as the background music dipping to nudge us in the ribs just before a laugh-line ("I've got tenure") or the inevitable throwaway lament that "books don't mean anything anymore" ("so true!" nods the target audience sadly - without of course including themselves in the equation). Afflicted with an overweening quirkiness, whether it's the voice-over describing someone as "insightful, kind and compulsively clad in red cowboy boots" or just a supporting role for a seven-foot transvestite toting a tuba ; shame, for it has things to say - on getting old and staying true, and losing faith as the opposite of losing control - when it just plays it straight, and it's certainly 'brave', or at least grown-up (and less self-conscious than AMERICAN BEAUTY) on such matters as smoking pot and lusting after other men. References to dead movie icons too much like quirkiness for my taste ; though I did like the Jean Genet gag...]