Films Seen - January 2002

[Pre-'96 films not included.]

WET HOT AMERICAN SUMMER (61) (dir., David Wain) Janeane Garofalo, David Hyde Pierce, Michael Showalter, Paul Rudd, Christopher Meloni, Molly Shannon [Seems to me there's a new spirit stirring in American comedy this year - what you might call conceptual humour, where the joke isn't in the presentation so much as (yes!) the concept, and not so much in one-liners or individual gags as audacious juxtapositions and leaps into the void. Here's another one, added to the patchy-but-astounding likes of POOTIE TANG, FREDDY GOT FINGERED and - at the more showbiz-friendly end of the spectrum - ZOOLANDER, being ostensibly a spoof of MEATBALLS-style 80s teen comedies except that it only satirises them directly for a fraction of its length (notably the "motley crew of misfits" pep-talk and going-into-town montage) ; most of the time it's a less specific kind of humour, wacky in a melting-pot, alternately snarky and demented kind of way, obviously influenced - like those other films - by the wilder reaches of sketch-comedy TV, not so much breaking taboos as floating past them, as if unaware they exist (will a girl gratuitously request some lube "for my pussy"? will the gay counsellors kiss onscreen? well, duh) - and of course, like its aforementioned brethren, making no attempt to court the mass audience (look for think-pieces on the New American Comedy when one of these movies actually makes some money). Highlights like the world's most stylised motorbike chase, or the great Meloni being lectured by a talking can of vegetables (its half-opened lid flapping like a beak as it talks), illustrate why most people didn't go for it ; pitch-perfect turns by Garofalo, Hyde Pierce and Shannon (plus hilariously retro opening credits) illustrate that most people have no taste.]

MERCI POUR LE CHOCOLAT (61) (dir., Claude Chabrol) Isabelle Huppert, Jacques Dutronc, Anna Mouglalis, Rodolphe Pauly, Brigitte Catillon ["I take care of the chocolate in this house," purrs Huppert's controlling bitch, and she does too - ladling it out and forever wiping it off her spotless surfaces, a chocolate puddle on the floor looking unmistakably like blood. Chabrol has some spotless surfaces of his own to exhibit - placid Swiss landscapes and a well-heeled world of sports cars, tennis courts and snooty restaurants with the waiters hovering like butlers - though, as in LA CEREMONIE, he saves the punchline for the closing credits, turning monster into victim and incidentally tying together all the various references to Death (only it's a death of the soul rather than the body). Pace somewhat stodgy - as opposed to merely slow - and the film-making sometimes over-casual : a shot of Huppert and Catillon drinking tea together is just poorly composed, leaving far too much space around the women. Takes a very special kind of film - and director - to locate menace in a hidden hand rubbing up restlessly against the back of a jacket, though.]

THE MAN WHO WASN'T THERE (79) (dir., Joel [and Ethan] Coen) Billy Bob Thornton, Frances McDormand, James Gandolfini, Scarlett Johansson, Tony Shalhoub, Jon Polito, Michael Badalucco [What do I love about a Coen movie? Velvety visuals, plangent score (even if Beethoven takes most of the credit here), finely-turned loquaciousness, sure ; inspired non sequiturs, quirky line-readings (favourites in this case : Richard Jenkins on the porch and Badalucco's prim little twist on "We're on time, Ed"), absolutely ; and yes, I suppose it is a noir pastiche, with supporting characters named Dietrichson and a little man caught in nightmare after a hesitant stab at criminality ; but it's so much more you can hardly encompass it all (even now I wonder what that late flashback means, and whether the NIGHT OF THE HUNTER reference is just a gag). What it's really about - I'm convinced - isn't just the human yearning for something greater than ourselves ("all the things they don't have words for here"), but more specifically the gap between yearning for that something - some call it God, Ed just calls it "peace" - and being able to achieve it, whether because it isn't really there (as the lapsed and atheistic will tell you) or because Man seldom has the capacity (as a cautious optimist like myself prefers to imagine), not to mention being trapped in Heisenbergian uncertainty : "The more you look, the less you know". The film's beautiful tragedy lies in being about a man who longs for Truth - he hates "phonies" more than anything, and even looks at a hair-piece with faint contempt - yet doesn't have the sensitivity to match (or consummate) his longing ; he's forever trying to get beyond existence, alienated from the life around him - he is the Man Who Wasn't There, nor is the laconic barber's garrulous voice-over merely a good joke (caught in the maze of his life, he can barely express himself ; only when he gets beyond, on the outside looking in, can he say what he feels) - but it takes an artist to accomplish what he seeks, and Ed doesn't have an artistic bone in his body (Shalhoub's silver-tongued lawyer is the artist - but he doesn't care about the truth at all). He's a small-timer, an entrepreneur ("modern Man"), seeing things (at best) as a business opportunity - a grey man in a grey flannel suit, justifying the film's setting at the cusp of 'modern' secular materialism ; it's a meditation, a love story and an ode to inarticulateness, valuing honest effort over slick complacency - and incidentally turning the spotlight back on its creators, who express themselves so meticulously on film yet often seem unable to string two sentences together in interviews. What do I love about a Coen movie? Wondering why Ed is so taken with the dry-cleaning scheme and noting, on second viewing, how Polito advertises "Cleanliness!" as part of his sales pitch (next to godliness, completes the viewer, mindful of the film's central theme) - then, almost an hour later, watching Ed leaf through a "Life" magazine spread on the subject and there, right in a corner of the screen, is the rest of the line : "Next to godliness!". Truly, the Coens think of everything. Stunning.]

BEHIND ENEMY LINES (38) (dir., John Moore) Owen Wilson, Gene Hackman, Gabriel Macht, Joaquim de Almeida [Slightly better than BLACK HAWK DOWN, mostly because it's 40 minutes shorter and doesn't pretend to be 'objective' about war, pitting its hero against honest-to-goodness baddies : he longs for the cut-and-dried days of WW2 when a guy could "punch a Nazi in the face" but the nasty Serbs he battles make excellent stand-ins, not just executing his wounded buddy but sadistically stamping on his broken leg first (good job, Serbs). The film longs for 'real' war as well, not this NATO peacekeeping nonsense where you don't know who your friends are half the time and our fine fighting men are hamstrung by swarthy foreigners and their hidden agendas ; "You are just what this conflict needs," smarmy de Almeida tells hard-nosed Admiral Hackman : "An uncomplicated man" (he's being sarcastic ; the film is not). So unthinking and overheated, macho and simplistic you can't even get angry - just somewhat puzzled. How does Hackman's brilliant strategy of leaking the whole situation to the media actually help anything, beyond pissing off the NATO guy? Why does a veritable horde of Serbian marksmen have such trouble shooting straight when they aim at our hero? Would a BBC news reporter really end up sounding like an advert for the US Navy ("They remain in a high state of readiness, eager to answer the call")? Do Navy planes really come equipped with a mellifluous female voice going "Warning! Warning!" after they get hit by a missile?]

VANILLA SKY (63) (dir., Cameron Crowe) Tom Cruise, Penelope Cruz, Cameron Diaz, Jason Lee, Kurt Russell [Quite remarkable, really : essentially the same film as OPEN YOUR EYES, slightly Hollywoodised (told you they'd drop the gratuitous tit-shot), yet completely different in approach - and subtly tweaked to reflect Crowe's recurring theme, viz. the man-child leaving his protected bubble, starting to engage with the world (incidentally adding this to AMELIE and THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS as movies where a choice must be made between private dreams and real-life compromise ; do we have a trend here?). Some may say Cruise is the real auteur, and they have a point - his movie-star glamour brings an automatic narcissism that obviously resonates with the material, and the theme suits him just as much as it does Crowe - but it's clearly relevant that the bubble has been sculpted (as in ALMOST FAMOUS) out of pop-culture, bits and pieces of songs, films and paintings, and it's Crowe who changes the thrust of the story from a thriller to a romantic comedy-drama, playing up the "night of true love" and playing down the shock moments involving the disfigured face (even the mask is more sad than creepy, with upturned eyebrows like a pierrot), as well as adding scads of literate dialogue (the "sweet and sour speech", the "saddest girl ever to hold a martini") and working his usual magic with the actors : don't think I've ever seen Cruz more relaxed and radiant than when she's looking at her portrait or smiles conspiratorially and says "Come here, I want to tell you a secret". Then again, it may well be that her radiance is due entirely to her co-star's extra-curricular assistance, and it's surely Cruise who lobbied for the hero's smirky immaturity to be traced so specifically to an unhappy childhood (a childhood flashback triggers the first abrupt switch to a darker tone) ; Spot-the-Auteur, a fun game for the whole family. Story still problematic, climax still anti-climactic - though Crowe seems to realise the final leap was never as ambiguous as Amenabar intended - and the whole thing now seems rather overlong and over-inflated ; still pretty good, though...]

OCEAN'S ELEVEN (70) (73 - second viewing) (dir., Steven Soderbergh) George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Julia Roberts, Andy Garcia, Matt Damon, Carl Reiner, Bernie Mac ["And introducing Julia Roberts as Tess," tease the closing credits - making light of star power while (of course) acknowledging and bowing down to it, like the film itself. A delicate balance effortlessly achieved, Smoothie Soderbergh's gift being apparently the creation of a slick, separate world that's coherent in itself, like a secret club we can either join or stand outside sniping at : the language of con-artists ("Two Jethros and a Leon Spinks, not to mention the biggest Ella Fitzgerald ever") is the secret language of movie stars oozing laid-back glamour, and what kind of dork would quibble that you couldn't slip a cell-phone into someone's coat pocket - then dial the number hours later - in the real world, because they'd probably have taken their coat off by then, or else reached into their pocket for a Kleenex and upset your plans (even though it's true)? Other quibbles equally valid - how long could a thug pretend to be beating someone up behind a closed door without giving the game away? how can Clooney emerge looking fairly unscathed after such a brutal beating? - and equally misguided, especially when Soderbergh's moving things along so fluidly and David Holmes' instant-cool score is thumping in the background, and Reiner's reminiscing about a woman "who worked the unmentionables counter at Macy's". Both playful and elaborate, the former increasing in direct proportion to the latter ; never cheats unless you doubt the premise itself, like a really tall tale told by a really good liar. Isn't that what films are all about?] [Actually picked up even more quibbles on second viewing - e.g. the plan apparently depends on Roberts seeking out Pitt on the casino floor ; what if she hadn't? - but also picked up even more strongly on the confidence, elegance and sheer sense of pleasure with which it's made. I want to see it again right this minute, and you can't ask much more from a movie. "Clair De Lune" is the scene to remember, but if I had to choose a Typical Moment it might be that heist-film cliché, Pitt giving rookie Damon the usual last-minute instructions on his upcoming 'job' : "Don't look down, or he'll know you're lying", "Be funny but not memorable" - finishing up with "And above all, the most important thing you have to remember is to never, ever, under any circumstances -" at which point he's called away by someone else, leaving Damon bug-eyed with frustration. Hilarious.]

THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS (63) (dir., Wes Anderson) Gene Hackman, Ben Stiller, Gwyneth Paltrow, Luke Wilson, Owen Wilson, Anjelica Huston, Bill Murray [Meet the American AMELIE : emotion artfully disguised / deflected by quirky games-playing, list-making and obsessive-compulsive behaviour ; characters escaped in their private little worlds, finally forced to emerge and face reality ; asexual couplings, love defined by obsession more than tenderness ; carefully composed visual style, emphasising artificiality ; dry but assertive voice-over, starting with a lengthy childhood flashback - which reverberates in tone throughout the movie, childhood being key to its nostalgic arrestedness. "A missive from the secret world of kids," I wrote re: RUSHMORE back in '99, adding that "its pixillated magic lies in extending [the child's-eye view] to everything that happens, without adult intervention (indeed, extending it to many of the adults too)" ; substitute "most" for "many" and not much has changed, except that RUSHMORE's "magic" has faded somewhat on repeat viewing and Anderson's precious packaging of saccharine stories in yearning understatement - cosily adorned with goofy-coloured ribbons tied just-so - is starting to get on my nerves. Can't dismiss the visual invention, though, painterly attention to detail and myriad offbeat touches (Bill Murray's beard is a movie in itself), and he's obviously an original : characters ask each other to proof-read an epitaph or paraphrase a suicide note, pint-size outlaws get a Paul Simon soundtrack and rascally Hackman (tactless, selfish, borderline-racist) makes like Jack Nicholson in AS GOOD AS IT GETS, only more delinquent. Studiously unsentimental, if a bit too studiously.]

MONSTERS INC. (71) (dir., Pete Docter) With the voices of John Goodman, Billy Crystal, Steve Buscemi, Jennifer Tilly [Not a lot to say about this, except that Pixar now rival only Haneke and the Coens (and, I guess, P.T. Anderson) for Consistent Excellence in Entertainment, and remain a beacon of light in the SHREK-benighted world of kids' cartoons : hard not to infer a wry note of self-reference in the gag near the end, when Wazowski tries to make a stone-faced tyke laugh with one-liners and sparkling repartee - then finally decides the-hell-with-it and burps loudly, eliciting squeals of delight. Not as well thought-out as its predecessors - what's the point of banishment if it's so easy for monsters to come back? - and a bit more sappy, but any film that can conjure pathos (and a lump in the throat) out of the paternal instincts of a giant blue furball is obviously doing something right. Nothing really stands out, gag-wise - except perhaps "Bring-An-Obscure-Relative-To-Work Day" - but it's all fresh and likeable, from jazzy opening credits to disarmingly sweet final moment, and of course it helps that Crystal's "Seinfeld" stylings are more to my taste than Eddie Murphy's coarser schtick (weighing up possible plans : "Big wooden horse? Too Greek!"). Good to know what puce looks like, too, after all these years...]

BLACK HAWK DOWN (37) (dir., Ridley Scott) Josh Hartnett, Tom Sizemore, Eric Bana, Sam Shepard, William Fichtner [Most significant shot here is perhaps the late glimpse of distressed commander Shepard - exemplar of Responsible soldiering, and a stickler for the 'rules of engagement' - desperately trying to wipe the blood off the floor of an infirmary filled with battle casualties : US foreign policy too obsessed with avoiding bloodshed, even where bloodshed is inevitable, hence (implicitly) losing sight of what battle is all about. "You can't control who gets hit," explains a soldier, "it's just war" - contrasting starkly with their CO's instructions to "be careful what you shoot at" and the general suggestion that war has been tamed by technology and international Conventions ("Only the dead have seen the end of war," cautions the opening epigram) ; the film uses war-is-hell clichés in worrisome ways, basically arguing that war is uncontrollable and any notion of civilised behaviour should go out the window when battle is joined - edging close to 'Kill 'em all, let God sort 'em out' territory in its emphasis that women and children carry guns as well (and will use them against you if you let them go), and close to outright racism in its view of the Somalis, shadowy figures except for the officer who explains that "in Somalia, killing is negotiation ; there will always be killing - this is how things are in our world" (implication : we're fighting savages, and we're worried about rules of engagement?). None of which would matter very much if the human element were there - bloodlust comes with the territory, after all - except the film's brutalism also demands that characters be smothered, individuals subjugated to the task at hand and the audience plunged into disorienting you-are-there experience in place of narrative (can't really comment till I've seen it on the big screen, but it does seem a lot easier to scramble everything together like this instead of bothering with geographical coherence). Obviously intense, and I guess it has a certain integrity, but it's just not very interesting : war-as-videogame action is monotonous, 'exotic' soundtrack fairly perfunctory, PRIVATE RYAN visuals impressive rather than exciting. Extra debits for the jaw-dropping - not to say obscene - final caption in which, having watched American troops hemmed in and shot to pieces for two-hours-plus, we learn that about 100 times as many Somalis as Americans actually lost their lives in the raid - and the film, seemingly oblivious to what it's just pointed out, then proceeds to do an honour roll of the dozen or so Americans who did get killed. Am I crazy, or is that just a wee bit insensitive?...]

CHAIN CAMERA (67) (dir., Kirby Dick) [Obvious double-bill with ELECTION, but a better equivalent is perhaps WAKING LIFE : as in that film, joy resides in the inspiring variety of life - multifarious parts co-existing, rubbing up against each other - more than any individual part, though they all have their moments. Parents come off worst, either absent or ineffectual, though that could well be a consequence of the unmediated format (teens with strong or domineering parents may have been discouraged from taking part, or not confident enough to speak out honestly even if they did) ; fairly dubious as social cross-section, despite the strenuous attempts at diversity / tokenism, but funny and moving as a random selection of untrammelled youngsters "expressing themselves to the whole world", esp. since the chain-letter structure militates against the self-indulgence of similar "video diaries" projects on TV (having the camera for one week only makes it no big deal ; some of the most revealing segments are those where the kids use it mostly as an excuse to horse around). Highlights include the smart kid facing unrequited love, the incongruously innocent, almost pre-sexual couple sitting on the bed talking masturbation, the pill-popping punk turning out to be politically active, the chubby gay boy and his macho chums, Stephanie and her Dad watching TV, plus (of course) the fake blow-job ; the slightly simple kid taking his king-of-the-prom coronation at face value - thinking people must really like him if they voted for him - is a cutting indictment of such PC idiocies.]

ALI (64) (dir., Michael Mann) Will Smith, Jamie Foxx, Jon Voight, Mario Van Peebles, Ron Silver [Loses its way a bit, not so much because it loses the human element (what with this and BLACK HAWK DOWN, depersonalised dazzle seems to be taking over this year's slate of Oscar-bait) but because it tries to regain it : Ali's progression to iconic status is compelling enough, but the boxing (after the breathtaking real-time ferment of the first Liston fight) becomes increasingly irrelevant, making the Rumble-in-the-Jungle climax feel superfluous - Ali's wilderness years (and racial pride) have already been vindicated, and it's long been established that there's more to the man than winning titles (one moment does stick out : Ali face to face with a mural of Ali-the-icon in Kinshasa). Smith's performance formidable nonetheless, one of those rare cases where a monumental figure's dark side is established without cheapening, or detracting one iota from his significance - driven entirely by his own agenda, cutting off people he admires (e.g. Malcolm X) or holding on to others who've betrayed him (like his money-grubbing manager) as needs dictate, undistracted by ego or sentimentality (it's sweet when he sticks up for Angelo Dundee, but there's also the suspicion that he looks on his trainer merely as an extension of himself) ; and of course he's also one of Mann's existential heroes, seizing responsibility for his life - "ain't gotta be what anyone wants me to be" - in a hard-nosed masculine world of aggression and business, like the heroes of HEAT or Jeffrey Wigand in THE INSIDER (or Hawkeye in THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS). Mann himself is rapidly becoming the King of Pregnant Moments - a pre-fight prayer, a ride in a car to a Big Event - burnishing and mythologising them, holding them up in Time like jewels to the light ; remarkably pure, formally prodigious film-making. But it loses its way a bit...]

INTIMACY (47) (dir., Patrice Chéreau) Mark Rylance, Kerry Fox, Timothy Spall, Alastair Galbraith [Does this film even realise what a wanker its protagonist is? A commitment-phobe, having walked out on wife and kids for no better reason than because he felt like it, he longs for anonymous sex and is irked when his partner shows signs of wanting more - "I thought you were ahead of me," he sighs, disappointed in her - yet also romanticises his old family life in poignant flashbacks and breaks with anonymity by following her home and secretly befriending her husband, consciously putting himself in the other man's shoes. The idea seems to be a man who secretly craves but can't handle intimacy (UN COEUR EN HIVER comes to mind), yet the film never distances itself sufficiently, always privileging its hero's viewpoint (his ex-wife never appears independently, nor does his new lover ever comment on his character ; it's weirdly lopsided for a 'relationship movie') till it seems to be wallowing in his own self-centred self-pity : hard to discern much irony when hero's friend boasts that he and hero "have always done what we wanted", equally hard not to link hero's gratuitous dissing of Billy Joel with a tragically-hip director kicking things off with Tindersticks over the opening credits (with abrupt cut-off midway through the song for that 'harsh' effect). Initially intriguing, then half-baked and wilfully opaque, its strangest subtext having to do with acting : Fox berates her drama students over a "fake" love scene, Rylance gets a tirade against "resting actors" - yet becomes an actor himself later on, spinning a yarn for Spall's sake, just as Fox, we're told, has no acting talent, making her criticism of the students suspect and unreliable. Is the film saying that acting is part of life, the quest for 'truth' - as e.g. in a purely sexual relationship, physical intimacy free of social niceties - harmful and unrealistic? Why do I suspect M. Chéreau wants us to applaud his shaky-cam and 'truthfully' graphic sex scenes anyway?...]

THE EXPERIMENT (52) (dir., Oliver Hirschbiegel) Moritz Bleibtreu, Christian Berkel, Justus von Dohnanyi, Oliver Stokowski [Got a lot of respect for this, having watched it silence a rowdy, unsympathetic audience who spent most of the first 15 minutes laughing at the German accents - but this kind of hothouse, claustrophobic premise (based-on-a-true-story scientific experiment with volunteers divided into wardens and prisoners in a mock-up prison) either carries you completely or not at all, and I never quite believed the histrionic second half (where we wallow in unpleasantness, prisoners are humiliated and the wardens behave ... well, like Nazis). Little things bring it down further, e.g. the undeveloped way our hero is given an Arab name, lazily suggesting the story may have things to say on current German racism without actually saying any of those things (some will call it subtle, but it struck me as a bid for brownie-points with minimal effort), or the way his girlfriend on the outside is misguidedly - and irrelevantly - used to 'open up' the narrative without being given anything to do (why would you want to open up this particular narrative, anyway?) ; basic problem is a lack of conviction, however, and the suspicion that, even if it happened, it didn't happen quite like this - wouldn't the prisoners point-blank refuse to strip naked? wouldn't the wardens sit down on the first day and discuss how rules would be enforced? why would they follow a man they have no real respect for? why would they descend into savagery, in the absence of "Lord of the Flies"-like necessity or appeal to their machismo? (an early reference to the prisoners "wearing dresses", i.e. less than real men, is a good start, but more was needed). Too much in the post-RUN LOLA RUN German style of flash-and-dash, not enough in the way of psychological detail ; obviously a crowd-pleaser, though - and I'll definitely be quoting the joke that begins "Why do women watch porno movies all the way to the end?"...]

THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING (55) (dir., Peter Jackson) Elijah Wood, Ian McKellen, Viggo Mortensen, Sean Bean, Cate Blanchett, Liv Tyler [Behold! I, Theo, son of Panos, do now take this most dread and solemn vow, that I will return to this broken-backed movie two years hence, yea and see how it fits into the overall 9-hour scheme - which, on this evidence, should be something to behold (Behold!), despite the giggle-inducing air of pomposity (am I the only one who cracks up at mere mention of the Inn with the Prancing Pony?). Takes ages to get going, Jackson's rhythm sluggish and hesitant, though that's hopefully to be fixed in the mix (90-minute build-up is excessive over 178 mins., reasonable over 540) ; gets quite stirring in the second half - whole underground set-piece has a steadily-increasing grandeur (with a great, bleached-out image as they finally emerge into daylight) and the fight scenes never cheat, stopping to show who's doing what to whom - though still seemed rather insubstantial to this non-Tolkien fan, character relationships rather thin and sketchy (Gandalf-Bilbo axis is probably the strongest, and that's barely glimpsed). Tale of a changing world where the individual must try and make a difference ("Even the smallest person can change the course of History") is both timeless and timely, of course, and at least the recurring theme of predestination - what is Written vs. what can be shaped, with the implicit presence of a divine hand choosing this particular hobbit for this particular mission - fits in perfectly with the concept of a part-finished film, a narrative in progress known only to the omniscient film-maker ; got chills down my spine when Sam opines they've probably seen the last of their companions as the Fellowship breaks up at the very end, and Frodo shakes his head and says don't be so sure - a nod to the wider canvas, and reminder that the end is yet to come. Still cautiously optimistic, though this really isn't much of a movie ; Wood makes a great Everyhobbit, however. Behold!...]

SPY GAME (57) (dir., Tony Scott) Robert Redford, Brad Pitt, Catherine McCormack, Stephen Dillane [You've got to hand it to Tony Scott : this is a preposterous film, but he juices it up like nobody's business - not just the filtered look and frenzied camera (any Simon West can do that) but a voracious appreciation of excess (Renny Harlin does it too), meeting the preposterousness head-on and turning it up to eleven. A secret confab to bribe a Chinese official is intercut with said official watching "Baywatch", delicate negotiations constantly giving way to full-screen images of lifeguards and babes (not irrelevant - the show reminds him of the Western way of life, which is why he accepts the bribe - but still preposterous). A boy soprano takes over the soundtrack whenever pathos is required (and sometimes when it isn't). The race-against-time scenario (24 hrs. to rescue Pitt from the firing squad) is of course familiar, but it's not everyone who'd give the time-checks in portentous freeze-frames ("How long do we have?" "24 hours" "As of when?" "As of now, Nathan" - blam! freeze on Redford looking worried, with a caption reading "8:02 a.m."), let alone remind us of the situation at regular intervals - "2:10 p.m." reads a caption ; "Execution at 8 a.m." adds another caption (my favourite in Superfluous Captions Dept. : this happened in Beirut, says Redford, back in '85, "place was a nightmare then" - cut to flashback, plus caption reading "Beirut '85"). Supremely silly, helping to disguise its rather dubious politics, wherein US secret agents carry out the "very necessary" job of intervention in other countries, targeting people (sorry, terrorists) for assassination and ignoring locals who run the gamut from corrupt to incompetent (it's important that we "do it our way", instructs Redford). Wants to be elegant and kinetic at the same time, grab the popcorn audience while encroaching on John le Carré territory of backroom deals and endless gamesmanship (our hero does it for the sport, telling a rival "You've got something in your teeth" just to watch him poking and grimacing in the mirror) ; wants too much - but still fun for what it is. Incidental question : why is a 1976 flashback introduced with Dire Straits singing "Brothers In Arms"?]

THE MUSKETEER (38) (dir., Peter Hyams) Justin Chambers, Catherine Deneuve, Mena Suvari, Stephen Rea, Tim Roth [Mixing genres, BROTHERHOOD OF THE WOLF-style - period adventure meets THE MATRIX - but why bother bringing a "stunt choreographer" all the way from Hong Kong if you're going to cut fast and shoot close on the fight scenes, so we can't even tell what's going on half the time? Nice work, Hyams. Debits : murky visuals, male-mannequin hero, kind of diction that attempts a 17th-century feel by banishing apostrophes ("Do not harm her!" ; "Do not tell him!"). Minor credits : the fight with the ladders (just for the visual texture)* and the villainous double-act of long-faced Rea and twitchy-eyed Roth (doing his foppish psycho out of ROB ROY and VATEL), esp. when Rea-as-Richelieu warns henchman Roth to carry out their plans without killing anyone. "What if I ... absolutely ... must kill someone?" quivers Roth, barely able to contain himself. Rea looks blank for a moment then shrugs wearily, his hangdog face already bored by the question : "Well, if you must, you must..."]

* : I'm now informed (thank you, Mr. Gregersen) that this is actually a rip-off of the climax from ONCE UPON A TIME IN CHINA - but why quibble?...

HEARTS IN ATLANTIS (34) (dir., Scott Hicks) Anthony Hopkins, Anton Yelchin, Hope Davis, David Morse [What an odd, insubstantial non-movie : it's like random motes of bittersweet nostalgia floating around in a vacuum. I wasn't around in the early 60s, but I suspect there was more to it than glimpses of "The Lone Ranger" on TV and rock'n roll standards on the soundtrack (esp. since the sensibility is determinedly 00s - a mother instantly suspicious of a kindly old man's motives towards her son, a homophobic taunt turning out to conceal a repressed cross-dresser) ; treacly score weighs a ton, even the washing on the line gets a golden back-light (a sad swansong for Piotr Sobocinski), Hopkins does his venerable-elder act, i.e. looks stoned and caresses every line - but there's no reason to believe any self-respecting kid would bond with this lifeless geezer, lobbing snoozy truisms like "When you're young you live moments of such happiness you think you're living someplace magical" and going on about "all the master storytellers of the world" (it's painful when he leavens the lesson with fart sounds and lines like " 'A Tale Of Two Cities' ends with a beheading, all kinds of good stuff" ; even kids aren't that stupid). Most incredibly, the story just drifts away, smothered in its own sickly atmosphere : nothing really happens, and the 40-years-later framing device is almost comically irrelevant, milking pathos out of characters we never get to know (the baseball glove hardly features at all) ; meanwhile that damn score keeps lamenting and the voice-over says stuff like "That summer was the last of my childhood". Why is David Morse even in this movie?...]

MONSTER'S BALL (61) (dir., Marc Forster) Billy Bob Thornton, Halle Berry, Peter Boyle, Heath Ledger, Sean 'Puffy' Combs [Mildly recommended for the performances and a gentle, unforced ending (to the effect that only when the past becomes truly irrelevant can the healing begin), plus that languid, morbid Deep South mood I always respond to. Lots of crude or exploitative things along the way, however, Forster's head-on approach edging close to sensationalism in the needlessly drawn-out execution scene (what with this and THE GREEN MILE, capital punishment is fast becoming the movies' new spectator sport), while the characters tend to be a bit too on-the-nose, not to say one-dimensional : just seems fake when a Death Row prisoner comes out with a line like "I've always believed that a portrait captures a person far better than a photograph" (it's that "far better" bit that gets bullshit-detectors going), except of course the script wants to make him virtuous and burnish his memory before the fact, and the racist ravings of bad-old-man Boyle - first cousin to James Coburn in AFFLICTION - are the cheapest of cheap shots (making him a cause of the break-up, meanwhile, is just absurd, esp. with a heroine so clued-in and cynical about both fatherhood and race in America ; if anything, the encounter should've made her love Thornton all the more, for surviving such a monstrous upbringing). Forster's matter-of-fact - some will say fearless - depiction of such things as paid sex and child abuse is a heartening sign (maybe a new generation is about to move beyond the PC evasions that have stifled Hollywood in the past couple of decades), though he spoils the effect with an over-stylised love scene ; Berry shows off a bit, over-indulging the slummy sluttiness ("Mah husband, he used to love him some Jack Daniel"), but Thornton can stop your heart with a simple "'Preciate it". Patchy, meretricious, kind of maudlin (what is it with bereaved parents this year?), still way better than the TV movie it could - and should - have been. By the way, I missed the line where someone explains the title ; was it important?]

THE AMERICAN ASTRONAUT (66) (dir., Cory McAbee) Cory McAbee, Rocco Sisto, Greg Russell Cook [Best black-and-white sci-fi Western musical with an outer-space setting I've seen in quite a while (better camp than HEDWIG, too). Here's your old coot in a bar asking "Is it just me, or do my balls itch?". Here's your musical number set in a men's toilet. Here's your characters with names like the Blueberry Pirate - an "interplanetary fruit thief" - and the Boy Who Actually Saw A Woman's Breast ("It was round and soft. Now go back to work"). Here's your real live girl in a box, heralding the dawn of a new era - "an era of sexually explicit conversation!". Here's your wilfully slapdash, unrestrained id-effusion for unsocialised male adolescents (real and arrested). Here's your ramshackle plot, un-special special effects and reference to late-60s Anatole Litvak obscurio THE LADY IN THE CAR WITH GLASSES AND A GUN. "A Laurel & Hardy skit directed by Salvador Dali," reckoned "EW", but it's more like "The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy" covered by the Leningrad Cowboys, Aki Kaurismaki at the controls. Means to be outlandish, hilarious and an instant cult movie - and it mostly is.]

LITTLE OTIK (70) (second viewing: 67) (dir., Jan Svankmajer) Veronika Zilkova, Jan Hartl, Kristina Adamcova [Pretty great, though I can see why Svankmajer fans generally rate it below his other work : it's much less visually extravagant, working as straight narrative more than delirious head-trip - a combination of bright social satire and dark fairytale (with obvious echoes of ERASERHEAD, ROSEMARY'S BABY and THE LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS). Camera dwells on textures - soil, a cat's fur, details of food and eating (how bizarre an egg-yolk or a bowl of porridge look in close-up!) - aligning child-rearing with the rest of the natural world, babies weird, squalling, dough-like things yet inescapably part of us ; tight framing helps, concentrating the mind on every image, setting off the rather excessive running-time ; third act the least satisfying thematically - unaccountably abandoning the parental angle - but also the most confidently paced, ending the film on a solid note. It's the Svankmajer film you could recommend to your college-educated, married-with-children friends looking for a 'proper movie' as well as your wild-and-woolly teenage nephew looking for some groovy fucked-up visuals. Why is that a bad thing?] [Second viewing, November 2006: Still impressive, but the rhythm in the first half seemed very creaky this time round, and the second half - as already mentioned - is thematically wonky, abandoning the parents to concentrate on the little girl (whose motives for looking after Otik are ... what exactly?). Maybe I just liked it more five years ago because 2001 was such a frustrating year.] 

BEHIND THE SUN (50) (dir., Walter Salles) Ravi Ramos Lacerda, Rodrigo Santoro, José Dumont [Scrubby brown rural-Brazilian landscape in stark, uncluttered compositions. Mucho familiar signifiers - harsh oppressive life (even the oxen going round in circles), wide-eyed little boy, the magic of books, a travelling circus. Lots of faux poetry - "This is a story about me, my brother and a shirt in the wind" - full moon at the climax, symbolic rain ("It never rains," marvels the child) acting as a kind of catharsis. Really don't have much to say about this pleasant, undistinguished, literal-minded movie, except how could anyone in their right minds - come on down, National Board of Review! - possibly name it the second-best foreign-language film of the year? I mean jesus...]

ZOOLANDER (49) (dir., Ben Stiller) Ben Stiller, Owen Wilson, Christine Taylor, Jerry Stiller, Will Ferrell [Male models = movie stars? 'Obviously' a joke when Stiller-as-Zoolander refers to himself as "ridiculously good-looking" and does a little moue like Dr. Evil, but he is getting (lots of) money to direct himself, his real-life Dad and his real-life wife in a self-indulgent comedy that flatters all their egos, with celebrity pals popping up not to kid their image (Fabio perhaps excepted) but to use it, adding a little glamour for the benefit of us mere mortals ; seems a little suspect making fun of "vain, narcissistic people" under the circumstances. Just as well the satire is mild, really, patchy knockabout comedy where the throwaway gags - "Earth to Matilda", "You can read minds?", Hansel saying Sting is a hero of his though he doesn't actually listen to the music ("But the fact that he's making it, I respect that") - are a lot funnier than the major set-pieces. Worth preserving for the whole MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE angle and Mugatu's training video, not so much when it trades on the 80s kitsch and flails around in random spoofs of 2001 or THE GODFATHER ; Jon Voight saying "I'm a coal-miner, not a professional film and television actor" might've been a great capper to something, but it just comes out of nowhere.]

THE CURSE OF THE JADE SCORPION (55) (dir., Woody Allen) Woody Allen, Helen Hunt, Dan Aykroyd, Charlize Theron [Phew! Woody lives, just about (thought we'd lost him for good after SMALL TIME CROOKS), though his acting is getting more erratic - he gesticulates so frantically you sometimes feel the next line must've slipped his ageing mind - and he should definitely think about a co-writer, making heavy weather of a splendid comic premise. Just laziness, for the most part, spinning his wheels after the first jewel robbery and not even bothering with questions of plausibility - why should the hypnotist have him hold on to the jewels, for one thing? why not bring them straight over, or at least include a hiding-place in the instructions? - let alone wrapping things up in a clever way (our hero's 'street' contacts conveniently come to the rescue). Also of course a question of temperament, narrative never having been a Woody strength, edging back to his "early funny movies" in his old age with a shambolic series of gags, now spiced with his crusty-old-coot persona - no longer the young neurotic on the prowl but a dirty old man and "shallow, skirt-chasing egomaniac" whose charm lies mainly in his resilience (women call him a reptile and an inchworm but he shrugs it off - and lo, they're secretly in love with him!). He's become an Institution, which is why these nostalgia pieces have a certain edge - he's not just setting films in the 40s, he lived the 40s - and why narrative inertia can be charming as well as irritating, esp. when sexism doesn't intrude too much (Hunt properly spiky in the Rosalind Russell role) and the fast-talking ambience spurs him to a couple of reasonable quips - and the images just glow, albeit more in a general golden-sheen-of-nostalgia way than any similarity to specific 40s pictures (then again, isn't that the point?). Also thought Charlize Theron incredibly sexy in Lauren Bacall / Veronica Lake get-up, but maybe that's just me.]