Films Seen - January 2003

[Pre-'96 films not included.]

THE HOURS (42) (dir., Stephen Daldry) Nicole Kidman, Julianne Moore, Meryl Streep, Ed Harris, Jeff Daniels, Claire Danes, Toni Collette, Stephen Dillane [The cinematic equivalent of a hot flush (yes, it's a woman thing), when the world suddenly seems too much to bear and things loose their moorings - "I seem to be unravelling," sez Streep - for no reason you can put your finger on, just a vague hormonal panic : three women in three ages, linked by nothing more substantial than dissatisfaction, neurosis and a general sense that "there are times when you don't belong, and you think you're going to kill yourself" (the straightforward 'queer' reading adopted by some critics seems surprising : if anything, the film seems to make sexuality per se less important, the kiss on the lips signifying different things - sympathy, lust or connection - to each of the women). Written with recurring motifs - bunches of flowers, guests arriving early for a party, and especially Death (has a film ever been so morbid to so little purpose?) - but there seems no reason why we should be getting these motifs as opposed to other ones - they're just ways of pointing out the stories are connected, though no-one seems to know exactly how (ditto the device of Virginia Woolf as a link, unless Woolf can be reduced to some special facet of Oppressed Womanhood) ; madness, social repression, stifled creativity and the loss of youth all crop up among the suspects, and at one point I thought a person's right to control over their life was the point, even extending to the right to suicide (but then the next moment someone admonished that "You can't find peace by avoiding Life"). In the absence of connecting theme, a stellar cast fall back on mannerism : Kidman does birdlike swoops and fidgets of her head to suggest eccentric restlessness (though she's actually the best thing in it), Harris says he wants to write poems about "everything in the world", half-closes his eyes and shakes his head at the beauty and pain of it all (only just refraining from putting a hand to his forehead in I-vant-to-be-alone style) ; banalities are mouthed ("I'm going to bake a cake") to the ominous strains of Philip Glass's doom-laden score. The effect is surreal, like a group of mourners wailing and lamenting round an empty coffin. Guess what the last two words of the voice-over are? Hey, it worked for THE DEAD...]

NARC (54) (dir., Joe Carnahan) Jason Patric, Ray Liotta, Krista Bridges [Police procedural, touching all the usual bases : the stakeout, where the cops relax and get personal ("talk wives") for a little while ; the interrogation, with yelling and bullying and battling of wills ("Say 'fuck you' again!" snarls cop to suspect, doing the old crazy-eyes ; "Say 'fuck you' to me again!") ; the guy from the coroner's office, eyeing a corpse with a cheerfully cursory "He's ripe" ; the chase, with roving camera and a little undercranking (a.k.a. the Private Ryan Effect), and special attention paid to harsh verisimilitude like the blood spurting when you tie a tourniquet and the gurgling sound a man makes after he's been stabbed in the neck. And yes, our hero's afraid of becoming like the people he hunts - it's a fine line between narc and junkie - and yes, Liotta is the good cop who doesn't play by the book, going by his own sense of right and wrong (he's got a 93% conviction rate - but he's "not stable," says the chief darkly), and yes, the cop on the street is forever having to fight city hall, with their cynical politics. I've seen it called a 70s throwback, but it's not like these ingredients are unfamiliar, even in these permutations (TRAINING DAY played with the maverick-supercop cliché just last year), and Carnahan's flashy style doesn't seem remotely retro - even his split-screen feels snazzy rather than cheesy, as if done on the latest split-screen software ; basically an actors' showcase, grabbed with both hands by Liotta (who executive-produced), doing the kind of role people talk about. Memorably moody, generally gripping, still slightly lacking. Put it this way : if it didn't exist, we wouldn't have to invent it.]

HUMAN NATURE (49) (dir., Michel Gondry) Tim Robbins, Patricia Arquette, Rhys Ifans, Miranda Otto [Charlie Kaufman seems mainly to delight in (a) making things unpleasant for repressed, over-intellectual protagonists (CONFESSIONS OF A DANGEROUS MIND being the exception, but it's not an original script) and (b) not so much subverting as ignoring the scriptwriter's rule-book with a kind of studied casualness, as when the framing story - Ifans testifying before Congress - gets tied together in comically arbitrary fashion ("...but first go back and testify before Congress," suggests Arquette for no particular reason as the film is about to end). Similar dynamic to BEING JOHN MALKOVICH - selfish weak husband, neglected animal-loving wife, oddball outsider (Ifans / Malkovich) 'tamed' by the former only to provide self-actualisation for the latter ; jokes not as good, however, and Gondry's work mostly unmemorable (in the simple sense that, 10 days after watching the movie, I can't remember it). Mouse-cam is fun, though, and it's almost worth a rental just to hear uptight Robbins trying to assure his beloved that he does indeed love Nature and animals : "Animals. And Nature. Wind. Animals. What have you. Squirrels..."]

CITY OF LOST SOULS (62) (dir., Takashi Miike) Michelle Reis, Teah, Koji Kikkawa [Narrative humdrum, and so confused it took me half the film to figure out if it was Brazilian gangsters in Tokyo or Japanese yakuza in Sao Paulo (the former, as confirmed when the cops finally appear). Full of wacky stuff, however, including : a primer on how to be Russian ("Lesson One : How to Eat Caviar") ; gratuitous slapstick involving a midget ("I have to shit!" exclaims the little fellow apropos of nothing, and makes a run for it) ; a knife-fight interrupted by a stream of Japanese girls on bicycles, daintily tinkling their bells as they come through ; a nightclub scene shot in some kind of groovy infra-red ; a spider crawling up a woman's arm ; and chickens - sorry, cocks - fighting MATRIX-style in nifty reductio ad absurdum of the World's Most Parodied Fight Move. Miike would seem to be part Melville - all those inscrutable badass types - part Leone (the opening, with ponchos and swirling dust), with more than a little Godard in the eclectic, uninhibited, throw-it-on-and-see-if-it-sticks sensibility ; wildly romantic in a doomed, irresponsible way - about Love, and of course about Death. "What do you see?" asks a gangster anxiously as a friend edges closer to the Great Unknown, the ache of moral doubt - is there really a final accounting? - underlying all there is to know about this lapsed-idealist director ; "Nothing," comes the equable reply. Figures.]

LIKE MIKE (40) (dir., John Schultz) Lil Bow Wow, Jonathan Lipnicki, Morris Chestnut, Crispin Glover, Eugene Levy, Robert Forster [Not a lot to say about this harmless kiddie movie (seen for work, i.e. not by choice) : bland pint-size rap star - rap equivalent of Aaron Carter - acts out every basketball-mad kiddie's dream, the NBA footing the bill in return for a paid advertisement. All quite cute and just about padded out to feature length, with its multi-cultural trio of kids (Bow Wow, Lipnicki, token Asian girl), unimpeachable hero (who won't go to bed at night without saying his prayers), always-welcome Levy and Forster, Crispin Glover as memorably distracted villain. Pretty sure I already saw this (with a soccer setting) back in the 70s as FIMPEN - a.k.a. STUBBY - but I don't remember much about that one. Don't remember much about this one, either...]

THE GOOD GIRL (57) (dir., Miguel Arteta) Jennifer Aniston, Jake Gyllenhaal, John C. Reilly, Zooey Deschanel, Tim Blake Nelson, Mike White [Hugely unpromising, a small-town fable wherein Aniston reprises her OFFICE SPACE role and we're all invited to laugh at the dumb provincials (writer White popping up as repressed-perv security guard with bug eyes and oleaginous manner : "Have you ever been to a Bible study?"). And yet it works, gaining in complexity as it goes - not just exploding Gyllenhaal's overbearingly 'sensitive' persona, showing up the selfish child beneath (it's a pleasure to watch his Holden Caulfield 'rebel' gradually curdle into pathetic neediness), but also expanding Bible Belt religiosity into a consistent subtext, based - as per the title - around notions of virtue : the 'good girl' just wants to help everyone, but "salvation" comes by way of adultery (not to mention sexual degradation), and resisting the "demon" adds up to betrayal, lies and all the wrong people getting punished. Turns out to be not so much sarcastic as bitterly ironic (there is a difference), and everyone gets their moment in the sun - Blake Nelson chillingly effective as a hard, implacable look suddenly breaks through his redneck-slacker goofiness, Deschanel pitch-perfect as the sullen teenage clerk mocking customers too thick to realise they're being mocked. Could've lived without the fanciful touches (blackberries of Death?!), and why is everyone so keen on this silly wind-of-change motif (see also UNFAITHFUL), but still surprisingly distinctive and ambivalent, with a kind of hayseed-Gothic authenticity. Calling Aniston an "actress of great range" (Miguel Arteta, "Empire" magazine) when she basically walks through the film with the same pained expression seems a little much, though...]

K-19: THE WIDOWMAKER (63) (dir., Kathryn Bigelow) Harrison Ford, Liam Neeson, Peter Sarsgaard [What went wrong here? Two-thirds superb, one-third near-unwatchable, the courtroom scene near the end painfully reversing the one in THE CAINE MUTINY - which is the dynamic this resembles, martinet captain making himself deeply unpopular with his men, except that Bogie didn't go all fatherly and reasonable (even heroic) in the final act, and his second-in-command didn't praise his courage and integrity before a military tribunal. Before that, tense and richly layered, not least for its implicit comment on the USSR - the sub is called the 'K-19' but it might as well be called the 'S.S. Soviet Union', built like that country on high ideals ("This is the future!" marvels an officer, looking forward to a time when nuclear subs will be as common as "cars that never need refuelling") but actually constructed out of lies, corruption and inefficiency, not to mention second-rate materials : its rickety structure, everything improvised and falling apart, works as a joke against the West's (mis)perception of Soviet power during the Cold War, as well as setting up incredible tension - the thing is such a deathtrap it's just a question of when things will go wrong, and how long the valiant crew can hold out (it evokes something that's almost certainly true yet almost never said in movies : heroism has little to do with accomplishing great success, much more to do with standing firm in the face of great disaster). Russian accents shaky - not to say unnecessary - but the faces are fresh and unfamiliar, and at least no-one says "Moss-cow" ; why do I get the feeling Bigelow is secretly chuckling at her macho characters, with their pissing contests and suspiciously phallic-looking warheads?...]

SAFE CONDUCT (72) (dir., Bertrand Tavernier) Jacques Gamblin, Denis Podalydès, Charlotte Kady [Case against this one seems to be that it justifies - or at least soft-pedals - French collaboration during WW2 ; needless to say, I don't agree. It's true the first thing we hear is a patriotic song, and it's true the films produced by the Nazi-controlled studio aren't just dismissed as propaganda (though there is a line where the studio head admits many of them are exactly that), and it's true the Communist Party come out of it looking like cowards and opportunists (though individual members are often heroic), and it's true the Resistance seems unreal, an adventure, a movie (though who's to say it didn't seem so, even at the time?) ; but the structure - a tale of two Jeans - is objective and fair-minded, very pointedly showing both sides of the equation, one Jean (the mercurial Aurenche, one of French cinema's greatest writers) constantly scrambling and shifting in order to live without collaborating while the other (stolid Devaivre, a little-known director) reluctantly shakes hands with the Devil, trying his best to subvert from within (working for the Nazis is "50% less hassle," insists a colleague ; "And the other 50%?" he retorts). The film's triumph isn't, in any case, political but evocative, managing to sustain a tone of wry amusement - with occasional forays into tragedy and farce - for 170 minutes and bringing out the details of life as it was : things like liquid butter, and the butcher keeping meat in a shoebox for valued customers (food is a constant concern, as befits a film by a French bon vivant), but also startling things like the casual, irreverent references to Jews - "They'll never bomb Citroen, it's full of Jews there," says someone breezily - because of course people at the time didn't know the full picture (it's just in our own minds that WW2 and Jews are inextricably linked). Simmers without really coming to a boil, but the running-about is superbly choreographed, the cinephile angle a major bonus (esp. if you know the names) and the whole thing full of small, intense pleasures : the way Devaivre's adventure in the land of the tea-drinking Brits snowballs quietly but steadily into tall-tale territory, finally bursting into surreality (or movie reality) ; the shocking, unexpected revelation that "My brother never came back" (followed by the poignant addendum of the one time he was seen again - as an extra in a movie) ; Michel Simon - a mythical figure, his face unseen - ascending a staircase as he rants and fulminates ; a bombing raid killing fish in a stream, providing free dinner for a resourceful film crew. A fond, humorous tribute to the various ways people did their best to "live through these shameful times with integrity" ; cluttered and shambling, but wise and dispassionate - unlike its critics.]

CONFESSIONS OF A DANGEROUS MIND (59) (dir., George Clooney) Sam Rockwell, George Clooney, Drew Barrymore, Julia Roberts [Some heavy ironies - trash-TV as another kind of Cold War, Barris 'killing' contestants (and viewers' brain cells) on "The Gong Show" just as he allegedly offs enemy agents for the CIA - and some light, amusing ones (the smash-hit "Dating Game" basically stemming from an ugly guy's desire to see a show where the ugly guy gets the girl) ; Clooney the director seems more attuned to the former, coming close to NATURAL BORN KILLERS visual overkill (to cite another in-your-face satire) - offbeat framing, invisible cuts, close-ups into people's eyes, a background that turns out to be a stage-set, flashbacks done in striking bleached-out style (I don't think I've ever seen anything like it : it's like a photographic negative coming alive with splashes of light and colour). Result is impressive but increasingly oppressive, while Kaufman's sensibility is depressive, positing Life as recurring joke played by the slick on the neurotic - success breeds paranoia, and a loser is a loser all his life ; only Drew Barrymore floats above it all, on a cloud of free love and cheerful malapropisms (the film treats her character with surprising generosity, though I guess a flake will always trump a goddess in the Kaufman universe). Special mention to : Rockwell's facial hair when he's holed up in the hotel. Too bad about : the pointless celebrity cameos. Spoiler-laden question : how does Julia Roberts die if we see the tray being turned around twice (first by him, then by her), meaning presumably the poison ends up where it was originally intended? I don't get that at all... (*)]

(*): This point has now been cleared up in my opinion. Many thanks to reader Gerthein Boersma of Somewhere In Holland, who writes: "Barris doesn't turn the tray around. He only switches the club-shaped sugar lump from the poisoned cup to the unpoisoned cup, and rotates the milk can in the middle; that way, it seems as though the tray has been rotated to Patricia (Roberts). Patricia looks at the tray, believes it has been rotated, probably thinks Barris an amateur for forgetting to switch the sugar lump and the milk can, and promptly rotates the tray for what she thinks is a second time, after which she herself rotates the milk can and switches the sugar lump so that (she thinks) Barris is none the wiser.Roberts thus ends up poisoning herself. How ironic". God, I love my readers...

TADPOLE (49) (dir., Gary Winick) Aaron Stanford, Sigourney Weaver, Bebe Neuwirth, John Ritter, Robert Iler [A rather pointless film, though its pointlessness only sneaks up on you gradually - maybe as it limps towards a safe conclusion and it suddenly occurs to you that (a) there was no good reason - other than the thrill of the forbidden - to make the hero a 15-year-old rather than a college boy or graduate if he's going to act so mature and precocious, his occasional lapses - e.g. the sideburns - too nonsensical to make a dent in the character (at least RUSHMORE recognised the kid in Max, even when Max himself could not) ; and (b) there was no good reason to spend half the film on what's basically a sub-plot, designed to engineer things so the mother sees her son as a sexual being for the first time, if she doesn't then act on that revelation (at least MURMUR OF THE HEART had the courage - not to mention logic - of its convictions). Does at least make sense thematically, i.e. someone obviously sat down and worked out a character arc - taking Oscar from moony romantic idealism to "seeing things as they are", mirrored in the mother's (his idol's) careful subjugation of Beauty to "the thing itself" - and Neuwirth at least seems to be enjoying it all, sketching a delicious portrait of a confident, liberated middle-aged woman (such a rare bird in movies, esp. American movies), eyes glinting with mischievous pleasure. But the frequent intertitles - Voltaire, no less - only add to the air of pointlessness ("Common sense is not so common," they offer gnomically), the thing is never more than a trifle, and it's not even the year's best frustrated-teen movie set amid the airy, sophisticated, oh-so-slightly amoral values of the well-heeled chattering classes ; not in the year when Igby went down.]

CHICAGO (51) (dir., Rob Marshall) Renée Zellweger, Richard Gere, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Queen Latifah, John C. Reilly [The kind of thing that takes all the pleasure out of being cynical - a filmic equivalent to the O.J. trial, which worked much the same dynamic (using showbiz hucksterism - "the old razzle-dazzle" - to get away with murder) ; there's a good dark joke here, the kind you might find in the newsroom comedies of old - as in the magnificent 40s version - but it gets smothered in brassy self-assertion and a kind of hard-sell desperation, aiming for the showbiz ideal where (to quote one of the songs) the audience loves the actors and the actors love the audience for loving them. Cynicism needs a certain in-built irony, the sense you found in CABARET (along with a much better Kander-Ebb score) that Sally's "divine decadence" was also a form of moral blindness, or even the sense in HIS GIRL FRIDAY that these smart-ass news people were living in an artificial world, cooler but less substantial than the world of the Ralph Bellamys ; here, on the other hand, there's no edge to the glitter - when Gere says "That's Chicago!" or "It's all show business!" the film seems to agree, and Marshall's only 'style' is to play the whole thing for hyper-caffeinated energy, cutting relentlessly MOULIN ROUGE-style, sticking toe-tapping jazzy backbeat over long stretches, even cutting away in the middle of songs (a line like "I don't care for wearing silk cravats" gets a quick shot of Gere at his tailor's, presumably turning down an offer of silk cravats ; anything for the sake of 'opening up' the material). Thrilling for about 10 minutes but it's one-note and strident, and the songs all sound the same and the dancing gets fragmented into lots of different angles, and those red and blue filters drive you nuts and the brittle, bitchy tone gets on your nerves ; undeniable highlights nonetheless, notably the Murderess Tango and Press Conference Rag. Wouldn't it be great if the Oscars double-billed the former in a 'murderess montage' with the scene from FEMALE CONVICT SCORPION - JAILHOUSE 41?...]

GANGS OF NEW YORK (75) (73 - second viewing) (dir., Martin Scorsese) Leonardo DiCaprio, Daniel Day Lewis, Cameron Diaz, Jim Broadbent, John C. Reilly [History told in flashes of lightning : much of the connective (i.e. narrative) tissue appears to be AWOL in this extraordinary epic - especially in the rushed and unsatisfying second half - but it only adds to the feel of a film turned up to 11, operating at a more intense (yet abstracted, in the sense of unreal) level than we're used to, jumping like a fever-dream from passion to violence and back again ("Some of it I half-remember," explains our hero, "and the rest I took from dreams"). Most typical shot is perhaps the slow pull-back from the action, in the style of GONE WITH THE WIND or Scorsese's own dead-monks God-shot in KUNDUN (all the way back to an aerial shot of NYC, in one case), losing its heroes in the mad swirl of hundreds of extras milling around Dante Ferretti's awe-inspiring sets - just as the love story is lost amid the rush to revenge, and revenge in turn is lost amid the bloody labour pains of History shaping itself (and DiCaprio pales beside Day Lewis, and both of them are very deliberately dwarfed by the final eruption, civic order forcibly imposing itself on the last remains of frontier-spirit anarchy - sparked of course by the Draft, a perfect symbol for subjugating oneself to one's country). Like ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA it deals in bold strokes - music explodes as a candle is blown out, stops abruptly as a door is kicked open - and doesn't mind straying into dark farce (the firemen's brawl, the public hangings) ; like that film, it's also being released in truncated form, though the more complete version might paradoxically weaken its oneiric, half-remembered quality (though it'll also fill out such non-starters as the tit-for-tat killings near the end, which just seem to dangle inconsequentially - classic example of a sequence being over-whittled in endless post-production till it would've made more sense to drop it altogether and use its running-time to bolster something else). Best Possible In-Joke: "Don't make that noise again, Harvey!". Did I Miss Something Department : if Bill the Butcher says he's 47, and his beloved father apparently died in 1814, and the film is set in 1864 ... oh, never mind. (*)]

[(*): I did miss something. It's set in 1862 ; my apologies. Guess I should also note that second viewing was a slight disappointment - "oneiric" and "extraordinary" seem excessive for what's really just a hot-headed pageant with a tedious final stretch (before it rallies at the very end). Still felt a rush of blood often enough to justify the rating, and the audacious climax - deliberately making the revenge plot irrelevant for the sake of a Larger Statement - must've given Harvey Weinstein ulcers. This is probably a good thing.]

THE TRANSPORTER (57) (dir., Cory Yuen) Jason Statham, Shu Qi, Matt Schulze, Francois Berléand, Ric Young [Major fun, blessedly unpretentious. Statham's a low-rent hunk, alternating between iconic blankness and startled Tcheky Karyo look ; Shu Qi is Natalie Portman in LEON (a.k.a. THE PROFESSIONAL) ; Berléand is the rumpled French cop who reckons Proust would've made a fine detective ("great detail man") ; Ric Young, with his female-impersonator mien and terrifying toupee, is possibly the year's creepiest - yet also most ridiculous - villain. Statham knocks two guys out using only a folded T-shirt (he wraps it round their necks and twists really fast), later rolls around in motor-oil and spills it all over the floor before a fight with a roomful of thugs, so everybody's slipping and sliding. Shu Qi pouts : "You are always complaining. Except when we make love, and then you do not say a word". Statham drives a black BMW 7.35. The villains fire heat-seeking missiles and scary bullets that can tear right through walls. There are car chases ; stuff gets blown up (though the actual body count is surprisingly - and no doubt deliberately - low) ; the climax carries pleasing echoes of THE ROAD WARRIOR and RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK. Nothing great, but breezy and enjoyable ; why would a French police computer accept search-terms in English, though?]

POSSESSION (44) (dir., Neil LaBute) Aaron Eckhart, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jeremy Northam, Jennifer Ehle [Why do I get the feeling the book (which I haven't read) worked better here? Why do I get the feeling it played the very last scene as a fantasy of a happy ending (rather than a happy ending per se), and gave Tom Hollander as the sardonic yuppie lawyer more than just one promising scene (before dropping him altogether), and showed its Victorian lovers only through their letters and diaries (keeping them mysterious), and tied the strands between past and present - illicit affair like the illicit investigation (documents repeatedly stolen by our literary-sleuth heroes), American outsider like eccentric 19th-century poetess - more tightly and meticulously? Eckhart's character is "off women", has "a problem with relationships", carries intimations of disastrous affairs in his past, Gwyneth's is spiky, reserved ("I have difficulty with compliments"), grows colder the more she feels about someone - yet the actors remain glossy, smoothly confident, as innocuous as the film-making. Two stories never came together for me - the idea being presumably a "grand passion" vs. the fears and insecurities of our non-poetic age, except the Victorian lovers are dull (Northam is the rare actor who shines in roles that demand little of him - GOSFORD PARK, ENIGMA - yet seems inadequate when forced to make an impression), the modern couple superficial, and no amount of clever single-shot transitions can create connection when the characters have no spark. At least THE WEIGHT OF WATER - featuring much the same plot - had Sarah Polley.]

25th HOUR (83) (75 - second viewing) (dir., Spike Lee) Edward Norton, Rosario Dawson, Barry Pepper, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Brian Cox, Anna Paquin [Staggering collection of scenes that fit together powerfully or a bit pretentiously, according to taste : 9/11 angle is the problem, but I thought it worked - clearly it's a film about people coming together at a difficult time (there's a reason Lee repeatedly goes for an overlapping-cut effect - showing the action twice from different angles, as if for emphasis - when characters hug), and it's even fair to see Monty himself as an all-in-one personification of the tragedy (there's a reason why there's two of him in the mirror scene - one Monty spewing hatred like a pre-9/11 terrorist, the other quietly trying to rebuild his life like a post-9/11 New Yorker). Some may still find the whole to be less than the sum of its parts, but those parts are pretty sensational, driven throughout by the contrast between a sombre symphonic score and pungent foul-mouthed dialogue, peppered with terse, rueful wisecracks ("What do you want?" "I want to be like that girl in X-Men, the one that can walk through walls"), not to mention some of the year's best photography : Hoffman and Pepper in the latter's apartment overlooking Ground Zero - shot so they're looking away most of the time, towards the city lights reflected in the window - captures a crushed, glittery sense of urban despair better than anything I've seen since the similar shot of the mother in YI YI. Wish I could say more, but it's one of those (unfortunately rare) films that gripped me so relentlessly I even forgot to take notes ; fair to wonder if these three very different men could ever have been such close friends in real life, perhaps, and the Russian gangsters are a little comical - but really, who cares? Peerless, intense performances, a palpable air of melancholy and a final sequence - the impossibility of cutting all ties? the 25th hour itself, i.e. the one we can never have? - of supreme truth and eloquence. What the hell happened to create this mature, elegant Spike Lee out of the smug, moronic zealot who made BAMBOOZLED? 9/11, presumably...]  [Second viewing, July 2009: Actually, most of my objections are already set out above - whole less than the sum of the parts, Russian gangsters comical, these three men could never have been such close friends, etc (one I forgot to mention is that "make me ugly" is a big anti-climax and also vaguely ludicrous, part of the film's mile-wide streak of gay panic; I suspect loneliness, isolation and the feeling of wasting your life are actually much profounder horrors in prison life than getting reamed on your first night). I also suspect there is no thematic through-line - except a general Do the Right Thing theme - and Spike doesn't really mean anything by repeating shots from different angles (though it's true many of those shots are of characters hugging) except that it looks cool. Images still spectacular, fevered rhythm gripping, Blanchard's score effective - except when it goes nuts when the camera gazes at Ground Zero - and the film contains two of the most dazzling scenes of the past 10 years. Benioff now looks like the weak link, however.]

BOWLING FOR COLUMBINE (67) (dir., Michael Moore) [More like 75 for the first hour, 59 for the second. "In the end it all comes back to bowling for Columbine," claims Moore in the final minute, valiantly trying to pull the various strands together, but the truth is in the end it all comes back to Michael Moore, a brave provocateur terrified of only one thing - that someday he might find the answers to the questions he puts so indignantly. He's lost when someone actually responds, like the Nike CEO in THE BIG ONE or the Lockheed guy here, who actually rebuts the tenuous link between weapons-making and school violence quite effectively : Moore can only counter with the "What A Wonderful World" montage, sheer demagoguery and possibly the film's nadir, if only because it's not even accurate - that America uses its weapons against regimes and groups it perceives as a threat may indeed be paranoia but it merely confirms the Lockheed guy's offensive / defensive point (for all its faults, modern US policy has never been expansionist - or, more accurately, it's expansionist through its business interests rather than its Army). What he does best is catch people off guard, often make fun of them (something about his tone when he says stuff like "This is Brent ... And this is his buddy DJ" - not necessarily malice, just the knowing glee of a stand-up comic setting up a punchline) and raise provocative points in hugely entertaining - and often unscrupulous - ways, using film clips, old commercials, hidden cameras, security monitors (chilling Columbine footage) plus his own uncanny ability to elicit fatuous responses on-camera (a local militiaman happily opines the girlie calendar his group have put out shows "a level of sophistication you wouldn't expect out of a militia"). Many points are valid, or at least arguable - including the main one, that US society is based on an unholy mix of "fear and consumption" ; more than once I had the thought that this is a film everyone should see - but there's never any follow-through : it's frustrating to see Moore raise a potential debate, e.g. how to define "arms" in the Second Amendment (does it mean everyone can have a nuclear bomb in their home? if not, why not?), and use it for a cheap laugh before simply dropping it, moving on to something else (though I guess he'd say it's up to his opponents to continue the debate by putting the other side in a film of their own). Long before the end he's resorted to the tactics he allegedly despises, milking tears ("This is the bus she was forced to ride to work every day...") as crudely as any 'empathetic' TV reporter, or just falling back on publicity stunts like the K-Mart pestering that takes up much of the second half. Moore's NRA-member status and teenage marksmanship awards aren't incidental - he has the blind evangelical zeal of the ex-smoker who campaigns against the demon weed ; also a short attention span, a showman's sensibility and - despite everything - a free-associative way of bringing things together under the same Big Top that's often very stimulating. For an hour at least, a must-see movie.]

ONE HOUR PHOTO (61) (dir., Mark Romanek) Robin Williams, Connie Nielsen, Michael Vartan, Gary Cole [A very designed film, as you might expect from a noted stylist who's had 17 years to mull over his sophomore effort - both the look (clinical-white for Cy, warm orange glow for the family, black-bordered image with silhouette trees - like an intimation of Death - when he walks with the kid in the park) and bits of subtext like the recurring eye motif (Cy dreams of blood-dripping eyes, crashes a seminar on eye diseases and "retinal degeneration"), the point being presumably his reduced worldview, privileging visual evidence (i.e. photos) over everything else ; you might say he lives in a world where seeing is believing. Film itself unexpectedly subversive (a nice surprise), turning the 'psycho within' genre on its head - the needy stalker doesn't end up trying to hurt the object of his desire, but sacrifices himself to bring the family together - finding unexpected compassion in the process, though it probably would've been more welcome 5 or 10 years ago, before these clichés became hopelessly shopworn, when the genre was delivering needy-stalker movies like THE FAN and SINGLE WHITE FEMALE. Last-minute attempt to 'explain' its hero (victim of abuse, PEEPING TOM-style) is too little, too late - and largely unnecessary, with Williams putting together a compelling character in his own right (creepy, yet vulnerable ; unformed like a child, yet exacting like an artist). Notion of photos as defence against Time (proof that "I was here ; I existed") is the most intriguing - mostly undeveloped - strand, though it surely should've led to STEPFATHER-like psychology, hero hating family for not measuring up ; whole thing is a kind of red herring, but it teases skilfully. Feels a little cramped - possibly over-designed - though...]

THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE TWO TOWERS (64) (dir., Peter Jackson) Elijah Wood, Viggo Mortensen, Sean Astin, Ian McKellen, Orlando Bloom, Andy Serkis [Behold! Strange how these things - i.e. both this and FELLOWSHIP, and the trilogy as a whole - always seem to get better as they go along (something to do with a stately quality that feels like creakiness till you gradually warm up to the goings-on - even if you never take them quite as seriously as the film does) ; halfway through I was sure I'd have to renege on my vow to watch the full 9-hour shebang once it becomes available, but now I'm at least looking forward to the third instalment, though it's kind of mind-boggling how little actually happens, plot-wise. Of the three strands making up this middle section, one (the Tree-Men) is just a diversion, another (Frodo and Sam) is character drama more than narrative, and the third is merely build-up to a single huge battle - which in turn is fairly rudimentary when it finally arrives (no tactics as such : two armies clash head-on, lots of bit-players fall over, one army wins with the help of a rather dodgy deus ex machina (and Gandalf couldn't have arrived a day earlier because...?)). Cunning and resourcefulness - the part of the brain that cheered when Odysseus tricked the Cyclops, to cite another picaresque folk-epic - never gets much of a look in, but the part of the brain that merely wants to know 'And then?' - the primal thrill of getting caught up in a story - is superbly catered to, the film moving with the breathlessly-mutating fluidity of a dream (dreams recur in the narrative, from the opening nightmare to Aragorn's vision of his beloved elf-queen) ; above all there's Gollum, catering to another part of the brain altogether - the modern, neurotic-obsessive part, following his mood swings as he strives for closure, riven by dysfunction and insecurity (and joins the Green Goblin in the ranks of surprisingly ambivalent villains having heated debates with themselves in recent blockbusters). Still not entirely sure what the big fuss is, but the visuals have sweep and majesty, performances are better than anything in STAR WARS - Wood a Frodo for the ages, Mortensen starting to stamp his authority on Aragorn - and the little CGI squirt may be the richest, most distinctive (even poignant) creature yet produced by special effects. Behold!]

SECRETARY (39) (dir., Steven Shainberg) Maggie Gyllenhaal, James Spader, Jeremy Davies, Lesley Ann Warren [Call it the anti-Haneke - S&M as quirky comedy, with hi-jinks in the laundry and masturbation fantasies in bright colours and a funny-romantic "hunger strike" to cap it all off (the strike becomes a media event, sealing our heroine's progression from lonely freakdom to part of Society, "going out in the world" as her mother puts it - Haneke's piano teacher, on the other hand, retreats further and further into her own head). Hard to argue with it as a choice, since it obviously is a choice, but it did very little for me : the comedy isn't terribly funny or pointed - though I liked when sensitive beau Davies ends a session of 'normal', i.e. non-masochistic sex by solicitously asking "Did I hurt you?" - more a generalised S&M-is-fun attitude that smacks (no pun intended) of craven timidity ; nor does childlike heroine really become more adult via regressive spanking games - it's hard to tell, since her parents remain very undeveloped figures - nor does she really find her true nature as a 'sub', her kink shown to be merely true-love-with-a-twist (it's the person she responds to, not the pain) in a plausible but still rather gutless final act. Might be overrating it, actually, given how half-baked and pointless it all seemed, but there's still good bits amid the faux-transgressive tedium - notably the clash between Gyllenhaal's rather corn-fed, settled quality and Spader's manic mincing, purring and grimacing. No excuse for that random voice-over - popping in whenever Shainberg feels the need to make a point - though.]

ABOUT SCHMIDT (60) (dir., Alexander Payne) Jack Nicholson, Hope Davis, Kathy Bates, Dermot Mulroney [Ultimately touching, because the final shot is strong and the whole thing deals in such profound material - the scaling-down of dreams, realisation that one hasn't been "tapped by Destiny" for any kind of greatness, the smallness of a single life in the grand scheme of things - but what a strange dynamic : again and again, the way it works is for Jack (and the film, therefore ourselves) to feel contempt for a person or situation, only so that he (and therefore we) can learn a lesson from them, be surprised by them, or otherwise come off second-best to them - first the colleague with his asinine speech ("Warren and I go way back") who nonetheless wakes him up to his hollow existence ; then his wife, whom he sees in a demeaning montage (with ECU of enormous posterior) then comes to appreciate, only to be doubly surprised by the things she's capable of ; then the foolish mobile-home woman who nonetheless can recognise what he himself can't, his "sadness" and anger ; then Bates and her family, whom he hates but is finally unable to defeat (unable to say what he "really wants to say"), letting her emasculate him all over again (his wife insisted that he pee sitting down ; Bates feeds him soup, like an old man or an infant). It'd be a shame if Jack won a fourth Oscar for (basically) letting the camera see his sagging skin, the veins in his ankles and what he looks like on the toilet, but it must be said the film uses his baggage very well, the whole feral Wolfman Jack persona adding an invisible sneer of cool contempt behind that glazed look as he listens to the colleague's speech or nods at obnoxious son-in-law saying "She was a very special lady" ; Schmidt would just be a lump with any other actor, yet the film depends on constantly encouraging the hell-raising 'Jack' quality - pointing up the absurdity of the world, the shallowness and idiocy of other people, the ludicrousness of waterbeds, bad haircuts and best-men's wedding speeches, the fatuous Midwestern landmarks with their kitsch and "collection of arrowheads", the monstrousness of Bates with her talk of bedpans and orgasms and her big flabby body - only to smother, disown or even reprimand it ; long before the end, you may find yourself wondering just what reaction Payne expects here, and why he leads you on with a mocking cartoon style if the point is respect and compassion. The answer is presumably that Schmidt must come to terms with his 'smallness', realise he's no better than anyone else - and we, perhaps, must realise we're no better than Schmidt - but it still seems oddly sadistic to beat up on a guy for showing a spark of spirit after a lifetime of respectable inertia. I can see why people like it (though maybe I can't : certainly, Lisa Schwarzbaum's description of "a bracing paean to a certain kind of American Everyman" in "EW" sits oddly with this sombre study in middle-aged failure) : it's heartfelt yet satirical, with effective little bits - the shooting star - and a kick at the end ; I just wish - as in CITIZEN RUTH, and certainly ELECTION - Payne wasn't so fond of smudging his characters till they become unintelligible. It's a fine line between complexity and trying to have it all.]

HOME MOVIE (67) (dir., Chris Smith) [Nothing much to say about this beguiling trifle (clocking in at just over an hour), except that I thought the various eccentrics would wear out their welcome after 20 minutes, and was pleasantly surprised to find them growing in stature as we got to know them (except the cat-house people ; I'm sorry, they're just nutjobs). Criticism levelled (wrongly, imho) at Smith's previous film, AMERICAN MOVIE - that he mocks or otherwise looks down on his characters - could almost be reversed here : not that he gives them too much respect, exactly, but it would've been nice to know what traumas or inadequacies drove these people to shut themselves away in a custom-built world (a person's home is their autobiography, notes the opening caption - but it's also their castle). Not significantly better or different than the stuff you might find on TV (at least in Europe), but why cavil? Curiously uplifting, thoroughly enjoyable.]

BARBERSHOP (58) (dir., Tim Story) Ice Cube, Sean Patrick Thomas, Eve, Cedric the Entertainer [In itself a funny, trash-talking character comedy, getting by on charm and colourful dialogue amiably enough to conceal the lack of any especially clever plotting (everything finally resolved via a rather fortuitous appearance by the cops). Interesting mainly as a reflection of the (rather muddled) place the African-American community seem to be approaching, on the one hand calling for blacks to stand on their own feet, John McWhorter-style - ridiculing the idea of reparations for slavery, even hinting it might be time to move on from blind fealty to the icons of the civil-rights era, start discussing them just like any other historical figures - yet also critical of Cube's capitalist shop-owner who refuses to give free haircuts ("Just trying to better myself," he says. "This ain't the projects, this is a place of business"), and turning Thomas as the college-boy character (who similarly claims he's only trying to "make something of myself") into something of a stuck-up idiot, not as smart or knowledgeable as he thinks he is ; nostalgia seems to be the bottom line, calling not for black entrepreneurs but the cosy sense of community (laced with a touch of tall-poppy syndrome) that allegedly existed back in the day, when a barbershop was "the cornerstone of the neighbourhood" and everyone knew everybody else's business. Down-to-earth and sensible, but you have to wonder how constructive (or realistic) these attitudes are ; all in good fun, though.]

8 MILE (56) (dir., Curtis Hanson) Eminem, Kim Basinger, Mekhi Phifer, Brittany Murphy [Don't know if Eminem could ever translate to the movies anymore, given how complicated his persona has become : everything he says in his music, both the rage and venom and the in-your-face confession of something like "Cleanin' Out My Closet", implicitly includes the fact that he's a millionaire celebrity (otherwise he'd just be some whiny loser) - like a human tabloid he connects you-the-listener with the experience of being rich and famous, adding reassurance that life at the top is just as angry, insecure and messed-up (thereby validating your own anger, insecurity and messed-upness). Having him star as someone else, even a version of his younger self, may just be impossible - his Eminem-ness gets in the way of suspending disbelief - especially in this kind of earnest ROCKY story : having him play straightforwardly 'street' may be as inadequate today as casting Ozzy Osbourne in a film about a heavy-metal singer. Still a worthy film in all sorts of ways, notably in coming across as a late-80s / early-90s kind of movie (which is when it's set), both in the gritty look - all gun-ranges and abandoned buildings - and in going for a square, pre-Age Of Irony structure : young man struggles, trains himself, finally makes good in all-or-nothing climax (after which the film simply ends), not to mention such corny detail as Brittany happening to turn up just as our hero starts rapping ; feeling of just-hanging-out is likeable (though Em's posse - incl. fat guy and 'professor'-type dude - is rather stereotypical), and the sense of rap as a way out for smart ghetto kids - the only time when they can be applauded rather than beaten up for their creativity - is strongly evoked. Best of all is the way it does in fact comment on its star, having him triumph the moment he finally stops apologising for who he is and pre-empts his critics by embracing his white-punk, screwed-up life, warts and all - which of course is what he's been doing ever since ; having people call him a "crazy motherfucker" isn't going to cut it, though, attempts at moral rectitude (when he says "Enough with the gay jokes" or sings the kid a lullaby) are simply unconvincing, and there's no way Hanson isn't having a laugh when he throws in a clip from IMITATION OF LIFE (a film about a black trying to pass for white). Pretty good, but not enough music, and the audience-teasing over when Eminem will finally open his mouth and start rapping in anger isn't really all that different from waiting for Princess Britney to favour us with a song - sing? who, me? - in CROSSROADS. Also, he fights like a girl.]

RABBIT-PROOF FENCE (45) (dir., Phillip Noyce) Everlyn Sampi, Tianna Sansbury, Laura Monaghan, Kenneth Branagh, David Gulpilil [Admirable in some ways, notably in not reducing the (true) saga of runaway Aborigine kids to a tale of good Abos vs. nasty Whites - just about all the Aussies our heroes come across are helpful and benevolent - but rather a contrast between carefree, natural spirituality (the kids, walking the land for weeks on end with no trace of strain) and cramped, 'civilised' efficiency (Branagh as the penny-pinching civil servant who's out to get them, budget permitting). Also helps that it's basically an action movie - one long outdoor adventure - gloriously shot (by Chris Doyle) and evocatively scored (by Peter Gabriel, whose low didgeridoo-type rumble sounds like the gathering of storm clouds before a downpour) ; the weak link, as in QUIET AMERICAN, is really Noyce, who imposes no viewpoint or visual rigour - shots are all over the place, as you might get from excessive coverage in the Hollywood manner (a scene like Branagh 'checking' the little girl for racial impurity begs to be told in a particular way, but some of it is her POV, some is neutral wide-shot, one bit is strikingly shot from below, and there's even a final high-angle shot looking down at both of them for no reason at all). Style never tries to match content, basically - the kids' patient, unhurried sense of Time is part of the point but onscreen time is very compressed, never giving the sense of an endless, monotonous journey (at least GERRY has the courage of its convictions), just as the deliberate narrative simplicity (kids don't even have a plan, just strike out) needed something starker and purer than this conventional, little-bit-of-everything film-making. Could've been worse, and at least it avoids the fashionable self-flagellation so beloved of (some) Australian-liberal types, but that's about all you can say ; it's okay, but it's no WALKABOUT.]

TRAPPED (52) (dir., Luis Mandoki) Kevin Bacon, Charlize Theron, Stuart Townsend, Courtney Love, Pruitt Taylor Vince [Ending is excessive, not to say stupid (though the final shot, a highway strewn with wrecked cars and even the remains of a seaplane, has a certain majesty), but the rest of it is hard to knock, except perhaps that you can't take it seriously. Even allowing for a certain badass nonchalance, these kidnappers are incredibly laid-back about their big score, taking the opportunity to soak in the tub and come on to their victims, and the late revelation that chief kidnapper Bacon is motivated by revenge rather than greed doesn't quite jibe with what came before (why would he wait till the fifth job for something so important? why make such a fuss about the kid's medicine if he plans to kill her anyway?) ; and don't even get me started on those "paralysing relaxants". Kidnap plot itself is solid, however - clever plan : a ransom without a pick-up - the presence of two great cinematographers (Frederick Elmes and the late Piotr Sobocinski) is occasionally validated - best shot : creepy MS of Bacon standing by the open door to the kid's bedroom, seen through a jumble of door-frames and somehow in silhouette with light both before and behind him - and Bacon does another of his super-cool villains, skeletal frame bristling with icy contempt, holding on to his sneer even with a scalpel-wielding Theron poised to slice off his penis ; he's definitely got that indefinable presence that imposes itself on a character (Love, on the other hand, probably hasn't). Bonus detail : Pruitt Taylor Vince as the inevitable slow-witted kidnapper, slapping his bald dome in distress and whimpering "I don't like it when little girls cry!". Better than its title, anyway.]

THE FOUR FEATHERS (29) (dir., Shekhar Kapur) Heath Ledger, Wes Bentley, Kate Hudson, Djimon Hounsou [Bad idea : the 1939 version showed the hero's back-story - growing up in a military family, forced to be something he wasn't by martinet father - so the central decision (refusing to go to war, even if it meant being accused of cowardice) made sense as a bid for self-actualisation - trying to be his own man at last - and an act of love towards his fiancée ; this remake shows nothing - he seems happy enough horsing around with his comrades, then suddenly decides to resign his commission just as the regiment is due to be shipped out - so the decision seems strange, to put it mildly (he does look like a coward), and there's no sense of injustice. Only explanation I can think of is that he was originally intended as a modern hero rebelling against Victorian values (hence his otherwise irrelevant line, "I sometimes wonder what a godforsaken desert in the middle of nowhere has to do with Her Majesty the Queen"), but the revisionist approach fell by the wayside, leaving only a lack of motivation ; either way, the whole thing is weakened from the story of a man fighting for a way of life - proving that he could go to war if he wanted to, but prefers to choose his own path - to the story of a man who makes a bad decision, lets his friends down and tries to make amends. There's no sweep to this new dynamic, the hero seems feeble and ignoble, and the film never recovers, weighed down even further by clichés, lame detail (don't think I've ever seen a film with so much phony-sounding laughter) and gaping plot holes ; looks quite nice in places - deserts are always photogenic - but why do the Mahdi's men capture the fort if they plan to fight the British on the plain? And why do they bother attacking twice, the second time in British uniforms (they've already swamped the Brits with their first charge, before unaccountably retreating and re-charging)? Why does the comrade who spots our hero not speak up when Hounsou's trying to convince them he's telling the truth? And why is Kate Hudson so unconvincing in period costume? (Like her Mom, she depends on a twinkly sauciness that just doesn't translate.) And can we really show "Mohammedan fanatics" and rock-throwing intifada kids quite so blandly and indifferently in the Current Climate?]

ARARAT (41) (dir., Atom Egoyan) David Alpay, Arsinée Khanjian, Christopher Plummer, Charles Aznavour, Elias Koteas [Not a complete disaster, made in the consistent Egoyan style - more so here than FELICIA'S JOURNEY - giving the film a certain homogeneity and all-of-a-pieceness, but still ends up as self-parody : trademark hidden links between characters seem contrived and pointless here - Plummer as the father of the lover of the actor in the movie Aznavour's directing - favourite motifs (film vs. life, especially) mentioned rather than explored, and the Armenian footage calls up memories of CALENDAR, where the atavistic grandeur of the Old Country was wittily (and poignantly) played against the mess and insecurity of life in the New. Here, on the other hand, it takes over everything, as portentous as the snow-capped Mt. Ararat itself, an oppressive talisman that seems to have sapped Egoyan of all confidence : staging is unusually clumsy - mother-stepdaughter tensions coming to a fore during a lecture with mother as the speaker, rest of the audience sitting stiffly as they work out their issues - characters banal, dialogue often tin-eared, not least when Alpay's telling Customs official Plummer (on what's obviously a slow day at the airport) various little-known yet valuable historical facts about Armenia. Can't blame Egoyan for trying, given how heavily the 1915 genocide weighs on the Armenian conscience, esp. the fact (echoed in a couple of pointed references to the Jewish Holocaust) that it remains so undocumented ; I still recall a film-society screening of THE ADJUSTER, packed to the rafters with the local Armenian community come to see 'one of their own' - and their disappointment as it slowly became clear his Armenian-ness wasn't going to be an issue (happy now?). Personal film-making run amuck, self-absorbed as a cocktail-party bore ; it's sincere, it means well, and there's hardly a convincing moment in it.]

IGBY GOES DOWN (67) (dir., Burr Steers) Kieran Culkin, Susan Sarandon, Jeff Goldbum, Ryan Phillippe, Claire Danes, Bill Pullman [If Igby were a quote, he might be Charles Crumb's "How perfectly goddam delightful it all is, to be sure" - only delivered with airy scorn rather than crushed weariness, and the brittle style of the young and privileged rather than the bitter irony of the blue-collar loser. Maybe that makes all the difference, but it's still hard to figure out the vitriol this has drawn in some quarters - especially when it's so infused with a spirit I don't think I've found in anything else this year, a zany sophisticated sangfroid reminiscent of Whit Stillman - dare we mention the wacky rich families in 30s screwball comedy? - and giddy youthful quality taking in both slapstick hard-knocks and such moments as Igby and his girl walking down a big-city street with ice-cream in hand, talking of their folks in the pointedly light way of those who've just recently stopped taking them seriously. Start on Igby and his bro being irreverent around their dying mother, cut to silver spoon falling on the floor - obviously the one in our hero's mouth when he was born - move on to a portrait of the sardonic teen as kicker against the pricks, saved from easy point-scoring both by Igby's near-masochistic knack for doing the wrong thing and the fact that everyone around him is just as cynical (they've all got their defence mechanisms - drugs, Young Republicanism, Goldblum's facade of "acting like he thinks a happy and contented man should act" : the film's smartest joke is that Igby-the-rebel is in fact the most conventional of his crazy family, still looking for escape and innocent enough to care that religion doesn't make sense and people let other people down). Blood comes into it around the 45-minute mark - sad father's fall in the shower, not counting Igby's frequent bloody noses - trying for a gravity it only just manages, and there's problems along the way - some misjudged jokes, faltering rhythm, picaresque structure, not-so-rich opening third before Igby really comes into his own (both he and the film get more impressive as they go on) - but it's amazing to find such a poised, nonchalant, unsentimental movie being made these days, especially with this cast. Goldblum seems tickled by his every line, Culkin is a natural comedian (I love when he politely declines a plate of brownies in the middle of a drug deal, or accidentally takes a sip of something vile and quietly spits it back in the glass with no comment or change in expression) and even Sarandon, a mannered actress in a diva role, totally won me over at the end, on her deathbed, when Igby snaps "Why d'you want me to be here anyway, Mother?" and she smiles weakly and replies, "Comic relief?". Against all possible odds, it works ; perfectly goddam delightful, in fact...]

PERSONAL VELOCITY (62) (dir., Rebecca Miller) Kyra Sedgwick, Parker Posey, Fairuza Balk [Nearly switched off right from the opening credits - something about that terminally precious sub-title : "Three Portraits" - and then there's that fancy golden light Ellen Kuras ladles over everything (esp. in the first story), and the meretricious freeze-frame device where we see events (e.g. Delia leaving her husband) as a succession of stills, and the attitude whereby Story #2 must be set among tony Manhattan publishers and "New Yorker" fact-checkers because Story #1 was set among white-trash slutty types and wife-abusers (I believe they call it 'versatility' - or is it 'virtuosity'?). Lots to annoy in the particulars, yet the overall proportions work really well : doesn't outstay its welcome (at 86 minutes for three separate stories) and the constant novelistic voice-over acts as a distancing device, keeping everything neat and supple, if also rather cold. Works as an exercise, an overview, describing rather than soliciting emotion - the narrator saying stuff like "Delia felt the women's pain like a vortex pulling her into her own muddled thinking" or "She felt the ambition drain out of her like pus from a lanced boil" works rather like the red violin in THE RED VIOLIN (to cite another portmanteau movie), a clearly-manufactured shaping device pulling you out of the film's reality, adding invisible quotation marks ; actually quite pleasing, affording space to observe these women's lives in almost scientific fashion, like butterflies pinned down in an album - past and present all spread out, struggle for control over their lives (one through sex, another through career, the third by looking for "signs") compared and dissected - and also to observe the performances : Sedgwick sensual and gutsy, Posey subtle and subdued, Balk febrile and slightly mad-looking. Not especially moving, but I don't think it tries to be.]

ADAPTATION (73) (dir., Spike Jonze) Nicolas Cage, Meryl Streep, Chris Cooper, Tilda Swinton, Brian Cox ["The last act makes a film," says screenwriting guru Robert McKee (or of course "Robert McKee") two-thirds of the way through, but the last act nearly ruins this one : it's just not very interesting, confirming the suspicion from BEING JOHN MALKOVICH that Jonze's talents are for getting the best out of actors and taking bizarre material in his stride, rather than pacing and varying a movie - the final third should feel texturally different (new, Hollywood rhythms, maybe a glossier style or blast of adernaline), but it hews to the same rather gritty look and rather shaggy rhythm - and going for a mealy-mouthed sort of resolution, "Kaufman" taking on McKee's - and brother Donald's - approach without actually following it to the letter (there is a deus ex machina - the croc - and voice-over too) ; the point is that adaptation involves exactly this halfway approach, adding one's imprint to the material while preserving its character, but it doesn't make for very compelling drama (or indeed comedy), even with the dial-tone scene acting as a cheeky "image system" for synthesis. What's most intriguing is the stuff even Kaufman (not "Kaufman") himself seems unsure about, notably the fact that Cage I is rescued from his solipsism by Cage II's point that everything revolves around the self, even Love ("You are what you love, not what loves you") - shouldn't self-consciousness be rescued by its opposite, an interest in other people, like the orchid drug that makes you "fascinated" by everything? or is being "oblivious" finally what makes a good writer, happy to live inside his own head? The whole thing often seems like a humorous dig at 'good' film-making - the first two-thirds religiously follow the 'show, don't tell' principle, jumping e.g. to a Darwin flashback - "139 years earlier" - rather than have Darwin explained (the screenwriter's fear of exposition becomes a joke, though also of course a variation on the chimp flashback in MALKOVICH), just as the 'unblocked' final third blithely does 'bad' things like showing events (the love affair) our narrators couldn't have known about : don't confuse artistic freedom with fixed notions of art, Jonze and Kaufman seem to be saying (adaptation as mutability, changing as required). Teems with ideas, flashes of poetry (the orchid that "looks like a Midwestern beauty queen") and a number of good jokes (special kudos to the orchid thief, Marty the agent and of course John Malkovich), finally coming down on the side of "caring passionately" over writing-by-system, whether the Artist's "industry"-hating preconceptions or McKee's Commandments - a call for whittling the world (or a source novel) down to the stuff you care about, like an insect with its "special flower", and writing about that (adaptation as self-interest ; adaptation as evolution ; adaptation as the ability to move on and never look back). Complicated, bold and self-indulgent which is (duh) the point, as well as making me feel better about gaining weight and losing my hair ; could've been the year's best movie, though...]

FAR FROM HEAVEN (68) (dir., Todd Haynes) Julianne Moore, Dennis Quaid, Dennis Haysbert, Patricia Clarkson [Deconstructive eye-candy made by (and presumably for) repressed nostalgists : ostensibly a tale of empowerment - housewife locked in 50s denial-mode ends the film a free agent, alive to the hypocrisy around her and able to make her own choices (e.g. volunteer for the NAACP) - getting lots of mileage out of casual racism and intolerance about homosexuality ("a sickness", "this thing"), it nonetheless plays the final scene between Quaid and Moore - and generally the collapse of her little world - very much as a tragedy. It's true we end on a crane-shot up to spring blossoms on the trees - renewal, a new life, etc - but we also start on a crane-shot down from autumn leaves, and it's very much a film about Death, the loss of a (misguided but undoubted) innocence, before everything came to the fore and became sexualised (there's an odd interlude where Moore and her girlfriends complain playfully of how often their husbands want to do "it", showing either the depth of their sexual repression or its opposite, the lie in the received wisdom that 50s folk were neo-Victorians obsessed and terrified by their sexual urges) : Haysbert's character literally brings Death with him, surprising Moore not once but twice with shocking news that his nearest and dearest have "passed away", and Quaid is literally lost in the shadows - a non-person - after his shameful tears annihilate his patriarchal immunity. Like BLUE VELVET - of which it may be called a romantic-drama equivalent - it has one foot in 50s values even as it attacks their oppressiveness (evoked in the stylisation and overpowering colours, as in 8 WOMEN) and probes at the culture's dark underbelly, which is why it manages such a slippery quality - Sirk pastiche but also a mirror-image, using similar style to tell the opposite story (not Society destroying passions, but precisely vice versa) ; Haynes comes to it from a rather academic angle, not always organic - the scene where Moore and Quaid can't talk about his "sickness" is more a stylised rendition of 'they can't talk about it' than a real scene, made up almost entirely of sentence fragments - but it's hard to see how this could've worked with any pretence to realism (see, again, 8 WOMEN). Smooth, gorgeous meld of real and movie emotions from one of the best stylists in the business ; I just wonder if the people who are moved to tears by it (I wasn't, especially) actually know what they're crying for...]