Films Seen - June 2003
[Pre-'96 films not included.]
THE DANCER UPSTAIRS (67) (dir., John Malkovich) Javier Bardem, Laura Morante, Juan Diego Botto, Luis Miguel Cintra [Unusual, though not quite special ; close to a great movie, but the final scene (little girl dancing, Bardem watching wordlessly) is so obviously designed for some kind of emotional epiphany, and it just wasn't there for me (also wonder why it's so pointedly scored to Nina Simone's "Who Knows Where the Time Goes" ; what does Time have to do with this movie?). Fascinating story, esp. for those of us who goggled at the whole 'Shining Path' trail o'terror in the early 90s, but the way this shadowy terrorist organisation keeps linking up to our hero's personal life - leading to a sadly predictable final twist - cheapens it slightly (STATE OF SIEGE gets mentioned, but that never lost sight of the fact that political violence is chilling precisely because it's depersonalised), and it ends up being a conventional manhunt movie instead of the nameless-danger mood-piece that might've been more powerful (and topical). Malkovich does a fine job - stately with a wry sense of humour, making good use of god's-eye shots and offscreen sound - and the first half builds a sense of a world on the brink, terrorists poised to strike at any moment : random atrocities in ghostly glimpses, unfamiliar Andean backdrops adding to the disquiet, power cuts plunging the screen into sudden darkness, sound of fireworks incongruously popping in the distance - even the weird disjunction between Spanish and English (cast speak the latter but are meant to be speaking the former, and there's a bizarre moment when a cue-card is printed in Spanish but read out in English) only adds to the atmosphere. Plot has cops searching for a pattern and that's really what the movie needed, some guiding metaphor to pull it all together (thought at first the title might be some wacked-out God reference, but no) - either that or a shift to pure abstraction, and the whole nameless-danger thing (see e.g. PARALLAX VIEW, ILLUSTRIOUS CORPSES). Stays in the box marked 'absorbing', never quite making the leap. Who's complaining?]
DREAMCATCHER (53) (dir., Lawrence Kasdan) Thomas Jane, Morgan Freeman, Damian Lewis, Jason Lee, Tom Sizemore [Indefensible as any kind of good film, and yet ... There's something here, maybe even a genre - call it Infantilised Gothic - in the unashamed literal-mindedness and tabloid sensibility and the use of catchphrases and pop-culture riffs side-by-side with the horror : it's there in the comforting nods to Mighty Mouse and Scooby Doo, iconic use of "Honey, I'm home", notion of Evil manifesting itself via monster farts (!), utterly nonchalant attitude to aliens and Roswell-type conspiracies (that's the tabloid sensibility), troubled fat man not just killing himself but eating himself to death (ditto), idea of childhood as a 'magical' time, implicit idea of dependency as a kind of enslavement (the alcoholic in denial about his problem, even poor Jason Lee letting out the "shit-weasel" because he just can't cope without a toothpick to calm him down). That last bit probably derived from psychoanalysis - which has done more than anything to infantilise a whole generation of (especially) Americans - the others impossible to trace without writing a thesis but maybe something to do with a too-comfortable culture tending to trivialise the Other, chronic nostalgia and refusal to grow up, and of course (a natural result of democratisation) a delight in one's own mediocrity : hard to say what Morgan Freeman's doing here (has any great actor ever taken on a more ludicrous role?), but the film obviously agrees with his description of its target audience - "They drive Chevrolets, shop at Wal-Mart and never miss an episode of 'Friends'". So-bad-it's-good hilarious too often to recall - though I guess the gun that turns into a phone would have to be my favourite - gloriously inept in dialogue and structure (Freeman traces our heroes with his hi-tech equipment so he can ... climb into a chopper and get himself shot down?), undeniably gripping now and then in its trashy way. The emphasis on male intimacy, villain called "Mr. Gay" (in retard-speak, but whatever) and long thin alien "worm" up a man's backside opens the door to an intriguing alternative reading ; except that would assume the people behind this had even the faintest idea what they were doing.]
WILD ZERO (57) (dir., Tetsuro Takeuchi) Guitar Wolf, Drum Wolf, Bass Wolf, Masashi Endo [LOCK'N LOOOOOOOOOLLLL!!! Also, zombies. Heads explode (splat!). Human entrails. Alien invaders. Mexican stand-offs. Flying saucers over the Pyramids and Statue of Liberty. Guitar Wolf!!! (Feedback.) Ain't it grand how Love survives, the undead zombie couple embracing in cross-cut symmetry with the human (if ambiguously same-sex) one? Might the zombies represent the crushing conformity of Japanese society, only assailable via outlaw amorality and the more disreputable fringes of pop-culture? LOCK'N LOOOOOOOOOOOOOLLLL!!!!]
ANGER MANAGEMENT (19) (dir., Peter Segal) Adam Sandler, Jack Nicholson, Marisa Tomei, John Turturro ["Wherever you look, there's something to be seen," says Nicholson's character, quoting the Talmud - but I have looked at ANGER MANAGEMENT, and seen nothing at all. Don't want to talk plausibility - what's the point? - but it's hard to get involved when the set-up doesn't even try to make sense (hence the mondo lame it-was-all-a-scam final 'twist', which didn't even have to be there if they'd had the gumption to set it up properly), and the characters exist only as joke-props. Basically a situation comedy - the houseguest from hell, pushing our hero till the worm finally turns - where the situation is starved, left to die and the corpse perfumed with jokes - which might be okay if the jokes were remotely clever, instead of just name-checking big dicks, lesbian porn stars and Rudolph Giuliani ; and might in turn be okay if Nicholson weren't so boorish (his self-satisfied preening is hard to take) and Sandler hadn't already made PUNCH-DRUNK LOVE ; and might even then be okay (or at least not offensive) if the message - don't repress your anger, let it out upon the world - didn't smack so much of high-self-esteem self-indulgence (do I need your "righteous anger" in my life? I don't think so). Dunno who decided to have J&A duet (at unconscionable length) on "I Feel Pretty" from WEST SIDE STORY, but it does seem - what with this and ANALYZE THAT - to be the musical du jour for crappy comedies ; John Turturro is a god, however.]
THE HOT CHICK (58) (dir., Tom Brady) Rob Schneider, Anna Faris, Michael O'Keefe [Pretty funny, though I guess a lot of it depends on your take on Schneider's persona : less aggressive than most comics, none of the barely-repressed explosiveness of good bud Adam Sandler (who guest-stars in this one), prone to putting himself through extravagantly painful slapstick - falling down a staircase, he bumps his head hard on every step - definitely sleazy yet also dishevelled and (somehow) defenceless, he gives the impression of a small rodent that's just been startled in the midst of some unnatural act. He is the Hot Chick, though the film seems hopelessly torn over whether it's trying to appeal to boys or girls : title promises sexist hi-jinks, girl-on-girl action is leeringly approved while, significantly, man-on-man kissing is dismissed as gross even when we know 'he' is really a 'she' (not to mention Schneider's 'punishment' at the end is getting picked up by a gay man) - yet only the obnoxious jock uses "gay" as an insult, there's a lot of mushy lovey-dovey talk for a film called THE HOT CHICK, the inevitable pesky little brother is turned into a secret cross-dresser (finally Accepted for Who He Is), and the bit where HC-as-Schneider spies on the football players after a game is the distaff mirror-image of the classic teen-movie fantasy, the boy in the girls' locker room (except those scenes invariably show the girls in mid-shower, whereas the boys here are merely shirtless). Fairly primitive as comedy, with few ideas beyond Hollywood's mystifying obsession with fart jokes, but it builds in the pleasing brick-by-brick way of 80s body-swap equivalents like ALL OF ME and of course you can see it as being about what 'makes a man' - gender confusion in the 21st century, sensitivity vs. machismo and so on (woman in a man's body is a better man than he is), not to mention strange body odours and all that unnecessary hair : "It's like I'm an ad for hair!"...]
LOST IN LA MANCHA (68) (dir., Keith Fulton / Louis Pepe) [Totally fascinating - and extremely painful - for anyone who's ever contemplated making a movie, but what can you really say about it? Disasters strike, crew try their best to put a brave face - "We'll wriggle out of this somehow" - Terry Gilliam laughs his manic laugh and looks increasingly unhappy. No-one's really to blame, as presented here - just bad luck, exacerbated by the complex logistics of mounting an international co-production - though you do wonder (esp. in the curiously muffled final act, with First AD Phil Patterson nursing an obscure grudge against the producers) how many shouting matches must've taken place just out of sight of the camera (or outside Fulton and Pepe's final cut) ; at the very least, it might've been intriguing to consider what the whole fiasco says about European cinema - given the aborted "Quixote" was to be among the most expensive European films ever attempted without American co-financing - and whether it'll ever be possible for it to thrive amid a babble of languages and actors scattered all over the continent (really makes an argument for the old studio system, or at least the geographical compactness of Hollywood ; maybe they can just buy Euro Disney and convert it to a pan-European super-studio or something). Not much depth, in other words, and no amount of Monty Python-style animation or overbaked Don Quixote analogies can give Gilliam himself much dimension either (maybe he is just this big kid, "gleefully battling in the face of all odds, and logic, and reality") ; the possibility that his "Captain Chaos" persona acts as a lightning-rod for disaster - leading him and others into denial of real problems - is touched on, then diplomatically allowed to evaporate. Flawed, mealy-mouthed, and essential viewing ; especially in film schools.]
PAU AND HIS BROTHER (51) (dir., Marc Recha) David Selvas, Nathalie Boutefeu, Marieta Orozco [Seen with French subtitles, so I might've missed a little here and there, though this isn't the kind of film you watch for its (very sparse) dialogue - more for its hushed, suggestive atmosphere, and the sense of lives caught in stasis. What it does best is explore space - a subway car, a bedroom, a landscape - its camera either restlessly probing, very close to the action, or else standing back, observing the characters dwarfed by their surroundings (there are relatively few medium-shots). In many ways your basic early-00s art film, the kind of thing festivals are littered with : inert - both in the sense that nothing 'happens' and the fact that the characters remain opaque - vaguely concerned with alienation and cross-cultural issues (people from different places trying to find common ground, inevitably tying into the film's own status as a regional work by a profoundly Catalan filmmaker), and of course featuring (a) no music score and (b) frontal nudity (male, in this case). Not really a film I'd see again - the bastard grandchild of Antonioni, when you come right down to it, Pau's (dead) brother not a million miles from poor missing Anna in L'AVVENTURA - but there's undoubted majesty to its craggy mountain landscapes bathed in morning fog, and abiding interest to its band of outsiders roving in search of who-knows-what (redemption? understanding?) ; Marieta Orozco of KRAMPACK fame - a rounder-faced Jessica Lange with a deep, watchful presence - joins the lengthy list of actresses I'm Keeping An Eye On.]
THE HUNTED (63) (dir., William Friedkin) Tommy Lee Jones, Benicio del Toro, Connie Nielsen [Not a lot to add to David Edelstein's dead-on take (esp. his fourth and fifth 'graphs), except to ponder why it is that many excellent film buffs should be drawn to this kind of brusque, stripped-down style (Friedkin conspicuously goes for a kind of substractive purity, even the opening action set-piece played in only three colours - fire-orange, dark blue and a very pitch-black) ; a little jadedness creeping in perhaps, grateful for the no-bullshit factor after seeing so many 'well-written' action films with character arcs and narrative set-ups (a.k.a. 'Winstons'). There's a line to the effect that our hero is afraid of heights - one of the few things we learn about him - which would be setting up a plot twist in any other studio movie, but has no special payoff here (there's a moment when it almost does, when he's perched atop a bridge tower, but nothing really comes of it), just as he and his prey don't 'bond' at any point, nor does Benicio deliver any variation on "We are the same, you and I", nor does svelte FBI agent Nielsen supply any semi-happy ending by veering into view in the final shot, despite hero's "open invitation" to come and visit him when all this is over (another set-up frustrated). Probably just bloody-mindedness on Friedkin's part more than anything, refusing to throw the audience any kind of bone, just as his attitudes are as unabashedly red-in-tooth-and-claw here as they were in RULES OF ENGAGEMENT (the heroes in that one spent half the movie snarling at each other before sorting out their problems in a massive fist-fight ; here, they don't even wait, just start swinging at each other and take it from there) ; it's a very macho worldview - women are sneaky, tricking our hero with hidden tracking devices - and there's something distasteful to a philosophy that admires killers for being merciless, a "species above us in the food chain" killing mere mortals as easily as we slaughter chickens. Maybe it's time for Friedkin to prove himself on a real project, instead of just redeeming genre exercises via abrasive personality and negative virtues (avoiding the traps more ingratiating directors fall into in their efforts to please, basically) - though he does do irresistible things like the quick cutaway to a soldier smiling when the CO presents a medal for upholding "peace and democracy", or Tommy Lee standing very still in a forest glade alive with buzzing insects. Action itself not always great, and it's such a harsh, ungracious movie ; definitely stands out from the crowd, though.]
FRIDA (46) (dir., Julie Taymor) Salma Hayek, Alfred Molina, Geoffrey Rush, Valeria Golino [I am Frida Kahlo, monobrowed Mexican painter. First I was a young girl, having fun with my friends. Then I had a trolley-car accident that left me in constant pain throughout my whole life (bzzzt!), sorry Julie I mean left me in pain whenever my movie wants to troll for sympathy so I sigh and call myself a "cripple" (though I walk fine otherwise, and never seem to limp or get tired). And then I got into painting. And then I met Diego Rivera. And then we got married. And then I went on an anti-imperialism demo because I am politically active (bzzzt!), sorry Julie I mean only in that particular scene. And then I danced with another woman because I have lesbian tendencies (bzzzt!), sorry Julie I mean only in that scene and maybe one other quick reference. And then Julie did the cool skeleton animation and paintings coming to life and whatnot. And then I proved I was a "girl with cojones" and proto-feminist icon (bzzzt!), sorry Julie I mean I fell apart at the thought of my husband's infidelities and gave a martyred-diva smile and sighed "I am used to pain". And then I helped my sister. And then I lost my baby. And then Mother died. And then Diego had that trouble with the murals. And then Trotsky came, pushing my movie to the edge of camp ("Leon ... Tell me about your children"). And then I got famous. And then I went to Paris. And then I put on old-age makeup. And then I had a glorious climactic summation of my life and work, "loveable as a smile, cruel as the bitterness of Life". And then I died.]
OLD SCHOOL (36) (dir., Todd Phillips) Luke Wilson, Will Ferrell, Vince Vaughn, Ellen Pompeo [Could this be one of those scripts we hear about that got rushed into production a few drafts short of acceptable in order to avoid that threatened actors' strike back in '01? Kinda doubt it - seeing as Phillips' ROAD TRIP also flared out after a funny start - but how else to explain it? I am not a highly-paid Hollywood screenwriter and even I know this kind of premise - adults go back to being college students - needs to develop in one of two ways : either the adults use their knowledge to become incredibly cool students (they've got cash, they know how to get the girls, they hold their liquor better, and years of office drudgery have made them "good at paperwork") or else the opposite, i.e. the adults find themselves regressing to the same immature idiots they used to be. Instead the film veers wildly between the two, trying alternately to appeal to thirtysomethings and adolescents, filling in the yawning chasm with increasingly desperate and irrelevant jokes - a seminar on "The Art of the Blow Job", nods to THE GRADUATE and OFFICE SPACE, a cameo by Clinton campaign manager James Carville - padded out with Will Ferrell's spaced-out expression and assorted slapstick involving a fat black kid ; some good gags, esp. in the early scenes (that foul-mouthed wedding singer is surreal), but altogether lazy, uninspired and just a rip-off, I mean come on. Special mention to Vince Vaughn, an actor in search of a niche, who again manages to be really, really good yet seemingly miscast - too beefy and wild-eyed for these regular-guy roles, just as he's too slack and shambling when he tries to play a villain ; isn't there a RETURN TO PARADISE sequel he can do or something?...]
ROBERTO SUCCO (71) (dir., Cédric Kahn) Stefano Cassetti, Isild Le Besco, Patrick Dell'Isola [A strange, unyielding film, shaped (though actually left unshaped) by Kahn's decision to include only eyewitness accounts of the titular (real-life) psycho with no attempt to 'get inside his skin', leaving the film without any identification figure : plays like a series of related yet unlinked incidents, sympathies shifting from scene to scene - we even follow the cops for a few minutes, learning of their off-duty liaisons before moving on to something else. Frustrating for a while but it grows on you, both because it's a more honest approach (esp. in the age of Hannibal Lecter) and because there's something broad and magisterial about it, seeing Succo as a purely social force, defined solely by his impact on others : it's like tracing the effect of a cancer in a body, or any rogue element in any system, by looking at the system rather than the individual - hence reclaiming the whole serial-killer genre from the unhealthy romanticism of the killer standing outside Society like an urban guerrilla (and implicitly making Society responsible for him, if only because he can't be understood except by reference to other people). Succo himself remains unknowable, yet - like social scientists - we get a pretty good idea of how he behaves, for all his contradictions and self-delusion (notably his belief in some "Fate" guiding his actions, silently negated by the film's random structure) ; psychopathic traits - desire for control, constant itch to be someone else, lapses into self-pity - emerge organically, and Kahn's feel for detail (from the lapping of waves to the layout of pages in a photo album) is extremely precise - though, as in L'ENNUI, he tends to over-length, and perhaps a few too many shots of aimless driving (aimless driving being the late 90s / early 00s movie metaphor for global alienation). Hard to get into, but surprisingly satisfying ; a major work, by any standards.]
JULIEN DONKEY-BOY (65) (dir., Harmony Korine) Ewen Bremner, Chloe Sevigny, Werner Herzog [What's wrong with everyone? This is great stuff, albeit in a Harmony Korine freakshow kind of way, the DV decomposing everything into a Fauvist jumble of splotchy lurid colours ; maybe it's just me, since the film's IMDb User Comments - "Anyone could make this movie for 500$ in their basement", etc - make it clear people think this messy style must be really easy to do, whereas I imagine it must be quite hard (Anthony Dod Mantle goes way beyond THE CELEBRATION, bathing Chloe in a golden glow as she walks, singing a hymn, through a field of lambent sunlight). Hard to say what it's 'about' but performance certainly a recurring theme, whether the performance of a priest in church, a wrestler in a fight or an armless midget doing card tricks - or of course Julien himself, who's entirely stylised, a performance of tics and babble (that he's played by a well-known actor is part of the point) ; needless to add, if we're all constantly performing then the idea of strict social rules - "sit straight", "wash your hands" - becomes a little hollow and hard to take seriously, and Werner Herzog is hilarious as the Voice of Authority, grumbling irrelevantly in his German-accented monotone like an old maid at a game of strip-poker - chastising his sons' "moody brooding" and "artsy-fartsy" poems or just rambling querulously from the sidelines ("Vy don't you tell your sister that she is a dilettante? She is never going to learn to play zis harp. She is a dilettante. And she is a slut"). Obviously garbled and amorphous, and I'd probably go nuts if all (or even many) films were made like this, but still funny and beautiful to look at, at least on video ; the fact that we go from the Dogme 95 certificate straight to a very processed-looking opening shot, with slo-mo and conspicuously non-diegetic music (turns out to be a TV image, but still) can only be a case of one merry prankster gleefully tipping the hat to another.]