Films Seen - October 2001

[Pre-'96 films not included.]

FREDDY GOT FINGERED (59) (dir., Tom Green) Tom Green, Rip Torn, Marisa Coughlan, Eddie Kaye Thomas [Pretty out-there, though nothing in the film is as weird as its critical reception, proving either (a) that critics have been so battered with Hollywood crud they've lost the ability to evaluate what they're watching, (b) the critical community bears Mr. Green some obscure collective grudge, or (c) that it does indeed touch a nerve, and everyone's simply in denial - though it's surely not the first time laughs have been mined at the expense of the vulnerable, incl. kids (even AIRPLANE! had those jokes about the little girl with the heart transplant), or indeed the first time artists have fulminated against their parents in order to shock (totally appropriate that Eminem appears over the closing credits). Maybe it's a case of the film's hysterical in-your-face-ness blinding critics to its status as a very personal project (bracketing it with the likes of JOE DIRT and SEE SPOT RUN, as per Roger Ebert, is just obtuse), though it's not like Green tries to conceal it, down to "I Gotta Be Me" on the soundtrack and the line "Get the fuck out of my way!" just as "Directed by Tom Green" appears onscreen ; guess the psychobabble would go something like 'arrested sexuality due to unresolved Oedipal issues', but it's one thing to say that and quite another to watch Green going apeshit, filling the film with Freudian fetishes and a sexual revulsion trumping anything in SCARY MOVIE, working through self-loathing ("I'm a loser! I wish I was dead!") and gratuitous signs reading "When the fuck is this movie going to end?". Bold, uncompromised and certainly unhinged - even if Green's comic universe is too insular and self-centred to really resonate beyond people who know him personally (the SOUTH PARK boys seem more adept at mixing personal Issues with satiric sensibility) ; thoroughly auteurist, but I just wish it was funnier really. Gord's admonition for his Mom to have sex with Greeks as a way to "satisfy her urges" is sound advice, however...]

VATEL (51) (dir., Roland Joffé) Gérard Depardieu, Uma Thurman, Tim Roth, Timothy Spall [Miramax + period trappings + touch of foodie-porn (story of a great 18th-century chef) = presumption of blandness, though there is an interesting moral dimension to this tale of a decent man in the service of decadence, forced to survive - and indeed create - in a world where people are the King's playthings (he's also of course the artist in a world of philistines, and pointedly the film-maker in the sycophantic world of Hollywood, hence presumably Vatel's habit of looking at the world through the lens of a spyglass). We probably didn't need Spall saying "You despise them, don't you?", but then the film does tend to spell things out a bit ; still might've worked, just because the setting is so strong - an odious, ingrown world where court life has supplanted the real world, everything seen in terms of palace politics ("The good news is we may go to war"), everything dependent on being in or out of favour with the King - but it never really comes to the boil then just peters out, the ending both predictable and abrupt (wouldn't Vatel's sacrifice be more meaningful if Thurman had refused to sacrifice herself for him?). Probably a step up for Joffé, after his 90s ignominy ; but even RIDICULE had more punch.]

RUSH HOUR 2 (47) (dir., Brett Ratner) Jackie Chan, Chris Tucker, John Lone, Zhang Ziyi [How many uncomfortable moments can a crowd-pleaser have (and still be a crowd-pleaser)? There's Tucker saying "All you [Chinese people] look alike", and "Blend in? How can I blend in? I'm two feet taller than anybody in here!", Jeremy Piven as a lispingly swish shop assistant (there was a similar bit in THE ANIMAL as well ; is this antiquated stereotype making a comeback?), Tucker again, playing the race card for easy laughs, plus a chilling bit - esp. in the light of recent events - where he laughs off news of a fatal explosion then instantly sobers up when he learns the victims were Americans (they don't even seem to realise how ugly and xenophobic it comes off). On the plus side, Don Cheadle does kung-fu, our heroes do a brief "Who's On First"-style routine and Chan does occasional moments of magic, shimmying up a vertical bamboo pole in a couple of lightning-fast moves or leaping across a room to insert himself feet-first through a tiny gap in a metal grille (out-takes later showing all the painful times when he missed the gap) ; when he grabs some random prop in a fight scene - a waste-basket, or a potted plant - it's as casual and graceful as Fred Astaire using a hat-rack for a dancing partner in ROYAL WEDDING. Mostly mediocre, though ; when did Tucker get so damn beefy, anyway?...]

VENGO (47) (dir., Tony Gatlif) Antonio Canales, Orestes Villasan Rodriguez, Bobote, Juan Luis Corrientes [Actually an average rating : add 12 points or so for the music, subtract about as much for the film sans music. The former is a heady fusion of Gypsy, flamenco and Arabic soufi, played with exaggerated feeling, often sung by stringy old guys or bedraggled-looking hags with compellingly powerful voices and a lifetime's experience of The Blues : the latter, as more or less conceded by the opening shots (boats bringing party of tourists to a club where the music is playing), is a theme-park tour through a particular culture (Andalusian Gypsies) emphasising both the squalor and ubiquitous role of music, rather like an updated version of those old-time Hollywood Ruritanias where the people were poor but loved to yodel. Some of it feels both true and well-observed, like the way little old ladies in black headscarves function as impromptu janitors, scuttering about in little groups after the excitement has died down, cleaning up after the excesses of the young ; most of it, heavy on the family vendettas, fiery passions and voluptuous women (yes!), just feels like playing to the camera. Kind of fun, but you can't take it seriously.]

SPY KIDS (58) (dir., Robert Rodriguez) Alexa Vega, Daryl Sabara, Antonio Banderas, Carlo Gugino, Alan Cumming [Smells like a franchise ; how about a theme song? Here's my humble contribution to the inevitable sequel, and / or possible Saturday-morning cartoon series :

THE WEIGHT OF WATER (48) (dir., Kathryn Bigelow) Catherine McCormack, Sean Penn, Sarah Polley, Katrin Cartlidge, Elizabeth Hurley [Action-film auteurs trying to make the move into 'respectability' - they're as bad as clowns wanting to play Hamlet. Excellent cast, Polley's haunted mien making her a natural for 'disturbed young woman' roles (she gets an extraordinary close-up, facing the camera as she lies beside her brother's wife, simultaneously terrified and the happiest she's ever been), and the oppressive atmosphere does eventually get to you ; but Bigelow doesn't seem to realise the potential for self-parody in this hothouse scenario with its KNIFE IN THE WATER-ish setting - famous writer Penn spouting florid aphorisms as shameless hussy Hurley rubs an ice-cube over her near-naked self and jealous wife McCormack (a poor man's Charlotte Rampling) smoulders from the sidelines - just as she dosn't seem to get how it might have people giggling at a period drama when your characters live in a place called Smuttynose and say things like "She is very agreeable, and also pleasant to look upon". Strangely adolescent - you can see younger viewers maybe finding High Seriousness in this pompous, ornate drama, with its melancholy score (a poor man's PIANO) and elaborately Gothic overtones ; yet the pace is deadly, you know where it's going 20 minutes in (all you can do is wait for it to get there), and no amount of high-flown obfuscation can change that. "There are times in your life when you sense something is about to happen, and at the same time you realise it already has," concludes the voice-over ; yeah right, like that actually means something...]

PLANET OF THE APES (41) (dir., Tim Burton) Mark Wahlberg, Helena Bonham Carter, Tim Roth, Estella Warren, Michael Clarke Duncan [So much talent - Burton, Broyles, Rousselot, Elfman - such a prosaic, by-the-numbers movie. What got everyone's juices flowing (surely not the prospect of huge amounts of cash?) was presumably the thought of adding 'relevance' - "Human-lover!", the Goldwater quote, alarmist talk of "humans outnumbering us four-to-one" sounding echoes of South African apartheid - but that's only a factor for about half an hour, leaving 90 minutes of dull chase-movie leavened with cheap jokes (ape couple saying "We just got back from our country house in the rain-forest," that kind of thing). Generally blah, turning offensively lazy whenever something needs to happen - our heroes' escape plan is just to run through the ape-city at night, even though they've been warned there's a curfew, running just a few yards behind a whole platoon of ape soldiers, hoping they won't be spotted (no wonder the apes think humans are stupid) ; Wahlberg must be the year's least resourceful action hero - mostly he just whines about wanting to go home, then runs out of ideas pretty quickly in the final battle. "[The villain] will never let you go," he's warned just before the battle ; "He'll keep coming after you". "That's what I'm counting on," he replies cryptically. Did no-one spot that absolutely nothing comes of this exchange? Then again, what d'you expect when they start off with humans being beastly to lab monkeys (ah, the irony!), or invert the original's most famous lines so they're spoken (but why?) by apes instead of Charlton Heston. The final twist boggles the mind.]

LUCKY NUMBERS (37) (dir., Nora Ephron) John Travolta, Lisa Kudrow, Tim Roth, Ed O'Neill, Michael Moore [Ever notice how bad films seem to slip down a slippery slope? At first they look promising - gleefully nasty black comedy, say, trading on the fear and loathing beneath showbiz types' schmoozy 'charm' ; then you find little things that don't quite work, like Travolta's monstrously insincere celebrity being apparently quite serious about the noble profession of game-show hosting (can it be he's not so insincere after all? can it be he's actually meant as a hero?) ; then you get some actively annoying scenes, like a brainstorming session that degenerates into drawn-out bickering about THE WIZARD OF OZ, and you start to notice that the easy cynicism is a bit too easy (e.g. Moore's line about his church needing a new furnace, glibly undercut with "adult bookstore"), and the 'daring' insensitivity being flaunted a bit too showily, and you wonder why American black comedies - from DROWNING MONA to I LOVE YOU TO DEATH - so often ratchet the proceedings into farcical cops and outrageously stupid robbers, when black comedy works so much better in deadpan KIND HEARTS AND CORONETS style ; then, finally, just as you're losing all patience, the film itself implodes, as though the film-makers were losing patience too - not even bothering to make sense anymore (why does Kudrow pepper-spray "Dale the Thug" when he hasn't even got the ticket yet? why on earth does Travolta attack the cop when he's not doing anything illegal?), as though to confirm its status as officially a Bad Movie. Depressing, to put it mildly ; why's it set in 1988, anyway?...]

TIME AND TIDE (47) (dir., Tsui Hark) Nicholas Tse, Wu Bai, Candy Lo, Cathy Tsui [Might've thought this the greatest movie ever made, at least if I'd never seen a movie before ; alas, I have, so I know they're capable of more than frantic cutting and the occasional jaw-dropping image. Elaborate action scenes are a sight to see, but the constant shifts in camera perspective muddle up the geography (is that the point?), and the feeling persists vis-a-vis the characters that we haven't been properly introduced, even as they dodge bullets and abseil down tall buildings ; meanwhile there's an ECU of an eyeball, shots from inside an ice-bucket and a tumble dryer, a freeze-frame in mid-fireball, a singalong in a car and fluttering pigeons to the max, to name just a handful of attractions (or distractions). No doubt works better on the big screen, maybe even better as avant-garde study in Pure Motion - though probably best of all as a two-minute trailer. Exhausting.]

THE SCORE (64) (dir., Frank Oz) Robert De Niro, Edward Norton, Marlon Brando, Angela Bassett [Heist is tense and the actors strike sparks - but who'd have thought it would be visually interesting as well? Opening shot sets the tone : master-thief De Niro sits in the dark, patiently cracking a bedroom safe, while sounds of unseen revellers chatter and laugh from elsewhere in the house (let the rest of Hollywood party, say Oz and Co. ; we're here to work) ; cautious introspection trumps flash and dazzle, hence the ending - and hence also the dark, murky images ("nice and dark in here"), light conspicuously held-down even in the outdoor scenes as if nothing should be wasted, not even light. It's shot very deliberately as though the protagonist - quiet, meticulous, living in the dark where a person can hide - were also the man behind the camera, making for a rare coherence between form and content. Doesn't build very well, admittedly - slow to start, skimping on the all-important middle section (not always clear how the job is going, or what's left to do) - and there's cheap shots, like the one-dimensional hacker ; but the big scenes work reliably well, Norton crackles like a young De Niro (doing his schizo double-act from PRIMAL FEAR) and Bassett deserves major props for bringing conviction to a nothing role (why did she accept it, though?) ; not to mention all the fun of drawing parallels to the famously reserved real-life De Niro, who also likes to disappear between 'jobs' and also owns a restaurant in New York (as opposed to a jazz-bar in Montreal). "I am very good at what I do," declares a robber evenly, "and I take it very, very seriously". 'Nuff said...]

THE ANIMAL (51) (dir., Luke Greenfield) Rob Schneider, Colleen Haskell, John C. McGinley [You know you're watching too many movies when you can recognise a reference to THE WATERBOY ; on the other hand, you know you're not watching too many movies when you can still get suckered in by a hilarious trailer that (inevitably) turns out to include almost every decent gag in the film itself. Best of the unseen are perhaps Schneider's fight with the orang-utan and the bit where he lets a baby vulture eat chopped-up worms out of his mouth (eww!), though in general the more outlandish the mishap, the better he comes off - his doughy face has a kind of Zen weariness that seems to be saying "Bring on catastrophe!" (as an aggressive comic, e.g. in JUDGE DREDD, he's near-intolerable) ; "That wasn't so bad," he groans at the end of an absurdly over-extended car-crash, two-minutes-plus of crashing and tumbling down various cliffs - just before his car is flattened by a huge rock. Some nice stuff but it runs out of steam, turning stale long before the end (the final-act werewolf scenario is a sign of desperation) ; most remarkable perhaps for a startling sub-plot in which the hero's black friend complains of reverse racism, i.e. getting preferential treatment all the time, everyone bending over backwards to accommodate him just because he's black. Somewhere a Professor of Sociology - call him Spike Lee - is fuming about this casual attitude merely soothing middle-class guilt, obscuring the plight of real-life blacks suffering real-life discrimination, while his opposite number argues it's just a reflection of America's growing colour-blindness, the logical next step from the comic figure of the paranoid black man (e.g. Doug E. Doug in HANGIN' WITH THE HOMEBOYS) who blames everything on being black ; and of course the mass audience ignores them both, giggling at the sight of a man with a live catfish in his mouth...]

BRIDGET JONES'S DIARY (56) (dir., Sharon Maguire) Renée Zellweger, Hugh Grant, Colin Firth, Jim Broadbent [Better than expected - though not when the heroine is making a fool of herself, or the world's worst soundtrack is underlining everything in cartoon colours ("All By Myself" as she languishes in her apartment, "Respect" after she tells off a caddish lover). Women come out of it quite badly, actually - not in the film but as a species, for taking to their hearts such a rancid stew of self-loathing and wish-fulfilment : not only are they shown to be helpless without a man but the woman who tries to be independent / go her own way is shown to be a fool (and returned to her husband), while the heroine is a hopeless klutz and gaffe-prone disaster-area without even the possibility of improvement - her happy ending is a man who will love her "just as she is", instead of the restless, exciting man who might take her to a higher level (though of course her choice - the men fighting over this pathetic creature - is shown as a choice between Hugh Grant and Colin Firth ; that's the wish-fulfilment). Hard not to see it as a confirmation of the 'little woman' role, Silly Girl told in no uncertain terms not to seek ideas above her station (that charismatic Grant must be unconvicingly tamed in the end gives the game away ; leaving him as he was - even if he promised her a life of adventure and she turned him down - would expose the ending for the dismal defeat that it is). That it works despite everything is a testament to the script's ruthless professionalism - keeping things tight, pared down to a fast-seeming 92 mins. - and above all the stars, who sidestep every conceivable landmine : Zellweger doesn't simper, brings a sense of fun to Bridget, Firth underplays (no doubt aware that his 1995 "Pride and Prejudice" is the top film of all time among female IMDb users), Grant modulates superbly, bringing just enough of the rascally charm to suggest a boyish nonchalance in the selfish bastard (his deceit rumbled, he just sighs a little in an "Oh well, here we go again" kind of way). Mindless fun, tart at the edges ; but I wouldn't read the book if you paid me.]

BROTHER (53) (dir., Takeshi Kitano) 'Beat' Takeshi, Omar Epps, Ryo Ishibashi, Claude Maki [Takeshi Kitano is 53, and undoubtedly remembers the bad old days of the 50s and 60s when Japan was humiliatingly in thrall to the US, all but emasculated by the Mutual Security Treaty - hence perhaps this sly bit of payback, in which Japanese discipline and tradition (the "strict world of yakuza", with its rituals and blind obedience) cuts through the shiftless LA underworld like a knife through butter. Takeshi Kitano is (allegedly) a major film-maker with a signature style, most of which gets recycled here - violence shot so we cut Before to After without the moment of impact, breaks for silly games, even a trademark scene-by-the-sea. Takeshi Kitano is a 'character', a persona stretching further into abstraction with every film : laconic to the point of near-autism, fundamentally sexless ("He's interested in women now?" marvels a surprised underling), happy - like Sanjuro - to stand on the sidelines letting enemies kill each other when it suits him (his listlessness possibly a joke on the real-life Kitano's manic energy), increasingly thin and shrivelled and increasingly remote, godlike, omniscient - the yakuza-as-Yoda, complete with goofy sense of humour. Not exactly an ambitious film, but it works well enough once you settle into its rhythm (and lower your expectations, esp. expectations of TK engaging with - maybe even making a comment on - his new environment) ; cuts straight to a shot of Kitano in lieu of any directorial credit, which says it all really...]

JOSIE AND THE PUSSYCATS (45) (dir., Deborah Kaplan / Harry Elfont) Rachael Leigh Cook, Tara Reid, Rosario Dawson, Alan Cumming, Parker Posey [Central axiom of teenage movies (actually, I just made it up) : teens are preternaturally insecure, and will not laugh at other teens unless they can be sure you're not secretly laughing at them (e.g. if the other teens are Bill-and-Ted-type lunkheads). From the opening shot of Du Jour fans acting grotesque to the digs at "mindless drones who will gobble up anything you tell them is cool" to the heroines themselves - all too easily manipulated by the corporate machine - this infringes at every turn, which presumably explains its failure with its target audience (the climactic twist, that the whole thing has been stage-managed by freaks and geeks, is just bewildering when the characters in question have been repressive, quasi-parental figures all along ; it's one thing for the Wizard of Oz to be revealed as human, quite another when he turns out to be the same person as the Wicked Witch of the West). All of which should ideally make it fertile ground for non-teens in subversive STARSHIP TROOPERS tradition, except it's not especially subversive either, neither is it using the genre for some larger statement - everything's completely out in the open, just kind of snotty and (Pussy)catty, nor is there much in the way of consolation : DP Libatique can't seem to lose himself in the candy colours, lighting everything just a bit too harsh (the shadows seem really marked, never matching the frothy CHARLIE'S ANGELS look), and the self-referential bits - shout-outs for ANGELS and CAN'T HARDLY WAIT, demonic laughter a la AUSTIN POWERS, Alexandra saying "I'm only here 'cause I was in the comic-book" - seem tacked on to the rest of it (like the product-placement, they're amusing but inconsequential). Kaplan and Elfont come across less as grown-ups holding up a (funhouse) mirror to teen culture, more like snarky college seniors hanging out at a party for 18-year-olds so they can feel superior ; details work, gags sometimes lively (Du Jour rule!), Pussys' sound uncannily No Doubt-ish, I thought - but maybe that's just me showing my age...]

PANIC (47) (dir., Henry Bromell) William H. Macy, Neve Campbell, Donald Sutherland, John Ritter, Tracey Ullman [Good intentions, wrong decisions. The premise may be done-to-death of late, but the casual way it's introduced makes a perfect moment (albeit not too convincing, with hindsight), and of course the cast is very strong ; but the film stumbles, veers into AFFLICTION territory - way overplaying the monstrous father - and the coda, ending on the thoughts of the precocious kid, leaves a rancid taste. The precocious kid ("I'm going through a green phase") is a bit of a pain in general, actually, which may just be miscasting (a kid with more gravity, like in NOBODY'S FOOL, might've brought it off) or a case of miscommunication : certainly Ullman seems to have the same problem, her character apparently conceived as a wild child gone middle-aged (used to do coke, bit of a kook in the flashbacks) but played as the usual frumpy housewife : it's as though Bromell couldn't quite convey what he wanted, forcing the actors to fall back on cliché. Has its moments in the writing, though the dry 'indie' style of dialogue - where people say "I don't know" a lot, or lapse into uncomfortable silence or repeat what the other person said - seems to me over-rated (much more difficult to extract character through wall-to-wall sparkling banter, surely) ; often comes across as a bit of a scrapbook, stuff thrown in for its own sake - a song Bromell likes (Mercury Rev, in this case), maybe a cute thing he heard his kids say ; but I guess that's what makes it personal...]

FINAL FANTASY: THE SPIRITS WITHIN (53) (dir., Hironobu Sakaguchi) With the voices of Ming-Na, Alec Baldwin, Ving Rhames, Steve Buscemi [Not what I expected. Clearly, "CGI realism" / "live-action meets animation" hype wildly premature - at best the effect is of something like "Thunderbirds", movements lifelike but a little jerky, lip-sync close but not quite there ; biggest surprise is the New Age philosophy, "planet-is-alive" blather side-by-side with the Ben Affleck hero in a strange alliance of Hollywood cash and Miyazaki worldview (this must be the first 'summer movie' I've seen where the hero ends by joining his soul with the spirit of the cosmos, unless you count Bruce Willis getting vaporised at the end of ARMAGEDDON). Even the villains are somewhat sympathetic, even the invading Phantoms turning out (in a PULSE-like twist) to be merely mixed-up ghosts looking for solutions - though they're much more fun when they act like monsters, hanging in the sky like dragon-shaped jellyfish ; probably works best as old-fashioned sci-fi (someone even gets to yell "Behind you!"), rousing if a little humourless. Quirks are interesting nonetheless, and it certainly looks good ; can't believe they left out the classic videogame shot - POV from behind the shooter - when Aki takes out an army of advancing beasties, though...]

CAPTAIN CORELLI'S MANDOLIN (37) (dir., John Madden) Nicolas Cage, Penelope Cruz, John Hurt, Christian Bale, Irene Papas [Greek dancing, photogenic settings, quarrelsome mammas in black headscarves ; Mediterranean stereotypes for bored Anglo-Saxons ; the occasional (very occasional) graceful moment - "Where's your miracle now, eh?" asks a dejected onlooker at a funeral, cut straight to a party days or weeks later (the miracle is Life Going On) ; Cage going back on the (slight) promise of THE FAMILY MAN, giving a vile, phony performance - doing 'high spirits' with the animation of a wind-up toy, then pouring on the soulful looks when things get dark ; Cruz once again getting lost in an English-language movie, her wistful, halting charm barely registering (she and he have zero chemistry). Madden directs in his sleep, shrugs at political subtleties (just as long as you've got Nazi swine for the villains...), can't even get the actors to use the same pronunciation for the Greek names, no doubt figuring it didn't matter (the project was foolproof, esp. with Harvey doing the marketing) ; his staging of the pivotal moment - Cruz letting fly repressed emotions in a red-hot dance o'passion - is so muted I didn't even realise what was going on till Cage's stunned reaction at the end (I may have been dozing a little). "Doesn't sound very exciting, does it?" observes someone (speaking of Love!) ; you can say that again. Not offensive, just dead in the water.]