Films Seen - September 2001

[Pre-'96 films not included.]

POLLOCK (43) (dir., Ed Harris) Ed Harris, Marcia Gay Harden, Jeffrey Tambor, Amy Madigan ["Some poor bastard gets a nod from Heaven and a prod from Hell, and out comes art" ; Pauline Kael on THE MUSIC LOVERS 30 years ago - but not much has changed judging by this thin biopic, which can't even follow through on its only real insight (whether Pollock drew from within himself, as he claimed, or was inspired by external factors, esp. the power of Nature). Mostly he oscillates between brilliance and the Demon Drink, while talented actors get nothing to play and 'splatter painting' is discovered accidentally, when Pollock's brush drips a little paint on the floor (which may well be true but is still as dopey as Johann Strauss being inspired to A Certain Composition by the clip-clop of horses while riding through the Vienna Woods in THE GREAT WALTZ) ; "No matter how drunk you are, one thing is sacred for you - your Art!" helpfully explains a supporting bystander, making you wonder why Harris privileged the writers with an opening-credits mention while modestly declining any directorial credit for himself (maybe so we know who to blame). Sincere, sensitive, well-meant ; obviously a labour of love ; not much going on, though...]

SUGAR & SPICE (52) (dir., Francine McDougall) Marley Shelton, Mena Suvari, Marla Sokoloff, James Marsden [BRING IT ON? SET IT OFF? Neither, as it happens - just a zippy tale of cheerleader felons, and surprisingly enjoyable till a lame final section. A better film might've pointed up the irony of a bank being robbed for the most all-American of reasons - the blessed union of a cheerleader and a football jock - whereas this kind of alludes to it before moving on to broader gags, but Marsden is funny as an amiable himbo ("What a sad waste of man," sighs waspish Sokoloff) and Shelton, with her Shelley Long sweetness, gets the butter-wouldn't-melt-in-her-mouth heroine (heart-shaped mirror, note-paper headed "From The Beautiful Mind Of Diane") exactly right ; too protective of its characters, but at least it likes them - which, failing HEATHERS or ELECTION-type subversion, is probably the next-best thing. Funniest gag : the principal's speech, with the guy in the Lincoln costume miming along. Second-funniest gag : "Papa Don't Preach" ; might've been top if they hadn't explained it...]

JURASSIC PARK III (57) (dir., Joe Johnston) Sam Neill, William H. Macy, Téa Leoni, Alessandro Nivola [Good film, shame about the dinos. Seen it all before, and making them smart (they can even 'talk' among themselves) was a bad idea, out of sync with their basic dino-tude ; yet the film happily re-invents a tired franchise, pushing it towards the loose comic spirit of a Joe Dante monster movie. Payne and Taylor don't exactly bring ELECTION to the dinos, but - with the unpretentious Johnston, blessedly free of Spielbergian capital-S Showmanship - they do poke fun at THE LOST WORLD's silly set-up ("Wait, you mean there are two islands?"), and use Macy and Leoni as a humanising presence, doing the mundane things rarely seen in action flicks (changing clothes, taking a pee) or having a marital spat in the middle of the jungle ("Go ahead and scream, then - but when that ... that tricyclopods attacks you don't come crying to me!") ; and of course Neill gets to grumble about "theme-park monsters", and a precocious kid hero disses the portentous chaos-theory babble from Parts I and II, and Randy Newman plays in the background to a bar scene, and you know that dinosaur-with-a-cell-phone gag was written with a cinema audience in mind (my audience automatically shot each other dirty looks, till they realised what was going on). In a word, irreverent.]

A KNIGHT'S TALE (55) (dir., Brian Helgeland) Heath Ledger, Mark Addy, Paul Bettany, Rufus Sewell [Guess I might've overrated this, but it worked well enough after a long day at the office. Interesting that the hero is part of a team, but must go his own way ("I will not run") in order to become a hero - the Hawksian idea of first among equals ; interesting also that the jousting tournaments are political tools, confirming the power of nobility for the eyes of the watching peasants (the recital of the combatants' lineage - going back four generations - takes twice as long as the joust itself), just as the film itself is covertly royalist (note the deus ex machina) masquerading as populist. Mostly however it's just a fun movie, with some playful touches ("Is this the road to Rouen?"), lively performances and a laddish, boisterous feel ; anachronisms feel like a gimmick, though, and Helgeland's glee in pain being inflicted (albeit toned down somewhat from PAYBACK) is a bit alarming in a grown man...]

SWORDFISH (44) (dir., Dominic Sena) John Travolta, Hugh Jackman, Halle Berry, Don Cheadle ["You know what the problem is with Hollywood?" sez Travolta (opening scene, straight to camera). "They make shit!". Oh, please. Here's Halle Berry going from sharp, sassy woman to pathetic damsel in distress, Jackman turning hero for no apparent reason, Travolta himself doing his devilled-ham routine from BATTLEFIELD EARTH - no amount of blather about "pushing the envelope" can disguise another wafer-thin, incoherent Hollywood actioner. Sena has fun with it, though, throwing in supermodel types named Helga and a vertiginous chase down a cliff-top just for the hell of it (the cops are waiting for our hero when he finally rolls to the bottom) - but it only really gains (unwanted) resonance in the final act, with debate on the ethics of counter-terrorism (you have to hit them hard, says Travolta, "make [revenge] so horrific that it becomes unthinkable to attack Americans") and a helicopter buzzing through the LA skyline, grazing various skyscrapers along the way ; bonus points for the thought of punch-drunk execs sweating through their suits as they ponder how the hell to finesse that for the DVD.]

LARA CROFT TOMB RAIDER (36) (dir., Simon West) Angelina Jolie, Jon Voight, Noah Taylor, Iain Glen [Curiously uninvolving, with a stop-and-start rhythm : tension never builds - long dead stretches where nothing happens, then suddenly it's the nick of time (ditto Lara's relationship with West, which suddenly inspires supreme sacrifice after being almost non-existent for the rest of the movie). Jolie gives it fizz, zooming on her bike through London traffic or swinging her feet up on a chair to the disapproving glances of the stuffed-shirts ; feminist critics are right to speak of strong women and phallic pile-drivers - but who can explain slimy villain Glen's orotund pronouncements in the heat of battle? "Remember," he intones as his minions search for the magic doodah, "what we're looking for is hidden not just in space, but also in Time!". I'll look over here, bud, you go look last Thursday...]

Toronto International Film Festival (36 films seen).

BULLY (55) (dir., Larry Clark) Brad Renfro, Bijou Phillips, Nick Stahl, Leo Fitzpatrick [Not to give too much away, but this true-life drama ends with the shocking news that its most likeable (and basically innocent) character has been sentenced to die in the electric chair - followed, way at the end of the credits, long after most of the audience have gone home, by the addendum that his sentence was in fact commuted on appeal to life imprisonment. Just a detail, and maybe it couldn't be helped, but it still seems to typify its dubious m.o. and willingness to sacrifice anything - even, perhaps, compassion - for the sake of a juicy moment (one suspects Clark swore under his breath when he heard the kid had won his appeal) ; the view of teens, as ever, is a mix of upfront exploitation and quiet self-loathing - it's tempting to see the murder in class-warfare terms, but surely it's also relevant that Stahl's character is much closer to the adult world than the other teens, and makes money by exploiting their bodies (i.e. is the closest equivalent to Clark himself!). Stoner humour is welcome, but it's hard to see how it changes very much - the film isn't actually amoral, though it doesn't point the finger at any one cause (Eminem, video games, parents who don't want to know, all get their moment in the sun) : if anything, making the kids so comically pathetic is an even clearer statement that Something Must Be Done to help them. Nice woozy texture, getting the intimacy of this hothouse world ; probably the best of Clark's films, but he's such a hustler, really...]

SMELL OF CAMPHOR, FRAGRANCE OF JASMINE (52) (dir., Bahman Farmanara) Bahman Farmanara, Reza Kianian, Roya Nonahali ["I do not fear Death," says Farmanara ; "I fear living a futile life", i.e. not making movies, so he makes a movie about ... his fear of Death! Dovetails intriguingly with the film-making, insofar as our hero tries to control his death as if it were a movie - and only stops obsessing about it when he realises that's impossible - but the thing still feels affected, not to say self-aggrandising : Farmanara's lugubrious Jackie Mason mien, both as actor and director ("Act One: A Bad Day"), is sometimes fun but it seems inadequate to his subject - Bahman in CU, looking bummed as he Contemplates Death, doesn't really make the statement he thinks it makes (actually closer to a statement of arrogance and presumption). Still a good thing overall, adding to our knowledge of Iran - it's a long way from Kiarostami's Koker to this courtly-looking intellectual, limning a world of cell-phones and Mercedes cars as he takes careful aim at the country's nepotism and bureaucracy, with hints of a darker underbelly (the encounter with the abused woman, with the implication that he'll be in trouble should he try to report it, says in 5 minutes most of what THE CIRCLE says in 90). It is, he says, a film about freedom - his own freedom to kill himself through unhealthy living if he wants, implicitly the country's freedom to move beyond prescriptive, for-your-own-good Islamism - illustrating the point with footage of a televised speech hymning freedom above all, which is canny ; making sure the speech in question is spoken by a mullah, which is even cannier.]

A.I. ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (70) (dir., Steven Spielberg) Haley Joel Osment, Jude Law, Frances O'Connor, William Hurt [Bizarrely structured, with the whole faux-"Pinocchio" middle section something of a red herring (basically, Pinocchio tracks down the Blue Fairy, asks her to make him a real boy - and gets the reply "Don't be ridiculous!") ; Spielberg has always been drawn to the theme of the hustler sidling up to something greater than himself (SCHINDLER'S LIST, EMPIRE OF THE SUN, CLOSE ENCOUNTERS to a great extent), but this is the first time he makes it clear that action in itself can't achieve transcendence - that you have to surrender, and appreciate that everything fades. Recognition of our own transience (incl. of course the transience of childhood) is what makes us human, which is why an eternal robot-child can never be a real boy however hard he tries - unless of course through a hi-tech virtual reality that contrives transience for him, making for a neat Kubrickian touch (emotion through technology) and a deeply moving ending. Earlier on, the Flesh Fair scene - humanising Death for mechas - seems misguided, but then much of the middle section seems misguided, sending David down a semi-deliberate cul-de-sac (hard to call it deliberate, since Spielberg - like the scientists engineering David's journey - seems unable to let go of that journey, too much the hustler perhaps) : emotionally, the film goes directly from the heart-wrenching forest scene to the final sequence, the traumatic loss of childhood (with all its rejection and abandonment) followed by the healing dream of childhood, dreams being our way of staving off mortality (why bother dreaming if we could live forever? what could we dream about if we had Time enough for everything? "everything fades" makes us who we are). You kind of wonder if Spielberg even knows what potent stuff he's playing with, because the film is so muddled and wrong-headed, yet it gets so many things right as well - especially the brilliant first hour, capturing a hushed, sterile world of over-perfection, mirroring the creepy perfection of David himself : he's scary the way kids are sometimes scary, in his alien single-mindedness (love the bit where he rests his head on a table, his eyeballs reflected in the polished surface like some sort of four-eyed mutant), which is why the forest scene is so breathtaking - he's literally losing everything he has in the world. That it also carries echoes of Snow White abandoned in the forest (or the mother's death in BAMBI) opens up another window, fairytales channelling and healing childish trauma - the magic of stories, and of course (Spielberg being Spielberg) films themselves ; but that's a whole other level...]

AUDITION (58) (dir., Miike Takashi) Ryo Ishibashi, Eihi Shiina, Tetsu Sawaki [Not a bad film by any means, but the melding of horror film and gentle human drama isn't really a terrific idea : one loses sight of the characters' motivations, seeing them only as psycho bitch and unfortunate victim - it's significant that the climactic torture is in fact based on a misunderstanding (the woman thinks the hero was using her, whereas he was genuinely in love) yet nothing comes of this, nor is it really relevant, merely evidence of a twisted sense of humour. Interesting as a FATAL ATTRACTION-style paranoid fantasy, even more interesting as a veiled statement on modern Japan - a place, we're repeatedly told, of loneliness and a chasm between the generations (the middle-aged hero looks to the traditional model of submissive Japanese women, but his young lover is very different - and the equally young bartender shoots him a scornful glance when he hears him talking about arranged marriage) ; interesting also that the hero indirectly seems to long for Death (because he's one of a dying breed?), drawn to the girl's apparent fatalism. But it's a lurid tale - serial-killer-type scenario with intimations of unhappy childhood - grafted onto a thoughtful one, and it doesn't give it room to breathe ; never really cared about these characters - mostly because my mind was elsewhere, on the encroaching sense of imminent mayhem ; the climax, in this context, seems less a catharsis than a cheap joke.]

GHOST WORLD (71) (second viewing: 69) (dir., Terry Zwigoff) Thora Birch, Steve Buscemi, Scarlet Johansson, Ileana Douglas, Brad Renfro [Could've been subtler : the ending overstates - surely it's enough to know that a bus came for the old man, that the heroine's consciousness has been raised - Douglas' putdown of "amusing" cartoons versus "higher" Art seems gratuitous and out of character, and it's annoying, after an album of yellowed photos has been leafed through with poignant 20s music on the soundtrack, for a character to then remark that most people have no sense of history (hence the music and the old photos, geddit?). It's the kind of line that prompts cries of smugness and holier-than-thou arrogance, yet the film is very pointedly about the opposite - the beginnings of compassion (a theme it shares with RUSHMORE), and the move from the clique-ridden universe of high-school to a larger understanding of the world, starting to acknowledge all the many kinds of people who must be respected, if not necessarily befriended (finding one's place in the world, you might say). All kinds of characters are offered, exaggerated for comic effect but suitably variegated, the film daring us to consider our response - initially as mocking as our snarky heroines' but gradually maturing, partly because we see the heroines' limitations (note the reaction shot of Seymour when the girls mistakenly assume he doesn't know they're laughing at him) and partly because everyone in the film is a little odd : why should it be funny for estate agents to say "I'm so proud of you!" after clinching a deal - is it any weirder than the painfully sincere pleas in the lonely-hearts column, or the super-understanding Dad who automatically shields his eyes when he enters his daughter's room, or the self-loathing geeks obsessing over their record collections, or indeed the Attitude-laden heroine herself? Crucially, we don't really see the damage she does - the only person sobbing onscreen is her - not because she's being protected (though there's that as well) as because she's too half-formed to really know what she's doing : very much a coming-of-age movie, which may be why the plot-driven second half is the weaker (too much Buscemi, I thought, though he's very good). Still very solid, and the look is fresh and vibrant.]