harborrat28 Reviews

El field. (2011)

One-Quarter Documentary; Three-Quarters Lyrical Film

[5/10 · 24 February 2012]

i was very disappointed in this film. visually it was beautiful but i believe that it was extremely uninformative about the situation of the farmworkers who come from Mexico on a daily basis to work in the imperial valley in California.

daniel rosas, the director, appeared at the screening which i saw. he was asked whether he had trouble getting permission to do this film. he said initially there had been some resistance because of the growers' secretaries misunderstanding their authority. once he spoke to the growers' themselves, he was given permission. this is not surprising as rosas's film does not touch on anything vaguely controversial.

the film is virtually a silent film with only the sound of the machines, a few brief exchanges of conversation between the workers and a bit of music. there is no commentary and no information about the area (the lady sitting next to me thought they were in Texas), the demographics of the labor pool, the nature of the agriculture (non-organic i was told in answer to my question), the method by which workers are granted work visas or the conditions under which the farmworkers toil. when asked whether he'd edited out complaints about working conditions, rosas said he'd heard none as the $95/day the workers receive is considered a great deal of money in Mexico. he also reassured us that they had access to medical treatment.

in my view, this impressionist film should not be categorized as a documentary.

The Ghost Writer (2010)

Chinatown It Ain't

[7/10 · 4 April 2010]

i saw the ghost writer yesterday w/ 2 very literate friends. i liked it well enough but not nearly as much as they....

i've given it a 7 on a scale of 10--good cinematography, very stylish setting & some intelligent one-liners. on the other hand, i found the movie confusing, as did many of the other members of the audience, who were volubly questioning one another in the lobby after. even my friends had differing & unclear impressions of who recruited who & when, & why the main character was so susceptible?

i was no better off and had additional problems w/ the why of the ending. maybe polanski added the ending (apparently it was one of the few things not verbatim from the book) to make the movie like a chinatown for the modern times. for the blair character, the movie might have been more credible had there been a second recruiting agency: opus dei. the davinci code meets chinatown.

what i did not find confusing was the heavy product placement for BMW's GPS system or the obvious parallels to the last administration. one of the many positive professional reviewers actually said he thought some people would not see the parallels! what people? the ones living in the outback w/o a TV or a telephone?

i agree with kimberly gadette, from indie movies on-line, who said: "What's in a name? If the name is Polanski, everything: adulation, fealty, reverence. But if the writer/director's name were, say, Johnny Whosis, then perhaps the movie's current enthusiasts would see this political mystery thriller for the empty vessel it is. The plot is centered on a substitute ghostwriter who's been hired to revise the memoirs of an empty suit of a former British Prime Minister, one Adam Lang; a thinly-disguised Tony Blair-type, bowing to the whims of the most vacant cipher to ever sit behind the desk in the Oval Office."

chinatown is one of my favorite all-time movies. the ghost writer does not hold a candle to it.

It's Complicated (2009)

Fun & Funny Flick

[9/10 · 27 December 2009]

It's Complicated was a real relief from the juvenile romantic comedies that seem to dominate (understandably, I guess) television, the theaters and the awards. I think of them as the post-Seinfeld romantic comedies--little if any nuance, lots of OMG, & an insufferable dose of It's All About Me. This work is sophisticated and intelligent, more like the classic comedies of the past with more skin and contemporary language.

It has often been said that it is more difficult to do comedy than drama, and I think this is true. In It's Complicated we see 1 actor who is extraordinary at both genres--Streep; 2 actors who are accomplished at comedy (& who can on occasion do serious) Martin & Baldwin; and a young man who, for the first time as far as I can see, may have the ability to outgrow his mugging serial persona and do something better than reincarnations of Jim in The Office or replications of what he is, a 30-ish, appealing young man--Krasinski.

Alec Baldwin was a total hoot--so unashamed of his corpulence & willing to put it all out there, laugh at himself & invite us to laugh at him. There was a lot of laughter from the audience throughout the movie & I think it came from both women & men.

Yes, I am over 50 & a widow. Yes seeing a movie where the female star has both great intelligence, beauty and wrinkles is balm to the spirit. Although I'm not in the market, I know how grim the prospects for finding someone to "like a lot" (as Martin says at one point) are. This movie did not give me hope in that regard (it is, after all, only a fairy tale) but it made me laugh for a couple of hours. A wonderful way to spend a dreary Saturday afternoon.

The Informant! (2009)

Incredibly Real & Well-crafted Work of Art

[9/10 · 19 September 2009]

A retired federal prosecutor, I saw this movie with a friend who is also an ex-prosecutor and is now in a white collar defense practice. We both loved the film & were hard-pressed to politely contain our laughter. There was so much that we recognized from our former lives. Matt Damon was magnificent and Melanie Lynskey, as his wife, a perfect match. Together they captured the typical white collar offender & his family--people who, when caught, are in total denial, blaming their misfortunes on everyone else, lying about the magnitude of their crimes, failing to appreciate that their life has changed forever, regardless of whether they avoid jail or not.

Similarly, the FBI agents in film were well-portrayed...like many agents(& many prosecutors, as well), they became a little (actually a lot) too close to their cooperator. Details like having to make critical phone calls from a public phone because your equipment fails & the problems with the making of the videos of the meetings, etc. were hysterical &, again, pretty real. I think most television-informed viewers think that law enforcement is perfect and can do anything. They forget that agents and police are just people like the rest of us, that life does not proceed as we plan it and that people like Mark Whittacre are almost always not "good guys." Rather they are people, often charming ones, who are tone-deaf ethically. And the movie captured what it feels like when you see an important cooperator dive into the tank.

The screenplay, music, the cinematography and casting were phenomenal. The film moved along briskly and coherently, engaging us aesthetically as well as emotionally.

This movie was one of the best I've seen this year.

A Good Woman (2004)

Pretty Bad

[5/10 · 9 September 2009]

This is another movie in the list of "What Does Anyone See In Scarlet Johansen" films. As in Vicky, Christina, Barcelona, the porcine-faced Johansson is totally unconvincing as the object of the desire of a man with appeal and choice who is driven by anything other than his small brain. It calls to mind the old punchline "If you can't sing Melancholy Baby," show us your tits."

In this case, both Johansson & Helen Hunt were not good choices for the roles they were called upon to play. The Wilde original calls for sophisticated (& probably necessarily British) actors with talent for the drawing rooms of the 19th century.

Tom Wilkinson & the sets/setting were the only redeeming things in this otherwise pretty badly acted film.

Religulous (2008)

well done movie -- both funny and upsetting at the same time.

[9/10 · 4 October 2008]

Unlike Bill Maher, I am not an agnostic. Rather, I am a scientific materialist, a description that I found recently in reading Edward O. Wilson's "On Human Nature."

Although I had already crossed the bridge from the agnostic to the atheist or Bright side of the a-religious ravine, Wilson's book, with its analysis of the evolutionary origins of, among other things, the human need to believe, heightened my comfort with my own conclusions about the nonexistence of a deity.

Against this background, I found many things to laugh at and agree with in "Religulous." The friend with whom I saw the movie is not religious but is hopeful that there is an afterlife and clings to the notion that the positives in religion (comfort to the sick and bereaved; a source of moral and ethical guidelines) outweigh the negatives (the violence and bigotry that all faiths--except maybe the Jains--support to preserve and defend their myths).

Throughout most of the movie, she was laughing and enjoying Maher's well done documentary. As the credits started to reel, however, I saw that she was crying. She was very upset by Maher's accurate summation of the threat to the world that religious belief poses (of course, she has a 17 year old son whom she loves dearly and she would like to believe that he has a future).

The movie is well done and fair IF one is capable of any objectivity. The proofs that religious texts, particularly the Old and New Testaments, The Torah, the Koran and the Book of Mormon, etc. were written by men with their own agendas and no scientific or experiential basis for their writings were well presented and documented. Jesus was certainly a repackaging of earlier Egyptian and Mithraic gods intended to make co-opt the earlier faiths and to gain converts.

In reading the reviews by other viewers, I noted a tendency for the so-called agnostics to lump people like me, whose lack of faith is not a creed, with atheists (for whom non-belief is a faith and who need to preach and convert) and religious extremists.

To claim to agree with Maher or to be an agnostic and still believe in some kind of supernatural power and/or to practice rituals based on myths that science and reason have effectively dispatched as ridiculous is to support the extremists of one's particular faith.

I wonder how many of the viewers in the theater, even those who applauded, had just finished their celebration of the Jewish holidays. How many will go to church on Easter to sing about the corporeal resurrection of the man named Jesus? How many of the 16% of non-believers cited by Maher cling to the vestiges of their mythology but talk about their respective scriptures as metaphorical?

Maher apparently believes that people can be reasoned with and change their behavior (a belief he shares with other writers on the danger that religious belief poses to humanity and the earth--Sam Harris, e.g.). He is wrong.

The need to believe is in our brain as what Wilson described as one of the "product(s) of genetic evolution by natural selection acting on human populations for hundreds of thousand of years in their ancient environments." Thus, religion is a subject that for most humans is beyond reason. They are genetically programmed to believe, were effectively brain-washed as children and do not have the strength or education or intellect or whatever to transcend their biology. And if the myth weren't a religious one, it would be a political one (Communism, Socialism, Nazism, Maoism) which is the same thing. We would still continue to kill one another based on unifying myths that we are genetically programmed to accept.

Like the mockery of our presidential and vice-presidential candidates, this movie makes me laugh until I sit back and think of how serious it is in terms of the consequences for our nation and the world.

Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008)

Another Disappointment Fueled By Uncritical Critics

[5/10 · 24 August 2008]

After reading a couple of over-the-top reviews in New York publications, I was anxious to see Vicky Christina Barcelona. I felt that I had not seen a truly enjoyable Allen movie for about two decades, believing that Allen -- although he talked the self-disparaging talk -- had long ago begun to take himself much too seriously. And this was before his despicable personal behavior in ending his marriage for his stepdaughter (using, undoubtedly, many of the rationalizations he has raised to gospel in this movie).

I'd hated Matchpoint both because it was improbable (which I can tolerate in an otherwise well-conceived and executed work) and because it is difficult to "hear" Woody Allen opining on moral ambiguity. Although I realized that there were possible mines lying in wait in VCB, the reviews were so good; I had just (finally) seen Bardem in The Sea Inside and liked it very much; I am going to Barcelona in a few weeks; I had just seen Elegy with it's wonderful performance by Cruz, so I figured how bad could it be??

Barcelona and the cinematography were beautiful and Cruz was stupendous. Bardem, Hall and Johansson were all pretty wooden (which could be attributed in part to the script) and neither Hall nor Johansson is fit to share the stage with Cruz (or even Bardem for that matter). In fact, if the truth be spoken, from most angles Johansson has a decidedly porcine look no matter how they dress her up. And imaging a neo-Picasso falling for Johansson or Hall was truly funny. Sure, wanting to get into their pants was credible -- as Dave Van Ronk said in Cocaine Blues, "You take Mary, I'll take Sue/Can' tell the difference between the two/Turn 'em upside down."

Worst of all, both the overlying narrative and the screeds of the various characters on the subject of sexual freedom and not succumbing to a banal life with a person one didn't truly, passionately love had a terrible effect on me visually. It was as if I were one of Annie Hall's WASP parents....the speaker's face, whoever it was, would turn into schlubby Woody Allen right before my eyes and the sentiments were rendered vapid and ridiculous without the redeeming humor of Allen's early movies.

Moving his films out of New York has not saved Allen from the pit of self-indulgent, pretentious twaddle that he fell into sometime at the end of the eighties or in the early nineties.

Since writing this I have visited Barcelona, where I learned that Allen was paid to use Barcelona & to promote it. Not surprising from this ethical paragon....

The Dark Knight (2008)

Sadly Disappointing.

[5/10 · 10 August 2008]

Heath Ledger and the FX for the first hour were the only redeeming things about this movie.

Ledger certainly deserves an Oscar for this film, not because he's dead but because he was amazing as the Joker. His performance as the essence of deranged evil, he was astounding, this despite the fact that the writer had him pontificating on the nature of man and chaos theory. It was the physical performance that was extraordinary. The scene of the Joker prancing around in the nurse's uniform was surreal and hysterical at the same time (but maybe that's part of surrealism.

Once the movie reached a point where it seemed to be repeating special effects just to do so, it lost me. It was WAY too long, repetitive & pseudo-intellectual.

Gonzo (2008)

Tremendous Trip Down Memory Lane

[9/10 · 2 August 2008]

I don't know a lot about Thompson although I did read the Hell's Angels book a couple of times and I saw (the very awful) Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. I have always felt that he was a man I prefer never to meet in person and wouldn't have wanted him for a neighbor. Although I am very much a child (??) of the sixties, I was more mouth than intellect. As a young lawyer, I was active of the civil rights and anti-war movements, but didn't have much interest in political campaigns. Hated Nixon and voted for whoever the Democratic candidate was.

Thus I am surprised how much I enjoyed this movie. It brought back the sixties and seventies very vividly--the music and the documentary footage was very effective.

Yes, it was fairly uncritical of Thompson. Tellingly, however, it closed with his ex-wife taking umbrage with the statement that his suicide was "heroic." As it is with most suicides, his was the act of a terribly angry man who was bound to show us how much we would miss him. Well, I'm still around & so is his wife & so many others. I actually felt sorry for him...I wonder if he ever had a truly happy day.

This movie, then, for me, should have been subtitled "The Times of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson," because that was where it was most successful.

Sherman's March (1985)

groan. save us from the self-centered post adolescent.

[4/10 · 27 August 2007]

perhaps it's a function of age and geography, but if this is what the younger generation of Americans is like, i am glad i lived at a better time.

mcelwee attempts to emulate errol morris but has a long way to go. mcelwee, with his narcissistic focus on himself, something morris always avoids, manages to record (as opposed to filming, because the recording mostly concerns his puerile musings on his own love-life) a lot of drivel. and at 2 1/2 hours you can imagine the size of the pile!!!

there was definitely some salvageable material in the film if viewed as a portrait of the south,but i don't know how the movie could have been organized or edited to save it.

Ratatouille (2007)

Cute (So-oh-oh Disney) versus WOW

[7/10 · 21 July 2007]

I recently saw "Paprika" and "Ratatouille" in close succession, in that order. I can only say that "Ratatouille" was an intense disappointment, especially when measured against a film like "Paprika," which demonstrates the adult potential of animation. The Rat story was a kid story with a good moral but was unexceptional and banal in its execution on the screen. Unlike "Spirited Away" & "My Neighbor Totoro," which are both moral stories appropriate for children (as opposed to, say, "Grave of the Fireflies"), "Ratatouille" was not at all sophisticated or imaginative in its presentation. Big noses and crooked teeth are a limited device for conveying the Gallic character and the villain's pencil-thin moustache made him look as if he'd been recycled from a WW II animated piece on the Pacific theatre.

I am not an unmitigated fan of Japanese popular culture which is often kitschy and misogynistic, but its clear that if animation is the measure, American productions are the mega-losers.

Lights in the Dusk (2006)

Visually Wonderful

[7/10 · 23 June 2007]

"Lights in the Dusk" was an incredible experience visually. It was as if Kaurismaki stitched together a series of modernist masters of various genres--Hopper, Bauhaus, Mondrian, Brutalism. Every scene was carefully planned by a man with a painterly eye for color and form. The characters/actors were living versions of Georg Grosz caricatures. The femme fatale had one of the worst complexions I've ever seen powdered over on a leading lady; a metaphor, perhaps, for her soul.

Unfortunately, the story did not have the holding power of the earlier "The Man Without A Past," one of my all-time favorite movies. The (anti) hero, a handsome loser, is just too wimpy. Ultimately he almost seems to deserve everything that happens to him, except for the enduring love of one good woman.

I was intensely disappointed by this movie although I'm glad I experienced it.

The Namesake (2006)

Slightly Disappointing But Worth Seeing

[8/10 · 16 March 2007]

I expected a great deal from The Namesake. Although I hadn't read the book (liberating as I went without preconceptions), I'd seen the trailers, read several positive reviews and really liked Monsoon Wedding.

Nair did a pretty good job of giving us the background information that was necessary to understanding the characters' motivations and behaviors. On the other hand, there were things that she kept secret until too late -- particularly the exchange on the jetty between Ashoke and the 4 year old Gogol or what it meant to "come out of Gogol's overcoat" -- that were clearly relevant to the characters' expectations and maturation. The information came too late for me and, as a consequence, Gogal especially lacked the resonance that was necessary to make him credible. Also, Nair's reminders of that past throughout the movie (like Ashoke's flashback in the railway station) were pretty heavy-handed. I didn't need to be reminded repeatedly of the exchange on the train or the wreck and the scene where Ashoke tells Gogol that it is not the wreck he thinks of when he looks at Gogol, but, instead, of every wonderful day since was sufficient to make the point.

Tabu was really excellent as the very young newlywed stranger in a strange land and her maturation and ultimate acceptance of her American home was credible and interesting. The multi-ethnic neighborhood party at the end and Ashima's comments about her feelings about her two homes revealed a character who evolved over the course of the movie.

Ashoke was not as successful. He was consistently a bit dour, but, I guess, that was comprehensible given his background and his near death experience on the train as a young man. He managed to convey to us the love he felt for both his wife and his family.

It was the younger characters that were badly developed or downright mistreated. Khan as Gogol was never really believable as anything other than a rebellious teenager whose dad died young. I don't know if this was a function of his acting skills or a failure on the director's part. His ping-ponging from ostensibly hip young architect into a shaven-headed, robed mourner performing the religious funeral rituals and his shock when, Moushumi, his sophisticated and admittedly (and obviously) promiscuous wife says she's keeping her maiden name didn't work for me. He had no insight into his reasons for marrying Moushumi (which appeared to have a strong hormonal component) and, consequently, for her dissatisfaction with their marriage and his expectations.

The movie's treatment of both of Gogol's serious love interests was the worst, especially in the case of his American girlfriend. When she is about to meet his parents for the first time, he gives her a long list of things not to do in his parents' presence and she ignores them all. This was not consistent with her character as developed up to that point in the movie.

Despite all that I've said, I'm glad I went to the movie and rated it relatively well.

Marie Antoinette (2006)

Sofia's Hamptons Rerun

[4/10 · 28 February 2007]

Although perhaps deserving some applause for the costumes and settings, most everything else about this movie was pretty dreadful. It reminded me strongly of an ugly out-of-body experience in the shoe department of Saks: I was surrounded by a pack of wealthy, privileged Upper East Side (OK-New York) women examining $800 shoes and talking about them as if they were very, very important. I activated my red Converse hi-tops and got out of there.

Thus, when the blond (Mid-western?) Marie/Kirsten Dunst said "Oh Wow" in response to the presentation of an over-abundance of beautiful fabrics and shoes and a ballet of pastries (as "I Want Candy" played in the background), I had a flashback to Saks. I realized that the problem with the movie was that Sofia had created a Versailles that corresponded to life in the richest regions of the late 20th century Hamptons in which she came of age. The American accents were the worst and the choice of Jason Schwartman as a catatonic or special needs Louis the 16th was really a disaster. The acting, as a result of directorial inadequacies or, worse, intent, was pretty abysmal in the context. Enabled by her family fame and money, Sofia Coppola has once again, as in Lost in Translation, brought us another boring memorial to her spoiled rich-girl life.

Luckily, the movie was beautiful to look at. I enjoyed, in the main, the rock/pop background music (there were a couple of places where it got out-of-hand) and liked the occasional camp, whether intentional or accidental.

Comes the revolution, I've got my scythe. And I have an excuse for being in the shoe department at Saks.

Little Miss Sunshine (2006)

Clichéd W/ Some Funny Scenes & Cameo Characters

[7/10 · 28 February 2007]

This movie came highly recommended by a friend in the movie industry whose own tastes run to foreign, esoteric and intellectual. He described it as one of the best movies he's seen recently. With this in mind, I was very excited about seeing the film and, also, expecting an awful lot. I was disappointed.

First, the entire film hinges on an untenable postulate: an adorable, chubby, sweet, kind little girl from Alberquerque (Olive, played magnificently by Abigail Breslin) has won, by default, a beauty pageant and been invited to compete in the Little Miss Sunshine competition in California. Her coach is her grandfather, a heroin snorting, randy old man with a penchant for loud shirts, leather vests and T&A magazines. The rest of her family has never seen her routine and has had no part of designing her hair, make-up and costumes.

The Hoover family is entirely dysfunctional but each of the individual members is engaging in his or her strangeness. Indeed, these idiosyncratic characters are the movies strength and salvation. My favorite was Dwayne, the 15 year old son who is fascinated with Nietzche, has taken a vow of silence until he attains his objective of getting into the Air Force Academy to become a jet fighter pilot and is, at heart, a great kid.

The family speeds toward California in a decrepit bright-yellow VW bus that is used for rather clichéd comic purposes, including attracting a clichéd, potbellied, red-neck motorcycle cop who ultimately lets them off when he finds grandpa's T&A magazines in the back of the bus. I won't tell you what he, bigoted redneck stereotype that he is, fails to see right before his eyes in the process.

In California the Hoovers find that the pageant is really for air-brushed, powdered, big-haired 7 year olds dressed to look like Las Vegas showgirls (this was realism, not humor). The audience of the pageant is filled with other-America stereotypes, including one 400 pounder woman and a tattooed biker who is a follower of these shows and clearly comes for the bumps and grinds.

Then the ending! How merry. What a charming moral (I hear the director defended the stale jump-start-the-bus bits as a symbol of the family pulling together). Gag me with a spoon. But I guess this is Hollywood's vision of wholesome.

Miss Potter (2006)

A Lovely, Genteel Movie

[8/10 · 24 February 2007]

Jan 19, 2007

"Miss Potter" was a welcome respite for me, coming on the heels of "Babel" and "Pan's Labyrinth," both of which I liked very much but which left me very down about our species.

"Miss Potter" was a wonderful, well acted and engaging piece on the mores of Victorian England and an interesting woman's liberation from them through her art. It was also a movie about the triumph of love and of the individual spirit.

The story of Potter's childhood, the evolution of her career and the woman that she became was interesting to someone like me who was totally unfamiliar with it. Ewan McGregor was extremely good as Norman Warne, the man who made the publication of Potter's work possible and her first love interest. Renee Zellweger was also good, although she relied on some slightly irritating facial quirks to convey Potter's frustration with her life, the expectations of her parvenu Victorian parents, particularly her mother and the setbacks that life handed her.

I am saddened that a movie like "Miss Potter" gets such blah reviews when compared to a mediocre and clichéd (but star-studded) comedy like "Little Miss Sunshine" or a ham-handed (but star-studded) "drama" like "The Departed." Our culture has certainly lost interest in nuance, gentility or refinement. And, sadly, even a well done film with a star-studded cast--like "Prairie Home Companion" -- isn't assured critical or popular acceptance.

I guess I shouldn't be surprised. When Princess Di, Elton John and Donatella Versace become icons of "elegance," it is certainly a confirmation of our (and I don't think it's limited to America -- look at the crap on BBC America) deadened taste buds.

Comedy of Power (2006)

Part Thriller, Part Picture of a Marriage

[9/10 · 24 February 2007]

Jan 7, 2007

In Comedy of Power, Isabelle Huppert plays Jeanne Charmant-Killman, a driven French investigating judge who is committed to rooting out systemic corporate corruption and bribery. As a judge and a woman, she finds herself lined up against entrenched old-boy attitudes and an acceptance of corporate corruption shared by most of the powerful older male characters including those in a position to influence her career.

Comedy of Power asks whether a woman in a position of power and influence can be effective and also have a life. Huppert is superb as the skinny workaholic Charmant-Killman (is this last name an intentional pun, I wonder). She has no time to eat or sleep, little or no empathy or tendresse and no time for her husband. It is difficult to decide where Chabrol comes out on the question of whether she is admirable for her determination and courage or despicable for her ambition and callousness. Perhaps, in just posing the question in such stark terms, Chabrol ultimately displays his own prejudice.

At the same time that Comedy of Power examines these somewhat cerebral questions, it also manages to keep us on the edge of our seat (not on a Hitchcockian level, but enough to make us flinch when the doorbell rings).

All in all, this was a very good movie.

The Motel (2005)

No Room For Ernest

[8/10 · 24 February 2007]

Jul 11, 2006

This three star vignette of the life of Ernest, a Chinese-American boy on the verge of adolescence in his immigrant Chinese mother's no-star cheaters' motel, was well-done. The boy desperately needs a male role model since his father has apparently long-since left his life and his mother is busy clawing a living out of the run-down motel. There is no place for sentiment in her world. She takes care of business, addressing overstays with a baseball bat. At one juncture she breaks the chain lock of a door of a room where the couple inside has over-stayed the hour or two they paid for. She stalks away, leaving the door wide open on the naked occupants, and says to her father (the handyman), "Room 6 needs a new lock!"

Although decidedly over-weight with glasses, Ernest is not unappealing. He works hard cleaning the sordid rooms, does his homework and writes stories about his life. At the beginning of the movie, he has a special friendship with Christine, a slightly older Chinese-American girl whose family owns a restaurant near the motel. By the movie's end, however, Ernest seems to have destroyed this relationship as a result of his acting on the basis of the inappropriate models available to him -- abandoned porn magazines, the advice of a dissolute, depressed and self-destructive young Korean man who is reeling from his own wrecked marriage and the interactions of the "guests" with their mistresses or prostitutes.

The movie ends without providing the viewer with a definite resolution, although, to me, not without the possibility that the most important person in his world -- his mother -- has recognized the depth of his need for her love and approval. Another person, however, might draw a different conclusion.

Volver (I) (2006)

Great Women's Film--Not a Chick Flick

[10/10 · 24 February 2007]

"Volver" (to return?) was simply a wonderful movie, although I'm not sure men will have the same strong positive response as I. The visuals -- the colors of the buildings, the settings, the characters and their clothes and makeup and Penelope Cruz (Raimunda) herself -- were spectacular.

This is a movie about the relationships -- both familial and by affinity -- that women form as they soldier through their lives, often struggling to carry on in a hard world where they are frequently profoundly betrayed by the feckless men in their lives. The movie presents a touching picture of the ferocity of maternal love and of the easy "I've got your back baby" dependability of female friendships.

Although "All About My Mother" remains my favorite Almodovar flick, this one is high on the list. It was not quite as effervescent, complex or funny as AAMM, but it was very good nonetheless.

It was fun to see Carmen Maura, who plays Irene, Raimunda's dead mother, 18 years after "Women On The Verge Of A Nervous Breakdown." Not the mistress anymore; rather a frumpy mother who comes back from the dead to clear up a few loose ends for her daughter, granddaughter and herself and pitches in for a couple of other miscellaneous and deserving women along the way. My movie friend said, accurately, that it gave her a flashback to "Keeping Mum." Although the story was a bit predictable, that was an easy thing to forgive.

The History Boys (2006)

Forget That It Was A Play And Enjoy It

[8/10 · 24 February 2007]

I approached The History Boys without any preconceived notions based on its past on the stage. As a film, it was extraordinary. With the exception of the headmaster, whose born to the lower classes hangups were skewered, there was no mugging for the groundlings. In the main, the actors made one believe in them and care for their characters. Richard Griffiths physically gross Hector was magnificent, pathetic and, because he was groping the boys when he shouldn't have been, somewhat despicable. Penelope Wilton as the understandably frustrated (by, among other things, the English public school system's misogyny) woman teacher walked the thin line between burnout and engaged concern (after all those years) for her students.

Oh that we had a couple of hundred thousand teachers with the passion and the intelligence of Hector (without the groping, of course) and Dorothy and a curriculum with even half of the gravitas of that in the Englich system. As it should be, there were no "life-experience credits" for these kids.

There could have been a bit more of an explanation of the class attitudes that brought the headmaster to his selfish frenzy to have his boys gain admission to the Oxbridge schools rather than several of the other upper-tier universities (like Durham) in the British system.

Breach (2007)

Great Investigative Thriller & Scary Portrait of the FBI

[8/10 · 24 February 2007]

This film was well done from a couple of perspectives.

First, it was an eye-opening picture of one of the biggest traitors in American history. The story of the extent of Richard Hansson's perfidy and of the damage that he did to our intelligence gathering efforts for a couple of decades -- all while serving as a respected insider in what claims to be America's best investigative agency* -- was engrossing. Chris Cooper, as Hansson, gives an excellent performance as a profoundly troubled and twisted man, who is brilliant, unlikeable by all except his religious wife and his grandchildren and, ultimately, unfathomable. Similarly, Eric Phillippe was perfect as the young FBI clerk who became one of the important actors in Hansson's ultimate undoing (along w/ an army of other dedicated agents).

Second, Cooper/Hansson's observations about the state of the FBI's IT systems and intelligence gathering and analysis capabilities in early 2001 are spot-on and scary. It is quite easy to understand why any hints about the coming firestorm in Lower Manhattan were lost. Moreoever, the description of how the most important thing to most agents was who would get the office with a window (or the best G-car or the best or latest Blackberry) and who would get on the high profile cases that would advance his/her career is one of the Bureau's most disgraceful dirty secrets. Like Hansson, I remember when the Bureau sent all the fatties and "odd" agents to the Foreign Counter Intelligence squads -- "rubber gun squads." I believe one of those agents, an extreme fatty and member of a major American religious faith, fell in love with a Russian spy, causing considerable embarrassment but little damage. Although I have been away from federal law enforcement for a while, I suspect that things have not changed all that much even now.**

In the end, this movie was a good story (even though we knew the outcome from the beginning) and a lens that focused us on a glaring (and uncorrected?) deficit in our country's security. I have spent the last 12 or so hours trying to figure out why Hansson did it. As the movie made clear, I'm not alone.

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*Others in law enforcement are more inclined to see the FBI as a legend in it's own mind!

**And I suspect that there is an added concern now in these post-911 times and that is moving potentially explosive investigations to someone else's desk (or to another agency) before they blow up on one's own watch.

The Departed (2006)

F for the Departed

[4/10 · 23 February 2007]

The day long movie, The Departed (it was a mere 2-1/2 hours but seemed like a day), is one of a very few movies I've found valueless. It is difficult to comprehend what the critics and the Motion Picture Academy are thinking in their various homages to this. I guess Scorsese is the magic word.

The last shot in the movie, a rat toodling along the balcony of the corrupt Colin Sullivan's (Matt Damon) luxury apartment in downtown Boston (the luxury apartment that no honest cop in the Special Investigations Unit realizes that Sullivan is living in on his $30,000 plus salary?) is emblematic of the ham-handed approach of the movie's makers. There are probably a dozen missteps by Sullivan that would have raised the curiosity of colleagues with an IQ higher than that of my cats but, hey, we know cops are dumb.

The Departed was totally lacking in finesse or intelligence and pandered to a crowd that has no trouble believing that all cops are either stupid or corrupt (or both); that undercover cops wherever they are are permitted to engage is every sort of violent, brutal and destructive act short of intentional murder by their handlers and that Baghdad-like firefights on the streets of major American cities and blood gurgling (or spurting) out of people's mouths or spattered on the walls and floors are realistic.

The approach of the movie was actually insulting to the audience (and, by the way, to black officers, making the nice black officer from the training cadre one of the principal mechanisms of the hero's undoing). Lest we fail to respect and empathize sufficiently with Captain Queenan (Martin Sheen), the incorruptible head of SIU, Scorsese takes Billy Costigan/DiCaprio (and us) into his home and has Queenan talk about his wonderful wife and son at college. Any suspense about whether Queenan would be among those left standing at the end of the film was instantly dispelled. I immediately ordered a wreath for his grave.

The movie was a waste of a great collection of actors. I'm not a DiCaprio fan but he was OK in the ridiculous role he was asked to play, although I don't consider lip-pursing acting. Mark Wahlberg, as Sgt. Dignam, a foul-mouthed but fiercely honest cop with good street instincts was about the best of the lot. And, in the end, the directors turn him into a cold-blooded murderer. Jack Nicholson was Jack Nicholson, which is OK. I suppose there are mobsters capable of clever one liners somewhere. The opera reverie scene in which he has a fantasy (?) of tossing cocaine into the air like fairy dust over two of his bimbos was, like the balcony rat at the end, insultingly gross.

I wonder what this movie could have been if it had been written and directed by people with intelligence, finesse and reserve.

West Bank Story (2005)

Short semi-musical comedy about the Jewish/Palestinian crisis

[3/10 · 20 February 2007]

This movie left me feeling as if I'd tasted something more than a bit spoiled. It was puerile, a circumstance which may be explained by the fact that it was part of a masters' project in a California film school.

Quel surprise that the Hollywood pack would pick this movie over any of the others, all of which were foreign. I waited for the credits with curiosity to see if there were many Muslim participants in its planning and execution. There weren't.

My own feelings about the Jewish/Palestinian question are very conflicted. Overall, however, I know it is serious and I wonder if many Palestinians (or, for that matter, thoughtful Israelis, especially those whose sons are being carried home in body bags) would find this an amusing movie .

It was as if the film's makers chose to do a musical comedy featuring a seriously disabled person, using that individual's problems as pratfalls for cheap laughs. It was in excruciatingly poor taste and very juvenile. But the old Hollywood trade association was true to form--parochial and gross in its tastes.