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Reviews
Little Miss Sunshine (2006)
A Marvelous Movie
This film in its frequently anarchic spirit resembles in a good way some of the signal endeavors of the 60's, namely "The Graduate" and "5 Easy Pieces." Business as usual in America, whether in social space or as it pervades the domestic sphere, is here given a freshly felt, genuinely contemporary, non-ideological, sharp-eyed scrutiny. Family life, when everyone "pursues his own bliss," is shown to become less personally liberating than a ground for finding others in one's way, and frequently annoying, if not in fact hateful. In career choices, it may lead to wildly unsuitable decisions, given one's actual talents or disabilities. In romance, it may encourage betrayal should a better option appear. In drug use, it may lead to death. There must be more to life, the film implies, than these attempts at bankrupt Nietzschean choice and then consistency in efforts at having one's foolish way or at all costs "winning." Greg Kinnear voices his impatience with those around him first at the dinner table and then towards non-customer friendly service people of varied ethnicity, both at a hospital and at an absurd beauty pageant for children. This same subversive spirit bubbles out of almost every line the wonderful Alan Arkin utters as Grandpa. All in all a marvelous comedy of ideas.
The 40 Year Old Virgin (2005)
No Wonder The Movie Industry Is Losing All Except Teenage Boys
Surely this movie after 15 minutes or so must become profoundly boring to genuine comedy lovers with minds characterized to any degree by mature interests. It's natural audience, I suspect, is horny teenage boys and those cheerleading, sentimentally romantic older critics eager at any cost for Hollywood this bad year to have a megahit. Scriptwriters Apatow and Carell appear to have had their comedic minds violated by a single idea, the notion of the necessary side-splitting hilariousness of a 40-year-old virgin and his buddies whose role it is to help him have first-time sex. Crude encounters and consistently crude language wholly lacking in requisite Aristophanic wit are certain to enrapture at least the aforementioned teenage boys. Two hours of this stuff for many other age groups turns the film into a hackwork exercise of non-incremental repetition. In a late effort, though, to please everyone, the scriptwriters shamelessly turn from gross farce to unlikely, essentially sentimental romance, combining jarring, disparate levels of reality in just the clumsy fashion of the comedic poetasters of old. Four stars out of ten in honor of Catherine Keener who is never bad, even in such drivel as this.
Brødre (2004)
A Melodrama With Pretensions
This melodramatic film does have some fine acting from the principal players, skillful cross-cutting and certain other spare externals which place it in the fashionable Dogme school of cinema, but at the same time it suffers from an excessive lifting of plot and characters from other and finer films. The central plot strand, for instance, one of two brothers, the good one the apple of his father's eye and the bad one the source of the cartoonish father's consistent irritation, is by and large an inferior retelling of that old James Dean flick, "East of Eden." In fact, it's so imitative of this last, it even has the bad brother becoming a candidate for the affections of the woman initially devoted to his good sibling. Secondly, the Afghan war plot strand, with its focus on the surprising and horrific actions war may unleash in the otherwise most pacific of men, though actually shocking, is nevertheless too heavily indebted to and not as good as the memorable Vietnam War sequences of "The Deer Hunter." These Afghan scenes, by the way, do have the courage to show Taliban members as brutal fascists, a daring that "sensitive" Hollywood has yet to engage in.
But the real poverty of this film is revealed not just in its too heavily imitative melodrama, but in its status as a melodrama with philosophical pretensions. It aspires to comment on the human condition, but its vision is merely therapeutic and sadly trite. Thus we have not only repetitive visual sequences of reeds blowing in the wind, but even a stale, repeated jingle about there being no good nor bad, nor right nor wrong, "save Love which never dies." This last I put in quotation marks, since it's not only the philosophy of the film but embarrassingly also the quoted credo of the absurd feminist Katisha from Gilbert and Sullivan's "Mikado." In seeking to rise above melodrama to the transcendent, this film becomes one more fallen soufflé.
Crash (2004)
As Bad As It Gets
I know of no clearer instance of the folly of a too ambitious director filming his own stories or screenplays than this latest offering from TV writer manque, Paul Haggis. While Haggis, or his cinematographer, may have some talent for the visual,(I have in mind certain of the overhead shots and those wide vistas of Los Angeles), if he has any talent for fresh and effective storytelling, in this film he's done his best to hide it. Except for a few pointed racial wisecracks (think "All In The Family") and some vituperative huffing and puffing from a largely wasted Sandra Bullock, Haggis' dialogue along with his imitation, repetitive Kieslowski plot and stale optimistic theme is embarrassingly pedestrian. The film, replete with unconvincing coincidences (the Ryan Phillipe good cop/bad cop sequence is especially annoying), takes as premise the easy idea that we are all basically the same, essentially decent folk when push comes to shove, so it's more the pity, even baffling, that we can't all just get along. Haggis' is paint by numbers screen writing. Now while it might play before an experientially challenged audience in a TV studio or a Hollywood boardroom eager to think well of itself, as a vision of actual human nature or chance as contemporary urban human beings really encounter such, "Crash" unforgivably strains credibility and boorishly tires the ear.
Undertow (2004)
Good Cinema Is Much More Than Photography
This film unwittingly calls into question the easy cliché of the film schools, the claim that while the stage is a verbal medium, film is essentially a visual one. Now while it's true one doesn't want to see filmed plays in which the camera never moves, nevertheless, as Pauline Kael judiciously pointed out long ago, the introduction of sound substantially altered the nature of film, so that skillful cross-cutting and close-ups are, for adult viewers who demand more than "inexplicable dumb-shows", no longer enough to cover over more serious lapses in plot and dialogue. In "Undertow" the remarkable banality of the dialogue and the quite arbitrary prolongation of the stale action -at best a mediocre, ugly and meaningless variation of "Huckleberry Finn" - awkwardly contrast with the beauty of the film's photography. While the acting of the principals, the aforementioned Bell and Josh Lucas, is also a credit, it too cannot hide director David Gordon Green's primary interest in camera angles and unnecessary freeze-frames. My point is that the screenwriter may be as necessary as, if not more necessary, to a distinguished film than the director or the cinematographer, and that here Green's limitations are embarrassingly apparent.
Palindromes (2004)
A Fascinating Failure
In his latest film Solondz, if I'm not mistaken, is arguing pretty dogmatically that under the surface of youthful innocence or adult "liberal" or fundamentalist "caring," people, are in fact all reducible to potential murderers. Hence the use of multiple Avivas in his narrative becomes not at all cryptic. He's presenting not just the particular case of Dawn Wiener's depressed, chubby cousin, but aiming to speak through her story about all ages, races and even genders. In other words, the figure in Solondz's ambitious carpet is that all people, despite surface differences of beautiful or ugly appearance or ideology, are essentially the same. Such monism I see as not only weakening Solondz's usually bracingly pointed and particularized satire of American life but more importantly robbing his film of needed cinematic vitality. Indeed, his mind appears to have been violated by a simplistic idea, and it, though of course a possible donee, becomes in his hands, unfortunately, the root cause of the film's labored quality, its undeniable tediousness. If, after two hours, you've seen all the Avivas, in other words, you've only seen them one. For my money, the American pro-abortion, pro-life debate with a relative innocent at the center and the satiric filmmaker also not taking a side has been already treated with much greater wit, vitality, and artistic success by Alexander Payne in "Citizen Ruth."
Lakposhtha parvaz mikonand (2004)
Gohbadi's Judgment Is NOT Equal To His Genius (Contains Spoilers!)
A chronicle of the hardships visited upon Kurdish children in a refugee camp near the Turkish border during the war against Saddam, as well as an account, to some extent, of those they visit upon each other, "Turtles Can Fly" is undeniably the work of a cinematic master. Just about every frame - whether of bleak, oddly beautiful landscape or of anguished or amused faces which speak volumes - ties one's eyes to the screen. Similarly, scenes of horror - the rape of the character Agrin or the young Kurdish leader Satellite's effort to save a blind child from a land mine - are pretty nearly unbearable in their dramatic intensity. Also, the director/writer is happily unjaded enough to conceive of characters, in this case children, who are capable of fertile and generous emotion without himself tumbling into patently false representations. In this regard, the armless brother Henkov's love for Agrin's child or the loyalty of one of Satellite's tiniest followers especially stand out. Yet all in all this film is oddly unsatisfying, and the problem, I suspect, has to do with the director/writer's judgment and consequently skewed focus. Concentrating on the mere phenomenology of war and the sufferings of children in it, Gohbadi pretty much dismisses larger causes or courses, so that his vision is reduced to that of TV news. In other words, any war is hell, as images of dismemberment make clear, and all sides are equally culpable because of the havoc and suffering war wreaks on private life. This is an age old and surely possible donee, and when handled with subtlety and depth as it was, say, in Euripides' "Trojan Women," it's beyond reproach. In Ghobadi's film, however, we appear to wind up with the peevish, overly simple, indeed Princess Diana-like judgment that the greatest cause of evil in the lives of displaced Kurdish children is remnant land mines. The mountains rumble, and all that's produced, unfortunately, is this ridiculous mouse.
El abrazo partido (2004)
Navel Contemplation
This film has been compared in the press to an early Woody Allen feature, and the comparison is a just one, not however for the presence of comic moments (there really aren't many such), but for the incredible self-absorption of the hero, Ariel. Abandoned by his father at an early age and bored with his life as a salesman in his mother's lingerie shop located in a Buenos Aires mall, the moody Ariel longs for what seems like hours of screen time to escape to the necessarily greener fields of Europe. Ariel is played by handsome Daniel Hendler who unfortunately gives a pretty one dimensional and ultimately boring performance, ranging from the gloomy to the sorely beset. To be fair to Hendler, though, his role seems deliberately limited to such a narrow range by the screenplay itself, which finds his inability to smile apparently richly comic. This essentially stale coming of age story is further burdened by an incessantly jerky, headache inducing hand-held camera, and the presence of numerous quirky characters doing cameos in the manner of American sit-coms. A forgettable "art" film.
Sideways (2004)
The Movie Of The Year (May Contain A Spoiler)
"Sideways" is essentially a brilliant romantic comedy, and its genre (with its predictable conventions)in our tragedy-preferring, "originality"-seeking age may have interfered in some instances with a due appreciation of its excellence.
Yet in "Sideways" Payne has done extraordinary work, making something extremely difficult appear easy and natural. His film, it's true, deals with familiar territory and is somewhat predictable, but only in the way Shakespearian comedy (to which in its moments of lyrical dialogue and its contrasting couples it bears some resemblance)is predictable. What Payne has crafted here, in fact, is the cinematic equivalent of a towering and elegant soufflé, rising so high because wholly free of either sentimentality or cynicism. Such comic work may look easy, but it's no mean feat. Consider for an example of the film's excellence the lengthy scene at Sandra Oh's house where the leading couple, Madsen and Giamatti, sit on a patio and discourse amusingly and in her case beautifully of wine and themselves. Surely no better dialogue has appeared on screen since, say, that in the highly verbal "All About Eve." And as a scene of male-female comedy and missed opportunity, this too rivals those in any classic romantic comedy. One would have to be a stone not to laugh at it and be moved as well. To banter consequently, as some in the press have done, about why "Sideways" is a GOOD film but not a GREAT one is to fall victim, I suspect, only to a bad case of self-importance.
The Aviator (2004)
Pretty Much A Movie In Search Of A Purpose
"The Aviator" is tiresomely overlong, anti-climactic, and indeed as purposeless a screen biography as I've ever seen. Further to the film's discredit, Leonardo DiCaprio is overparted in just the way Patty Duke was when she attempted adult roles. Lacking sufficient presence, he too looks annoyingly just like a high school student dressed up to play a grownup. This limitation robs almost all his scenes of any clout. An exception are those in which he debates with a Senate committee and to succeed needs only recite the well written, David Mamet-like lines there given him. Otherwise, he's pretty much a disaster. Even worse, though equally overpraised in the press, is the usually fine actress Cate Blanchett who does not so much act the role of Katherine Hepburn as mimic that great star in the manner of a female impersonator. With her thrust forward jaw and quavering "Howids," she too was impossible to believe for a minute. Two stars to this film for the scenes mentioned, the fine retro ties, and the art deco and forties sets.
8 Mile (2002)
The Grass Is Greener At The Trailer Park
There's no denying that Eminem has an intensity that's initially charismatic along with a definite rhythmic and verbal flair sufficient these days to enrapture large portions of the suburban young. What isn't adequately observed, though, is the extreme narrowness of his art as revealed in this film. Essentially, he's engaging here in merely occasional poetry, extended rhymed insults which don't merit hearing - in my view - apart from the circumstances which give rise to them. Nevertheless he has been hailed for these in some quarters as a genius, whereas he reveals at most a modest talent. His acting, too - if indeed he is an actor - has been overrated, given the limited requirements both the story and the semi-biographical role in "8 Mile" place upon him. Largely, he moves through the film in a single mood, one in which a charismatic intensity is joined to a pretty consistent, if cryptic, self-fascination. His role is actually the sentimental one of noble savage, but freed of lumpenproletariat trappings, so we find him here - oddly enough - both defending gays and sporting not a single tattoo. A low view of women, however, remains essentially intact. The film in itself is a contemporary variant of that genre which has been called the "slum pastoral." Virtue, authenticity and even real creative spark are to be found apparently only where both philosophy and experience would lead us least to expect them - among certain insulted and injured trailer park types. Presumably, a middle-class or even more privileged upbringing by itself would disequip one for real achievement in the field of rap music. In short, this film reeks of what the satirist Tom Wolfe in a different context identified as a mind-numbing "nostalgia for the mud."