I've Moved to New Digs
I'll be keeping my archives here, but you can find my new reviews and more bloggy-type posts at The Movie Babe. It's hot, it's happenin', it's tres cool. Or at least I hope to make it so ASAP.
Thanks for visiting, yo.
Diary of the Dead
I'm totally submitting this to Funny or Die
People who videotape their lives and upload it to YouTube are fucking jackasses. That’s the primary message of George A. Romero’s Diary of the Dead, the fifth installment of the auteur’s zombies-can-teach-us-anything series. There’s more, ostensibly—Romero is, after all, famous for soaking his films in as much social commentary as blood. But for moviegoers who may find searching for yet another parable about our post-9/11 world tedious, Diary wields its “criticism” of bloggers and MySpace addicts as if it were the bludgeon and you the brain-feeder.
The problem isn’t so much Romero’s lack of subtlety as the emptiness behind the bile. The sequel isn’t a continuation of 2005’s apocalyptic George A. Romero’s Land of the Dead, in which survivors adjusted to coexisting with a zombie majority. Instead, Diary is the original Night of the Living Dead by way of Cloverfield: Corpses are suddenly walking again, and film student Jason Creed (Josh Close) and his generic pals are making their own mummy movie in a Pennsylvania forest when they hear the news. Most of them go all Chomsky, believing the news is exaggerated, and even once they’re proved wrong and hunker down in an RV, Jason insists on filming it all—so that the world, at least the parts of it where WiFi still works, can learn the “truth.” This does not go over well. “If it’s not on camera, it’s like it never happened, right?” sneers Jason’s annoying girlfriend, Debra (Michelle Morgan), about every five minutes. “There will always be people like you!” Jason’s alcoholic, British caricature of a professor (Scott Wentworth) says with unjustified disgust. And so on, as the gang encounters empty hospitals, a power-hungry black militia, and a mute Amish dude who’s handy with a stick of dynamite.
Also: zombies, of course, and though Romero doesn’t really do anything new with them—he even recycles a shot from his Day of the Dead—he does come up with some bloody/cool disposal ideas, including a murder-suicide. Plus, Diary won’t make you spill your own guts; its hand-held camera feels wielded by a professional and not, as in Cloverfield, a spastic 8-year-old. It’s even edited: Debra, as she explains in droning voice-over, had a change of heart and helped Jason put together the project we’re watching, The Death of Death, including not just their own footage but images of Katrina, riots, and other moments of real-world chaos they grabbed from the Internet. The visuals are interesting; Debra’s constant analysis of humanity, video-obsessed or otherwise, is not. “It used to be us against us, now it’s us against them,” she intones, meaninglessly. “Except they…are us.” Whatever. Could someone eat her already?
Nanking - The Violin
There’s a chance you might have learned a few facts about Japan’s invasion of Nanking, China, while studying World War II in school or zoned out in front of the History Channel. In 1937, you might recall, the Japanese bombed the capital of China at the time until it fell, then tortured, killed, and raped some 200,000 citizens within six weeks. Another 200,000 found refuge in the “Safety Zone,” a small piece of land established and guarded by Westerners—among them a Nazi businessman—who sought to spare the Chinese too poor to flee as the Japanese soldiers adopted what was called the Three Alls Policy: Kill all, burn all, loot all. To this day, some Japanese dispute these numbers and even deny the atrocities themselves; it’s the Asian Holocaust.
You may think you know these things, but until you’ve seen Nanking, you have no idea.
In Bill Guttentag and Dan Sturman’s documentary, an elderly Chinese man weeps as he recalls trying to escape with his family. His mother was stabbed as she nursed his baby brother in an attempt to quiet him; the infant was plucked by a bayonet and tossed aside like trash. For a while, both survived, the baby crawling over bodies toward his mother’s voice and drinking her milk while her wounds gushed blood. It wasn’t for long. “I thought, Mom just died,” the survivor tells the camera. “What should I do?”
Nanking, which can’t by any stretch of the imagination be
considered entertainment, is full of such stories, told from various
perspectives—the tormented, the tormentors, and the saviors. Even the
dead speak: In addition to interviewing witnesses, Nanking’s
directors also brought in actors to personify men and women who were
instrumental in maintaining the Safety Zone, using their letters and
diaries. It’s gimmicky, but most of the time it works. Jürgen Prochnow,
as sympathetic Nazi businessman John Rabe, and John Getz, as missionary
George Fitch, who smuggled 16 mm footage of the war crimes (some of
which we see here), channel ghosts quite naturally and, in Getz’s case,
poetically, finding a rhythm in Fitch’s words. Even Woody Harrelson,
arguably the most famous face here, disappears as he stoically speaks
as surgeon Bob Wilson.
Mariel Hemingway, however, is considerably less successful in a role that’s crucial to the sliver of sunshine the filmmakers try to force in the closing minutes of Nanking. Hemingway portrays Minnie Vautrin, the American dean of a women’s college located within the Safety Zone. In time, the Chinese came to refer to her as the Goddess of Mercy: Vautrin risked her life to block the Japanese from harming her students, according to tearful commentary from survivors as well as Vautrin’s own journal entries. But Hemingway never fully embodies the heroine, never lubricates her dialogue beyond table-reading stiffness.
It’s a significant failing, but the remainder of the film is far too powerful to be sunk by it. Nanking bombards you with words and images of acts too barbaric to fully absorb. Japanese soldiers casually describe rape techniques. Old women recall sacrificing themselves to save family members. While these people speak, you see a city destroyed, its citizens running in fear or piled on top of one another when their attempts to flee backfired. The last chapter of Nanking shows the area reborn, with soaring music playing as we’re reminded of the efforts of Vautrin, documentarians, and others who put themselves at risk to not only save the Chinese but tell the world the full story. It’s here, and it’s unflinching.
The Violin opens with violence and closes with high tension—but in between, its pace is so leisurely and story so spare that it feels as if writer-director Francisco Vargas wasn’t quite ready to abandon the short films on which he honed his craft before advancing to his first feature. Indeed, the film was originally a short. But the full-length movie has become Mexico’s most-decorated film in history, its unhurriedness touched with small moments of tenderness and a nearly documentary tone before unleashing an emotional wallop.
Shot in lovely black and white, The Violin captures the day-to-day lives of three generations of peasant musicians. Don Plutarco (Ángel Tavira) and his grown son, Genaro (Gerardo Taracena), play the violin and guitar on rural Mexican streets while Genaro’s boy, Lucio (Mario Garibaldi), collects money. They perform and wander until they have enough money to eat, spending the rest of the day relaxing on roadsides or in cantinas. When Genaro exchanges looks with a menacing stranger in a watering hole one night, you might expect a fight to break out. Instead, he’s taken into a back room and allowed his choice of munitions. Genaro and Plutarco may be simple farmers, but they’re also part of a rebel movement. And when their oppressive government’s militias invade the revolutionaries’ compound, father and son must figure out a way to retrieve the arms they’ve buried in their land.
The most compelling chapter of The Violin is its last, which focuses on Plutarco and his strategy for surviving this blow to the revolt. He uses his age and his musical skills to his advantage, trying to persuade suspicious soldiers that he’s merely an old man who wants to check his crops. (When they ask his name, he responds, “Plutarco, at your service.”) They inspect his violin case and command him to play, a test he passes so easily and beautifully that the sentimental captain orders him to return daily. Plutarco’s patience in his attempt to win the soldiers’ trust is more effective than Genaro’s guns could ever be.
Tavira is, stunningly, a novice actor. His face deeply lined, with eyes that are thoughtful and vulnerable, Tavira is aching as Plutarco, expertly relaying an elderly man’s simultaneous capacity for wisdom, cunning, feebleness, and melancholy. The character is quiet when Genaro acts like father doesn’t know best—in fact, he tells him “the less you know, the better”—while teaching Lucio about their awful circumstances with gentle but honest parables. You may not remember how exactly this trio passed the time during most of the film’s 98 minutes, but Plutarco is a character you likely won’t forget.
George Lucas Attempts to Redeem Himself, Take 4
Being only a quasi-nerd, it took me a minute to process the news announcing the theatrical release of Star Wars: The Clone Wars on Aug. 15, 2008. Wha? Why are they re-releasing a prequel that 1) just came out and 2) sucked?
Oh. That was Attack of the Clones.
Anyway, at this point the details are so yesterday, but if you're slow like me, the deal is that this is a full-length, animated feature that's a big push for the same-titled TV series that will bow on Cartoon Network shortly thereafter.
"I felt there were a lot more Star Wars stories left to tell," Lucas said. "And I'd like to hire a full-time police force to protect my unicorns on Skywalker Ranch. The fire department is nice, but let's face it, it's not enough."
OK, I made the last part up. But let's just hope Clone Wars doesn't end up being another Randall Curtis production.
Here are some stills to salivate over:
© Lucasfilm Ltd. & TM. All rights reserved. Used with permission.
And you can check out a series of documentaries chronicling the development of the film/show at http://www.starwars.com.
In Bruges
Farrell earns his treat
Martin McDonagh has hijacked the Tarantino-goes-to-Europe genre from Guy Ritchie, and not a moment too soon. In Bruges, the Irish playwright's feature debut, is everything Ritchie's latest film, Revolver, wanted to be: cool, yes, but also a good story with bits of humor, existential ruminations, and innovative action involving a couple of guns-for-hire who hide in plain sight. The chill location, a gorgeous town in Belgium full of canals and medieval architecture, is just one reason the film doesn't feel like a rip-off.
Colin
Farrell is another. The Irishman who's lately better known for
carousing and poor career choices shows a never-before-seen range here
as Ray, a rookie hit man whose boss exiles him and his experienced
partner, Ken (Brendan Gleeson), to Bruges when a job goes bad. They're
supposed to do nothing but wait for a phone call and, presumably, think
about what they did. But soon Ray starts getting antsy—"like a
5-year-old who's dropped all his sweets," as Ken puts it—and he
hesitantly suggests that they could just grab a quick pint at the pub.
Ken glares. Ray thinks, then points out how nice the historic buildings
might look under the Belgian stars. Ken relents.
The pair's differences are immediately apparent as Ken admires the scenery and starts talking dates. "I used to hate
history, didn't you?" Ray yammers before, doglike, getting distracted.
"What are they doing over there?" he says excitedly. "They're filming
something—they're filming midgets!" It's a movie set, all right, and
not only does Jimmy (Jordan Prentice), a little person, ignite Ray's
interest, he's also captivated by Chloë (Clémence Poésy, refreshingly
lovely in her non-Hollywood imperfections), whom he assumes is also an
actor and asks out on a date. His chat-up includes a ramble about how
"midgets" often kill themselves—when Chloë says Jimmy prefers the term
"dwarf," Ray responds, "This is exactly my point! People call you a
midget when you want to be called a dwarf, of course you're going to
blow yer head off!" But she gives him her card anyway. Meanwhile, Ken
and Ray's boss, Harry, did indeed call their hotel room, leaving them a
curse-laden message neatly typed out by the hotel's owner.
Harry
sounds quite like the GEICO gecko, but we later see that he's actually
Ralph Fiennes, another terrifically unexpected casting choice (and one
that makes the film a bit of a Harry Potter reunion, as
Gleeson and Poésy have appeared in the series). Fiennes, his hair
closely butchered, is great fun as a cold-blooded cockney, and Gleeson
gives the proper sarcastic solemnity to an assassin who reevaluates his
life when Harry's next order is something he's not sure he can do.
But
Farrell is the revelation. At first, his eyebrows forever arching and
his expression often set to confused, he seems to be merely performing
a dumb-monkey act. (Though it's admittedly an amusing one.) It's when
the audience discovers what went wrong in that first job—in a
startling, violent flashback—that Farrell's Ray begins to show depth.
The drinker, fighter, and skirt-chaser is so remorseful he's suicidal
and becomes less and less capable of covering it up with humor. (In an
unsettling first-date scene, Chloë takes Ray's confession to being a
killer as a joke, which he's barely able to play along with.) Farrell's
subtlety in portraying a walking wounded is note-perfect, naturally
pulling off McDonagh's balance of comedy and drama without letting the
character or the movie devolve into a tonal mess.
McDonagh, who won an Oscar for his 2004 short film, Six Shooter (also starring Gleeson), successfully translates his theatrical strengths to the screen with dialogue that snaps without coming off as too clever, a simple but compelling narrative, and memorable scenes that are odd but believable at the same time (booze and coke can make for strange nights, after all). As the story deepens, the script offers thoughts about honor, forgiveness, friendship, discrimination, and, more humorous, tourism. In Bruges may, at its core, be just another shoot-'em-up with jokes, but it's been a long time since someone's gotten one right.
Taxi to the Dark Side
At this point in the War on Terror, sitting through a feature-length documentary that regurgitates details about torture in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Guantanamo Bay may very well violate the Geneva Conventions. News outlets and water-cooler talk long ago exhausted the topic of Abu Ghraib and its sister catastrophes. Many of us understand that this presidency and its worldwide conflicts has been a disaster. Does anyone really want to watch another nearly two-hour analysis of it?
Regardless of whether it finds an audience, Alex Gibney's Taxi to the Dark Side
gets points (in addition to its Academy Award nomination) for the
thoroughness and intelligence it offers along with its good intentions.
The film is very reminiscent of last year's Iraq doc No End in Sight—another
Oscar nominee that Gibney produced—in terms of overall quality and
ability to induce teeth-gnashing, using one unfortunate cab driver's
wrong place, wrong time, wrongful death story to launch into a
breakdown of how the American military's interrogation system has,
well, broken down.
Gibney, who also directed the excellent 2005 documentary Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room,
uses a similar approach here: airtight facts and stats (and lots of
'em), archival footage, interviews with not just talking heads but
people who were involved in the incidents, whether as decision-makers
(such as John Yoo, the Department of Justice legal counsel who helped
write what became known as the "Torture Memos") or order-takers
(several now-remorseful soldiers talk about their experiences with
prisoners). The film is divided into chapters, but it flows like one
continuous reiteration of a simple (but no less appalling) story:
Around the world, America's prisoners were/are being treated unfairly,
from random capture without habeas corpus to unconscionable
interrogations that included sexual humiliation, sleep deprivation, and
"stress positions" such as standing with outstretched arms for hours
straight to, often, death.
The government assured any critics that such incidents were a matter of
overenthusiastic, unbalanced troops taking matters into their own
hands. Then we see Donald Rumsfeld's initialed approval of a memo
outlining slightly less severe versions of these tactics, along with a
scribbled note, "I stand for 8-10 hours a day. Why only 4 for
detainees?" In a press conference, Rummy dismisses the comment as a
joke.
Not surprisingly, it's all
rather sickening. Gibney wallpapers his film with images of prisoners
naked, bruised, and bloodied, frightened out of their minds with dogs
barking in their faces, piled on top of one another like trash. Some,
perhaps, were "the worst of the worst" as Rumsfeld stated. Still, all
it takes is a few wise words from former FBI special agent Jack Cloonan
to understand that, whether the detainees are guilty or not, you're
much more likely to get useful information out of them by building a
rapport instead of, you know, beating them to within an inch of their
lives. Gibney's father, a now-deceased World War II vet, puts it more
eloquently in a clip at the end of the film: "Behind the façade of
wartime hatred, there was a central rule of law, and we believed in it.
It was what made America different."
Vince Vaughn's Wild West Comedy Show
Don’t judge Vince Vaughn’s Wild West Comedy Show by its title—the documentary isn’t 100 minutes of Fred Claus running his mouth. Instead of putting himself center stage for the eponymous event, the loud, tall acquired taste picked four genial comedians from Los Angeles’ Comedy Store and organized a 30-day, 30-city tour.
The 2005 shows featured stand-up comedy, obviously, but also a little bit of music (Dwight Yoakam makes an appearance) and sketches with guest actors (Peter Billingsley, aka A Christmas Story’s Ralphie, re-creates scenes from a steroid-themed 1990 after-school special he and Vaughn taped). The performers themselves—Bret Ernst, John Caparulo, Ahmed Ahmed, and Sebastian Maniscalco—are given as much time offstage as on, lending the doc a compelling Comedian feel as they talk about venues, bios, and bits or just give one another the kind of shit to be expected when a bunch of dudes hole up together for a long while.
Vaughn says his aim in putting together the project was “to bring a top-quality comedy show to people’s backyards,” reasoning that the best bills tend to be restricted to Los Angeles or New York. The tour was a hit with the live audiences it reached, and the multilayered film that stems from it is a gem that clearly has the ability to take Vaughn’s goal further. These are good-natured, likable guys as well as solid comedians who can even spin tired did-ya-ever-notice gags about the differences between the sexes into gold. (It’s shocking to hear, late in the movie, that Maniscalco had actually still been waiting tables when he was plucked for the show.) Seeing how the comics mold the not-so-funny stuff they’ve gone through—poverty, racism, and death—into their act is fascinating, as is the fact that the timing of the road schedule brought them face-to-face with another tragedy, Katrina.
As nice as these men seem, there’s a notable perspective shift from the time they crankily pile into a minivan, not thrilled that they’ve unexpectedly been tasked with handing out free tickets to a campground of hurricane victims, to the time they leave, after they help put genuine smiles on the faces of people who have nothing. There’s nothing condescending about these scenes; along with the comics’ constant riffage and the doc’s terrific, vintage-country soundtrack (Buck Owens, Johnny Cash), the film’s full of joyful moments that pretty much guarantee you’ll feel better walking out than you did going in. As Caparulo notes, “It’s really cool to have a job that’s cathartic.”
4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days
In 4 Months, one of those days -- and then some
In 4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days, a young woman is pregnant, but she can’t go searching for a solution in the Penny Saver. There are no supportive parents, cute singalongs, or OMG! banter between her and her best friend. In other words, Romanian writer-director Cristian Mungiu’s second feature is the anti-Juno, a bleak portrait of a world in which women don’t legally have the right to choose but often feel forced to anyway.
Set in 1987 Communist Romania, the story focuses not on expectant
college student Gabita (Laura Vasiliu) but on her roommate, Otilia
(Anamaria Marinca). The pair are getting ready for a short trip; while
Gabita stays in their room, packing and worrying about whether she
should bring her notes, Otilia makes businesslike rounds throughout the
dorm and into town, trying to secure black-market cigarettes, some
cash, Gabita’s lent-out hairdryer, and a hotel room. The last proves
particularly difficult, as their hotel of choice claims not to have
their reservation and a convention has the area’s rooms booked. But
Gabita’s appointment with Mr. Bebe (Vlad Ivanov) is today, so in
desperation Otilia reserves a much more expensive room in the kind of
place where, she’ll unnervingly discover, the staff keeps a vigilant
eye on who’s coming and going.
Mungiu follows Otilia with long tracking shots—in fact, much of the
film consists of a single shot per scene—letting the audience feel the
exhaustion of her errand-running and the trivial but constant battles
of a bad day: For instance, she can’t find anybody who has her brand of
smokes. Her boyfriend, Adi (Alex Potocean), lends her money but expects
her at his mother’s birthday party that night, not accepting her excuse
that she has something important to do. The clerk at the first hotel is
rude and condescending, questioning why Gabita made her reservation
over the phone and implying that the conversation never happened.
Getting a room at the other place offers only brief relief, as Otilia
still has to meet up with Bebe, an occasion that unveils a whole new
set of problems. And, of course, there’s the abortion itself.
4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days won the Palme d’Or at Cannes in 2007, and it’s tonally reminiscent of another film that premiered at the festival last year, No Country for Old Men. The anguish in both movies is unrelenting and packaged in quietude: There’s no music in 4 Months,
only the ambient noise of Otilia shuffling through busy urban streets
during the day (or, more disconcerting, deserted ones later that night)
and the silences that occur when talk is unscripted or situations are
grim. Of course, this dialogue is scripted, however, and it’s a
testament to the brilliance of Mungiu’s writing and the actors’
performances that the conversations feel more natural than anything
captured on a reality show. The characters’ frankness ratchets up the
tension—Otilia is a martyr to her friend and boyfriend in her actions
but blunt whenever she’s unhappy about their behavior; Gabita tells
Bebe a host of lies. (The biggest whopper is that she’s only two months
along; the film’s title gives the accurate duration of her pregnancy.)
She comes clean about her falsehoods one by one, and Bebe himself, far
from being a soothing Vera Drake, is explicit about the process, the
pain, the blood, and what to do with the fetus once Gabita “gets rid of
it.”
Rarely does anyone yell, even though nearly everything that could go
wrong does. Two scenes are unforgettably intense: In the first, Bebe,
Gabita, and Otilia negotiate in the hotel room, with Bebe getting
increasingly exasperated as he discovers how many of his original terms
the childlike Gabita ignored, addressing her as “young lady” and
eventually, skin-crawlingly, indicating that they’d need to offer him
more than money for him to risk the jail sentence he could face for
performing the deed.
The second is a bravura dinner sequence that puts Mungiu on par with
Spielberg for wrenching emotion out of a meal, as Otilia suffers the
offhand grilling and general prattling of the guests at Adi’s mother’s
celebration while worrying about having left Gabita alone. The
director, aided by cinematographer Oleg Mutu (The Death of Mr. Lazarescu),
isn’t shy about fixing his camera wherever it’s most uncomfortable—and
that includes a graphic shot of the fetus. It’s not quick.
We don’t know much about these women outside of Mungiu’s intimate
day-in-the-life snapshot, including why Gabita chose to abort or who
the father is. But their characters are strong regardless, with their
friendship belying very different personalities in the face of crisis.
Vasiliu’s Gabita is nearly unbearably soft-spoken, meek, and somewhat
naive, but the actress shows moments of strength, too—keeping quiet can
be an act of courage as well as one of fear—and her performance
prevents you from losing respect for the girl or wondering why on earth
Otilia goes to the lengths she does to help her friend. Marinca,
though, recently seen in a bit part in Francis Ford Coppola’s Youth Without Youth,
is the film’s obvious star. Her Otilia is terrifically complex, a
realistic mix of stereotypically masculine and feminine
traits—aggressive but compassionate, no-nonsense but not immune to
getting emotional during times of stress. Marinca carries 4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days,
appearing in nearly every scene, the narrative’s intensity reflected in
her expressions. The performance is as raw and honest as the film
itself.
