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The Train (1964)

2009-04-22T23:14:00.000-07:00

All war pictures invariably ask at some point if the mission -- and by extension, the war -- is worth it. John Frankenheimer’s 1964 film The Train asks this question in a simple, yet provocative way. In the film, a French rail station manager played by the outrageously swarthy American Burt Lancaster tries to stop a train carrying priceless works of French art from Paris into Germany.

It’s a terrific conceit that leaves aside the standard cliches of war adventures. There is no bond of brotherhood between soldiers here, or subplots involving broken loyalties, or the glory of battle. There are paintings by Renoir, Degas, Cezanne, Picasso, and Matisse. There is Col. Von Waldheim, a ruthless German officer who appreciates them, and Labiche, the gruff, no nonsense member of the underground who does not. When the museum curator informs Labiche of Von Waldheim’s plan, he bluntly points out how he’s running low on men and asks if she has copies of the paintings. When told that the fallen members of the underground would’ve wanted to save the art, he responds, “And they're dead. And they'll never know!”

There’s lots of nifty action, with trains derailing and colliding and whistling and squealing, all of which is a childhood dream come true for any outrageously swarthy dude who ever had a train set. In one scene, Lancaster slides down a ladder, gets up a head of steam, and jumps aboard a passing train -- all in one shot by Frankenheimer.

It’s a lean and mean affair that unfolds like one long shell game, with Labiche and his cohorts trying to trick the German officers onboard that the train is en route to Germany when, in fact, it is looping back toward Paris. I enjoyed the tricks the French Underground employed to fool the German officers, and the numerous, sometimes ingenious ways Frankenheimer finds to make a train running along tracks exciting. At one point, Labiche must bring an engine from one station to another in broad daylight, and he soon comes under fire from a British fighter that, of course, does not know a swarthy American playing a French saboteur is at the helm. The ensuing scene becomes a race to a tunnel, with Labiche getting the engine up to top speed and then having to slam on the brakes to avoid being strafed.

Another twist involves Labiche’s having to paint the roof of the train so that future Allied air attacks can identify it and let it be. While the bulk of the film focuses on these and other tactics, what really grounds the action is the constant question: is it worth it? The more Col. Von Waldheim is undermined, the more vicious he becomes. At several points, dozens of civilians are lined up and shot without hesitation. Von Waldheim is a terrific villain, a ruthless man of culture who is a great foil to Labiche. At one point he tells Labiche, “The paintings are mine; they always will be; beauty belongs to the man who can appreciate it.”

The film succeeds because it balances the swift action and clockwork plotting with these brief exchanges about the value of art and culture. “This is our pride, what we create and hold for the world. There are worse things to risk your life for than that” argues the museum curator early in the film. Labiche says he can’t help her, but he does. Because that’s what swarthy dudes do during war.

The Incredible Hulk

2008-07-10T08:55:00.000-07:00

...not to be confused with Ang Lee's 2003 Hulk, which was less incredible and more sleep-inducing. 2008's The Incredible Hulk is a kinda, sorta sequel and kinda, sorta reboot of the franchise starring Edward Norton in a soft-spoken, nuanced performance. I was surprised by how the story unfolded early on, with Bruce Banner in hiding and trying to deal with the menace he's already been saddled with (the opening credits remind you of his radioactive incident, of course). When Norton isn't the Hulk, many of his scenes are told with simple looks. Norton carries a good chunk of the film with his eyes, which for the most part are sad and forlorn. Though he's done quite a few flicks since, my last impression of him was his mail-it-in performace in The Italian Job, so it's good to see him back to form.

The film as a whole is solid if unspectacular. I liked the patience of the opening sequences, how the film takes its time establishing Banner's fugitive life in Brazil (which, incidentally, looks georgeous). This is, after all, a character who's established goal is to NOT get angry and turn into the titular character, and I liked how Banner was constantly monitoring his pulse and teaching himself to channel his energy while on his search for a cure.

I was also pleasantly surprised by director Louis Leterrier. I've liked the Luc Besson disciple's previous work, especially the Jet Li flick Unleasehed, but Transporter 2 isn't exactly a hallmark of cinema (I still like it, though). I watched Incredible Hulk a day after taking in the flashy and hollow Wanted, and Leterrier is clearly comfortable balancing character and action moments. The first big action scene in the Brazilian cola bottling factory is an impressive example of pacing, editing, and building tension, with the Hulk emerging from shadow only as a brief silohuette from a flash grenade. It's a geeky, uber-cool moment of iconography, a payoff for the film's quiet opening passages.

Unfortunately, as tuned in to the character as the screenplay is, the plot plods along from one locale to the next without any real sense of urgency. The insinuation the entire film is General Ross (William Hurt) needs to cover up this insidious military experiment gone awry while also restarting the project in secret... which explains the small, specialist squad led by Emil Blonksy (Tim Roth) but not the tanks and helicopters that come storming onto an American university -- tanks and helicopters being difficult to explain when one wants to keep a conspiracy on the down low. There's a sweet subplot with Betty Ross (Liv Tyler) helping Bruce evade her father, but the further along the story progresses, the less clear and more obligatory things become.

I liked the mini-rivalry Hulk has with Blonksy, a warrior who yearns to combine his experience with an all-powerful body of his own, but the finale feels like a long, drawn-out sideshow. There's a moment late in the film where a crowd of people -- including the Rosses -- watch the heroic Hulk walk away, and I wasn't sure if they were happy about this or not. It's a frustrating climax that not only leaves questions unanswered (sequel!) but raises questions and reveals plot holes that otherwise would have gone cheerfully unnoticed.

What the film lacks is that extra gear that all good action movies have. While I appreciated the simplicity of the film's opening, the ending is overly simplistic, leaning on gravitas that isn't really there. The film is executed well, but at the end of the day, it's a one-note story.

Wanted

2008-07-10T08:37:00.000-07:00

Your reaction to Wanted will depend largely on how you handle the Loom of Destiny. It's a machine at the center of the Wanted universe and a big linchpin in the plot. It tells the Fraternity, the society of assassins in the story, who to kill next via irregularities in the stitching that are actually coded messages.

If you're confused, yes, it's that kind of loom. A machine that weaves yarn into cloth. This is an action movie about a millenia-old underground society of superhuman killers who restore balance to the world based on the machinations of a device that makes sweaters.

If you can buy that, you're going to love Wanted. Me, not so much.

I had mixed expectations about the film going in. The imagery left me cold, but then the reviews starting pouring in and praising director Timur Bekmambetov for his inventiveness and flair. Apparently, he was given an uncanny amount of freedom, especially for a foreign director making his English-language debut with a big budget Summer flick. And at one point during the film, I thought to myself that Bekmambetov was Michael Bay with a sense of restraint. He has a feeling for when to let a scene breathe versus when to go for the craziness. The first big action sequence specifically is full of energy and excitement, what with a confused Wesley (James McAvoy) being literally swept away at 100 mph by Fox (Angelina Jolie -- really, that's her character name) and her Dodge Viper. Jolie proceeds to lie on the car's hood so she can steer with her feet and shoot backwards at the bad guy. The sequence has a visceral quality that all great action sequences should have -- speed, momentum, a sense of danger.

And then in comes the Loom of Destiny. Which, again, is a machine that weaves yarn.

There's something so obligatory, so plain, so by-the-numbers about Wanted's storyline that keeps Bekmambetov's visual flair from succeeding. The screenplay pretends to be about Wesley's search for an identity, a search ignited by the revelation that his father was the world's best assassin, but all we get is a lackadaisical training montage highlighted by pretty CGI bullets dancing through the air in slow motion. The story then throws away all established themes and logic for the sake of plot twists that are supposed to be eye-opening, but are instead confounding and empty. Basically, the film tramples all over its first half in order to fill the second half with twists that lack sense. Wesley supposedly is following in his father's footsteps, but the film is too busy to note how he feels about this, instead giving us cryptic backstory for Fox and underwhelming lectures about the Fraternity's role in the world. At the center of it all is an air of myth and mysticism in the form of a machine that turns cotton into tablecloths.

For all the spectacular, inventive action, there's just as much that is hollow and superficial. Much is made of the bullet bending trick, especially for what it represents about Wesley's growth, but then that's that, and the plot keeps chugging along. Visually, there's something anti-climactic about watching two bullets slam into each other. Even the big finale is a letdown, involving an overly-elaborate scheme with bombs planted onto rats. I'm not sure if this strategy is supposed make Wesley clever or not, but all it basically accomplishes is to open the front door for him. Speed? Momentum? A sense of danger? No, no... we get bomber rats.

Wanted puts the fate of its characters, plot, and themes in the hands of the Loom of Destiny. The actors acquit themselves well enough, and some of the action is pretty cool, but at the end of the day, things hinge on a machine that knits. Who know who else knits? My mom.

My Blueberry Nights

2008-03-25T21:28:00.000-07:00

Early in My Blueberry Nights, Elizabeth asks cafe owner Jeremy if her boyfriend has been there with any other women. Jeremy only remembers faces and meals, and Elizabeth discovers that yes, indeed, her porkchop and meatloaf-eating boyfriend has been eating with another. Elizabeth angrily leaves her apartment keys with Jeremy with the intent of never seeing her boyfriend again. Later, heartbroken and lovesick, she returns to find the keys still in Jeremy's possession. Her boyfriend hasn't come calling. Jeremy tries to cheer her up by talking about his desserts. He explains that at the end of the night, the cheesecake, apple pie, and peach cobbler are always finished, but a whole blueberry pie always remains. "What's wrong with the blueberry pie?" Elizabeth asks with great despair. "There's nothing wrong with the blueberry pie, it's just people make other choices."

"I'll eat it," Elizabeth offers.

This is typically how things unfold in the world of Wong Kar Wai. His films are a triumph of atmosphere and tone over story. The plots meander and end up where they began, if they end anywhere at all. The characters ponder romantic heartache out loud, posit quirky theories, and often undertake curious, fruitless journeys on an emotional whim. Elizabeth has a series of after hours meals with Jeremy, who has a jar full of keys and the stories to match. He's an equally wounded soul who now only observes from behind his counter, refusing to act on his clear affections for Elizabeth. One night, Elizabeth decides to "take the longest way to cross the street" and heads first to Memphis, then Las Vegas, where she encounters a variety of hopeless romantics.

In her acting debut, Norah Jones has a sweet naturalness about her, but she's reduced to the role of observer for most of the running time, waitressing in various locales made all the more bustling and colorful by Wong's distinctly skewed photography. (WKW's #1 rule of cinematography: Get your characters just inside the edge of the frame. Then stop.) In Memphis she befriends Arnie (David Strathairn), an alcoholic who can't let go of his resentful ex-wife, Sue Lynne (Rachel Weisz). In Nevada, she stakes poker player Leslie (Natalie Portman) with her meager savings in exchange for a car.

Wong has a clear fascination with late night dining and ill-fated relationships, and food always takes on intriguing symbolic relationships with his characters. My Blueberry Nights, his first English-language film, is a kindred spirit with his Chungking Express and Fallen Angels. All revolve around greasy spoons and the strangers that inhabit them, passing each other in the night until the moment that they don't, their disparate paths suddenly crossing over. Chungking Express was a wonderful piece of romantic whimsy, but My Blueberry Nights misses the mark, trying to build emotional currents on a flimsy structure of contrived character sketches.

The film is a bit of an acting showcase as there's no shortage of crying, yelling, and other outpourings of emotion. What's missing is the quiet moments inbetween, the moments in which these characters actually make the decisions that lead to the building up or, mostly, breaking down of their relationships. Elizabeth narrates the meandering adventure in postcards written to Jeremy, but her observations don't contain much insight to either the situations or her point of view of them. Oddly, the most endearing moment for me was a throwaway scene when Jeremy, wanting simply to talk to his friend, calls every single diner in Memphis asking to talk to any waitress named Elizabeth.

There are a lot of nice moments in the story. I liked Sue Lynne coming to terms with Arnie by paying his insanely big bar tab, Elizabeth's mobile goodbye with Leslie when they separate at a fork in the highway, and Jeremy's musings on his jar of outcast keys. Unfortunately, the vignettes don't so much end as run out of steam, and Elizabeth's cross-country waitressing journey leads to a simplistic conclusion. My Blueberry Nights isn't more than the sum of its parts, forcing whimsy when there should be honesty. I wonder what would have been if Elizabeth had decided to take the short way across the street, instead.

Quick DVD note #1: You probably know to buy all region DVDs when purchasing on eBay (region code zero). Also remember to buy DVDs in NTSC format, as the PAL videos from Asia and elsewhere don't work in standard North American players.

Quick DVD note #2: An old XBox can play PAL! And if you have an HDMI cable for it, it can work as a poor man's upcoverting player, too. And to think, I was going to banish the thing to the garage. I heart you, old XBox.

The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters

2008-03-25T16:19:00.001-07:00

Competition and rivalries often bring out the best in people, and just as often bring out the worst. The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters features a nerdtastic competition and an engrossing rivalry. I put it on the ol' Netflix queue on a lark, thinking a documentary about competitive Donkey Kong would at least be funny, and at most validate my own thumb-mashing, cartridge-blowing, Contra code-chanting childhood. I just got a Wii, after all, and legitimately consider Wii boxing to be a thorough upper-body workout. Why not revel in old school Nintendo glory?

I was emotionally exhausted after screening it. Watching that slimy, wily Billy Mitchell defend his high score is like watching the Yankees buy another All Star. Or Ivan Drago juicing in Rocky IV. Or Kreese telling Johnny to sweep the leg. Occasionally, movie villains come along that audiences love to hate. Billy Mitchell is not one of those villains. I wanted to strangle him. The fact that he is a living, breathing, bona fide real person makes me livid.

I'd rate The King of Kong as one of the best sports movies in recent years. And at first blush, it's probably up there with the all-time great sports flicks. Sure, the inspirational, based on a true story movies like Miracle, Rudy, and Hoosiers stand out, especially since they are about monumental moments in athletic lore and not about a video game. But I can't think of another film that so thoroughly and effectively captures the dynamics of competition, the cliques that form, and the often juvenile means in which competitors view each other and define themselves. How many sports fans quantify their team's wins and losses, not content to let the scoreboard be the defining element it is supposed to be? How many purists are loathe to compare generations, always claiming that theirs was the toughest? The King of Kong illustrates how a level playing field is a completely subjective notion.

Things start innocently enough, revealing Billy Mitchell as a man not content to let go of his 15 minutes of fame, and Steve Wiebe as a man who never got close to a second of it. The tape that Wiebe submits of his first high score attempt, complete with his young child demanding Wiebe stop playing to come wipe his ass, is the kind of detail I expected. It's both hilarious and poignant, a portrait of childhood pursuits that never die. But the real meat of the proceedings comes next, when the governing body of video game scoring, Twin Galaxies (which could be subject of its own doc), refutes Wiebe's score. Did I mention that Mitchell, the poster boy of Twin Galaxies, is also one of the judges? And that he has an oily mullet and sells hot sauce?

How this involves Mitchell's unsettled rivalry with a man who calls himself Mr. Awesome is too... well... awesome to conceive. But it is Mitchell's truly Machiavellian responses to Wiebe's pursuit of a face-to-face battle that blew me away. You can't help but root for the hard luck Wiebe, in part because he does everything asked of him and more, and especially when Mitchell ducks him and sends a series of minions to do his dirty work. It's classic David versus Goliath stuff that exposes the very dark underbelly of this -- and really, any -- competition. The politics and nuances of this world are positively Shakespearean in their breadth.

To recap that last paragraph: competitive Donkey Kong = Machiavelli + Bible + Shakespeare.

This is not hyperbole. I swear, this movie is that good. The greatness of The King of Kong is how it reveals the complexities of competition, no matter how simple the rules. It finds the human drama in a twenty-plus year-old video game and underscores just how rivalries in sport never truly end, even if the game does.

Some people worry that kids are playing too many 1st-person shooters. They ought to watch this film.

For updates on their story since the completion of the documentary, check the film's official site: www.billyvssteve.com

Atonement

2008-03-06T20:20:00.000-08:00

possible spoilers below

First of all, to the marketing genius who decided to score the Atonement DVD commercials with Timbaland's "Apologize" -- stop taking your teenaged daughter's advice on ad campaigns. And stop going through her cabinets and smoking whatever drugs you find. They're hers.

Speaking of marketing, Atonement reminded me why it's good to never see a trailer, read a review, or otherwise know anything about a film before seeing it. I thought it was going to be a schmaltzy romantic throwback involving separated lovers, old English class conflicts, glorious depictions of the French losing World War II, period costumes galore, and misty-eyed love letter voice overs. And it has all that. But the story of Atonement's tragically separated lovers is anything but old school by virtue of its structure. The film begins with the eyes of young Briony, a precocious young teen with a fertile imagination and a penchant for writing. An early sequence cleverly indoctrinates the audience to how this story will unfold. There is an encounter between Briony's prickly older sister Cecilia and Robbie, the son of the estate's housekeeper, that Briony thinks is menacing, but the film replays the events for what they are: the contentious spark that reveals a friendship to be romance. A number of events in the film's first act play out in this fashion, and it feels like a clunky device until Briony witnesses an ugly crime. The only way her young mind can make sense of it is to pin it on the seemingly lewd and uncouth help, thus condemning Robbie to prison and, later, the army.

The ensuing scenes of heartbreak and emotional devastation against the backdrop of a generation-altering war are beautiful in their sweep. The single-take sequence of harried British troops on the beaches of Dunkirk is grand cinema. However, it's the film's ending that pulls everything together. Twists that change the context of every scene that preceded it tend to fall flat on their faces. More often than not, they're cheap gimmicks that essentially boil down to the filmmaker's saying, "Hey, those last two hours you just watched? I was kidding -- this is what really happened." For examples of how a twist like this can go horribly awry, see Abandon and Lucky Number Slevin. Or take my word for it and don't see them because they suck.

Atonement's twist (for lack of a better word) is rooted in the character work, in the foundation laid in the opening scenes, in the thematics, and even the title. It's an affecting piece that had me thinking about it long after the credits rolled, about Robbie's simple mistake of honesty that brought two people together, and how the confused imagination of a young girl destroyed two other lives. I especially appreciated how the story doesn't try to explain Briony's motivations. Her convoluted version of the truth is equal parts jealousy, fear, and immaturity. The notion that she can only amend her lie by devoting her life to writing fiction is what pushes Atonement beyond a simple love story. The film starts as an engrossing romantic tragedy and ends as a provocative view on the sticky relationship between truth and fiction, and the muddy distinction between fiction and lies.

On another note, please give the Amazon.com mp3 store a look. I downloaded the lovely Atonement soundtrack from there (which uses the pounding sound of a typewriter to good effect) and now listen to it in it's DRM-free, 256 kbps glory. They don't yet have the selection of iTunes and the interface isn't as slick for browsing, but they deserve props for forcing the record companies' hand and dropping the handcuffs of DRM. Of course, iTunes is still tops for organizing music, especially if you're not one of the two people who own Zunes, but competition is always fun, so keep it up, Amazon.

Stop-Stop-Play

2008-02-27T20:51:00.000-08:00

I learned this one a while back while listening to super sweet tech news podcast Buzz Out Loud. (If you're into that stuff, please listen to them. You'll quickly find yourself in geek heaven.)

If you're annoyed by the endless amount of previews on DVDs, every DVD player has this nifty feature built in to skip straight to the feature presentation. Simply press stop, press stop again, then press play. Your player will then skip to the main feature. It may flash an FBI warning or other such legal babble, but otherwise you're home free.

So, when you're mired in a seemingly endless montage of a studio's action movie back catalog edited to Bonnie Tyler's "Holding Out For A Hero," just remember to hit STOP-STOP-PLAY on your remote.

(You think I'm joking. One of my Paramount titles has it, complete with Harrison Ford in Witness ducking out of a grain silo with a shotgun. It's actually quite glorious.)

No Country for Old Men

2008-02-16T12:49:00.000-08:00

There are swift thematic undercurrents just under the violent surface of No Country for Old Men. From the lean, nuanced writing to the quiet, confident performances and the Coen Bros. restrained direction, the whole film is an exercise in understatement. Yes, there's a lot to digest in this high-minded action/western/thriller. The real question to ask after taking this film in is: really, who gives a shit?

The Coen Bros. can do and have done every type of movie. They have an off-kilter sense of humor, a real mean streak, and an uncanny ability to balance the two. Sometimes they create moments so tense and unnerving that an audience's only recourse is to laugh. Such is the case with most every scene involving Javier Bardem's amoral Anton Chegurh. He's quiet, composed, and sinister, a supremely chilling villain.

Sadly, the rest of the characters exist on another, less involving plane. They are flat, uninteresting people who speak in vague, ambiguous statements, if they speak at all. Tommy Lee Jones' retirement-avoiding sheriff opens and closes the film with two meandering soliloquies that deal with who-freakin'-knows-what. There's man's violent nature, retirement, the conflict in men between staying and going from their chosen lives, the eternal conflict of good and evil, violence begetting violence, and other such high-minded concepts that have fans of Cormac McCarthy's source novel sloppily wetting themselves.

I am a fan of the Coen Bros. and I do appreciate it when filmmakers let their audiences connect the dots. Forcing the audience to figure out what exactly the dots are is another matter, one that I feel should take a back seat to simpleton stuff like interesting characters and emotional thematics.

Make no mistake, I'm not knocking the film for being uniquely literate and intellectual, but strip the rosy prose away from the characters, and No Country for Old Men is a lean thriller about the mechanics of running and hiding with a big bag of money. If the medium is the message, then that is what's happening for two hours. When the Academy Awards do their featurette on this film during the ceremony and someone describes it as a provocative, insightful look into the dark souls of men, please remember that a significant portion of the film's running time is devoted to Josh Brolin screwing and unscrewing air vents.

The presence of Anton Chegurh changes and elevates things. His actions and their curious motivations are in such stark contrast to the film's protagonist that it leaves you craving more. But "less is more" is the theme of the day here, and No Country for Old Men left me underwhelmed. It's tense, involving, and meticulously plotted. I'll even throw in the adjective "diabolical" for good measure. But the hype is too much. If I had stumbled upon this film a few years down the road, I probably would have wondered, "Why haven't more people seen this?" But critics and (gulp) the literati are falling over themselves kissing this film's ass, and all I have to say is, "Really?"

UPDATE: Ask A Ninja agrees with me.

The Boondock Saints (sucks your will to live)

2008-02-06T00:27:00.000-08:00

WTF?

The cult success of The Boondock Saints confounds me. In my mind, there are only two possible explanations for its relatively high regard: 1) a halo effect from the well received documentary Overnight, about writer/director Troy Duffy's abrupt rise and ego-laden fall from Hollywood's good graces, and 2) nostalgia for the mid to late 90's when every other movie was a shameless rip-off of Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs. Considering that Pulp and The Professional, two of my favorite films, are shamelessly looted from here, I was almost bemused watching it. It's like I was in high school again.

Reminiscing aside, The Boondock Saints is ridiculously stupid. It's built around the intriguing premise of two blue collar immigrant hoods becoming vigilante killers, but the writing is all over the map. It wants to be gritty and bold and daring and dynamic, but succeeds only in being juvenile and inane. The fact that it's a rehash in terms of characters, tone, the fractured timeline, and a pop philosophy, only adds to its maddening retardedness. That's right, it's so dumb I had to use the word "retardedness."

The real trouble with the film -- aside from the retardedness -- is its wildly uneven tone. Portentous religious overtones give way to farcical fat jokes, followed by obligatory timeline manipulation, and then Willem Dafoe's sitcom creation of a character. It's been almost a week since I've seen the movie and I still can't wrap my head around Dafoe's Will & Grace-esque gay FBI agent who's childish putdowns are made to be intelligent by virtue of the other policemen being stupid. I suspect the character is supposed to subvert expectations, but it's a nonsensical mish-mash of caricatures. It's like Duffy didn't want to offend gay people, FBI agents, or children, so he combined all the worst stereotypes into a cartoon and then directed Dafoe to channel Gary Oldman in The Professional. I could be paraphrasing, but he actually razzes another cop with, "Who's getting coffee? THIS GUY!"

Seriously, WTF?

I don't say juvenile to mean I was offended. The film simply feels like it was vomited into existence, the half-digested remains of something tastier and more satisfying. It wants to be vibrant and fresh by punctuating its serious moments with silliness, but it ends up undermining any pathos the story had going. One scene features an accidental shooting of a cat that's so awkwardly handled, the ensuing scene just gives up on the joke, turning what was an (unfunny) bit into a boilerplate argument between previously simpatico characters. The film wants to subvert your expectations, but it doesn't set up any expectations, nor does it establish any kind of heightened reality. It assumes you've seen the films of Tarantino, Scorcese, Besson, et al. Except if you have seen those films, then The Boondock Saints sucks even more.

I'm proud to say I've never walked out of a movie, but The Boondock Saints pushed me to my limits. And I was watching it at home, so walking out would have been a tremendous feat. But who would consider walking out of their own living room to get away from an atrociously conceived and produced movie?

This guy!

Cloverfield

2008-02-05T10:38:00.000-08:00

I wonder if the found footage/shaky cam sub-genre of film will branch out from witches and monsters to include an actual domestic-themed "home" movie. But then I suppose no one would care to watch meandering stories of dysfunctional families. Oh wait, Little Miss Sunshine happened.

Anyway, 1-18-08 has finally delivered the film initially code named "Cloverfield" and shot under the names "Slusho" and "Cheese," and finally released as... Cloverfield. It follows through on the cryptic, gripping teaser trailer that promised a disaster/monster movie told from the point of view of the man (or Abercrombie & Fitch model) on the street.

It reinvents the genre in such a simple way that the film has an immediacy lacking in the likes of bloated behemoths like Godzilla (1998) or even the big event movie that carried Cloverfield's teaser trailer, Transformers. All the cheesy artifice that plagues these movies -- the military officers and government officials with their needless explanations, the interminable "something strange is going on" sequences followed by the "this can't be happening!" sequences -- all of that melts away. If you're someone who demands to know what this monster is and where it came from, you're going to be disappointed. This is a monster movie boiled down to the essence of what we all truly want: people running from something scary. It's surprising how spine-tingling the appearance of stealth bombers and machine guns can be when their arrival is a signal of danger, and not a precursor to more needless plot.

However, one thing Cloverfield doesn't reinvent is melodrama. Fans of JJ Abrams and his gang from their work on Alias and Lost will know they have a deft way with banter and group dynamics. Their characters are always endearing even if they're not terribly interesting (save for the notoriously inane Nikki and Paulo from Lost). The film takes a healthy amount of time to set up Rob, a young man who's childhood friendship with Beth has finally turned into romance on the eve of his career taking off. Unfortunately, the characters that end up together for the majority of the film are a hodgepodge bunch. While I applaud the filmmakers' willingness to kill characters, we end up with a group that lacks much chemistry.

What I especially was disappointed with was the character of Hud, who's basically the cameraman. He is Rob's awkward friend, saddled with the job of taping well wishes and turning it into a chance to hit on a girl. He easily could have been the voice of the audience, but instead he becomes a punchline, uttering some overtly obvious lines for the sake of humor. It's not that the character is dull or poorly written (his musings in the subway tunnel are hilarious), it's that the approach of telling the entire film through one single camera creates opportunities that are missed. The film could have subverted even more genre conventions by deliberately toying with the point of view or having Hud deliver more biting coments, but instead it opts for long, motion sickness-inducing takes. There's a lot of shaky cam for the sake of shaky cam, which is especially frustrating during the quiet moments. And there are moments with the monster when Hud points the camera at his friends, and instead of screaming at the stupid characters to run, the audience screams at the stupid characters to point the damn camera at the monster.

But here I am, after the fact, criticizing a fresh and inventive film for not being inventive enough. Cloverfield is undeniably involving, a special effects spectacular that you experience and not just observe. The standard built-in features of the camera (the light, the nightvision) are used to terrifying effect, and the approach creates startling moments that simply aren't possible in a conventionally shot film. The mere sound of the creature is terrifying because the camera could whip around and suddenly find it breathing down the characters' necks.

Even Rob's melodramatic motivation, which I didn't completely buy into amidst all the chaos, pays off in the end in a surprisingly poignant climax. It's icing on the cake, really, because at the end of the day the characters don't really matter, anyway. Cloverfield's approach is to trim the fat and make the audience an active participant. The point is to take part in this visceral, frightening roller coaster experience, and it works. Sure, you may laugh about the experience once the adrenaline has left your body, but you'll probably want to get on again afterwards.

Reverse Graffiti

2008-01-28T12:25:00.001-08:00

I originally found this video via a bizarre (and random) trivia blog. So, check that out, too.

Reverse graffiti is basically cleaning dirt and grime off of a surface in such a way to create a picture. Like all those people that write "clean me" on dirty car windows, except for imagery. The genius of it is that it's not really vandalism -- the artist is selectively cleaning a surface that the local government otherwise has neglected. Suddenly, authority types are forced to do their jobs and take care of public spaces, but are they doing it to suppress art or are they doing it to be responsible and clean up their mess?

This video is clever. I found it oddly provocative and moving, too. It helps that it's shot and edited well and has cool music. It brings up all sorts of issues about not only art, but the use of public spaces, and the relationships between neighborhoods, their inhabitants, and their governments. On a separate note, comedy has certainly found a home in online video like YouTube, etc... will more dramatic stuff ever find a footing? Or are videos like this just one-off novelties, the rare non-comedy to gain a viral audience?

Juno

2008-01-17T22:36:00.000-08:00

I'm normally allergic to the independent darling of the year. They usually come with a cheeky behind-the-scenes story (screenwriter Diablo Cody was a stripper!) and get championed as the Little Movie That Could (take that, big studios!) despite the fact that they usually mistake oddball dysfunction for character and plot. Combine this aggravating annual ode to hipness with the fact that, damn it, I wanted to be this year's cheeky behind-the-scenes story (blogger hits Hollywood big time!), and I usually hate these flicks before I see a single frame of film.

Things didn't look well during the first few minutes of Juno. More specifically, things didn't sound well during the first few scenes. The film is front-loaded with an avalanche of oddball verbiage, with every character speaking in some strange, ironic, quirky vernacular. Like, dude, for shiz. I'm a big fan of euphemism and irony and wit, but this was like being forced to listen to an inside joke that's evolved between friends to the point of not being funny anymore. Yes, that is a back-handed complement to the nuanced realism of the writing, but my bigger point is that it's off-putting. For realz, home skillet, it totally annoys my balls off, yo.

But then something happens. Pregnant Juno can't go through with an abortion, decides she'll put the baby up for adoption, and drops the bomb on her parents. Quirkiness abounds. Her father puts her down, telling her she isn't the kind of girl that gets pregnant. "I don't know what kind of girl I am," she says. It's a telling line, delivered with the perfect mix of remorse, exasperation, and heartbreak by Ellen Page. It turns out Juno isn't merely a collection of overtly ironic catch phrases, she's a living, breathing teenager trying to make sense of the world.

Juno has a heart. The film turns out to be terrific, smartly walking a fine line between biting sarcasm and heart-warming sentiment. After these opening scenes, the screenwriting stripper finds a gear that works. The writing and the fantastic performance by Ellen Page really capture the voice of a precocious teenager who is certainly smart but also inexperienced -- a person who wants to be better than the thoughtless, hormonal teen who wants to know what drove adults to coin the phrase "sexually active." There's another telling scene when Juno meets the couple she hopes will adopt her baby, and her nonchalance about the situation quietly wounds Vanessa (Jennifer Garner), a woman who yearns so badly to switch places with the smart ass pregnant teen poking fun at her home decor. Beneath her eloquent sarcasm, Juno's just an emotionally-unstable kid.

The distinct difference between the first ten minutes of the film versus the remainder is that the opening moments are trying so hard to reach for laughs that aren't there. The rest of the film settles for telling a story and letting the comedy come out of the characters and the situations. Juno's battle of wills with her step-mother is hilarious, as is her sometime best friend, sometime boyfriend admitting that he tries very hard to be cool. There's an awkward sweetness to Juno's relationship with Mark (Jason Bateman), Vanessa's musician husband who'd like nothing better than to be in his twenties again.

The Juno-Mark relationship is the key to the film. It unfolds in a way that confounded my expectations. The way it forces Juno to reflect on what she really wants is surprising, and it really brings the film's emotional undercurrents to the forefront. I loved the way the film builds to these later moments where the audience begins to fully understand what kind of girl Juno is just as she's discovering this for herself.

I especially appreciated the unforced nature of the story. It avoids cheap melodrama and lets the characters breath. Thankfully, Juno isn't too hip for its own good. It's a little gem of a character piece that's thoughtful yet biting, sardonic yet warming. For shiz.

The Fountain

2008-01-05T23:39:00.000-08:00

The Fountain is a lot to take in.

Pardon my French, but Darren Aronofsky sure knows how to fuck with people's heads in an immediate way. He's a director with a distinct visual style that manages to capture emotions with striking, visceral imagery. I haven't seen the film that made his name, Pi, but I distinctly remember watching his lyrical ode to self-destructive addiction, Requiem for a Dream. If you haven't seen it, let me summarize my initial feelings once the credits roll: "Fuck me." You will want to go into the shower, curl into a ball, and cry like a starving, sick little African child after watching Requiem. Yes, that is a recommendation. And again, pardon my French.

Inside of a minute, Aronofsky establishes The Fountain's theme of circles in about ten different ways. The circular head piece of a staff, the crown of a queen, a crest in the floor. Circles, circles everywhere. He's not shy about letting the audience know that this film isn't a one-way trip. There's the past story about the Spanish conquistador looking for the Tree of Life, the present-day story of a doctor looking to cure his wife's cancer, and the future story of the strangest damn astronaut you ever did see using the Tree of Life as a spaceship to reach a nebula of life-giving stars. And it's not even that simple. Each story affects the others in direct and indirect ways, some you see coming, others completely unexpected. Aronofsky and his co-writer, Ari Handel, maintain an emotional and symbolic logic to drive the story. It doesn't make sense, per se, but it maybe kinda sorta sometimes does.

While there are distinct parallels between the future, past, and present stories, the present day vignette could have existed as a film all by itself, especially since the "past" story is actually a novel-in-progress in the present. What I especially appreciated is how tapped in it is to raw, strong emotions. It's involving and heartrending, with Thomas's desperation consuming him. His drive to cure his wife is what keeps him at work and away from her. His desperation is palpable. I don't know why Hugh Jackman isn't a bigger star than he is, because he's terrific. (Plus, his name is Hugh Jackman. He can go up to girls and say in his exotic Aussie accent, "Hey, baby, I've got a Hugh Jackman, if you know what I'm saying. Don't Hugh wanna be Jackman'ed?" By the way, why do future sci-fi protagonists always speak American English? Why not the Queen's English or Aussie? Or, God forbid, something other than English?)

Where The Fountain leaves you wanting more is, unfortunately, the 3rd act. It's something in the vein of 2001: A Space Odyssey, an ending that makes sweeping, bold thematic gestures without giving the ripe emotional undercurrent of the preceding scenes. It's not a cheat or a trick, but it's not wholly satisfying either. I was mostly perplexed, but not to the point of not caring. The film sticks with you because it's a mind bender with an emotional core. It leaves the job of connecting the dots to the audience, and in turn, has you thinking about the things people pursue, the ceaseless drive towards finishing, and the links between the end of something and the beginning of something else.

It's like finding an old puzzle and putting it together, only to realize you're missing quite a few pieces. The big picture is there, you can see it, but it'd be nice to have it all down. And maybe after repeat viewings the other pieces will emerge. The good news is I want to find them.

Scorsese's "Key to Reserva"

2007-12-06T16:29:00.000-08:00

There's a new nine-minute pseudo-documentary by Martin Scorsese that's actually a long ad for a Spanish wine. It's a funny bit in which Scorsese preserves a "film that has NOT been shot" by shooting a short film in Hitchcock's style. Good times. Have fun spotting all the Hitch references.

Cinematical's Asian Sensations (sort of)

2007-11-30T00:24:00.000-08:00

Cinematical has a list of Asian-American actors on the cusp of kinda sorta stardom in a steady-roles-that-aren't-generic-bit-parts way. Aw, shucks, Cinematical... you make me semi-ashamed for being a white-washed fan of mainstream Hollywood. Thanks for the shout out.

Rufio! Rufio! Ru! Fi! Oooooooo!

Grindhouse

2007-11-14T18:11:00.000-08:00

Asking me for my favorite film is an exercise in futility. Even a Top 5 is tough, as it often just depends on my mood. If there's one thing I've learned about the moving picture, it's that movies hit you differently depending on when in your life you've watched them. I used to love Top Gun with every fiber of my being when I was eight, in large part because I had no concept of the French Kiss. Watching Tom Cruise and Kelly McGillis tongue-bathe each other in soft blue lighting was an earth-shattering cinematic revelation for me. Nowadays? Not so much.

However, if you ask me why I've pursued a career in film, what movies made me want to MAKE movies, the answer is easy. Pulp Fiction and The Usual Suspects. Hands down, no contest. I watched them and thought, "Wait, you can do that in a movie?" Each flick, in its own way, questions the films that came before it, acknowledges and re-invents genre conventions, and finds unique ways to kick ass.

Which is why it pains me to say that I didn't care for Death Proof at all. Quentin Tarantino's first two films, Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, along with his screenplay for True Romance, have had an undeniable influence of Hollywood (not to mention me) in the last fifteen years, but in that same time Tarantino seems to lose himself a little more in his passion for movies. Each new QT piece, from his segment of Four Rooms on down, is bloated, self-indulgent, and often just a little boring. For every butt-kicking Kill Bill, Vol. 1, he delivers a drawn-out Kill Bill, Vol. 2.

Death Proof's faults are a lack of storytelling basics. There is no clever reinvention, no freshening up of dusty genre cliches. It's four girls yapping, followed by another four girls yapping. For two hours. And every now and again, Kurt Russell and his death proof mobile drop in to make things exciting.

And don't get me wrong, things get exciting when the titular car makes an appearance. The raucous, road raging finale delivers on the guilty pleasure promise of the whole grindhouse notion. It's genuinely thrilling to watch two types of car fetishes literally ramming into each other on a winding two-lane road. Unfortunately, the vast majority of the film is content to be about girls in conversation. And not the wonderfully sly, lyrical conversation Tarantino is known for. The conversations aren't unique, don't wind back on themselves, don't come up again later, or reveal anything about the characters. It's dreadfully natural chatter, bland in its realism. Oh, sure, there's a vague thematic connection, but who wants thematic mirrors when you've been promised killer cars?

I remember the mid-90s when Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez burst onto the Hollywood scene. Tarantino was the Golden Child, the post-classical Hollywood auteur. He was the trendsetter to Rodriguez's raw, brash director prodigy. The knock on Rodriguez was always that he could direct the hell out of anything, but couldn't write a story to save his life.

Planet Terror kicks unholy ass. Rodriguez has crafted a screenplay that toes the line of awfulness without ever going over, resulting in a marathon of corny dialogue and excessive gore that's an absolute pleasure to take in. He's smart enough to give us characters we care for, and savvy enough to know that what we really want out of Grindhouse is the sweet action/horror stuff. For example, there's El Wray, the classic brooding anti-hero. He's constantly being given a hard time by the local sheriff, who makes vague references to El Wray's dark, mysterious past. After skipping over a "missing reel" that burns out the film midway through the story, Rodriguez jumps straight to all hell breaking loose and reveals a wounded sheriff telling El Wray, "Thanks for telling me about... you know." It's more than just a film buff in-joke. It's Rodriguez telling his audience to hang on, the good stuff's on the way.

The film is a delightfully rich ball of cheese. It's the type of movie that's unafraid to beat a testicle joke to death, to repeat dialogue for melodramatic effect, or to amputate it's heroine's leg and replace it with an automatic rifle/rocket launcher. While Death Proof goes through great pains to recreate certain grindhouse elements (the scratched, dirty film stock, poor editing, etc.), Planet Terror actually relishes in the ridiculousness of action/horror movies. Tarantino delivers a tip of his cap to a by-gone genre of film, but Rodriguez goes all out and makes a film that stands on its own cheesy, gory merits.

Disturbia

2007-11-12T16:07:00.000-08:00

I don't want to sound like an old blowhard longing for the glory days of Hollywood's studio system. Disturbia's pretty good. It's an effective suspense/thriller. Shia "The New Dicaprio" LaBeouf is pretty good. But, come on, it's not Rear Window. Shia's kinda sorta cute girl has nothing on Grace Kelly. No one will ever rue the day she marries into Monaco's royal family. Speaking of which: Damn you straight to hell, Prince of Monaco Guy! Who do you think you are, taking Hitchcock's quintessential heroine? F you, a-hole!
Anyway. It's not fair to compare the two. Whether Disturbia is a re-invention or a re-imagining or a contemporary re-telling... it's a different animal. As in weaker. Oops, there I go.

I liked Shia's character, Kale. The opening moments of the film that turn him into the angry troublemaker he becomes are genuinely terrifying, and his resulting petulant attitude is completely understandable. In fact, that's ultimately what holds this story back. Kale's plight is so sad that his voyeuristic tendencies are almost acceptable.

The keen and clever part of Hitchcock's film was the James Stewart character's life of choice was one of distance, through his camera lens. He held everyone, including precious angel Grace Kelly, at bay, but was suddenly thrust into action upon discovering a murderous neighbor. Kale's actions really don't reflect on his character's flaws... he doesn't necessarily want to peek into his neighbor's lives. He got the royal screw and is stuck at home, what else is he supposed to do?

There I go with the comparisons, again. Look, here's the thing, Rear Window is dated. It's long and slow in parts. But it's ultimately more compelling and more harrowing when the chips are on the table. It indicts James and Grace and, gasp, even the audience for peeking through the window curtains, whereas Kale just happens to be bearing witness to evil and ends up going through the whole boy-who-cried-wolf affair.

So, if you've never seen Rear Window, then Disturbia does the job. It's tense and exciting when it needs to be, and surprisingly endearing between the thriller stuff. Kale's wise-ass Asian friend is hilarious. Alas, he has nothing on Grace Kelly, either.

Ong-Bak

2007-10-22T16:04:00.000-07:00

There's such a fine line between gloriously bad and wickedly awesome. During the opening moments of Ong-Bak: The Thai Warrior, I was worried the film would lean toward the bad. The basic set-up is simplistic.

Meet Ting (Tony Jaa), rural villager, monk-in-training, and master of Muay Thai fighting. An elder monk stresses that Ting must not use his impressive combat skills. Everyone watching knows he will spend the entire movie using his impressive combat skills.

Meet Don, a shady character. How do we know he's shady? Because he wears jeans, has a trash 'stache, and offers to buy a sacred religious artifact from the villagers. When his offer is spurned, he steals the head of Ong-Bak just prior to the annual Ong-Bak festival.

Meet the villagers. They moan and wail and cry about how their village is doomed to perish without their sacred statue. They pool their meager savings to help Ting on his journey to track down the statue in the big city. There's actually a scene where they realize the well is running dry and, rather then, oh I don't know, look for more water, they gather and wring their hands about their missing statue.

It's a stilted yet quick way to get Ting into situations where he must fight against his peaceful will. But a funny thing happened on the way to the butt kicking: the movie suckers you into caring. It wins you over with humor while cleverly setting up a simple, effective theme to underscore the wild action.

The director and his co-writers find the perfect tone to launch Ting on his journey through the grimy, corrupt underworld of Bangkok. The film is sardonic and wry, almost satirical, but never silly and stupid. One funny scene has scam artist Humlae, a jaded former neighbor of Ting's, stumbling futilely while Ting leaps gazelle-like down an alley and away from an angry gang. Humlae eventually steals a knife from a butcher and wields it, the tables briefly turned, only to have a knife vendor pass through hawking her wares to the gang's sudden delight.
Instead of making Ting a superhuman hero, the film makes him a fish out of water. He's on the outside looking in with his peaceful mindset and singular beliefs. The filmmakers know a modern audience can't really identify with his mystical mission. Just like con artist Humlae and his partner, who Ting hesitantly links up with, we're skeptical of what Ong-Bak means and why it's so important. The joke is on Ting half the time, as when Humlae tricks him into participating in an underground fight club to pay off his gambling debts. Humlae keeps baiting and switching Ting, helping only so far as he can help himself. Tony Jaa finds the perfect note to play Ting. He isn't there to convert anyone, he's just a guy trying to make things right. He's patient, kind, but not stupid. He knows when he's being used but doesn't act out of spite or revenge. His refusal to compromise, if only to make his journey a little easier, is endearing. He's kinda like an ass-kicking Forrest Gump, a lovable country bumpkin with some seriously vicious flying elbows who's resilience won me over.

What I especially liked about the film is the way they make the conflict actually kinda sorta interesting. It's not just Jaa versus gangsters. It is that, but time and again the story reflects themes of the old versus the new, the traditional versus the modern, and the sacred versus the corrupt. I'm not saying it's Pulitzer material, but there's something identifiable in the fighting that goes deeper than good and evil. My brain was tickled just enough to keep it awake. It's not just Jaa that you're pulling for, it's his cause, which I started to root for almost in spite of myself.

And by the way, the film kick serious ass. It's amazing stuff, especially considering that it's all basically real. Jaa's knees and elbows really are making contact, although it's a little suspect that every would-be victim either has big hair or a cap to hide the padding protecting him. No matter. Jaa is clearly an athletic freak, and the fights are quick and nasty, choreographed for maximum impact. (Doesn't "maximum impact" sound like a B-movie action flick? Curiously, it isn't. Dibs!) I appreciated the way that Jaa almost always is on the defensive, a reflection of his character. Most "peaceful" heroes in these things usually have an angry switch, but Jaa does only as much as is necessary to kick your ass.

He gets hit with chairs, tables, refrigerators, saws, more chairs, and even fire. Since this is an action movie, all sorts of bizarre and dangerous obstacles (plates of glass, racks of sharp rakes, whatever) magically appear during foot chases, but Jaa doesn't stop. All that stuff about tone, themes, and character? It adds just enough reality to the film to make me believe he can do all these things that he does. I willfully and gratefully suspended my disbelief, not just so Tony Jaa can jump off balconies and through scaffolding, but also so he can make things right with the gods, and maybe even redeem a few corrupted men along the way.

Ong-Bak had me going. It knows when to be funny, when to be serious, and when to let the stuntmen do the rest. That's how asses are kicked.

Gloriously Bad Movies: Bloodsport

2007-10-18T18:58:00.000-07:00

When the idea for this blog was percolating through my head, one of the ideas I was most excited to write about was the Gloriously Bad Movie. You've seen them really late at night on FX or TBS, or all day on The Sci-Fi Channel. You may have taken part in a drinking game surrounding a Gloriously Bad Movie, or at least stumbled drunkenly home after a party, you and your friends about to tear into some fast food as you refuse to go to sleep while still buzzed, gleefully watching one.

Just to be clear, I am not talking about guilty pleasures. We all have movies that we're ashamed to like, that we enjoy even though we know we'll get ridiculed for it. I really dig Ronin, despite the cardboard cutout characters and a plot that's both byzantine and simplistic at the same time. It's a bad movie. But the car chases rock. They are sublime in their badassness.

The distinction is this: We like guilty pleasures in spite of their badness. We like Gloriously Bad Movies because of their badness. We revel in how awful they are. We cannot believe the low-rent acting or the do-it-yourself special effects or the fact that it was obviously shot without permits behind the liquor store down the street. The suckiness of these films is so entertaining that we just can't contain ourselves.

First and foremost, Gloriously Bad Movies are not about the details. At least, not the right details. Common utterances during a typical viewing include: "Wait, what?" "No way!" "Did that just happen?" and "Oh, my God, that was retarded!" If it's a truly glorious Gloriously Bad Movie, then you might even start doing the Mystery Science Theatre bit and speak overt, sexually explicit dialogue on the characters' behalf.

The inaugural entry into the Gloriously Bad Movie database: Bloodsport. Featuring that stalwart of Gloriously Bad Movies, the Muscles from Brussels himself, Jean-Claude Van Damme. It doesn't fit the mold of bad, it IS the mold. Watching this is watching every sports and action movie cliche from the past thirty years. And those are the good parts.

If you haven't had the good fortune of seeing it, the movie revolves around a secret, full contact martial arts contest in Hong Kong called the Kumite (KOO-mi-tay). A song plays during several fighting montages during which "Kumite" gets chanted in faux-hypnotic fashion. Remember, this is a non-John Hughes 1980s flick, which means the music is at a truly abominable level of cheesy synthetic shame. Jean-Claude plays an American soldier named Frank Dux who's representing his surrogate Japanese father who's dying but isn't dead. And never actually does die during the course of the story, so who knows, maybe he just has the flu.

"Wait, what?" Frank Dux. Surrogate Japanese martial arts master father. Wait, it gets better. In a really awful way.

Again, these bad flicks are about the wrong details, and Bloodsport is a prime example. Why is Dux an American with a Belgian accent representing a Japanese master in a secret Chinese martial arts contest? See, early on in the film, Van Damme visits the Tanaka home. Van Damme stares and stares at a sword before looking up into space for a prolonged beat, probably wondering why it's taking so long for the flashback to kick in. Then it kicks in, showing a young Van Damme first being beaten up by, then coming to the rescue of, Tanaka's real son. Tanaka takes Frank under his wing, but then the real son dies. We are not told why, but clearly it's because Frank needs to say to Tanaka that he's been treated like a son. Which happens a few minutes later.

Does any of this matter when the fighting starts? Is Frank's manhood or family ever questioned? Not so much. Anyhoo...

The flashback sets a good and proper tone of unintentional hilarity for the rest of the film. Rather than going with a kid who has a natural accent to match Van Damme's, the filmmakers cast a completely insecure stiff of a boy who may or may not have Down Syndrome. Watching the poor kid half-heartedly put up his dukes during a fight scene just about made me wet myself. It's important to note also that during this extended flashback/training sequence, the film keeps cutting back to Van Damme in the present day, still looking up into the air and wondering just how the hell long this damn flashback is.
Probably the biggest running unintentional gag is the secretive nature of Kumite. Time and again, the characters refer to the underground event as a sacred, honor-bound club. And time and gain, these conversations happen in public. At full volume. With other people around. In hotel lobbies. On the street. At restaurants. The police station. This is the worst-kept secret in the world. Less secret than Marilyn Monroe's affair with JFK. Less secret than Britney Spears' vajayjay. Everyone in all of Asia knows about Kumite. Except, of course, the requisite love interest: the hard-talking, career-driven female reporter who, nevertheless, falls in love with our hero.

The character of Janice is introduced with a shot of her legs, a short skirt being the outfit of choice for caucasian investigative reporters on the prowl in Hong Kong. Her investigative techniques are direct and to the point, "Hey, tell me about the Kumite. Where's the Kumite going to be? Come on, tell me about the Kumite!" She could have gone Jan Brady and screamed, "Kumite! Kumite! Kumite!" at the top of her lungs in public. Since everyone and no one knows the secret of Kumite (sssshh!), the effect would have been the same.

The film isn't really interested in Janice. There's a tremendously dumb scene where Frank, trying to explain what Kumite means to him, asks her why she's a reporter. "Well, my father was a reporter and I was a good writer and it seemed like a good fit." Um, okay. Frank practically goes into a spasm since this answer doesn't help him make his point. Janice eventually gets in on the arm of a gambler, sits ringside, and whispers illicit notes into a monstrously big tape recorder in full view of the rest of the crowd. By the way, if Kumite is such a secret, who are these peasant spectators? And how exactly does betting work when you're simply standing and holding up money? Oh, nevermind.

Above all, this is a movie of sheer manliness. The fighting stuff is actually pretty cool, although all the cliches of movie fighting are there. You know, if your opponent surrenders and you turn your back, he's gonna try and get the jump on you. Or the bad guy using some illicit substance to either pump himself up or blind the opponent (Van Damme gets blinded). The various fighting styles are in fine form, though sometimes the film is a little too manly. In fact, homoeroticism is taken to absolutely fabulous heights. When Frank beds Janice (after a scene of not-so-subtle innuendo), the filmmakers go out of their way to cover the naked Janice with a bedsheet. She looks offscreen at her lover, and the reverse shot is of Jean-Claude stark ass naked. This after a scene in which Van Damme meditates while doing an elevated split between two chairs in his underwear. The creme de la creme of latent gayness? The resolution in which a victorious Van Damme visits his injured comrade in the hospital. He's won the tournament and avenged his friend's defeat. He's got the girl at his side. He looks deep into the eyes of... his ravaged buddy. "I love you, man," says Jean-Claude. They hug. The girl stands off to the side wondering why she never filed her Kumite story.

I've not even mentioned Forest Whitaker as an FBI agent chasing Van Damme. Oh yeah, Van Damme is an AWOL soldier forbidden from fighting in the Kumite (because, see, EVERYBODY knows what the Kumite is, even United States Army officers.) For some reason, Whitaker and his elder partner want desperately to bring Van Damme back, but only they know why. And after all is said and done, they're waiting at the airport for Jean-Claude, who hasn't shown up. They curse his wily ways. Then Jean-Claude emerges from the plane with a smirk, "Hey, what took you guys so long?" And this point I uttered, "Oh, my God, this is retarded!" But it wasn't finished yet. Oh, no, Gloriously Bad Movies are bad to the last drop.

See, Jean-Claude turns and sees Janice waiting on the tarmac. She brings a fist into her open palm and bows like a fighter. "Did that just happen?" I asked myself. Jean-Claude returns the gesture. The music is coming up. I'm grinning from ear to ear at this silliness and I say to myself, "Please, Dear God, end with a freeze frame. This movie needs to end with a freeze frame." And just as I'm saying this -- BOOM! -- the image of Jean-Claude's bow goes still. The closing credits roll.

Glorious.

Tony Leung Trio

2007-09-23T10:41:00.000-07:00

I was going to recommend the films of Wong Kar-Wai when I had a revelation. I've seen roughly 8 Chinese-language films in my lifetime, and actor Tony Leung (a.k.a. Leung Chiu Wai, if you're of the Asian persuasion) has been in, oh, 7 of them. Whether he's the Kevin Bacon of China or simply an actor whose movies happen to get US distribution, I do not know. What I do know is his presence anchors every film I've seen him in.

The first film I saw Tony Leung in is John Woo's Hard Boiled. Leung plays a cop undercover in a gun dealer's gang who crosses paths with Chow Yun-Fat's hardened (as in a boiled egg) detective on the trail of the very same gun dealer. While that description may sound like an intriguing setup for a gritty drama, keep in mind that this is a John Woo film, which means lots of people shoot lots of guns at lots of other people as they jump and swing and do lots of insane shit, sometimes in slow motion. The opening teahouse shootout sets the kick-ass tone for the rest of the film. Woo has many nameless henchmen kill many nameless civilians, which doesn't really bother Chow Yun-Fat's character so much as when his partner is killed. Angry Chow chases his partner's killer into a backroom, gets covered in flour while dodging bullets, and then blows off the guy's head, thus splattering his flour-white face with blood. Yes, that is the first five minutes. Leung lends some gravity to the proceedings as the morally compromised undercover cop, but it's Woo's bullet-ridden choreography that will forever forgive him his future trespasses, which are called Windtalkers and Paycheck.

In Infernal Affairs, Leung plays another cop undercover as a gangster who is hunted by another cop, who happens to be an undercover gangster. This is the gritty drama take on that premise, and the film is both a clever thriller and an intriguing character study. There is an extended sequence early in the film when the police are waiting for a drug deal to go down and the film details how Leung and his counterpart (played by Andy Lau) are indirectly sabotaging the other's operation. It's a clever, taut, even provocative film that manages to stay focused on the two leads as they slowly but surely lose their grip on their identities. Lau is solid, but Leung stands out as a man who hates himself for what he is only pretending to be, and slowly drowns in desperation because the number of people who know the truth are dwindling. If this all sounds strangely familiar to you, this was the basis for The Departed, so if you want to lord your superior film knowledge above the heads of your Netflix friends, do give it a spin and pretend like it was a secret that the Hollywood Remake Machine let out.

In Wong Kar-Wai's Chungking Express, Leung gets to stretch his legs and play... a cop. Which is why I will instead be talking about Wong Kar-Wai's In the Mood for Love. In it, Leung plays a writer (ha!) who rents a room next door to a lady played by Maggie Cheung. Both are married, and both come to the realization that their spouses are cheating on them with each other. What unfolds is an endearing friendship that threatens to turn into something more, but both vow never to sink to the level of their unfaithful spouses. This is the type of art house fair that I usually dread, but Wong is a romantic through and through. He infuses his films with real heart and, in this case, real melancholy. Loneliness and unrequited love are staples of his work, and what's heartbreaking about Mood is the fact that both emotions are self-inflicted. Both characters repress their true feelings so as not to shame their already broken marriages. Visually, the film is a splendor. Wong is a master at creating atmosphere, and here he recreates a crowded 1960s Hong Kong with rich colors and a penchant for the Nat King Cole song "Quizas, Quizas, Quizas." At first, it is a little odd to hear Cole crooning in Spanish for this Chinese film, but the images are mesmerizing and the repitition of it is sadly evocative... perhaps, perhaps, perhaps. Leung won Best Actor at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival for his work here.

So there you go. If you're in the mood for a fun Friday night doubleheader, go with Infernal Affairs followed by Hard Boiled (and stay far, far away from the Infernal Affairs sequels). If you want heartbreak and romance, give In the Mood for Love and Chungking Express (which is delightfully romantic) a spin. If you want a dash of science-fiction mixed in with your unrequited love, pick up a copy of Wong Kar-Wai's 2046, a quasi-sequel to Mood that also stars Zhang Ziyi and follows Leung's character as he becomes a cold womanizer who writes a pulp sci-fi novel that mirrors his hedonistic exploits. Like what you've read about Leung but want some kung fu? There's Hero with Jet Li, a visually stunning and dreadfully boring film, but hey, whatever your cup of tea. Action? Love? Subtitles? Tony Leung is your man.

"Only The Brave" & Kouraku

2007-09-20T10:42:00.000-07:00

I really, really wanted to like Only The Brave, an independently-financed film about the most highly decorated unit in US military history, the 100th/442nd Regimental Combat Team comprised of Japanese-Americans, most of whom were sent to internment camps in the wake of the Pearl Harbor attack. It's an amazing story, a uniquely American story, and a real shame that it hasn't been told in the mainstream before. Most World War II texts gloss right over it. The fact that Only The Brave is written and directed by a Japanese-American filmmaker, Lane Nishikawa, makes it all the more significant. And all the more disappointing.

The film is actor-writer Nishikawa's directing debut. It shows, especially during the war scenes, as his camera has trouble navigating the chaos of the battlefield. It's hard to criticize him for not having enough money (narrow-minded film executives are to blame there, but that's another topic), but the budget limitations are evident. Visually, there's little urgency to the war stuff. Which soldiers are where, and where they are going, and what's in their way... it's all muddled and flat.

I'd like to say that the battle sequences are ancillary to the story of these brave volunteer soldiers and their journey from the internment camps to the army, but it isn't. The bulk of the picture is focused on the 100th/442nd's rescue of the "Lost Battalion," a unit surrounded by German forces in October 1944. The entire context of the internment of US citizens for no other reason than racist paranoia is relegated to a crawl of text during the opening moments of the film. If you were to walk in late to this film, you might not know at all that it's about soldiers who overcame blatant discrimination to join the army and serve the very country that maligned and repressed them.

Part of the trouble is the driving force of the film is explored with cryptic strokes. Jimmy, the platoon leader played by Nishikawa, is first seen as a veteran haunted by his memories. However, his relationships with his men are cold and conventional. There's little chemistry between the characters because they do little together save for stalk through the forest. There are poignant flashbacks spread intermittently throughout, featuring each of the soldiers saying their goodbyes to their families. One in particular, with one soldier receiving a "1,000 stitch" scarf that carries the well wishes of an entire community, strikes a heartbreaking cord. These share other details and give some shading to what are otherwise faceless soldiers, but they aren't enough to sustain the prolonged battle sequences and serve only to convolute Jimmy's story.

It's evident that Nishikawa wants to honor the veterans of the 100th/442nd by telling their story without melodramatic touches or fifty years of hindsight. The tone of the film is stoic, immediate, and the filmmaker has a fondness and a good ear for the soldiers' banter between battles. However, as a whole, it all feels raw and incomplete. Jimmy's haunted looks are never fully explored, undermining an intriguing absolution. As a historical retelling, Only The Brave misses the mark, and as drama it's convoluted and underdeveloped.

The Los Angeles screening I went to was the kick-off of a national tour promoting the DVD. Visit the film's website for more info.

After the film, Camille and I wandered through J-Town looking for some eats. (Isn't "J-Town" much cooler than "Little Tokyo?" Come on, try it on for size.) We thought the wise thing to do was follow a crowd, so we walked into Kouraku, a quaint place with the menu written in dry erase on the wall and counter seating fronting the kitchen. Of course, the dry erase wall menu was in Japanese, so we had to peruse the surprisingly vast table menus. They seem to specialize in noodles, so we both went for ramen with an appetizer of squid cooked in butter.

Squid can easily become rubbery and gross, but here it was fresh, soft but with a nice bite, and butter-rific. I don't think I can overemphasize how deliciously buttery the butter on the butter squid is. Butter butter butter. So simple and fantastic.

I went for a shrimp omelette ramen in a soy-flavored broth. First and foremost, the broth brings the goodness. Warm, smooth, and a touch sweet and salty. While I'm a tremendous fan of putting a fried egg on pretty much anything, I've never considered making an omelette... and then dropping it onto soup. The shrimp omelette by itself would have done the job, but the plain sweet flavor of the shrimp and egg in the middle of a rich broth, combined with the soft noodles is thoroughly satisfying.

Camille had a more hodgepodge soup that contained an array of proteins in a different kind of broth. I think satisfying is probably the best word for this food. Not fantastic. Not mind blowing. Satisfying. Looking at the menu, it's enticing to see that every soup dish describes the different broth they use. I think we'll be coming back.

314 East Second Street
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With a name like Swagger...

2007-09-04T16:59:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, Taco Bell just does it for you. Maybe you've only got a few bucks on you, or maybe you're drunk -- which is the preferred state for eating a double decker taco -- but sometimes you don't want quality. Not even McDonald's-level quality. You just want a double decker taco.

Shooter is a double decker taco. It's directed by Antoine Fuqua, whose magnificent Training Day is a whopper of a dirty cop thriller (pun intended, thank you). But Shooter, on the other hand, is dull and workman-like. It's not bad, per se, but you've got to be in a specfic mood to really enjoy something as exceedingly mediocre as this. Drunk, for example. Or up late, eyes buzzing with caffeine while channel-surfing madly through infomercials hoping for something decent at 2 am that isn't Law & Order reruns on TNT. You see what I'm getting at here.

One of Mark Wahlberg's criteria for picking out scripts must be really spot-on character names. There exists no better porn star name than Dirk Diggler, and I really can't come up with a better moniker for a sharpshooter than Bob Lee Swagger. Of course, while I like Wahlberg, the last thing I'd say about him is that he oozes charisma. So, in the misnomer department, Swagger is up there with Pussy Galore from Goldfinger. But it's still a cool name. So cool, it should be written with an exclamation point -- Swagger!

Swagger! is depicted as an earnest, loyal, simple man. During an operation, he and his spotter are left behind. Since the spotter just showed a picture of his girl mere moments before, War Movie Doctrine dictates that he tragically die, and so it goes. Swagger! escapes and moves to the mountains to become a sharp-shooting yokel, and there he stays until Danny Glover (whose character name is so bland I cannot recall it) arrives with a job: Figure out how to assassinate the President and, in doing so, track a rogue assassin plotting to do so. Swagger! is set up but escapes, embarrassing a young FBI Agent (Michael Pena) who begins to suspect Swagger! is just a fall guy.

Fuqua is a confident director who's shown real flair in the past, but he doesn't do much to elevate Shooter above it's generic trappings. The writing is strangely concerned with making Swagger! smart and resourceful, which is Screenwriting 101 for creating character, but the end result is a thriller in which there are few thrills since the bad guys can't match wits with a good-hearted killing machine like him. Swagger's got this. I mean, his name's Bob Lee Swagger!

The film is a throwback to the straight-arrow action films of the 1980s. In fact, substitute the story's post-9/11 government paranoia with communists and you'd have Red Dawn, right down to the sharp-shooting yokels camping in the woods. At the end of the day, I think I prefer Red Dawn's shameless 80s sincerity. That movie at least knew in its heart that the villains didn't really matter, it was the struggle of teenaged kids banding together to survive World War III. Shooter loses it's steam at the most crucial of points, the very end, when the story suddenly shifts from Swagger clearing his good name to the filmmakers wagging their fingers at morally-corrupt capitalist bureaucrats. By the time you realize what they've done for money (no, not for money! Evil!), you'll probably want the credits to roll. There's actually a sequence where Swagger lets the bad guys go so they can be properly shamed in a government hearing. Which they don't, but hey, we're talking about Bob Lee Swagger! Suffice to say, this is the least satisfying comeuppance a villain has ever had.

Yet, I cannot condemn the flick as bad. It's decent. It moves quickly. The action is nifty. Not spectacular, or terribly exciting, but nifty. Sure, Michael Pena becoming Swagger's new spotter is one big ball of cheese, as is the quasi-romance that blooms when Swagger seeks refuge with his old spotter's heartbroken girl. But every time Wahlberg, I mean Swagger!, offs a baddie with his sharp-shooting skills, it's oddly satisfying. Double decker with mild sauce satisfying. And with just as much guilt on my part.