Moon (09, Duncan Jones)

When your primary base of cinematic style is Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, there are generally two things that your audience will be cued into: your art direction and your profound, ostensibly befuddling message. Given its clean, white, yet mechanical ship interiors and mysterious and often WTF-inducing premise, Moon seems very deliberate in referencing the earliest benchmark. I don't mean to say that Duncan Jones' debut is indelibly linked with Kubrick's classic, but given that most buzz about the movie makes the comparison (as does the film in strange ways that I will discuss later), I think that a comparison between each film's goal might illuminate Moon.

The film's premise is a lot like what the trailer suggests. Sam Rockwell plays Sam Bell, an astronaut whose corporate sponsored gig is to monitor energy mining units on the surface of the moon. Left alone for a three year mission, Sam's only got 2 more weeks till he reunites with his wife and small child. We witness Sam sending and receiving recorded messages with his family. Oh, he also has a HAL-inspired robot (voiced by Kevin Spacey) to keep him company, a machine with HAL's electric eye but also an LCD screen that displays emoticons to simulate emotion. After an accident on the Moon's surface, Sam struggles to last out his time on the station as he descends into an increasingly bizarre conspiracy.

So, the first act orients the viewer to Sam's isolation, his extreme loneliness, the distance he feels from the world (a touching moment has him sardonically commenting to HQ that their delayed football feed almost felt "live"), and the ambiguous relationship between Sam and the corporate-built robot. Distrust of corporations, technology, the premise of renewable, clean energy as some kind of dubious redemption for mostly malevolent big business that insists on taking the human element from its employees... okay, we have a pretty wide canvas to sketch on here.

And here come the clones...

So, the film puts down another layer, the commodification of human tissue. I guess here is where we get into the "profound" stuff. Big existential crises? Check. Plot turns by the minute? Check. The film moves so fast from plot point to plot point by this time that all of the questions about the evil of corporate greed, energy, etc. fall by the wayside (did I mention that the HAL-inspired robot ends up being benevolent!?!). Duncan's simply too busy running the plot through to take time to address these things. Even though the film plays out in an increasingly gripping way as more and more of the nature of Sam's life become clear, the flick plays it out for its admittedly compelling drama rather than any of the implications. 

The film seems rather content to focus on this emotional level without doing anything with the idea that one could have clones, could be a clone. The film seems too hinged about a classic 3 act structure to do anything interesting. Instead, the film seems to fall back on the evil, faceless corporate inhumanity angle, but because the film's zipping so fast, there's really no comment there other than to say that corporations do soulless things, a message that anyone with enough consciousness to realize that her/his shoes are made in a sweatshop should have had in place before they got to the multiplex. 

There's a certain laziness to the thought behind the narrative, as if Jones and screenwriter Nathan Parker decided they wanted to make a "deep" movie but forgot to fill the jar. Even the film's most brilliant idea, throwing an emoticon generator onto HAL, falls completely flat. Seeing that at once, you might think, "Wow, so when HAL turns evil, it will further expose the lack of interpersonal communication and its manipulation that the film also seems centered on." But the electric eye turns out to take a backseat to the good guy smiley faces on the display, a conclusion that seems oddly out of place in the film's insistence on humanity (and no, neither the robot nor Kevin Spacey have any real morals, they're programmed...go watch Terminator 2 already for your feel good robo kicks). 

Because of this inability to focus on any of its implications, Moon is ultimately a very beautiful and often entertaining piece of cotton candy. That the film even doesn't manage to aim as meagerly as Blade Runner in the conceptual department should ring some bells, and Moon ain't half as gorgeous as Blade Runner. 

Public Enemies (09, Michael Mann)

Michael Mann's gone from being an innovator in what is often called the Mtv style of the 80's (think pastels and rain-soaked streets) to one of the most forthcoming in the use of digital video. Whether you liked his 2006 Miami Vice revamp (like me) or hated it (like everyone else), one thing that must be acknowledged is that it doesn't look like any other flick. The smoothness of movement in the format (accentuated by Mann's often questionable choice of having it overtly handheld with bumps and jarring movements within the frame) seems the perfect 21st century counterpart for the high tech equipment and technical garble that Jamie Foxx and Colin Farrell spout throughout the movie. So, acknowledging all of this, how does this format work when the setting is switched from 2006 Miami (a place that seems ultra-modern) to Depression-era Chicago? I ask this question primarily because Mann mostly uses the same guns in his holster to shoot Public Enemies. Despite all of the grimy takes on period dramas lately (think The Proposition or, even better, Deadwood), Public Enemies might be the first time that what I'd say is a modern aesthetic was fully applied to a period narrative. Grimy locales and filthy dialogue are surely later takes on that social milieu, but the aforementioned titles are done largely using basic aesthetic strategies. In Public Enemies, Mann takes the sloppy, handheld look and the motion-blurred yet strangely smooth DV motion and applies it to a historical narrative.

"Historical narrative" is the important word here because it's not the narrative or its time period that creates the tension between the new technology and the period piece in Public Enemies. However, the trappings of the historical narrative as applied to film, namely in terms of costuming, art direction, and set design, create a certain disjunction that, I suppose, film could suture in the past with an aesthetic of chiaroscuro lighting, smoke and fog, and the comparatively mirage-like movement created by celluloid. That's not to say that HD digital video and a period setting are incongruous in general, but the scrubbed-clean costumes, the oddly artificial sets, and the studied Hollywood dialogue do not seem to suit this new aesthetic, to an extent that I spent the first forty-five minutes of the film attempting to get used to the style of it. Needless to say, outdoor scenes of action fared better (is there anyone working in Hollywood now who can shoot an action scene as confidently and wonderfully as Mann? Don't think so). 

And when the DV works, Mann approaches creating something like a new aesthetic. The close-ups in this movie are numerous and, owing largely to a talented (and beautiful) cast, rewarding. Individual moments, a great underslung shot of Depp leaping over a teller's booth, have a certain stamp to them that makes one wish Mann would have strove for the whole film to make this kind of sense. Instead, it falls somewhere between a costume drama and a tightly-reined, digitally shot piece of gangster cinema.

I think this conflict is caught in the film's title as well, referencing William Wellman's film and a completely different era of gangster filmmaking. The film's costuming and set design also seem to reference this. Mann almost seems to be working in two modes here, that of the crafter of cold and calculating dramas like Heat or The Insider and that of the melodramatist who seems to resort to stock plot twists or romance subplots to fill in his gaps in characterization in Miami Vice and Collateral. Here, just as in Miami Vice, what could have been a lean crimer is over-inflated and ultimately sunk in an underdeveloped and uninteresting romance angle that does little to characterize its female love interest or develop the male protagonist. In the end, the portrayal of John Dillinger is too thin, alternating between two briefly breathed motivations, that of reckless youth and fame-mongerer. Neither is terribly compelling, and despite a fine performance by Christian Bale, the story of a fed who discovers that her/his methods are uncouth is simply too familiar. The first half hour of this film will be exciting as Mann's characters unfold and the style of it shocks you, but after you get past those buckets of water to the face, you just find yourself bored and wet.

Wassup Rockers (06, Larry Clark)

I can't really blame people who hate Larry Clark. The guy's flicks come from the 13 year-old boy inside of him that he can't seem to tame or break. His movies are full of sleaze, crude dialogue, and a definite feeling that young actors shouldn't be alone on set with the director. The guy's signature shot (from Bully) is a scene in which a young girl talks on the phone while Clark's camera drops below her waistline to give the viewer an upskirt shot. Still though, from Kids to Bully, the guy's movies, either despite or because of the sleaze, pack a punch that forces one to ask what the hell is wrong with people, in a way much less forced or wannabe arty like Gaspar Noe. Wassup Rockers' opening scene would suggest that it's going to be more of the same. Clark opens the film with a close up of his young protagonist, Jonathan (played with due authenticity by a young kid named Jonathan Velasquez), narrating stories of his friends' sexual activity (fooling around, masturbation, etc.). Clark shoots it from two angles but rather than cutting between them, the shot is presented in split screen. Cornered in his bedroom, the young boy has nowhere to even look away from the camera. From this opening, with its dual camera setup and its slightly uncomfortable yet candid subject, you think that perhaps this is the culmination of Clark's attempts to document teenage sexuality, especially as there is no narrative framing for this testimonial. As the movie starts, you have little more to expect as Jonathan and his friends go to school, skateboard, clash with other ethnic groups, flirt with girls, practice in their hardcore punk band, etc. Indeed, despite a certain lack of griminess on Clark's part (he's no saint here either with a young teen girl character walking around looking for a body to rub against), that sense of realism is accounted for. The group of teenage boys skating around aimlessly feels staggeringly real. It's scenes like this that point out what I think Clark is traditionally best at. Despite his often offensive treatments, he always understands his male characters, down to their marrow (it's especially striking in this film if you've seen Paranoid Park, a film I like much less now after contrasting its empty characters and forced existentialism with this film's full-bodied love of its characters). They end up in Beverly Hills because it's another place to skate and because one of the gang follows a girl onto a bus. It's here where the film goes from being a slightly realistic document into some new territory. After being hassled by a bunch of preppy boys and a cop (luckily, Clark refrains from using any "Skateboarding is not a crime" stickers), the film descends into what's essentially a surreal reworking of The Warriors narrative. Our heros wander through Beverly Hills and find themselves in increasingly bizarre, dire, and often hilarious scenarios. The brief pairing of two of the Latino youths with cut-from-Cosmo material girls becomes all the more pointed (if not a bit ham-fisted) after the boys live out some kind of Pasolini nightmare in which they find very real walls between their backgrounds and that of the "higher" society (one of the youths repeatedly exclaims "We're from the ghetto!"). By the end of the film, Clark has not only bounced between narrative styles but has somehow entertainingly sketched the gaps in American society, those between culture (rappers/rockers/preps/arty) and race (rich white/poor Latino/poor black). The film's blunt, but it's passionate. The film's surreal, but it's main characters couldn't be any more real. Like usual, Clark isn't terribly concerned with depicting females in any kind of interesting, mature, or tasteful way. Perhaps I know nothing about teenage girls (I certainly didn't when they were in my peer groups), but they're simple sketches here. Then again, it's these kinds of viewpoints that, I think, allow Clark to identify and properly portray his male protagonists (although there is a certain expense at that). Maybe Clark's most interesting and accessible film, Wassup Rockers represents some growth from a filmmaker who rises a bit from his normal slime, even if it's still ground-level and backed by a constant barrage of serious hardcore punk.

The Dirty Dozen (67, Robert Aldrich)

The Dirty Dozen's a narrative of many faces. First and foremost, it's the archetypical men on a mission narrative. Almost every film culture has produced their own version of this story (Eastern Condors, Inglorious Bastards (the Castellari one, of course), etc.). The film also has the largest conglomeration of badasses ever to grace the screen simultaneously. Lee Marvin, Charles Bronsan, John Cassavetes, Jim Brown, Telly Savalas, Ernest Borgnine, Robert Ryan, Donald Sutherland, and even lesser known personalities like Ben Carruthers and Mancini all put in poppy yet enigmatic performances. Somehow, these actors manage to infuse the personality necessary to slog through what's really quite an unbalanced narrative. From a structural perspective, the film really doesn't have a lot going for it. I don't think it's going too far to say that the film owes its fame more to its cast than even to its wonderfully capable director. That's not to slag Robert Aldrich's direction. He handles action like few directors can, and his person-object two shots frequently cast visual light on the actors' work with the characters. But what I think the most commendable thing is about The Dirty Dozen is that while it functions fine as a narrative of wartime brotherhood that I watched with my Dad as a kid, the film also inflects its narrative structure with incredibly subversive moments of leftist (often radical) politic. From the opening condemnation of capital punishment to Jim Brown's wonderful emotional turmoil as his cohorts dump gasoline and grenades into a German bunker containing their targets and their girls, the film pushes at its stolid narrative structure with an outstanding uncertainty of this history that's quite innovative, especially considering the easy slip of thinking of World War II as the good one (look at the portrayals of WWII in films as recent as Saving Private Ryan for the morally complacent version). The film dares to say that, left to a fair fight, the oppressed black man would beat the hell out of the racist asshole who doesn't want to serve with him. With Savalas' twisted performance, the film completely apes but manages to honor Night of the Hunter by suggesting that war turns even the honorable dozen into a bunch of Maggots via their firebombing of innocent women (granted, their repressed sexual urges have little to do with it). Hell, by the end of the film, the Bronsan character proposes that now the dozen might be better to go after its own commanding officers now that the mission is over. The Spirit of '68 finds an early collaborator here, as the founding father of American independent cinema meets a star cut of its own cloth. The film's and the dozen's maverick patriarch, Mr. Marvin, comes to find that a lot of good can be made by forging an alliance with those who work completely outside the system's boundaries.

To Live and Die in L.A. (85, William Friedkin)

After making some Oscar-winning classics in the 1970's, William Friedkin was mostly demoted to a director of stylish yet underappreciated genre thrillers, but even his The French Connection can't hold a candle to this mid-80's effort, which may be the most tonally-efficient and hardest-nailed cop flick ever made. Those who make police procedurals should take a look at this film and see how to take procedure and make it cinematic. Mongos might scoff at the 80's trappings, the now-cliched plotlines, and the Wang Chung soundtrack, but those who have advanced beyond the laughing at nostalgia blockage will see that the film is still extremely stylish and manages to avoid MTV style editing in favor of a more innovative approach to scene and tone transitions. 

And looking chronologically, you might also notice that To Live and Die predates a lot of things that might crop up as cliched (esp. the "I'm too old for this *beep* line that it seems Shane Black stole for Lethal Weapon). More importantly though, almost all of Friedkin's characters have depth and personality. And I'm not talking about ham. These characters all inhabit a slightly over-the-top world, but they bring it back down to life by acting as naturally as possible. William Petersen especially shines here, portraying Chance with the right mixture of determination and human degradation that won a lesser performance by Gene Hackman an Oscar in the 1970's. 

But what makes things even more interesting is the way in which Friedkin plays with the notions of protagonist and antagonist in this film. He worked with it somewhat in The French Connection by making Popeye Doyle a self-absorbed racist bastard, but in that film, the enemy's only personal traits was that he was a smarmy French businessman. And that's where the difference and shades come in here. By the end of the film, Masters (Willem Dafoe) is much more the protagonist than Chance or Vukovich. 

That's not to say that Chance and Vukovich aren't complex or likable characters, but the film seems to take place in this capitalist dreamland, a place where money's so sought after that people deal in the stuff, and the film's characters simply have degrees to which they follow that dreamland's ethics. The film's opening sets this dichotomy into place as the moment of Masters destroying his legitimate art is followed by a whirlwind credit sequence depicting street level counterfeiting. 

But as an artist living in the 1980's, Masters also seems to find solace in his "funny money." Take, for instance, Friedkin's painstakingly accurate portrayal of the counterfeiting process. It seems important when you consider that we never see Masters working on the supposed masterpieces that he burns. Master's knack for art purifies the artless object, makes it clean (which may be why the final step in the process is running the bills through a dryer: now that he has "washed" the object of its blase use, he has to dry it). 

At one point, Masters pays a street level thug with the bills for a prison hit on a potential informant. After the hit goes south, Masters murders the criminals and burns the money. Crouching naked in front of his fireplace, he piles handfuls of the bills onto a roaring fire. Asked why he's doing it, he says that he can't use it now that someone has "handled" it. There's a certain self-assured purity to what Masters does, but the gig does have occupational hazards like the murder of a federal officer. Near the end of the film, it becomes clear that Masters is simply waiting for the other shoe to drop, recognizing that selling out his artistic talent to capitalist *beep* is to place himself on a lit fuse. 

In the end though, because he recognizes these things, Masters' soul is clean. He may contribute and participate in the cash craze surrounding him, but on the inside, he's just a tortured artist who unfortunately went for the money. And he burns for it. 

Petersen's Chance is a much more recognizable character. His determination, grit, and uncompromising attitude puts him in line with any number of memorable 70's cops, and as anyone who has seen The French Connection can tell you, Friedkin does this kind of character better than anyone else. But what makes this film better than the others is that he not only creates a character with Petersen that fits all of the genre necessities, but he allows a reflexivity that comments on the character. 

After his partner is killed, Chance goes off the grid in his attempts to get revenge. We've all heard this plot many, many times. When he tells Vukovich, "I don't give a *beep* how I do it," we're coached enough in this type of cop movie to know that he's probably going to do some improper off-the-books kind of policing. And around the time he is taking undercover feds hostage and stealing money from them to make a counterfeit deal with Masters, you're fairly sure he has gone off the deep end. 

In other words, he too works outside of the system of money and procedure that drives the capitalist wonderland in 1985. In this sentiment, he and Masters are doppelgangers to a degree. Both work (and die) inside of the system's confines, but both seem to have deeper motivations than money or the upholding of the law. Masters would really like to express himself as an artist, and Chance upholds an older honor, that of vengeance for a fallen brother-in-arms. Masters ultimately fails because he decides to put his artistic talent in service of the capitalist wonderland. Chance ultimately dies because he pays heed to the underwritten law. Had either character gone all the way with his intention, things may have turned out positively. 

Then again, there seems to be a distinction between the characters, and Friedkin does place evaluative judgment on the value of their actions. This assessment comes primarily through the characters' interactions with their girlfriends. There's really no niceties or tenderness between Chance and Ruth (Darlanne Fluegel). She acts as an informant and as a lover with Chance, but he sees her through his work and her position in the corrupt business world. 

When he visits her at a strip club where she works at the door, she has to take a break from their conversation to admit customers. As she does so, Chance turns around, and the camera takes his point of view as to see the strippers at work on the other side of the room. After a moment, he turns back to Ruth and continues his business. Taken as continuity, this scene implies that Chance sees his girlfriend as a prostitute. After all, the shot of the strippers is from his point of view. In this relationship, the transaction of information has about the same levity as the transaction of sex. This view might explain why our protagonist can pretty much rape Ruth after the film's big car chase without moral reflection. 

This relationship compares unfavorably to Masters' relationship with performance artist Bianca (Debra Feuer). If nothing else, the relationship remains Masters' one connection to his true calling. Besides scenes of Masters destroying his art and counterfeit money, the moments he spends with Bianca round out his character. Dafoe inflects a certain sadness with his admiration as he watches his love at work as if he wishes he could be so true to his artistic intentions. 

But he also possesses her image on video. However, unlike Chance's control over Ruth, he does not use it for his own devices but as a playful addition to their love life. Later, he uses the same video to capture his sadness at his own demise and leaves it for Bianca, the one person that understands him as more than a soulless counterfeiter and a member of the soulless society that envelops the characters. After Masters' death, his attorney asks Bianca how she could stand to stay with him for so long. She asks him why he represented Masters. He replies, "Cause that's business." Without smiling, she nods, leaves the house, and takes off with her new girlfriend, a fellow dancer whom Masters had set her up with. They drive off into the sunset. 

Immediately afterward, we find out how Chance leaves Ruth. Evidently haunted by his partner's death, Vukovich has taken on his persona. In "Chance mode," he visits Ruth at her home and finds her packing up, ready to blow town. When asked if she knew Chance died, she says, "I'm busy." He tells Ruth that he knows she set them up earlier in the murder of an undercover agent. He then lets her know that she works for him now. Because Chance's relationship with her was based upon the system and its prostitute-client relationships, she doesn't have a clear future, and no one really mourns Chance's memory. He's simply a part of the city and its money-drunk corruption. 

Friedkin does ultimately have pity on Chance. The ending credits never play against black but to a changing series of tracking shots from a car. The sequence changes locations from the city to a bridge and ultimately to a sunset in the country. Friedkin then cuts from that sunset to an earlier shot of Chance in his apartment. Dead as a victim of the system, Chance is finally taken out of the squalor and horror of that scene and given a pastoral resting place outside of the film, after its ending credits. 

Through this often innovative and unexpectedly insightful use of character types and rewriting of traditional protagonist-antagonist roles, Friedkin really makes To Live and Die in L.A. a masterpiece of 80's cinema. The way the film looks, feels, sounds, talks, and moves is ahead of its time, so much so that to see it 24 years out probably makes it seem comprised completely of cliche. However, hardly content to do a cross between The French Connection and Miami Vice (Michael Mann sued him for copyright infringement for perceived similarities between the film and the then-hip TV show), Friedkin presents an earnest and subtle criticism of 80's consumer insanity, a sophisticated statement that helps the film age much more gracefully than any of its more famous counterparts. 

Taken (08, Pierre Morel)

"You come to this country, take advantage of the system and think because we are tolerant that we are weak and helpless." Liam Neeson tosses this line at a group of Albanians who specialize in kidnapping American tourists and forcing them into drug addiction and prostitution. Like a sleeping giant, Neeson's ex-military wonderman character comes back to the life of ultraviolence after his daughter and a friend are taken by the aforementioned group. He's told that he has 72 hours to get them back before they disappear into the depths and horrors of (wha-na-nah) Eastern Europe! Naturally, he must beat the tar out of hundreds of Albanians and Frenchmen in order to get his daughter back into his protective arms. From the whooping and roaring from the packed crowd on opening night, you would've thought that it was 1985 and Rambo was winning the Vietnam and Cold Wars all over again. You could almost feel the nostalgia when Neeson needles information out of a criminal by connecting his body to the city's grid (one neighboring viewer even pointed out that our new, wussy, liberal president wouldn't have liked that. What would that communist do if his daughter was kidnapped?).

It was strange to see this audience reacting so heartily and trustfully to a creative team from France. Generally, anything those anti-American liberals say or create is regarded with a great deal of trepidation, but due to the 80's action plotline and modern action tropes, they were hook, line, and sinker for perhaps the most subversive action film to be released in America since big daddy Reagan had his day.

It's easy to see why the film's done so well here. The essential plot couldn't be more familiar. Liam Neeson plays Bryan Mills, a former CIA(?) operative, who's retired from the horror of the service in order to reconnect with his daughter, Kim (Maggie Grace). At the start of the film, she lives with Mills' estranged wife (Famke Janssen) who has moved on from an honest life with our hero to live the easy life as a rich housewife. Against Mills' better knowledge, his daughter and a friend leave for a few weeks of Euro-hopping only to find themselves at the mercy of our sadistic ethnic minority in a country that we're iffy about anyway. Fighting both the Albanians and the French, Neeson comes out the victor and now can introduce his daughter to a pop star that he did security for (oh yeah, forgot to mention that Kim wants to be the next Britney Spears).

Essentially, we're looking at a plot about as deep as Commando or Out for Justice. In another writer or director's hands, the film could easily resemble either of those movies due to Mills' constant righteousness as he goes about his business. When he shoots the innocent wife of a dirty French cop, we understand because he wants his daughter back so so much. I mean, he only has 72 hours. The clock's ticking. He's got no time for the Geneva convention! He needs that info now!

But the fact that the audience buys this crap is perhaps the biggest joke of all. Through their combination of these 80's action cliches, the ridiculous self-awarded virtue of Mills' cause, and the rampage that ensues, director Pierre Morel and writers Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen weave a remarkable parody of the American action film and subtly emphasize some hypocrisy in American moral standards and foreign policy. And they do it with a film that channels its social commentary through a spot-on variation on the 1980's American action film.

Although Morel owes much to a fantastically insidious script, his direction of this material is spot-on. The tacky father-daughter relationship, the stock dialogue, and typified characters all come through so earnestly that I'm still a little unsure that the film doesn't take it seriously.

Perhaps this can be attributed to Morel's top notch action sequences, which, even after cuts for a PG-13 rating, have more impact and finesse than your typical Bond or Bourne movies. They don't spring up nearly as much as they should nor are they as inventive or modern as his previous work in District B13, but the film uses the action sequences not just as rewards for sitting through the sometimes trying dramatics but also as a reflection of its main character. Mills' expertise in the area and his motivation are completely sold by his cold, efficient performance of the individual action beats.

But the film also presents the ugly side of such efficiency. Throughout the film, Jean-Claude (Olivier Rabourdin), a French police officer and a former colleague of Mills', attempts to persuade Mills to allow the authorities to handle the situation. Naturally, Mills declines, knowing that he is better suited to the job. At one point, he has dinner with Jean-Claude and his wife in their home. Incensed that Jean-Claude is on the take, Mills shoots his wife in the arm to get information, despite her ignorance of her husbands' corruption. He then threatens to murder the whole family if Jean-Claude refuses him the information he needs. But "stuff happens" in these situations, right?

This moral equivocation allows Mills to support his righteous cause. Jean-Claude's poor wife will recover, and his daughter will be found. Besides, the evil Albanian slave traders deserve to be punished, and the world's better off without them. Mills is doing the world (and the "wussy French") a favor. Then again, with such a noble cause, why doesn't Mills attempt to help or save any of the other girls stuck in this slummy hellhole? Mills manages to convince himself that his work has a sort of moral superiority that makes shooting an innocent woman okay, but he never bothers to solve any of the social problems or save any of the gang's other victims. Even after he finds his daughter's friend, Amanda (Katie Cassidy), dead from a heroin overdose, he just plugs along after his daughter, remaining unaffected by all the helpless women awaiting the same fate.

This apathy expresses the character's fundamental hypocrisy. He does horrible things to people innocent and guilty alike, but he manages to create and maintain an illusion of moral superiority and righteousness by balancing his actions against the evil Other. Unfortunately, these notions don't hold up in the big picture. After his daughter is saved, Mills' work in this area is over, and he never attempts to pursue the bigger operation or to dismantle it. He simply gains personal revenge for wrongs inflicted to his family. This cavalier attitude may be said to reflect the greater portion of America's recent war in Iraq. The target goal, as expressed by our previous administration, was to assure safety for American citizens, but this dubious reasoning for an invasion/occuptation, of course, comes courtesy of hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqi's. The torture, the reassurance of moral intentions, all of these things are in the film. Oddly enough, most of the audience members applauding Mills' battles also supported the expansion of our war on terror into a tangentially related country.

This joke's pretty good, exposing the faults of a stance while roping along those taking the stance. But that joke has nothing on the film's last roarer. Safe at home, Mills is finally able to jumpstart his daughter's music career, courtesy of some security work he did for a Shakira-type pop star. As anyone who has seen Todd Haynes' Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story can tell you, what Mills basically does is to take his daughter out of a situation in which she would be a sex slave and put her into a profession that would morph her from a person into a sexualized property, no doubt, of a corporate conglomerate. That the film frames this profession with the danger of being assaulted by an oversexed fan only reemphasizes the irony of taking his daughter out of a whorehouse and putting her into a common sex culture. It's Mills' last failure, and Morel's greatest success, a matter made all the more frustrating considering how many smartass newspaper critics called it another dumb actioner.

Xenobites (08, Michael Fredianelli)

Fredianelli's character type as distorted mirror of self

After dabbling with genre with the entertaining but detached A Bird in the Bush, Michael Fredianelli comes back swinging with his toughest and most personal crimer yet, a remake of his early short Xenobites. Originally a science fiction noir mash up along the lines of Blade Runner  with a hint of Sin City, this feature length iteration of that universe largely diverts from the science fiction story line concerning government-made psychic cops who turn psychopathic and turn the streets of San Jose into chaos. Instead, it focuses on Icarus Van Calder's (Fredianelli) struggle to find a tape that seemingly every shady figure in town wants. Naturally, yakuza, Michael Nosé, and other violent types get involved, and things quickly become very complicated.

With the mash-up of a large cast and a lot of interaction shooting sequences, the film would seem to suffer from Bird's increasing loss of focus upon its central characters. Luckily, this film centers itself around character much more so than action sequences or even its cute colored objects within a black and white framework motif. Fredianelli himself has stated some dissatisfaction about his character: "I'm just going through the motions (and not very well at that) on the type of character I've done to death and sick of doing," but I think that detachment, that sense of the same-old same-old works much to the director's favor in this piece. Reminiscent of Alain Delon's bored performance in Un Flic, the frustration and laconic performance gives ways at times to staggering emotiveness, both in Fredianelli's writing and his willingness to abandon the familiar modes that he's already perfected.

Around the halfway point of the film, the crimer plot has unravelled for the most part, and the finish seems like it shouldn't be terribly far off. When he cuts to a still of a studious-looking man with a Briar in his mouth and the voiceover starts dictating on about a mission to assassinate the creator of the Xenobites, it seems as though Fredianelli's thus far razor sharp narrative, floundering for something to push it into feature-length time, has fallen into episodic storytelling. Although the transition does chop itself into the narrative, the story line that it develops between Van Calder and the creator's daughter turns the film from an entertaining crimer into a devastatingly personal statement about destructiveness in the face of human apathy.

    

Burnt cash, burnt body: destructiveness as character trait

To say that Fredianelli's general subtextual feature is nihilism seems like an understatement, but the work he's done films as disparate as The Mark, Violent by Nature, and the last five minutes of A Bird in the Bush all finally comes together as a cohesive statement in this film. Although I do think the film is misogynistic in all its excessive violence and emotional battering done to its female characters, it's clear in this picture that Fredianelli is not only aware of this tendency in the film but also manages to work on it, not to excuse it by any means but to shed some light on it. 

After all the abuse, business-related and otherwise, and a nihilistic placement of his position in the world summed up by Shai Wilson's character: "You're a piece of shit [. . .] Like your

 pathetic life means something? It doesn't [. . .] anyone who has a chance is going to use you. Cause that's all you are, a tool for better people. Nobody's ever given a shit about you, and no one ever will," the light romantic possibilities with the target's daughter seems like an oasis. Fredianelli borrows Chaplin's dinner roll dream from The Gold Rush with a heartbreaking dream sequence that, natural as it could be, seems like it was lifted from another film in the context of the piece as a whole. 

        

Plausible connection? Fredianelli and Jana Ireton

This turn seems to divert the crimer plot in the same way the romantic comedy moments did in Bird, but the turn here sheds more light on the central character than any facade of romance could. Do these things excuse such brutality? Of course not, but I think it's safe to say that Fredianelli's aware of this too in such scenes as the brutal dispatching of Cassidy via plastic bag. The explication of these aspects, figured into the two women characters, serves to highlight the overall destructive nature of Van Calder, something that seems like it could be changed if it weren't for the caprices of oblivious parties and the folly of fate. 

        

      

The fatal brush-off

This notion comes most sharply into focus when Van Calder accompanies the daughter to meet up with the father. Van Calder's earlier voiceover states that all he lives for after the unraveling of the crimer narrative is to take down as much of the operation as he can manage. In one simple gesture, any attempted belief in humanity becomes moot, and Van Calder can move on to the subsequent massacres that close the film. 

The technical ecstasy that Fredianelli weaves here more often than not tends to serve the personal statement. With this film, he's again raised the bar for no budget filmmaking. The crisp black and white images with pitch-perfect editing only come down when inexplicable Sin City style color coating comes into play. That the flashbacks are in color is no matter because they perhaps reflect a time when possibilities seemed more abundant. However, the coloring of certain objects, while a nice technical feet, feels like a shallow, arbitrary stylistic trait. Other hiccups, like the aforementioned jump into the romance narrative or the deliberately vague treatment of the Xenobite characters, don't distract as much as the incessant voiceover, which, while expressing some measure of insight, tends to over explain. The film simply does not need moral guiding into the Xenobite project. One wishes Fredianelli would respect his audiences' attention a bit more with the device. 

All in all though, even these problems get pushed aside by Fredianelli's emotional honesty, the drive of the narrative, the action scenes, and some fantastic acting by Fredianelli, Kevin Giffin, newcomer Henry Lee, and surprisingly good work from Jana Ireton. Here's to hoping that Fredianelli can manage to ignore the daft reviews that I've seen for the work so far. It might be his best film yet.

Apologies

Due to the intensive time taken to shoot my movie and mounting pressure from school-related work, my amount of writing on this site will probably be pretty low for the next couple of months.

The Dark Knight (08, Christopher Nolan)

After the runaway success earlier this summer of the flimsy, forgettable, and flaccid comic pic Iron Man and subsequent releases of other dumb movies like Prince Caspian and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, I was set for another summer of forgettable family fare. Even with the surprising inclusion of (weak) political commentary in Iron Man, the whole season seemed too geared toward the usual "cover crap script with CG action scenes" panache for my taste. As the hot months went by though, I was taken by surprise with a film that inevitably achieved a staggering amount of critical and financial success but whose prerogative didn't concern marketing but the formation of some political objective. 

Shockingly, while the film works great with any audience and provides the same sustenance one might get from The Incredible Hulk, The Dark Knight wears its political objectives on its sleeve and works outward from those notions into mainstream territory. As a child of the 80's (and, on the same token, 90's) blockbuster (a perfect example being Tim Burton's Batman), seeing that big budget films from major studios with so much at stake can be so unashamedly layered gives me more optimism for cinema's future than a million Tarantinos could.

But let's not jump ahead of ourselves. Even though the films do commit to actually saying something, how legit are their claims? After all, Favreau's red and gold rocketeer seemingly said something about weapons manufacturers and terrorism, but after the first thirty minutes, any kind of nuanced statement was left in the dust in favor of Robert Downey Jr. acting very cool. 

Nolan's The Dark Knight has much more success, picking up the "justice" angle began in the underwhelming Batman Begins and actually doing some work with it in a modern context. The result is a superhero movie less focused on a villain's origin and more concentrated on analyzing the effects of a destabilizing force on the microcosm of Gotham City. With fears of another depression (or a terrorist attack) seemingly on the government's brain 24/7, the manic sense of order slipping away plays perfectly into today's political situations (not to mention the inclusion of a Chinese businessman in the shady operations). How does a powerful public figure respond? Beatings? Killings? Torture? 

What the screenplay by Christopher and Jonathan Nolan presents the audience is an unabashed morality play. Unfortunately, the potential to really go for it and develop such an angle is continually hampered by the screenplay's unquestioning parallels between Batman, the Joker, etc. and the "real world," something that the Chicago cityscape might suggest but a notion that continually comes up suspect. 

Forget the insanely asinine boats blow up angle near the end. That's just the most prominent example of a series of odd political statements the film advocates. Surprisingly, the film does endorse the existence of a body of justice that lies somewhere outside the law (and the Constitution). I mean, cripes, Batman and Morgan Freeman build a machine that does roving wiretaps! Realistically, such a statement may be politically dangerous but nonetheless sincere and developed. After all, the fail safe of the Patriot Act in the film is that hopefully we'll have somebody to pull the plug after the threat's gone. The film's treatment of torture as an interrogation method on ideologues also seems to reveal the brothers as fairly even-handed thinkers.

Unfortunately, as much as I'd like to think that we could fight terrorism (or something akin) with non lethal force, the film comes across as a bit naive in Batman's continuation of such antics. Sure, it might be easy to take the bad guys into the lockup for criminal trial when you can punch and kick them into cuffs, but unfortunately, the correspondents in the real world carry AK-47s and don't seem to come along so easily. That's not to say that Batman should be icing every thug he happens across, but among the more developed aspects of the brothers' argument, this thread seems very glossed, especially since it was such a major part of Batman Begins. I guess the Nolans hope we manage to get Osama Bin Laden hanging by his ankles on the side of a building (we'll have to wait until Frank Miller's long in development Batman versus Al Qaeda to get our far right fix of holy lethal wrath, I guess).

Partially because of his uncharacteristic performance but also because of the tragically timely circumstances, Heath Ledger's performance as the Joker will likely be more remembered than any of the above content. To Ledger's credit, he performs the role with a charismatic grace, not backing off of the danger of his psychopathic character but somehow making him endearing (basically, Anthony Hopkins without the English charm in Silence of the Lambs). Unfortunately, the flashy work done in the role will probably keep attention away from the fantastic Aaron Eckhart who does a great smarmy politician (like Nolan previously seemed to cast Bale based on corresponding work in American Psycho, Eckhart seems to channel his hilarious performance in Thank You for Smoking) and the begrudged psychopath schtick with seemless expertise. Bale's given a bit more to chew on here with less linear character development, but we've all seen him do better in nearly any other film he's been in (and his Batman voice still sounds like a toughguy hardcore vocalist). Thankfully, mugging by Morgan Freeman and Michael Caine has been cut in half, and Maggie Gyllenhaal is a welcome replacement for that Dawson's Creek alumni. Unfortunately, Gary Oldman is again completely wasted in a role that requires nothing but doe eyes. Still, it's good to see the guy get a paycheck.

As a director, Nolan takes the fantastic work on The Prestige and applies it here. Aside from the opening bank robbery, the film's action scenes still can't muster any impact or kinetic energy (and he repeats the ludicrous close-up pulse camera he used in the first film during the film's climax, for Ford's sake), but he more than makes up for it with breathtaking Imax footage of Batman looking down on his city, trying to figure out how to keep it safe, and of a hospital being blown sky high, the epitome of the Joker's chaos. 

Unfortunately, the screenplay suffers a lot because of its constant pandering. The aforementioned moral crisis involving boats and explosives near the end is so childish and unsatisfying that it makes my head hurt. That's not to mention the numerous narrative shortcuts taken by the brothers in order to move the narrative along (mostly coming in the form of police officers of Cro-Magnon intelligence). And you get the Joker in a nurse's uniform for some reason (the kids loved it though). Even with these casualties though, Nolan's new (and last?) Batman movie comes through with a breath of fresh air. Sure, it might not delve as far into its subject matter as we'd like, but considering the circumstances, I'll take Batman questioning how to properly deal with today's political landscape over another Mummy sequel or Will Ferrell comedy any day.

The Crazies (73, George A. Romero)

Although George Romero directed two of my all-time favorite horror flicks (Dawn of the Dead and Martin), he has also made a good number of films ranging from fun yet mediocre (Creepshow) and just plain bad (Diary of the Dead). With the relative nonexistence of word about his efforts between Night of the Living Dead and Martin, I wasn't sure what to expect from this 1973 low budget flick. 

Surprisingly, The Crazies not only fares well among similar low budget drive-in cinema of the 70's but also stands up right alongside Romero's best efforts. The basic plot revolves around the military occupation of a small Pennsylvania town after a plane carrying an experimental chemical crashes in nearby mountains. Although Romero's screenplay does set up a group of five that escape the military's clutches and try to make sense of the situation, its focus really comes full circle, effortlessly floating from military officials in Washington, a scientist flown in to conjure an antidote, the army officials charged with keeping the city's quarantine secure, and the general actions of the army and civilians. 

With this scattershot perspective and a clear unwillingness to cast any one group into an underwritten "villain" role (even the detached military leaders calling the shots are given some insight), Romero frees the film to focus on the damage caused by miscommunication caused by ever-rampant bureaucracy and also by society in general. If not for the dreaded delays in radio communication caused by "voice print" authorizations necessitated by the detached body of rules and procedures, this whole situation may not have became such a catastrophe. 

At every point of the story, such barriers in the way of direct communication causes the major problems. Had the military been open about the nature of the virus affecting the town and the reasons for their being there, perhaps the open revolt they face from individual citizens wouldn't have exploded. If the soldiers conveying the scientist had listened to him rather than their orders, maybe his lab materials could have been brought to the city, leading to a more efficient search for a cure. On another level, if the average citizen could have more contact with her or his basic impulses, maybe the virus, which essentially alleviates one of such impulses, would not lead to such drastic expressions of animalistic behavior.

These examples are only the tip of the iceberg, and the general tension that Romero generates in the story almost always originates from some sense that either people aren't communicating with each other or themselves. What really shows off Romero's talent as a writer and director is his complete integration of these ideas into what's basically an old-fashioned genre flick. More tense action/thriller than a straight horror movie (much in the same way Dawn of the Dead is more of an adventure movie than a horror film), the film's central characters' misadventures in the chaotic environment provides for a compelling central storyline to complement and round out the political elements of the situation. The character work and acting may not be stellar, but the relationship between Lane Carroll and Will MacMillan pays off big time in a fantastically emotional climax.

Yes, The Crazies may not be as focused in characterization as Martin or brilliantly bombastic as Dawn of the Dead, but it certainly reveals Romero as even more of a genius and capable director than even I've considered him over the years. The film's financial failure is a shame, and God only knows how goofy the remake will be, but if it motivates more youngsters to check out this fantastic, underseen gem, then I suppose it will have done its service. After all, once you see the morally ambiguous white-suited and gasmasked soldiers, I doubt you'll ever be able to fully forget the film. 

Political Lobotomy: Brian De Palma's War Cartoons

70's cinema generally wears its political motivation on its sleeve. Socially aware, critical, and often offbeat, that whole crop of filmmakers typically denote politically aware filmmaking. Amidst that whole scene, Brian De Palma's films, even his best, generally carry more of a reactionary point of view. Not to say that De Palma emphatically declares hatred for the social movements or mores of the times, but in his best films (the 70's and 80's Hitchcock knockoffs like Sisters or Dressed to Kill), changes in gender or sexuality often become a tool for De Palma to exploit for heightened tensity.

Maybe De Palma's perfect handling of that material causes him to hiccup when he goes for explicitly political filmmaking. Because his sensationalist approach to direction (the long tracking shots, the brutal (often sensual) violence) carries the emphasis rather than trivial elements like plot or character, the material more often travels the most direct approach to a political objective. As a result, De Palma never concerns himself with subtlety, character development, perspective, or even realism. Instead, he goes for bombast (shock and awe). Therefore, his two war films shout with a lot of outrage and clamor but lack the verisimilitude or emotional honesty (or rawness) that carries the power of superior war films like Apocalypse Now or even something like Leone's Duck, You Sucker!

Even today, the casting of Michael J. Fox as the central character in a war film might seem odd, but for De Palma's Vietnam movie Casualties of War, he fits perfectly. I know, you're saying, "Marty McFly in Vietnam?" But simply put, in the film, the character fits Fox's wholesome career image that he had maintained up to that point. Although an occasional moment of human moral ambiguity might come into play, the character retains such a constant well-intentioned and outraged attitude at what De Palma perceives as the military's moral corruption that even his worst faults come off like a superman's weaknesses. Sure, he can be moral and condescending toward the insanity of war, but only because he's a sketch of a character rather than a person, the rock solid war hero of a Communist propaganda movie, idealistic and not afraid to stick around to get truth and justice for the audience.

This approach to character represents the film's biggest problem. The screenplay has scenes that try to keep characters balanced, but the good/bad switch holds only at on or off, and with De Palma's flashbang direction, characters are either Clark Kent or Charles Manson, with nothing in between. This handling makes Sean Penn's character a particular disappointment because the initial character work that depicts him as a fatherly soldier struggling with the pressures of the war makes for compelling material. Unfortunately, that work is wasted as time goes on and Penn becomes Snidely Whiplash, a gleeful rapist with nothing on his mind but racial hate and misguided anger. Any attempt made by David Rabe's screenplay or by De Palma to realistically depict how a human might become such a monster never settles to the character as depicted who more often just swears and mugs mean in front of the camera.

The hamminess typical of the film forces any meaningful political commentary out of the picture. At times, De Palma tries to indict the war as an immoral and brutal practice as a whole, something that never should have happened, but he does it with a simple moral story with characters too stupidly-written and one dimensional to ever carry anything but an adolescent's displaced anger. When John C. Reilly bellows about how he feels like Genghis Khan, you can't help but feel that De Palma takes you for an idiot, someone who can't realize the truth but for the movie's perennial wisdom.

Considering the flick's lesser status today (after all, it's a fairly forgettable movie in a genre that was pretty much played out by the film's 1989 release), it might seem strange that De Palma would choose to revisit this material after The Black Dahlia, a film seemingly meant as a return to his sleazy thriller roots, but he did with a pseudo remake of Casualties of War set in the Iraq War and called it Redacted.

Despite the implicit indictment of the Iraq War as a "remake" of the Vietnam War that arises from remaking the Nam flick in the current conflict, the repetition of the Casualties narrative never rectifies the problems with characterization that the aforementioned film was so plagued by. Taking into perspective the film's presentation of itself as an aesthetically "realistic" document, these problems cripple the picture as a whole.

The film begins with a disclaimer that advises the viewer that the film is indeed fictional although (and that's De Palma's key) events like these were widely reported. Where? CNN? msn.com? Wikipedia?

That complete lack of accountability immediately undercuts De Palma's ambitions and becomes especially baffling with De Palma's "in the moment" aesthetic strategies that portray the events of the film as completely homespun in some sort of purposefully faux documentary form.

This aesthetic movement works with the harrowing material much more efficiently and directly than the sweeping pans and elaborate tunnel set pieces in Casualties of War. Instead, De Palma composes the film out of "video diaries," "security camera footage," clips from a "French documentary," and perhaps most interestingly, "streaming footage" from mock websites. De Palma's ability to fake it varies widely, but the juxtaposition of different sources occasionally lends insight into the conflict.

One of the best scenes in the film has a French journalist grilling "the nice guy" soldier about the hood he's placed over a captive's head. She bickers about the prisoner being able to breathe while the innocent guy tries to explain the procedure in the uncertain moments following the raid of a house. Moments like these and the sudden bursts of violence comprise De Palma's greatest achievement in his handheld depiction of the war; the unpredictability of death from an unexpected source hangs over this entire film. In that, De Palma one-ups Casualties in getting the surrounding pressure that plagues his characters right.

Unfortunately, not all of the individual viewpoints work. The security camera footage fails at every turn, conveniently catching some important dialogue but appearing like the film's HD camera with a cheap Avid filter attempting to create some illusion of reality. De Palma has more success with his harrowing streaming video moments. However, the horror of a taped execution comes nowhere near the obnoxiousness of a facial-pierced punker woman who yells about corporate media and the My Lai massacre. Moments like this inspire laughter rather than outrage because De Palma understands this generation about as well as Antonioni got the hippie movement in Zabriskie Point.

The video diary never feels real but manages to catch certain moments, most notably the detonation of an improvised explosive device, in a light unheard of in the current run of flicks on the war. But even the best moments in these segments continually fall flat due to the cartoonish nature of nearly every character. De Palma's screenplay effectively gets the pressure these young men are under, the different media takes on the situation, and the general confusion about what's going on in the midst of the conflict (remember, this was in the "stuff happens" days of Donald Rumsfeld). None of it takes on any kind of earned meaning in the end though because De Palma doesn't care about his characters enough to develop them with competence.

As a result, we get our figurehead for the opportunistic Youtube journalist (to be fair, De Palma handles with one character what George Romero did for an entire movie in Diary of the Dead), the sensitive guys, and the jerks who initiate the war crimes. Maybe it's because De Palma spends no time in the development of his sympathetic characters that the amoral white trash figures stand out so much. They use racial slurs, like to kill Iraqi civilians, and have an armchair in their barracks with a Confederate flag draped over it. I've never known De Palma to be subtle, but at some point, it's a bit hard to take seriously. 

Like Casualties, De Palma expends some effort in the analysis of his villains' psychology, but like the other film, these moments are our (and the film's) sole inquiry into what are otherwise caricatures. Likewise, moments of levity and insight regarding the wars continually takes the back seat to De Palma's angsty outrage. 

De Palma probably would like the architects of this war to apologize, but he needs to say he's sorry to the poor Iraqis whose dead bodies he throws into a montage of war photos at the end of the film. The action implied by including these after such a snotty, stupid movie seems to try to get at that truthfulness that he stabs toward in these films but ends up insulting the deceased and the viewer alike. This kind of simplistic focus works great when it's placed upon visual tricks meant to titillate an audience, but when the topic turns into a political argument, Casualties of War and Redacted resemble the aforementioned angsty woman in the Youtube segment: all fury, no perspective, no meaning. 

Movies I Watch with My Wife

Unless you're a complete bozo jerk or maybe lucky enough to have a significant other who shares each and every one of your tastes, you've likely taken one for the team and checked out a flick for that special person in your life. My wife's a saint in this respect (our first date to the cinema was Alexandre Aja's High Tension). As such, I try to not hesitate to see movies with her that I might never watch alone.

So, if you're looking for a romantic or lighter movie to watch with your better half, I'll give you my take on three we've watched recently. 

I would normally give my left leg to keep clear of a movie like The Nanny Diaries. The frosty sugar that coats these tween flicks usually gives me a stomach ache before the opening credits set to a Gwen Stefani tune are finished. This one was directed by the same director team (Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini) that brought out the perfect adaptation for American Splendor though, so I was on board and expecting good things. 

The film's essential endeavor, to serve as a cinematic anthropological study of mothers and the soulless society of rich New Yorkers, unfortunately succumbs twice too many times to the fantasy airbrushed lives these films are always too eager to indoctrinate teenagers with. The way in which the film treats working class people as the tough, honest type and juxtaposes that stereotype with the skewering of the neglectful parents of the bratty rich trust fund babies acts as an early roadblock of any idea of the honesty (or humanity) that American Splendor ran with so splendidly. These kinds of things keep that anthropological study voiceover as a cute joke rather than any kind of meaningful stylistic device.

That said, the film does manage to engage the audience, primarily through its (cartoonish) depiction of the privileged super rich, and the healthy outrage of the whole thing might let me give the film as a whole a pass in hopes that it will keep one teenager from tuning into Real Housewives of New York City or such related trash. Part of what makes the film so successful isn't the patsy-watsy casting of It girl Scarlett Johansson but the fantastic bitch played by Laura Linney and her underused but suitably loathsome husband by Paul Giamatti. The couple works to the film's ultimate advantage, giving us good reason to hate them consistently throughout.

Linney really steals the show from everyone though. She plays the role with more enthusiasm and straight up brutality than Meryl Streep could, despite any number of Oscar recommendations. The screenplay gets it all wrong with positing sympathy with her in the end. Throughout the entire film, the upper class moms are privilege incarnate, people too uninvolved to take part in any aspect of their children's lives. With the men, it's almost expected, and you get a sense that their neglect can almost be excused because they're not idle necessarily. The film's quick denouement and off screen redemption for the mother leads to quite an unsatisfying conclusion. The divide between the character's worst atrocity and her subsequent offscreen reconciliation is so short and blunt that it overturns the dynamic of the entire film.

As adaptors, screenwriters, and directors, Berman and Pulcini need the blame placed on them for the film's problems. After the mesmerizingly well-blended directorial strategies found in American Splendor, it's disappointing to see the slick, shiny New York city we knew and abhorred in Devil Wears Prada or How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days. However, the nice romance B-plot is the worst atrocity to the audience. Perhaps more indicative of the film's willingness to buy into typical genre fantasy than the rooftop date scene is the hunk himself. A Harvard grad who isn't into material things, considers going into a liberal arts profession, yet keeps an apartment in the same building as the horrific X family, he's everything we should want our super cute protagonist to end up with. In short, she (and we) get to have our cake and eat it too.

If The Nanny Diaries keeps its social criticism and typical genre trappings as its chief illusions, Juno's primary smoke screen is its audience's own perception of how offbeat it can be. As if to emphasize this point, my wife's friend asked during the opening credits if it was an independent film or something.

That "indie factor" is the key fantasy just like it was in Garden State. The hip irony, the offbeat product references (Slurpees, race car beds, and hamburger phones here), emo tunes, and overt references to cool tastes (Bad Brains poster, overt references to The Stooges and Dario Argento) all are present and accounted for. A lot of friends said that the film's first fifteen minutes were an unbearable exercise in feigned wisecat dialogue. I'm personally surprised none of them realized that the whole film's like that.

As if that didn't have you racing for the exit, the most annoying facet of the picture is that its central premise, the accidental pregnancy narrative, ends up as a functional B plot to the film's fairly typical "looking for love" storyline. Seriously, keep track of the drama of the pregnancy, which all but evaporates after the film's first act. Namely, this plotline basically serves the same purpose as the poverty and deadbeat dad moments in Pretty in Pink. 

The big moments you'd count on in a film like this, especially the debate over whether to abort the fetus or not, are handled with kid gloves and summed up with a moment of Dolby surround sound. Bigger moral debates like if Michael Cera is actually the hottest man on the planet to alienated youth everywhere take much more precedence and attention.

Similarly, the gabbing about genre flicks and punk music service the build-up of the relationship between Juno and Jason Bateman's character. Sure, it's cool that they showed some clips from what I'm sure Diablo Cody thinks is an obscure flick, but why make Juno and her friends such big fans of punk when the soundtrack's full of nothing but flaccid acoustic numbers and Sonic Youth covering The Carpenters?

In the end, Juno's a fantasy, an artifice. The stuff that rings true isn't the underage pregnancy but the loneliness and the longing. The hip dialogue, useless voiceover, orange Tic Tacs, Michael Cera -- will the next generation venerate this stuff like I do Judd Nelson in The Breakfast Club?

Still though, there is some heart in the thing, mostly in the love narrative. Toss in some great lines by J.K. Simmons, and you have a solid date movie. It's just a shame that you might have to retch every time some poser waxes hip about H.G. Lewis.

If the running theme of the last two movies has been the employment of fantasy as the allure, Peyton Reed's Down with Love throws any pretension of realism aside and goes for the fantasy not only as allure but as central concept. Frankly, the film's better than the above for it. It's fairly typical for a romantic comedy to have its characters in lofty, otherworld gigs (fashion designer in Sweet Home Alabama, magazine writers in How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days, etc.). The film seems to recognize the idea that a creative (easy) job seems like an ideal fantasy, so what does it do? It makes its protagonists two successful writers who seemingly never work and instead craft public images for themselves.

Sure, but that's done in a lot of flicks, right? Down with Love sets itself apart by placing that dynamic within a lalaworld of the early 60's that's somewhere between that era's sitcoms and The Cell. Placing itself within a strictly cinematic past, the film then moves on to actually commenting on the social change rampant in the period as well. More so than the hyper stylized sets, colors, outfits, dialogue, etc., the film's attempt to pay attention to how social mores (at birth but especially contemporary) are shaped even while they're played out.

That the film integrates its politics into its humor makes me able to forgive the constant barrage of occasionally weak double entendres (this is a PG-13 romcom, after all). However, when that humor arises out of the movie's gender role inversion (an exaggerated masquerade, of course), it seems more genuine and, dare I say, a bit fresher than a similar gag in your Kate Hudson or Reese Witherspoon run throughs. 

Granted, this retro setting and take on the material begs the question of how revisionist this past ends up, but the fact of the matter is that the film makes no pretense of realism (or even smarts) but relies mostly on its charms. In that way, it remains punchy and entertaining in a shallow way but also manages to give something else to chew on. That it actually follows its protagonists through the negotiation of gender roles after feminism within such an odd retrocontemporary environment only leaves more to ponder.

In this context, casting itself makes a comment. Ewan McGregor may be a teen heartthrob, but I'm not sure if his pretty boy simplicity would have flown in comparison to guys like Sinatra or even Grant. His placement in the role reflects on the progression in ideas of gender even as it models itself after antiquated types. To a lesser extent, the same could likely be said for Renée Zellweger, most famous for her roles in the Bridget Jones films, which, nauseating as they may be, earn points for their faith in nonconventional female forms. Although I'm not sure how associated she may with that type, her placement in the fiery gender role showcases her character's role as an originator of some feminist thought that would eventually allow such depictions at the same time as it engages the prior (and, really, current) requirements. 

The mixture of political questioning and gender roles, past and present, at work here belies the general entertainment value of the entire film, which, as a madcap comedy, generally works. The characterizations never get beyond face level, but they work in the lens of the outrageous interpretation of story through older and new cinema. All of these elements, in conjunction, gave me at least one very pleasurable movie experience that I can say my wife enjoyed as much as me. She'll remember it next time I drag her out to a gore flick.

Genre Trouble: Romcom and Criming in Michael Fredianelli's A Bird in the Bush

Michael Fredianelli's long-promised foray into romantic comedies somehow manages to simultaneously expand his oeuvre's scope while confirming his own unwillingness to completely separate himself from his bread and butter. Fredianelli stars as Grant Oldman, a wannabe academic who winds up entangled with a wild girl named Babs (Jana Ireton) after she hits him with a car. After some perfunctory romantic comedy narrative, the narrative swiftly heads into crimer territory with witnesses to mob hits, insane Italian caricatures (the boss' name is Daddy Don Guido), and feds swirling around the increasingly afflicted couple.

The romantic comedy material (the first third of the film) comes off with varying degrees of success. A scene in which Fredianelli haphazardly goes to a dinner interview with Babs works pitch perfect due to nice acting and sharp dialogue. The scene's a perfect marriage of Fredianelli's brand of cranky old man humor (it ends with a disgruntled man firing a gun at our fleeing protagonists, just like Run You Motherf-----!) and the romantic comedy regimen. Unfortunately, many of the attempts at humor fall a bit flat with even a flatulent hobo played by Aaron Stielstra grabbing laughs only in reference to Less Human than Human. The romance itself has a pretty legit build (even if a bit familiar) but flat lines somewhere in the second act, getting lost amid the crime plot developments.

The crime moments do pick up the narrative and the humor considerably, and the fast-paced madcap third act zip with some great humor, helped by a hilarious performance by the increasingly indispensable Michael Nosé as the endangered witness who finds himself caught up with Oldman and Babs. The crosscutting between the outrageous gangster characters, the feds, and the protagonists keeps the piece brisk, and Fredianelli gets some genuine somber moments amidst all the cartoon characters.

That's the problem with the film though. Does its definite success as a fairly tough action-comedy indicate issues with the romantic comedy storyline? The first third definitely has its share of laughs, but they all fit in more with the action comedy template of the last two-thirds of the film, which points out the weakness of the romcom elements all the more. With all of Fredianelli's decidedly politically incorrect humor (a running gag has characters saying Barbara Streisand is "too Jewish"), dummies flying off of parking structures seems to have little to do with the lovers by accident storyline. 

To further mud up the tone, Fredianelli transitions into his trademark nihilism here and there with little setup, resulting in a fairly flat and uneven conclusion. Sure, it's nice to see the real world implications of the narrative played through, but it comes so full out of left field that it indicates either Fredianelli's inability (or unwillingness) to fully depart from his normal material or possibly a critique of the romantic comedy genre's tendency to ignore the ramifications of its characters' dilemmas. 

If nothing else though, the film poses both a challenge to Fredianelli to tackle disparate material with less hesitation and an affirmation of his ability to make genre work within his framework, at his will. The work within multiple genres might not work completely, but the fact of the matter is that the pieces are still entertaining and different despite the occasional incongruity.

Youth at War: If... in Perspective, by Way of Columbine and Heathers

After the trauma of a school shooting, hands usually go from wiping tears to pointing finger. After Columbine, media forces like Marilyn Manson, Doom, and The Basketball Diaries all took a piece of mass outrage. Luckily, it seems like we've moved on since. After the tragic shootings at Virginia Tech, the allegations that Oldboy was an inspiration for the murderer never picked up steam.

Oddly enough, films that deal with these massacres like Heathers and If... seem to be left outside of the outrage. Maybe because of a lack of exposure but certainly not because of a lack of violent potential.

Beside the shotgun and trench coat fantasy sequence from The Basketball Diaries, I'm not sure another film could have had as explicit and noted effect as Michael Lehmann's Heathers. Like the real tragedy, the maniac here features the black trench coat, the violence response to overbearing social structures, and a failed plot to blow up a school. Although the film inevitably positions itself against these actions, the cool swagger, the gleeful hedonism, and the slow smolder of Christian Slater's performance glamorize the characterization to an extent.

However, the film counterpoints him with Winona Ryder, the real protagonist of the piece. She's the point of audience recognition and shares the glee at times but ultimately recognizes the insanity within. While Slater is allowed to have a murkier background and psychopathic divorced parents, Ryder gets to address the audience's outrage with the social structures while still paying heed to the overall morality of the picture (and its perceived viewers). If put on trial, Lehmann and Daniel Waters could call for this backup as an obvious indicator of their intentions.

With If..., Lindsay Anderson might have a harder time. The film has no buffer for the impressionable youth who would presumably see it. There's no Winona Ryder pointing out the insanity of the violent acts. Instead, Anderson lets Malcolm McDowell remain the film's entire center. An even cooler outcast than Slater's, McDowell faces injustice and cruelty (and returns them) but remains our point of identification throughout the film. He's funny, vulnerable, politically different, and brave. Namely, if you threw a ton of irony into the mix, he'd be a generation of Juno's dream hunk.

Without perspective, the sudden bloodbath that ends the film could indeed be dangerous as it seems like a natural response to the pressures of the school's screwy power structures.

However, the constant lingering presence of Che and Mao echo that danger for the film's main character. If we're willing to buy into the symbolic, mythic stature of such figures, the message of violence as a necessary response to political injustice will certainly carry over into bloodshed, especially when put into the microcosm of the school in which schmoozers and jerks obtain the power positions. The film was made right in the middle of it, 1968, a time in which guys like Mao and Che were being taken as visionaries fighting for a better world.

With the presence of such brave, brash figures in a youth's daily influence (remember, youth culture had only been a couple decades old at this point), traditional forms of outletting one's anger at society (represented in the film primarily through drinking, stealing a motorcycle, and getting laid) lose their relevance. After the idealization of figures who deal political change with violence, raging hormones and the abrasive discovery that the world doesn't function by way of square deals but by carrying out the society line keep the rational words of elders as simple rhetoric from "the man."

However, without that perspective, the final bloodbath simply seems like a radical, brave, and admirable occurrence, a simple response to how unfair things can be. The fact that the film features no Winona Ryder character is brave. Any consoling voice in the film ends up becoming part of the establishment. With the ever-burgeoning youth culture tied to political radicalism (and the perceived necessity of violence in some aims), the big If of the film basically shows what happens when the youths with such influences and the historical moment learn that the world's a place in which individuality and freedom are punished in favor of the moral majority, essentially, anarchy. Anderson's last moment, McDowell brazenly blasting down from a rooftop, emphasizes the focus on violent outburst. Can progress be made from there? What good can come from this? The fact that a young man who can gain access to the powerful men on the campus is implicated in these murders may be more telling even than McDowell.

So, back to the original question, is there danger here? What happens when confused and tormented youths see a film in which violent kids go out in a blaze of glory? There seems to be some potential for misunderstanding and the propagation of that era's myths. I'm not sure how much we should worry though. The same Che symbol that Anderson uses as a key to understanding Mick's willingness to take the violent route now usually sits on a t-shirt worn over a pair of pants from the Gap, worn by the same jerks who in another generation would have paddled poor Mick and his friends.

Arterial Spraying(s): Xavier Gens' Messy Handling of Genre Takes

2007 was a big year for French director Xavier Gens. After a number of short projects, he (with the help of Luc Besson) helmed his first feature film, Frontier(s) in France and got the job to do the feature adaptation of the video game Hitman (again, through Besson) here in the States. Frontier(s) got a spot in After Dark's annual “8 Films to Die For” horror showcase, so the year looked to be his big breakthrough.

Unfortunately, Frontier(s) got whacked with an NC-17 from the MPAA that forced it out of After Dark's fest, and some ambiguous studio interference came up with Hitman. Frontier(s) ended up faring okay, getting some press in festivals but mostly staying under the radar. Hitman, on the other hand, fared pretty poorly at the box office, facing mediocre reviews and little audience interest.

However, after seeing the two films, these developments might have been a blessing in disguise. After Eli Roth's Hostel: Part Two tanked, the market for these gorno flicks seems to have subsided. Eventually, Gens' flick went to home video, which is the proper medium for these kinds of films anyway, and can be found on the shelf of your local Walmart, along with Hitman, a poor film whose little recognition may work to Gens’ advantage when he tries to get funding for his next project.

Even with all this productivity and press though, does Gens really warrant it? The guy seems to keep his mind firmly in genre territory, and these kinds of filmmakers usually end up with a large base of fanboys who'll scoop up their stuff after the obligatory Harry Knowles review. Then again, a guy like Alexandre Aja (now Americanized to "Alex Aja," of course) did quite well with a remake, of all things, and French horror filmmaking as a whole is a rising genre due to the success of flicks like Them and Inside. Where does Gens fit in?

After seeing two of his flicks, Gens seems to want to present himself as this generation's John Carpenter, a low budget filmmaker who worked from genre to genre with deep focus on character and social commentary. In Hitman, Gens works with a script from writer Skip Woods (most well-known for that early 00's travesty, Swordfish). The story involves the title character duking it out with fellow agents of a shady religious organization and a political assassination. It even hops on the "who are we after facial reconstructive surgery" motif that's been popular ever since the 60's. The political context of the whole thing is a waste of time though with no real commentary on real religious organizations or anything of the sort. It serves purely aesthetic purposes with monks providing a visual background to our super cool, bald, and deadly assassin.

Viewed alongside Frontier(s) though, Hitman does pick up a thematic link in Gens' oeuvre. Scripted by Gens himself, the film follows a group of ostensibly leftist radicals (whose political affiliations are never really discussed) who, after the election of a right wing government, decide to flee to the country (evidently, they're going to face persecution. Gens doesn't bother to mention about what or even how). Once outside Paris, they run through the plot of Eli Roth's Hostel, only this time with neo Nazis rather than businessman and Takashi Miike. At first glance, the film's social commentary seems to say that "hey, it could be a lot worse, right?" Surely, the right wing government that the film's characters are so concerned about could never be worse than the insanity of the Nazi family living in a cottage with inbred children running about, right? That might explain the parenthetical "s" in the film's title with the different levels of what one perceives as a political danger and the actuality of how horrific a truly insane political ideology really is.

However, by the end of the film, I'm not so sure, especially after Gens makes comments about the 2002 elections in France being "the most horrible day of [his] life." I know I shouldn't take a filmmaker's words as too serious in a critical sense, but with Gens’ comment in mind, it becomes pretty clear that he sees the fascists in the cottage as the future of such a presumably oppressive government. I'm guessing, in that frame, that he sees the ending as a nihilistic submission to the new political machine. I personally see it as accepting a necessary evil. All of this might have been a bit clearer had Gens actually characterized the nature of the oppressive government. Instead, he opts to hop right into the thrills, which, given the possibility of developing a politically lobotomized attempt at social commentary, might have been the best thing for the film.

However, I must say that between this and Hitman, Gens' use of political backdrops for his genre trappings generally works to his films’ advantage, as long as they aren't dwelled upon. One of the very few things Hitman gets right is the sense that the political order as it exists could be, at any second, swallowed by oppressive figures. The same obviously applies to Frontier(s). Whether or not a plausible (or even intelligent) argument is made might be irrelevant, but the paranoia that it brings to the films elevates the tensions they present, which, as genre offerings, is key.

So, I guess that since the political discussion is nearly a moot point, the question of Gens' worth depends on whether he can deliver a capable genre flick or not. Although Frontier(s) is a pretty derivative work as a whole, Gens can shoot the horror, gore, and imposing Nazi freaks with a pretty steady hand, only occasionally succumbing to recent stylistic idiocy like excessive shaky cam or off-rhythm editing. His choice of the neo Nazis as villains, the whole treatment of their surroundings, and their eugenic-driven quest pays off quite a bit in distinguishing the film from similar gorno flicks, but his political radical thieves never take off, coming off as captivating as the teens who land on table saws in any number of crap American torture porn flicks.

Hitman never works quite so well, and I'm not sure that Gens is to fault for it. The screenplay's just as laughable as Woods' other screenplay for Swordfish (apparently, he's also working on the new G.I. Joe movie). Its attempt at crafting a political assassination plot, the religious assassin organization, and a pseudo love story constantly undercuts itself with terrible dialogue, vacant character work, and meth mouth pacing. The less said about Olyphant, the better. He mugs his way through the whole thing, taking a wannabe smug tough guy attitude to the film and failing continuously. He's the type of guy you'd end up beating up in a bar. You know you're in a tough place for an actor when the news that Vin Diesel was originally going to play the role makes you sad for the missed opportunity.

Gens tries though, putting a different kind of Bessonesque European arthouse look to a Hollywood actioner. The stylistics aren't deep, but they work to give something to look at other than the characters on the screen. The action is shockingly good with several competent gunfights and some nasty squib-popping. I can't give Gens too much credit when one of the pop pop fests somehow devolves into a fourway sword fight. Then again, it’s done with a certain amount of competency, so I’m actually willing to give him a pass on it. Unfortunately, even the better action sequences only come up sporadically in the narrative with the film more concerned about roundtable discussions between officials and lousy dialogue scenes between Olyphant and a Euro hooker, so a recommendation based on them alone is misguided idea, at best.

Still though, Gens does show promise as a director, able to deliver the technical goods that genre flicks depend on (shootouts, gore shock scenes, etc.). Although the films he’s made can’t be called politically apt, he manages at times to use the political backdrops to enhance the shallower enjoyment to be had. Frontier(s) works from a sometimes stupid and derivative script, but as a staple of what’s a silly genre to begin with, it’s better than most. His work in Hitman is visually interesting, and it’s a shame that the script for the film is so utterly idiotic and poorly-done. It seems that the key for Gens will be to work from good scripts, and with his next film, a cannibal flick set in the 18th century, I think we can look forward to fun things.

Once upon a Time in America (84, Sergio Leone)

As Sergio Leone's last film, Once upon a Time in America carries forward the advancements Leone had made with his last two films, Once upon a Time in the West and Duck, You Sucker! Like Once upon a Time in the West, Leone seeks and strives to reference, riff, and comment on nearly every (mainstream) gangster picture ever made. While doing so, he also addresses the big steps he took in Duck, You Sucker! and crafts characters with big psychological strains. Somehow, he manages to tie these two concerns into one big package that finishes the thematic concerns of the two pictures (the death of the West, flourish of revolution) and take his material up to the present day through his commentary on industry and the trajectory of American business practices.

Sound like a lot? Leone certainly takes on a multitude of subjects with the film, but with the release at just under four hours, he has time to look at a lot of things. Ever the entertainer though, Leone makes sure to keep the running time managable through his incredible sense of staging and pacing. The use of alternating time periods here is something astounding and allows Leone to frame his narrative while simultaneously building his characters, relationships, and the bigger questions therein. So the beginning of the film sets up De Niro as a destroyed man and then charts back to explain how he rose and fell and the larger implications of his story upon the changes in America itself.

Where Leone really improves upon his prior efforts is in the "before" stages. While backstory and motivation in his previous films had been largely handled through the use of revelatory flashbacks (Bronson in West, Lee Van Cleef in For a Few Dollars More, Mallory in Duck), he creates the character's pasts into a whole section of the film and utilizes his increased running time and the chance to fully explore these pasts as a way to develop his larger concern.

Through such an expansive narrative, the film can take a lot of thematic threads and follow them over time. Take, for instance, the concurrent developments of sexuality and business, the film's two major tools. As the boys start hooding around and robbing for small time, they also develop sexually. The two threads continually converge, most notably early on when the boys intimidate a police captain by photographing him with a prostitute and proceed to lay down their terms with him as they lose their virginity. Such a moment ties the big moment of puberty, the first sexual experience, with burgeoning business.

Leone never loses this connection but sees it through the rest of the film. The group's first big job, a knock down gig, comes concurrently with the film's first rape scene, a very bizarre moment that touches on some of Leone's shortcomings with female characters. As the group steals diamonds, Noodles, seemingly in the energy and motion of the moment, rapes the jeweler's lover. Even though he later states some regret in working for the big organization, the damage is done. Leone constantly portrays Noodles in this way, able to be violent (sexually or otherwise) but simultaneously pining for a chance to keep things small and presumably start a relationship with his childhood crush, the embodiment of purity (played by Elizabeth McGovern).

The relationship between De Niro and McGovern ultimately ends in the film's most disturbing sequence. After a date in which Noodles essentially plays Gatsby, he finds out that he can't have her and rapes her in the backseat of his car. The moment comes as a revelation to Noodles who seems to realize that the expansive business practices isn't the answer. Of course, things go south for the gang from there, and the film comes full circle.

The eventual ruthlessness of sexualized violence becomes a tool for Leone to show the depths of Noodles' flawed psychology but also as a wake-up call for the character himself. In the end though, even this symbol of purity ends up with the corrupt politician, implying, essentially, that all women are subject to money and really become whores when given the chance. Leone's treatment of women here and throughout the flick is quite atrocious and really plays into the virgin-whore dichotomy. They're used mostly as ciphers for the men and an echo for their business practices. Of course, Leone shows how such an existence is inherently unsatisfying for a woman, but the treatment of the characters is shallow in the first place. McGovern spends most of the film gazing off into space because she really has no character to play at all. The others try, but their simple promiscuous femininity is too cut and dried for any attempts of development. As stated above though, they are ultimately used as ciphers for the larger thread of business expansion and dead ideals.

This lazy character work runs concurrently with some of the others in the film. Despite a great James Woods performance, the Max character essentially operates under the radar with character development left out in favor of sporadic changes. The rest of the gang and other secondary characters (police, union leaders), while not given much work, function as a whole due to some great casting, including Treat Williams, Joe Pesci, William Forsythe, and Danny Aiello. Although none of the actresses get to play real characters, the men get some great, pulpy moments to push aside concerns over underwriting. De Niro is predictably great as Noodles, and the film's intense of that characterization and his psychology is unheard of in Leone's canon that normally concentrates on grabbing a character's essence and rocking it out for the film's running time (see: Henry Fonda in West and Clint Eastwood in the Dollars films). This emphasis on psychology and the effort put toward tracing it throughout the narrative is a big jump for Leone, and the film owes its success to how that character is handled.

Like the characters though, individual scenes occasionally flounder. The romance scenes between De Niro and McGovern are almost all an outright failure, which is a shame because the first scenes with the two as children are fantastic. As the pair age though, that naive flirting tries to become a romance without any meaningful moments between the pair. The relationship between Woods and De Niro has a lot more substance even if Woods' character doesn't get developed except in short sporadic bursts that cause the development of their friendship to get muddled and inconsistent at times.

Likewise, Ennio Morricone's soundtrack runs the gamut from gorgeous to sentimental to just plain weird with that pan flute. However, for the most part, his themes carry the emotional moments, and when it works, it works better than Howard Shore or John Williams could dream of.

Perhaps the conflict that sometimes arises between hard boiled and sentimental comes from Leone's obsessive genre take. At times, scenes will play out with stark brutality that recalls some of the meaner noirs and 70's crimers. Other times, there's a flowery sentimentality that also recalls an older era of filmmaking, something that Leone can never escape. Morricone's soundtrack reflects this with the pan flute accompanying the weirder and progressive moments mostly and the weepy themes accompanying some of the weaker moments.

In the end though, Leone's successful with his genre work, getting the eras and styles of yesteryear right while bringing in the uncompromising characterizations, violence, and sexual behavior more akin to the films of the 60's and 70's that he helped influence in the first place. In short, he makes it fun but keeps it sophisticated.

Although not as entertaining as the Dollars films, comprehensive in genre as Once upon a Time in the West, or as explicitly political as Duck, You Sucker!, Once upon a Time in America may be Leone's greatest achievement, a case in which character, construction, commentary, and cojones all come together. It's a swansong for one of the most celebrated and consistent directors ever, and it's a miracle of home video that the appropriate version is now the only version.

The Edge of Heaven (08, Fatih Akin)

If you've never caught a film about Turkish Germans, you can get a lot of bang for your buck with Fatih Akin's newest feature because it has incredibly familiar tracts and motifs even for someone who hasn't seen a lot of films that concern this particular group (i. e. me). Tackling generational conflict and questions of German (and Turkish) identity, this work seems to poise Akin as a modern day Rainer Werner Fassbinder, so much so that he makes sure to cast R. W. F. regular Hanna Schygulla. Consider the film a quick primer for the socially conscious cinema that German auteurs are world-renowned for.

However, the film may have less to do with Ali and more to do with modern flicks like Babel that take a social issue and spin labyrinthian narratives to comment on different angles of said issue. Here, the execution of these narratives marks Akin as a very special filmmaker. Rather than take three separate stories whose relation depends on subtext instead of content, the film relies on connections within the stories to highlight points but never panders to connect them. 

In fact, Akin's connections between segments come much more organically, and the missed connections within each disappoint the closure-seeking audience but create much stronger statements. For example, after a woman dies in the first half of the film (the segment appropriately preceded by a title card: "Yeter's Death"), the film's protagonist, Nejat, spends some time trying to find Yeter's daughter by posting flyers of Yeter's face everywhere. Because the next portion centers around Yeter's daughter Ayten and shares characters with Nejat's parallel journey, one might expect the natural conclusion to be Ayten's discovery of Nejat's poster and the cathartic conversation that would logically follow. Instead, Akin has Ayten only enter Nejat's bookstore in Turkey after he removes the flyer. These moments may seem like a tease or a downer, but they only reemphasize how empty such gestures would be, especially in light of the Turkish-German bonding that goes on throughout the film in individual relationships like Susanne and Ayten's developing friendship or the awakening and resolution of Nejat's Turkish-German identity. 

These meaningful connections also manage to subvert what I referred to in the opening sentence of the review: the familiar narrative tracts. I'm not sure if I've seen any more than five or six films about Turkish-Germans, but those experiences were enough for me to recognize a lot of the film's material, from the outburst of violence against a woman to the German-Turkish lesbian relationship. Akin manages to leap over any accusations of same old same old by not only summarizing these tracts but also through the creation of new meaning. The riff on the familiar image of a prostitute sitting in an open window in the prison at the end of "Yeter's Death" is maybe the best and most powerful example of such an operation.

At times though, it seems like this perceived attempt at a comprehensive film forces some questions into muddle. For example, after local hardline Islamic men discover that a blonde local prostitute can speak (and is) Turkish, they descend upon her on a bus to let her know that she can expect violence if she continues. Chilling as this moment is, it opens a page on the threat of violence from Islamic radicals that picks up after Ayten's stint in prison. However, beyond the statement that the mindset brings about violence, the film never addresses it or its place within the culture or even its effects upon the relationship between the two nations (although I guess it adds some irony to the "international incident" in "Lotte's Death" in that such an incident may have been presumed to be the work of terrorists). 

The above complaint may be moot in the film's greater attempt to discuss nationality and, eventually, migration. Every character leaves Germany in the end for Turkey, and a lot of tensions work themselves out in the "foreign" surroundings. The theme of migration might not seem so important in the face of Akin's depiction of national healing between Germans and Turks, but the fact that all of the emotions and issues come to a head in Turkey seems to indicate that such healing can't be done in the German nation but in the Turkish background. However, Akin always includes his German culture in some of the bigger figureheads of transition (the German bookshop), and the detached yet claustrophobic camera angles lend the private space that Schygulla has her breakdown in a certain sense of ubiquity. All the same, even with the insularity of German culture in each of the characters, Akin's exclusive placement of resolution in Turkey might lead his self definition to change from the German Martin Scorsese to the Turkish Fassbinder. 

Maniac Cop (88, William Lustig)

Maniac Cop's a very good example of how a sharp script that understands how to structure a film (and ensuing direction) can amp up the obviously "____-themed slasher flick" premise. Here, a police officer starts offing civilians in New York. Naturally, the police attempt to keep it quiet, so we have to rely on Tom Atkins, Laurene Landon, and Bruce Campbell to solve the crimes.

The plot's pretty basic for this kind of film and really defies any kind of true logic, but cult legend Larry Cohen's screenplay knows how to handle this material. When Campbell is inevitably accused of the crimes, Cohen doesn't try to make it a red herring that the audience will pick right away. Instead, to keep the mystery running, the script never attempts to explain anything. Eventually, of course, the predictably silly zombie(ish) cop details come up, but, luckily, William Lustig even keeps the killer's face secret until the third act. In so many of these flicks, they rely solely on the sleaze scenes to keep audience interest. Here, the filmmaker and scriptwriter actually attempt to offer something to look forward to other than more nudity or violence. 

That's not to say that these things are missing. Maniac Cop isn't a Fulci flick but certainly features its fair share of atrocities involving our mysterious policeman. Although many a kitchen implement are used, the majority of the material focuses on the cop's insane strength, a part of the genre that I think is usually ignored by writers who come up with set piece ideas in their local Home Depot. It doesn't hurt that Lustig films these sequences with some considerable skill, utilizing a giant actor and hard-hitting stunts to get across a number of intense moments with no gore or special effects. 

It doesn't hurt that the film features perhaps my two favorite cult 80's actors: Tom Atkins and Bruce Campbell. They both pretty much do their thing with Campbell taking a more serious turn than usual and more often than not leaving me with the impression that those Evil Dead flicks may have kept him from a legit acting career. The other actors don't measure up quite as much with the other of the three starring roles going to Laurene Landon who, despite being an epitome of my conception of 80's female looks, never gets a chance to do anything. Of course, I don't imagine Lustig and Cohen were priming Maniac Cop to be a flick oriented for a female audience. Bit players get to give great lines about the physical abuse applied to the victims, using medical jargon that sounds like it was grabbed at random out of a medical book, and Richard Roundtree even pops in for awhile to say hi.

All in all though, it's the film's half-sleazy but somewhat competently made attitude that keeps it going. It becomes more clear when you consider the seeming political commentary that's only good as a cool nihilist attitude that Lustig and Cohen are an 80's B-movie dream team. *** out've *****

The Lovers (59, Louis Malle)

Although the film's public reputation stems from the controversy surrounding the erotic moments and ensuing cases of censorship, the shift in sexual attitudes since the late 50's leave the film's treatment of sensuality rather tame and, therefore, more of a neat historical fulcrum than one of the film's defining traits. Instead, the enduring value of the film comes from the strength of character and the exemplification of Malle's versatility even at such a young age.

Whereas Malle's debut feature, Elevator to the Gallows, had four central characters who served larger questions of political action and the primacy of the private sphere over the public in that action, The Lovers takes an intense focus on only one character and allows its political functions to rise from that characterization, rather than the other way around. 

The deep focus on Jeanne Moreau's character pays off most of the time. The opening act efficiently gets down to Jeanne Tournier's daily routine: her negligent husband, lackadaisical relationship with her daughter, her fun yet yawnish affair with a polo player. The narrative's placement of these things in opposition to the happiness of the vague discontent of Mrs. Tournier really enables Malle to throw the narrative over as Jean-Marc Bory's architect character comes into the picture. The ensuing affair capitalizes on that setup and follows the narrative through to its somewhat ambiguous ending.

Despite the deep-focus characterizations, The Lovers ends up a mixed bag due to the rampant romanticism that persists throughout the narrative. Malle's attempt to present Bory as an intellectual counterpoint to the bourgeois surroundings come off as a very naive fantasy. The idea seems to be that Moreau, fed up with her empty lifestyle, goes off with the activist to lead a better life. Unfortunately, Bory's character's blowhard rejection of the aristocratic lifestyle never becomes a problem as he woos Moreau, and no real significant character work is done with Moreau to bridge the gap. Instead, Malle insists that the viewer accept that the two love each other at first sight and that such a notion legitimizes itself as long as that Brahms accompanies it.

However, it would be unfair to Malle to say that he doesn't recognize this. He includes a subplot involving the heroine's daughter that seems to sober the narrative from floating off into space. After all, if she takes off, her daughter's left alone with an inattentive father who spoils rather than parenting the child. Despite this inclusion though, the film tends to forget about this problem in favor of allowing audience sympathy to Moreau's character. 

Perhaps the most impressive thing about the film is that Malle pulls all of these contradictions together somehow. Sure, we know that Moreau's Tournier constantly endangers her child and, frankly, doesn't really give a lick about her, but Malle stacks the deck so much with the pace of the film that we fall for the trick too. The entire front half of the narrative keeps things relatively sober as the film sets up Moreau as the disaffected and neglected housewife who runs a passionless affair on the side. After the dinner party scene, the power of completely stopping the narrative as Moreau wanders around gardens, boats around, and makes love with Bory somehow gets the romantic material to overpower any other concerns. It's really a whirlwind of a scene with some classically and majestically filmed sequences that get so right, perhaps more than any other film, how one moment can result in the exclusion of the outside world. That Malle speeds through the setup efficiently but takes the time to linger over these moments only reemphasizes how talented he was, even in his 20's, at modulating mood. The infamous lovemaking only becomes a part of this fantasy world.

Again though, the problem resurfaces near the end when Moreau and Bory have a stop to say goodbye to the daughter. Malle acknowledges what Moreau is doing but never allows the implications to play out. Instead, the film reaffirms Moreau's control of her own destiny and need to run with something so instantly satisfying. As the car drives on, the film seems to forget the victim of the situation, which I suppose might have been empowering in that historical moment but simultaneously belies a wish to forget the dark side of the situation. Instead, the film revels in its romantic vision of the relationship even while attempting to present a more modern, less frilly perspective.

If the film needs to wrest the viewer from these questions by hooking attention to the plight of the story's heroine, then Jeanne Moreau greatly helps Malle in the attempt. Her acclaimed performance in Elevator in the Gallows seemed more like glamorized posturing rather than a fully realized character, but the nature of this narrative gives her a role to really bite into. Her patented seething boredom and penchant for the portrayal of denied passion makes the Mrs. Tournier part such a perfect fit that the actress and character even share a first name. While kudos should certainly go to Alain Cuny as Moreau's respectfully malevolent husband and Judith Magre as wannabe aristocrat "it" girl, Maddy, Moreau's performance glues the narrative together. Her ability to nail every emotional cue legitimizes Malle's love at first sight thread much more than the classic notion itself.

All in all, The Lovers features much stronger character work than Elevator to the Gallows but never grabs onto the cohesiveness that made Gallows such an instantly powerful work. The strong acting and some smart writing allow some of the cornier notions success. Additionally, Malle's strong visual sense and some neat pacing almost give the romantic iconoclast moments some credence. Unfortunately, the fact remains that there are facets of the film (the occasionally sketched ancillary characters and failed attempts to expand the film's ideology with the child's narrative) that must be endured. Luckily, what works does so in a strong way. So much so that the lesser aspects can be happily endured rather than angrily focused upon. **** out've *****

short changed (Blieden, Anger)

Rather than do full reviews for the following, I'm being lazy and writing small bits. Truth is, I don't really have a whole lot to say about them, and I'd feel like a fraud to pad a review to fit length or whatever. So, anyway, here's the flicks:

Super High Me (07, Michael Blieden): Despite some great standup comedy by Doug Benson, this flick really fails due to its attempts to address medicinal marijuana issues. It tries to say that California's the city of the future but even the most sympathetic doctor says that it's a farce. If it had lost that, it could at least stand up as a proper, if not a big stupid, comedy rather than a pretentious attempt to make a film out of such a ridiculous concept. ** out've *****

Scorpio Rising (64, Kenneth Anger): Kicking off a fascination with fascism, the occult, and cars and motorcycles, this Kenneth Anger short is maybe his most unsettling. Transitions between an old films, nazi bikers, and pajama parties of some sort disquiet me in more ways than I feel comfortable admitting. However, it's also one of his most cohesive works since Fireworks. **** out've ***** 

The Invocation of My Demon Brother (69, Kenneth Anger): Featuring perhaps the most awful soundtrack in film history, courtesy of Mick Jagger of all people, Anger's collaborative effort didn't really affect me but never lost me either. The strong visuals and pacing worked, but it never seemed to build to much, and I think Lucifer Rising gets a lot of the ideas this one gets wrong right. Again though, annoying synth score by Jagger. Awful. ** and 1/2 * out've *****

Lucifer Rising (72, Kenneth Anger): Some stunning Anger visuals accompany a very bizarre narrative concerning ancient Egyptians, aliens, cults, etc. How the pharaohs and the Sphinx (which Anger films in a way you've never seen before) have connections to the devil is beyond me, but the tone is consistent, and the individual scenes vary without becoming incoherent. **** out've *****