INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS (2009)
Quentin Tarantino’s films----all seven of them---are energized, in large part, by his willingness to toss aside traditional movie storytelling methods, substituting a style that resembles a collage of vaguely connected ideas. Every finished picture looks to me as if the eccentric writer-director has taken three or four or more scenarios, some that could have been developed into separate films, and found a way to force them together. Sometimes the pieces barely fit together (“Jackie Brown,” “Death Proof” and both parts of “Kill Bill”), sometimes they fit well enough (“Reservoir Dogs”) and sometimes the parts are so fascinating that not fitting is barely an issue (“Pulp Fiction”).
In his latest cinematic extravaganza, Tarantino has tied three leisurely paced, superbly written and directed set pieces together with an honest to God theme: Jews kill Nazis in World War II. But please don’t bring the kids for a history lesson; this is World War II as a fantasy revenge story, a brazenly comical and bloody reimagining of how the war turned out, filled with first-rate performances (something you don’t expect in a Tarantino film) and intense, savage action, not to mention a primer on Nazi propaganda filmmaking.
The roguish title (taken from a correctly spelled 1978 Italian film) refers to a ragtag band of soldiers----dressed as civilians----recruited to act on their own to kill as many Nazis as they can behind the front lines in occupied France. Most are Jewish, one is a renegade German solider and all are chomping at the bit to not just kill but brutalize and intimidate the Nazi army. Their commander is Lt. Aldo Raine (sounds like Aldo Ray, one of many movie reference), a quick-witted Southerner who demands, owing to his Native American background, every dead Nazi be scalped. That’s just one of the many ways the film humiliates and terrorizes the Nazis----defeat and death wasn’t nearly good enough for those bastards, Tarantino is saying, we need to revisit this stage and really put the hammer to them.
The Nazi-killing Basterds slip into the background during the second half of the film, as a young Jewish woman (superbly portrayed by Mélanie Laurent), who escaped while her family was murdered and now runs a Paris movie theater, plots her revenge against the hierarchy of the Nazi command. In the end, it’s all about the power of the cinema to make a difference. (Heck, even a film critic turned soldier gets into the act.)
Smirking and squinting through the entire operation is the fearless Aldo, played to near perfection by Brad Pitt. He’s crazy, impulsive and having the time of his life killing Nazis. As much as I’ve been bored by the recent dramatic acting of Pitt (“Babel,” “Benjamin Button”), his comedy chops are better than ever (here and his spasmodic health club worker in “Burn After Reading”).
Yet the performance you won’t forget is given by little-known Austrian actor Christoph Waltz as the ever-smiling, talkative, cunning and ruthless SS officer Col. Hans Landa. In the mesmerizing opening sequence, Waltz’s Landa visits a dairy farmer who he suspects is hiding Jewish neighbors. The well-mannered Landa calmly discusses the farmer’s milk, his family, his recollections of the Jewish family he’s pursuing, all as a psychological battle to squeeze out the information he’s sure the farmer has. If only for that scene, Waltz’s performance would be amazing, but he keeps turning up and adding layers to this toxic mix of amused superiority and pure evil. It is far and away the best performance I’ve seen so far this year.
“Inglourious Basterds” isn’t for everyone. Beyond the usual Tarantino indulgences----cartoonish characters (truly weird are Mike Myers as an English general and Rod Taylor as a spooky Winston Churchill), long discussions about trivial subjects, glacier-like pacing and, of course, plenty of spurting blood---you have to accept the fact that he’s rewritten the story of World War II to accommodate his scenario. Yet seen simply as an action adventure war film, it’s a thoroughly entertaining movie and easily Tarantino’s best film since “Pulp Fiction.”
THE MYSTERIES OF PITTSBURGH (2009) and WONDER BOYS (2000)
While I’m not a huge admirer of Michael Chabon’s novel---it’s a good debut but with all the shortcomings you’d expect from a writer just out of college----I was taken aback by the wholesale changes to “The Mysteries of Pittsburgh” made by director-screenwriter Rawson Marshall Thurber (“Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story”). In an interview on the DVD, Chabon says he gave his blessing to Thurber’s rewrite, but he also admits this was the fourth or fifth attempt to bring the book to the screen since it was published in 1988. He was probably just relieved to get it over with.
Most egregious to me is the elimination of the book’s most colorful character, Arthur Lecomte, an unstoppable party animal who’s in love with the book’s narrator, Art Bechstein. Elements of the character are incorporated into another friend of Art’s, Cleveland, but all that does is make Cleveland less believable; he ends up carrying too much of the thematic and symbolic load. Art’s girlfriend (needless to say, the recent University of Pittsburgh grad struggles with his sexual identity), the quirky, devoted Phlox, for no good reason, has been rewritten for the film into a shrew and very annoying minor character (played by Mena Suvari).
Yet even putting the book aside, the film doesn’t offer much of interest; the story is softened by the passage of time and the actors seem uncertain about what to do with their flat, predictable characters.
Twenty years ago, tales of binge drinking, gay sex and a bi-sexual protagonist was edgy and controversial. Now it seems like an indie film cliché. Amazingly, as filmed, the story feels so wholesome and ordinary that I can’t believe Chabon didn’t engage in some binge drinking over the results.
Art (Jon Foster, who played a similar type in “The Door in the Floor”) decides to have fun during the summer (of 1983) after graduation and finds it when he meets a gregarious couple, Cleveland (Peter Sarsgaard) and Jane (Sienna Miller). Art falls for both of them, but the film turns the homosexual angle into something of a lark and puts the emphasis on the bland Art and the blander Jane. The liveliest scenes in the movie involve Art’s mobster father, played by a very scary, very convincing Nick Nolte.
The film makes some use of the old neighborhoods of Pittsburgh, but most of the film could have taken place anywhere, despite the title.
Director Curtis Hanson’s take on Chabon’s “Wonder Boys” is a funnier, more insightful picture, populated with interesting, believable characters. When I saw the film during its theatrical run in 2000, I disliked it, finding both the socially backward, emotionally immature college student (Tobey Maguire) and the indulgent, dope-smoking professor-novelist (Michael Douglas) nothing more than literary devices. They still are, but seeing it again recently, I appreciated the literate, witty script (by Steve Kloves, who went on to do most of the “Harry Potter” films) and the wonderful supporting players. Robert Downey Jr. is a hoot as the professor’s gay book editor who brings a transvestite to the book fare being held at Pitt. Also memorable are Rip Torn as an egotistical novelist, Frances McDormand as the dean of the English department and Prof. Tripp’s mistress, Richard Thomas as her husband and president of the school who’s obsessed with Marilyn Monroe and Katie Holmes as a student who keeps trying to seduce her professor.
I must admit that when I saw the film nine years ago, Douglas’ Tripp came off like a pitiful jackass----an old guy trying to be cool. Now that I’m older than the character, I find him more believable, entertaining and even sympathetic. What that means, I don’t think I want to know.
JULIE AND JULIA (2009)
This entertaining, but forgettable movie intermingles a sweetly amusing valentine to the iconic cooking writer and TV personality Julia Child with an equally lightweight story of an unfulfilled 30-year-old woman who uses Child’s cookbook to regain a sense of herself.
Child, as impersonated by Meryl Streep, comes off exactly as she did in her popular cooking show: an unabashed, uninhibited eccentric who above all else loved food. Unfortunately, she seems about as real as an animated character. Writer-director Nora Ephron efforts to make Streep tower over others in the film (Child was 6 foot 2), shooting from odd angles and placing her in scaled-down sets, adds to the fairy-tale feeling of the film and the one-dimensional portrait of Child. Too often, Streep’s Child reminded me of Gandalf in “The Lord of the Rings.”
Stanley Tucci, who, in a juicier role, was Streep’s able assistant in “The Devil Wears Prada,” here plays Child’s husband Paul, an American diplomat. He’s given little to do, but in an odd aside, his character is recalled to Washington at the height of McCarthyism and his loyalty questioned. The whole episode seems completely out of place in this story.
But for all its faults, Child’s part of the film----mostly set in Paris in the 1940s and ‘50s as she and a pair of friends toil away at the French cookbook that would make her famous----shines compared to the dreary, clichéd world of Julie Powell. This discontent New Yorker, circa 2004, working in a tedious government job, decides to cook through Child’s recipes in 365 days. And, of course, blog about it. The crazy project results in frustration and domestic problems, but mostly great food and an improved self worth. Amy Adams as Julie pulls out all her charm and pluckiness to win us over, but her tale is so predictable and artificially feel-good that I never could build up much interest in her.
At one point, Julie and husband Eric (Chris Messina) are seen enjoying Dan Aykroyd’s hilarious imitation of Child from “Saturday Night Live.” If only this film had gone beyond the insight of that comic moment and told us something about this famous and influential woman. At least, I wish Ephron had found a better way to explain Child’s importance in the world of food.
BAD GIRL (1931)
This simple story of a young couple who meet cute and then struggle to hold on to their love oozes with the bleak, sorrowful mood of the country during the Great Depression. Unfortunately, it’s more interesting as a time capsule than it is as a film.
Frank Borzage, who won the best director Oscar for this movie, starts out making an ahead-of-its-time statement about the mistreatment of women, as Dorothy insults every man who tries to make time with her. We see various men, including her supervisor, attempt to “date” her, but she’s not interested in guys who are just after “one thing.” But just when you think you’re about to watch the story of a liberated, Depression-era woman, she falls for Eddie and “Bad Girl” becomes a sentimental love story.
It takes an interesting turn when Dorothy’s brother throws her out of the house because she was at Eddie’s until 4 a.m., assuming she has ruined the family name. But moral issues are quickly dispensed with and the picture becomes a contrived melodrama. In a drawn-out, silly plotline, both Eddie and Dorothy believe the other doesn’t really want the baby they are about to have.
James Dunn, who 17 years later would win an Oscar as the alcoholic father in “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn,” plays Eddie as a diffident, inexplicably bitter man, while Sally Eilers supplies the real energy to the proceedings as Dorothy. Both actors were career supporting players, but in “Bad Girls” they work well as sincere, sympathetic stars.
Not only did Borzage win an Oscar (over far superior work by King Vidor in “The Champ” and Josef von Sternberg in “Shanghai Express”) but the film was a best picture nominee (losing to “Grand Hotel”) and screenwriter Edwin Burke won for his adaptation.
LORNA’S SILENCE (2009)
This Belgian film doesn’t make for a pleasant evening at the cinema. But sometimes, believe it or not, movies are worth seeing because they illuminate a part of the world we don’t know much about. That remains the overriding concern of the best filmmakers of Europe, which includes brothers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, writer-directors best known for “Rosetta (1999) and “The Child” (2004). Their latest may be their most impressive, offering a look at the sleazy, dangerous world involving the buying and selling of residency papers. The film received the best screenplay award at the 2008 Cannes film festival.
Lorna (Arta Dobroshi) is an Albanian immigrant barely tolerating her drug-addicted Belgium husband (Jérémie Renier), who was paid to marry her so she could secure legal status in the country. Her taxi-driving partner has already arranged for her to marry a Russian man, so he can become eligible for residency and is anxious for a quick ending to her current marriage. This plan starts to fall apart when Lorna develops sympathy for her temporary husband after he shows determination to break his habit.
The characters of “Lorna’s Silence” aren’t very sympathetic, but their plights as they grind out joyless livings with one foot in the crime world, has become a universal problem that can’t be ignored. As Lorna, Dobroshi, an inexperienced Albanian actress, gives a tough, unsettling performance revealing the humanity beneath her criminal, callous surface. Nearly as impressive is Renier, who also played a druggie in “In Bruges,” as the razor-thin heroin addict who desperately wants a new life.
I’m unaware of the politics of the Dardenne brothers, but one of the strengths of this film is that it doesn’t ask you to feel one way or another on the immigration policies that have created this underworld. Without any adornment, it offers a glimpse at the desperate lives millions across Europe are living.
NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH (2008)
Writer-director, and former journalist, Rod Lurie has taken the basic outline of the Judith Miller-Valerie Plame imbroglio----turning up the melodramatic volume a bit----and fashioned an uncompromising study of the on-going threat to the First Amendment.
This being a Hollywood film, the issues become less subtle than their real life counterparts, especially when it comes to the picture’s hero, political journalist Rachel Armstrong (Kate Beckinsale). Unlike the New York Times’ Miller, Rachel is presented as a writer without an agenda or questionable connections to the administration. And unlike the real-life controversy, the film’s reporter actually writes the story that lands her in jail. In the movie, Rachel reports that an uncover CIA agent’s report on Venezuela was ignored before the president ordered air strikes and, citing an unnamed source, names the agent.
Beckinsale, the slight British actress who has become an unlikely sci-fi action star (the “Underworld” series), convincingly portrays this ambitious newspaper reporter who finds herself in the middle of a political power play, and pays a high price to maintain her journalistic integrity. By refusing to reveal her source she’s doing the right thing, but archaic laws are utilized to punish her.
Alan Alda plays her attorney, an upscale First Amendment specialist who at first seems more concerned with her wardrobe than the case but ends up becoming her staunchest ally.
The Plame character, Erica Van Doren, played by Vera Farmiga (the girlfriend in “The Departed”) with her usual clenched intensity, also is very easy to hate at first but ultimately gains sympathy as she faces untenable choices.
Movie critic turned filmmaker Lurie has made some heavy-handed political movies (“The Contender” and the polemic “Deterrence”) but here he’s written sympathetic, believable characters and put them in very real, stressful circumstances. There’s no need to fabricate crazy scenarios (as in his previous films) to examine the corruption of American politics and government---just turn on the evening news.
While lacking both the thriller energy of “Body of Lies” and that film’s big-picture interest in the future of journalism, “Nothing But the Truth” offers a very personal and poignant look at the costs journalists often pay to stand up to a power-abusing government.
WORLD’S GREATEST DAD (2009)
Don’t be fooled by the title or the fact that the movie stars Robin Williams: This is an unpleasant, irrational picture about a sexually perverted teen and his inept father who lies his way to fame. Not exactly the family film the title implies. And all attempts at dark humor or sarcasm fall victim to the jackhammer-like touch of writer-director Bobcat Goldthwait, longtime standup and friend of Williams.
A miscast Williams plays Lance Clayton, the single parent of a pornography-obsessed, hate-spewing, ignorant son who ends up accidentally killing himself (trust me, you really don’t want to know the details). His father, a high-school English teacher, attempts to give his son some dignity he never had when alive and composes a suicide note for him, painting a picture of a depressed, poetic, lost soul who was misunderstood by everyone. The rest of the film plays out accordingly: the vile boy becomes beloved by his former classmates and teachers as Lance fabricates a journal and encourages the fake image of his dead son he’s created.
Some critics have applauded the film as a comedic indictment of the culture of over-praising those who die young. But the son is depicted as so repulsive (Hitler was better liked than this kid) that Bobcat’s points are lost in the sheer ridiculousness of the situation.
Lance is a childish, scared rabbit of a man who struggles to carry on a conversation with fellow teachers. He’s such a sad excuse for an adult that it’s pretty clear why his son turned out to be such a social outcast. But it’s more than the character’s flaws that sink this film and performance. Half the time, Williams looks totally confused, expressing emotions that are out of place and unconnected to what the other characters are saying. Motivations change drastically from scene to scene and no one seems to be listening to what anyone else is saying.
“World’s Greatest Dad” makes most straight-to-DVD films, or even recent Williams bombs such as “Patch Adams,” “Bicentennial Man” and “Jakob the Liar,” play like Oscar contenders, so I have no idea how it rated a theatrical release. In fact, I can’t understand why Williams didn’t have all the prints destroyed. It’s really that bad.
SURVEILLANCE (2009)
Unlike Sofia Coppola, whose films bear little resemblance to her father’s, Jennifer Lynch is clearly a disciple of her strange, brilliant father.
Her second movie comes 16 years after her controversial debut “Boxing Helena,” which gained more fame in court than on the screen because of a legal battle between the studio and Kim Basinger, the film’s original star. The picture told the bizarre story of a surgeon who amputates the limbs of the woman he’s in love with. Considering the high-profile critical and box office failure of “Boxing Helena,” it’s not surprising that it took her this long to get a second chance behind the camera (though she also was hampered by physical problems after a car accident).
This bloody, amoral tale filled with psychotic policemen, spaced-out druggies, an irritating family on vacation and two very odd FBI agents unfolds as the survivors of a murder rampage are interrogated. The family’s quiet but intuitive young daughter, who notices details the adults around her are too distracted to see, offers the only respite from the picture’s parade of unpleasant people.
But this being a Lynch film, everything isn’t as it seems on the surface and when secrets are revealed, it makes everything that happened before more interesting. While the picture never achieves the nightmarish, disjoined hyper-reality of her father’s best works, it lives in that world, especially in the twisted performance of the cops and the federal agents played by Bill Pullman and Julia Ormond.
Both of these fine actors, who haven’t had good roles in years (Pullman in 1998’s “Zero Effect” as a wonderfully bizarre detective; Ormond since she burst on the scene as the title character of the 1995 remake of “Sabrina”) re-establish their acting chops with these puzzling, off-kilter characters and are the best reasons to see the film.
The seemingly pointless bloodletting can be hard to endure, but “Surveillance” has much more going on. While the film can’t be called a success, it certainly indicates that Lynch (who co-wrote the film with Kent Harper) has the potential to be more than just a famous filmmaker’s daughter.
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
August 2009
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July 2009
THE HURT LOCKER (2009)
Unless I missed something in the last few years, this harrowing new film from veteran filmmaker Kathryn Bigelow is the first feature to capture the sweaty intensity and death-defying existence of being an American soldier in Iraq. Breathtaking and disturbing, the uncomplicated story follows a three-man bomb squad as they are sent out into the street to disarm powerful munitions as less-than-hospitable Iraqi citizens look on.
The 57-year-old Bigelow, best known for cult favorites “Point Break” (1991) and “Strange Days” (1995), doesn’t rush anything; each frightening, unpredictable assignment the squad is sent to plays out in what seems like real time, shot with hand-held cameras that get right in the face of these men. One lengthy sequence has the trio of soldiers stopping to help a British unit in the middle of the desert and finding themselves the target of sniper fire. The film depicts long periods of waiting, in this case under the burning tropic sun, followed by sudden violence that seems---from everything I’ve ever read or heard from those who’ve experience warfare---closer to reality than what most action-filled war pictures offer. This film isn’t about battlefield strategy, military goals or political motivations; it’s about doing a job and surviving to see another day.
While each set piece plays out with teeth-grinding intensity, the film wouldn’t have the impact if the director and screenwriter Mark Boal (who was an imbedded reporter with a bomb unit) hadn’t emphasized the volatile relationship between the three members of the squad.
Sgt. J.T. Sanborn, played by Anthony Mackie (he was the smart-mouthed boxer trained by Clint Eastwood in “Million Dollar Baby”), is a no-nonsense kind of soldier who’s counting down the days remaining before he can go home. Sanborn prefers to get in and out of hot zones as quickly as possible, which becomes a point of conflict with the new squad leader, Staff Sgt. William James. This cocky, self-styled wild man who savors the chance to don the protective body suit and untangle the detonator wires of these home-made explosives could care less that his unorthodox methods unnecessarily put his team at risk. Jeremy Renner, who has never had a role this prominent (though he did play Jeffrey Dahmer in the 2002 indie “Dahmer”), plays Sgt. James, who, while totally nuts in his refusal to take precautions and wound too tight to function normally, proves to be superbly skilled at his job. He gives an amazingly focused performance; in many ways it reminded me of Christopher Walken’s Oscar-winning performance in “The Deer Hunter” (1978). Both characters have remade themselves into the warriors their wars required.
The third member of the squad is Spc. Owen Eldridge, played by Brian Geraghty, who seems on the verge of a nervous breakdown; tentative and unsure of his abilities, he admits he’s just waiting to die.
How these three relate, work out their differences and, in the face of danger, trust one another as emotional brothers explains what war is about----at least the war that’s fought on the ground day after day after day----in ways that no civilian or politician can grasp.
I’m not crazy about the title, but, if I read it correctly, its meaning captures this war. “The Hurt Locker” is the place where soldier put all their demons and fears, where they can shove aside all the normal emotional responses they might have to the horrific experiences of war, allowing them to continue to function and survive and do the job their country has asked them to do.
SUPERMAN II:
THE RICHARD DONNER CUT (2006)
Director Richard Donner, after “Superman” became a smash hit in 1979, expected to return to London to finish up the sequel, having shot most of the footage planned for Part II at the same time he was making the original. Instead, he was fired by producers Alexander and Ilya Salkind and replaced by Richard Lester, best known as the director of “A Hard Days Night” and “Help!”
The Salkinds, who battled with Donner during the filming, didn’t think they needed him once the picture was a box-office success and brought in Lester, whom they had worked with on “The Three Musketeers” films. Just as shortsighted, they decided they didn’t need any of the footage of Marlon Brando (who played Superman’s father Jor-El) in the sequel---avoiding what would have been a hefty payday for the actor---and substituted Susannah York as Superman’s mother.
If the No. 1 priority is the bottom line---as it almost always is in big-budget filmmaking----then it’s hard to argue with the producers. “Superman II,” minus Brando and Donner, was the second most popular movie of 1981. But if the goal was to make a worthy follow-up to the impressive original, they failed. And that failure becomes more obvious after seeing the re-edited version of the film, which represents Donner’s vision (at least, as close as possible) for the sequel.
Producer and editor Michael Thau (who had supervised a 2000 restoration of “Superman”), with the support of the director and the encouragement of the loyal fans of the series, utilizes the Donner footage that Lester had discarded and reshot (so he could claim directing credit) and the structure that Donner and script consultant Tom Mankiewicz intended to piece together this alternative to the disappointing sequel. (A minute chronicle of the changes can be found on the film’s Wikipedia site.)
While this 2006 version can’t help being choppy and occasionally jolting in its editing (put together nearly 30 years after it was filmed) it greatly benefits from the disembodied image of Brando, which shifts the focus of the film from the impossible relationship between Superman (Christopher Reeve) and Lois Lane (Margot Kidder) to the soul-searching, intense confrontations between father and son.
What was the strength of the 1981 version remains the best thing about the 2006 version: Gene Hackman’s performance as Lex Luthor (all directed by Donner). Part standup comic, part silent film evil doer, Lex never stops cracking wise or spotting an angle he can use to his advantage. It’s a crime he wasn’t nominated for an Oscar for either “Superman” or “Superman II.”
Thau brings back Donner’s opening sequence in which Lois throws herself out the window of the Daily Planet newsroom to test her suspicion that Clark Kent is Superman. Her stunt fails but later she tricks Clark to admit his dual identity by firing a gun (loaded with blanks) at him. That sequence is pieced together from Reeve’s and Kidder’s filmed auditions. Two Daily Planet mainstays from the original, editor Perry White (Jackie Cooper) and photographer Jimmy Olsen (Marc McClure) are underutilized in “Superman II;” instead the film (both versions) spends too much time with the evil trio from Krypton and their campy takeover of the United States---another miscalculation by Lester.
Visually, there’s nothing in “Superman II” that can compare to the brilliant photography by Geoffrey Unsworth in the first film. There’s an unforgettable, deep-focus shot of Clark walking in the wheat field after his father dies, photographed through the kitchen window at dawn from his mother perspective as she places a box of Cheerios on the table. This painterly still life is followed by the magnificent blue of the glaciers and water of Superman’s newly formed home away from home. (The two-time Oscar winning Unsworth is responsible for most of the 2006 version of Part II since he shot all the Donner footage before he died in October 1978.)
One problem with the structure of “Superman II” is that it doesn’t step back from the plot and offer the thoughtful moments that enriched the first film. Maybe if Donner and Mankiewicz had been able to finish Part II, some of that magic might have been added. (The pair’s commentary on the DVD is well worth a listen.)
The film ends disappointingly as it repeats Superman’s stunt of turning back time to erase everything bad that happened during the movie. It seemed like a cop-out in the first film and really seems lame to do it again.
The sequel to “Superman,” no matter who directed, was bound to be a disappointment: it’s hard to recapture that feeling of awe when audiences first saw Superman fly. But Lester’s emphasis on silliness rather than classic storytelling set a tone for the series that was carried on in the next two entries. Donner’s version, at the least, gives a taste of how the Superman legend would have been continued under his guidance.
PUBLIC ENEMIES (2009)
Maybe I’m old fashioned, but I like my movie gangsters with at least a hint of psychological underpinnings (Freudian or otherwise) to help explain who or what made them turn to crime. Michael Mann’s thoroughly entertaining chronicle of the last two years of John Dillinger’s life, when the FBI made catching the dashing bank robber their No. 1 priority, spills over with superbly orchestrated shootouts, escapes and robberies and captures the deep disparity between the haves and have nots during the Great Depression, but never digs very deep into its subject.
Johnny Depp’s Dillinger resembles, a bit too closely, Warren Beatty’s Clyde Barrow from “Bonnie and Clyde” (1967), another carefree romantic who robbed banks, to less notoriety, during the Depression. But Dillinger doesn’t display anything close to the quirks of that film’s Clyde; he’s just a smart, good-looking criminal. An equally one-note character is his pursuer Melvin Purvis (a tightly-wound Christian Bale) but that’s to be expected----he’s the good guy, the ultimate professional who, while never as interesting as the outlaw, will always prevail at the end.
Mann, shooting in many of the original locales of Dillinger’s exploits, directs believable action as well as anyone in the business, starting here with a brazen escape by Dillinger and his gang from the Indiana State Prison before Dillinger is even issued prison garb. A later escape from a city jail is even more spectacular as Mann’s camera follows the escapees through the narrow stairwells and hallways of the ancient facility. There’s also an explosive night shootout at a rural motel followed by a chase through the woods, showing off Mann’s directional dexterity and Dante Spinotti’s first-rate cinematography.
The film’s best performance is given by Marion Cotillard, the French actress who won the 2007 Oscar for “La Vie en Rose,” here playing Dillinger’s last girlfriend. She reluctantly gets involved with this dangerous man, but ends up caring deeply for him. Also quite good are Jason Clarke as Dillinger’s right-hand man Red Hamilton and Billy Crudup as a ruthless, conniving J. Edgar Hoover.
Mann and co-writers Ronan Bennett and Ann Biderman (from Bryan Burrough’s nonfiction book) go to great lengths to show Hoover’s FBI as just as brutal and unfeeling as the criminals they’re after, but they also never allow Dillinger to become a sympathetic character. For all his cool, half-smiling cleverness, Depp’s machine gun-wielding crime boss is presented as a bad man who led a very exciting life. Yet Mann and Depp never let us peek very far under the facade for signs of what made Dillinger Dillinger.
While “Public Enemies” is a much stronger effort than Mann’s slick, forgettable big-screen version of “Miami Vice,” or his overly solicitous biopic “Ali” (2001), it falls short of his best films, “Heat” (1995) and “The Insider” (1999). “Thief” (1981), his first feature film, does what Mann’s new film should have: offer a thoughtful and thorough character study of a career criminal.
James Caan plays Frank, a safe cracker specializing in jewelry, who has a good thing going until he throws in with crime boss Leo (a memorable Robert Prosky, best known as the desk sergeant on “Hill Street Blues”). He ends up paying a price for trying to go big-time.
Not only does Mann show the step-by-step procedures of the break-ins, but he explores Frank’s anxieties and frustrations even as he makes bundles of money. The supporting cast is first-rate: Tuesday Weld plays Jessie, the fragile, needy restaurant hostess who sees beyond Frank’s brash exterior; Willie Nelson as Frank’s criminal mentor; and Jim Belushi, in his first film, plays Caan’s partner, an expert in alarm systems. Dennis Farina, who later starred in Mann’s acclaimed TV series “Crime Story,” also makes his debut in a small role as a gunman for Leo.
TOOTS (2006)
Has there ever been a more exciting, vibrant and glamorous than New York City in the years after the war? The city was the center of the sports world, the television and music industry, organized crime and the bustling world of newspapers. And they all came together in Manhattan’s taverns and restaurants nearly every evening. Not only was this before the famous became too rich to mingle with the hoi polloi, but before drinking to excess on a nightly basis---while the wife and kids were safely tucked in back home----was frowned upon. It was also a time when these celebs had no fear of reading about their after-hour indulgences in the paper the next morning. The reporters and columnists who were hanging out in the same joints respected their privacy; maintain the image of family values and All-American lifestyles.
At the center of it all was Bernard “Toots” Shor, a Philadelphian who came to New York in 1930 and gained a following among the city’s rich and famous as a bouncer at many of the most popular speakeasies in Manhattan. Encouraged by the friends he’d made, he opened his self-named restaurant and bar at 51 West 51st Street in 1939. For the next 20 years, the circular bar at “Toots” was the hippest place in the city and Shor, treating everyone as both a friend (he called everyone “crum-bums,” from Supreme Court justices to young sport writers) and a special guest, became the town’s top saloonkeeper. He moved around the corner in 1959, but by the end of the 1960s, the world of celebrity had changed. No longer were the top athletes and actors hanging out in bars night after night.
This documentary, made by Shor’s granddaughter Kristi Jacobson, lets those who were there tell Toots’ story, including writers Pete Hamill, Murray Allen and Gay Talese; TV personalities Walter Cronkite and Mike Wallace; and athletes Joe Garagiola, Whitey Ford and, most poignantly, Frank Gifford. Toots was a very important part of Gifford’s life; he clearly sees the barkeep as a second father and he doesn’t hide his feelings in the interviews.
The filmmaker also includes some archival footage of two of Toots’ most loyal customers, Jackie Gleason and Frank Sinatra, talking about the man they so admired. Unfortunately, it was too later to hear from two of Toots’ favorites, the great Yankees, Mickey Mantle and Joe DiMaggio.
Toots Shor, who died in 1977, was a bigger-than-life character who was a big part of creating the legendary Manhattan nightlife at mid-century, and he did it simply by being a great friend to everyone who mattered. This documentary is a worthy memorial to his fascinating life.
HARRY POTTER
AND THE HALF-BLOOD PRINCE (2009)
The latest entry in this fantasy series does little to advance the epic tale of young wizard Harry Potter and his battle with the much-feared high priest of the dark side, Lord Voldemort. Also treading water is the character development of the movie’s maturing hero and his cohorts, Ron and Hermione. Yet it still runs 2 hours and 33 minutes.
Putting aside the “Harry Potter” fanatics, who, savoring every word J.K. Rowling has ever written, would be happy if every film was six hours long, I can’t imagine the average movie fan will find much of interest in “Half-Blood Prince,” in large part because so little happens. It easily could have been combined with 2007’s “Order of the Phoenix,” turning two placeholder films into one really good one. But this series isn’t about making first-rate, standalone films; most important is remaining doggedly faithful to the original novels.
The last 40 minutes of “Half-Blood Prince” brings the characters and action to life as Harry and Dumbledore plunge headfirst into an adventure to unlock the very soul of the dark world. Visually and emotionally, it’s the only memorable episode of this plodding picture.
I never really took notice in the previous five films, but at least in this one, the acting, with few exceptions, is either drearily bland or over-the-top flamboyant. Daniel Radcliffe as Harry, Emma Watson as Hermione and Rupert Grint as Ron struggle with any scene that requires them to be anything more than spunky and determined, while the older actors either ham it up (Alan Rickman, Jim Broadbent and Helena Bonham Carter) or are given little to do (Maggie Smith, David Thewlis, Robbie Coltrane). The great exception is Michael Gambon, the deep-voiced, elegant acting legend who took over the role of Dumbledore when Richard Harris died after the second Harry Potter film.
Gambon, who made his film debut with a small role in the Laurence Olivier-starring “Othello” (1965), emerged as one of Britain’s top stage actors in the 1980s and ‘90s after being a mainstay of British TV productions since the 1970s, highlighted by his starring role in Dennis Potter’s “The Singing Detective” (1986). He began appearing in American films regularly in the 1990s, including key roles in “The Insider” (1999), “Gosford Park” (2001) and “Open Range” (2003). He also gave a mesmerizing performance as Lyndon Johnson in the HBO movie “Path to War” (2002). But much like fellow acting giant Ian McKellen, who will forever be remembered as Gandalf in “The Lord of the Rings,” Gambon has a place in film history for his calm, thoughtful and witty Dumbledore, who understands Harry, and his destiny, better than anyone. In “Half-Blood Prince,” he’s especially key to the plot and more than ever deserves recognition for the role. Maybe even an Oscar nomination?
Director David Yates, who also helmed “Order of the Phoenix” and will do the two-part conclusion, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows” (along with veteran series scripter Steve Kloves), seems content to keep the faithful happy, biding time until finally putting the finishing touches on Harry’s destiny and his endless stay at Hogwarts.
DON JUAN (1926)
This silent version of the legend of the infamous Latin lover starts off impressively, with Don Juan’s father, an important Spanish nobleman, discovering his wife’s indiscretion and instilling his young son with a lifelong distrust of women. John Barrymore, as both the father and, as an adult, the son, captures equally well the bitterness of the father and the dashing, carefree manner of the son. We first see Don Juan cavorting in his Italian estate in an amusing scene in which he shuffles his various mistresses from room to room as word comes that the husband/lover of two of the women is on his way there.
But once Juan spots a young woman (Mary Astor) in the court of the wicked Borgia family, the film becomes a very familiar tale of royal intrigue and Don Juan’s playboy legend is all but forgotten. Suddenly, he’s an heroic figure out to save the naïve girl and her oppressed family.
The cast, especially those in the Borgia clan, including Warner Oland as the evil father, Estelle Taylor as the conniving Lucrezia and Myrna Loy as a lady in waiting, keeps things interesting and Barrymore’s enthusiastic performance never flags. But it’s really a sin that his character carries the name of history’s greatest lover. The picture should have been sued for false advertising.
CHERI (2009)
More than 20 years ago director Stephen Frears, screenwriter Christopher Hampton and Michelle Pfeiffer teamed for the witty, sexy costume soap opera “Dangerous Liaisons.” Their new collaboration shares the look and gossipy intrigue of that 1988 success, but is sadly lacking in characters you care enough about to either love or hate.
The filmmakers have adapted a pair of Colette stories about Lea (Pfeiffer), a high-class prostitute in pre-World War I France who, approaching 50, realizes she’s near the end of her run. Then her longtime friend (Kathy Bates, another aging woman of ill repute) encourages Lea to take up with her 19-year-old son, Cheri (Rupert Friend), who seems to have no interest in anything other than getting drunk or high. Despite the queasy nature of the relationship (Lea has known the boy since he was born), and Cheri’s nearly total lack of personality, the pair bond and end up together for six years.
Despite her history of short-lived affairs (with the men paying the bills), Lea has settled into her life with the freeloading Cheri and is surprisingly unprepared when his mother announces that a marriage to a young woman has been arranged and the wedding is just months away. How Lea accepts this new reality makes up the second half of the slow-moving picture.
Pfeiffer gives an admirable performance as this conflicted woman who finds all her toughness and practical approach to life useless after losing her heart to Cheri. But there is something remote, out-of-time about her character; Lea seems way too modern (and way too thin) for this early 20th Century world. While the 51-year-old actress looks ten years younger, still retaining the beauty that would attract young clients, her character never displays the sparkling personality you’d expect from a woman who has made her living alluring rich, famous and handsome men. Hampton’s script goes out of its way to make all these frivolous people not just dull, but quickly forgettable.
THUNDER ROCK (1942)
This odd, stagy philosophical study of an individual’s responsibility to do what they can to improve society goes off on too many tangents and attempts to tackle too many issues yet it remains fascinating throughout.
Set during the run-up to World War II, the picture uses the rise of Adolf Hitler as the launching pad for its examination of ignorance and cruel foolishness. Michael Redgrave, an underrated British actor who was drawn to difficult roles, plays David Charleston, a former foreign correspondent whose cynicism turns to hopelessness as world events turn ugly. Escaping into his own world, he works as a lighthouse caretaker on Thunder Rock, an isolated outpost on Lake Michigan.
Using a highly theatrical device, David imagines he can interact with the long dead captain and passengers of a ship that crashed near the lighthouse in 1849. Among those he gets to know is a doctor condemned for experimenting with an early form of anesthesia and a before-her-time suffragette. His intellectual debates with these characters on their responsibility to continue to fight against accepted beliefs are like scenes out of George Bernard Shaw’s “Man and Superman” and a rare cinematic plunge into larger issues of how one lives life.
British writer-director Roy Bolting does an impressive job of presenting David’s background, the passengers’ lives and the odd interactions between this 1930s man and these characters who have been dead for 90 years. The director and cinematographer Mutz Greenbaum make the most of the cramped lighthouse setting.
Redgrave, the father of Vanessa and Lynn, gives one of his most compelling performances as this self-analyzing, short tempered intellectual who is constantly searching for answers. It ranks with his best work, including his hypnotic turn as the ventriloquist in “Dead of Night” (1945), as the disturbed brother in “Mourning Becomes Electra” (1947), the introspective, retiring teacher in “The Browning Affair” (1951) and as the disillusioned foreign consul stationed in Vietnam in “The Quiet American” (1958).
James Mason creates an intellectual presence as David’s friend and boss who visits at the start of this film as part of an inspection team. Their heated discussion of each man’s place in the world sets the tone for this thoughtful, introspective drama.
Unless I missed something in the last few years, this harrowing new film from veteran filmmaker Kathryn Bigelow is the first feature to capture the sweaty intensity and death-defying existence of being an American soldier in Iraq. Breathtaking and disturbing, the uncomplicated story follows a three-man bomb squad as they are sent out into the street to disarm powerful munitions as less-than-hospitable Iraqi citizens look on.
The 57-year-old Bigelow, best known for cult favorites “Point Break” (1991) and “Strange Days” (1995), doesn’t rush anything; each frightening, unpredictable assignment the squad is sent to plays out in what seems like real time, shot with hand-held cameras that get right in the face of these men. One lengthy sequence has the trio of soldiers stopping to help a British unit in the middle of the desert and finding themselves the target of sniper fire. The film depicts long periods of waiting, in this case under the burning tropic sun, followed by sudden violence that seems---from everything I’ve ever read or heard from those who’ve experience warfare---closer to reality than what most action-filled war pictures offer. This film isn’t about battlefield strategy, military goals or political motivations; it’s about doing a job and surviving to see another day.
While each set piece plays out with teeth-grinding intensity, the film wouldn’t have the impact if the director and screenwriter Mark Boal (who was an imbedded reporter with a bomb unit) hadn’t emphasized the volatile relationship between the three members of the squad.
Sgt. J.T. Sanborn, played by Anthony Mackie (he was the smart-mouthed boxer trained by Clint Eastwood in “Million Dollar Baby”), is a no-nonsense kind of soldier who’s counting down the days remaining before he can go home. Sanborn prefers to get in and out of hot zones as quickly as possible, which becomes a point of conflict with the new squad leader, Staff Sgt. William James. This cocky, self-styled wild man who savors the chance to don the protective body suit and untangle the detonator wires of these home-made explosives could care less that his unorthodox methods unnecessarily put his team at risk. Jeremy Renner, who has never had a role this prominent (though he did play Jeffrey Dahmer in the 2002 indie “Dahmer”), plays Sgt. James, who, while totally nuts in his refusal to take precautions and wound too tight to function normally, proves to be superbly skilled at his job. He gives an amazingly focused performance; in many ways it reminded me of Christopher Walken’s Oscar-winning performance in “The Deer Hunter” (1978). Both characters have remade themselves into the warriors their wars required.
The third member of the squad is Spc. Owen Eldridge, played by Brian Geraghty, who seems on the verge of a nervous breakdown; tentative and unsure of his abilities, he admits he’s just waiting to die.
How these three relate, work out their differences and, in the face of danger, trust one another as emotional brothers explains what war is about----at least the war that’s fought on the ground day after day after day----in ways that no civilian or politician can grasp.
I’m not crazy about the title, but, if I read it correctly, its meaning captures this war. “The Hurt Locker” is the place where soldier put all their demons and fears, where they can shove aside all the normal emotional responses they might have to the horrific experiences of war, allowing them to continue to function and survive and do the job their country has asked them to do.
SUPERMAN II:
THE RICHARD DONNER CUT (2006)
Director Richard Donner, after “Superman” became a smash hit in 1979, expected to return to London to finish up the sequel, having shot most of the footage planned for Part II at the same time he was making the original. Instead, he was fired by producers Alexander and Ilya Salkind and replaced by Richard Lester, best known as the director of “A Hard Days Night” and “Help!”
The Salkinds, who battled with Donner during the filming, didn’t think they needed him once the picture was a box-office success and brought in Lester, whom they had worked with on “The Three Musketeers” films. Just as shortsighted, they decided they didn’t need any of the footage of Marlon Brando (who played Superman’s father Jor-El) in the sequel---avoiding what would have been a hefty payday for the actor---and substituted Susannah York as Superman’s mother.
If the No. 1 priority is the bottom line---as it almost always is in big-budget filmmaking----then it’s hard to argue with the producers. “Superman II,” minus Brando and Donner, was the second most popular movie of 1981. But if the goal was to make a worthy follow-up to the impressive original, they failed. And that failure becomes more obvious after seeing the re-edited version of the film, which represents Donner’s vision (at least, as close as possible) for the sequel.
Producer and editor Michael Thau (who had supervised a 2000 restoration of “Superman”), with the support of the director and the encouragement of the loyal fans of the series, utilizes the Donner footage that Lester had discarded and reshot (so he could claim directing credit) and the structure that Donner and script consultant Tom Mankiewicz intended to piece together this alternative to the disappointing sequel. (A minute chronicle of the changes can be found on the film’s Wikipedia site.)
While this 2006 version can’t help being choppy and occasionally jolting in its editing (put together nearly 30 years after it was filmed) it greatly benefits from the disembodied image of Brando, which shifts the focus of the film from the impossible relationship between Superman (Christopher Reeve) and Lois Lane (Margot Kidder) to the soul-searching, intense confrontations between father and son.
What was the strength of the 1981 version remains the best thing about the 2006 version: Gene Hackman’s performance as Lex Luthor (all directed by Donner). Part standup comic, part silent film evil doer, Lex never stops cracking wise or spotting an angle he can use to his advantage. It’s a crime he wasn’t nominated for an Oscar for either “Superman” or “Superman II.”
Thau brings back Donner’s opening sequence in which Lois throws herself out the window of the Daily Planet newsroom to test her suspicion that Clark Kent is Superman. Her stunt fails but later she tricks Clark to admit his dual identity by firing a gun (loaded with blanks) at him. That sequence is pieced together from Reeve’s and Kidder’s filmed auditions. Two Daily Planet mainstays from the original, editor Perry White (Jackie Cooper) and photographer Jimmy Olsen (Marc McClure) are underutilized in “Superman II;” instead the film (both versions) spends too much time with the evil trio from Krypton and their campy takeover of the United States---another miscalculation by Lester.
Visually, there’s nothing in “Superman II” that can compare to the brilliant photography by Geoffrey Unsworth in the first film. There’s an unforgettable, deep-focus shot of Clark walking in the wheat field after his father dies, photographed through the kitchen window at dawn from his mother perspective as she places a box of Cheerios on the table. This painterly still life is followed by the magnificent blue of the glaciers and water of Superman’s newly formed home away from home. (The two-time Oscar winning Unsworth is responsible for most of the 2006 version of Part II since he shot all the Donner footage before he died in October 1978.)
One problem with the structure of “Superman II” is that it doesn’t step back from the plot and offer the thoughtful moments that enriched the first film. Maybe if Donner and Mankiewicz had been able to finish Part II, some of that magic might have been added. (The pair’s commentary on the DVD is well worth a listen.)
The film ends disappointingly as it repeats Superman’s stunt of turning back time to erase everything bad that happened during the movie. It seemed like a cop-out in the first film and really seems lame to do it again.
The sequel to “Superman,” no matter who directed, was bound to be a disappointment: it’s hard to recapture that feeling of awe when audiences first saw Superman fly. But Lester’s emphasis on silliness rather than classic storytelling set a tone for the series that was carried on in the next two entries. Donner’s version, at the least, gives a taste of how the Superman legend would have been continued under his guidance.
PUBLIC ENEMIES (2009)
Maybe I’m old fashioned, but I like my movie gangsters with at least a hint of psychological underpinnings (Freudian or otherwise) to help explain who or what made them turn to crime. Michael Mann’s thoroughly entertaining chronicle of the last two years of John Dillinger’s life, when the FBI made catching the dashing bank robber their No. 1 priority, spills over with superbly orchestrated shootouts, escapes and robberies and captures the deep disparity between the haves and have nots during the Great Depression, but never digs very deep into its subject.
Johnny Depp’s Dillinger resembles, a bit too closely, Warren Beatty’s Clyde Barrow from “Bonnie and Clyde” (1967), another carefree romantic who robbed banks, to less notoriety, during the Depression. But Dillinger doesn’t display anything close to the quirks of that film’s Clyde; he’s just a smart, good-looking criminal. An equally one-note character is his pursuer Melvin Purvis (a tightly-wound Christian Bale) but that’s to be expected----he’s the good guy, the ultimate professional who, while never as interesting as the outlaw, will always prevail at the end.
Mann, shooting in many of the original locales of Dillinger’s exploits, directs believable action as well as anyone in the business, starting here with a brazen escape by Dillinger and his gang from the Indiana State Prison before Dillinger is even issued prison garb. A later escape from a city jail is even more spectacular as Mann’s camera follows the escapees through the narrow stairwells and hallways of the ancient facility. There’s also an explosive night shootout at a rural motel followed by a chase through the woods, showing off Mann’s directional dexterity and Dante Spinotti’s first-rate cinematography.
The film’s best performance is given by Marion Cotillard, the French actress who won the 2007 Oscar for “La Vie en Rose,” here playing Dillinger’s last girlfriend. She reluctantly gets involved with this dangerous man, but ends up caring deeply for him. Also quite good are Jason Clarke as Dillinger’s right-hand man Red Hamilton and Billy Crudup as a ruthless, conniving J. Edgar Hoover.
Mann and co-writers Ronan Bennett and Ann Biderman (from Bryan Burrough’s nonfiction book) go to great lengths to show Hoover’s FBI as just as brutal and unfeeling as the criminals they’re after, but they also never allow Dillinger to become a sympathetic character. For all his cool, half-smiling cleverness, Depp’s machine gun-wielding crime boss is presented as a bad man who led a very exciting life. Yet Mann and Depp never let us peek very far under the facade for signs of what made Dillinger Dillinger.
While “Public Enemies” is a much stronger effort than Mann’s slick, forgettable big-screen version of “Miami Vice,” or his overly solicitous biopic “Ali” (2001), it falls short of his best films, “Heat” (1995) and “The Insider” (1999). “Thief” (1981), his first feature film, does what Mann’s new film should have: offer a thoughtful and thorough character study of a career criminal.
James Caan plays Frank, a safe cracker specializing in jewelry, who has a good thing going until he throws in with crime boss Leo (a memorable Robert Prosky, best known as the desk sergeant on “Hill Street Blues”). He ends up paying a price for trying to go big-time.
Not only does Mann show the step-by-step procedures of the break-ins, but he explores Frank’s anxieties and frustrations even as he makes bundles of money. The supporting cast is first-rate: Tuesday Weld plays Jessie, the fragile, needy restaurant hostess who sees beyond Frank’s brash exterior; Willie Nelson as Frank’s criminal mentor; and Jim Belushi, in his first film, plays Caan’s partner, an expert in alarm systems. Dennis Farina, who later starred in Mann’s acclaimed TV series “Crime Story,” also makes his debut in a small role as a gunman for Leo.
TOOTS (2006)
Has there ever been a more exciting, vibrant and glamorous than New York City in the years after the war? The city was the center of the sports world, the television and music industry, organized crime and the bustling world of newspapers. And they all came together in Manhattan’s taverns and restaurants nearly every evening. Not only was this before the famous became too rich to mingle with the hoi polloi, but before drinking to excess on a nightly basis---while the wife and kids were safely tucked in back home----was frowned upon. It was also a time when these celebs had no fear of reading about their after-hour indulgences in the paper the next morning. The reporters and columnists who were hanging out in the same joints respected their privacy; maintain the image of family values and All-American lifestyles.
At the center of it all was Bernard “Toots” Shor, a Philadelphian who came to New York in 1930 and gained a following among the city’s rich and famous as a bouncer at many of the most popular speakeasies in Manhattan. Encouraged by the friends he’d made, he opened his self-named restaurant and bar at 51 West 51st Street in 1939. For the next 20 years, the circular bar at “Toots” was the hippest place in the city and Shor, treating everyone as both a friend (he called everyone “crum-bums,” from Supreme Court justices to young sport writers) and a special guest, became the town’s top saloonkeeper. He moved around the corner in 1959, but by the end of the 1960s, the world of celebrity had changed. No longer were the top athletes and actors hanging out in bars night after night.
This documentary, made by Shor’s granddaughter Kristi Jacobson, lets those who were there tell Toots’ story, including writers Pete Hamill, Murray Allen and Gay Talese; TV personalities Walter Cronkite and Mike Wallace; and athletes Joe Garagiola, Whitey Ford and, most poignantly, Frank Gifford. Toots was a very important part of Gifford’s life; he clearly sees the barkeep as a second father and he doesn’t hide his feelings in the interviews.
The filmmaker also includes some archival footage of two of Toots’ most loyal customers, Jackie Gleason and Frank Sinatra, talking about the man they so admired. Unfortunately, it was too later to hear from two of Toots’ favorites, the great Yankees, Mickey Mantle and Joe DiMaggio.
Toots Shor, who died in 1977, was a bigger-than-life character who was a big part of creating the legendary Manhattan nightlife at mid-century, and he did it simply by being a great friend to everyone who mattered. This documentary is a worthy memorial to his fascinating life.
HARRY POTTER
AND THE HALF-BLOOD PRINCE (2009)
The latest entry in this fantasy series does little to advance the epic tale of young wizard Harry Potter and his battle with the much-feared high priest of the dark side, Lord Voldemort. Also treading water is the character development of the movie’s maturing hero and his cohorts, Ron and Hermione. Yet it still runs 2 hours and 33 minutes.
Putting aside the “Harry Potter” fanatics, who, savoring every word J.K. Rowling has ever written, would be happy if every film was six hours long, I can’t imagine the average movie fan will find much of interest in “Half-Blood Prince,” in large part because so little happens. It easily could have been combined with 2007’s “Order of the Phoenix,” turning two placeholder films into one really good one. But this series isn’t about making first-rate, standalone films; most important is remaining doggedly faithful to the original novels.
The last 40 minutes of “Half-Blood Prince” brings the characters and action to life as Harry and Dumbledore plunge headfirst into an adventure to unlock the very soul of the dark world. Visually and emotionally, it’s the only memorable episode of this plodding picture.
I never really took notice in the previous five films, but at least in this one, the acting, with few exceptions, is either drearily bland or over-the-top flamboyant. Daniel Radcliffe as Harry, Emma Watson as Hermione and Rupert Grint as Ron struggle with any scene that requires them to be anything more than spunky and determined, while the older actors either ham it up (Alan Rickman, Jim Broadbent and Helena Bonham Carter) or are given little to do (Maggie Smith, David Thewlis, Robbie Coltrane). The great exception is Michael Gambon, the deep-voiced, elegant acting legend who took over the role of Dumbledore when Richard Harris died after the second Harry Potter film.
Gambon, who made his film debut with a small role in the Laurence Olivier-starring “Othello” (1965), emerged as one of Britain’s top stage actors in the 1980s and ‘90s after being a mainstay of British TV productions since the 1970s, highlighted by his starring role in Dennis Potter’s “The Singing Detective” (1986). He began appearing in American films regularly in the 1990s, including key roles in “The Insider” (1999), “Gosford Park” (2001) and “Open Range” (2003). He also gave a mesmerizing performance as Lyndon Johnson in the HBO movie “Path to War” (2002). But much like fellow acting giant Ian McKellen, who will forever be remembered as Gandalf in “The Lord of the Rings,” Gambon has a place in film history for his calm, thoughtful and witty Dumbledore, who understands Harry, and his destiny, better than anyone. In “Half-Blood Prince,” he’s especially key to the plot and more than ever deserves recognition for the role. Maybe even an Oscar nomination?
Director David Yates, who also helmed “Order of the Phoenix” and will do the two-part conclusion, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows” (along with veteran series scripter Steve Kloves), seems content to keep the faithful happy, biding time until finally putting the finishing touches on Harry’s destiny and his endless stay at Hogwarts.
DON JUAN (1926)
This silent version of the legend of the infamous Latin lover starts off impressively, with Don Juan’s father, an important Spanish nobleman, discovering his wife’s indiscretion and instilling his young son with a lifelong distrust of women. John Barrymore, as both the father and, as an adult, the son, captures equally well the bitterness of the father and the dashing, carefree manner of the son. We first see Don Juan cavorting in his Italian estate in an amusing scene in which he shuffles his various mistresses from room to room as word comes that the husband/lover of two of the women is on his way there.
But once Juan spots a young woman (Mary Astor) in the court of the wicked Borgia family, the film becomes a very familiar tale of royal intrigue and Don Juan’s playboy legend is all but forgotten. Suddenly, he’s an heroic figure out to save the naïve girl and her oppressed family.
The cast, especially those in the Borgia clan, including Warner Oland as the evil father, Estelle Taylor as the conniving Lucrezia and Myrna Loy as a lady in waiting, keeps things interesting and Barrymore’s enthusiastic performance never flags. But it’s really a sin that his character carries the name of history’s greatest lover. The picture should have been sued for false advertising.
CHERI (2009)
More than 20 years ago director Stephen Frears, screenwriter Christopher Hampton and Michelle Pfeiffer teamed for the witty, sexy costume soap opera “Dangerous Liaisons.” Their new collaboration shares the look and gossipy intrigue of that 1988 success, but is sadly lacking in characters you care enough about to either love or hate.
The filmmakers have adapted a pair of Colette stories about Lea (Pfeiffer), a high-class prostitute in pre-World War I France who, approaching 50, realizes she’s near the end of her run. Then her longtime friend (Kathy Bates, another aging woman of ill repute) encourages Lea to take up with her 19-year-old son, Cheri (Rupert Friend), who seems to have no interest in anything other than getting drunk or high. Despite the queasy nature of the relationship (Lea has known the boy since he was born), and Cheri’s nearly total lack of personality, the pair bond and end up together for six years.
Despite her history of short-lived affairs (with the men paying the bills), Lea has settled into her life with the freeloading Cheri and is surprisingly unprepared when his mother announces that a marriage to a young woman has been arranged and the wedding is just months away. How Lea accepts this new reality makes up the second half of the slow-moving picture.
Pfeiffer gives an admirable performance as this conflicted woman who finds all her toughness and practical approach to life useless after losing her heart to Cheri. But there is something remote, out-of-time about her character; Lea seems way too modern (and way too thin) for this early 20th Century world. While the 51-year-old actress looks ten years younger, still retaining the beauty that would attract young clients, her character never displays the sparkling personality you’d expect from a woman who has made her living alluring rich, famous and handsome men. Hampton’s script goes out of its way to make all these frivolous people not just dull, but quickly forgettable.
THUNDER ROCK (1942)
This odd, stagy philosophical study of an individual’s responsibility to do what they can to improve society goes off on too many tangents and attempts to tackle too many issues yet it remains fascinating throughout.
Set during the run-up to World War II, the picture uses the rise of Adolf Hitler as the launching pad for its examination of ignorance and cruel foolishness. Michael Redgrave, an underrated British actor who was drawn to difficult roles, plays David Charleston, a former foreign correspondent whose cynicism turns to hopelessness as world events turn ugly. Escaping into his own world, he works as a lighthouse caretaker on Thunder Rock, an isolated outpost on Lake Michigan.
Using a highly theatrical device, David imagines he can interact with the long dead captain and passengers of a ship that crashed near the lighthouse in 1849. Among those he gets to know is a doctor condemned for experimenting with an early form of anesthesia and a before-her-time suffragette. His intellectual debates with these characters on their responsibility to continue to fight against accepted beliefs are like scenes out of George Bernard Shaw’s “Man and Superman” and a rare cinematic plunge into larger issues of how one lives life.
British writer-director Roy Bolting does an impressive job of presenting David’s background, the passengers’ lives and the odd interactions between this 1930s man and these characters who have been dead for 90 years. The director and cinematographer Mutz Greenbaum make the most of the cramped lighthouse setting.
Redgrave, the father of Vanessa and Lynn, gives one of his most compelling performances as this self-analyzing, short tempered intellectual who is constantly searching for answers. It ranks with his best work, including his hypnotic turn as the ventriloquist in “Dead of Night” (1945), as the disturbed brother in “Mourning Becomes Electra” (1947), the introspective, retiring teacher in “The Browning Affair” (1951) and as the disillusioned foreign consul stationed in Vietnam in “The Quiet American” (1958).
James Mason creates an intellectual presence as David’s friend and boss who visits at the start of this film as part of an inspection team. Their heated discussion of each man’s place in the world sets the tone for this thoughtful, introspective drama.
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