APRIL 2007 Movie Reviews

*** Superior Film
** Solid Effort
* Same ole
# Sleep Aid

(Editor’s Note: Written before the recent French Election.)

Not long ago Dude said that he didn’t give up Perrier after our run-in with the French. For me, overpriced Perrier was easy to give up and not drinking French wine was a pleasure. The only thing that I couldn’t and didn’t give up. . . French films. Of continental European cinema, the French seem to please me more than any other. The next two films are two good reasons of why.

***PICKPOCKET (1959) – Robert Bresson didn’t make many movies, but he’s revered as a master among a sub group of auteur critics. PICKPOCKET is a barely 75 minutes and with so little dialogue it’s more like a silent movie than a foreign language one. Our hero has a compulsion for picking pockets and he has no moral qualms about doing so. The money scene has our hero and two confederates working a train station ballet like. After the film I watched Paul Schrader’s introduction in which I learned that Bresson uses non-actors which means Bresson is one hell of a director because it worked and that usually doesn’t.

***Le SAMURAI (1967) This is a great film noir that I had never heard of until Netflix recommended it. Alain Delon stars as the hired assassin who is spotted leaving a job. The police suspect him and that suspicion worries the mob that hired him enough that they try to kill him first rather than get caught in the web. I had never heard of director, Jean-Pierre Melville, but it turns out he was an actor in Godard’s BREATHLESS, the famous French new wave film. Melville now has my attention and I’ll try a few more.

**VOLVER (2006) – The most enjoyable Almodovar film of the four or so I’ve yet seen. Penelope Cruz, her daughter, sister, mother and aunt are struggling with their past and their future. I’ve seen enough of his work now that I can safely say that Almodovar is incapable of showing a normal and healthy male/female relationship. TIE ME UP, TIE ME DOWN is about a guy who kidnaps a girl and turns her into his lover. TALK TO HER has a male nurse raping the comatose girl who gets pregnant and wakes up. In ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER, mother and father are divorced because father is now a drag queen. VOLVER gives us the incest story that nearly repeats itself. Here if you step away from the gentle flow and your rooting for Penelope Cruz, much of the plot is laughable and yet Almodovar’s slight of hand makes it all seem so reasonable. That is a remarkable talent.

*WHO GETS TO CALL IT ART? (2003) – I thought this was going to be a documentary about the politics behind the modern art movement. Instead it’s a movie about a guy who actually got to decide if it was art or not, MET curator Henry Geldzahler. So the title should have been a declarative instead of a question. The movie is much in the mold of MAYOR OF SUNSET STRIP another obscure 60s figure that was nonetheless in the middle of much that was happening. The best part of the movie is the little vignettes with pop artists from the 1960s and how Henry was involved in their discovery and fame.

*SUPERMAN II (Richard Donner cut) (1982+2006) – When the original Superman was released to DVD a few years ago, Richard Donner said that he had shot more than half of Superman II simultaneously with the first movie but was fired after the first film was complete. Richard Lester took over and scrapped most of Donner’s footage. Fans on the internet started clamoring to see the Donner version and the studio yielded and hired a guy to put all that footage together. Despite the fact that Donner has to use a good portion of the Lester footage to bring his work to completion, the new cut is different in certain plot points, but not so different overall. I watched it with comic book guru, Sir Saunders, and he wasn’t convinced it was any better than Lester. I think that’s about right.

*ICE STATION ZEBRA (1968) – Several years ago with the release U-571, I asked co-workers to name their favorite submarine film. It’s hard to compare eras and even languages, but those who had seen DAS BOOT liked it best, followed by most who had seen HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER. Those of us who had seen RUN SILENT, RUN DEEP or OPERATION TOKYO discussed those for a while too. I even remember a guy standing up for CRIMSON TIDE. One guy was adamant to the point of conviction that ICE STATION ZEBRA was without a doubt the best. I figured that kind of passion was worth giving it a look someday. When Howard Hughes bought the Dessert Inn and purchased that Vegas TV station he made them run ICE STATION ZEBRA constantly. So I watched it while recovering from surgery. I found it a little pretentious actually with an overture and intermission despite being less than 3 hours. Rock Hudson is predictably solid as the captain. Jim Brown plays a badass Marine Officer in wooden manner. Patrick McGoohan shines as usual as an Intelligence guy along with Ernest Borgnine playing a Russian of all things. It was overlong and dated, and not charming dated like a 40s movie, with chessy sets that left no doubt that these actors were sleeping in their own beds each night. It’s a shame the plugger left the company because I wanted to ask him what exactly he liked so much. Maybe the worst Submarine film I have ever seen although not without some TOWERING INFERNO like entertainment value.

*THE ILLUSIONIST (2006) – Companion move to THE PRESTIGE, where another guy becomes a magician back in the old days. Edward Norton plays a smart Edward Norton, Jessica Biel plays Jessica Biel and Paul Giamatti plays a police chief. It’s kind of like a Mamet film with slight of hand and cons and what not. I heard it wasn’t good compared to THE PRESITGE, but it was alright actually although it fades from the mind quickly.

*MEMOIRS OF A GEISHA (2005) – If you saw The Last Samurai then you know how Hollywood makes a movie in period Japan. Just replace sword fights with pretty girls and you have the essence. It was certainly better than the preposterous Cruise movie and a decent example of characters living through an era that ends abruptly. Ken Watanabe trades his Samurai sword for business clothing and he makes a decent hero to our precious geisha.

*THE BREAKUP (2006) – Vince Vaughn is perfect as the loutish boyfriend who half listens to and usually disappoints his girlfriend, Jennifer Aniston. Aniston is also perfectly cast as the girl easy to fall for due to her cuteness but impossible to stay with due to her stick in the mud personality. This was marketed as a big comedy, but it deals seriously with a number of the issues between people who break up. Aniston didn’t really want to split from Vaughn, but his insensitivity made her play hardball. Instead of apologizing, Vaughn escalated the fight and refused to budge. Trish commented that it must have been funny that they were dating while making a movie splitting. I replied that Vaughn must have thought, wow I’m with Brad Pitt’s ex-wife. And then a few months later, wow I can see why she’s Brad Pitt’s ex-wife. Trish, who has a soft spot for Aniston, thought my comment cruel and I promised never to repeat it to Aniston.

**WHITE HUNTER, BLACK HEART (1989) – Had this movie come after critics “discovered” Eastwood in UNFORGIVEN it probably would have received much better marks. 18 years later is holds up quite well like many of his underappreciated films from the 1980s. Eastwood plays a character loosely based on director, John Huston, and it means that he has more dialogue than any three typical Eastwood films. The plot revolves around whether Eastwood can bag an elephant before he has to commence shooting his “African Queen” movie. I especially enjoyed the scene where he tells the lady that she is much too pretty to interrupt, mostly because Dude once did a pretty good impression of that scene when we were sitting around at his house.

FLAG OF OUR FATHER (2006) - (A Movie Review)

I tired to read FLAG OF OUR FATHERS when it hit the bestseller’s list a few years ago. It wasn’t easy. Instead of coherent story about the men in the battle and the aftermath, it was too much about the son’s journey to get to know his father. I thought the grown kids in Eastwood’s BRIDGES OF MADISON COUNTY were discordant and worried that I’d be in a similar fix here. Luckily, Eastwood and/or Haggis did a great thing by minimizing the role of the son. It probably saved the film because the story of these men is really powerful emotionally and it benefits from Eastwood’s subdued manner. The battle scenes are the believable hell. The army politics seem right-on. The national war-bond drive politics seem authentic too. The juxtaposing of War Bond Drive with flashbacks of their action on the island is well done and reveals character information as the right times.

Also a big help are the great cast of character actors throughout. Guys like Barry Pepper as a tough but kind Sergenat, Gordon Clapp as an officer working in the invasion plan, and even John Polito as Mayor Laguardia seem like real people although in minimal screen time. The three “heores” of the film played by Ryan Phillipe, Jesse Bradford and Adam Beach seem just as real.

Critics tend to see what they want to see in Eastwood movies. They’ll applaud what they see as an enlightened “right to die” message in MILLION DOLLAR BABY, but ignore his message about welfare cheats and personal responsibility in the same film.

Here they get locked into the politics behind the war bond drive and the phony hero aspect trying to make correlations to Iraq although the film never takes a definite stand like most Hollywood lore. It’s just presented. Yes, raising that flag was not heroic and yet you’re treated like a hero, but listen up son, you have a chance to be a hero by helping raise money in the war bond drive or we’ll otherwise lose the war. It’s hard to make an argument that they didn’t do the right thing.

FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS is a winner every step of the way and I think it’s his best movie of the decade.