Drive

I caught Drive, Danish director Nicholas Winding Refn’s hollow confection of a caper film, at Nitehawk, the new movie theater in Williamsburg. It’s a hipster’s concept of movie-going, with high end bar food and cocktails available to nibble and sip during the feature. There was something so fitting about ironically chomping down on nachos while trying to enjoy Drive, which, regardless of quality, stands to emerge as an instant hipster classic. With it’s neon-soaked industrial landscape and seductive, 80s-inspired soundtrack, it embodies a style and attitude that’s captivated the too-cool-for-school post-MTV generation. Despite it’s visual flourishes and occasional breathtaking sequence, Drive amounts to nothing more than a whole lot of posing. It’s the Marie Antoinette of chase movies – all style, no substance.

It-boy Ryan Gosling stars as a nameless stunt driver who moonlights as a wheel man for heists and robberies. It’s unclear whether thrill-seeking or economics motivate his felonious night job, but then we don’t ever find out why any of these characters are doing anything. He inexplicably falls for his downtrodden neighbor (Carey Mulligan) who comes with her own baggage – a husband in prison, a young son she takes care of, and a really tacky pair of hoop earrings. When her husband is released and needs cash quick, Gosling helps him with a robbery that predictably goes awry. In its aftermath, Gosling is forced to go head-to-head with a brilliantly cast-against-type Albert Brooks, a kingpin in LA’s seedy underbelly. It’s a great set-up for a trashy B-movie tribute, but Refn’s approach is so cold and detached that it’s impossible to become emotionally invested in the proceedings.

The actors can’t be faulted; they’ve been given cardboard cutouts to work with. The direction for Gosling was clearly to channel Steve McQueen, which he does with aplomb, though his cheekbones are doing most of the heavy lifting. It’s tough to buy Mulligan as a down-on-her-luck waitress – she has an inherent confidence and sophistication that’s at odds with the character. The supporting cast is a lot more fun, dialing up to archetypal B-movie figures. It’s a delight to see Brooks playing the heavy, while Bryan Cranston and Mad Men’s Christina Hendricks bring an otherwise absent authenticity to their small but pivotal roles.

Ultimately, the whole thing plays like an M83 music video that runs two hours too long. It might not be a bad strategy, however, as I couldn’t wait to download the soundtrack the minute I left the theater.

the year that was ...

Where did the lazy, cozy, red-wine-soaked winters of yore go? So far this has been a frantic, angry-badger-faced season for me, which means I've only now caught up on last year's films. Here's my list of 2010's best:

1. Winter's Bone

Call it Ozark noir. Jennifer Lawrence stars as a ceaselessly determined teenager who must hunt down her meth-cooking father to keep her family together. As she portrays this search through backwoods Appalachia, writer/director Debra Granik captures her subject and setting with a documentarian's eye. It's atmospheric, moody, and riveting. Lawrence, who played a similarly precocious and world-weary teenager in The Burning Plain, makes her character's pluck endearing and believable, while Dale Dickey and John Hawkes offer indelible portraits of not-entirely-unsympathetic figures entangled in the meth business.

2. Black Swan

Sure, I can handily buy all the "it's about the artistic process" arguments, but for me, this is a blood-soaked psychological thriller, as gleefully over the top as Carrie or Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?. Darren Aronofsky has never been one for subtlety, and thank goodness. Natalie Portman has never been better as a ballerina losing grips on reality (she relishes the stage like Elizabeth Berkeley did the stripper pole in Showgirls ... that's not a knock). Barbara Hershey and Vincent Cassel haven't gotten the praise they deserve as Portman's manipulative mother and director, respectively.

3. Somewhere

Sometimes I think about what it must be like to be Sofia Coppola.

"But Daddy, I want to make a costume drama!"

"When I was in the front row at the Anna Sui show ..."

"I loved that song 1901, off my husband's last album."

It's easy to hate on Coppola, but perhaps that's because we all wish we were hollywood progeny, fashion icons, and indie rock wives. Also, that we could write delicate, minimalist screenplays and bring them to the screen with grace and visual splendor. That's just what Coppola's done with Somewhere, her best film since Lost in Translation (the less said about Marie Antoinette the better). It's easily her most minimal, defined by dialogue-less scenes, a rudderless narrative flow, and relationships are implied rather than stated. I love the ambiguity as well as apathy for traditional narrative propulsion. Stephen Dorff stars as a disenchanted hollywood star living in the famed, decadent Chateau Marmont. Elle Fanning (she of the Dakota Fannings) is his charming, precocious daughter. They interact, disconnect, go to Milan. Their relationship -- and Dorff's lack of relationships with everyone -- feels quintessentially LA. It reminds me of the line from Less Than Zero, "People are afraid to merge."

4. White Material

I've written about Claire Denis' brilliant examination of post-colonialism before, so I'll keep it brief. Isabelle Huppert (always great) is the steely operator of a coffee farm in a crumbling African nation. It's abstract, non-traditional, haunting.

5. I Am Love

It had me at hello. A snow-blanketed Milan, John Adams' lavish score, and vintage credits. A fitting start to an opulent send-up to old style melodrama. Tilda Swinton (who else?) stars as a the matriarch of a dynastic Italian clan. Betrayal, dueling loyalties, clandestine love. It's all there. The soap opera is fun, but the technical marvels are the reasons to stay - costumes to die for and the most appetizing prawn I've ever seen.

6. Animal Kingdom

When his mother overdoses, a teen is forced to move in with his only family -- a notorious gang of bank robbers. Similar to this year's The Town, it's a fairly traditional crime film that explores loyalty, honor and family. The white trash Australian setting is fascinating and Jackie Weaver deserves all the praise she's receiving as the motley crew's duplicitous matriarch.

7. The Social Network

Yeah, it's been overpraised. Which is too bad, because there's now a bit of a backlash against this witty, insightful look at flawed ambition and social alienation. Few directors working today possess David Fincher's skill and precision, and when paired with Aaron Sorkin's rapid-fire dialogue (so good it warrants comparison to Preston Sturges), it's hard to beat. The opening confrontation between Jesse Eisenberg and Rooney Mara could easily be one of the best first scenes ever, and contains my favorite line of the year, "Dating you is like dating a Stairmaster."

8. Shutter Island

A real treat for lovers of old film, Martin Scorsese approaches this psychological thriller with an eye to Hitchcock and Georges Franju. The technical merits are peerless, and supporting turns from Ben Kingsley and Max Von Sydow are over-the-top in a great way. This is also, I think, the better of DiCaprio's "tortured soul due to late, crazy wife" performances.

9. Inception

Now for the other DiCaprio as a "tortured soul due to late, crazy wife" film. With The Dark Knight and this follow-up, Christopher Nolan deserves credit for pushing blockbuster filmmaking into an uncharted realm. It's also refreshing to see an original idea (not a franchise, reboot, etc.) get the big budget treatment (even if every line Ellen Page says is a piece of exposition). And as much as this isn't a performance piece, why people haven't been talking about Marion Cotillard's affecting work as Leo's luminous (albeit slightly crazy and dead) wife is beyond me.

10. Exit from the Gift Shop

An engaging look at the art of the scam, which itself might just be a scam. It looks at the rise of street art and the mysterious (and potentially fictitious) Banksy, who along with Shepard Fairey are the empresarios of the movement. It's all about what's art and who decides, or as Jennifer Egan put it in the excellent A Visit from the Goon Squad, "When does a fake mohawk become a real mohawk? Who decides?"

christmas? again? already?

Moments of utter bliss can occur in the most random of places. Picture me, puffy-eyed, hair tussled, early this morning at the Admirals Club at O'Hare. What an odd time to discover a bootleg version of Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story online.

It's not an exaggeration to say I've waited my entire adult life to see this movie. It's the first work from Todd Haynes, who I've had a crush on since I saw Safe in high school. It only grew when I saw his other films -- Poison, Velvet Goldmine, Far From Heaven -- in college.

But until now finding this first short film has been impossible. Due to his liberal, unauthorized use of the Carpenters songbook, and the fact that he uses Barbies (a trademarked entity) to play Carpenter and the other characters, it's been banned everywhere.

Amazingly, it lives up to my decade-long anticipation. It's camp meets David Lynch meets Kathy Acker meets Ivy League dissertation. It's unflinching, impossible-to-look-away-from, highly stylized, and profoundly disturbing. So, a fitting precursor for the Todd Haynes filmography.

I encourage all of you to take a look!

best. date. movie. ever.

Obviously, I'm kidding.

Nothing says "afternoon of a bonus day off" like an ultra-realistic film about the explosive demise of a relationship, but laundry was the alternative, so I couldn't resist.

Eeep. To call Blue Valentine the cinematic equivalent of getting punched in the stomach might be an understatement. Deliberately difficult to watch and pulling no punches, the film painstakingly documents all the horrible things people do to each other in a relationship. Unfortunately, it's a like what Cassavetes would have been like if he tried way, way, way too hard. That said, Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams can't be faulted. Yes, they're "fearless" for being so exposed, but they also make the film seem almost believable and real, even at its most contrived. If this is what that hipster couple next door grows up to become, I hope to have moved by then.

To that point, imagine my surprise to be alone in a sea of couples watching the film at the Angelika. What were these people thinking? Apart from loving seeing movies by myself, I was thrilled to be alone, I was relieved to not have shared the experience with anyone I know (Trading gasps during an abortion or awkward sex scene isn't going to bring me closer to anyone).

So, as hard as it was for me, the cold walk home with someone else would have been way harder.

isabelle huppert never lets me down

Five things that will happen to you during a snowpocalypse:

1. You'll get stranded in Connecticut.

2. You'll remember how much you hate shoveling snow. Outside of the threat of gay bullying, it was the thing you liked least about high school.

3. You'll become lousy for baked goods. You'll see that there's an inverse relationship between inches of powder and ability to display will power. You'll dread returning to New York this puffy.

4. You'll fall for Video On Demand. You'll take full advantage of your parents' cable and watch White Material, now showing at the IFC. You'll love Claire Denis' searing, unflinching look at post-colonialism. You've always had a crush on Isabelle Huppert and as the operator of a crumbling coffee plantation, beset with family disloyalty, a corrupt government, and unruly rebel miltias, she brings it. If you had a vote, she'd be your pick for the Oscar.

5. You'll be glad to (finally) return to Williamsburg, only to find yourself in something out of Land of the Lost. More than a day after the snow ended, your street will not be plowed and you'll see an abandoned bus stuck at the intersection of Driggs and N. 7. The look will be post-apocalyptic arctic chic. You get hipster apathy, but with half the guys in the nabe looking like burly woodsmen, you'll wonder why so few of them lack shoveling skills.

your parents' favorite movie of the year

We managed to take a break from preparing for Snow-pocalypse 2010 last night to catch The King's Speech. It's tradition for the Schumanns to brave the cold and the crowds to catch a movie on Christmas night. My pleas for Burlesque were ignored and we ended up at Masterpiece Theater.

Tis the season for self-serious historical biopics, and that's just what this one is. Deliberately paced (read: slow), handsomely photographed, and screaming it's importance at the top of it's lungs, one senses that the real climax the filmmakers are aiming for will occur on Oscar night. That might be a tad harsh, as the film does this brand of film as well as any other ... I'm just a bit sick of the stuffy British dramas.

The history behind the King's Speech is actually pretty fascinating -- the reluctant Duke of York (Colin Firth) is forced to take the thrown when his brother (Guy Pearce) steps down to marry a commoner (Wallis Simpson, the subject of Madonna's future Razzie-winning directorial debut). That's all fine, but it's the age of radio, there are Nazis all over the place, and the new king has a killer stutter. Enter an unconventional elocution expert (Geoffrey Rush) hired to prepare the king for his first wartime speech. It's the Odd Couple with a scepter when the unlikely duo become good chums and isn't that nice.

The actors, though, cannot be faulted. It's nice to see Firth do something more lively than the morose gay eulogy that was A Single Man, and Rush proves again that he can do no wrong -- they're an apt, dynamic pair. Most people know that I have an undying love for Helena Bonham Carter, so of course I ate up her tart rendition of the Queen Mum -- she's quick-tongued and witty. As much as I love her constant goth queen incarnations in Tim Burton's films, I wouldn't mind seeing her remind us of her range like this more often.

Jane Campion’s latest, Bright Star, explores the love affair between poet John Keats and Fanny Brawne. For all its literary ambition and handsome styling, it’s never more than a coffee table book of a film – very pretty to look at, but totally devoid of substance.
When we first meet Brawne (the round, vacant Abbie Cornish), she’s a superficial fashionista who finds literature and poetry a total bore. That’s until she meets Keats (the brooding, whisp-thin Ben Whishaw). He sulks around the grounds, writing verse and wearing his impending demise like the latest fall fashion. Of course she falls in love with him and their mutual infatuation swiftly moves into doomed love affair territory. With echoes of Julianne Moore’s nagging cough in The End of the Affair, Keats begins hacking up blood and though we know how this story will end, Campion chronicles his slow end at a snail’s pace. I suppose that I was meant to feel something, but as I watched Whishaw wither away, I couldn’t help but think how much better Bright Star would have been if he died at the beginning of the film.
It doesn’t help Campion’s case that Cornish, meant to be the film’s heart, is an utterly hollow screen presence. Best known for being the third wheel in a campy love triangle with Cate Blanchett and Clive Owen in the mess that was Elizabeth: The Golden Age, she has the look of a younger Kate Winslet with none of the depth. Whishaw fares slightly better, though as written Keats is more of a lovesick teenage girl’s fantasy of who Keats might have been rather than a fully formed character. Paul Schneider (so good in Lars and the Real Girl and currently on TV in Parks and Recreation) delivers the film’s only real performance as Keats’ pompous fellow poet and confidante.
This is a rare misstep for Campion, who even when she is off (the bizarre Kate Winslet and Harvey Keitel two-hander Holy Smoke!) is at least interesting. While nice to look at, Bright Star lacks the visual whimsy and dazzle of either The Piano or In the Cut, not too mention the dramatic urgency.

god, not more phlegm

Long before he burned the image of Tobey Maguire in spandex into our minds with the Spider Man franchise, Sam Raimi was the master of B-movie schlock. His Evil Dead films are the gold standard for blood-splattered, midnight-showing-worthy guts and gore. With Drag Me to Hell, Raimi returns to the genre, this time with tongue firmly planted in cheek. Much like Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino did with their Grindhouse double bill, Raimi delivers a gleeful, self-referential horror send-up.

When we meet Christine (Alison Lohman), her life seems full of potential. She’s ripe for a promotion at work, is about to meet her brainy boyfriend’s parents, and has bouncy blonde hair worthy of a shampoo ad. Everything changes when she turns down an old woman’s request for a third mortgage extension. The old woman begs and pleads, but with that promotion in sight, Christine has security escort her from the building. Big mistake. Christine quickly learns that the last thing you want to do is shame a gypsy, especially during the housing crisis. The old woman puts a curse on Christine that she has three days to reverse, otherwise she will, as the title suggests, be dragged to hell.

As Christine works tirelessly to undo the gypsy’s curse, demons from the underworld unleash an increasingly horrific barrage of terror upon her. It’s gross, visceral stuff — geyser-like nose bleeds, home-wrecking phantasms, and phlegm, lots of phlegm. There’s an especially memorable sequence when Christine finally meets her boyfriend’s comically snobbish parents that involves a piece of cake that bleeds and spews flies.

Raimi pulls all the gross excess off because he’s winking at us the entire time. The film sustains an elevated comic tone throughout and crescendos at a memorable, shocking climax.

Lohman, best known for enduring an embarrassing succession of wigs and the foster care system in White Oleander, gamely traverses the corporeal horrors that Raimi springs on her. The film rests on her shoulders, and she carries the narrative with dignity and pluck. As her improbably supportive and understanding boyfriend, Justin Long reminds us why he’s most famous for those 30-second Apple ads — he’s a TV-sized personality who does not seem comfortable on the big screen.

Drag Me to Hell knows exactly what it is. The production values, including a memorable score by Christopher Young, conjure memories of dated, low-budget staples of the horror genre. One gets the feeling that it would feel more comfortable being watched in the middle of the night on one of the lesser cable networks. And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that.

what's your state of play? yeah, you've got no game.

I'm currently reading Don DeLillo's Players. Written in 1977 and largely taking place on the 79th Floor of the World Trade Center's North Tower, it reads like a time capsule of sorts. Being a DeLillo novel, it's no surprise that everyone's paranoid. One character wanders the trading floor on Wall St. consumed with the fear that people are reading his thoughts. There are also terrorists everywhere, of course.
Speaking of the 70s, and getting to what this post is really about, ha, Hollywood in the 70s brought us my favorite sub-genre of film, the paranoia thriller. Think The Parallax View, Marathon Man, and The Stepford Wives. The new film State of Play, based on the highly acclaimed British mini-series, seems to be trying to channel these genre standards. Oh, and because it's centered on journalists pursuing the truth, there are shades of All the President's Men throw in for good measure.
Russell Crowe, or rather a puffy, sweaty fleshball somewhat resembling Russell Crowe, stars as a haggard DC reporter who happens to be besties with a dignified-looking, but totally duplicitous Senator (Ben Affleck). When Affleck's pretty, young aide dies a mysterious, accidental death, Crowe investigates and before you can say "Deep Throat" there's talk of a conspiracy. Crowe and the hip/young/stubborn blogger on staff (Rachel McAdams in some terrible outfits) work together and uncover a potential conspiracy involving a Blackwater-esque private mercenary company. The plot contorts into a messy web, characters say things like "this is a conspiracy to the highest levels", and there are some fairly unconvincing chase scenes (one involving a wheezing Crowe ducking behind cars in an underground parking garage). Basically, it makes The Pelican Brief look like art.
It doesn't help that Affleck, he of the Keanu Reeves school of inexpressive acting, stars as the two-faced Senator at the center of the tangled web. An eyebrow raise or pouty lip does not an emotion convey, Mr. Affleck. Other odd casting decisions abound. A surprisingly off-center Jeff Daniels plays a Cheney-like powerbroker, Jason Bateman bizarrely beams down from another planet (or another movie) as a sleazy PR slack, and Robin Wright Penn has nothing to do with the thinly conceived "scorned political wife" role. Thank goodness Helen Mirren stomps around as Crowe's coarse, broadly-conceived editor. She looks fabulous and curses a blue streak (score).

phasers set for stun

I’ll start with an embarrassing confession. When I was a kid, I was a trekkie. I had the action figures. I snuck into the TV room late at night to watch re-runs of the original show. I even had my mother sew me an officer’s uniform for my costume one Halloween. I patrolled the neighborhood that night in full anticipation of a Klingon attack. Few pop culture narratives have achieved such a cult status. It’s the exploration of unusual worlds, the bold vision of the future, and the constant peril that befalls our heroes that has kept scores of fans rabid for every iteration of the popular series.

It’s no surprise, then, in Hollywood’s era of the reboot, that audiences would be given a slick, youthful reinvention of the classic tale. This, after all, the same town that will show us remakes of Friday the 13^th, The Taking of Pelham 123, and Sherlock Holmes in this year alone. There’s even talk of a new Footloose for 2010. Lucky for us, director JJ Abrams, the man who has millions of TV viewers in awe and constant head-scratching with his hit series Lost, manages to pay due homage to the original show while creating one of the most thrilling adventure films I’ve seen in years.

Abrams’ interpretation is an origin story. We first see James Kirk and Spock as two very different children – Kirk as a mischievous rebel and Spock as a brilliant, if tortured young mind. Abrams sidesteps the narrative issues that normally plague exposition-heavy background stories and quickly flashes forward to the two men as students at the Star Fleet Academy and eventually onboard the fabled Starship Enterprise. Along the way we meet the new versions of other members of the original show including Uhura (a knockout Zoe Saldana), Dr. McCoy (Karl Urban) and Chekov (Anton Yelchin). Abrams wisely doesn’t spend too long on the introductions, and the Enterprise is soon locked into heated combat with a rogue Romulan vessel. The action scenes are visually stunning and incredibly well-paced.

Abrams and his actors should be credited for delivering finely etched characterizations while hoping from one elaborate action set piece to the next. As Kirk and Spock, respectively, newcomer Chris Pine and Heroes’ Zachary Quinto ooze matinee idol charisma. The other members of the Enterprise crew do justice to their predecessors, most notably the hilarious Simon Pegg as Scotty.

Much like last summer’s The Dark Knight, Star Trek proves that Hollywood is still capable of raising the bar for summer action epics. And seeing as though Abrams ends this chapter ripe for a more, I fully expect him to somehow top this adventure.

the holocaust, illiteracy, old age makeup, oh my!

Every year around this time, I turn into the most improbable moviegoer. All year long, even through the often overcrowded holiday movie season, I try to see all the films that garner critical praise or become hot buttons of discussion. In a perfect world, these films would be in the running for Oscar recognition, but that is seldom the case (that Rachel Getting Married’s sole chance at a win rests on Anne Hathaway’s shoulders is a crime).
But as we all know, the Oscars play from a different rule book. That’s why after the nominations are announced, you can find me in line with all the other saps to see something I would never waste time on under normal circumstances.
The Reader, Stephen Daldry’s melodrama that takes place in post-WWII Germany, exemplifies this dilemma. I had a lukewarm reaction while watching the film, but in the past few days my opinion has solidified and I’ve had trouble shaking its acrid aftertaste. The film certainly panders to the Academy’s faux-highbrow tastes. It’s painfully self-serious, dutifully photographed, and confronts one of their favorite themes, the specter of the holocaust. And all while pulsing with a disposable score that, I’ve decided, is in place to keep us awake.
The story follows a dull German student who improbably conducts an illicit affair with a much older woman (Kate Winslet) in 1950s West Germany. She’s icy, controlling, and they bathe together quite a bit. The first third of the movie is spent laboriously chronicling their trysts, an exercise that is neither thought-provoking nor stimulating.
One day, Winslet’s character leaves without saying goodbye, which sends our awkward protagonist into lamentable turmoil. A few years later, he’s a law student (still awkward, still dull), who studies the case of several SS guards on trial for murder. He’s shocked and horrified to see Winslet as one of the accused. The trial and its aftermath (where our protagonist is now played by Ralph Fiennes, and yes, still dull, still awkward) investigates the legacy of the holocaust with a club foot, and throws in illiteracy and old age makeup for good measure.
The film can’t succeed because we never get a handle on Winslet’s character. It’s meant to pivot on the tension that comes from feeling improbable sympathy for a Nazi guard, but it fails. When we first meet her, years after the war, it’s clear that she’s a damaged person, but she’s also cold, calculating, and selfish. I hate to suggest that Winslet turns in a two-dimensional portrayal, but we never get a glimmer of Hannah’s inner-life. Sure, there are moments in the film’s final act that suggest insecurity and childish curiosity, but it’s not enough to add texture to her morally dubious behavior. There’s no rule that says all characters must be sympathetic, we need enough substance to complicate and engage our reaction.

"our lady of humanitarian narcissism"

Clint Eastwood’s Changeling feels, much like the director himself, like a relic from another era. It’s the type of melodramatic, bravura yarn about a down-to-earth heroine’s perilous travails that seems better suited for the Barbara Stanwyck and Joan Fontaine set. It’s surprising, then, to see this sudsy tragedy feature the decidedly contemporary Angelina Jolie, she of the big lips, smoky eyes, and world-saving ambition.

Jolie plays Christine Collins, a single mother living in 1920s Los Angeles. Over the course of the sometimes laborious two-and-a-half running time, she encounters an otherworldly level of suffering (and wardrobe changes) that would make Susan Hayward proud. One day, Christine returns from her job at the phone company to find her young son, Walter, missing. When she calls the police, she gets the first of what turns into many brush offs. Her search for her son exposes a corrupt police department that would rather silence its critics than admit its own mistakes. When the department uncovers a boy they claim is Walter, but clearly is not, Christine challenges them. Her crusade to find her real son attracts the attention of an evangelical blowhard (John Malkovich, who acted opposite Eastwood to much better effect in In the Line of Fire), who becomes an unlikely partner in Christine’s quest.

Eastwood based the film on a true story, and the narrative suffers for it. True life simply doesn’t move at the compressed pace that even a slow-moving film requires. And even the most exciting lives require a little dramatic license to suit a compelling narrative. Eastwood is too married to the real-life events to keep the audience entertained. With all of the legal and bureaucratic gymnastics that Christine must endure, the film often feels like a second-rate depression-era crime procedural. Think CSI: Pasadena. Additionally, a critical subplot involving a ruthless serial killer is entirely mishandled. It’s a surprising misstep for Eastwood, who has experienced an unlikely career renaissance with the effortlessly thrilling Mystic River and the beautifully-acted Million Dollar Baby.

Given the borderline absurd level of suffering that Christine undergoes, it’s a testament to Jolie’s talent that her performance does not become overrun with hysterics. Yes, she has a nasty run-in with electroshock. Yes, she has the requisite “Give me an Oscar” cry scene. Yes, she must endure not one, but two simultaneously occurring trials. And all without smudging her make-up. It’s a star vehicle of the classical model, and even with the best lighting and killer crimson lipstick, Jolie manages to make Christine’s suffering honest and relatable.

the last movie i saw

With her sullen cheeks and detached gaze, it’s hard to believe the Kristin Scott Thomas we see in I’ve Loved You So Long is the same actress who stunned us in The English Patient 12 years ago. That actress was luminous and radiated an old Hollywood glamour. Her screen presence still held a distant, aristocratic coolness, one that went on to define her subsequent work in The Horse Whisperer and her underrated comic turn in Gosford Park. In this film, a probing French drama that moves at a clip, Scott Thomas leverages her chilly persona to create a fascinating character and deliver an unforgettable emotional wallop.

When we first meet Juliette (Scott Thomas), all we know is that she has just been released from prison and is moving to a French university town to live with her sister (an impressive Elsa Zylberstein) and her family. As we spend more time with Juliette, writer/director Philippe Claudel slowly and masterfully reveals the details of Juliette’s lengthy incarceration, all culminating in a shocking, devastating revelation in the film’s final moments. Until this explosive finale, though, the true drama and tension comes from what is not said and what Claudel keeps from his audience.

As we see Juliette listlessly confront the realities of rebuilding a life – finding a new job, meeting new people, reconnecting with forgotten relatives – her silence and indifference indicate the crippling repercussions of the crime she committed years ago. Each time she tries to reach out for human contact, most notably when she picks up a paramour in a café, she recoils at the slightest hint of a genuine connection. And while the film carries all the trappings of a Lifetime-worthy domestic drama – crime, bitterness, familial dysfunction – Claudel and his actors approach the material with subtle dignity.

Each member of the cast provides an intriguing characterization, but nobody leaves as distinct an impression as Scott Thomas. It’s a largely silent performance, especially during the film’s first two-thirds where Juliette is most acutely unable to forge a connection with anyone. Scott Thomas is able to convey a great deal of anguish, strife, and anger through her characters painful stoicism. It’s an intricate marvel. It certainly has been Scott Thomas’ year. She’s currently receiving raves for her performance in The Seagull on Broadway, and she delivered a funny, touching supporting performance in this summer’s fantastic Tell No One (also in French).

playing to an empty stadium

The last movie I walked out of was David Cronenberg’s dull, hollow Eastern Promises. It wouldn’t make anybody’s list for worst film ever (Tim Burton’s Planet of the Apes remake holds that spot for me), but its plodding mediocrity was more than I could stomach. I felt the same sense of antsy dissatisfaction with Oliver Stone’s sluggish, defanged W. Neither a satire nor a traditional biopic of our current President, this one lazily glides through a score of anecdotes we’ve already heard and tries to pass it off as a narrative. By the time George Bush is traversing the range at his Crawford ranch with Tony Blair and Condaleeza Rice in tow, I knew I had seen enough. Yes, I walked out. My only regret is that I didn’t do so sooner.

Stone has made a career out of making inflammatory, revisionist historical epics. JFK pushes forth controversial conspiracy theories as fact, and Nixon eviscerates a worthy target with gleeful, fact-fudging verbosity. It’s a shame Stone left his boxing gloves at home this time around, because his take on Bush is notable only for its bland, apolitical, and almost objective interpretation. There’s a place for objectivity in hard news, but it doesn’t cut it in cinema.

We get the same story we’ve always heard. Hard-partying frat boy turns unlikely heir to a political dynasty. Stone tries to shape the tale into an Oedipal drama about W’s inability to please his father (a totally unconvincing James Cromwell as Bush Sr.), but it’s hard to buy this dim-witted politico as a tragic hero. And that’s about as much focus as we get. The political policy scenes that follow, especially those that depict the build-up to the current war in Iraq, lack the nuance of even a sub-par episode of The West Wing.

Brolin, who carried last year’s No Country for Old Men with gusto, doesn’t have the range to pull off a winning impersonation of W. We never really believe we’re watching the real thing, even when Brolin mutters an amusing “bushism.” He fares better, though, than the supporting cast, which plays like a rogue’s gallery of rejected SNL impersonations. Richard Dreyfuss hams it up as Dick Cheney, Ellen Burstyn wears an awful wig as Barbara Bush, and Toby Jones looks and acts nothing like Karl Rove. The worst, though, must be Thandie Newton, whose cartoonish interpretation of Condi Rice looks and sounds like a bad Halloween costume.

Elizabeth Banks, as Laura Bush, is the only actor who manages to turn in a fully-realized performance. If it were her story, I might have stuck around.

glad to be weirdly close

Since 1999’s Being John Malkovich, Charlie Kaufman has amassed a level of fame that’s rare for a screenwriter. Diablo Cody, with her slang-driven fare and stripper background is the only other recent phenom in the same league. Kaufman’s aggressively idiosyncratic, chaotic worldview has turned conventional genres on their ear – Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is a romantic comedy for hipsters, manic depressives, and schizophrenics alike.
It’s no surprise, then, that Kaufman’s directorial debut, Synecdoche, New York, has been so eagerly awaited. Would Kaufman’s decidedly unorthodox narrative style survive without the directorial filter of Spike Jonze or Michel Gondry? The answer is a resounding no.
Synecdoche, New York is a muddle of existential malaise and grating navel-gazing. The film follows Caden (Capote’s Philip Seymour Hoffman), a downtrodden regional theater director whose life is swiftly deteriorating. His sardonic wife (Being John Malkovich’s Catherine Keener) takes their daughter and moves to Berlin with her pot-smoking best friend (Margot at the Wedding’s Jennifer Jason Leigh). On top of this personal failure, Caden experiences a series of increasingly disgusting medical woes – graphically depicted gum surgery is the least of it. Things begin to look up when he wins a prestigious grant and decides to mount an ambitious theater project that aims to realistically depict everyday life. Housed in a gigantic New York City warehouse, the play turns into a decade-spanning behemoth, with recreations of all of the places and people in Caden’s life.
The chief problem with Synecdoche, New York, outside of its crippling ambition, is Kaufman’s refusal to fully develop any of the other characters in Caden’s life. Hoffman does an underwhelming two-dimensional tap dance of death-tinged midlife disappointment, and Kaufman’s obsession with Caden’s woes push the potentially vibrant supporting cast into the fringe.
Samantha Morton (Minority Report) makes the strongest impression as Caden’s loyal assistant Hazel, while Keener, and Dianne Wiest (Hannah and her Sisters) and Emily Watson (Punch-Drunk Love) as actresses in Caden’s production come almost as close. It’s a shame to see remaining cast, consisting of some of the best character actresses working today including Leigh, Michelle Williams (Brokeback Mountain), and Hope Davis (American Splendor), go to such cruel waste.
While the entire proceedings are tamped down by Kaufman’s exceedingly bleak atmospherics, composer Jon Brion, who provided memorable scores for I Heart Huckabees and Punch-Drunk Love, deserves special mention for his whimsical score.

would you like some chicken fillets?

British filmmaker Mike Leigh has never shied from portraying the gloomy side of everyday life. Secrets and Lies, his sensational, Oscar-nominated drama, explored deception and familial conflict in working class London and his Vera Drake portrayed the destruction of a struggling family at the hands of moral absolutism. So considerable surprise greets his latest, Happy-Go-Lucky, an amusing, ceaselessly funny comedy that follows a perpetually positive and cheery London schoolteacher.
We’ve all met people like Poppy (Sally Hawkins, of Leigh’s Career Girls). You know the type, cheerful no matter the circumstances, and almost giddy in the face of adversity. In life, that kind of eternal optimism can be annoying (to put it mildly), but on screen Leigh and Hawkins create Poppy as one of the most engaging comic heroines of recent memory. When her bike gets stolen, she shrugs it off and says, “That’s a shame, we were just getting to know each other.” She takes a sprained back in stride. She handles class bullies with candor. She even deftly handles a sardonic, misanthropic driving instructor (Eddie Marsan in a richly textured performance). As we see Poppy handle these increasingly intense and potentially inflammatory encounters, we realize that there’s a lot we could learn from her sunny outlook.
In addition to making Happy-Go-Lucky a winning character study, Leigh and Hawkins have also made one of the most consistently funny movies in recent memory. Hawkins’ relentlessly manic, madcap comic persona is the source of many laughs, and the film’s improvisational style resembles Larry David’s Curb Your Enthusiasm. Because Leigh doesn’t work from a traditional script – he creates the story and then works with his actors to create scenes, character traits, and dialogue – every scene pops with lively, unpredictable energy.
The film rests squarely on Hawkins’ shoulders, and it’s a testament to her considerable talent and grace that Poppy’s unflappable perkiness never grates. She manages to find the humanity and vulnerability beneath Poppy’s overt enthusiasm, and constructs and authentic, endearing portrait. I can only imagine what Hollywood could have done with this story – we’d probably get Renee Zellweger, she of the squinty eyes and irritating pluck. In her hands, Poppy could easily have turned into a shrill caricature.
In this, one of the most uneven and uneventful years for film in quite a while, Happy-Go-Lucky is a high point. Along with Gus van Sant’s Paranoid Park, Jonathan Demme’s Rachel Getting Married, and Courtney Hunt’s Frozen River, it’s further proof that the most interesting films being made right now are occurring outside of the studio system.

searching for debra winger ... oh, found

When legendary American director Robert Altman died, I was afraid we would lose his trademark narrative style as well. You know what I’m talking about — tons of characters wandering through a free-flowing narrative that defies conventional standards but still manages to be simultaneously tragic, hilarious, and heart-breaking. If you’re unfamiliar, Nashville and Short Cuts are a good place to start.
There are a few filmmakers still around who embody the Altman spirit — Paul Thomas Anderson of Magnolia and There Will Be Blood chief among them. With Rachel Getting Married, we can add Jonathan Demme, who has had the most unlikely of film careers, to that list. Demme was an American maverick in the 1980s with off-beat comedies Married to the Mob and Something Wild and is best remembered for the genre-bending thriller The Silence of the Lambs. But he’s been off the A-list since (no little thanks to his ill-advised remake of Charade, the embarrassing The Truth about Charlie).
He breaks new ground with this film, which follows Kim (Anne Hathaway) a fresh-out-of-rehab addict as she endures her sister’s wedding. Demme shoots the film with mostly handheld cameras and allows his actors to fumble dialogue and talk over each other. It feels like an intimate family gathering, rife with raw emotion, authentic dysfunction, and caustic humor.
Demme lets his characters to go through the motions of a hectic wedding weekend — preparations, rehearsal dinner, ceremony, after-party — without too much interference. His camera lingers as actors roll from room to room, engage in fleeting conversation, nosh on food, and sip on drinks. Kim slips attention-grabbing one-liners at inopportune moments, which quickly catches the wrath of her sister, the titular Rachel (Rosemarie DeWitt). Their father (Bill Irwin) plays peacemaker, while their mother (Debra Winger) makes fleeting, bruising appearances.
Movies like this depend on great actors. It became clear that Hathaway could do more than giggle through Disney live-action and fetch Meryl Streep’s coffee when she wowed in the small, pivotal role of a hardened Texas rodeo wife in Brokeback Mountain. But nothing suggested that she could pull off the attention-starved, terminally dysfunctional Kim. She portrays this potentially unlikable character with dignity, and imbues her with authentic, relatable pain. It’s a stirring, memorable turn.
It’s to the credit of the supporting cast that Hathaway doesn’t walk away with the film. Theater veteran Irwin, who was unforgettable in the revival of "Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf", is touching as Kim’s doting father and DeWitt makes a striking impression.

Vicky Christina Penelope

I had time to write another review!

Even a seasoned Woody Allen fan might mistake the auteur’s latest film, Vicky Christina Barcelona, for the work of another filmmaker. That is, until the characters open their mouths.
Allen’s latest sparkles with sumptuous, sure-footed visuals as few of his previous films have. While nothing can be compared to Manhattan’s arresting black and white cinematography, this is his most compelling work in color. He captures Barcelona in all its sun-soaked glory. But when his characters begin talking, and falling in and out of love, it’s unmistakably an Allen film.
The film follows two Americans, the engaged, sensible Vicky (The Prestige’s Rebecca Hall) and the impulsive, unmoored Christina (Match Point’s Scarlett Johansson), as they spend a summer vacationing in Barcelona. Their reasons for traveling are dubious at best (Vicky is getting her doctorate in Catalan studies, but inexplicably speaks not a word of Spanish), but that’s not the point. It becomes achingly clear that they are in Spain to fall in love, whether they like it or not.
Seduction comes in the form of the painter Juan Antonio (No Country for Old Men’s Javier Bardem). The girls don’t get through their first day in Spain before being whisked off to a rural village with Juan Antonio, where he attempts to seduce them both. As he pursues both women, and they pursue him to a sometimes surprising effect, Allen explores the various maddening effects of attraction.
Madness and love become inseparable when Maria Elena (Volver’s Penelope Cruz), Juan Antonio’s ex-wife, joins the film. Cruz blasts in and out of scenes with a primal voracity, brimming with unstable passion and jolting the sleepy film into something that demands attention. Every time she leaves a scene I wanted to follow.
Cruz turns out to be the film’s most apt performer. Johansson has never looked so uncomfortable on screen, and it’s impossible to know why Allen keeps on casting her in his films. She’s awkward and clumsy, and can’t seem to convey any of Christina’s restlessness or terminal dissatisfaction. Conveying emotion can be difficult, I suppose, when one’s lips and bust line are doing the heavy lifting.
Hall fairs better. Vicky is the type of role Diane Keaton would have played for Allen in the ’70s, a sophisticated, sometimes brash know-it-all who projects superiority to mask crippling insecurity. Hall has great comic timing and imbues the character with relatable false confidence and vulnerability.
Bardem’s role plays up his screen idol appeal, and completely wipes away of his creepy psycho-killer from No Country for Old Men.
While Allen has fun exploiting some of the romantic entanglements, the film ultimately becomes too convoluted to be worth the trouble. Allen gets this, too, as the many bizarre revelations and outlandish plot elements in the third act scream desperation.

Brideshead

I moved to Connecticut the summer before my freshman year of high school. I was appalled with, among other things, the lack of film criticism in the local newspaper. So, by the time I was a sophomore, I had the idea for a column. My father, who is responsible for my borderline obsession with movies, and I started to write a father-and-son movie review column that fall. It was great, and lasted through high school and into college. He still maintains it, though now (after a few relatively unsuccessful guest spots by my little brothers) it's strictly a paternal affair. I still get the opportunity to help out in a pinch, though. So this week I contributed my take on Brideshead Revisted, the utterly lackluster adaptation of the beloved Evelyn Waugh novel. I'm running it below in its entirety. Enjoy.

I can't be the only one a little surprised to see a new version of Brideshead Revisited hit screens. Most agree that Evelyn Waugh's melodramatic saga received the definitive transfer in 1981 when BBC mounted an epic miniseries adaptation that featured Laurence Olivier and Claire Bloom, and launched the career of a budding Jeremy Irons.
That version meticulously captured Waugh's nuance and subtlety over 11 hours, so it's no surprise that the new film can't match its depth in under two. It's still the story of Charles Ryder (Match Point's Matthew Goode), a young man of earnest means who befriends the eccentric Sebastian Flyte (I'm Not There's Ben Whishaw) at a posh boarding school. Sebastian introduces Charles to the world of British nobility, which includes a killer spread (the titular Brideshead), a frigid mother (Howard's End's Emma Thompson), and a conveniently single sister (Cassandra's Dream's Hayley Atwell). Almost immediately after the Flytes accept Charles as one of their own, he realizes that their pristine image masks deep dysfunction. There's greed, jealously, class snobbery, religious fanaticism, and latent desire. You know, the storied terrain of the English class melodrama.
Unfortunately, for all the promise of suds and juicy subplots, director Julian Jarrold (Becoming Jane) has too much of a stiff upper lip to have any fun. The plot pivots on passion, desire, and betrayal, but Jarrold's morose, self-serious approach douses all of Waugh's flames. As such, watching Brideshead Revisited is the cinematic equivalent of nibbling on a soggy cucumber sandwich.
The actors, too, are mostly unable to convey the difficult emotional terrain their characters must traverse. Though effective as Jonathan Rhys-Meyer's smarmy brother-in-law in Match Point, Goode loses his footing here. He is either unable or unwilling to let us see Charles’ inner turmoil. Instead, he glides through scenes as if lost on the way to a photo shoot.
Whishaw and Atwell, as the spoiled, tragic Flyte siblings, are similarly underwhelming. Whishaw camps up Sebastian’s flamboyance to the point of caricature, and it’s hard to understand how Atwell could be anyone’s hotly contested object of desire.
Thankfully Thompson is on hand to class up the proceedings. Though it’s a little disarming to accept her as a graying matriarch (it’s the kind of role Judi Dench and Maggie Smith have been playing for years), there are few actresses who can convey so much by doing so little. When Thompson is on screen, the film really moves.
The production values, so often the saving grace for a film like this, fall short as well. It made me fondly recall Stephen Fry’s Bright Young Things, a jaunty, raucous take on Waugh’s Vile Bodies, and even the otherwise leaden Atonement, two films that presented great costume and set eye candy.
Video Pick: Howards End
The filmmaking team of director James Ivory and producer Ismael Merchant set the gold standard of British period films with this adaptation of E.M. Forster’s novel. Thompson stars here in her best role (which also won her an Oscar).

skull and bone sunglasses

I watched the 80s dark comedy classic Something Wild for the first time last night. There's a moment when Melanie Griffith (before the plastic surgery and Antonio Banderas) robs a liquor store wearing the most devastatingly cool pair of black sunglasses, which have plastic skeletons glued to the rim of the lenses. Not only did I want them immediately, I wanted to be transported back to a time when an accessory like that would actually be pushing it. Now, you'd see them worn by Iggy Pop in a John Varvatos ad or in the window of his new store in the old CBGB space.

Like Desperately Seeking Susan (it's cinematic soulmate), the movie is old New York ... you know, the one before Pinkberry moved onto St. Mark's Place. Griffith plays a boho wild child who takes Jeff Daniels' Wall Street starch shirt for a mad cap ride that quickly turns felonious. It's surprisingly dark, complex and endearingly oddball. In short, it's a rare studio film that could never be made today. Strike that, they would probably consider a re-make, but only if Heidi and Spencer would headline.