Movie Recommendation of the Week (for um, next week..)

They sure as hell don’t teach you this stuff in American history class. If Ridley Scott’s new film, American Gangster, is to be believed, then Frank Lucas was one of the most notorious (and ingenious) criminals in modern U.S. history. Morality aside, I came away with what can only be described as admiration for the man. Of course you can’t really separate what he did from the consequences and repercussions of his actions (he was a part of a drug epidemic that brought Harlem, if not NYC to its knees in the 70s), but you have to begrudgingly respect his business acumen.

Denzel does his usual thing playing Frank Lucas. I couldn’t really picture anybody else besides maybe Don Cheadle or Jeffrey Wright playing the role. Don’t get me wrong, I like Washington, but you already know what to expect from him. He’s a superstar and it’s impossible for a superstar to get lost in a role. The audience always sees that guy just beneath the surface. It doesn’t detract from the movie to be fair though.

Russell Crowe gives a good turn as the incorruptible cop set out to bring Frank Lucas down. No scenery chewing, but then I don’t think any could ever accuse Crowe of doing that in any film save maybe A Beautiful Mind. I’ve always dug his performances from L.A. Confidential to The Insider. The rest of the supporting cast ranges from solid to great with special nods to Ruby Dee and Josh Brolin (the former Goonie has had a resurgence of late giving another outstanding performance in No Country For Old Men. Seeing how Sean Astin has made some good films in the recent past, maybe Corey Feldman’s next? Wow…).

I’m usually fairly cool to Ridley Scott’s films. Alien is the only one I love unabashedly. I don’t remember Thelma & Louise or (I’m ashamed to admit this) Bladerunner. I’ll have to add American Gangster to that sparse list. I don’t want to review the film, because I think it has some real pleasures in it that the viewer should just discover on his or her own. I’ll just say the picture is highly recommended. I'll be lining up to see it again when it gets its theatrical wide release November 2nd. I'd love to fly out to L.A. to watch this movie at the Arclight. Why can't they build a Cineramadome here in NY? It's completely unacceptable that the Left Coast should have something we don't. Somebody needs to get on that...

7 Days, 6 Nights, 20 Flicks: Testing the Limits of Human Endurance

It's that time of year again. I'll be headed up to Toronto for my annual film binge at the 32nd Annual Toronto Film Festival. The Muslims have Mecca. The pornophiles have the AVNs. Movie junkies like myself have Toronto. I'll be posting reviews the whole time I'm there.

Toronto in September is an experience unto itself. The weather is usually amazing. The city is basically like taking New York and shaking all the garbage out and then making everybody smile. Also, I'm convinced Toronto has more than its fair share of beautiful women in every shade. Walking down the street feels like a Benetton ad come to life. Nobody believes me, but I swear I'm going to get my dual citizenship with Canada some day. I love America Jr.--same great taste with half the guilt.

GFI + GFII = GFOAT Pt. II

The final shot of Godfather II, Michael Corleone sitting on a bench, alone and pensive, is one of my favorite closing scenes of any film. We’ve watched Michael commit more than a couple of unforgivable crimes and in essence lose his soul. At the end of GFI, I felt a bit of sympathy for Michael. Although he willingly chose his path, a confluence of unfortunate events pushed him towards it. In contrast, at the end of Godfather II, the feeling was complete ambivalence. His choices made sense, but only in a moral vacuum. And that’s what the film seemed to be getting at: the most powerful men (in America anyways) don’t play by the same rules. But we also see the price of playing this way. Michael is one of the great tragic figures in American cinema.

The Godfather series makes for great commentary on American ascendancy and hegemony. Vito Corleone seems to be universally beloved and at least respected by his enemies. Michael on the other hand, is respected only out of fear and as the final shot shows, completely alone. Yet, Michael is no more a criminal than his father was. They both murder, bribe, extort, etc. But Vito is sort of this romanticized figure, similar to how Americans romanticize the history that allowed this country to accumulate such wealth in such a short period of time. Thus Michael comes to embody the growing disillusionment the American people had with figures of power (the movie was released during the Nixon years after all). End half-@$$ pseudo-thesis.

Man, these films are so much more than just bad-@$$ gangster movies (granted they are that as well). Taken together, the Godfather I and II deserve a spot at the head of the table. My appreciation grows with every viewing. Best movie(s) of all time. I think this needs to be ratified into the Constitution. 28th amendment. I’ll get started on a letter to Charles Rangel. Get the ball rolling. Yessir.

Movie Pick of the Week

Judd Apatow and his band of merry men pretty much own comedy at this point. If you’ve laughed at a movie in the past three years, odds are pretty good he had a hand in it. His production credits include: Anchorman, 40-Year Old Virgin, Talladega Nights, Knocked Up and now Superbad.

It’s gotten to the point where the studios are attaching trailers to his films that use the new film to promote the even newer film. The trailer for Walk Hard, another Apatow production due out at the end of the year, promotes itself as being from the guy who brought you Knocked Up (which just came out a few months ago) and Superbad, the movie you’re paying to see. Nice. I don’t begrudge the guy his success either. As coach Larry Brown might say, he’s doing it “the right way.” All his movies have a healthy dose of humanity in them. This goes back to his television work on the under-seen “Freaks and Geeks” and almost not-seen-at-all “Undeclared.”

Apatow’s comedies are not very elaborate. They don’t rely on set-ups that are too preposterous or contrived ala the Farrelly or Zucker brothers. Not knocking those guys—they’ve made some of the funniest movies I’ve ever seen. His films don’t really contain “homerun”-moments. There are no “hair gel” moments like in There’s Something About Mary; no “double premature ejaculation shown on the internet” like in American Pie. His movies are just consistently funny, mining humor out of the mundane situations we all find ourselves in on occasion (actually the Will Ferrell movies are an exception to that, but Will Ferrell is…well, Will Ferrell). But Apatow’s movies stick. It’s like the difference between being told a funny story and being told a hilarious joke. The joke might make you laugh harder the first time, but the story is something you can hear again and again because you identify with it somehow.

I can definitely identify with Superbad. The premise is familiar: high school is ending; last chance to score; figuring out how to say goodbye to old friends. Almost ten years ago, this movie was called American Pie and nearly twenty years before that it was called Porky’s. But that’s irrelevant. High school is an inexhaustible source of comedic material, because 1.) it’s an almost universal experience and 2.) it is the most awkward time in most of our lives. Jonah Hill, Michael Cera and Christopher Mintz-Plasse play a trio of friends who are getting ready to graduate and move on to the next phase of their lives. Seth and Evan (played by Hill and Cera respectively) are best friends who are on two different paths: the sincere and intelligent Evan headed for Dartmouth, the obnoxious but loyal Seth headed to some state university. Mintz-Plasse’s Fogell (aka McLovin) rounds out the group, but he's mainly a (hilarious) comedic device like Stifler (honestly, if Mintz-Plasse goes on to make other movies, I see his career taking the same arc as Seann William Scott's or Jon Heder-welcome to typecasting purgatory).

The film's plot is fairly threadbare: guys need to score booze to score with a few girls. The introduction of two cop characters played by (co-writer of the film) Seth Rogen and Bill Hader give the film a bit more meat (for better or worse). The strength of the film is its dialogue which is often laugh-out-loud funny and its subtle observations of interactions between pubescent boys and girls. The film is also fairly poignant as we watch Seth and Evan come to grips with the fact that their lifelong friendship could likely be coming to a close. The McLovin storyline will either make you laugh or roll your eyes (or likely both). It does wear a little thin after a while, but I never looked at my watch or anything. The movie starts strong, coasts a bit and then finishes strong. I enjoyed the characters so much (especially Cera's Evan) that I didn't really care though. Time will tell if the film goes into the Pantheon of Great Teen Comedies (Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Can't Buy Me Love, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Breakfast Club, etc.). In the meantime, congrats Mr. Apatow, you've done it again.

You Know Chuck and Larry Will Be On DVD in a Few Months, So Why Not Try This?

Once is the type of movie that sounds really iffy on paper, but by the time the credits roll, you're thinking "Wow, they really pulled that off." Once is the story of an aspiring singer who spends his days playing his guitar on the street, singing cover songs for spare change. At night he sings his own compositions, one of which captivates a cute little naif who happens to walk by. They get to talking and pretty soon find themselves in each other's company day and night.

The narrative plays out literally like an album with both characters intermittently breaking out into song. It's a musical, but not in the typical way. The characters don't talk to each other and then begin spouting exposition in song. The songs just naturally happen within the space of the story. It wouldn't work if the songs weren't good and thankfully all of them are quite catchy. The guy (who along with everyone else is oddly never named) has a good voice that breaks into the occasional falsetto (spurring some critics to compare him to Chris Martin of Coldplay, but it's not like Chris Martin has exclusive use of falsetto or was even the first to popularize it--hello, Thom Yorke?). The girl is also a good singer and musician in her own right. Neither are professional actors, but they do a great job and I never once felt the chemistry between them was feigned or exaggerated.

Seeing this movie is like stumbling upon a great little restaurant that nobody knows about. You want all your friends to know about it and support it, but you don't want to over-hype it for fear that people will raise their expectations too high. So I'm not saying it's the best movie I've ever seen, but it's the kind of movie that makes you feel like the world is a pretty decent place for at least an hour and a half. And who can ask for more than that from a flick?

Also, "Okay, f@ck this." might be my favorite line in a movie this year.

Movie Non-Pick of the Week

Danny Boyle, you really piss me off sometimes. This is the second movie I’ve watched from you that completely falls off the rails in the third act. The first was 28 Days Later, a good little film that could have been a great little film if the third act hadn’t descended into cliché hell. Now, the same thing happens in your new sci-fi thriller, Sunshine. For about ¾ of the film’s runtime, I was completely enthralled. The visuals were stunning; the characters were interesting and it seemed to be avoiding the usual plot devices in the “group of people stuck in space” genre. The acting was great; even Chris Evans of Fantastic Four infamy showed that he can act. The movie tries very hard to bring new things to the table--and that’s where I think it goes sour. I figure the film’s writer, Alex Garland had this running through his mind: “Well, I can’t have an alien, because obviously that’s been done. I can’t have the ship’s computer go crazy, because that’s been done too. I can’t even have a crew member go crazy because that’s been done as well…hmm, I’ve got it!” And so he pretty much ruins the film with one of the dumbest contrivances I’ve ever had the misfortune of seeing. If you have no plans on seeing the movie now or on DVD, then highlight for a synopsis w/ spoilers:
The crew of Icarus II are on their way to re-ignite the sun when they pick up a distress signal from the original presumed-to-have-perished-7-years-ago Icarus I. After some debate, they (of course) decide to go investigate. They find the ship and discover most of its crew immolated from direct sun exposure. After an incident that leaves two of the ‘away’ team members dead, Cillian Murphy’s character discovers there is a stowaway on Icarus II. The stowaway turns out to be the captain of the Icarus I who has somehow survived on the ship for 7 years, parked at the Sun's doorstep. He walks around naked and looks like Freddy Krueger, because he apparently enjoys tanning more than George Hamilton. Oh and he’s also superhumanly strong and homicidal. So he proceeds to try and kill the remaining crew with some degree of success, but Murphy manages to get the device to the sun and save the world.
As I stated earlier, I was riveted to the screen for much of the film, but when they introduced that element of the story, I literally couldn’t wait for the movie to end. It just turned the movie into something else completely. All the intelligence and suspense just drained away from the film. Oh well, Boyle is obviously a gifted director. Everyone’s entitled to a misfire here and there.

Mr. Nolan, You give me a reason to wake-up every morning.

Movie Pick of the Week

Judd Apatow is moving in on "must-see" status fairly quickly. I found this movie more consistently funny than The 40-year Old Virgin. It's the type of movie you might see twice, because you were laughing too hard and loud to hear all the jokes the first time. I only saw one trailer for this and it didn't look that funny, but I kept hearing good pre-release notices on the movie. Having watched it, I don't think you could make a general audience trailer that would make somebody want to go see this film.

I expect word-of-mouth to be great. It's long, but for me it honestly never feels padded and doesn't lose steam. Like most movies it follows its genre conventions in an almost desultory way, but I didn't care because it was so funny almost all the way through.

I would like to see Apatow learn to write women better. Paul Rudd's wife is a shrill, castrating, humorless brow-beater (seriously, would a woman say that her husband playing fantasy league baseball is worse than him having an affair?). Catherine Heigl is a bit of a cipher. We get enough of Seth Rogen's character to understand why someone might find him endearing after a while, but with Heigl, there just isn't much there. Yeah, she's pretty, but after that? What's frustrating about it is that she is at times likeable and you just wish you would have gotten more of what makes a character like hers decide to be with this guy who is somehow an utterly charmless charmer.

Enough of that though. The movie made me laugh. A lot. A whole lot. I'll be seeing it again. Just to hear Paul Rudd say, "Roads? Where we're going, we don't need roads." again is worth $10.50.

Movie Picks of the Week

Hot Fuzz – Danny Butterman: "Ever fired your gun in the air and yelled, 'Aaaaaaah?' "
So goes the line that sets up one of the funniest scenes I’ve seen in years. Hot Fuzz comes from the guys who did Shaun of the Dead (a movie I only saw parts of, but heard good things about).

These are guys who I would love to sit down to dinner with and just talk about movies because clearly their minds are as gunked-up with celluloid as mine. This movie reminded me a lot of Talladega Nights in the way it manages to almost lovingly skewer its target, in this case the buddy-cop genre which gave us classics like Beverly Hills Cop and regurgitated tripe like Rush Hour (or “-2”, or “-3”).

They respect the genre which is what allows them to mock it so effectively. You’ve got everything ranging from a very well telegraphed Point Break reference that had me in tears to toss away references of movies like Chinatown. Clever chaps. British humor doesn’t seem to translate too well in the States which is a shame because I feel as if you’ve not completely experienced comedy if you’ve never watched one Monty Python film or at least seen an episode of Mr. Bean. Simon Pegg and Nick Frost have impeccable comedic timing and play off each other exceptionally well. I look forward to whatever they have next on tap.


28 Weeks Later

28 Days Later was an imaginative take on the zombie-genre where instead of the living dead, we were given people infected with “rage.” (You know what just occurred to me though? The whole “rage”-virus was stolen from the Transformers cartoon. Specifically this episode. Man I’ve seen too much crap. What have I done with my life?) Anyway, it was the first time (as far as I know) that you had “zombies” running like track stars trying to take down anything in sight.

It was truly intense, especially the early scenes where we have the protagonist Cillian Murphy wondering around a seemingly abandoned London. The tension is ratcheted up to the point of being unbearable. I loved every minute. I’ve watched Boyle’s films since Shallow Grave which introduced me to Ewan McGregor who would go on to make Trainspotting with Boyle a couple of years later.

After a tidy return at the box office and decent DVD sales, four years later we have the sequel which returns none of the original cast and Boyle overseeing only as executive producer. The movie starts off well enough with a man making an obvious, but tough choice (c’mon does she really leave him a choice?). But instead of really exploring the consequences of his decision, we get your standard “let’s do everything that doesn’t make sense to progress the plot.” Now this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Many an entertaining film has come from watching people make god-awful decisions (Friday the 13th series, Aliens, Poltergeist—should have just left the little girl in the TV—as Eddie Murphy said, she was only five and they couldn’t have been that attached to her). In this case, I just got a bit frustrated as to how stupid everybody was being. Also, it felt too much like a retread of the previous film which was a bit lame since they had such great ideas to start this one off.

On the bright side, the film does have a decent amount of scares in it and although I’d seen it all before, it was done competently (except for the awful ‘chaos-cam’ whenever up-close ‘rage’-attacks happened). I can’t really recommend this one as a $10 expenditure, but if it’s on cable I wouldn’t make you change the channel. Until that happens, go rent 28 Days Later!

My Favorite (non-Porn) Movie of 2006

Last year I attended the Toronto Film Festival for the 451st consecutive year. I mostly saw a lot of decent films--close to twenty this time, down from nearly thirty the previous year. Only a couple of movies stuck with me, but they were so good that I didn’t really need more. The first was Deliver Us From Evil, a documentary about a Catholic priest who molested an unfathomable number of children over a period of nearly two decades--with the church's complicity. It is a very disturbing, yet riveting film that will leave any viewer outraged, shocked, angry…in short a real ‘feel good’ time at the flicks. After seeing that film I have to say—and no disrespect to Catholics, but—the entire Vatican theocracy can DIAF.

The other was Guillermo del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth. Maybe I loved this movie so much because I wasn’t expecting much. Don’t get me wrong; I like del Toro, or rather I thought before seeing this film that he was a competent filmmaker. I’ve seen most of his work, beginning with 'Mimic' which I thought would be just another generic serial-killer/monster flick, but turned out pretty good. I netflixed 'The Devil’s Backbone' and thought it was well done, but a bit too heavy on atmosphere and light on story. 'Blade 2' and 'Hellboy' were both mixed-bag experiences. 'Blade 2' was pretty much what you expected it to be. Nothing memorable, but not an embarrassment by any means. 'Hellboy' considering the source material was a minor letdown, similar to how I felt about the first X-Men movie. All the ingredients were there, just not in the proper amounts. Then comes Pan’s and from start to finish I was absolutely enthralled.

The film takes place in Spain around the end of WWII. A little girl tries to escape the horrors of the spasmodically winding down (wish I could phrase that better) war through excursions into a fantasy world she discovers in the ruins behind an army encampment. She also has to tend to her sick pregnant mother and contend with her wicked prick of a stepfather.

Let’s start with the heroine, Ofelia, played by Ivana Baquero.

Too often (I generalize of course) in American films, the child actors don’t act like children. We praise them for their precociousness and how ‘adult’ they act (see: Haley Joel Osment, Dakota Fanning, the Culkin clan). Here, Baquero manages to convey the innocent awe a child would experience delving into such a fantastic world and gets the viewer to abandon his or her own modern effed-up cynicism/skepticism. Credit the actress and the director. Guillermo’s ability to direct children reminds me of early Spielberg. He just gets the most natural and effective performance possible from this young lady. She never over-emotes, yet I feel her sense of wonderment, fear, stubbornness, compassion, etc. Another accomplishment is that I never felt manipulated.

I would argue that all films are manipulative in some way; it’s just that the best ones never feel like they’re manipulating you. In Pan's Labyrinth I became fully invested in Ofelia's plight to escape the horrible realities around her. As the movie reached its climax, I was completely in tears. That takes a lot (or maybe as I get older it doesn't, but I swear only five films including this have ever made me cry and that's: E.T.,Antoine Fisher (when his family invites him to eat and they all introduce themselves...total sucker, I know), Honey, I Shrunk the Kids (when Anty dies) and 4 Little Girls).

Another performance that anchors the film is Maribel Verdu’s.



I hadn’t seen her in anything since Y Tu Mama Tambien, where she played the dying MILF. I left that film thinking how absolutely stunning she was physically. I left this film thinking how absolutely stunning she was as an actress period. It’s not that she does anything special, rather she plays the role about as perfectly as one could imagine. The film’s villain, Captain Vidal, played by Sergi Lopez is acted equally well.



The man epitomizes evil. There are no redeeming qualities to his character which make his comeuppance oh so satisfying.
The film exists in a Manichaean universe. Good is good. Evil is evil. Morality is painted in broad strokes; there is no gray. Some may lament del Toro’s lack of subtlety, but this is a fairytale (an adult fairytale, but a fairytale nonetheless) and that is consistent with the universe that all fairytales inhabit.

People will walk away from this film and say "it's not a kid's film" or "it's not really a fairytale," because the film is rather dark. I'd argue that before the 'Disneyfication' of our children's stories, most fairytales were dark. If you've ever read the original Brother's Grimm stories, they weren't very cheery. They were cautionary tales: Hansel and Gretel end up as meat streudels. Pan's Labyrinth harkens back to those types of stories.



The film’s visual look is a character unto itself. Everything is soaked in blues and de-saturated browns. The movies palette is comprised of elements: water, earth, wood and blood. A handful of spectacular phantasmagoric creatures populate Ofelia's fanstasy world, the best of which is Pan himself. Pan the faun is a haunting creature made of earth, wood, horn and flesh; it's a version of the creature I'd never experienced before. The below creature is also well designed, but even it is not as montrous as del Toro's fascist Captain Vidal creation. You can tell he's really evil because he polishes his boots until they're real nice and shiny.



What keeps bringing me back to the film is the question of whether or not Ofelia's fantasy world is 'real' or not. No other character in the film experiences it which is not unusual in films of this nature. However, what usually does happen is that there is some evidence that exists to suggest that the fantastic things experienced by one character are not solely the creation of his or her own imagination. You know the parents find some artifact of the fantasy world which in turn acts as a wink and nod to the audience to suggest, 'hey, this really DID happen'. Nothing like that exists in Pan's Labyrinth which leaves the ending completely up to your own interpretation. For instance, the below scene parallels a 'real world' scene that happens earlier making the below scene rife with symbolism. It further confuses whether these things are actually happening to Ofelia.

The film then becomes a sort of litmus test for the viewer. It can conclude happily or tragically. Margaret Atwood in talking about the book, The Life of Pi, talks about this same thing. The character in that book, Pi, the sole survivor of shipwreck that takes away his family that had set sail from India with their circus in tow, is being de-briefed in Brazil (I think)by a couple of Japanese insurance agents (don't ask, just read the book). The insurance agents conclude that Pi's story could be interpreted two ways: one fantastic, the other not so much. Pi in turn asks them which one they like better and they both agree that they like the former. He bursts into tears and thanks them. Pan's Labyrinth works much the same way, but it leaves it up to the viewer to choose which one they believe more strongly in. Either way, the movie is quite moving.



Upon a third (!) viewing of the film, I realized something interesting: it could work completely as a silent film. The movie is in Spanish, but if you didn’t speak Mexican (as The Shrub would say), you’d understand almost everything that happens on screen. That is the work of a great visual storyteller. More kudos to del Toro.

Guillermo del Toro has now become for me a 'must-see' director along the lines of Scorcese, Mann, Nolan, Linklater, Lee, the Coen Brothers and of course McG.