Austin Chick's
August
Opens Friday, July 11, 2008
Starring: Josh
Hartnett; Naomie Harris; Adam Scott; Emmanuelle
Chriqui; Andre Royo; Robin Tunney; Rip Torn; and
David Bowie.
Reviewed
by Wendy R. Williams
Austin Chick's new film,
August, takes the viewer time-travelling
through the world of the late nineties' dot com
boom. Dot com-mania was a fantasy world, populated
by true believers like the towns people in Hans
Christian Anderson's The Emperor's New Clothes.
And like the story of the fairy tale, when the
dot com bubble collapsed, the world finally realized
that the information highway was populated by
naked kings. Yes, the internet was the future,
but almost no one was making any money.....yet.
And no one wanted to be the first to say, "The
Emperor has no clothes."
John Hartnett plays
Tom in August (named for the month just
before 9/11). Tom runs an internet company with
the help of his hard working brother Joshua, played
by Adam Scott. Their internet company is staffed
by a large group of attractive older children
(twenty-somethings) who, according to Tom's father,
David (played by Rip Torn), sit at Ikea desks
and eat Oreos.
The dot com boom
was a sexy world; a world where youth ruled; a
world where no one wanted to say that they did
not UNDERSTAND the internet because that would
mean they themselves were not COOL. It wasn't
COOL to not understand the buzz words and to not
be in-with-the-in-crowd who was developing the
alternative universe called cyberspace. So we
all drank the kool aid and admired the Emperor's
new clothes.
Josh Hartnett plays
Tom with James Dean style angst. He mopes, he
sulks, he charms, he bulllshits. And he uses:
uses his brother; uses his girlfriend (played
by Naomie Harris); uses his assistants (played
by Robin Tunney and Andre Royo); and most of all,
uses his long-suffering brother Joshua (played
by Adam Scott). Tom is a man who is going down,
the only plot point in the film being just when
will Tom hit rock bottom.
But in the bleak world of August, there
is also a touch of redemption. When Tom's world
finally collapses at the feet of a bail-out investor
(played by David Bowie), Tom finds a touch of
nobility in his soul and uses it save some of
the people he has harmed.
The film
is at its best when it depicts the dot com world
- the clubs, the offices, and players of that
fume-powered universe. It is an atmosphere flick,
a slice of life in a time now gone. And Austin
Chick's August does a good job of portraying
this fantasy world, filtered through the smoke-and-mirrors-magic
of pre 9/11 Manhattan.
Jan Hrebejik's
Beauty in Trouble (Kraska V Nesnazich)
Opens June 13, 2008
Written By: Petr
Jarchovsky, story by Petr Jarchovsky, Jan Krebejk
Starring: Ana
Geislerova; Roman Luknar; Emilia Vasaryova; Jana
Brejchova; Jiri Schmitzer; Josef Abrham; Jan Hrusinsky;
Jiri Machacek; Andrei Toader; Nikolai Penev; Jaromira
Milova; Adam Misik; Michaela Mrvikova; andRaduza.
Mememsha Films
Reviewed for New
York Cool by Harvey Karten
Grade: A-
This stunning film
which deservedly won the Grand Jury Prize at the
2006 Karlovy Vary Festival and Best Feature Film
at the Denver International Festival, at base
asks the question: Which is more important—hot
sex with a rough, working-class thief, or material
splendor with a rich, gentle, older fellow? But
this is where any similarity between "Beauty
in Trouble" ("Kraska V Nesnazich"
as it's called in Czech), and soap opera, ends.
Jan Hrebejik's film written by Petr Jarchovsky
from the writer and director's story contrasts
culture with boorishness, loyalty with change,
the urban sophistication of the Czech capital
with the rustic beauty of Italy's famed Tuscany.
The acting is superb all around with a lovely
soundtrack featuring some songs taken from the
movie Once. The multi-character story
is rich in human dimension, Hrebejik and Jarchovsky
shucking off all caricatures to show that people
(like you and me) have both positive and negative
sides which can emerge either without apparent
cause or in response to the way we're treated
at any moment.
The writer-director
team's previous feature Up and Down—about
small-time smugglers who discover an abandoned
baby, triggering consequences among a disparate
group of people—selected the challenging
title of this one from a Robert Graves poem which
became the inspiration for a popular Czech song
which goes "Beauty in trouble flees to the
good angel/ On whom she can rely/ To pay her cab-fare,
run a steaming bath,/ Poultice her bruised eye"
and which concludes "Virtue, good angel,
is its own reward."
We're made privy
to the lives of disparate people, as in Up
and Down, folks who are imperfect in different
ways but who deserve our sympathy even as they
choose wrong actions. Marcela Cmolikova (Ana Geislerova),
for example, is fated to love two men for different
reasons, a woman who may live out the rest of
her life as though in conflict with society's
mandate to select and remain loyal to only one.
Her husband, Jarda Smolik (Roman Luknar), is a
thief who steals cars and quickly remakes them
for sale in his garage. Criminality aside, we
understand that he and his family were wiped out
by a flood that hit Prague in 2002 and destroyed
their uninsured home. Jarda and Marcela must provide
a decent life for themselves and their two adorable
kids, Lucina (Michaela Mrvikova) and Kuba (Adam
Misik). In one of the film's many comic scenes,
the children cover their ears as they must do
nightly as their parents have loud, incredible
sex in the adjoining room. When Jarda is caught
and sent to jail, the rest of his family are forced
to move into the cramped home of Marcela's mother,
Zdena (Jana Brejchova) and Zdena's surly second
husband, Richard Hrstka (Jiri Schmitzer), the
latter resenting their presence and making efforts
to get them out. Even here we are invited to find
sympathy for Marcela's stepfather, as he is sick
with diabetes and is eager to get back to his
own sexual life with his wife.
When Marcela meets
Evzen Benes (Josef Abrham), the wealthy owner
of the car whose theft led to her husband's imprisonment,
she is surprised, after a brief courtship, to
be invited to the gentleman's lavish Tuscany digs—an
invitation she accepts despite the large difference
in age in order to keep her family together. This
new courtship is opposed by her mother-in-law
(Emilia Vasaryova), a fervently religious woman
sticking up for the sanctity of marriage.
Class differences
allow for comic scenes, particularly at the dinner
table where in a restaurant overlooking the Vltava
River (which the Czech composer Bedrich Smetana
immortalized in The Moldau) she is introduced
to sushi and makes the mistake committed by Sam
Malone in one episode of Cheers of taking
in a full mouthful of the hot green wasabi condiment.
While Benes, a vintner, relishes a glass of dry
wine, Marcela finds the grape tolerable only when
she combines it with a cola.
Among the cast members who excel we'd have to
include Jiri Schmitzer who, in the role of the
nasty stepfather Richard tells his nephew and
niece the unvarnished truth about their dad after
having some time before rhetorically asked the
teenage girl "Have the boys in school felt
you up yet?" He redeems himself in one heartbreaking
moment. Ultimately the film belongs to Ana Geislerova,
the conflicted Marcela who, upon her husband's
release from prison must decide between a life
of material and psychological security with a
much older man or her less predictable situation
with a sexual dynamo. A fast-paced conclusion
provides an interesting, complex answer.
Photographer Jan
Malir exploits the russet beauty of Tuscany and
the medievalflavor of sections of Prague in a
film that has enough respect for the character
to treat them in all their conflicting dimensions.
Note: The Czechs
produce fine films of their own, obviously, but
Prague, with its Barrandov Studio, is also a favorite
spot for Hollywood film-makers. See my article
in Film
Journal November 2007.
Not Rated.
110 minutes. © 2008 by Harvey Karten Member:
NY Film Critics Online.
John Crowley’s
Boy A
Opens Wednesday July 23, 2008
Written By: Mark O'Rowe, from the novel by Jonathan
Trigell
Starring: Andrew Garfield; Peter Mullan; Shaun
Evans; and Katie Lyons
Reviewed at the
2008
Tribeca Film Festival by Frank
J. Avella
John Crowley’s
Boy A is the best narrative feature I’ve
seen at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival.
If handled correctly (delicately), it could be
(should be) an indie sleeper. Granted the film
does not have the comic uplift of a Juno
or a Little Miss Sunshine but it does
have some important and thought-provoking things
to say about our society and the world we live
in and how we view rehabilitation and redemption.
It also contains an incredibly nuanced, star-making
performance by newcomer Andrew Garfield (seen
last year in the underrated Robert Redford gem
Lions for Lambs).
The film opens
with a 24-year old “boy,” about to
be released from a British juvvy prison, choosing
a name as he sits with his devoted caseworker.
As the film flashes back and forward, we become
privy to his unbelievable story. At the age of
ten, Boy A was involved in committing a heinous
crime and was hauled away. A decade later, the
case is still fresh in the minds of the public
as well as the media so “Jack” must
start afresh and live his life carefully and wary
of revealing who he really is to anyone.
The pic meticulously
takes us into Jack’s daily life as he nervously
makes new friends and even begins dating a co-worker
(an impressive Katie Lyons). Jack is obviously
still a young boy in a man’s body. He is
forever haunted by memories of his past, and worried
about whether he is even deserving of a second
chance.
His caseworker,
Peter (the always extraordinary Peter Mullan),
has been his champion, mentor and protector but
must now deal with his own mess of a son moving
back in.
As the movie moves
towards an inevitable reveal and people’s
predictable reactions, the film keeps true to
it’s bleak but honest themes about the difficulty
of forgiveness and the dangers of the mob (and
media) mentality. Jack may very well be a changed
boy, but will he ever be allowed to live any type
of normal life?
Based on the novel
by Jonathan Trigell, the screenplay (by Mark O’Rowe)
is smartly structured and probes the complexities
of Jack’s impossible situation. We grow
to like him and then we flashback to the murder,
which makes our feelings all the grayer. Along
the periphery the film also examines class and
how that effects the boy’s situation.
Throughout the
film, Garfield holds our attention, showing us
Jack’s fears and newfound joys. We watch
how he learns about the world anew (never having
heard of a dvd), experiments with drugs (a hilarious
scene with him dancing on Ecstasy) and clunkily
stumbles through the awkward moments of falling
in love for the first time. It is a truly remarkable
performance.
Boy A
does omit an important part of Jack’s story
(possibly deliberately). We are never shown any
moments from his time in prison. I would have
loved a glimpse of his world and what it was like
to be inside his head during some of the defining
period of adolescence. But then that’s what
a really good film does. It makes us want more.
John Crowley’s
Boy A
Opens Wednesday July 23, 2008
Written By: Mark
O'Rowe, from the novel by Jonathan Trigell
Starring: Andrew Garfield; Peter Mullan; Shaun
Evans; and Katie Lyons
The Weinstein Company
Reviewed for New York Cool by Harvey Karten
Grade: B
At times Boy
A looks more like a propaganda piece for
penal reform, or more specifically, a plea that
society understand that when prisoners are released,
they've paid their debt. Society does appear at
first to honor this idea when a fellow commits
a heinous crime at the age of ten, is incarcerated
in a juvenile facility for fourteen years, is
given a new identity, apartment, job and a caring
social worker who seems to have only one client.
What's more, he appreciates what he's getting,
is well-liked on a job he's overjoyed to have—one
which comes with an outgoing girlfriend. Yet when
"society" finds out that he was in jail
not for stealing cars for joyrides but for murder,
albeit far below the age of maturity, the people
who heretofore accepted him think nothing of casting
him out. His big mistake was to return to a Manchester
nabe rather than to disappear in London, but that's
another story.
Perhaps Boy
A will deserve a rating better than "B"
from Brit-crix. The biggest problem in this superbly
acted downer is the dialogue, which is not as
bad as what we put up with in Trainspotting
(don't expect to understand Scottish if you're
an all-American, but at least that pic had English
subtitles—which Boy A could most
decidedly use). One wonders why Peter Mullan,
who plays a social worker who presumably has had
a college education, must talk with a thick brogue,
though we accept this as cinema verite from the
mouth of his favorite client.
John Crowley's
film, adapted by Mark O'Rowe from Jonathan Trigell's
novel, is nicely edited by Lucia Zucchetti, who
takes us seamlessly from the present to the protagonist's
past at appropriate moments. Andrew Garfield,
who played student Todd Hayes in Lions for
Lambs, anchors the story in a career-making
performance as Jack Burridge, a 24-year-old released
from juvenile custody after fourteen years for
a senseless murder he helped commit at the age
of ten. He's most fortunate to be under the wing
of a Terry (Peter Mullan) social worker who if
anything is too dedicated to his job, a seriousness
that ultimately proves disastrous to his client.
Jack, whose real name is Eric Wilson, enjoys his
job with a delivery company, a gig that affords
him not only friendly co-workers but also girlfriend,
Michelle (Katie Lyons) who is immediately attracted
to the lad: From time to time, photographer Rob
Hardy shows us that Jack is tormented by the past
by allowing us to eavesdrop on his (Alfie Owen's)
hanging out with the wrong company, namely Philip
Craig (Taylor Doherty). His current fortune will
prove all too good to be lasting.
Aside from its
execution as a downbeat story, the real find is
Andrew Garfield who evokes the shyness of a guy
whose best years have been ruined in a prison
cell, where in one scene he is tortured by fellow
convicts. Katie Lyons as girlfriend Michelle convincingly
brings the young man out of his shell while his
caseworker, who is in loco parentis, provides
more adult support. Peter Mullan, whose bio includes
the starring role of Joe Kavanagh in the working-class
study My Name is Joe, plays the sort
of guy we'd all want as a dad—even if his
own son takes exception.
Not Rated.
100 minutes. © 2008 by Harvey Karten Member:
NY Film Critics Online
Julian Jarrold's
Brideshead Revisted
Opens July 25, 2008
Written
By: Andrew Davies; Jeremy Brock; from Evelyn Waugh's
novel.
Starring: Emma Thompson; Michael Gambon; Matthew
Goode; Ben Whishaw; Hayley Atwell; Stephen Merchant;
Greta Scacchi; Ed Stoppard; Jonathan Cake;and
Patrick Malahide.
Miramax Films
Reviewed for New York Cool by Harvey Karten
Grade: B+
"The rich
are very different from you and me," said
F. Scott Fitzgerald, to which we can add by contrast
that emotions remain the same in every century,
across whole demographic strains. Evelyn Waugh's
masterpiece, Brideshead Revisited, illustrates
this point, the film adaptation by Julian Jarrold
flawlessly illustrating the way a wealthy, aristocratic
British family during the decades preceding World
War II spend their days, seeking pleasure yet
restrained by religious influences. What the viewer
must remember, though, is that the restraints
of the Catholic faith, to which Waugh converted,
must not be looked upon as a negative. The major
theme of the novel is that Divine Grace enters
into the lives of people when they open themselves
up to the Deity no matter how late in life the
conversion, a process sometimes called being "born
again."
The Evelyn Waugh
novel was given an eleven-episode treatment on
TV in 1981 under the direction of Charles Sturridge
and Michael Lindsay-Hogg with Jeremy Irons and
Anthony Andrews assuming the roles of the two
principal characters. Compressing the novel (now
available for just over ten bucks at Amazon) into
just over two hours required Julian Jarrold to
omit several minor characters from the tapestry,
concentrating particularly on the relationship
between young Charles Ryder (Matthew Goode, Match
Point and The Lookout) and Sebastian
Marchmain (Ben Whishaw, Perfume: The Story
of a Murderer), a friendship that began when
each entered Oxford University.
The current film
gets the treatment we've come to associate with
Merchant-Ivory productions, punctuating the privileges
of the very rich during the decades that the aristocracy
was to decline in Great Britain. Without sentimentality
or preaching, Brideshead Revisited, adapted
from the novel by Andrew Davies (Bridget Jones
Diary) and Jeremy Brock (The Last King
of Scotland), evokes the principal motifs:
The importance of Catholicism; nostalgia for the
age of English nobility; and the passionate, though
platonic, relationship between Charles Ryder and
Sebastian Flyte.
The story opens
on Charles Ryder, a British officer during World
War II who moves his men to a castle known as
Brideshead. He wistfully recounts his days among
the Marchmain family inhabiting what Charles considers
the most beautiful home he had ever seen. While
now a middle-aged, somewhat disillusioned fellow,
he was just a naïve freshman at Oxford when
he is introduced by Sebastian to an intimidating
crowd of students. His friendship with Sebastian
leads the latter's family to invite Charles to
spend the summer, whereupon he slowly develops
an affection for his friend's sister, Julia Flyte
(Hayley Atwell, Cassandra's Dream). Though
an atheist (an agnostic in the novel), he gains
the trust of Lady Marchmain (Emma Thompson), who
takes her Catholicism seriously, though her husband,
Lord Marchmain (Michael Gambon) has moved to Venice
with another woman, Cara (Greta Scacchi) Charles's
atheism, however, makes him a poor match for Julia,
who has been ordered by Lady Marchmain to marry
a rich, boorish, Canadian businessman. Sebastian,
an alcoholic who will eventually move far from
his home to get away from his devout mother who
controls him through guilt, proves to be a handful
for both his family and Charles. As Charles's
bond with Julia becomes firmer, we in the audience
question the man's motives. Is he in love, or
is he (despite his newly acquired fame as a painter)
all too hungry for the trapping of aristocracy?
Filmed by Jess
Hall to evoke the incredible wealth and privileges
of the 20th century aristocracy in Britain, Brideshead
Revisited is both a compelling piece of cinematography
and a slow, painstaking look at the diverse fortunes
of the anointed. As one non-believer after another—including
to some extent Sebastian but more directly Sebastian's
father, and even Charles—becomes "born
again"—their dissolute lives become
more constructive in ways that should be seen
rather than revealed in a review. Brideshead
Revisited is smart, handsome film-making
without the usual summer panoply of special effects
and computer generative industry, a picture graced
by solid acting and a rich empathy with people
who find themselves through religion rather than
wealth.
Rated PG-13.
120 minutes. © 2008 by Harvey Karten Member:
NY Film Critics Online
Felicity Jones as Cordelia
Flyte, Hayley Atwell as Julia Flyte,
Emma Thompson as Lady Marchmain and Matthew Goode
as Charles Ryder in Brideshead Revisited.
Julian Jarrold's
Brideshead Revisted
Opens July 25, 2008
Written
By: Andrew Davies; Jeremy Brock; from Evelyn Waugh's
novel.
Starring: Emma Thompson; Michael Gambon; Matthew
Goode; Ben Whishaw; Hayley Atwell; Stephen Merchant;
Greta Scacchi; Ed Stoppard; Jonathan Cake;and
Patrick Malahide.
Reviewed by Julia
Sirmons
A film adaptation
of a literary classic is difficult at the best
of times. The situation is only complicated when
said classic has already been televised in an
epic, 13-hour mini-series starring a gaggle of
Britain's literary talents, the prospect becomes
even more daunting. Fortunately, director Julian
Jarrolds has had the testicular fortitude to attempt
a new version of Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead
Revisited, resulting in a compelling and
innovative take on one of Britain's
finest and most nuanced pieces of literature.
Needless to say, when condensing a 30-page book
Page book (or an 11
hour miniseries) into a 2-hour, much will be lost
in translation. Certain plot points are excised,
several characters are reduced in significance,
but this is all in aid of Jarrolds' intent, which
is to shift the main focus of the story toward
the bizarre love triangle between seductively
charming siblings Julia (Hayley Atwell) and
Sebastian (I'm Not There's Ben Whishaw)
and their lesser-born, introspective friend Charles
Ryder (played by Matthew Goode; Goode strongly
resembles Jeremy Irons, who originated the role
in the miniseries.)
Obviously, this approach loses some of the epic
sweep and deeper political and philosophical concerns
of Waugh's vision. The book and original adaptation
can be viewed as a Canaletto canvas, with the
characters carefully and distantly through the
grand landscapes of Oxford, Venice, and the titular
stately homes, their emotions carefully (if barely)
in check. Jarrolds, on the other hand, has filmed
Brideshead as a Caravaggio, where the rich settings
are a backdrop for the desperate passionate grappling
and anguish of lovers trapped in murky waters.
This approach is aided immensely by powerful performances
by the three
leads. Atwell is positively dazzling as Julia,
a woman torn between a nature of vitality and
passion tempered by a sense of duty and devout
Catholic faith. As Sebastian, the outwardly vivacious
but deeply fragile and insecure gadabout, Whishaw
balances impish charm with heartbreaking pain
and fragility. Goode, the most enigmatic of the
trio, is something of an unsteady chameleon, but
with a great deal of emotion and compassion.
While this trio works beautifully together, the
standout performance in Brideshead is
Emma Thompson as Lady Marchmain, Sebastian and
Julia's mother. Almost un recognizable in grey
set curls, Thompson doesn't shy away from the
staunch domineering, aspects of Marchmain's character,
but also brings moment of exquisite vulnerability
and uncertainty that makes her character much
more human.
With this new focus,
some of Waugh's intent falls by the wayside. There's
much mention of the film of the Marchmain-Flytes
being Catholic, but little demonstration of how
their faith guides their actions. Nevertheless,
this new angle on Waugh's complex story is teeming
over with romantic, lustful and tender, and the
social formalities that labor in vain to constrain
them. Gloriously set and
sumptuously costumes, it's a drama of emotion
and passion not to be
missed.
Aaron Eckhart in The
Dark Knight
Christopher
Nolan’s
The Dark Knight
Opens Friday, July 18, 2008
Starring:
Christian Bale; Heath Ledger; Aaron Eckhart; Michael
Caine; Maggie Gyllenhaal; Gary Oldman; and Morgan
Freeman.
Reviewed by Frank J. Avella
Christopher Nolan’s
The Dark Knight is easily the best action
film to be released so far this summer. I almost
hesitate to label it an action film because it
is smart, clever, dark and disturbing. Audiences
will probably not leave theatres feeling good
about their fellow man. They may leave pondering
certain moral and ethical issues the film brings
up (and, mercifully, does not necessarily answer)
and that is reason enough to celebrate!
Nolan, who helmed
the terrific Batman Begins, along with
his writer/brother Jonathan and David S. Goyer,
probe the gray and dig deep down into the grim
in order to hypothesize about the point where
hero becomes villain. Can anyone hold onto his
own code of ethics in a fickle and rush-to-judgment
society? Does power always corrupt? Why do heroes
matter so much to us? And if we knew the real
truth about those we are led to believe are models
of propriety, would we ever be able to believe
in anyone or anything?
Heavy? Sure. And
thank God for that!
The plot is deliberately
confusing and repeat viewings are encouraged.
Suffice to say that our caped crusader has his
work cut out for him this time around. The mob,
led by a smarmy Eric Roberts, is getting away
with murder and a new D.A.; Harvey Dent (the terrific
Aaron Eckhart) is on the scene to battle crime
in Gotham City. His girlfriend is Bruce Wayne’s
former squeeze, Rachel Dawes (a perfectly cast
Maggie Gyllenhaal, replacing Katie Holmes).
Batman is more
brooding and angst-ridden than usual and Christian
Bale has pain and suffering to spare. He’s
at a moral crossroads and the arrival of a new
and unpredictable threat tosses him into a confounding
tailspin. From American Psycho onward,
Bale proves he is one of the best and most fascinating
actors working today.
“The which
doesn’t kill you, makes you stranger.”
The Joker.
The threat arrives
in the form of the initially bumbling Joker (Heath
Ledger). But don’t let his first few scenes
fool you--this villain is vile and wicked. With
his mussy, stringy hair, repulsive yet beguiling
(white) face and badly painted smile to accentuate
his scars, this card (pun intended) believes in
chaos and anarchy. His evil cannot be predicted,
reasoned or controlled because he doesn’t
want anything other than to cause mayhem, destroy
and prove the malignant nature of man. As Michael
Caine’s wise Alfred puts it: “Some
men just want to watch the world burn.”
He doesn’t even want Batman dead. Quite
the contrary, he stares at him and freakily states,
“You complete me.”
If the Joker’s
reasons are buried in childhood trauma or abuse
we are never given his real story and Ledger’s
performance is the better for it. As a matter
of creepy fact, the Joker actually provides a
few horrific childhood scenarios, but we soon
realize that we can’t ever trust what he
says; he’s simply having a macabre laugh
at his victim’s expense, after all, he is
a sadistic fuck. He’s also a masochist.
It’s a mesmerizing, messy portrait, loaded
with mad nuances.
There has been
much posthumous Oscar speculation among critics,
prognosticators and Hollywoodites regarding Ledger’s
performance--and with good reason. It’s
an all-immersive, vanity-free portrayal and a
fitting swan song to a promising career cut tragically
short. Ledger should have won his gold dude for
Brokeback Mountain, so it would not be
surprising if his genius turn here gets him the
prize.
The look of the
film is stunning and spectacularly gloomy. All
tech credits are extraordinary.
The Dark Knight
proves a superhero film can be more than a cacophonous,
pyrotechnic, effects-driven video game. It can
have non-stop action, amazing effects and still
have an untidy, topsy-turvy plot and performances
that strive to be more than simply good and actually
achieve a kind of transcendence.
Heath Ledger in The
Dark Knight
Christopher
Nolan’s
The Dark Knight
Opens Friday, July 18, 2008
Written By: Jonathan Nolan; Christopher Nolan;
Story by Christopher Nolan; David S. Goyer from
characters in DC Comics. Batman created by Bob
Kane.
Starring:
Christian Bale; Heath Ledger; Aaron Eckhart; Michael
Caine; Maggie Gyllenhaal; Gary Oldman; and Morgan
Freeman.
Warner Bros.
Reviewed for New York Cool by Harvey Karten
Grade: B-
It's difficult
to criticize a movie in which a fellow who is
considered "a White Knight," "the
best of us," goes by the first name "Harvey"—a
District Attorney who has locked up half of Gotham
(filmed by Wally Pfister in Chicago). The picture
is a mixed bag, one that might be summarized by
part of a terrific commercial that appeared years
back before trailers, in which one moviegoer is
pondering whether to attend a film that's "visually
arresting but ultimately pointless." Not
that The Dark Knight is pointless, but
on the other hand comes across as though it were
a series of trailers. Christopher Nolan who directs
from a script he co-write with his brother Jonathan
Nolan, appears to make a few moral points: that
even the best of us can turn rotten when pursuing
vengeance; that a caped crusader can be disliked
by much of the city he protects because he is
blamed indirectly for quite a few murders; that
you can't negotiate with a terrorist, because
(at least in this case), the demon has no interest
in money or power but only in fomenting as much
chaos as he can.
The Dark Knight
is graced by an astonishing performance from
Heath Ledger as The Joker, one scary fella who
covers up scars he received from his knife-wielding
dad with makeup that gives him a face covered
with white paint while leaving lips to be decked
out in dark red. If an Oscar can be awarded posthumously,
Mr. Ledger should be guaranteed at least a nomination
for portraying what will probably be this year's
most exciting portrayal of a villain. The movie
comes to life whenever he is on the screen, but
becomes pedestrian whenever Christian Bale, so
fearsome and authentic as Patrick Bateman in American
Psycho, enters the screen. Bale is a dull
Bruce Wayne and a less than awesome hero.
There are two fundamentally
distinct ways to judge the quality of this plot.
One group of moviegoers and critics are going
to find gems in its complexity, stating even that
the film deserves multiple viewings (at two and
one-half hours a pop) to figure out who's who
and what's what. Others will take an opposite
approach, holding that the story is so incoherent,
one might as well throw up his hands and consider
the film of value only because of some awesome
visual delights. I'll have to take that latter
point of view. David Lynch's Mulholland Drive,
or for that matter Christopher Nolan's Memento,
have trajectories which become clear by the second
or third viewing. The Dark Knight, by
contrast, throws together a pot pourri of criminals
and crime fighters that are nearly impossible
to sort out or make even comic-book sense of.
Additional screenings are likely to be fruitless.
Gotham is portrayed
as a city rife with police corruption, organized
crime, and one weird, psychopathic killer who
seems motivated to get revenge against the father
who scarred him for life. He takes out his anger
on an assortment of citizens. His chief nemesis
is the incorruptible (at least for a while) District
Attorney, Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart), but The
Joker is not eager to kill Batman. He considers
the caped crusader someone who "completes"
him, someone to play with to prove his skills
to the entire city. The Joker is an expert at
demolition: in one scene, he blows up a hospital
and buildings surrounding it, walking away laughing
to himself. When he gets the drop on an individual,
he licks his lips, slowly, calmly explaining to
his victims why he has become the psycho he is.
Every actor wants to play the bad guy, Heath Ledger
providing a textbook example--as the D.A., Bruce
Wayne, and Batman are dishwater-dull by contrast
(until one of them shows his dark side, thereby
helping to prove the maxim). The film can be interpreted
as an indictment of American foreign policy. In
one scene, a scientist sets up a system of wiretapping
that will allow Batman to spy on millions of Chicago's
citizens. In another, Batman mercilessly delivers
a beating to a prisoner, hoping to get information
about a kidnap victim's whereabouts.
There are faux
Batmans, bank robbers, Hong Kong businessmen,
all thrown into the mix helter-skelter along with
the usual array of car crashes, truck somersaults,
and a terrific-looking Batpod. There's even a
romantic triangle as Bruce Wayne's former squeeze,
Rachel (Maggie Gyllenhaal), has shifted her loyalties
to the district attorney—an unusual switch
considering that she once had the attention of
a billionaire playboy. Gary Oldman shows up regularly
with a restrained performance as a detective about
to become the city's police commissioner, Morgan
Freeman as a scientist, Michael Caine as Bruce
Wayne's lifelong butler Alfred.
If you thrill to
visual mayhem, try to see the picture on the IMAX
screen, which delivers the goods particularly
when Batman descends quickly from skyscrapers
or spreads out his bat-wings to fly across buildings.
By now, though, the usual visual thrills have
become a common-enough staple in blockbusters.
Ditto the thumping soundtracks, in this case provided
by Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard. What's
missing is a solid, coherent story, one that pares
down the numbers of subplots and subplots to subplots.
Rated PG-13. 152
minutes. © 2008 by Harvey Karten Member:
NY Film Critics Online
Wayne Price's
The Doorman
Opens July 18, 2008
Written By: Lucas
Akoskin, Wayne Price
Cast: Lucas Akoskin,
Matthew Mabe, Peter Bogdanovich, Thom Filiica,
Denise Qunones, Amy Sacco
Gigantic Release
Reviewed for New
York Cool by Harvey Karten
Grade: C
At my age, gaining
access to the right club is picking up the appropriate
Ace when I'm holding a ten, Jack, Queen and King
of clubs. For me, watching a movie about a doorman
at a night club is in equal parts a trip down
memory lane and a voyage to a foreign land. A
movie about a doorman? It's not a bad idea at
all to hone in on some of the people who act in
society's supporting roles, though one might not
necessarily find a doc about a bathroom attendant
to be compelling viewing—unless, of course,
Judd Apatow has a hand in the writing.
The Doorman
is a mockumentary, a subgenre that tends to add
interest to a movie rife with talking heads. As
a maker of this mockumentary, though, Wayne Price
in no way even begins to match up to the talent
of Christopher Guest (Best in Show, Waiting
for Guffman). His principal character may
be charming and comic at first, but quickly becomes
so irritating (particularly when he peppers virtually
every sentence with the adolescent filler "you-know")
that the movie outlives even its brief seventy-six
minute length halfway through. What's more most
of the men and women, many of whom play their
real-life selves, comes off as superficial as
the consumerist quartet in Michael Patrick King's
Sex and the City.
The title doorman,
known allegedly by the hippest people in New York,
Miami and Vegas, calls himself Trevor W., though
he is played by the Argentinian actor Lucas Akoskin—who
sports a heavy Latino accent. He is the creation
of writers Wayne Price and Lukas Akoskin, who
originally thought of making a short video about
a guy who imagines himself to be a subway doorman,
emerging from the train with a list and refusing
to let most people board "the VIP car."
That sounds like something that could be funny
for about three minutes. Instead, Akoskin and
director Wayne Price extended the idea to focus
on a guy who is clueless about his real importance
but believes himself to be a celebrity, an authority
figure who could bar entrance to hip night clubs
to all he does not like or who are not wearing
the right shoes, or maybe too old, too uncool,
or what-have-you. During the film he is shown
using his Great Powers at the door—though
one big guy who is denied entry simply barges
through and, since the doorman is not a bouncer
, he can do nothing about that.
Lucas Akoskin,
then, tells "his own story" in a movie
that has far too much improvised dialogue, the
principal raison d'etre presumably being to show
off a cast of real-life movers and shakers, none
of whom I know (except for Peter Bogdanovich who
inexplicably invites Lucas to dine with him and
to listen to Lucas's plea for a film part). The
conversation involves one of the few genuinely
humorous lines: Bogdanovich tells the waiter that
he does not eat dairy, while Lucas curries favor
by adding, "Yes and I don't eat dirty either.
Clean it up and maybe I'll order it."
Lucas is at the
top of the game when he shows up in an assortment
of purportedly high-fashion threads at a New York
Club and is also invited to work at special events
at Las Vegas and Miami. While VIPs like Thom Felicia,
a notable interior designer, and Amy Sacco, owner
of Lot 61 club, tell the interviewer their impressions
of Lucas, Lucas eventually finds himself on hard
times when he is fired from his job presumably
because he did not recognize Nicolas Cage and
refused him entry. He applies for jobs as a rock
singer, a TV actor, and a film star, in all cases
showing himself to be boorish, ill equipped to
sing, and obnoxiously insistent on his qualifications.
The point of the film appears to be that when
one is given a little authority in a small sphere
of operations, he becomes grandiose—emerging
as a sad caricature of a man. Again, good idea,
Mr. Price and nice try, Mr. Akoskin, but while
the tagline is valid, "Trevor W. knows people.
More importantly he knows people who know him,"
those of us in the movie audience may find little
to cheer in a vehicle that falls short of entertainment.
Not Rated.
76 minutes. © 2008 by Harvey Karten Member:
NY Film Critics Online
Marcos Carnevale's
Elsa & Fred
Opens June 27, 2008
Written By: Marcos
Carnavale, Lily Ann Martin, Marcela Guerty
Starring: China
Zorrilla; Manuel Alexandre; Blanca Portillo; Roberto
Carnaghi; Jose Angel Eglo; and Gonzalo Urtizberea.
Distimax Inc
Reviewed for New
York Cool by Harvey Karten
Grade: B
For every hundred
movies about romance among the young, there's
maybe one that deals with the chemistry of folks
over the age of sixty. In this case, the Elsa
of the title is eighty-two, her "boyfriend"
is seventy-eight. When the emotions of people
over seventy are given expression, their children
are more than likely to say "ewwww,"
as though there's something perverted about dirty
old people, who should presumably keep their bond
private—certainly not show their exuberance
by stomping about Rome's Trevi Fountain.
Elsa and Fred are
two people of different temperaments—she
is bubbly, outgoing; while he is by her own judgment
subdued. But their kinship works in this small
film featuring the Montevideo-born China Zorrilla
and Madrileno Manuel Alexandre in the roles of
an Argentinian lonely-heart and a Spanish man
who is grieving the recent death of his wife,
a self-absorbed hypochondriac with a bevy of varied-colored
pills.
Marcos Carnevale,
Argentinian by nationality, examines the partnership
while at the same time paying homage to the movies,
in particular to La Dolce Vita, undoubtedly
Elsa's the number one favorite, one that has her
comparing her own youthful self to Anita Ekberg.
The movie serves as well as a travel poster for
Spanish tourism, featuring a vibrant Madrid with
upscale restaurants and urban sophistication.
Elsa and Fred meet
cute after she has accidentally broken the headlights
of a car parked behind hers. Fred's daughter,
Cuca (Blanca Portillo), the woman whose car was
damaged by Else, is meddlesome, playing the role
of her dad's overseer—entering his apartment
without knocking while urging him to invest in
a business which he passively agrees to do. But
when he again has someone to live for, he reconsiders
putting his life on automatic pilot. With Fred
pulled reluctantly, at first, into living once
again, the film gains its heartening motif.
Else &
Fred will likely be seen by people long past
their prime, which is unfortunate. Young people,
who likely caricature those in their declining
years, as irrelevant at best and deplorable at
worst, will gain insight into the real selves
of people beyond the age of seventy who are, like
these two delightful folks, teenagers in oldster
bodies.
Not Rated.
106 minutes. © 2008 by Harvey Karten Member:
NY Film Critics Online
Peter Tolan's
Finding Amanda
Opened June 27, 2008
Cast: Matthew
Broderick; Brittany Snow;, Peter Facinelli; Steve
Coogan; Maura Tierney; and Bill Fagerbakke.
Written By: Peter Tolan
Distributed by Magnolia Pictures
Reviewed for New
York Cool by Harvey Karten
Grade: B
Anyone reading
the supermarket tabloids is familiar with the
number of stories about celebrities entering rehab—for
drugs, usually, some for drinking, others for
gambling. But whoever heard of entering a classy
rehab center in Malibu for hooking? Peter Tolan,
did, that's who. His film, Finding Amanda,
is about a twenty-year-old prostitute whose uncle,
a TV comedy writer in Pasadena, heads over to
Las Vegas to find his niece and get into a center
which he had already paid for. If there's really
no such thing as "curing" a prostitute,
who cares? The movie uses that theme to show us
that the forty-three-year-old uncle is more in
need of help than the woman who is half his age.
Tolan has cast his film well, especially in the
person of Brittany Snow in the title role of Amanda,
one who determines that eight clients in a weekend
would give her more money, a fabulous apartment,
and even more fun than her job at the International
House of Pancakes could give her in an entire
month. The story has a tonal change that's quite
acceptable, as many light comedies turn serious
during the final third of a story. In this case
the switch works: it's competently prepared for
by all that precedes.
Money seems no
object, at least for a while, for Taylor Peters
(Matthew Broderick), a richly rewarded TV comedy
writer whose show is in the toilet with low ratings
and who seems oblivious to his chances of being
more canned than its laughter. When his wife,
Lorraine (Maura Tierney) prods him to convince
his niece to enter rehab, he agrees with no objection,
not because he really is into helping the young
woman but because going to Vegas gives him the
chance to continue his gambling addiction—to
the horses and then to the card tables—even
to go off the wagon and become the drunk he once
was. He finds Amanda in a hotel lobby aggressively
out to seduce the men, meets her idiotic boyfriend,
Greg (Peter Facinelli), who finds nothing wrong
with bringing girls into her home, and is not
too concerned that she is not convinced from his
pitch. He has his own problems by steadily losing
at his favorite hotel, where he is welcomed big
just as all losers are, and convinces the casino
host, Jerry (Steve Coogan) that the check he bounced
will be covered by a bank transfer.
The weakest segment
of the picture deals with boyfriend Greg, an odd-looking,
hostile fellow who does his best to get rid of
Uncle Taylor, even pouring pasta and sauce all
over the older man's clothes. Aside from a splendid
side role by Steve Coogan (24 Hour Party People),
who somehow is not credited with the role on the
Internet Movie database imdb.com, much credit
goes to Brittany Snow, whose Amanda is happy-go-lucky
for the bulk of the movie but in one scene finds
her exploring herself in some depth and finding
a core of self-loathing. Matthew Broderick, who
at the age of forty-six looks not a day older
than when he played Ferris Bueller in 1986, turns
in his usual reliable performance as a man who
loses his money, his sobriety, his soul.
Rated R.
90 minutes. (c) 2008 by Harvey Karten, Member,
New York Film Critics Online.
Courtney Hunt's
Frozen River
Opens Friday, August 1, 2008
Starring:
Melissa Leo; Misty
Upham; Michael O'Keefe; Mark Boone Junio;Charlie
McDermott; James Reilly; Dylan Carusona; Jay Klaitz;
Michael Sky;John Canoe; and Nancy Wu.
Reviewed
by Bryan Close
Don’t let the fact
that Frozen River won the dramatic grand
prize at Sundance fool you. Director Courtney
Hunt’s low-budget indie about two poor mothers
– one white, one Native American –
who risk their lives smuggling illegal immigrants
across the Frozen St. Lawrence river is not just
a complex, well-acted, authentically naturalistic
slice of forgotten lives; it is also a tightly
plotted, gripping thriller.
Frozen River tells the story of Ray Eddy
(Melissa Leo), a poor upstate New York mother
who lives in an insulation-free trailer with her
fifteen and five-year-old sons. When her gambling
addict husband relapses a week before Christmas
and runs off with the cash for the doublewide
of her dreams, leaving Ray and the kids (Charlie
McDermot and James Reilly) to live on popcorn
and Tang, Ray goes looking for him. Nobody’s
victim, she brings along a revolver, which she
immediately uses to shoot a hole in the side of
the camper where she finds husband’s car.
The camper is on the Mohawk reservation that straddles
an unpatrolled section of the US-Canadian border,
and in it is Lila Littlewolf (Missy Upham), a
luckless smuggler who is trying to get her own
baby son back from her late husband’s mother,
who, she says, “stole him.”
From this inauspicious meeting, the partnership
is born. For a while, the river holds and the
money flows. But complications ensue. These involve,
in no particular order: deep-seated racial tensions,
the law, a finicky blowtorch, gunshots outside
a strip club, looming blindness, ingrained bitterness,
single motherhood, the suffocating realities of
poverty, the (at best) indifference of nature,
possible complicity in a variety of heinous crimes
(including, Ray suspects, of terrorism) and both
metaphorical and literal thin ice. Along the way,
the women may even participate in an authentic
Christmas miracle involving a pair of unwanted
travelers and an infant that somehow doesn’t
feel the least bit cheesy.
The leads
are so strong that it is difficult to imagine
other actresses in the roles. Leo (best known
for the 90’s TV series Homicide: Life
on the Street) anchors the movie with a tough,
vanity-free performance as a woman with whom life
has not been gentle, but who retains a core of
decency. Upham’s open face conveys worlds
of emotion beneath a deep mistrust not only of
white people and their world, but of almost everyone
around her. The bond they share as single mothers
fighting for their broken families is unspoken
but palpable and one of the films biggest strengths.
The other main players deliver as well: in an
especially well written role, McDermot expertly
navigates between the poles of teenage selfishness
and maturity, pettiness and generosity. And old
pros Michael O’Keefe as the local sheriff
and Mark Boone Junior as a thoroughly scummy human
trafficker give strong support.
Hunt’s writing is crisp and unsentimental,
and her pacing is unusually taut for a low-budget
indie. Cinematographer Reed Morano shoots the
bleak Plattsville, NY location in all its gray
oppressiveness and natural grandeur, and the score
(several composers are credited) is haunting,
further contributing to the thriller-like atmosphere.
That it was done on the cheap in less than a month
in sub-zero temperatures makes the accomplishment
all the more impressive.
But don’t take my word for it. Sundance
jury president Quinten Tarantino, a guy who knows
a little something about provoking a reaction
from an audience, said the film “put my
heart in a vice and didn’t let go.”
Peter Segal's
Get Smart
Opens June 20, 2008
Written By: Tom
J. Astle, Matt Ember
Starring: Steve
Carell; Anne Hathaway; Dwayne Johnson; Alan Arkin;
Terence Stamp; James Caan; Masi Oka; Nate Torrence;
Ken Davitian; Terry Crews; David Koechner; and
Dalip Singh.
Warner Bros/ Village
Roadshow
Reviewed for New
York Cool by Harvey Karten
Grade: B-
People under the
age of twenty-five probably can't believe that
on the TV series Get Smart that began
in 1965, a secret agent's gadget consisting of
a shoe with a wireless phone inside was considered
a far-out, James-Bond style toy. Remember that
as recently as then, a telephone in your car was
considered an expensive luxury: few could have
conceived that more Americans would own cells
today than not. In adapting the Get Smart
concept for a big-screen movie, director Peter
Segal (The Longest Yard, Naked Gun
33-1/3) pays homage to the old episodes created
by Mel Brooks and Buck Henry which starred Don
Adams and Barbara Feldon while simultaneously
updating the story to throw in some more gadgets.
At the same time, though, Barbara Feldon in the
role of Agent 99 for 131 episodes was already
a liberated woman who did not defer to Adams's
Maxwell Smart (138 episodes). In a sense, then,
the small-screen and multiplex versions are not
dissimilar.
Get Smart
has a lot of action shots filmed by Dean Semler—a
low-flying propeller plane threatened with breakup;
a car about to collide with a train; some skydiving
with and without parachutes; explosions within
a bakery; car chases; people chases; gunplay;
all punctuated by Trevor Rabin's pulsating music
with breakneck speed encouraged by editor Richard
Pearson. But comedy is scripters' Tom J. Astle
and Matt Ember's primary consideration, the laughs
coming out of the situations that the agents of
CONTROL find themselves in, while verbal wit is
virtually nonexistent. In fact there is just one
quip worthy of the term in the entire one hundred
ten minutes of the movie, that involving an essay
on existentialism that Maxwell Smart has written
on an exam that he takes for a hoped-for promotion
in the agency.
Steve Carrel anchors
the show as CONTROL agent Maxwell Smart, who will
turn out to confirm the Peter Principle: "In
a hierarchy, every employee tends to rise to his
level of incompetence." An expert at analysis,
he picks up chatter of enemies of the U.S., delivering
valuable information to the staff of the clandestine
agency. When he passes an exam that should have
promoted him to agent, the bureau chief (Alan
Arkin) wants to keep him doing what he has been
doing, though circumstances change. He becomes
a field operative, Agent 86, is teamed up with
Agent 99 (Anne Hathaway), and is no longer responsible
for preparing dull reports for Agent 23 (Dwayne
Johnson). The job is to uncover nefarious activities
by the head of KAOS, Siegfried (Terence Stamp),
suspected of considering sabotage somewhere in
the U.S.
The laughs are
designed around essentially a series of Saturday
Night Live skits involving the relationship
of Agent 86 and Agent 99, with Anne Hathaway's
character resenting a man who is brand new to
the job and could compromise her safety. After
all, she proves herself several times during the
story by being able to run with high heels, kick,
punch and shoot like the best of the men. Inevitable
bickering between the two will give way to sentiment,
with Agent 86 finding herself sufficiently attached
to her partner that she will presuambly crumble
if he is hurt or killed.
As in the James
Bond series, gadgets are the co-stars: 86 and
99 appear competitive even in showing off what
they're carrying, the paraphernalia including
the shoe phone, a pocket smokescreen, a small
flamethrower, a hook, a blowgun; while sports
cars formerly seen in the TV series strut their
stuff—the Opel GT, the Karmann Ghia, the
Sunbeam Tiger. James Caan turns up as our country's
chief executive, a man who is not identified but
who cannot pronounce "nuclear" and who
falls asleep during a concert of Beethoven's Ninth
Symphony.
Not surprisingly,
Steve Carrel is the man to watch, his Agent 99
being out of his depth in the field, but unlike
The Pink Panther's Inspector Clouseau,
sensitive enough to be taken aback by criticism.
Bond wannabees have included Mike Myers's Austin
Powers, Dean Dujardin's Oss 117, and in real life
quite a few people in Britain who want to join
M16 thinking that they will really be license
to kill. There is only one James Bond: his comic
imitators on the screen are pale by comparison.
Rated PG-13
110 minutes. © 2008 by Harvey Karten Member:
NY Film Critics Online
