Moore is better than fiction
Movies from seen in early 2003
Originally written: April 2003
2003 Oscars
Bowling for Columbine
Solaris
The Emperor's Club
Maid in Manhattan
The Truth About Charlie
Analyse That
Daredevil
Rules of Attraction
Red Dragon
Fellowship of the Ring - DVD
The 2003 Oscars have been awarded and there was, for a change, a few surprises. I haven't as yet seen The Pianist so I am in no position to judge whether the awards it received were deserved or another example of the Hollywood truism that you can't lose awards by making a movie about the Holocaust. I was happy to see Chicago win best movie as it's the best movie from 2002 I've seen so far - a joyous paen to movie-making of old, not just another routine epic or middle-class drama. Our Nicole (as it is now compulsory to call Ms Kidman) won but I'm still not sure she's made the grade as an actress. When you consider recent winners of the award - Gwynnie Paltrow, Julie Roberts, Hilary Swank, Halle Berry, Helen Hunt - and compare them to the gravitas of the male winners - Rush, Crowe, Washington, Spacey, Nicholson - you'll see that the female award has been going through a weak period (I have deliberately omitted the one male aberration: Roberto Begnini). You have to go back to the early to mid 1990s to find Frances McDormand, Susan Sarandon, Jessica Lange, Holly Hunter and Emma Thompson; since then the best actress has not really recognised the cream of female actors, with Cate Blanchett and Judi Dench obvious examples of those overlooked. So Our Nic fits in well with the recent run of best actrines. Similarly, the award to Adrien Brody seems to reinforce the domination in the male category of an outstanding performance, even if in a little seen movie (Nic Cage, Geoffrey Rush, Kevin Spacey and Denzel Washington are similar qualifiers). With Roman Polanski winning best director, at least this year Martin Scorsese lost to a real director (unlike previous times when he lost to Kevin Costner and Robert Redford). It came as somewhat of a surprise that the movie with the best direction, best script and best actor was not the best movie but that's show business!
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As to the ceremony itself: it was an improvement over recent years. The toned-down dresses occasioned by the war meant that there were many fewer fashion disasters than normal, although it was good to see that you can still rely on the winner of the Best Costumes award to wear the night's worst dress. Steve Martin did a good job as host, but the star turn was Michael Moore who deservedly won the Best Documentary award and then demonstrated how not to win an argument (his film was far less overt in its approach). Adrien Brody and Chris Cooper made the same point much more successfully. Still Moore is never less and such a display was to be expected. The incidence of pregnant stars (especially Catherine ZJ and Geena Davis) meant the return of the heroic bosom, although Queen Latifah matched them without benefit of foetus. (I was worried during the Latifah/Zeta duet that someone was going to have an eye taken out.) The worst choice was getting Meryl Streep to present Peter O'Toole's honorary oscar. What was the connection? At least O'Toole, who should have won at least two Oscars earlier, demonstrated some class in his acceptance speech.
I've sung the praises of the shambling mound, Michael Moore, before (in reviewing his two books of essays - both highly recommended as funny and mordant). Starting with his doco Roger and Me, dealing with the way in which General Motors had helped fuck up his home town of Flint, Michigan, and his fruitless quest to interview the then CEO of GM, Moore has become a gadfly on the left wing of US business and politics, particularly through his TV show, The Awful Truth, and two best-selling essay collections. In Bowling for Columbine, Moore again turns his mind to the film documentary form, in an examination of the American gun culture and a number of different aspects of it. He wants to discover why the number of gun deaths is so great in the US when its neighbor, Canada, with similar levels of gun ownership, has a death-toll a couple of orders of magnitude lower. The centre of his film is an examination of the events in Littleton, Colorado, the locality within which a couple of students at Columbine High committed the worst of the recent high school massacres. He links the presence of missile maker Lookheed in Littleton to the massacre in perhaps the weakest link in his film: the Lockheed plant in Littleton makes rockets for satellite programs, not for missiles (although it can be argued that the satellites are integral to the command and control function in any military atatck involving missiles and smart bombs). Moore's peregrinations take him to banks that give away guns with new accounts; to K-Mart, whence the bullets for Columbine were purchased; to the Michigan 'militia' (this is not what the makers of the second amendment meant by a 'militia') whose members defend the gun culture (and Moore draws the obvious links from the Michigan 'militia' to Terry McVeigh); to the NRA and its defence of the arming of civilian America (creating the situation where even more guns are available to criminals to steal from homes); and finally to Charlton Heston who is silly enough to give Moore an interview and not smart enough to match him without a script. In one of the most telling sequences, Moore gives a lie to the assertion that America hasn't used its position as a superpower to influence (ie invade or overthrow or assassinate the leaders of) other countries. This is a superb film; a documentary that is as much a polemic as an examination of a problem. Like all good Public Journalism, Bowling for Columbine turns the spotlight on an issue desperately in need of action. Until the Americans realise that the current interpretation of the second amendment is not only incorrect but fatal to their society, it will continue to be a society where gun deaths are greater than the rest of the world combined.
Zero Kelvin
The basis of Solaris, the recent SF movie, is deceptively simple. The eponymous planet seems to create simulacra of people, based on the memory of those people contained in the minds of those on a space probe exploring the planet. Such is the panic engendered by this that Kelvin, a psychologist who is himself something of a basket case following his wife's suicide, is sent to discover what is happening and what can be done to repair the situation. Naturally a replica of his wife soon turns up and his task of healing others is complicated by his own doubts and concerns. George Clooney plays Kelvin and does his best with a script that offers him very little help. Largely his character is too passive and too much a victim of what's happening around him to keep the film afloat. And he is the most sympathetic of the characters. Stephen Sodebergh's direction is similarly at fault in this. The pace is positively somnolent. Partly a result of the scripting, partly a result of the fact that the book on which it is based is similarly slow-moving. No, make that boring. The McGuffin is just not interesting enough to keep the audience interested: are we anything more than the sum of what other people see as being? If you're interested, wait for the video. There's no reason to see this one in the cinema.
Thank you, boys ...
Countless are the movies about the heroic efforts of school teachers who devote their lives to generations of students at private schools. Whether Mr Chips or Miss Brodie or Mr Keating, they seek to inspire their students to some set of values, by personifying those values. The Emperor's Club has the latest edition to this genre: Kevin Kline's William Hundert, a classics teacher at St Benedict's, a prep school for the children of the rich and powerful in New England, being trained as the next generation of bloated plutocrats and robber baron businessmen. Hundert seeks to instil values in these punks, which seems a pointless task in the light of attitude of the senatorial father of his most difficult student, which is, basically: "You teach him, I'll mold him". Nonetheless, Hundert's class in Greek and Roman history is all about the values of the Greeks and Romans (let's forget the rapine and pillage for the nonce) and how these should be adopted into their own lives. Young Sedgewick Bell is the rebel without a clue who, more in fear of his father than his pedagogs, temporarily reforms himself and climbs the academic ladder towards a place in the 'highlight' of the school year, the Mr Julius Caesar contest, wherein the three top students from the classics class are posed obvious questions about the Roman Republic and Empire. (In the Year Book the three are call 'the Triumvers', a mistake that no classicist would make - the word should be 'Triumvirs'.) Hundert adjusts the scores to push Bell into the final, to reward him for his effort, and then catches him cheating. In a bridging montage sequence, we are told of Bell's reversion to type and that he was a trouble-maker for the rest of his school life, and a hero to his peers. The second part of the movie, set many years later, sees a reunion and a re-run of the contest. I won't go into further spoilers on the plot. The interesting thing is that, despite extolling Hundert's pedagogical skill and contribution to the success of his students, the film exposes his weaknesses and failures as well. The success of the film is not well-served by the three anti-climaxes - another American film that doesn't know how to end. It is greatly assisted by Kline's cerebral and thoughtful performance. He makes Hundert as interesting as Donat's Chipp or Smith's Brodie and improves over Williams' Keating. I liked this movie despite some silly parts of it and find its commentary on the state of contemporary US diplomacy and governance subtle but effective.
J Lo Down
Maid in Manhattan is a run-of-the-mill romantic comedy that is not as bad as it should be. Yet another variation on the Cinderella trope, MiM casts Jennifer Lopez as a hotel maid who, through a mix-up, is thrown into the arms of Senatorial hopeful (and gossip mag interest) Ralph Fiennes. As you would expect there is a ball for which Cinders is transformed by an army of fairy godparents, the various maids, servitors and store managers of the hotel at which she works. And Cinders runs from the ball, to be pursued by her Prince, but not pursued very far. The denouement is effected not by a glass slipper but by Cinders' idiot savant son (a character I don't recall from Grimms' tale) and is exactly as you would expect. J Lo is generally good (although the costumers and make-up people do her no justice with the get up for the ball) and Fiennes is as normal a real stick whose attractiveness to women you have to take on trust. They are assisted by a good support cast, with Bob Hoskins particularly effective and affecting as an old butler within the hotel and Stanley Tucci good as Fiennes' political adviser. On the other hand, Natasha Richardson is particularly shrill as an executive who is the ugly sister of the piece. Not a prize part for her.
Playing charades
Sometimes you can understand why they remake a movie. Sometimes not. The Truth about Charlie seems to fall into the latter category most of the time. It is a remake by Jonathan Demme of Charade, a 1960s spy mystery with Audrey Hepburn and Cary Grant. Her French husband is dead and the Grant character may or may not be helping her to work her way out of the problem and to escape for hubby's former associates and from the Paris police all of whom seem more than interested in some loot he was alleged to have had. Mark Wahlberg is the Grant replacement and fails pretty dismally. While an acceptable support in features like The Three Kings, Wahlberg lacks the charisma to take the lead in a film like this. Opposite him is Thandie Newton, an East African actress, who made her debut in Flirting, the second of the John Duigan coming-of-age trilogy, and was good in Jefferson in Paris and wasted in MI2, takes the part which Audrey Hepburn had in the original. Granted she's no Audrey, she has a spark and some style and carries off the part, familiar to watcher of Hitchcock films, of the innocent person caught up in events she can neither understand or explain. She has to figure out if Wahlberg's character is good or bad and then figure out the Tim Robbins' character - seemingly the helpful US embassy man. Robbins is far less saturnine than Walter Matthau who had the part in the original and carries different menace. This is entertaining and diverting. Not as good as the original but a worthwhile re-imagining of a classic.
Forget about it
On the other hand, Analyse That is the worst of all things: an unfunny comedy sequel. Harold Ramis has breached Joe Bob's rule of sequels; he's tried for a second original movie, this time combining a heist subplot with the mafia-shrink plot. De Niro and Crystal are still there but the shtick doesn't work as well the second time around. Cathy Moriarty and Anthony La Paglia add some interest but there needs to be something more than the funny characters and allegedly funny situations, you need something called a script. In the absence of such an animal, this sequel sinks like a stone.
Mourning becomes ...
Daredevil manages to get the simple formula of the superhero genre just about right. There's the you-killed-my-father beginning; the grim, noir feel to the city and the hero; a kick-arse heroine; the nosy journalist; the scenery eating super-villain; the criminal mastermind; even the helpful priest (who's been on vacation since Mask of Zorro). Daredevil is blind but has enhanced powers in his other senses, although it appears that hearing is the main one, with some assist from smell. At least we never see him feeling or tasting his way through his difficulties. A lawyer by day; crime fighter by night, he's played by a strangely centred Ben Affleck. His nemesis is Bullseye, played with the usual elan by Colin Farrell, an actor definitely on his way up. The mastermind role goes to the imposing Michael Clark Duncan, who manages to create a believable Kingpin. TV's Jennifer Garner is Elektra, the heroine, who is a match for Affleck but not for Bullseye. Like her Greek namesake, it's her father's death which sets her off and creates the impetus for the second half of the plot. Good fun, although, like Spiderman, they still haven't quite got the gravity right and the flying through the city stunts don't quite work. In the Marvel stakes this is up there with, and just below, X-Men and a vast improvement on Spiderman. The influence of the Hong Kong action directors, actors and stuntpeople on the Hollywood action feature becomes more and more obvious. This is yet another homage to their work.
Repulsion
I went into The Rules of Attraction not knowing anything about it. I discovered subsequently that it is based on a novel by Bret Easton Ellis, author of American Psycho. That might have been at least a warning. In any case, what I found what all style and no real substance. Based in a New England college unlikely to exist in the real world, where the students may attend classes but you wouldn't know it from the movie which is about a succession of parties, sexual encounters and drug taking. I saw more white powder snorted in this movie than was helpful to the nasal passages or the plot. It seemed to be based purely on story-telling by excess. The protagonists are a self-absorbed set of youngsters, each seeking personal satisfactions, largely through a series of pointless bonkings. None of the people are sympathetic enough to keep our attention and the only possibility (Shannyn Sossamon) is so alienated from her fellows that she alienates the audience as well. On the positive side, director Roger Avary is a real talent and his use of camera and his editing, particularly in the brilliantly conceived opening sequence (where we follow story lines of each of the three lead characters at the 'end of the world' party, only to 'rewind' to the main party to follow the next), is what gives the movie any energy it has. And the end title sequence does something I've never previously seen in a movie - in keeping with an aspect of the opening sequence. However, in story and character, The Rules of Attraction remains repellent.
Where there's a Will ...
Red Dragon is a remake of Michael Mann's Manhunter, a film based on Thomas Harris first Hannibal Lector book. Only in the book and in the first film, Lector puts in only a cameo appearance. Red Dragon, in giving a greater role to Anthony Hopkins' impersonation of Lector, upsets the dynamic of the narrative which centres on the actions of the criminal, Francis Dolarhyde (Ralph Fiennes), and his nemesis, Will Graham (Edward Norton), the FBI profiler who caught Lector and is brought out of retirement for the hunt for the Tooth Fairy. The end result is that this movie, while not unreasonable, is not nearly as good as Manhunter. It may be that Brett Ratner is not as good a director as Mann or that the movie was made too soon after the original, for the purely fiscal purpose of cashing in on Hopkins' performances in Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal, but for whatever reason there is a lack of oomph here. It is not in the Dolarhyde sub-plot where Emily Watson plays the blind woman who may humanise the sociopath (a role played so well by Joan Allen in the original). It is probably in the Graham section: Norton is too callow for Graham and Harvey Keitel too over-the-top as Jack Crawford; William Petersen (now in CSI) made a far more troubled and believable Will Graham and Dennis Farina was a more laid back Crawford. In this case, the comparisons are inevitable but I will try and leave them aside for the nonce. In its own right, Red Dragon is an OK movie, better than Hannibal, not as good as Silence of the Lambs. There are a number of good performances, including Philip Seymour Hoffman's slimy journalist, but inevitably the re-ordering of the plot to give Hopkins more screen time screws with the balance of the film, to the detriment of the suspense and the horror. Good, but no cigar.
The hobbits have grown
I have revisited The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring through the 'extended version' DVD. Peter Jackson has re-incorporated about 30 minutes of additional footage, largely in the first half of the movie, that adds quite a bit to the flow of the movie and the understanding of the story for the non-cognoscenti. I think that the longer version of the movie flows far more successfully and gives a better feel to the hobbits journey from the Shire to Rivendell. The changes in the journey from Rivendell to Amon Hen are not as great, nor as telling. With the extended DVD comes two extra DVDs with what Jackson calls 'Appendices', just like JRRT had with the LotR novelisation. These additional bits include a number of short features about the books and the adaptation of the books to movies and the difficulties in getting the financing and casting for the movie. The second, and more interesting, set of appendices deals with the making of the films, the special effects, costuming, editing, music and so on. These are fascinating, and as good a set of making-of pieces as I have seen (The Making of The Abyss was formerly the best I'd seen). If you enjoyed the movie, I'd recommend the extended DVD set - I'll be buying each of them as they come out for each of the trilogy.
[Note: Information about the movies mentioned, including cast and crew lists and all sorts of trivia, is available at the Internet Movie Database (IMDb).]