Corrupt leaders & other runaway trains

I wanted to see me some Italian corrupt politics riddled with assassination but I got more than I needed in Il Divo. Rather than just tell the story straightforward, which would have been gripping enough, director Paolo Sorrentino goes gonzo and thinks he’s Kubrick meets Scorcese but is neither as proven by his pretentious over-direction. Lead actor Toni Servillo plays the main character of long-time Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti like a grotesque caricature, hunching around, an expressionless Dracula save for the stagey (but really it’s all so stagey) soliloquies where he rants rapidly like a madman. Much like 2006’s visually beautiful but hollow “The Fall” this director knows how to make beautiful pictures, he just doesn’t know when the say ‘basta’ and tell a story. Subtlety is not sin signore; see ‘La dolce vita’ instead.

The frustrating age of Bush resulted in a backlash that produced not just a satirical film in last years’ “W.”, but also a one-man show, before he had even left office. Will Ferrell’s “You’re Welcome America, A Final Night with George W. Bush” being the latter. Ferrell is as always absurd and funny, his political satire spot-on, but weighing in at almost an hour and a half the show does get tired. It seems like a drawn out SNL sketch not helped by a dancing secret service man between scenes played by Ferrells’ brother. Maybe it’s just too soon.

The remake of “The Taking of Pelham 1-2-3” is a textbook example of how current Hollywood does thrillers bad with Tony “Top Gun” Scott pulling out all his tricks: The macho mustachioed men from Central ‘New Yawk’ casting, loud soundtrack booms with pulsating rock riffs, intermittent slow motion with over-saturated colors, super quick cuts and zooms, the overused helicopter shots and not one ounce of honest character development in the mix. Denzel Washington goes from a coffee spilling demoted MTA boss to a superhero chasing his nemesis on the Brooklyn Bridge with gun in hand. (I would say “Spoiler alert” but the tell-all trailer for this film already gives most of this film up). John Travolta is the brains of the subway-napping who eats up the scenery and all but gives his name and address to the dispatchers. In short this movie sucks. Scott constantly cuts to police officers and SWAT teams who do nothing with the exception of getting into three (Count em!) separate car crashes in one trip uptown. The filmmakers had unrestricted access to the NY subway system so it’s a shame this film pales in comparison to the original. That 70’s film directed by Joseph Sargent was shot with real grit and intelligence as it had the meticulous Robert Shaw matching wits with the great low-key Walter Matthau. Its classic ending was near perfect. They don’t make them like that anymore as this remake proves loudly.

The Threes of Fall

Since so many films are just average, neither outstanding nor particularly bad, I find them hard to write on. We only use 5 shakers to keep it simple- not the one to one-hundred exactness of Rotten Tomatoes or Metacritic. Some average threes are almost-fours- others almost-twos. Zzzzzzz... Sorry, anyway here’s a bunch of average Joes:

"Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog" - Made during the writing strike this is basically a showcase for the singing and comic talents of Neil Patrick Harris who went on to take over the award show host circuit. A cute story of offbeat superheroes; it’s retro, kitschy and hip with catchy songs. Kind of like a fun college film. The creators are the Hollywood writing family behind “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and other hi-grade pop phenoms: Jed, Joss and Zack Whedon. These men have a cult army of followers and this was a big hit at Comic-Con. You get the picture, wants to be a mini-“Rocky Horror Picture Show” for geeks.

“O’ Horten” - I loved how director Brent Hamer adapted Charles Bukowski in 2005’s “Factotum”. Here he creates a Norwegian deadpan existentialist flick about a retiring train engineer so I counted myself in! Loneliness, old age, absurdity and non sequiturs are all represented in this offbeat tale. However, like Jim Jarmusch’s work (except “Mystery Train” which I loved) this was critically praised but didn't quite work for me.

“Not Quite Hollywood: The Wild, Untold Story of Ozploitation!” - This is a pretty comprehensive look at how the B-Movies of Australia from the sixties through the eighties helped to establish that countrys’ national film industry. A feast of clips intercut with the older and wiser filmmakers and one horribly pretentious film critic (I hate those guys), this film moves along briskly with sex, violence, Kung Fu and car crashes. Seeing how all of this gave birth to “Mad Max”, the “Godfather” of these films, is fascinating but like the exploitive films themselves it does get tired and repetitive.

“Every Little Step” – When choreographer Michael Bennett held an interview/workshop with a bunch of dancers in New York City in 1974 and turned it into “A Chorus Line”, it became a classic Broadway success story. Winning a Pulitzer and nine Tony Awards it ran on Broadway for fifteen years closing in 1990. Fifteen more years later some of the members of the original creative team reassemble to stage a revival and this doc follows the dancers that audition for this show in a clever, life-imitating-fiction-which imitates-life loop. Yet just as the original writing team feared that too many stories would overwhelm the audience this film spreads itself too thin. I would say this is for hardcore fans only, but watching actor Jason Tam nail an audition so convincingly that it renders the production team into a bunch of crying schoolgirls, is to watch an actors’ dream. I wanted more of these breakthrough moments but as they say it’s like lightening in a bottle. “ShowBusiness: The Road to Broadway” was much more fun.

“Lymelife” - Directed by Derick Martini and co written with his brother Steven (what’s with all the family teams popping up?), this film felt like the serious older cousin to Greg Mottola’s excellent “Adventureland”. I guess I should have reviewed that one. A coming-of-age film set in the late seventies on Long Island, this film would fall into the suburban angst genre I talked about earlier this year. Long-faced Rory and Kieran Culkin do their best as two siblings trapped in a disintegrating family. The adult stars Alec Baldwin, Cynthia Nixon, Timothy Hutton and Jill Hennessy almost save this film from its own over-seriousness. Almost doesn’t count.

“Coraline” - Speaking of depressing? Jeez Louise who is this film aimed at? Too creepy for children and a little too weird for adults, “Coraline” is Henry Selicks’ version of “The Nightmare Before Christmas” without the fun. The stop-animation is clever and all, but an alternative universe where a young girl must replace her eyes with buttons freaks me out much more than when the Abominable Snowman terrorized Rudolph. Children will go all Goth or Emo soon enough without entertaining them with this kind of horror and loneliness; as Joker asked: “Why so serious? “

Lose your Illusion

There have been many documentaries about the war in Iraq but Tony Gerber and Jesse Moss's “Full Battle Rattle” captures the motivation and policies of our military better than most. Ironically it was filmed in the US, in a mock Iraqi city in the Mojave Desert of California. The “city” is a battle training ground that seems to be a cross between a video game simulation and the town featured in “The Truman Show”. The make-believe hamlet is populated by Iraqi-Americans and other soldiers portraying the locals. There are meetings with the city council, confrontations at check points and even photo opportunities as building contracts and cash are handed out to buy good faith. Insurgents and assassinations also sneak in as programmed by the war game officials. A soldier and the man portraying the deputy mayor refer to their script as they discuss how to play a scene in one of the many surreal moments in this interesting film. When the same deputy mayor proudly shows video of his mock execution to his real family, his wife breaks into tears and we are reminded that this role playing is mirroring the real life violence effecting actual families. As the military personnel are shipped off after their training exercise you can really sense the anxiety as they leave a place where the dead were just actors or medical dummies to enter the very real chaos of war. I found this to be an interesting dissection of the logistics of modern war with the implied violence eerily foreshadowing the reality that awaits them.

In “Anvil! The Story of Anvil”, director Sacha Gervasi first introduces the Canadian rockers via old footage of the 1984 Japanese Super Rock Festival that they appeared at with The Scorpions, Whitesnake, Bon Jovi and other top bands. Members of Metallica, Motorhead, Guns N Roses and others are seen telling of their influence. We then cut to 2007 Toronto to see the band members working middle-class jobs while still holding onto the dream of making it big. Lead guitar/singer “Lips” (Steve Kudlow) and his long suffering best friend/drummer, Robb Reiner are mellow but often prone to explosive arguments like an old married couple. This is one of the many parallels of this film with the famed mockumentary “This is Spinal Tap”: We see the band making its’ way to the stage saying “Hello Cleveland!’, the silly album covers, an audio knob going to “11”, the foreign road manager girlfriend, the series of humiliating gigs, Stonehenge and the redeeming call from Japan. Yet somehow this flick does not mock its subjects, in fact the optimism of “Lips” in the face of all odds is actually inspiring and touching. Their families are still trying to support them and you can’t help but to pull for (or head bang for) this group as well.

Steven Soderbergh follows his dense but unmoving “Che (Parts One & Two)” with a small film about a high-end escort in Manhattan just prior to the election of 2008. “The Girlfriend Experience” uses real-life porn star Sasha Grey to portray Chelsea, a call girl just trying to make it in the world of the wealthy. Captured in a series of high-end restaurants and stores we see what may be a collapsing gilded era as Chelsea acts as ‘the girlfriend” of several nervous movers and shakers, which mostly means listening to them talk about finances. Her live-in boyfriend is a personal trainer also trying to leverage his relationship with his rich clients to get ahead. Their parallel realities comment about the materialism and superficiality of life. Sex, looks and money is all important, but this soullessness is also the death of real love. The film even has a trip to Vegas in it, the ultimate metaphor for the illusions of wealth and the American dream of success. However, again Soderbergh just doesn’t pull it off. This is yet another arty film that moves slowly and seems plot less. To mix it up a bit, it is edited in a confusingly deliberate non-chronological order which is reminiscent of “Memento”. The biggest problem is the monosyllabic, boring performance by Grey in the lead. I suspect a high end call girl would be intelligent and an excellent conversationalist. Grey seems more like a bored teenager here and that’s a GF experience that no one would pay for.

Quick review: “Watchmen” a sadistic abomination, torture porn and fanboys still ruling Hollywood!

The American dream: Elusive, then hard to maintain

As the US seems more divided than ever lately, I recently saw three new DVDs that deal with our freedoms in their own personal way.

In “Sugar” (2008), Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck’s follow-up to their very good “Half Nelson” (2006), we are introduced to a Dominican baseball player whose whole town depends on him making the minor leagues in the US and then possibly the majors. The pressure to succeed and the fish-out-of-water culture clashes of his life are examined in a very low-key, naturalistic style: Far too low-key for my tastes. Whereas in “Half Nelson” we had the Oscar nominated performance of lead actor Ryan Gosling taking us into the shadowy world of teachers who abuse drugs, here we have a non-actor, Algenis Perez Soto playing the lead. The fact that he isn’t an actor does increase the realism but since in 90% of this film the camera is pointed at him, the story would have benefitted if we could have had more insight into his mind. He just seems to stare vacantly most of the time as things occur almost randomly around him. This trend of almost hyper-realism, where we find ourselves stuck into one unstructured scene after another seems a bit lazy and pretentious to me. In one long shot we see ‘Sugar’ walking through a blurry entertainment arcade finally arriving at the edge of a bowling alley where his American counterpart is enjoying a game surrounded by friends. I know I was supposed to sympathize with his isolation here but I was too bored by the length of the take of his walk. That’s just me- ADD boy! His character then makes a questionable decision halfway through the film that seems unlikely given all we’ve been shown. So although this film came with high praise and had some nice plays, it just failed to score with me.

On the opposite end of the spectrum is “Sin Nombre” (2008), which although shot with equal realism gives us memorable imagery, strong dramatic performances and a tight story. Filmmaker Cary Fukunaga wrote and directed this tale of a group of Central American immigrants making their way to the American border. Casper (Edgar Flores) is a Mexican gang member of the scarily tattooed ‘Mara Salvatrucha’, who needs to prove his worth. Sayra (Paulina Gaitan) is a young Honduran girl just trying to follow her family to a better life. Both end up hitching on top of a rural train that snakes its’ way north. Somehow these images capture the beauty and sacrifice of these people. One touching scene has the train passing under a large statue of Mother Mary as many pray for her blessing. As the gang pursues Casper, he tries to thwart the advances of Sayra to no avail. Like good and evil itself these two seem trapped with each other. I found this film similar in my mind to “The Warriors” another surreal adventure of a road trip to redemption.

“State of Play” (2009) is based on a popular BBC mini-series and I’m sure if I had seen this I would have hated this film. In fact, I expected not to like it since it seemed super-hokey, which it is to some degree. However, although not the best political thriller ever it does make its’ points, have strong performances and is nicely shot. Russell Crowe plays Cal McCaffrey a veteran reporter for the fictional Washington Globe (a stand in for the Post); Della (Rachel McAdams) is a newbie blogger for the paper which has just been acquired though a merger by a global corporate media group. Helen Mirren is the editor who must weigh the pressure to sell papers with the infotainment demands of a 24-hour news cycle rather than taking the time to get the story told correctly. Stephen Collins (Ben Affleck), Cal’s old college roommate, is a congressman from Pennsylvania who oversees a committee investigating a defense contract corporation which eerily looks like Blackwater. The film opens with a series of killings that somehow link up to the death of a female Collins’ staffer who also was having an affair with him. Collin’s wife Anne (Robin Wright Penn) still pines for Cal in a ‘Casablanca’-like triangle that I found to be great old-timey Hollywood fun. The old-school vet reporter and newbie blogger team up to clear Collins’ name and get to the bottom of the killings in an attempt to bring the evil defense contractor out into the light while saving the paper from the pressures of its’ new owners.
There sure is a lot going on in this flick (since it is distilled from a mini-series) but it sucked me in and I enjoyed it! Director Kevin Macdonald (“Touching the Void”, “The Last King of Scotland”) really captures the surroundings from the messy newsroom, to the streets and eateries of DC, to the clean yet ominous halls of our government. He also gives some visual nods to “All the Presidents’ Men” with scenes at a creepy garage, the Watergate hotel, as well as extreme close-ups of copy being written, this time with a blinking cursor rather than the rifle-like cracks of typewriter strikes. Although it is flawed and a little too tidy in resolution, this film demonstrates how diligence is always needed to maintain our country’s morality in the face of a very complex, corrupt world. Sadly, this film also seemed like an epitaph for printed newspapers in a world overcome by the internet and bloggers (like me?).

Dudeism

Two new releases this month tell of unusual male friendships- one for laughs and one for sentiment; both seemed overrated and predictable.

In “The Soloist” Jamie Foxx went with the advice of Robert Downey’s actor character in “Tropic Thunder” and didn’t play “full retard” just going with schizophrenia. Based on the true story of Los Angeles Times columnist Steve Lopez (played by Downey) who befriended a down-and-out man, Nathaniel Ayers (Foxx), who he discovers had some classical cello training at Julliard and then told his story in several articles. Director Joe Wright tries hard to beat the clichés and be original, but by playing loose with the facts (and doing hokey things like presenting a symphony internally from Ayers point of view), the film lays the melodrama on when understatement would have worked better. Downey as usual is great and Foxx keeps his character credible but this is another case of the actors being better than the material. With forced flashbacks and a skid row that seems to be more “Escape from New York” than the real streets of LA, Wright and the screenwriters kill the reality of film despite the two strong performances up front. Trying to play a meaningful violin piece with only two strings again doesn’t work.

On the wackier side of unusual male friendship is “I Love You Man” written and directed by John Hamburg although it seems way similar to the work of bro-mance comedy director Judd Apatow. Paul Rudd is Peter Klaven, an LA realtor who is getting married but seems to just realize that he has no male friends. He finally bumps into bohemian free-spirit Sydney Fife (Jason Segal) who he connects with on the rocky road to male bonding. Along the way there are jams in the man cave, scuffles with Lou Ferrigno and some forced awkward man-dates. Unfortunately for me all seemed like a Comedy Central made-for-TV movie and the only laughs are when Rudd tries to speak hip – saying things like “Slappa da bass mon! “, calling Sydney bizarre nicknames like “Joben” and generally mining the un-coolness of his character to the hilt. Segal as Fife on the other hand seems completely unreal whether when he is threatening people who ask him to curb his dog, launching an unauthorized billboard campaign for Peter or engaging in primal scream therapy. Needless to say this all builds to a downright stupid ending. Reworking date movies for male appeal is a good idea, but they need to be funny, this one is all premise no delivery- totally ... totes my goats!

Past Lives

I like scary movies but not torture porn. For example I was spooked by “The Blair Witch Project” because it was so inventive for its’ budget and it went for the root of what scares us: “There’s something out there in the dark trying to get us!” I also enjoyed the original Japanese versions of “The Ring” and “The Grudge”. Yet American horror movies of today are a dime a dozen, full of soundtrack jolts and cheap scares. To confess a guilty pleasure, I do TiVo all of the paranormal stuff for easy entertainment. I especially love ridiculous shows like “Ghost Adventures” where Scooby Doo is recreated and ghost teams startle each other on night vision camera.

One ghostly documentary “A Haunting in Connecticut” was made in 2002 but still airs frequently. It was genuinely spooky following a family who move into a large house which is offered at a surprisingly cheap asking price so that their son, who suffers from cancer, can be closer to his treatment hospital. The house which is next to a cemetery is actually an old funeral home and the sick boy who sleeps in the basement discovers that this is where the mortician did his thing. Needless to say as someone whose childhood home was also nearby a cemetery, I found this show scary. The main ghost even wore those black contacts which on its own freaks me out. So hoping for the best I rented the Hollywood film version which was recently released on DVD. My worst fears were realized as even the credits were filled with the quick cuts and soundtrack blasts that earmark the worst horror films of today. Virginia Madsen and Elias Koteas are two actors who try to ground all the unnecessary CGI vainly. Lifetime movie vet, Martin Donovan is featured as always playing the well meaning dad. (Spoiler) When the house burns the end titles tell us it was rebuilt and stands there to this day. Well the house does stand because it was never burned and therefore never needed to be rebuilt. Since “based on a true story” means nothing to Hollywood versions of ghost stories they obviously feel no shame in rewriting history like this, kind of like Fox News. It’s a shame though since as I say the original story was spooky before they rewrote. See the original version if you can.

Past glory is also what haunts the title character of “The Great Buck Howard’ played by the great John Malkovich. The story here however is not Howard himself but that of his assistant played by Colin Hanks. Based on the real life experiences of a former assistant to “The Amazing Kreskin”, Howard is a mentalist who performs mind reading, hypnosis and the like before finishing up with a few cornball songs. His act is dated, his audience dwindling and Howard is constantly repeating stories of his salad days, especially his appearances on “The Tonight show with Johnny Carson”. (I do love it when Buck calls Leno Satan!) The film wants to be quaint old-fashioned fun but is actually kind of predictable and dull. Hanks is likable enough but doesn’t seem to have the charisma of his dad Tom to pull off this one-dimensional character. (Hanks Sr. appears here briefly playing, of course, his father) The Howard role seems custom made for Malkovich but yet it is too cartoony and underwritten. Involving has-beens do make for interesting stories (“Sunset Boulevard”, “Raging Bull”, “All about Eve”, “My Favorite Year”. “The Wrestler” etc) but here the magic just isn’t there.

In the film version of Dickens’ “Great Expectations” there are haunting scenes of the crazy Miss Havisham still in her wedding dress trapped in the past, living in her rotting mansion. In 1975 the Maysles brothers made a bizarre documentary about a mother and daughter living in similar conditions. Edith Bouvier Beale was nearly eighty and her daughter “Little Edie” was in her fifties at the time of filming, both living in the squalor of their rotting East Hampton mansion. Both women were obviously mentally ill with “Little Edie” being absolutely manic doing dances with her head constantly wrapped in a makeshift scarf. It was a sad film to watch and yet the subjects seemed perfectly happy in their little world, delusional as they were. Their home and the film was perfectly named “Grey Gardens”

This year HBO returned to these subjects making a dramatic film that attempts to fill in the blanks on the plight of these women. Also titled “Grey Gardens” the filmmakers do a great job at recreating scenes of the original doc between flashbacks of the characters affluent earlier years. Drew Barrymore who has made some bad films really shines here playing little Edie from her teenage years into her fifties. She totally nails this character and has a great time doing so. Jessica Lange playing the elder Edie also brings to life the desperation and increasing madness of her character. Both women, along with Ken Howard who plays Mr. Beale and Jeanne Tripplehorn as a shell-shocked Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (the womens’ famous cousin) have been nominated for well deserved Emmys. I think this film is best viewed after seeing the original documentary but in any case it is as haunting as the original. See it and then clean your home.

Love & War

As an audience member you really shouldn’t be too ahead of your characters or they come across as idiots. Just as in horror movies where it’s a constant battle of dumbness with folks going backwards into dark rooms, splitting up and of course assuming the maniac is dead and not kicking their weapon away or shooting them again. James Gray’s “Two Lovers” doesn’t have any murders- just the predictability. Leonard (Joaquin Phoenix) is supposed to be a manically depressed, but often witty, regular-Joe. He has it half-down not seeming to be any fun in the least and almost “Sling Blade” slow. He also is just not believable as a middle-class Jewish boy (nor is Isabella Rossellini- yeah you heard me, as his mom.) Predictably Vinessa Shaw is the nice Jewish girl who would save him versus the fragile and exploitative shiksa played by Gwyneth Paltrow doing her best to sell the “New Yawk” accent. This film has received good reviews and I did find the camera work atmospheric and the mood appropriately downbeat. However the all star casting goes against it making it seem a little like an SNL skit- though if I could just transplant Adam Sandlers’ character in “Reign over Me” into Phoenix’s place we may have had the likeability we needed as we watch this dude stumble through his love life. Robin Williams also did a great job in a similarly toned, little known film “Seize the Day” twenty years earlier –so I think Phoenix’s performance was the problem. Then he went on Letterman in that prank deal- Oy Vey!

Having given thirty choices for best releases this year so far, I am happy to give my first recommendation for the second half of 09. “Waltz with Bashir” is an “animated documentary” about the 1982 Lebanon war as seen by the Israeli foot soldier. Director Ari Folman is the basis of the main character who has his own repressed memory of the war jarred after a friend tells him of a recurring nightmare which features the many dogs he killed during that war coming back to get him. The animation seems to be rotoscoping (painting over a filmed image), but supposedly it is not. Actors were filmed for reference only. I think the animation serves its’ purpose, adding to the unreality and dreamlike nature needed as various characters recount their war stories. It also captures the absurdity and odd juxtapositions of war (creepy dead horses, an attack in an orchard, apartment dwellers watching a firefight from their balconies) which I found to be reminiscent of “Apocalypse Now”. As our heroes’ memory is stimulated by his comrades’ tales we realize why he has blocked them in the first place. Perhaps this films’ compelling visual style will pull one teenager away from their war porn video games long enough to give the joy of killing a second thought.

Failed plots- the law of average

I had a friend tell me I was too tough on films in this blog. My response is that isn’t being critical the whole point here? I don’t think I am too critical; I just love good films and I’m here to save you time. When some fail or worse yet come out average, I have the time to sit through them and spare you. Obviously it’s only my opinion and there are thousands of other blogs and sources for you to look at if you disagree. Jessi also counters me sometimes, but she has her fingers in many creative pies and is currently saving our world and so she lets me ramble here. I always say it is somehow sadder for me when a film is just average. The ones that fail outright are at least adventurous and committed to a vision. The vast majority of films are just average (3 shakers) and so they are usually the result of compromise, playing it safe, or just telling a story that we’ve seen many times before without much originality. So in this post I’ll look at three such average Joes: a romcom, a crime story and a war flick.

Expecting nothing but a cute pic I saw “He’s Just Not That into You” with a female friend when it was still in theaters. The place was just packed with the females that were its target audience. I’m kind of glad my friend was with me because where I saw harmless fluff she was outraged by both the female characters onscreen and their live counterparts in our theater. The pic has interwoven stories featuring thirty-somethings coming to terms with their relationship status. Like most Hollywood films they all have perfect jobs, great clothes, beautiful homes and wonderful friends (hey just like the show “Friends” which also had Jennifer Anniston) but all they do is whine about their unhappy lives. Poor them!

The main character, Gigi (Ginnifer Goodwin) has been told since childhood that men act like jerks if they like you and she therefore continues to throw herself at douche yuppies with apropos names like Conor (Kevin Connolly). When the studly bar manager Alex (Justin Long of the Mac commercials) pities her and begins offering her detailed advice on male behavior, my friend and I wondered what was ridiculously obvious: “Gee I wonder if these two will fall in love?”

Meanwhile, Connor still has the hots for his girlfriend Anna (Scarlett Johansson) who is on the hunt for married man Ben (Bradley Cooper) whose friend Neil (Ben Affleck) has been dating Beth (Anniston) for seven years but she seems only now to be peer pressured to get married against his wishes. Ben’s wife Janine (Jennifer Connelly) is back at their townhouse doing extensive renovations. Probably a heavy-handed metaphor for all the wanna-be, nesting females here. You get the picture? As my friend pointed out all the females here cared about was the opposite sex, they seemed more like 16-year-olds than grown women. Goodwin’s character was an idiot and Johansson seemed sleepy. So how can a film for and about women be so misogynistic? Obviously the writers were just not that into you!

The crime film that averages out is one I thought might have some real grit since it was written and directed by a true life criminal. In “What Doesn’t Kill You” Brian Goodman plays a local Mafioso boss and wrote the screenplay based on his memories of life in the tough streets of south Boston. Brian (Mark Ruffalo) and Paulie (Ethan Hawke) are friends since childhood and do what they have to in order to survive. Petty crimes aren’t cutting it anymore and Brian needs to provide for his family, so tensions develop as the boys want to break out from under their boss's thumb. Brian then develops a (symptom free) coke habit but here the believability starts to strain. As Paulie plans for that one “big heist” that they need to retire both the film and his acting seems to become one big cliché. This film shot in stark winter is lean and mean and Ruffalo almost sells it, but for me it went nowhere, much like the lives of those it portrays.

Finally we have “Valkyrie” which has Tom Cruise playing beloved World War II German hero Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg. Do I have to go on here? Tom Cruise is a crazy dude and watching him become more erratic and fanatically Scientologist has been kind of a sad thing. When an actor so obviously manic speaks against psychotherapy it’s just bizarre. When he acts mad in his films he just seems like a little boy stomping his foot for his blankie. Like Richard Gere I think he is best when he plays against type as the heavy. The supporting cast is strong although they all speak in different accents (Kenneth Brannaugh, Terrence Stamp, Bill Nighy, Tom Wilkerson) which I know shouldn’t matter but between the star casting and the accents we already have more of a stagey less believable feel. Then there is the structure; it is played out in strict chronological order and played seemingly for suspense. This is odd since we obviously know Hitler was not assassinated and therefore it’s tough to get to that tension. I’ve seen many more effective films like this that would frame the film as the main characters are about to be executed and work it in flashbacks. The structure and lead can’t take away from the nice location shooting though; many scenes were shot in their actual locations. I can imagine an older Germans’ blood would run cold as they past a an old Nazi building again being filmed draped in Swastikas so perhaps this whole film was just a bad idea about a good idea.

"Tsotsi" and Sudden Magic Baby Syndrome

Jessi, I say- you've seen one redemptive tale of impoverished ghetto life in South Africa- you've seen them all! I am being facetious here- but I was moved more strongly by “City of God' set in the Brazilian slums in that it was equally stylized with a more dramatic, less forced story.(Although it’s follow-up based on the spin-off Brazilian series “City of Men” was less thrilling) I'm glad the main character in Tsotsi was able to open like a flower- but since (spoiler) he gunned down the mother why should I care? This might be my own personal baggage since I lost a family member in a random bit of street violence- but am I to truly believe that this man comes around due to a baby which he most likely would have killed as well? If so perhaps all gangs should be given these magic babies. Let's turn this one over to the Johannesburg Lifetime channel. I know that sounds cynical but films like these either grab you or repel you.