Feet of Clay(ton).

Move over, Erin Brockovich. The skimpy blouses and truth-to-power sass isn’t going to phase these corporate ne’er-do-wells in the slightest. An intelligent, well-made throwback to the conspiracy-minded thrillers of the 1970s (such as The Parallax View and Three Days of the Condor), first-time director Tony Gilroy’s Michael Clayton is a withering and mostly plausible excursion into the ethical dead zone that can emerge at the top levels of the money game. (Gilroy previously wrote the Bourne movies and that TNT new classic The Devil’s Advocate, with Keanu Reeves as a hotshot lawyer who ends up working for Satan (Al Pacino in full hoo-ah mode), and the influence of both can be seen here.) I didn’t really buy every element of the film, to be honest, but for the most part Michael Clayton works. It’s an adult, believable thriller that’s well worth checking out, and George Clooney, as per the norm, is excellent.

When we first meet Clooney’s Clayton, he’s in the middle of an illicit Chinatown poker game, wearily enduring the taunts of a toupeed yokel at the end of the table, when duty calls. A fixer for the legal firm of Kenner, Bach, & Ledeen, Clayton must venture out to Westchester in the middle of the night to reassure a high-end client (Denis O’Hare) who’s just committed a hit-and-run. (This being the real world, there’s not much he can do, Clooney or no.) On the way back, Clayton, in the grip of an ethical crisis that will later be explained, is briefly mesmerized by three horses standing in the early morning light. And, just as he reaches out to pet one of these chestnut mares, BAM! His car explodes. What turned Michael Clayton’s ride into an unlikely fireball? For that, we’ll have to venture four days into the past, when he was sent to Milwaukee to pick up Arthur Edens (Tom Wilkinson), a senior litigating partner who, a la Peter Finch in Network, has blown a fuse somewhere and can no longer handle his lifetime role as a corporate stooge. This poses a particular problem, as Edens was the architect of a $3 billion class-action defense for the agribusiness behemoth U/North, and his coming to Jesus, mid-deposition, couldn’t have happened at a worse time for the company. And, when Edens, in-between his flights of insanity, starts brandishing a smoking-gun memo and threatening to give it to the plaintiffs, elements at U/North decide they must take extra-legal action…and if Clayton gets in the way, well, he should know the score by now.

Perhaps it’s a failure of imagination or just willful naivete, but, as with The Constant Gardener, I tend to have trouble believing corporations, however undeniably shady, have assassins on the payroll. (Blackwater notwithstanding, of course.) And, though it’s not entirely her fault, Tilda Swinton is wholly unbelievable as the fastidious, insecurity-wracked Karen Crowder, chief counsel for U/North (i.e. what passes for the Big Bad here.) From the moment her OCD character is introduced, practicing a television interview over and over again in the mirror, she feels more like a writerly construct than a person, and that feeling never goes away. (That being said, one of the funnier scenes in the movie involves Swinton and one of said assassins “taking a meeting” on a street corner, and trying to negotiate a kill-order in corporate legalese.)

Still, there are a number of noteworthy performances throughout Michael Clayton. Sydney Pollack is almost too convincing as Marty Bach, the firm’s take-no-guff man in charge. Thoroughly accustomed to the entitlements of power, Pollack’s Bach exudes a ruthlessly professional mien, and doesn’t suffer people who waste his time gladly. Equally scene-stealing is Caddyshack‘s Michael O’Keefe as Barry, Pollack’s #2. He doesn’t get a lot of run, but O’Keefe personifies the lifetime corporate comer who’s made it all the way up the ladder by dint of hard work and sheer weaselling, and will be damned if anyone’s going to screw it up for him now. And then there’s Clooney, who continues to surprise as an actor and shows us something different here. When we first hear Michael Clayton is $75,000 in the hole with some unsavory types who bankrolled his (and his alcoholic brother’s) failed restaurant — hence the card room — it’s hard not to think, “Oh, just get the gang together again and do another job.” But Clooney here — haggard, puffy, furtive — is no Danny Ocean. When he turns on the know-it-all charm here, it seems a suit of armor Clayton dons to do his job, so as to mask the stench of failure and compromise that threatens to leak out of every pore. If Michael Clayton turns out to be a rather conventional tale by the end, Clooney’s Michael Clayton still makes the trip worthwhile.

Beatles for Sale.

Woke up, got out of bed. Dragged a comb across my head. Found my way downstairs and drank a cup,
and looking at the blog I noticed I was late (heah, heah, heah, heah) in posting a review of Julie Taymor’s sadly insipid karaoke-musical Across the Universe. Ever since Ms. Quarles’ fourth-grade class in Florence, SC spent a full week on the Beatles — discussing lyrics, watching A Hard Day’s Night, etc. — they’ve been a part of my mental landscape. (We also did a week on Edgar Allan Poe — that had more morbid ramifications on my young brain.) In fact, the Beatles were the first musical group I remember being cognizant of. (Hmm, upon further reflection, that’s not entirely true: It seems like ABBA got some run in the house when I was a pre-schooler — I remember my brother getting this record for Christmas one year…You’ll have to ask him if that had anything to do wih him marrying a Swedish gal.) At any rate, from that fateful week of musical schooling to about eighth grade, when I discovered Pink Floyd’s “The Wall” and Depeche Mode’s “Black Celebration” and anguished adolescence began in earnest, the Beatles were far and away my favorite musical act, (In fact, I was justifiably eviscerated by friends and foes alike for crooning “Yesterday” in the seventh grade talent show — before my voice had broke — later prompting the waggish schoolyard riposte: “Suddenly, I’m not half the man I used to be…ever since that vasectomy…”)

But, really, there’s no point in going on trying to prove my Beatles bona fides. The fact of the matter is, everyone loves the Fab Four in their own way (and those few who don’t are either too cool for school or just certifiable Blue Meanies.) It’s hard to think of any band that’s as universally beloved as the boys from Liverpool…which is one reason why Across the Universe seems like such a misfire. Given Julie Taymor’s considerable talent, on display in Frida and elsewhere, and the ubiquitous fondness for the music she gets to play with, how did the final product end up as tepid and uninspired as what we’ve got here? Perhaps it’s a fault of the karaoke-musical genre — I didn’t much care for Twyla Tharp’s riff on Bob Dylan either. But really. Surely a band as influential and inspired as the Beatles deserve something better than a remake of Rent with better music. Unless you’re really a completist on matters Liverpudlian, or your iPod’s broken or something, I wouldn’t recommend crossing the street to see this, much less venturing across the universe.

“Is there anybody going to listen to my story, all about the girl who came to stay?” So pleads Jude (Jim Sturgess, looking like Paul with a hint of George) from the bleak gray oceanfront of what could only be North England. You see, before he started quoting Rubber Soul for effect, Jude was a working-class stiff in Liverpool who, on a youthful journey of self-discovery, set out for the green fields of Princeton University to find and confront his absent WWII GI father. Once arriving at the Ivory Tower, he reunites with dear old Dad, and, more importantly, meets up with the fun-loving, dissolute Max (Joe Anderson), who — in the natural manner of all Ivy League undergrads — spends his nights playing drunken golf with his father’s borrowed set of “silver hammers.” But here’s the important point: Max happens to have a little sister with kaleidoscope eyes, the lovely Lucy (Evan Rachel Wood), and — as you can probably guess — as soon as Jude sees her standing there, he’s got to get her into his life. In any case, Max drops out of college, and he and Jude — and ultimately, Lucy — procure tickets to ride to the bohemian paradise of New York City, whereupon they fall in with sultry singer Sadie (Dana Fuchs, a.k.a. Janis Joplin), guitar hero JoJo (Martin Luther, a.k.a. Jimi Hendrix), and crush-heavy misfit Prudence (T.V. Carpio, who, in one of many Beatles puns throughout, first comes in through the bathroom window.) All is groovy in East Village Bohemia, for awhile…but, there’s a war going on, man, and all things must pass. Soon enough the Magical Mystery Tour has come to an abrupt halt: Max is drafted, Prudence tunes out, Sadie and Jojo break up the band (with nary a Yoko in sight), and Lucy discovers SDS…leaving Jude once again a loser in Liverpool. But, hey Jude, don’t let us down. You have found her, now go and get her…

So, as you can see, the movie is basically just a bunch of Beatles songs assembled in a sort of narrative order. That’s fine — that’s what we were all expecting, and the Beatles obviously have a lot of great tunes to work with. But, while there are a few nice visual flourishes at times, more often than not, Across the Universe turns gold into lead: It tries to be transporting, but ends up feeling forced. Part of the problem — for me at least — is the rather pedestrian choices made, of which the Lower East Side Rent angle is only one. Obviously, I enjoy American history, or I wouldn’t do what it is I do. But, frankly, the Forrest Gumpian, TV miniseriesish “Summer of Love derailed in the jungles of Vietnam” trope has gotten really, really old over the past few years. Can we please find some other period in American history to fetishize, or find some way to tell this story differently? In all honesty, the hackneyed “Paradise Lost” version of the Sixties presented here has become as wheezy a historical contrivance as “The Greatest Generation.” (And is there a lazier way to string together a bunch of Beatles songs than “the Sixties experience”? Are they that bound up with their time? Even Tharp’s botched Dylanpalooza had its own traveling circus conceit.)

And, speaking of wheezy contrivances, I know I’m probably going to be an army of one on this, but oh well, go ahead and crucify me: I’m so deadly sick of the tired rom-com subgenre whereby our hero/ine does or says something irredeemably stupid in the second act of a movie and loses the object of his/her affection, but then goes all out in the third act with some zany, fearless, and/or bravura romantic display and all is forgiven. You see it all the time, and does life ever really work out like this? Um, no. Yes, I know it’s a trope that’s as old as the hills, but it is totally and utterly played out. (Offhand, I can think of only Annie Hall and maybe The Science of Sleep as movies that show this type of third-act Hail Mary blowing up in the protagonist’s face.) I fully realize that a happy-go-lucky musical based on Beatles tunes may not be the appropriate film to make this stand, but screw it — I’ve reached my tipping point. This bird has flown, Jude, so next time hide your love away and cry instead. (And, Ms. Taymor, what with all the Beatles characters here, where’s Eleanor?)

Even notwithstanding my more curmudgeonly issues, though, Across the Universe takes some missteps along the way. “Let it Be” makes for a lovely gospel rendition, but it’s just about the worst advice you can imagine as a civil rights anthem. And perhaps I’m living easy with eyes closed, misunderstanding all I see, but the “bleeding fruit” presentation of “Strawberry Fields Forever” here seemed almost completely wrong to me. But, hey, at least those two songs made an impression. Most of the tunes here never even get that far: Usually played deadly earnest and mostly stripped of any subversiveness therein, the songs as sung by the lead actors here tend to be flat, uninspired, and virtually interchangeable. The only way to tell them apart is in the very occasionally striking visual flourishes, from the myriad of Salma Hayek-y nurses present for “Happiness is a Warm Gun” to the teen-dream Bowlmor lanes conceit of I’ve Just Seen a Face” (which isn’t even the best musical number ever set in a bowling alley — that still goes to Kenny Rogers’ “I Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In” from The Big Lebowski.) Indeed, the trippy visuals often overshadow the bland versions of the songs. The eeriest image in Universe may have been Taymor’s weird Jungian bent on the famous Kim Phuc photo, but I’ll be damned if I know what it was in there for or remember what song it was in reference to.)

As for the musical guests, Eddie Izzard all but sleepwalks his way through a pained version of “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite,” and U2’s Bono shows up midway to embarrass himself as a Ken Kesey-type character. This AICN comment nailed it: Bono sings “I am the Walrus” as if it’s “MLK” or “Sunday Bloody Sunday,” like it’s the most important thing ever written. He’s meant to be ironic, I guess, but he can’t seem to get past his own vanity. But, to be fair, one musician here does ring true: In fact, almost everything that’s wrong with Across the Universe is made manifest by his fifteen-second cameo. Joe Cocker is partially famous for his blistering rendition of “With a Little Help From of My Friends” at Woodstock,” and, as a homeless guy here, he imbues his one verse of “Come Together” with all the heartfelt passion and hard-fought wisdom he brought to that earlier performance. (After it happened, the audience at my showing spontaneously applauded.) Don’t let him be misunderstood: Cocker makes clear these songs mean as much to him as they do to us. He’s the only one here able to strip away the saccharine, shrink-wrapped Rent-lite blandness of this whole enterprise and, at least for a moment, do the Beatles proud.

Ford’s Theatre.

On a Saturday in late September, the gray hours were marked by occasional rains, and Kevin, having completed his affairs of commerce the evening prior and having no social prospects on the calendar, traveled to the theater on 68th St. to bask for a day in the fulgor of the cinematograph. And so it was that, three films into his personal odyssey, he came upon Andrew Dominik’s The Assassination of Jesse James By the Coward Robert Ford, a recount of the last days of one of the Old West’s most famous killers, and an analysis of the man who laid him low. Kevin found it to be an overly protracted and ultimately uneven work, to be sure. But he also found the movie often striking and occasionally beautiful, and — even if its reach exceeded its grasp — he admired the film for its ambition, and its confidence in taking extended, leisurely digressions. Kevin applauded Dominik’s attempt to pay homage to the films of Terrence Malick and to the sprawling psychological westerns of the 1970s. That being said, he found the interminable voiceover by Basil Exposition — which often needlessly described the action Kevin could witness for himself on the screen — more than a little irritating…

Thanks, Basil, I’ll take it from here. As Assassination begins, the James gang — or, more to the point, the gaggle of local toughs Frank (Sam Shepard) and Jesse (Brad Pitt) James have assembled for one last train heist in Blue Cut, Missouri — are waiting out the day in the woods. During this stopover, the weaselly wannabe Robert Ford (Casey Affleck), nursing a lean and hungry look, tries desperately to ingratiate himself with the celebrity brothers in turn. (If we couldn’t figure out from the title what part Ford will play in all this, he seems like trouble right from the get-go: one part Mark David Chapman (“I can’t shoot him like this. I wanted to get the autograph.“), one part Sirhan Sirhan (“I have achieved in one day what it took Robert Kennedy all his life to do.”)) And yet, through sheer dogged obsequiousness, Ford eventually manages to fall in with younger brother Jesse, who seems both amused by his blatant hero-worship and nonchalant about the quality of his riding partners. So, for the next two hours plus, we follow the twists and turns of Jesse and Robert’s doomed relationship, particularly as it becomes strained by James’ increasing (and justifiable) paranoia and Ford’s own delusions of easy immortality. And, as we eventually get to that fateful day when the shot is fired (and the years beyond), Ford slowly comes to discover that it’s one thing to kill a man. It’s another to live with yourself afterward.

Assassination definitely isn’t going to be everyone’s cup of tea, and, to be honest, it’s really not at the level that its pretensions seem to warrant: The film never achieves the psychological depths it purports to plumb — Ford in particular seems a pretty straightforward nutjob — and it runs for several beats too long. (The movie should already have ended two or three times over by the time Zooey Deschanel shows up.) And, then, of course, there’s that awful narration, which comes across as screenwriting on autopilot and nine times out of ten feels jarring and unnecessary. (I assume the passages come from the book by Ron Hansen, but they don’t work here at all. They either repeat — or worse, contradict — what we’re seeing. For example, the voiceover tells us in the first ten minutes that Jesse James was a constant blinker, after which Brad Pitt stares at things with an unfaltering, steely blue gaze for three hours.)

That being said, with some wonderful cinematography by Roger Deakins (who also shot In the Valley of Elah) and a solid, colorful cast, Assassination does have its moments. It’s always grand to see Sam Rockwell, and he’s quite commendable here as Bob’s older brother Charlie. (And, while he at first appears to be a mere buffoon, there’s more to him as the movie goes along.) Deadwood‘s Garret Dillahunt also adds another finely-honed cowboy to his western repertory here: His Ed Miller, an outlaw sadly operating a few cards short of a full deck, is a far cry from both Jack McCall and Frances Wolcott, but memorable nonetheless. And there’s plenty of other good work here, including outlaw turns by Jeremy Renner (of 28 Weeks Later), Paul Schneider (looking like the lost Fiennes brother), and, of course, Affleck and Pitt, both of whom bring their A-games to the table (even if Pitt’s motivations in his final moments escaped me.) Also, I’m forced to admit, I was rather tickled by the mean old cuss they acquired to play the Governor of Missouri…

The Illustrated Man.

The King of the West may be a man of the East in David Cronenberg’s London gangster flick Eastern Promises, but — Anduril or no — he’s no less handy in a tight spot. As with Mortensen and Cronenberg’s last collaboration, A History of Violence, I found Promises to be a sleek and rousing genre exercise that’s being more than a little overpraised. I enjoyed the film, it’s worth catching if you have the stomach for it, and its steam bath centerpiece will be talked about for a good long while. But, to be honest, there’s really not much there there. Remove that fight from the equation and you’re basically left with sizable helpings of immigrant and gangster cliche. (Cronenberg seems to know as much — he tips his hand in the campy accordionist scene.) Naomi Watts is a fine actress, but she’s not given anything to do here besides tote around the film’s two Maguffins. Armin Mueller-Stahl, the Russian godfather of the tale, plays the same avuncular-going-on-sinister note throughout. And, while exemplifying the adage “still waters run deep” once again, Viggo’s character is almost too much of an archetypal badass — You can see the twists and turns in his story coming a mile away.

After a grisly assassination in a barber shop that’d do Sweeney Todd proud (just to let you know we’re in Cronenberg territory), Eastern Promises opens with the death of a young, drugged-out, and pretty clearly abused Russian teenager in a London hospital…and the subsequent birth of her child. (Speaking of Cronenberg territory, he films the newborn baby like it’s something out of Existenz.) Having lost her own pre-born of late, Anna Khitrova (Watts), the midwife in attendance, takes a shine to this orphaned child, and thus sets out with the dead girl’s diary to locate the foundling’s proper home. Anna’s (sort of) ex-KGB uncle takes one look at this untranslated journal and warns of a dangerous road ahead. Nonetheless, Watts’ investigation quickly takes her to a Russian restaurant run by Mueller-Stahl, an Old World type of fellow who’s clearly something of a n’er-do-well despite his fantabulous borscht. Soon enough, Anna also stumbles upon Mueller-Stahl’s flamboyant, hard-drinking Dauphin of a son (Vincent Cassel) and his assigned playmate Nikolai, a stoic, tough-as-nails chauffeur (Mortensen). And when it inevitably turns out that Mueller-Stahl et al are actually part of the feared vory v zakone (a.k.a. the Russian cosa nostra), the fates of Anna, the baby, the diary, and all involved come to rest in the hands of one enigmatic, very tattooed, and possibly conflicted driver…but what’s his angle? Let’s just hope the Russians love their children too.

I’m not going to spill Viggo’s secrets here, tovarisches, although you can probably guess he’s not one to just up and off a baby when called upon to do so. (Also, if this sounds a bit like Dirty Pretty Things, it may be because the films share a screenwriter.) Nonetheless, most of the buzz surrounding Eastern Promises justifiably centers on a fight scene in the middle going, when Viggo, naked as the day he was born, is confronted by two mobsters who don’t have his best interests at heart. It’s hard to say whether this gory steam room fracas is better than the splendid hand-to-hand duel in The Bourne Ultimatum, but it’s up there. If that deft, practiced, lightning-quick Bourne melee was a stiletto, this brutal scene packs the visceral, bone-crushing crunch of a mace. It’s also extremely hard to watch, and not because of Mortensen’s dangly bits — let’s just say David Cronenberg and sharp objects are involved. (Call me a lover, not a fighter, but when it comes to this director pushing the envelope of the R-rating, I prefer History‘s sex scenes with Maria Bello to nude, bloody Viggo plunging knives into people’s soft parts. But, to each his own.)

No Country for Young Men.

[Review, take 2.] Every day I think I’m going to wake up back in the desert… I must say, I went in expecting not much more than an over-the-top “message movie” schmaltzfest, or at best a harmless helping of mediocre, inert Oscar Bait like Cinderella Man or A Beautiful Mind. But Paul Haggis’ In the Valley of Elah, the first of four(!) movies I caught last Saturday, turned out to be quite a bit better than I expected. Rather, Elah is a melancholy rumination on the hidden casualties of (any) war and a somber inquiry into the heavy toll exacted on the wives, parents, and children of military men. (The families of military women will likely get their due in John Cusack’s forthcoming Grace is Gone.) The David and Goliath nonsequitur of its title notwithstanding, Elah more often brings to mind the questionable sacrifice for an unknown higher purpose in Abraham and Isaac, or the bloody fate of erstwhile brothers Cain and Abel. And, biblical parallels aside, the film showcases the best work Tommy Lee Jones has done in years. (Well, I didn’t see The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, and have high hopes for No Country for Old Men.) And it’s probably the most engaging police procedural of the year this side of Zodiac.

“Dad?” Roused from a dream he can barely grasp the edges of, grizzled Vietnam Vet turned mechanic Hank Greenfield (Jones) is awoken one Tennessee morning by a call from faraway Fort Rudd, informing him not only that his son Mike is back from Iraq but has gone AWOL since getting back stateside. This doesn’t gibe with Hank, who’s been receiving image-laden e-mails from his second son during his tour (his first son already perished in his nation’s service), and so he packs his bags, kisses his wife (Susan Sarandon) goodbye, and drives straight through to New Mexico, looking to ascertain the score.

The sergeant on duty at Ft. Rudd (James Franco) and Mike’s returning platoon members all think he’s just shacked up with a good time woman somewhere…but Hank’s not so certain. And, just as he’s beginning to tease clues off Mike’s damaged cameraphone, a charred, mutilated, and dismembered body is discovered on the outskirts of town. Sure enough, it’s Mike, and as the ensuing homicide investigation slips into the jursidictional crack between local law enforcement (most notably represented by Charlize Theron) and the Military Police (headed by bureaucrat Jason Patric), Hank takes it on himself to bring his son’s murderer to justice. But, as Hank well knows, the dogs of war impart a moon-touched madness on those they’ve mauled, and Hank will be forced to confront some ugly truths about his son, and the man he became in Iraq, in order to get to the bottom of things.

Admittedly, the movie starts out kinda rocky (or perhaps I was just gunning for Haggis in the first reel.) Events occur early on that scream symbolic significance (you’ll know what I mean), people speak in characterization shorthand — “Someday, you’ll just have to trust somebody, Hank” — and some plot points just don’t hang together. How did Hank ever find that (symbolically-named) computer guru operating out of a van, and why does it take him so ever-loving long just to do a defrag? But, for whatever reason — my money’s mostly on Jones — Elah is a significantly subtler and more resonant film than I ever expected from the writer-director of the lamentable Crash. (Then again, a ball-peen hammer to the skull is subtler than Crash, a film which, as I noted in my review of Inside Man last year, feels like it was made by and for people who don’t get out very much.)

In any case, Tommy Lee Jones is really excellent here: Check out the scene where he has to ID his son’s body in the morgue, or note how his early military rectitude seeps away as he sinks into the slough of despond. And Jones isn’t alone. Sarandon is memorable in every short scene she’s in, Theron is surprisingly believable as an ordinary (albeit beautiful) cop, and Patric — a dependable actor who never quite made it as a lead — seems to relish the freedom of his oncoming, paunchy Val Kilmer/Alec Baldwin phase. His “on a need to know basis” character in particular could’ve been way over the top, but Patric underplays him as a guy who really just doesn’t want to do the paperwork. (There’s also a brief but solid turn by Josh Brolin, Jones’ Coen compadre, as the local sheriff.)

Elah isn’t the best movie of the year or anything. But it is most of everything you’d want out of a fall film — It’s timely, sober-minded, well-acted and well-made. And, if nothing else, it shows Haggis has the ability to reboot after Crash.

Slow Train Coming | How the West was Won (and where it got us).

Although the last act strains credulity quite a bit, James Mangold’s moody, memorable 3:10 to Yuma is nonetheless a worthy foray into the unforgiving territory of the Old West. I’ve never been much for oaters, to be honest, but if they keep making ’em like David Milch’s Deadwood and 3:10 (and, hopefully, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford in two weeks), I’m all for a full-fledged return of the cowboy pic. Then again, I guess it’d probably have been hard for 3:10 to falter in any event, with talented actors like Christian Bale, Russell Crowe, and others in the respective saddles. Mangold (showing more skill here than he did in Walk the Line) displays an authoritative sense of the genre here, and he doesn’t stint on the fireworks. But, for all the breathtaking “Big Sky Country” vistas and well-executed gunplay on display, the most exciting parts of 3:10 occur in the quiet moments between its two stars, as we watch Crowe (the Black Hat) attempt to wend and worm his way into what remains of (White Hat) Bale’s haunted psyche. With their dark interplay driving 3:10, not even the high suspension of disbelief required by the end, nor an overwrought father-son subplot, manage to derail this train. Come on aboard.

On the outskirts of Bisbee, in the years after the Civil War, an honest life is hard, as attested by the sad fate of one Dan Evans (Bale). Having lost his leg in the service of Abe Lincoln, Evans transplanted his wife (Gretchen Mol, dusty yet luminous) and two sons to the Arizona plains in search of renewal, only to find himself deeply in debt and on the verge of starvation. Dan’s boys, particularly his older son William (Logan Lerman), are humiliated by his failure and seeming weakness…and the rains just ain’t comin’. Meanwhile, the regal, courtly Ben Wade (Crowe), a part-time illustrator and full-time desperado, is living high on the hog, along with his gang of thieves, murderers, and bad, bad men — most notably his adoring #2 Charlie Prince (a.k.a. Ben Foster of Six Feet Under and Freaks & Geeks, strangely eerie and excellent here.) But, after a stagecoach job near Evans’ land, this Jack of Hearts lingers too long back in Bisbee, and is summarily captured by a mishmash of local law enforcement, bounty hunters on the Pinkerton payroll (i.e. a solid Peter Fonda, looking haggard and reminiscent of his dad), and Evans himself, in town to settle a debt one way or another. And, when the local railroad suit (Dallas Roberts) offers a $200 fee that might turn around his struggling fortunes, Evans enlists in the company assembled to take Ben Wade to Yuma Prison, by way of the 3:10 train in Contention. But — and it’s a big but — Wade’s gang is still at large, the forces of Law & Order are amateurish at best (note Firefly‘s Alan Tudyk as a well-meaning veterinarian conscripted into the group) and easily corruptible at worst, and Wade himself is no slouch in the survivability department. By means fair or foul, whether by quoting Scripture with a serpent’s tongue, bashing in a sleeping man’s head with a rock, or tempting Evans (and his son) with all the lucre and pleasurable squalor the ignoble life affords. Ben Wade will do what he must to restore his freedom…

…Or will he? My biggest problem with 3:10 to Yuma, and perhaps it’s also an issue in the Glenn Ford version of 1957 (I haven’t seen it), is that Ben Wade’s motivations grow increasingly confused as the film progresses. Given how easily he subdues certain people at certain times, one begins to wonder what’s keeping Crowe along for this ride, other than a general sense of bemusement about the whole proceedings. By the third act, which devolves into a town-wide shootout at the railroad crossing of Contention, it’s hard to figure exactly why Wade is behaving as he does (or, for that matter, why Evans’ missing leg isn’t a problem as he engages in the cowtown equivalent of Ninja Warrior.) Crowe is given a few lines at various points, and the final shot in the movie, to help explain his reasoning…and I guess it makes a certain amount of sense, from a dramatic perspective. But I’m not sure if I bought it, given all that’s come before.

Still, 3:10 to Yuma is another solid and welcome entrant in the burgeoning ranks of the revisionist western. (Indeed, the film reflects more of the New Western History than it does John Wayne country — For example, there’s a sequence involving evil Luke Wilson overseeing a Chinese railroad camp which is really kinda unnecessary, but I for one just liked seeing a Chinese railroad camp included in the proceedings.) And, as with The Wild Bunch, Unforgiven, and several other superlative entries in the genre, 3:10 frontlines the question of what code should — and actually does — govern a man’s actions when he is unconstrained by larger society.

Indeed, if you’ll permit me a digression, that was the beauty of Deadwood, a classic show still unsullied by Milch’s later, more confused attempt to fashion a Gospel of Surfing: Watching the varied, colorful residents of the town attempt to create a tentative order out of anarchic disorder: What rules must we live by if we are to live together? What should we do when the plague breaks out? How and when should the municipal government gather, who should attend, and what roles should it take on (and, for that matter, should there be canned peaches or cinnamon served at the meetings?) And, for the coup de grace, Milch offered a wry commentary on the iron fist within the velvet glove of the existing Gilded Age social order (and the ugly commercial realities that drove much of westward expansion.) When the fledgling entity of Deadwood finally ran up against the established authorities, it was not the government of these United States it faced, but rather the ruthless and mighty arm of unchecked Capital. By the end of Season 3, everyone — even the wily, formidable, and take-no-prisoners saloon proprietor Al Swearingen — was eventually forced to bow and succumb before the whims of the Great (and Monied) Man, George Hearst. (As Al put it, “Leviathan f**king smiles.”)

3:10 to Yuma doesn’t cover exactly the same ground as Deadwood, of course (and it has much less time to ruminate in any case.) But, at its heart, in the churning psychological tension between Crowe’s Wade and Bale’s Evans — as well as the omnipresent lure and power afforded by the almighty dollar therein — 3:10 ponders similar western verities. In the absence of external fetters, what drives a man to do the right thing, even to the point of ignoring his own self-preservation? In a world of complicated loyalties and compromising shades of grey, where the law is irrevocably bound up with the interests of the railroads and a struggling farmer and a smirking murderer can draw disparate conclusions from the same Bible, what, even, is the “right” thing in the first place? As today, different men come to different answers amid the open country of the Wild West. What probably matters most, 3:10 seems to suggest by the end, is that a man has some answer he’s ready to live — and die — by. As the cowboy troubador Alias once put it, “to live outside the law, you must be honest.” So you’d better do or find something to make your short time in Contention count…’cause no matter how you live your life, that slow train is coming up around the bend, and it ultimately waits for no one.

It Happened One Night.

What do stars do? Well, apparently, they mince around in petticoats. Although, like Knocked Up, Matthew Vaughn’s well-meaning but uneven Stardust is probably best enjoyed as a date movie, preferably with a large crowd of similar Princess Bride-leaning folk, I went ahead and caught an empty matinee of said fantasy yesterday afternoon, as it’s the last mainstream summer outing (with the possible exception of Ratatouille) I had any interest in seeing before the fall film deluge.

And, well, I wanted to like it, being a fan of both the genre and of Vaughn’s first feature, the sharp Brit gangster flick Layer Cake, and Stardust has its moments, scattered here and there — In fact, I think it eventually even comes off better than the sum of its parts. But, for most of its run, I thought the film overshot its intended target of whimsy and landed on the far side of twee. The movie’s two leads — Charlie Cox and Claire Danes — are affectionately engaging, and Michelle Pfeiffer chews up the scenery with aplomb as this fairy tale’s most wicked witch. But, to be honest, there’re just too many notes, and the film barely hangs together as a whole. If anything, Stardust reminded me of Terry Gilliam’s (superior) The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, an ambitious and episodic attempt at high fantasy that doesn’t quite work. But, then again…as the Dylan song goes, true love tends to forget.

Much of the action of Stardust takes place, Ian McKellen’s authoritative voiceover informs us early on, in the enchanted realm of Stormhold, which happens to be connected to our mundane world via a hole in the wall near the sleepy English village of…uh, Wall. In said village, eighteen years after his father indulged in a happy dalliance over on the Other Side, a shopboy named Tristan (Cox) decides he will woo the town beauty (Sienna Miller) by tracking down a fallen star for her in what he first presumes is a nearby field. (Would he feel the same if he knew about her Steve Buscemi daddy issues?)

The problem is, this star isn’t the hunk of smoldering space rock one might expect, but a delicately shimmering and seriously annoyed girl named Yvanne (Danes), who’s just been randomly pelted out of the sky by a large, translucent ruby. This magical gemstone, recently sent aloft by the spirit of King Peter O’Toole (still looking like Berkeley), holds the key to the kingdom, so to speak, and thus all of the monarch’s living (and dead) heirs are mercilessly tracking it down. But Stardust is much too complicated for only one MacGuffin — Three wicked witches (most notably Pfeiffer) also seek out this fallen star, in order to cut out her glowing heart and restore their vanished youth. So, by the time our hero arrives on the scene via a teleporting “Babylon Candle” (as with a lot of fantasy, there’s a lot of setting up of the ground rules here), he discovers he’s now in a much bigger pickle than he bargained for…and, eventually, that love has a funny way of sneaking up on you when you least expect it.

As I said, Stardust‘s problems are myriad. For one, a lot of what should come across as sly, understated British humour a la Douglas Adams, Terry Pratchett, or (naturally) the author here, Neil Gaiman, is instead telegraphed and overdirected to feel like a poke in the eye. (See, for example, the poisoning of the archbishop scene.) For another, the film aims to be wryly dark at times — there’s quite a bit of fun with reading entrails — but we’re still in Belle & Sebastian, Lisa Frank lunchbox territory a lot of the time. (I’m looking at you, unicorn.) For yet another, Stardust is burdened with one of the most bombastic and intrusive scores in recent memory. (Ilan Eshkeri did great work with Layer Cake, but this is just bad.)

And then there’s De Niro, preening in a supporting role as the cross-dressing buccaneer Capt. Shakespeare. I know De Niro is lauded as one of the greatest actors of his generation, and I’ve got Raging Bull sitting on my coffee table at the moment to prove it. But, lordy, is he terrible here. Making Elton John seem as in the closet as Larry Craig, De Niro’s wildly over-the-top performance is a flat-out cringeworthy embarrassment. It plays like he’s never met a gay person in his life, or as if some abrasive guy at a party was doing an impression of De Niro doing an impression of Liberace. (Along those lines, The Office‘s Ricky Gervais, in an extended cameo, seems like he’s playing his character in Extras here — he even gets in Andy’s unfortunate catchphrase. Waking Ned‘s David Kelly and the Lock Stock boys are hanging around too, but the funniest cameo is probably Mark Williams, a.k.a. Arthur Weasley, as an ornery old goat of an innkeeper.)

All that being said, I thought the movie did manage, somehow and despite itself, to stick the landing: However caustic and subversive Stardust pretends to be at first, it’s ultimately turns out a rather staid and traditional fairy tale about the enchantment of true love. And, with that in mind, I found myself willing to forgive the film most of its substantive flaws — and there are many — by the time the inevitable coronation coda rolled. However cynical I get as the years go by, it seems, like Fox Mulder, I want to believe.

Quest for…Fire.

True love? Well, first things first. With hormones raging and graduation imminent, all the gaggle of adenoidal misfits at the heart of Superbad want to do is just get on the board. I caught Greg Mottola, Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg’s ode to teenage fraternity and the exquisite misery of high school celibacy two weeks ago, as a follow-up to The Invasion. And, while I could see how it might not be everybody’s cup of tea (and assuredly plays better to the Y-chromosomed among us), I logged enough time as a nerdy, oversexed high schooler back in the day to dig the film considerably…or at least its first hour or so. I frankly never get tired of Arrested Development‘s Michael Cera — nobody does teenage awkward anxiety better — and newcomer Christopher Mintz-Plasse was a real find. But Superbad‘s two skewed peace officers — Rogen and SNL impressionist Bill Hader — reallly overstay their welcome. They should’ve been a one-sequence joke, but they linger on and on here, like the mortifying memory of a drunken mistake.

The story? It’s as old as the hills and as common as puberty. Basically, portly wiseass Seth (Jonah Hill of Knocked Up) and nebbishy dreamer Evan (Cera) are not only high school BFFs about to go their separate ways in college but interminably horny boys on the threshold of manhood. In fact, they’re willing to do just about anything to hasten their crossing of that threshold, sexually speaking, including procuring copious amounts of alcohol for an end-of-school party they’ve miraculously been invited to (thanks to some smoother-than-usual maneuvers by Seth in Home Ec one day.) But, their visions of easy, liquor-soaked seduction go awry when they discover their even nerdier partner-in-crime, Fogel (Mintz-Plasse), has inexplicably reinvented himself as a 25-year-old Hawaiian named “McLovin” on his fake I.D. And, when “McLovin” gets (inadvertently) apprehended by two local cops (Rogen, Hader) after a “bad buy,” Seth and Evan must attempt more drastic maneuvers to obtain the demon rum, or remain high school virgins for time immemorial…

So, yeah, in other words it’s Porkys, or Revenge of the Nerds, or any of a hundred other movies that center around quirky (male) adolescents frantically trying to get laid. But the play is the thing, and as an example of the genre Superbad is both pretty darn funny at times and altogether plausible, at least for its first few reels. In conversations both profane (types of porn, inadvertent erections) and profound (the tragedy of Orson Welles), Seth and Evan exhibit a wide-ranging, free-association friendship that feels honest and lived-in. In fact, that’s ultimately half the joke…the duo in Superbad constantly assert their heterosexuality as way of expressing their homosociality. (“P.S. I love you“, indeed.) Admittedly, the film does drag some as it goes along, particularly during all the interminable cop shenanigans (or when Seth voices — over and over again — his abject Freudian horror at menstrual blood.) But watching Cera squirm through another uncomfortable conversation — or seeing Fogel groovin’ in that swanky vest — makes Superbad feel like a funky, sweet throwback to those high-school days of yore.

Spaced Invaders.

So, in the midst of last week’s somber news, I followed my usual routine when needing to unwind and caught a double feature with a friend. The second film we saw was Superbad. The first was…well, super-bad. Oliver Hirschbiegel’s The Invasion, the fourth movie version of Jack Finney’s science fiction novel The Body Snatchers, is, alas, a trainwreck. Apparently, somewhere along the line, the studio got the sense they had a stinker on their hands, and brought on the venerable brothers Wachowski to try to salvage the patient. Well, whoever’s to blame — and it’s probably all involved, since it feels so much like a movie-by-committee — the result is an ill-thought-out mishmash of stock tropes, bad ideas, and warmed-over elements from The Matrix. As filmed, The Invasion barely makes any sense, and it brims over with unnecessary car crashes, obligatory cute-kid scenes, and some of the clunkiest sci-fi exposition I’ve ever heard in a big-budget film. That being said, I have to admit I did sorta enjoy myself through the film in a so-bad-it’s-good kinda way, even if I felt sorry for otherwise-quality stars Nicole Kidman, Daniel Craig, and Jeffrey Wright for having to churn their way through this morass.

To be honest (and perhaps like other recent invasions that come to mind), The Invasion actually peaks at the very beginning. Trying to fend off a sleep-dep delirium amid a sea of fluorescent flat caffeine lights, a scared, haggard Nicole Kidman (inasmuch as she can seem haggard — she looks great in this movie, even for her) furiously scans the back room of a ransacked pharmacy for the remaining uppers, amphetamines, and assorted other go-pills. Before we know what’s going on, we then cut to convincing CNN coverage of a space shuttle tragedy, which occurred during an unplanned re-entry and which has strewn wreckage across the continental United States. Enter government fixer Jeremy Northam to inspect the scene, and the trouble begins. After cutting his hand on a piece of the aforementioned wreckage, Northam returns home to his live-in girlfriend (Malin Ackerman, soon of The Watchmen), establishes he has an ex-wife and child somewhere, and promptly falls asleep…and you can probably guess what that means. (Ack! Merchant-Ivory Pod Person!)

We then cut over to Kidman, who it seems, is a Washington D.C. psychologist with a relentlessly adorable kid, a hunky doctor boyfriend (Craig — sadly for The Golden Compass, the two don’t show much chemistry here), and an accent borrowed from Kyra Sedgwick on The Closer. Over the next few days, Kidman slowly discerns that her ex-husband, her patients (and their spouses), her neighbor’s kid, and varied other D.C. denizens are starting to act curiouser and curiouser — They’re calm, flat, level-headed, magnanimous…assuredly not the usual Inside-the-Beltway mentality. And, as this virus of clear thinking spreads (in a rather unseemly fashion — don’t drink the water), Kidman, Craig, cute-kid, Craig’s colleague Basil Exposition (Jeffrey Wright, slumming it), and the dwindling host of honest-to-goodness humanity must negotiate their way though a tightening noose of epidemic protocols and cordons sanitaire, all designed to catch those among us who would continue to display their emotional baggage in public. We’re coming to get you, Oprah…

More than even most sci-fi parables, Invasion of the Body Snatchers has always been grist for keen cultural commentary, from the sinister spectre of Communist infiltration and/or McCarthyist paranoia haunting the 1956 version to the rising tide of Reaganism evident in the 1978 Donald Sutherland remake. (I never actually saw the 1993 Abel Ferrara one with Gabrielle Anwar, but I’m going to presume it’s there too.) And this version is no exception, although what it’s actually trying to get at is more confused. There’s a running gag throughout the movie — funny at first, overdone by the end — that the world as run by Pod People is a kindler, gentler one, where Iran and North Korea voluntarily disarm, Bush passes universal health care, and the Mideast Conflict just sorta settles itself. Or, put another way, the Others Nicole Kidman is facing this time around are exactly the sort of people she’s been trying to fashion as a psychiatrist — bland, innocuous entities that have been over-prescribed into a flat, emotionless stupor, with all their edges taken off. (I’d also like to think that Kidman fighting aliens from outer space who threaten to take over our brains and make psychiatry redundant is a wry parting shot at her ex-husband’s Scientology, but I’m probably reading into it.)

But that subtext, which could’ve made for a wry, subversive little flick, gets confused by all the other elements brought in (to say nothing of the interminable car crashes, “save the child!” pandering, and out-of-nowhere chase scenes thrown about.) Instead, The Invasion spends a lot of time dabbling in epidemic hysteria, an immune-carrier subplot done better in the far superior 28 Weeks Later, and what feels like leftover material from The Matrix. (Kidman finds that, while most authority figures seems to have lapsed into Pod Peopledom quite early, a few other citizens, usually African-American, are also managing to live “under the radar.” This would be quite a clever conceit, if we hadn’t so recently seen the exact same point made as the heart of The Matrix.)

But, most importantly, The Invasion is just terribly written. Different strokes for different folks, of course, but I’d beware anyone who doesn’t cringe at the Czech dinner party scene or the horrible telegraphing involved in the adrenaline needle sequence. And watch out for those who don’t restrain guffaws during Kidman and Craig’s discussion of a possible antidote, or, for that matter, anytime poor Jeffrey Wright has to open his mouth and spew forth another dubious “tachyon field”-type explanation for recent events. They may just be Pod People.

Bourne Slippy.

If you see him, say hello, he might be in Tangier. Or Paris, Madrid, London, New York, Moscow…uh, sir, we have Jason Bourne popping up all over the grid here. Shall I put it on One? As you have likely heard, Paul Greengrass’ The Bourne Ultimatum — which I caught last Friday — is a top-notch surveillance thriller that’s easily in keeping with the high standard of excellence put down by Doug Liman in Identity and particularly Greengrass himself in Supremacy. In fact, if there’s a downside to this smart, visceral action flick, which is as excellent as any one can hope for, it’s that it serves to remind us how amazing a Greengrass Watchmen might’ve been. After Bloody Sunday, United 93, and the Bournes, all films characterized by their in-your-face immediacy and gripping visual realism, the man seems incapable of making a bad movie. In any case, he brought the goods here — The Bourne Ultimatum doesn’t have much of a plot, but frankly it doesn’t need one. Like Yen in the suitcase, Jason Bourne is “the Modern Man, disconnected, frightened, paranoid for good reason.“…or at least the Modern Man as he’d aspire to be, if he could speak eight languages fluently, kick all kinds of ass with a library book, and always stay two steps ahead of the great Eye in the Sky.

As Ultimatum begins, we’re back in Moscow at the end of the last film: Bourne (Matt Damon) is on the run from Russian police (as a result of his bravura car chase with Karl Urban), he’s still walking with that limp (suffered from jumping off a bridge in…Amsterdam, was it?), and he’s still confused, amnesic, and obsessive about his origins as a lethal global assassin. So, when he begins experiencing flashbacks involving paunchy government bureaucrats — one of whom speaks with a well-known, recognizable croak — and an abusive interrogation involving hoods and waterboarding, Bourne, like a Frankenstein’s monster of the surveillance age, sets out anew on his mission to discover and confront his creators. (Uh, why doesn’t he just eliminate the middleman and head for Dick Cheney’s office?) In this quest for self-knowledge, Bourne is inadvertently aided by a crusading Guardian reporter (Paddy Considine, of In America and Hot Fuzz), who’s discovered that the super-secret government agency known as Treadstone may have been superseded by a new “sharp end of the stick,” Blackbriar. As you might imagine, this leak does not sit well with VIPs at Langley, so the CIA director (Scott Glenn, more craggy than ever) dispatches suits old (Joan Allen, returning as Pamela Landy) and new (David Strathairn, exuding intelligence in the Chris Cooper/Brian Cox role) to track down and eliminate the source, the reporter, Bourne, and anyone else who gets in their way. And thus the game is on…but who’s the cat and who’s the mouse here? This particular superspy wasn’t Bourne yesterday.

The rest of the film involves Bourne on the run, engaging and evading his would-be captors as much as possible in various scenic vistas around the globe. Yes, you could argue that we’ve seen this all before in the first two films — the CIA suits chattering away in vaguely menacing organizational jargon, the occasional hand-to-hand fisticuffs, the crunchy car carnage — Ultimatum definitely follows a template: Edgar Ramirez shows up in the Clive Owen/Karl Urban role, and Julia Stiles is back as Julia Stiles (and, I’m happy to say, does her best work of the series.) Or one might quibble that Bourne is a bit overpowered — even notwithstanding his superior reflexes, astounding peripheral vision, and brilliant gamesmanship, Bourne’s most powerful weapon might be his ability to induce convenient pangs of conscience among his adversaries at just the right time. But, the play’s the thing, and Greengrass succeeds in making Ultimatum an almost completely immersive experience regardless. Shadowy conversations are filmed from behind the shoulder, drawing attention to furtive eyes and pained grimaces. Observation cameras trace dangerous lines of sight across chaotic crowds, relentlessly seeking out their suspect. And, when the action breaks out…hoo boy. (I think I might’ve preferred the car chase in Supremacy to the very good one here, but there’s a fight in Morocco at one point that is a flat-out doozy.) By the final shot, which not brings the story full circle but recalls a haunting image of Franka Potente’s Marie from II and III, it’s clear that Greengrass is firing on all cylinders right now. I was already impressed with him, but Bourne further suggests that Greengrass is among the very best directors working today — Let’s hope he shares with us more surveillance intel in very short order.