Culture Shock.

With the movie situation for the next few months looking somewhat grim, I went to see Zhang Yimou’s Hero yesterday with high hopes. But, like a maddening Zen parable, Hero left me of divided mind. Well worth seeing for its colorful meditations on swordplay, music, calligraphy, and story-telling, the film fumbles the sword something fierce when it starts dabbling in political economy…so much so that it basically completely took me out of the movie. Alas, what had started as a very worthy successor to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon ended as an almost laughable exercise in knee-jerk ultra-nationalism. As such, it’s hard not to discuss Hero without resorting to massive spoilers, so here goes.

For much of its running time, Hero is a strikingly kinetic and poetic piece of work that lulls you in with its languid rhythm and sensual colors. As you may or may not know from the ads, a nameless warrior (Jet Li) comes before the rightly paranoid Emperor Qin (a very good Chen Daoming) to tell him of how he managed to eliminate the province’s three most dangerous assassins (an all-star line-up of Donnie Yen, Maggie Cheung, and Tony Leung, with the lovely Zhang Ziyi thrown in to boot.) But, faster than you can say Swift Boat, the Emperor tells Nameless he’s full of it, and offers his own explanation for recent acts of heroism, which are further revised as the film goes forth.

As I said, these various retellings move slowly — even despite the fighting — but with purpose, and are made distinct from one another through color shifts that are at once exquisite and bewitching. But, eventually we come to the end of the story, and therein the problem lies. For, as it turns out, the moral that undergirds our recent contemplations is a pretty reprehensible one (and one you’d think might have been re-evaluated in light of the last century): Namely, that brutal, despicable tyrants must be allowed their cruelties and massacres for the sake of the State.

When this Machiavellian might-makes-right proposition was first uttered by the characters, I thought perhaps I was misreading what was going on. But, no, they go through with it, and almost all of the major characters we’ve been following take a dive in varying fits of nationalistic self-sacrifice, so that the Emperor Qin can gloriously maim, loot, and murder his way into uniting the Middle Kingdom. And, thus the film concludes with the glaring contradiction (pointed out by my friend Jeremy) of mooning over lovers to-be-reunited in “a place without borders” while extolling The Great Wall, still probably the most impressive border every built by humankind.

In sum, Hero is a sumptuous visual feast that’s operating several levels above most schlocky American action pics (including the recent Kill Bills of its US “presenter.”) But the underlying moral sensibility of the final moments is so repellent that it seriously detracts from the film. Call me an incurable Western individualist, but if excusing the crimes of one’s leader for the sake of the (Mother, Father, etc.)Land is heroism, then I’m with Tina Turner. Take it elsewhere, Raggedy Man.

Vice City.

Although the swing is nowhere near as severe, Michael Mann’s Collateral also had a bit of a Code 46 problem: Highly promising at first, it ultimately backslides into a much less appealing and much more ham-handed film. Now, Collateral still ends up being a decently enjoyable night at the movies, but the flaws of the final third definitely hurt the overall experience.

All’s well that starts well…the film has a great sense of place, and both Tom Cruise and Jamie Foxx are very good throughout. (Despite what many of the reviews say, by the way, Cruise has played a villain before…he was Lestat, and he actually turned out to be pretty good.) And there’s some nice supporting work by Before Night Falls‘s Javier Bardem and The Ladykillers‘ Irma Hall. (Mark Ruffalo seemed slightly miscast as the cop, and he may well be approaching the Stiller Threshold for overexposure in 2004, but he was solid enough.) For the first ninety minutes or so, as Max and Vincent discuss their respective philosophies while making their bloody rounds across the City of Angels, the film (much like Heat) feels like a strangely moody and contemplative Grand Theft Auto mission.

But, when Max’s cab stops for two Very Highly Symbolic Coyotes crossing the street, trouble bells started ringing. And sure enough, soon thereafter, Collateral lapses into over-the-top, nonsensical cheese. The eject moment came for me when Tom Cruise, previously unwilling to venture into one nightspot to retain his anonymity, starts firing away haphazardly in a Chinatown disco. (I guess this is the only club in America without video cameras.) And from then on, the movie takes too long to do too little…the last few set pieces unroll sluggishly, and could all have been cut down by several minutes. By the overblown final moments, I’m sorry to say, I had pretty much checked out. All in all, Collateral is definitely worth two hours of air conditioning, but as for its larger pretensions…Mission Failed.

Lost in Translation.

Well, for the first twenty-five minutes or so, when Tim Robbins and Samantha Morton were wandering around a picturesque, slightly-futuristic Shanghai, I thought Michael Winterbottom’s Code 46 might turn out to be quite good, perhaps a slightly better version of Wim Wender’s Until the End of the World. After all, some of the cinematography in the early going (Shanghai hotels, Morton under a strobelight) was very impressive, and I liked the way the movie just went for it…immersing you in this world of the future without taking the time to explain all that much.

But, right about the time this very unlikely couple consummate their evening, the film starts slipping off the rails, and it’s a long way down. For one, the more you hear about this particular future dystopia — the Sphinx corporation, critical travel “papelles”, empathy viruses, Code 46, etc. — the less sense it makes. If people could read minds just by, um, becoming infected with a virus (as Tim Robbins has and does), then why wouldn’t everyone do it? And why would the rest of the characters be so consistently amazed by his ability, if it’s simply off-the-shelf? Similarly, while at first the global NewSpeak, incorporating elements of French, Spanish, Chinese, and other languages into English, seems like a neat idea, it eventually just sounds ridiculous. Si, it’s true…ultimately, every hombre and femme ends up sounding a bit like a dinner-party Hercule Poirot, until you start wondering if it’s possible to get your dinero back.

But, however weak the premises of this sci-fi vision, the real problem here is in the “love” story. Tim Robbins and Samantha Morton can both be appealing actors elsewhere, but here they seem all wrong for each other. He’s too lanky and she’s too fetal, and together they exude zero chemistry. More problematically [Spoilers to Follow], once the “Code 46” genetic aspect of the story kicks in and the two implausibly venture off to Neo-Dubai, their romance degenerates into some twisted sci-fi rumination on Oedipal complexes that’s at turns head-scratching and rather dull, despite featuring one of the most ghastly and unerotic sex scenes in recent memory. (Trust me, if you thought Meryl Streep pawing Liev Schreiber’s chest hair in The Manchurian Candidate was creepy, you ain’t seen nothing yet.) At any rate, as the last few moments hammered the subtext into the ground and Coldplay started crooning over yet another excessively fond shot of Morton, I had to concede that Code 46, however visually promising at first, turned out to be a bad, bad film. And, given how much fun Winterbottom’s 24 Hour Party People was, that’s disappointing, n’est-ce-pas?

The Village Idiot.

Having completed my chores in timely fashion this past Sabbath morn, I decided to undertake a sojourn in M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village, in spite of my apprehension over The Curse of William Hurt and The Mel Gibson Film Which We Do Not Much Enjoy. As you perchance have ascertained, it seems the goodly people of this nonsensical village have experienced some difficulty with the strange and mysterious residents in the nearby woods. Alack, Number Six is nowhere to be found, and Goody Ellen Ripley seems too engaged sweeping and darning at the present time to handle the marauders in her usual efficacious manner. This is highly unfortunate, for M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village is an exceedingly drab and silly place, whose full terribleness can only adequately be described in spoiler-filled invisitext (Note: invisitext turned off — it’s been 15 years):

Hoo boy…grab your torches and pitchforks, village people, cause we’ve got a really lousy film on our hands. (Ok, Van Helsing and Riddick were worse, but they harbored fewer delusions of grandeur…this film is just a pretentious bore.) As a refresher, I liked Sixth Sense, was intrigued by Unbreakable, and loathed Signs, and this one’s probably just as bad as Mel Gibson’s run-in with the water-and-door-averse aliens. Even though the plot twists in this bad boy can be seen a mile away, they still don’t make any sense. As with Signs, this is a film so lame I can only wrap my mind around it in numbered point form:

1) First off, the whole Elders bit. Is it really possible not to see this coming? What other explanation could there be for those big black cabinets in every house? I understand that these Villagers were not exposed to Scooby Doo, but how strikingly incurious could they be?

2) Along those lines, if you call a shed “The Old Shed That Is Not To Be Used” in any human society, no more than a week would pass before some enterprising youth started skulking around it. And why are the creatures called “Those We Shall Not Speak Of” anyway, when everyone is incessantly speaking about them? Surely some other nomenclature would take off at some point.

3) How come not a single Village soul has ever attempted to beat back the not-so-frightening wicker creatures with a block of wood or a stick of fire or something? Hasn’t anyone ever wondered why the Elders never seem to be around when the creatures come out?

4) What is this clipped faux-nineteenth century argot everybody’s speaking in? It’s embarrassing (although A.O. Scott made an excellent point when he noted that this is how William Hurt sounds all the time. Perhaps this actually makes sense.)

5) After our worst fears about the Scooby Doo Elders have been confirmed, why would Shyamalan think the blind girl’s encounter in the woods would be scary in the slightest? The only real question was whether it was Brendan Gleeson or Adrien Brody in the costume.

6) What vested interest would the government have in protecting this village from fly-overs, poachers, etc.? Nada, zip, zero. We already have Colonial Williamsburg.

7) Whatsmore, I find the political economy of this film somewhat repellent. Is the urge to create a rigid, backward-looking, and authoritarian society — where everyone knows everyone else’s business (except of course, the Big Business), where the only people of color are Red, and where the only trouble around is Adrien Brody the Village Idiot — really as worthy and benign as Shyamalan makes it out to be? These people are nutjobs, but they’re portrayed as humanists. If anything, the end of the film makes it seem as if this noble way of life will and should go on. There’s no real critique made at all of the Elder’s impositions, only of its misuse by Jealous Brody.

8) Speaking of which, village idiot? Blind girl who sees auras? C’mon now. You’re not even trying.

9) I see very well how Shyamalan might have intended this as a Twilight Zone meditation on terrorism, what with fear-mongering and color codes and all that. But, if that’s the case, then the film should not have been constructed as a Sixth Sense thriller rife with plot twists in the last third (particularly when the plot twists are so glaringly obvious). It should have shown its cards up front and then attempted to explore this allegory a little more creatively.

In sum, with Goody Weaver and Mssrs. Brody and Gleeson as residents of this unfortunate village, I had thought my brief stay in these woods might be more relishable. As it is, I am headed for the towns and shall not return.

Red States, Blue States, Altered States.

While remakes of film classics are generally a lousy idea (Exhibit A: Gus Van Sant’s Psycho), George W. Bush’s America seems a more than apt time and place for Jonathan Demme to re-tackle The Manchurian Candidate. And, while there’s no scene herein as memorable as the brainwashing in the original 1962 film, the Denzel version actually turned out to be a decent night at the movies, despite a failure to capitalize fully on the potential of the source material and the histrionics of Meryl Streep.

For those looking for quality Bush-bashing from this project, there are some nods in your direction. This version of the film takes place in a post-9/11 election year when “security” is definitely the watchword of the electorate. And Manchurian Global, the new Big Bad for these post-Communist times, clearly “Harkens” to Halliburton and its ilk. Unfortunately, however, most of the politics in this movie aren’t very well thought-out. For example, this would seem a perfect cinematic vehicle to skewer the newsmedia for its inane and/or atrocious political coverage these days. But almost all of the political scenes here — conventions, talk shows, speeches, and whatnot — come off half-baked and unrealistic. Liev Schreiber is undoubtedly a good actor, but it’s hard to imagine him winning a congressional seat as portrayed here, much less the vice-presidency. Speaking of which, the convention backroom scene at the beginning seemed woefully out of date, as by now it should be clear to anybody that any political party worth its salt would have picked a ticket before their Big Show. In sum, most of the politics here seem like plot points to move the story along, when with just a little more tweaking they could have made for some really devastating satire.

Still, The Manchurian Candidate is an entertaining ride, in no small part due to several quality performances. The characters from the original Candidate are scrambled in this version, but remain more or less intact, with Denzel as Sinatra, Liev Schreiber as Lawrence Harvey, Kimberly Elise as Janet Leigh, and Meryl Streep as Angela Lansbury. (Alas, no Queen of Diamonds.) All in all, I’d say most of this bunch do a solid job (particularly an almost-unrecognizable Jeffrey Wright as Cpl. Melvin)…with the very notable exception of Meryl Streep. I’m not sure what she was going for here — some sort of uber-Karen Hughes or something, I guess — but she’s more over the top than Hoo-ah Al Pacino in Scent of a Woman. At one point in the middle third, she even out-JonVoights Jon Voight, which I didn’t know was possible. While everyone else seems to be working hard to make the film seem remotely plausible, despite all the talk of implants and such (i mean, why bother with implants when you can just throw up a malleable dupe like Dubya?), Streep seems to be just playing it for camp. (It didn’t help that her first speech, in the aforementioned smoke-filled room scene, is completely hamhanded and improbable…however the choice of a veep goes down, I highly doubt it goes down like this.)

All in all, The Manchurian Candidate is worth seeing, but it’s nowhere near the league of the original. Which is too bad, really, because I think with just a little more effort, this could have been quite something.

Beauty in the Breakdown.

While I may not have been in the right frame-of-mind for Anchorman, writer-director-actor Zach Braff‘s debut Garden State later that evening settled over me like a cool, refreshing breeze. Other than Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (and, for sentimental fanboy reasons, Spiderman 2), I’d say Garden State has leapt to the top of my 2004 list so far. I could see some people finding it overly talky and pretentious, others too choppy, drug-ridden, and episodic, but, well, it struck a chord with me.

Seduced in by this teaser (and the accompanying song, Frou Frou’s “Let Go”, which has been flitting about my head for days now), I entered expecting a stylish but showy and self-indulgent film, as befitting a first-time triple threat. (At worst, I feared something along the lines of a Whit Stillman or P.T. Anderson flick.) But Garden State feels not only intelligent and confident but grounded, understated, and, like its dazed, over-medicated protagonist, even somewhat self-effacing. More than anything, I found the movie a sweet, quirky, and good-natured tone poem about awakening to both the pain and the possibilities of the life around you.

Admittedly, there are elements of the movie that don’t work very well. The father-son angst with Ian Holm doesn’t amount to much, and its resolution is the closest the film ever gets to derailing. Zach Braff and Natalie Portman have a lot of conversations in this film, and occasionally they do seem like movie people talking. (Nevertheless, this film resurrects Portman as an actress in my mind…she’s so flat and awful in the Star Wars films, yet she’s effervescent and adorable here. What is it about those blue screens?) Let me put it this way: There’s a scene (on the poster) where the three main characters — Braff, Portman, and an excellent Peter Sarsgaard as the local stoner/gravedigger — scream into a void (to the strands of Simon & Garfunkel’s “Only Living Boy in New York”…yes, comparisons to The Graduate are apt.) This will either come off as pretentious hooey or seem kinda touching…I obviously bought into it.

In other words, I doubt it’s everybody’s cup of tea, but I found Garden State an eloquent little film that’s at turns playful and poignant, one that — like Eternal Sunshine and Lost in Translation last year — manages to capture some of the elusive magic and tentative self-discovery inherent in relationships old and new. Plus, it’s got Natalie Portman briefly interacting with Method Man…that’s gotta be worth close to the price of admission, right?

Meet the Press.

Well, perhaps I wasn’t in the right mood for it (everyone else in the theater seemed to think it was gut-bustingly funny), but I finally caught Anchorman, and, frankly, it kinda passed me by. I think Will Ferrell can be really hilarious at times (here as Dubya, for example), but, for the most part watching The Legend of Ron Burgundy felt to me like being trapped in a 12:45am SNL skit for two hours.

Ok, the Gangs of New York riff was pretty rich (although by this point, Ben Stiller, Vince Vaughn, and the whole “Frat Pack” crew are utterly overexposed…they should take a cue from Janeane Garofolo and disappear for awhile), and Steve Carell’s weatherman had some choice moments. But, I thought most of the set pieces — jazz flute, panther scent, dead dog, afternoon delight, etc. — fell totally flat. Which didn’t stop Ferrell & co. from remorselessly beating them into the ground, of course. I guess I should give them credit…the cast clearly did anything they could to extract humor out of the jokes and situations here. Unfortunately, I still didn’t find the end product all that funny. Ah well. (Dubya Ferrell link via Value Judgment.) Update: Ok, having watched this again on HBO, it’s definitely funnier than I gave it credit for at first. My b.

Bourne Again.

As I noted in my blurb on The Bourne Identity a few years ago, “I’d rather see another Bourne than another Bond.” Well, I got my wish, and thankfully The Bourne Supremacy is just as intelligent, fast-paced, gritty, and near-plausible as the first outing. Joan Allen has joined the agency this time around, and Karl “Eomer” Urban has replaced Clive Owen in the role of Eurobad assassin, but otherwise the gang’s all here again: Matt Damon, Franka Potente, Brian Cox, Julia Stiles (still miscast)…even Chris Cooper.

But, even if you missed Bourne I, if you’ve seen the ads, you know what you’re getting here: chilly European ambience, highly-trained fisticuffs, and Ronin-style car chases. The surprise here is how well everything’s executed — until the last fifteen minutes or so, when Bourne turns into R.E.M.’s The Apologist (the guy who insists on making everyone feel worse to make himself feel better), the film moves at a kinetic, captivating clip. Much credit goes to director Paul Greengrass (who also directed Bloody Sunday, which I’ve been meaning to see for awhile) for making each punch, kick, or crash provoke a shudder or a wince. (It’s nice to see a flick where the injuries actually take a toll on the hero for once…here Bourne hurts his leg two-thirds of the way through the movie and ends up limping the rest of the film.)

In sum, Her Majesty’s Secret Service should really take a gander at Treadstone…’cause while 007 was tooling around Iceland with Halle Berry last iteration, Bourne once again managed to deliver a quality cloak, dagger, and action payload.

His Darko Materials.

“I can do anything I want. And so can you.” So, with or without Frank the Bunny, I went to catch Donnie Darko: The Director’s Cut Friday afternoon. While still very enjoyable, a lot of the fun of the film (reviewed earlier here) is in not knowing what exactly you’re in for, so the movie admittedly does lose a step after another viewing. And, like the official website, the Director’s Cut has a Midichlorian problem…elements of the film that are better left unexplained are now laid over with pages from Grandma Death’s time travel tome. As a result, some of the more memorable scenes (particularly the “Mad World” montage at the end) suffer. Still, if you haven’t seen DD (or, like me, saw it only on DVD), it’s a genre-bending marvel that’s definitely worth checking out on the big screen. (The film now also includes the deleted scenes from the DVD, such as the excised Watership Down subplot, and several shots of a 2001-esque eyeball, as seen in the trailer.)

Siege Perilous.

Well, in some other movie Clive Owen would’ve made a really great King Arthur. And he’s definitely very watchable here as the lead in the Jerry Bruckheimer-produced King Arthur. But this project basically feels like a Gladiator meets Tears of the Sun retread, and, aside from the characters’ names, it has very little to do with the Arthurian legend. I’d say the film’s probably better than you’ve heard, but still somewhat disappointing. Workmanlike, but ultimately rather drab.

I must say, I really can’t get my mind around the current trend in epic movie-making. After the wild success of PJ’s LotR, it should be a no-brainer: You can’t tell The Iliad without the gods, and you can’t do justice to the story of King Arthur without sorcerers, enchantments, love triangles or the Holy Grail. Demystify the legend and you end up with…well, I guess you end up with what you have here, which is a lot of grunting and flying arrows and bad hair days along Hadrian’s Wall. Admittedly, I liked the realistic take of a film like The Alamo, but it just seems unnecessary here (particularly when the “realism” portrayed involves 5th century Abu Ghreibs and an Arthur who’s a good 1000 years ahead of the times on the political philosophy front.)

As I said, Clive Owen is pretty solid, though, and he helps his case here as the next James Bond. Keira Knightley is passable given the material, although every time I see her now I can’t help but think of Winona Ryder and a quote by Bilbo Baggins (“I feel thin — sort of stretched, like butter scraped over too much bread.”) Ioan Gruffudd’s performance as Lancelot was also derailed by my terminal fanboyisms, as I spent most of his screentime trying — and failing — to remove his facial hair and picture him as Reed Richards/Mr. Fantastic. And the rest of the knights? Well, they’re a dirty, ragged bunch, but Ray Winstone (of Sexy Beast) and Ray Stevenson stand out as Sir Bors and Sir Deadduck respectively. Mention must also be made of a Tom Waits-voiced Stellan Skarsgard as the Saxon Big Bad, who gets off a quality zinger about Anglo-Saxon interbreeding, and who is the only person who seems to be having any fun in this project.

All in all, I suppose this movie is solid enough if you’re looking for a decently well-done entry in the long line of period war movies we’ve had of late. But, if your thoughts on King Arthur run towards Camelot, the Lady in the Lake, Morgan le Fey, or even the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch, you might want to wait for the next iteration of the story (or just go rent Excalibur.)