Iron Giant.

As far as Marvel characters go, I can’t say I ever really cottoned to Iron Man in my comic-reading youth. Sure, I was aware of his backstory and his rogue’s gallery and all that, just by dint of sheer osmosis. But, other than when he was hanging around the Avengers or engaged in some huge crossover like Secret Wars, I don’t think I ever picked up an issue. (Besides, with his industrial-techy side and all the paramilitary hangers-on, Iron Man seemed a hero designed for the GI Joe/Transformers kids, which was never really my scene. Inasmuch as I read Marvel, I usually preferred the angst-ridden, verbose types (Spidey, the X-Men, etc.))

All of this is a long way of saying that, given I have no real reservoir of nostalgia for its titular hero, Jon Favreau’s crisp, surprisingly fun Iron Man seems that much more of an achievement. (Yes, I’d say the movie of the trailer holds up.) Sure, it suffers from having to tell yet another variation of the increasingly worn origin story, and thus slips below the top tier of recent comics films freed from that obligation (X2, Spiderman 2, The Incredibles.) And it’s possible that Iron Man‘s sheer, unapologetic summer-blockbusterness may rankle a few viewers out there. (Note the not-very-subtle Burger King and Audi product placements.) But, as far as origin stories go, I’d say Iron Man can hold its helmet proudly alongside Batman Begins and the Donner Superman, thanks mainly to its superb cast (and inspired casting). And, as the kickoff to what’s by all accounts an absurdly-stocked fanboy summer, Iron Man sets an auspiciously high bar for the many features to come.

In this updated incarnation, Iron Man begins as a sequel of sorts to Charlie Wilson’s War: A troop convoy containing genius weapons manufacturer Tony Stark (Robert Downey, Jr.), nursing a scotch, is upended and undone on a dusty road in Afghanistan, and the ne’er-do-wells responsible are somehow armed with Stark Industries’ finest. Cut to the title card, then to 36 hours earlier, when we meet Stark in his natural locale, Vegas. The son of a famous “ironmonger” and member of the Manhattan Project, Tony is basically a cross between Bill Gates and Howard Hughes, an acerbic, alcoholic, womanizing billionaire who always knows he’s both the smartest and the richest guy in the room.

But after being near-fatally wounded by shrapnel of his own making and captured by an Afghan warlord in the aforementioned raid (Stark was in-country, with his Air Force pal Rhodey (Terrence Howard), to pitch his newest lethal invention to the Brass), the playboy industrialist undergoes a not-unanticipated moral awakening, thanks in part to the saintly doctor (Shaun Toub) who saves his life with an electromagnet and a car battery. After building a suit of armor to break out of his Tora Bora captivity, Stark eventually returns stateside a changed man. He’s got an arc reactor (don’t ask) for a heart, he’s getting out of the Merchant of Death trade for good, and he’s thinking about taking that whole suit-of-iron idea to the next level. This (literal) change of heart, however, doesn’t sit altogether well with Stark Industries’ chairman-in-regency, Obadiah Stane (Jeff Bridges), who — despite his long relationship with Stark and his father — may have his own ideas on how to proceed. Y’see, the weapons trade really tied the company together, so Stark’s new digression will not stand, man.

The Dude’s turn toward unctuous corporate villainy is one of the most potent secret weapons in Iron Man‘s arsenal. (Speaking of which, look for the explicit Lebowski name-drop.) A bald, bearded, leering, and obviously untrustworthy achiever, Bridges is great fun here as the eventual Big Bad — he takes the film up a notch in every scene he’s in. (There’s long been rumors of a Tron 2.0 script involving Bridges’ character having gone all Col. Kurtz somewhere up the datastream. I was thinking of that quite a bit during Iron Man.)

But Bridges is not alone — He’s matched here every step of the way by Robert Downey, Jr., who’s both a brilliantly unconventional superhero and a note-perfect Tony Stark (indeed, so much so that my brother tells me the recent Ultimate reboot has basically ret-conned Stark into Downey, Jr.) It’s really hard to imagine any other actor in the role, or anyone else working as well. In fact, as with Batman Begins (give or take Katie Holmes), Iron Man is basically overstocked with talent at every position, from Gwyneth Paltrow as Pepper Potts (Stark’s Moneypenny) to director Favreau as Happy Hogan (Stark’s Foggy Nelson) to Clark Gregg (In Good Company) as an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. (although not that one — he comes later.) I mean, when you’ve got Paul Bettany playing the voice of the computer (also a nod to Jarvis, Stark’s Alfred), you know you’re working with an embarrassment of riches.

If Iron Man has a problem, it’s that, despite the prodigious talent on display, the movie is still somewhat hampered by the now-rote conventions of the origin-movie genre. I mean, I’m definitely of the fanboy temperament, but even I grew ever-so-slightly bored as Iron Man moved us through the usual paces (the awakening moment, the learning to use the new powers, the big reveal of the new suit, the final mano a mano, etc.)

Still, Favreau and Downey leaven these moments as best they can, and — as you might’ve guessed from Lebowski, above — there’re plenty of knowing winks throughout to keep the base happy. (Like I said, I’m pretty unfamiliar with Iron Man canon, but even I could figure out the nods to War Machine and the Mandarin.) In short, if you allow for the constraints of the genre, Iron Man is basically everything you’d want in a summer-y superhero blockbuster. And if they bring Downey et al back for the sequel, I’d definitely look forward to seeing Iron Man live again.

Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger.

:The vista I see now is changing. Uncertainty is suffocating. Our hope has never felt so great…” It’s become fashionable of late to hate on R.E.M.’s last album, 2004’s Around the Sun, so much so that even the band has been badmouthing it lately, dismissing it as a result of them not really getting along at the time. Well, they’d know better than me, but I won’t go there. Sun is clearly overproduced at times but I still think it has its grace moments, all the more so because it’s an album drenched in melancholy and compromise. (And I still like it better than Reveal, and even the back half of New Adventures in Hi-Fi, their last venture with original and much-missed drummer Bill Berry.)

That being said, Accelerate, which officially came out yesterday, is no Around the Sun. It’s just as political as AoS — in some ways, Accelerate is their most overtly political album since Document. But, now, Stipe, Mills, and Buck have gotten the band back together. And, imbued with that sense of team confidence, they’re picking up the pace and taking no more prisoners. The end result is short, fast, and dirty, a half-hour-long album which (as one of my colleagues in US history, southern upbringing, and R.E.M. fandom noted yesterday) probably most recalls 1986’s Life’s Rich Pageant.

From the first track, “Living Well is the Best Revenge,” the difference is manifest. In Around the Sun, R.E.M. were just as political, but much more tentative and unsure of themselves. Remember all the relationship anguish of Sun? Well, now the men from Athens have the wind at their backs. “All your sad and lost apostles hum my name and flare their nostrils, choking on the bones you toss to them. Well I’m not one to sit and spin, ’cause living well’s the best revenge. Baby, I am calling you on that.” The equally aggressive second-track, “Man-Sized Wreath” (i.e. a huge, ridiculous emotional ploy and substitute for thought) takes up the standard with enthusiasm: “Nature abhors a vacuum but what’s between your ears?” That heady sense of being not only on the right side of the argument but — at long last — on the right side of history persists throughout Accelerate and keeps it afloat. “Mr. Richards” jauntily takes glee in a Cheney-esque figure (or at least one of Dubya’s Dicks) finally receiving his comeuppance and going to prison for his transgressions, and “Horse to Water” is equally mad as hell and won’t take it anymore. (“I’m not that easy, I am not your horse to water. I hold my breath, I come around.“) And even the slight downers, such as the beautiful and too-brief post-Katrina ballad “Houston” (“If the storm doesn’t kill me, the government will“) still mostly resonate with hope of change to come: “It’s a new day today, and the coffee is strong. I finally got some rest.” (By the way, as a note to the R.E.M. fans out there, I love how that fog-horn sound in “Houston” calls back to “Leave” and particularly “Undertow” from Hi-Fi, which in retrospect also seem rather Katrina-esque.)

On the Peter Buck end, Accelerate interpolates and reconfigures the jingly-jangly riffs of Life’s Rich Pageant with the (much-underappreciated) sonic grunge of Monster, and I can’t wait to hear these cuts live. Still, Accelerate‘s secret weapon is probably bassist Mike Mills, who brings back the harmonizing of Out of Time and earlier albums, and single-handedly elevates tracks like “Living Well” and “Sing for the Submarine.” Speaking of the latter, “Sing for the Submarine” is, for the time being, my high point of Accelerate, a dense, moody track that hearkens back to much of the R.E.M. canon. (“Electron Blue” and “Feeling Gravity’s Pull” are explicitly name-dropped.) I haven’t come close to unpacking it yet: “It’s all a lot less frightening than you would have had it be. But that’s the good news, my darling, it is what it’s going to be.” But I’m definitely enjoying the attempt, and I love the Pink Floydish power-chords as the song builds to chorus. (If negativity is required, I could honestly take or leave the first single, “Supernatural Superserious,” — it’s a lot like “Imitation of Life” on Reveal — and I tend to skip over it. And “Until the Day is Done,” the sole mid-tempo ballad here, is less interesting than most of AoS. But neither are deal-killers.)

So, the short answer is this: if you thought R.E.M. has lost a few steps lately and have thus skipped the past few albums, then the reviews for Accelerate are true: They’re back in a big way, and you should definitely check this one out. And if you’ve stuck with ’em all the way, then you’ll be pleased to discover that they’re on the same page as many of us this election year: To wit, after eight years (and arguably more) in the mire, it’s nigh time we progressive-minded lefties started kicking ass and taking names. “Don’t turn your talking points on me, History will set me free. The future’s ours and you don’t even read the footnote now!“

Darkness in Bucharest.

The Cannes winner of 2007 (over No Country for Old Men, which I still preferred), Cristian Mungiu’s 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days, a fearless look at a very dark day in the life of two Romanian women, is a tremendously harrowing exercise in Hitchcockian suspense, and a grim, unrelenting journey into the moral compromises and bureaucratic decay that characterized life in Nicolae Ceausescu’s Romania. I have some issues with Mungiu’s film, which I’ll get to in a bit, but no one can deny that it’s a powerful and expertly-made movie, one that tortures with silences and devastates with quiet restraint. But it’s also, I have to admit, a film I admired more than truly enjoyed. That’s its intent, of course: I can’t think of any other movie I’ve seen lately that had me squirming with as much psychic discomfort. (Remember the visceral suspense of the hotel scene in No Country, when Chigurh passes by Llewelyn’s door and removes the hallway lightbulb? Now imagine having that feeling for over an hour.) Still, while I can’t deny 4 Month‘s emotional hold, I think I ultimately prefer The Lives of Others — a film that offsets its tragic tale with moments of grace, humor, and even redemption — when it comes to recent fables of the Eastern Bloc.

4 Months establishes its naturalistic, real-time feel from its opening moments, as we watch a young Romanian student named Gabita (Laura Vasiliu) fiddle with her belongings and seemingly make preparations for an important trip. As she frets, her roommate, Otilia (Anamaria Marinca, Oscar-worthy) wanders down the hall of their dormitory, navigating the nooks and crannies of a casual black market economy with a bored, practiced ease. (She picks up cigarettes for bribing officials, looks over the recent array of smuggled-in beauty products, and procures some Tic Tacs from a friendly dealer-neighbor.) But Otilia too gives the sense that something major is afoot, something we gradually glean the outlines of as the day goes along. Leaving Gabita behind, Otilia ventures out to lock down a nearby hotel room (something Gabita was previously meant to do, but apparently didn’t), borrows some money from her boyfriend (Alexandru Potoceanu), and eventually goes — on behalf of Gabita — to meet a Mr. Bebe (Vlad Ivanov, memorably sinister), a man we eventually come to learn is a back-alley abortionist.

Then, things get worse. For not only is abortion a criminal offense under the Ceausescu regime, one that carries a penalty of prison or even death, but the helpless Gabita (the pregnant one) turns out to be flaky and careless to the extreme, and basically an abuser of Otilia’s competence and compassion. Worst of all, the seemingly innocuous Mr. Bebe — despite dripping with doctorly condescension toward the “young ladies” — turns out to be the type of monster that can readily flourish in the interstices of totalitarianism, reveling in the power he manages to hold over the desperate Gabita and Otilia. And, even beyond the ruthless Bebe — who, trust me, is more than loathsome enough — there awaits the very real risk of medical complications, and the danger of discovery by the authorities…

Sustained by long, masterful, and unbroken shots, 4 Months manages to ratchet up the tension well beyond comfortable levels, making even scenes of a casual dinner party at Otilia’s boyfriend’s house palpable with dread. Like the two women at the center of the story — and, like many people living through totalitarianism, I’d suspect — we’re constantly on pins and needles, waiting for the other shoe to drop. (But don’t get me wrong — some really horrifying shoes drop in this film.) As a remorseless and nerve-wracking Eastern bloc thriller, 4 Months has few parallels I can think of. So why do I harbor reservations about the film? Well, four years, 0 months, and 3 days ago, I wrote of the considerably overpraised 21 Grams that it “just ambles around in its terminally depressed jag for so long that it loses any sense of perspective, and instead becomes just a vehicle for indulging the arthouse fallacy that misery is a substitute for character.” Now, 4 Months is a much, much better film than 21 Grams, but — however tense and suffused with menace — the same problem persists.

Coming out of 4 Months, I was reminded of an interview I read with David Simon about the importance of humor in The Wire, which however bleak is also by all accounts a gut-bustingly funny show. (I know, I won’t shut up about The Wire, but bear with me here.) This article makes the same point: “Though people don’t talk much about the humor in ‘The Wire,’ it’s there. You drop somebody into an alien environment — a closed society like the homicide cops or the drug culture–and the key to working your way into that culture is to understand the jokes, which David does. It’s crucial, because, if it weren’t there, the work would be too depressing. It’s crushing subject matter, but not necessarily to the cops–they’re making jokes while they’re looking at dead bodies–and not to the people shooting dope, even. They’re not necessarily walking around saying, ‘Woe is me.’ There’s a grim humor that springs out of that life.” Picking up along the same lines, Jacob Weisberg wrote: “While The Wire feels startlingly lifelike, it is not in fact a naturalistic depiction of ghetto life. That kind of realism better describes an earlier miniseries of Simon’s, The Corner…The Corner seems to have been a crucial life study for The Wire, a program that attains the dimensions of tragedy without being depressing. The Wire does this by painting with brighter colors on a wider canvas and by leavening its pain with humor…What ultimately makes The Wire uplifting amid the heartbreak it conveys is its embodiment of a spirit that Barack Obama calls ‘the audacity of hope.’” (You see how I snuck in an Obama reference with a Wire reference? See, I’m always on message.)

Seriously, though, it’s that critique which gets to the heart of my hesitation about fully embracing 4 Months. I don’t fault its unflinching refusal to sugar-coat what amounts to a horrible tale in a sad time and place, and it probably speaks worse of me than of Mungiu’s film to even hold such a thing against it. Many stories — maybe even most of them — don’t have happy endings or a laugh track. And, after all, we watch Otilia and Gabita persevere through an extraordinary amount of suffering, so why should they have to crack a joke just to let us off the hook, and make us feel better about their obvious misery? Still, if you can look past the razor-sharp tension that drives 4 Months, it is a relentlessly downbeat — and even one-note — affair. 4 Months is an impressive and powerful movie in any event, but I think I’d hold the film in higher esteem if it — like The Lives of Others — occasionally broke the gloom and allowed its long-suffering characters an uncertain smile, even while staring into the abyss.

Purgatorio nel Belgio.

One part black comedy, one part gangster flick, one part Bruggian travelogue, and one part Catholic rumination on sin and mortality, In Bruges, Irish playwright Martin McDonagh’s directorial debut, is a reasonably diverting two hours in the Tarantino mold. But, while mostly entertaining throughout, and featuring a particularly good performance by Brendan Gleeson, Bruges also ended up feeling a bit too pat, in some ways. The film is definitely funny at times, but it also tries too hard to be shocking (three words should make the point: coked-up racist midget) and occasionally falls flat. And, while the ending takes an interesting turn for the baroque (or Boschian, to be more precise), In Bruges ultimately came across to me as a more worldly and Continental version of those quintessentially Tarantinoesque also-rans, Things to Do in Denver When You’re Dead, 2 Days in the Valley, and Killing Zoe. Like those flicks, In Bruges isn’t a bad movie by any means, but it’s not a particularly memorable one either. And, however enjoyable at times, it feels just as derivative.

An ancient port town in the northwest corner of Belgium, Bruges, we are told early on in the film, is the “best-preserved medieval (pronounced “meddy-evil” by our Hibernian heroes) city in Europe.” It’s also the hideout for two Irish hitmen laying low(-country) after a botched job back in London. Ken (Gleeson), the older and more experienced of the duo, is enthused about the chance to sightsee, even if he senses grim portent in the fact they’re hiding out so far away. On the other hand, his partner Ray (Colin Farrell, a good actor but miscast — the part needs someone younger and dumber. Ewan Bremner, maybe?) is aghast by the place, and completely bored senseless from the moment they arrive…until he makes the company of a beautiful local drug dealer, Chloe (Clemence Poesy, best known as Fleur Delacour. Yep, it’s Fleur and Mad-Eye and…well, you’ll see.)

But even Chloe’s considerable charms — and a few drug-fueled binges with a visiting dwarf actor and his coterie of hookers — can’t take Ray’s mind off recent events. You see, the last job (offing Ciaran Hinds) took a dismal turn, innocent blood was spilled, and now Ray feels trapped in the endless purgatory of unabsolved sin. (Having recently sat through Cassandra’s Dream, where he had exactly the same problem, my advice is get over it already. This is another reason why Farrell seems miscast. He’s played too many memorably world-weary strongmen — The New World, Miami Vice, even Daredevil — to seem the aggrieved innocent here.) At any rate, Ray’s mortal screw-up doesn’t sit well with the boss of Ray and Ken’s outfit either — that would be Harry (Ralph Fiennes, playing an amalgamation of Lord Voldemort and Ben Kingsley’s character in Sexy Beast.) And eventually Harry decides to come to Bruges himself to make a reckoning. Let’s just say he’s not coming for the chocolates…

Fiennes’ wildly over-the-top Cockney crime lord is one of the funnier treats in In Bruges, and it’s almost worth the ticket just to watch him delight in being so gleefully unrestrained. (Other than He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, of course, and occasional roles like Spider and Red Dragon, Fiennes has — since his breakthrough in Schindler’s List — mostly got stuck in clipped-and-distant, dignified understatement mode, a la The Constant Gardener or Maid in Manhattan.) Matching him toe-to-toe is Gleeson as the voice of conscience In Bruges — I still have yet to see him give a bad performance, and even though his final scenes are rather goofy and implausible here, Gleeson sells it. He’s the heart and soul of the film.

But, even with the quality of acting on display here, there’s a quite a bit of filler in-between the better moments. McDonagh’s jokes are, frankly, hit-or-miss. Even notwithstanding some of the more obvious targets (Americans are fat and self-centered, Belgium is a “sh**hole”), McDonagh’s ear is curiously tone-deaf at times, and his attempts to be edgy and profane by pushing the un-PC envelope often sound dated and embarrassing (Note, for example, the aforementioned racist midget’s screed, Farrell’s strange seesaw analogy, or Fiennes’ AK-47 rant about South Central drive-bys. Ten points from Slytherin.) I wasn’t inherently offended by the attempts, really, but if you’re going to head down that road, at least be funny or clever. Too often, McDonagh seems to expect the shock level to do all the heavy lifting. (Another case in point, the restaurant beatdown.)

In any case, In Bruges has its moments, but I can’t advocate dropping everything to rush out to see it. If you’re the type of person who enjoys decently-made Tarantino-knockoffs, or actors playing against type a la Sexy Beast, add it to the Netflix queue. Otherwise, I’d hold off. I’m sure somebody will make another film about lovely, historic Bruges, a few more centuries hence.

Like a Fly on the Wall.

Outside, it’s America, with all its stirring, hard-fought, and often thoroughly draining primary election drama. Inside the IMAX at 68th St., however, it’s Catherine Owens and Mark Pellington’s U2 3D, an impressive state-of-the-art concert film of Dublin’s famous foursome doing what they do best, and in three dimensions! Anyone who’s ever thrown in The Joshua Tree — that’s millions of people, obviously — and listened to the thrilling opening strands of “Where the Streets Have No Name” can probably imagine the potential of U2 filtered through an IMAX sound system and projected in multiple dimensions. All I can say, it’s pretty darned cool. If you’re not at all a fan of the band or their music, I’d guess you’d enjoy the 3D-effect but might get bored at some point. But, if you’re at all into U2, it’s definitely worth checking out. I’d consider myself an above-average fan of the band, although I’ve probably listened to the last two albums — All That You Can’t Leave Behind and How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb — all of twice. (“My” favorite U2 is the Achtung Baby/Zooropa/Pop period, and I thought they took a step backward when they reverted back to instant-classic-rock. But, like I said, I probably haven’t given the new stuff its due.) At any rate, U2 3D really feels like the future in concert films. As a music experience, it’s better than having the best seats in the house (and the drunk girl on her boyfriend’s shoulders in front of you — while in 3D — never actually obscures your vision.)

So…U2 3D recounts the tale of four Irishmen — arguably the biggest rock band of the last 25 years (although I’m personally partial to R.E.M.) — in the midst of a huge sold-out stadium tour on the far side of the world (South America, to be exact.) Let’s see, we’ve got Bono (Paul Hewson) on vocals, Adam Clayton on the bass, Larry Mullen, Jr. on the drums, and The Edge (David Evans) on guitar. And, that’s about it, really — It’s just the show, no backstage banter or time on the bus or anything. With perhaps one exception (the start of the encore), the guys are definitely in their post-ironic, UN high commissioner mode for the show’s entire run, and the setlist mostly reflects that. Ok, sure, I had the usual concert quibble: Despite all the rousing political numbers in their back catalog, I’d love to have heard some of their more conflicted love songs therein too (“Love is Blindness,” “So Cruel,” “Running to Stand Still,” “If You Wear that Velvet Dress.”) (And, for that matter, I kept thinking it might’ve been more fun to catch the more subversive MacPhisto or PopMart tours in 3D instead, but ah well.) But while there are very few surprises therein, U2 do a surprisingly good job of covering most of their main bases over the past three decades. You can guess most of the songs they play, sure, but, they still fit almost all of ’em in there.

And, the actual concert notwithstanding, the 3D aspect of U2 3D is particularly impressive. I didn’t really know what to expect going in, but based on Beowulf I figured there’d be a lot of Bono trying to brain me with his mic stand. But that’s not how it plays. Yes, Larry Mullen has the most hyperreal three-story drum kit I’ve ever seen. But the real magic of 3D here is in how directors Owens and Pellington use it to transpose different images over each other to fashion a unique and wholly different visual perspective, just as The Edge layers various guitar parts atop one another to create his own sonic landscape. In short, too much is not enough. It’s actually possible to watch completely different things at once, because the various shots are operating in disparate planes — We may have Bono singing in the foreground, a close-up of Clayton jamming in the middle distance, a shot of the crowd in the lower background, and a view of the screens along the upper tier, all at the same time. It’s actually a much more striking effect than just a regular 3-D image, and it indicates more than anything else I’ve ever seen that 3D technology could really create an entirely new cinematic language. (See also Matt Zoller Seitz gushing about the medium.) At any rate, look, I gotta go, I’m running out of change (although, hopefully, Sen. Obama isn’t.) But, to sum up, if you’re into U2 or 3D, see U2 3D — you won’t be disappointed. Okay, Edge, play the blues!

The Brothers Grim.

So, since the statute of limitations is running out on this one, and since I now have a backlog of films to write about (including two involving Colin Farrell wracked by conscience): Woody Allen’s surprisingly pedestrian Cassandra’s Dream, which I caught two weekends ago, is definitely a swing and a miss. It’s true that I’ve been Netflixing Allen’s better films – Crimes and Misdemeanors, Husbands and Wives, Manhattan — of late, so I might be holding Allen to a higher standard than Scoop, say, should deem appropriate. But even Allen’s most recent drama, Match Point, far outshines the tale of familial woe on display here. Ewan MacGregor is always an appealing actor, and Colin Farrell and Tom Wilkinson are no slouches either, but they can’t spin gold from the overheated, overwritten script Allen has dealt them this time. If you see one recent movie about desperate brothers getting in over their heads on the wrong side of the law, see Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead. If that movie was a return to form for Sidney Lumet, Cassandra, unfortunately, goes down on the debit side of the ledger for the Woodster.

As Dream begins, two working-class English brothers, ambitious restauranteur Ian (MacGregor) and amiable mechanic Terry (Farrell), contemplate pooling their very limited resources to buy a small sailboat. The vessel, unfortunately for them, is named Cassandra’s Dream (I guess Polyanna’s Reverie had already sailed), and its dour apellation is the first of many harbingers of doom for these two Cockney lads. But buy the boat they do, thanks to an infusion of gambling winnings for Terry, who’s enjoying a sterling lucky streak at the races of late. But, the problem with gambling, as everyone knows, is eventually you lose. And, after a particularly bad night of cards, Terry finds himself down 90,000 quid and in a good spot of trouble. (Perhaps he should’ve listened to the veritable Greek chorus of supporting cast, who continually remind us that Things Go Wrong.) Ian, meanwhile, is sick of the family business, and also needs money in the worst way, both to get in on a potentially lucrative investment deal involving California hotels and to woo a beautiful, wanton, and clearly high-maintenance actress (newcomer Hayley Atwell) he met-cute one day in the countryside. And so, since family is family and blood is blood and all that, the two brothers go hat-in-hand to their supremely wealthy uncle (Wilkinson), a world-traveling plastic surgeon/industrialist of some sort. Uncle Howard is happy to help, but he wants a pound of flesh for his contribution, namely the head of a business associate who threatens to rat out his financial indiscretions to the powers-that-be. Will Ian and Terry put their very souls at risk for the lure of some quick, blood-tainted cash? Wouldn’t be much of a movie if they didn’t, now, would it?

Given the title and the constant, over-the-top foreshadowing of grim events to come, it seems clear Allen was trying to tell a modern-day version of the ancient Greek family tragedy (a la Mystic River, which gave the sense its main characters’ fates along the wine-dark Charles were decided for them decades before, as children.) But, while Fate in Cassandra may be inexorable, it’s sadly not all that interesting. The brothers spend the middle third of the film agonizing over a choice we already know they’re going to make, and the final third repeats this process all over again. (The ending, which I will not give away, is a particularly goofy contrivance.) Plus, the many wheezy monologues about doom foretold and family bonds seem even more stilted by the fact that Allen is clearly out of his element. These sorts of meditations seemed more natural when delivered by the anxious and overanalytic New York intellectuals of Crimes and Misdemeanors. After all, that’s Woody’s wheelhouse. But, simply put, working-class London is not Allen’s forte. Perhaps the only actor who comes off convincingly here is Sally Hawkins, as Terry’s kind, long-suffering girlfriend. While MacGregor and Farrell seem a mite confused by Cassandra‘s stiff formalism, she’s the only actor here who manages to seem an honest-to-goodness human being, and thus the one character who manages to put the sting of tragedy in Allen’s otherwise forgettable tale.

It’s Godzilla, We’re Japan.

While poorly executed, surprisingly unengaging, and mostly banal, Matt Reeves’ Cloverfield, the much-hyped version of Godzilla-meets-The Blair Witch Project produced by Lost/Alias guru J.J. Abrams, does pose at its heart one truly frightening scenario: What would you do if the moment the next 9/11-level catastrophic event happens here in New York City, you just happen to be stuck at a party downtown with a bunch of godawful douchebags? Seriously, though, I’m not sure how you screw up a ground-eye-view of “Huge Monster Destroying New York” so badly, but Cloverfield is as big a January dog as they come. Not above milking blatant 9/11 imagery for gravitas (which doesn’t offend me per se, although I do wish it was in the service of a better story), Cloverfield basically tries to be little more than a monster movie thrill ride for the Youtube generation. (The film is bookended by a trip to Coney Island, and, yeah, I’d say that’s about right.) But given that the none of the main characters are all that likable, and given that the film falters on the promise of showing NYC in full disaster mode, I can’t say it’s a ride worth paying for, Sadly, one or two brief moments notwithstanding, last year’s eerie teaser is about as good as it gets.

The setup’s all in that teaser, of course, but that doesn’t stop Cloverfield, an 85-minute movie, from starting off wicked slow. After a few moments with two young lovers in a Deluxe Apartment in the Sky (Time Warner Center, to be exact), the film begins with a surprise going-away party downtown for Rob (Michael Stahl-David), a young financial type heading for Japan. (Not to obsess over real estate, but this apartment too is as impressive as the monster.) We then spend about 20 minutes wandering around said party, meeting all the young beautiful people who may or may not become Cthulhu food. (Rob, it seems, has many friends, but none of them are plain-looking.) So, let’s see, there’s Rob’s brother Jason (Mike Vogel), his best friend (and our cameraman) Hud (T.J. Miller), Jason’s girlfriend Lily (Jessica Lucas), Hud’s current crush Marlena (Lizzy Caplan)…but conspicuously absent amid them all (at first) is the fetching young lass we saw in the opening moments with Rob, Beth (Odette Yustman). She shows up late, with — ZOMG SC4ND4L! — another man in tow (I think his name was Travis, but it doesn’t matter — he’s a plot point that’s forgotten anyway), and, soon thereafter, leaves in a huff. (By now you may be thinking, uh, where’s the monster in all of this 90210 dreck? Yes, my thoughts exactly.) Anyway, so after enough time has elapsed that Beth could’ve gotten back home, there’s a shaking and a rumbling and…finally…well, you know what happens next.

Now, I could’ve forgiven Cloverfield its interminably long set-up if we then got a New York City disaster movie for the ages. But, after letting some obvious 9/11-ish images and moments — the collapsing buildings, clouds of billowing smoke, panicked cell phone calls — do the heavy lifting, the film mostly just stalls out. As far as the story goes, Rob decides he must go save Beth from the TWC, and, for reasons that don’t make much sense, everyone else just decides to tag along. Ok, that’s fine — you gotta get the protagonists moving around New York for one reason or another. Except, once the monster attacks, the city is almost completely empty, aside from U.S. infantrymen (who, as my friend pointed out, somehow got there before the Air Force.) I mean, it’s Manhattan. You’d think there’d be people wandering around everywhere in various states of terror and confusion, but, nope, all two million people either hunkered down or got out right away. In fact, other than the Statue of Liberty and the 9/11 nods, there’s not much point for the film to have taken place in New York at all. I mean, sure, there’s a sequence in the subway tunnels in which our heroes magically leap from Spring St. to 59th St. (and one which will seem rather derivative if you saw 28 Weeks Later or The Descent.) But, otherwise, this could have taken place pretty much anywhere.

If this review all sounds a bit nit-picky, well, perhaps. But, when the film never really engages at an emotional or visceral level, you gotta do something to pass the time. (The midnight crowd at my local Magic Johnson sat there more dutiful than dumbstruck.) Except for the occasional rare moment, as when the gang get caught in a full-out alley melee between the creature and the US Army, or witness a horse pulling an empty cart around Central Park, Cloverfield never establishes a groove. And everytime you think it might start to get interesting, it falls back into Archie and Veronica grandstanding. Throw in a few wildly implausible escapes and people rallying from seriously painful injuries, and there’s not much here to recommend. To be honest, I’d wait for the video. And, if no one ever finds said video under all the debris in Central Park, well, trust me, you didn’t miss much.

2007 in Film.

Happy New Year, everyone. So unlike last year, when I took an extra month on account of my travels in New Zealand, the Best of 2007 Movie list seems ready to go out on schedule, and it’s below. (If you’ve been reading all the reviews around here, I’m betting the top few choices won’t be a surprise. Still, organizing the 5-15 section was more tough than usual this year.) At any rate, 2008 should be a big orbit around the sun in any event, what with grad school winding down and it being time — at last! — to pick a new president. So a very happy new year to you and yours, and let’s hope the movies of the coming year will contain to sustain, amuse, baffle, and delight.

Top 20 Films of 2007

[2000/2001/2002/2003/2004/2005/2006]

1. I’m Not There: “There was a movie I seen one time, I think I sat through it twice.” Admittedly, it was a wonderful confluence of my interests. Nevertheless, Todd Haynes’ postmodern celebration of Bob Dylan, brimming over with wit and vitality and as stirring, resonant, and universal as a well-picked G-C-D-Em progression, was far and away my favorite film experience of the year. It seems to have slipped in a lot of critics’ end-of-year lists (although Salon‘s Stephanie Zacharek also put it up top, and the Sun-Times‘ Jim Emerson has been championing it too), but so be it — You shouldn’t let other people get their kicks for you anyway. A heartfelt, multi-layered, six-sided puzzle about the many faces and voices of Dylan, l found I’m Not There both pleasingly cerebral and emotionally direct, and it’s a film I look forward to returning to in the years to come. Everybody knows he’s not a folk-singer.

2. No Country for Old Men: It probably won’t do wonders for West Texas tourism. Still, the Coens’ expertly-crafted No Country works as both a visceral exercise in dread and a sobering philosophical rumination on mortality and the nature of evil. (And in his chilling portrayal of Anton Chigurh, Javier Bardem has crafted a movie villain for the ages.) People sometimes refer to Coen movies as “well-made” as a dig, as if the brothers were just soulless clinically-minded technicians. I couldn’t disagree with that assessment more. Still, No Country for Old Men seems so seamless and fully formed, so judicious and economical in its storytelling, that it reminds me of Salieri’s line in Amadeus: “Displace one note and there would be diminishment, displace one phrase and the structure would fall.” A dark journey that throbs with a jagged pulse, No Country for Old Men is very close to the best film of the year, and — along with Miller’s Crossing, Fargo, and The Big Lebowski — yet another masterpiece sprung from the Coens’ elegant and twisted hive-mind. Bring on Burn After Reading.

3. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly: Through the wonders of cinematic alchemy, Julian Schnabel took the sad real-life account of Vogue editor Jean-Do Bauby’s horrific imprisonment within his own body and made it soar. No other film this year put the “locked-in” experience of taking in a movie as inventively in service of its story (although I kinda wish Atonement had tried.) Special kudos to Mathieu Almaric for conveying so much with so little to work with, and to Max von Sydow for his haunting turn as Bauby’s invalid father. And, lest someone holds “arthouse foreign film” against it, Diving Bell is both much funnier and more uplifting than anyone might expect of a tale about hospital paralysis. Salut.

[3.] The Lives of Others: The one hold-over from 2006 on the list this year (I was pretty thorough about catching up before posting last January, although I still never did see Inland Empire), The Lives of Others is a timely and compelling parable of art, politics, surveillance, and moral awakening in the final days of the Stasi. In a way, Lives is an East German counterpart to Charlie Wilson’s War, a story about how even small political acts of individual conscience can change the world, even (or perhaps especially) in a decaying Orwellian state. With a memorable central performance by Ulrich Muhe and a languid conclusion that ends on exactly the right note, the resoundingly humanist Lives of Others is a Sonata for a Good Man in Bad Times. We could use more of its ilk.

4. Knocked Up: Judd Apatow’s sweet, good-natured take on modern love and unwanted pregnancy was probably the most purely satisfying film of the summer. As funny in its pop-culture jawing as it was well-observed in its understanding of relationship politics, Knocked Up also felt — unlike the well-meaning but overstylized Juno, the film it’ll most likely be paired with from now herein — refreshingly real. As I said in my recent review of Walk Hard, an eventual Apatow backlash seems almost inevitable given how many comedies he has on the 2008 slate. Nevertheless, we’ll always have Freaks & Geeks, and we’ll always have Knocked Up.

5. The Bourne Ultimatum: The third installment of the Bourne franchise was the best blockbuster of the year, and proved that director Paul Greengrass can churn out excellent, heart-pounding fare even when he’s basically repeating himself. Really, given how much of Ultimatum plays exactly like its two predecessors on the page — the car chase, the Company Men, the Eurotrash assassin, Julia Stiles, exotic locales and cellphone hijinx — it’s hard to fathom how good it turned out to be. But Bourne was riveting through and through…You just couldn’t take your eyes off it. I know I’ve said this several times now, but if Zack Snyder screws up Watchmen (and I’d say the odds are 50-50 at this point), the lost opportunity for a Greengrass version will rankle for years.

6. Zodiac: The best film of the spring. What at first looked to be another stylish David Fincher serial killer flick is instead a moody and haunting police procedural about the search for a seemingly unknowable truth, and the toll it exacts on the men — cops, journalists, citizens — who undertake it for years and even decades. Reveling in the daily investigatory minutiae that also comprise much of The Wire and Law and Order, and arguably boasting the best ensemble cast of the year, Zodiac is a troubling and open-ended inquiry that, until perhaps the final few moments, offers little in the way of satisfying closure for its characters or its audience. Whatever Dirty Harry may suggest to the contrary, the Zodiac remains elusive.

7. 28 Weeks Later: Sir, we appear to have lost control of the Green Zone…Shall I send in the air support? Zombie flicks have been a choice staple for political allegory since the early days of Romero, but one of the strengths of Juan Carlos Fresnadillo’s merciless 28 Weeks Later — perhaps the best horror sequel since James Cameron’s Aliens — is that it foregoes the 1:1 sermonizing about failed reconstructions and American hubris whenever it gets in the way of the nightmare scenario at hand. (Besides, if you wanted to see explicit muckraking about current events this year, there were options aplenty, from In the Valley of Elah to No End in Sight, although plenty of this year’s politically-minded forays — Rendition, Lions for Lambs — looked rather inert from a distance.) There’s little time for moralizing in the dark, wretched heart of 28 Weeks Later: In fact, the right thing to do is often suicide, or worse. You pretty much have only one viable option: run like hell.

8. In the Valley of Elah: Paul Haggis’ surprisingly unsentimentalized depiction of the hidden costs of war for the homefront, Elah benefits greatly from Tommy Lee Jones’ slow burn as a military father who’s lost his last son to a horrific murder. In fact, it’s hard not to think of Jones’ inspired performances here and in No Country of a piece. There was something quintessentially America-in-2007 about Jones this year. In every crease and furrow of this grizzled Texan’s visage, we can see the wounds and weariness of recent times, the mask of dignity and good humor beginning to slip in the face of tragic events and colossal stupidity. Jones is masterful in Elah, and while Daniel Day-Lewis seems to be garnering most of the accolades for There Will Be Blood and Philip Seymour Hoffman stunned in three pics this fall (all on the list below), I’d put Jones’ work here as the best of the year.

9. There Will Be Blood: Ah, the maddening There Will Be Blood. I just reviewed this one yesterday, so it’s doubtful my opinion on it has changed much. But what Anderson’s film reminds me of most at the moment (and not only for the Daniel Day-Lewis connection) is Scorsese’s Gangs of New York, a movie I reviewed at the end of 2002 and then bumped up a few spots a week later when writing the 2002 list, thinking that its flaws would diminish over time. They haven’t — if anything, they’re just as noticeable as ever. So it may well be with TWBB. Even despite its somewhat unseemly pretensions to greatness, the first hour or so of There Will Be Blood, from the Kubrickian opening to the Days in Heaven-ish burning oil rig, is as powerful and memorable as you could ever want in a film. But TWBB loses its way, and the second half is a significantly less interesting enterprise, ultimately culminating in that goofy, illogical bowling alley ending. I’d characterize Blood as a significant step forward for PTA, and there’s something to be said for getting even this close to a masterpiece. But he hasn’t struck black gold yet.

10. Hot Fuzz: While I personally still prefer Shaun of the Dead, this fish-out-of-water, buddy-cop action spectacle proved the droll British team of Nick Frost, Simon Pegg, and Edgar Wright can’t be considered one-hit-wonders (and that they’re as savvy about certain pop culture tropes as their American colleagues in the Apatow camp.) And, while I didn’t see Elizabeth II: The Golden Age, Hot Fuzz may well include the second-best Cate Blanchett performance of the year.

11. Gone Baby Gone: First-time director Ben Affleck acquits himself well with this chronicle of missing children and seedy n’er-do-wells in working-class Boston, wisely choosing to stick with a town and a leading man he knows like the back of his hand. His brother Casey holds his own, and crime author Dennis Lehane’s original source material provides some compelling twists-and-turns throughout. And, as the drug-addled, quick-to-dis Townie mom who’s lost her baby, The Wire‘s Amy Ryan gives arguably the Best Supporting Actress performance of the year (although she’ll likely get some run from Blanchett’s Jude Quinn.)

12. Michael Clayton: Clooney’s impeccable taste in projects continues with this, Tony Gilroy’s meditation on corporate malfeasance and lawyerly ethics (or lack thereof.) The bit with the horses still seems a convenient (and corny) happenstance on which to hang such a major plot point, and I found Tilda Swinton to be overly mannered and distracting for much of the film’s run. But most else about Michael Clayton, from Sidney Pollack’s Master of the Universe to Michael O’Keefe’s snide, unctuous #2 to Tom Wilkinson’s last scene to Clooney not rebounding as well to events as, say, Danny Ocean, rang true. A small film, in its way, but a worthwhile one.

13. Charlie Wilson’s War: Another one I wrote on in the past 24 hours, so I don’t have much to add. Perhaps the best thing about Mike Nichols and Aaron Sorkin’s adaptation of Crile’s book is that it “gets” politics like few recent Washington thrillers I can think of. Philip Seymour Hoffman shows impeccable comic timing as the gruff Gust Avrakotos, and he works very well with Hanks here, who’s gone from being overexposed a few years ago back to a guy I wouldn’t mind seeing more of, particularly if he continues along the Alec Baldwinish character actor path Wilson sometimes suggests could be his future.

14. The Savages: I actually thought about putting Tamara Jenkins’ The Savages higher on this list, and few other movie endings this year hit me in the gut quite like this one. But, there are definite problems here, such as the wheezy Gbenga Akinnagbe subplot, which compel me to keep it here in the mid-teens. Still, this comedy about an ornery lion in winter, and the battling cubs who have to come to his aid, is a worthwhile one, and particularly if you’re in the mood for some rather black humor. As Lenny the senescent and slipping paterfamilias, Philip Bosco gives a standout performance, as does Hoffman as the miserable Bertholdt Brecht scholar trapped in deepest, darkest Buffalo.

15. Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead: Now, Before the Devil is a movie I did end up seeing twice, on account of Brooklyn friends who were looking to catch it, and the film didn’t bring much new to the table on that second viewing. Still, Sidney Lumet and Kelly Masterson’s lean family tragedy benefits from several excellent performances — most notably by Hoffman, Ethan Hawke, Marisa Tomei, and Albert Finney, but also in supporting work by Amy Ryan, Michael Shannon, Brian O’Byrne, and Rosemary Harris — as well as a memorable Carter Burwell score. (Also, it’s just a coincidence that the three Hoffman movies ended up in a row like this — Still, it’s a testament to the man’s ability that he seemed unique and fully formed in each. Then again, the only time I can think of that Hoffman was actually bad in a film was Cold Mountain, which was pretty glitched up regardless.)

16. Sunshine: Along with There Will Be Blood, Danny Boyle and Alex Garland’s exasperating Sunshine is the other film this year that saw an amazing first hour become undone by breathtakingly poor choices on the back end. Unlike the halting, confused slide of TWBB, though, the moment where Sunshine slips the rails is clear-cut and irrefutable: It’s when what had been a heady science fiction tale about a near-impossible mission to the heart of the sun became instead an unwieldy space-slasher flick, i.e. basically an Armageddon variation on Jason X. The wreckage this subplot makes of what had been a superior hard-sci-fi film is more than a little depressing…Still, for that first hour, Sunshine is really something, perhaps the best realistically-portrayed outer space voyage we’ve seen on-screen in years.

17. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford: Andrew Dominik’s sprawling psychological western about the end of the West and the early days of American celebrity-worship is every bit as ambitious and flawed as PTA’s There Will Be Blood. Still, maybe it’s the often stunning Roger Deakins cinematography, or the lively character actors (Sam Rockwell, Jeremy Renner, Garret Dillahunt) in the margins of the film, or maybe it’s even the terrible omniscient voiceover, which is every bit as distracting as the similarly ham-handed one in Little Children, and so goofy at times it verges on endearing. Whatever it is, I warmed to Jesse James more than I probably should, and for whatever reason I feel more willing to forgive it its considerable problems. If you blinked, you probably missed its theatrical run…but maybe it’ll find new life on DVD, when the 160-min running time won’t seem so off-putting.

18. I am Legend: When the film focused on Will Smith and his dog fighting blood-sucking and badly rendered CGI Infecteds (whose level of social deevolution changed back and forth solely to accommodate turns in the plot), Francis Lawrence’s I am Legend could seem pedestrian and forgettable. But, when the movie focused on Will Smith and his dog fighting interminable loneliness in an eerily abandoned New York City, which was most of the first two-thirds of the film, I am Legend was a surprisingly melancholy and resonant blockbuster. What can I say? This one hit me where, and how, I live.

19. Ratatouille: There’s no review of this one up — I actually only saw it on DVD last week. And yet, while Ratatouille is a visual marvel (and Brad Bird and the PIXAR gurus don’t seem to make bad films), I found this nowhere near as inventive or entertaining as their last collaboration, 2004’s The Incredibles. (I’d put this one at about the level of Cars.) Now, this may in part be due to the fact that I have much more interest in comic book conceits than the culinary arts. (I’d even go so far as to say that I find many foodies — particularly those who blather on endlessly about Parisian cuisine — kind of insufferable.) Still, even given my relative lack of interest in the subject matter, Ratatouille bugged me. If “anyone can cook,” as Chef Gustave proclaims, why is no one’s input ever important but the rat? If it’s bad to make money selling pre-cooked (and affordable) food to the teeming masses, as Ian Holm’s character tries to do, why is it any better to do what Remy does? (And why should we care then when he and Gustave Jr. move into a deluxe apartment in the sky? I thought this enterprise wasn’t about making money.) In short, I thought Ratatouille wanted to have it both ways, cloaking a rather elitist, even snobbish story in the trappings of democratic tolerance. And the closing monologue by Peter O’Toole’s Anton Ego, which I thought ostensibly tried to make the movie critic-proof, irked me too. But, all that aside, it does look real purty.

20. Atonement: There were several contenders for this last spot on this list, including Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, The Simpsons Movie, and Jason Reitman’s Juno. But in the end I went with Joe Wright’s take on Ian McEwan’s novel, partly because people I trust who haven’t read the book beforehand haven’t shared my issues with the film. If nothing else, Atonement looks ravishing, and it features breakout performances by James McAvoy, Romola Garai, and Saiorse Ronan. Still, in a year that saw No Country and Diving Bell, I wish Wright had been less conventional in its approach to the story, and found a way to do the gloomy, misanthropic ending of McEwan’s novel justice.

Most Disappointing: The Golden Compass, Grindhouse, Spiderman 3, Southland Tales

Worth a Rental: 3:10 to Yuma, Beowulf, Eastern Promises, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Juno, Live Free or Die Hard, Lust, Caution, Ocean’s 13, The Simpsons Movie, Stardust, Superbad, Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story

Don’t Bother: 300, Across the Universe, American Gangster, The Darjeeling Limited, Interview, The Invasion, Margot at the Wedding, The Mist, Pirates of the Caribbean 3: At World’s End, Transformers, You Kill Me

Best Actor: Tommy Lee Jones, In the Valley of Elah; Daniel Day-Lewis, There Will Be Blood
Best Actress: Ellen Page, Juno
Best Supporting Actor: Javier Bardem, No Country for Old Men
Best Supporting Actress: Amy Ryan, Gone Baby Gone; Cate Blanchett, I’m Not There

A Good Year For

Casey Affleck (Assassination of Jesse James, Gone Baby Gone)
Judd Apatow (Knocked Up, Superbad, Walk Hard)
Josh Brolin (American Gangster, Grindhouse, In the Valley of Elah, No Country)
Michael Cera (Superbad, Juno)
Garret Dillahunt (No Country for Old Men, Assassination of Jesse James)
Full-Frontal Parity (Diving Bell, Eastern Promises, I’m Not There, Walk Hard)
Philip Seymour Hoffman (Before the Devil, Charlie Wilson’s War, The Savages)
Tommy Lee Jones (In the Valley of Elah, No Country for Old Men)
Man’s Best Friend (I am Legend, The Savages)
Pregnant Hipsters (Knocked Up, Juno)
Seth Rogen (Knocked Up, Superbad)
Amy Ryan (Before the Devil, Gone Baby Gone)
Texans (No Country for Old Men, Charlie Wilson’s War)
The Western (3:10 to Yuma, Assassination of Jesse James, No Country for Old Men, There Will Be Blood)

A Bad Year For

The Beatles (Across the Universe, Walk Hard)
Josh Brolin’s PETA standing (American Gangster, No Country for Old Men)
Great Cities (28 Weeks Later, I am Legend)
Kidman/Craig Pairings (The Invasion, The Golden Compass)
The Male Derriere (Charlie Wilson’s War, Margot at the Wedding)
Standard-Issue Music Biopics(I’m Not There, Walk Hard)

Unseen: Away from Her, Black Book, Black Snake Moan, The Brave One, Breach, Control, Elizabeth II: The Golden Age, Enchanted, Grace is Gone, The Great Debaters, Goya’s Ghosts, The Host, Into the Wild, Joe Strummer: The Future is Unwritten, The Kingdom, The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters, The Kite Runner, Lars and the Real Girl, La Vie En Rose, Lions for Lambs, Love in the Time of Cholera, A Mighty Heart, The Namesake, No End in Sight, Once, The Orphanage, Persepolis, Redacted, Rendition, Rescue Dawn, Reservation Road, Romance and Cigarettes, Shoot ‘Em Up, Sicko, Sweeney Todd, Talk to Me, This is England, We Own the Night, The Wind that Shakes the Barley, Wristcutters: A Love Story, Year of the Dog, Youth Without Youth

2008: Be Kind, Rewind, Cassandra’s Dream, Cloverfield, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, The Day the Earth Stood Still, Funny Games, Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Hellboy 2: The Golden Army, In Bruges, The Incredible Hulk, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Iron Man, James Bond 22, Jumper, Leatherheads, My Blueberry Nights, The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, Revolutionary Road, Run, Fat Boy Run, Speed Racer, Star Trek, Valkyrie, Wall-E, Wanted, The X-Files 2…let’s see, am I missing anything…?

Welcome, 2008. I’ll see y’all on the other side.

Mr. Wilson Goes to Washington.

At one point in Mike Nichols’ smart, surprisingly enjoyable Charlie Wilson’s War, the freewheeling, fun-loving Representative Charles Wilson (Tom Hanks), he of the Texas 2nd Congressional District, tells his schlubby, foul-mouthed partner at the CIA, Gust Avrakotos (Philip Seymour Hoffman), “You ain’t James Bond.” Deadpans Avrakotos, “You ain’t Thomas Jefferson, so let’s call it even.” True, Bond and Jefferson they’re not, but that’s actually part of the appeal of Nichols’ lively little film. A strangely optimistic, almost Capraesque movie about the covert proxy war in Afghanistan (and, ultimately, the inadvertent role played by the U.S. in fostering the Taliban), Charlie Wilson’s War — adapted by The West Wing‘s Aaron Sorkin from the book by the late George Crile — is no grim, sober-minded edutainment. Moving at a brisk clip and maintaining a light touch — too light, some might argue — throughout, the movie instead depicts how a few (relatively) ordinary, committed people can change the world…provided one of them is sitting on the House Defense Subcommittee, and has stacked up a sizable amount of chits.

When — after a quick flash-forward setup — we first meet Congressman Charlie Wilson (Tom Hanks, eschewing the Pvt. Ryan earnestness for his more sardonic Bachelor Party/Volunteers side), he’s lounging in a Vegas hot tub with a coke-snorting television producer, a Playboy bunny, and two strippers. In short, he seems like a out-and-out cad. But there’s something endearing and even statesmanlike about his piqued interest in a 60 Minutes report, playing in the corner, on the mujahideen in Afghanistan. (Maybe it’s the Dan Rather Texas connection.) Delving further into the issue back in Washington, Wilson — exercising the power of his crucial committee position — singlehandedly doubles U.S. funding of the mujahideen from $5 million to $10 million. This by-all-accounts token gesture draws the attention of the wealthy Houston socialite Joanne Herring (Julia Roberts, solid), a woman with money, connections, and a fervent commitment to anticommunism, and she sends Wilson off to Pakistan to meet with President Zia-ul-Haq about the situation in neighboring Afghanistan. There, Wilson is moved to the cause by the sight of a dismal refugee camp, and soon enough, he’s enlisted an important ally in Avrakotos, a profane Langley veteran (Hoffman, showing yet another side after Before the Devil and The Savages this year, and nearly running away with the movie.) Together, these three — Wilson, Herring, Avrakotos (John Rambo’s unique contributions to the cause of Afghan freedom are sadly overlooked — set in motion a scheme not only to increase funding radically for the war but to funnel Soviet weaponry owned by Israel and Egypt to the freedom fighters there. Of course, some delicate diplomacy is required, and, in any case, giving Afghan youths an arsenal of helicopter-slaying RPGs doesn’t seem like such a great an idea in retrospect…

While nodding to the dismal events that follow American intervention in the region, Charlie Wilson’s War hardly dwells on the blowback, or on anything — a few refugee camp horror stories and a Pavel Lychnikoff cameo notwithstanding — that might interrupt its tone of hearty, back-slapping jocularity. (Supporting turns by Amy Adams, Emily Blunt, Ned Beatty, Denis O’Hare, John Slattery, and Peter Gerety help speed things along in a comfortable groove.) And yet, however feel-good, Wilson ultimately feels more ripped from the headlines than even the filmmakers could’ve guessed. Some lawmakers have trouble distinguishing between Pakistan and Afghanistan at one point, and Herring begins an introduction of Pakistan’s President by saying, “Zia did not kill Bhutto.” (Leavening the chill that follows this now-eerie moment, Rudy Giuliani and John Murtha also come up at various times as punchlines.)

But, its timeliness and prescience aside, what I found most impressive about Charlie Wilson’s War is how aptly it portrays the feel of Washington. This was somewhat surprising to me as, while I liked Sorkin’s The West Wing decently enough as a TV drama and admired its general idealism about politics, the show always felt rather fake to me. But, be it due to Crile or Sorkin or Nichols, Wilson conveys a lot of the telling details of life inside the Beltway quite well — the hallway horse-trading and neverending quid pro quos, the simultaneous meetings, the bland, institutional cafeterias; the bevy of youngish staffers (and inordinately pretty administrative assistants) on Capitol Hill, the deals crafted over dinner or drinks, the conference calls, the memory holes, myopic thinking, and CYA behavior. Outside of The Wire‘s nuanced take on the compromises of Baltimore city politics, it’s hard to think of a more on-target recent portrayal of the (non-campaigning) political process. Sadly, for Congressman Wilson as for today’s legislators, fiddling with the internal dynamics of far-flung nations we barely understand for short-term gain is All in the Game. Still, as Charlie Wilson’s War proves, don’t let it ever be said that nothing gets done in Washington.

Citizen Plain.

In the opening sequence of Paul Thomas Anderson’s passionate but flawed There Will Be Blood, it is 1898, and a man named Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis), alone and driven, casts himself into a dark, dusty hole and hews mineral wealth from the surrounding rock. After suffering a nasty leg injury therein, Plainview hauls himself out of the deep recess through sheer grinding will and, in an act of Herculean exertion rivaling the endgame of Touching the Void, crawls across the sun-baked earth on his back, precious nuggets of silver in hand. This sweating, teeth-gnashing endeavor is an apt metaphor for Anderson’s film. There Will Be Blood looks beautiful, and it has moments of poetry in it. But, like Plainview (and The Assassination of Jesse James, another transplanted 70’s western out this year), it also wears its ambition on its sleeve, and it strains so hard to seem an instant movie classic that it eventually loses its way. (The mostly atonal and distracting Jonny Greenwood score, reminiscent of The Shining, unfortunately doesn’t help.)

Now, in the interest of full disclosure, Paul Thomas Anderson is a director I’ve never warmed to. I thought Boogie Nights was decent but overlong and I had a visceral dislike for both Magnolia and Punch-Drunk Love. (I haven’t seen Hard Eight.) Still, while I think this is Anderson’s best and most accomplished film, and it’s probably worth sitting through for the first third regardless, There Will Be Blood eventually bogs down in some of the usual PTA indulgences. In addition, Daniel Day-Lewis never gives a bad performance and is typically magnetic here, but he also gets more actorly and mannered as the film progresses, and is loonily over-the-top in Blood‘s disastrously misconceived closing moments. (That being said, I wouldn’t be surprised if “I drink YOUR milkshake!” gets some run in the cultural lexicon of useful and memorable movie quotes.) In short, There Will Be Blood is a good film, in some ways even a very good one. But it’s not the landmark masterpiece many reviewers are making it out to be, and it slips into murk well before the end.

Straying rather far from the Upton Sinclair tome that inspired it, Blood is, in effect, a character study about the dehumanizing consequences of naked ambition. (If that sounds like Citizen Kane, you’re on the right track. PTA is borrowing from Welles, Malick, and Kubrick rather than Altman or Scorsese this time ’round.) After the 1898 prologue, we pick up Daniel Plainview’s story a few years later: He’s moved from silver to oil and has been successful enough to hire on a few workers, one of whom has brought his infant child with him on the dig. Alas, tragedy — a pretty common occurrence in the turn-of-the-century oil business, it seems — strikes at the workplace, and the child becomes Plainview’s. By 1911, this now ten-year-old boy (Dillon Freaser) has become a valuable part of the family business — He’s the silent partner Plainview uses to soften his pitch when dealing with locals or landowners. In any event, the oilman (as he prefers to be known) one day gets a tip from a traveler (Paul Dano) about a town where the black gold literally seeps from the ground. Soon, the Plainviews set up shop in this California hamlet, named Little Boston, and start buying up the place. But standing in his way is another ambitious soul, the evangelical preacher Eli Sunday (also Paul Dano), and he doesn’t want a rival for the town’s admiration. There’s only room for one Great Man in Little Boston…but will his symbol be the Derrick or the Cross?

So, as you can see, what we have here is John D. Rockefeller versus Elmer Gantry, commerce versus religion, another virulent intersection of the black gold, texas tea and that old-time fundamentalist religion. But don’t go in expecting Syriana in Progressive Era California just yet. In fact, Blood turns out to be barely political at all. (Somewhere, Sinclair sighs.) Anderson puts several interesting ideas and characters in play, and the first third of the movie is absolutely gripping stuff. But, unfortunately, once all the derricks are in a row, Anderson doesn’t seem to know what to do with them. And so, right around the time Plainview’s first rig goes up in flames, There Will Be Blood begins to stall out. There are some clever reversals in the oilman-churchman balance of power thereafter (the baptism scene, for example), but the movie doesn’t really go anywhere. Instead, for most of the rest of the film, PTA goes back to his well and focuses once again on his pet issue, the meaning and importance of family. (See also Magnolia, Boogie Nights, and, from what I’ve heard, Hard Eight.) He brings a long-lost half-brother (Kevin O’Connor) into the story, has Plainview take extreme umbrage at any suggestion he’s a deadbeat dad, and starts dwelling on the brewing discord and enmity between father and son. (Also a major factor in Oil!, although it’s done rather differently.) Of course, Anderson can be forgiven for concentrating on what most interests him, and plenty of very good directors — maybe even all of ’em — have a tendency to keep ruminating on the same thematic content. Still, given how intriguing There Will Be Blood plays for its first hour, it’s a significant letdown to see PTA fall back into the same old, same old.

Unfortunately, once the spell of Blood is broken, other bad habits of Anderson’s start becoming harder to ignore. Clearly good about giving actors room to breathe (maybe too much room, given DDL’s going off the rails in the final reel here), Anderson can also be distractingly showy (the Scorsese steadicam business in Boogie Nights, for example.) He has a tendency to beat quirky ideas into the ground (Exodus 8:2, the harmonium in Punch-Drunk Love), can hinge a sequence on some really lousy dialogue (“I’m silently judging you“), and often lets scenes meander for several beats too long (anything involving the quiz show in Magnolia.) These tics are more subdued in There Will Be Blood than in any of Anderson’s previous movies, but they become manifest as the film loses focus, and well up with explosive force in the last act. Set in 1927, with Plainview now a wealthy but dissolute drunk in his own Xanadu and Sunday an Aimee Semple McPherson of sorts, the final showdown between our two antagonists is a misfire on multiple levels. Not to give the story away, but the scene relies on far too many suspensions of disbelief. (Why would Sunday come to Plainview, of all people? Would Sunday really not get it beforehand? And, how the heck did he lose money in the stock market in 1927? Note this site: “From 1926 to 1929, the market indices moved up nearly 400%.“) Worse, both Day-Lewis and Dano start blatantly overacting. (Somebody please take that plate of chicken away.) And, what with the bowling alley and milkshakes and whatnot, the last act of There Will Be Blood even comes across as downright silly. It’s an ignominious end for a film that, for its first hour or so, had all the makings of a masterpiece. But, sadly, the gears end up grinding too loudly on this rig, and, just as pride goeth before a fall, it all eventually comes to a crash. Oil is a tricky business.