Not with a Bang but a Whimper.

Well, I guess nobody can doubt its commitment to Sparkle Motion. But, sadly, the sprawling, incoherent Southland Tales, the second film by Donnie Darko creator Richard Kelly, is a ghastly trainwreck, and easily the worst film I’ve seen in a theater since 2003’s Gods and Generals. As I said to my brother on the way out (and as David Edelstein also noted), it makes the excellent Donnie Darko look worse in retrospect (and goes a long way toward explaining why the needlessly expository Darko Director’s Cut is so much less satisfying than the original version.) A hackneyed, overwrought stoner mishmash of leaden political satire and borrowed apocalyptic sci-fi influences, Southland Tales is so terrible I left the theater irritated that it even got made. It’s not so-bad-its-good…it’s just bad. Really, how does a movie this lousy get filmed? How do the actors and everyone else involved not see they’re in the midst of a disaster? And why didn’t marginally more talented folks like Kevin Smith or Eli Roth take a break from their oh-so-cutesy cameos and give their boy a heads-up? As it is, Southland Tales basically feels like something composed in the back of a high school notebook, amid album cover doodles and lyrics about being misunderstood, after a long night at the bong.

As Southland Tales begins in the near-future of 2005 (which should give you a sense of how long this film was stuck in development hell), a family barbeque in Abilene, Texas is disrupted by nuclear devastation, and WW3 begins in earnest. As then explained in voiceover by a disfigured Iraq vet (Justin Timberlake) over an impressive infotainment presentation (probably the best thing about the film), the US is now at war with Dubya’s entire Axis of Evil (and Syria to boot); the world is facing a global oil shortage which may be alleviated by a newly-created hydrothermal energy source known as Fluid Karma; the Department of Homeland Security has taken NSA wiretaps to the next level and fashioned an Orwellian nightmare known as USIdent; “Neo-Marxist” (really?) cells have sprung up around Venice Beach, CA to fight Big Brother; and the crucially important election of 2008 pits the staid Democratic ticket of Clinton/Lieberman against the sinister Republican team of Eliot/Frost (both poets which Kelly quotes throughout like they’re going out of style –They’re not.)

Finally, to kick off our story (which is apparently Part IV of a larger, presumably even more boring saga), we learn that an impressively-tattooed, Schwarzeneggerian movie star with top GOP connections (The Rock) has shown up in the middle of the desert suffering from amnesia, and has been taken under the wing of talk show hostess/porn star Krysta Now (Sarah Michelle Gellar) and her drug dealer roommate (Will Sasso). Got all that? We also discover along the way that the GOP and the Fluid Karma gurus (more on them in a second) might be in cahoots, that the NeoMarxist underground is basically run by former SNL alums (and poor, poor Avon Barksdale (Wood Harris) — guess he won’t be making fun of McNulty anymore for 300), that — paging Mr. Darko — there may be a time travel aspect to all of this, and that the secret to everything may rest on a pair of twin brothers (Seann William Scott), who find themselves getting drugged and/or knocked out a lot. Oh, and since JT keeps quoting Revelations over various scenes, its a solid presumption that the End of the World is more than likely on hand too…Bummer.

If this all sounds splendidly bizarre, well, it’s not. Southland Tales‘ strained attempts to come off as surreal might have worked if they had seemed effortless, but sadly they always feel here as if they required Herculean labor. Too much of the dialogue is drowning in exposition or weighed down by ponderous nods to Eliot, Frost, Revelations, etc. (I fear Kelly defenders will cite these to argue the film has hidden depths, when really they just expose how often Tales languishes in the shallows. But, admittedly, they might seem profound if you were completely baked out of your gourd.) Kelly has also clearly tried to give this project some weirdness cachet by dint of offbeat casting — the film is overloaded with C-grade celebrities and former ’80s icons. Case in point: Early in the film, we meet the team behind Fluid Karma, and they’re — I kid you not — composed of Wallace Shawn (best known for his “inconceivable” rants in The Princess Bride), Bai Ling, Zelda “Poltergeist” Rubenstein, Beth “Sparkle Motion” Grant, and Curtis “Booger” Armstrong. This sort of thing is good for a chuckle every so often, but after awhile — John Larroquette plays Karl Rove, Christopher Lambert drives an ice cream truck — it all just seems glommed on and irritating, particularly since Kelly seemingly expects the sheer presence of these people to do all the heavy lifting.

So what’s good about Southland Tales? Lordy, not much. As I said earlier, the satirical CNN of the near-future is well-constructed. The cast do what they can with what they’ve got, and most of ’em rise above the material: The Rock is charismatic enough to jet by, Seann William Scott at least seems like he’s trying, and Justin Timberlake redeems himself with one of the better scenes in the film, a lip-synched video to The Killers’ “All These Things That I’ve Done” (which nonetheless comes off as a Big Lebowski ripoff set to ski-ball, and mirrors quite closely the “Happiness is a Warm Gun” routine from Across the Universe earlier this year.) But these brief moments are by no means enough to recommend this dismal misfire of a film. Let me put it this way: I really liked the original version of Donnie Darko (note the rotating header), I really like cutting political satire and big-think sci-fi (for a classic example of how to do it right, see Brazil), I really like seeing semi-forgotten actors find work (see my post on Matt Frewer and Watchmen earlier this week) and I hated — hated — this film. You’d be hard pressed to find someone more likely to give Richard Kelly and Southland Tales a larger benefit of the doubt than I did going in, but this movie is rambling, incoherent, puerile, and, worst of all, tedious. Revelation 3:16: So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth.

In the Country of Last Things.

“Seen the arrow on the doorpost, saying, ‘This land is condemned’…” Well, Bob, East Texas may seem rough, but trust me, West Texas is even worse. I’m always going to have a soft spot for Miller’s Crossing, and The Big Lebowski is its own strange and beautiful beast, but the Coen Brothers’ tense, brooding No Country for Old Men, which I caught this morning, is right up among their best work, and that is no small thing. Admittedly, in some ways the Coens don’t seem quite right for a Cormac McCarthy adaptation: They usually thrive on witty, motormouth dialogue, but McCarthy’s men (Woody Harrelson’s character notwithstanding) are invariably strong, silent types. And you can feel the brothers trying to restrain their usual mordant sense of humor through much of the otherwise bleak No Country. (It still leaks out here and there: the mariachi band, “I pre-visioned it,” “these look to be managerial types,” the constant noting of the dead dog, and so on.) Nonetheless, for all intent and purposes, they nailed it. No Country is easily one of the better films out this year, and, if you harbored any doubts about the Coens after their botched remake of The Ladykillers, fret not. The brothers are back in form.

“The crime you see now, it’s hard to even take its measure.” No Country opens on the arid, forbidding landscape of west Texas, as we hear local sheriff Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones, doing a lot of soul-searching this autumn between here and Elah), in voiceover, lament what the world has come to. As if to prove his point, we are then introduced to one Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem, unforgettable), a chilling, wide-eyed psychopath with a lousy haircut, an air-powered cattle gun, and a penchant for making coin tosses with weighty implications. While Chigurh calmly breaks out of police custody (by strangling a deputy to death and murdering an unlucky motorist), a down-on-his-luck local named Llewellyn Moss (Josh Brolin) happens upon the scene of a horrific shootout in the middle of the desert, one which has all the markings of a drug-deal-gone-bad…including $2 million in a black briefcase. Thinking his ship has come in, Moss decides to takes the money and run. But, he’s savvy enough to expect some blowback, and thus sends his wife (Kelley MacDonald, of Trainspotting) off to her mother’s place in Odessa and vacates his old trailer park before hitting the road, traveling from motel to motel across west Texas. But right behind him, ruthless, inexorable, is Chigurh, armed with a transponder that follows the money. And, if Moss can’t stay one step ahead of the madman, or if Sheriff Bell doesn’t find a way to reach him before Chigurh does, there’ll be hell to pay like West Texas hasn’t seen since…well, probably since this morning.

Having read the novel a few summers ago, I knew what I was getting into here, and thus (as with Chris Nolan’s The Prestige) I was prepared for a third-act jag that’s irritated a few moviegoers out there who expected a more conventional resolution. But, frankly, that’s the book. Near the end of No Country, one of the men we’ve been following tells us about two dreams he’s had recently: While it may seem in the early going that this movie is about the first, it’s actually more about the second. (Put another way, I’m guessing people who saw Lord of the Rings and thought the story was about the ring found all the endings to Return of the King more unnecessary and unsatisfying than those who thought the story was about Frodo and the fellowship.)

Yes, No Country is a crime yarn a la Fargo and Blood Simple, but it also has bigger game in its sights. One of the scariest aspects of Anton Chigurh is that he seems to believe himself an Agent of something else, something completely and utterly out of his control, and perhaps the scariest notion of all is that he might be right. “If the rule you followed brought you to this,” Chigurh tells one victim, “what was the use of it?” And would following any other rule have made any difference? Sheriff Bell is heartsick over the madness and grotesque violence that seeps out of the corners of society, and another aging lawman tries to lay the blame for “the dismal tide” on “kids with green hair and bones in their noses.” But, as another character reminds us, the West, and the world, has always been like this. You can’t stop what’s coming. At best, all you can do is light a fire in the dark.

The Devil Inside.

“The world is an evil place. Some people make money from it, and some people are destroyed by it.” Capping a weekend stand of venal cops, missing children, and murderous ballet was yet another feel-good film, Sidney Lumet’s sparse, harrowing amorality tale, Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead. (The title is taken from an Irish proverb, “May you be in heaven half an hour before the devil knows you’re dead.”) All in all, I quite enjoyed the film, although it may not be everyone’s vial of acid. A dark and ugly story of corruption, desperation, and family betrayal, its pleasures reside in being told simply and told well. As in Lumet’s classic Dog Day Afternoon, Before the Devil dwells on the consequences of a badly bungled crime perpetrated by two increasingly desperate men. But here, the crime is of a more personal nature than the bank robbery of Dog Day, and the planners and victims have more in common than just being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Here, the road to Hell is a well-traveled one, and nobody sends you careening down it faster than your immediate kin.

After briefly visiting the sex life of Manhattan real estate broker Andy Hanson (Phillip Seymour Hoffman) and his trophy wife Gina (Marisa Tomei) — While it may at first seem tawdry and gratuitous, this is Hank’s “half hour in Heaven” moment, setting up everything to follow — Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead begins with a really bad day at an average, suburban strip mall in Westchester. To wit, a matronly woman (Rosemary Harris, best known as Aunt May) opening a jewelry store is suddenly beset upon by a masked villain brandishing a gun, who barks orders at her and begins filling a sack with the store’s wares. Alas, Spiderman is not forthcoming this time, and the attempted robbery ends in tragedy. After a getaway car flees from the scene, we then flash back to the days before the botched theft, and discover that it was originally the simple plan of Andy, who needs money in the worst way to cover up his flagrant embezzling from a forthcoming company audit, to knock off “a mom-and-pop operation” and fence the lucre.

Moreover, Andy has enticed his obvious screw-up of a little brother, Hank (Ethan Hawke), into the scheme. (Hank has money problems of his own: he’s three months behind on child support, as his ex-wife (Amy Ryan, late of Gone Baby Gone) keeps reminding him, and even his young daughter, in between her middle-school performances of King Lear(?), now realizes he’s pretty much a loser.) Complicating the perfect crime even further, of course, Hank is having an affair with Gina and has fallen in love with her; Hank, not the brightest bulb on the tree by anyone’s measure, decides to outsource the actual deed to a tough-guy bartender friend of his; Andy is a barely functioning heroin and cocaine addict who’s close to veering off the rails in any event; and, most importantly, the jewelry store in question is owned and run by Hank and Andy’s parents — in fact, it was meant to be their father (Albert Finney), who Andy might well have considered acceptable losses, behind the counter on game day. And now, as Hank puts it, “it just came apart“…so what are these two criminal masterminds going to do?

There are no heroes in Before the Devil, just a lot of deeply flawed people each caught in a tightening vise of circumstance. Even notwithstanding his money problems, Andy is drowning in self-loathing. His wife Gina is an obvious manipulator (note her purring, Lady Macbeth moment when she catches wise to the crime.) Hank is a spineless wheedler, who can’t stop trying to skate by on his boyish looks even when it’s obvious they’ve long since failed him as a negotiating tactic. Even Charles, the pater familias, has issues: If he can’t be directly faulted for the sins of his children here, it’s clear he’s responsible for some of the family dynamic at work, and his turning into R.E.M.’s “The Apologist” after the crime doesn’t help matters.

Still, if there are no good guys here, there are a number of very good performances. The cast is excellent across the board, and the sheer quality of the ensemble work here helps this otherwise bitter tonic go down smooth. If you like your family sagas or crime stories served up ice-cold, give Before the Devil a run for its money. As Lumet’s film reminds us, when it comes to the best-laid plans of mice and men, the devil is in the details, and the evils that we all may be quite capable of lurk only a few bad days away.

Little Girl Lost.

Wading into the same dark, turbid, and clannish Boston waters as Mystic River (also by author and Wire contributor Dennis Lehane) Ben Affleck’s Gone Baby Gone is another wicked-smaht tale of horrible crimes and neighborhood secrets in and around the Hub, and marks a promising debut for Affleck as a director (and another step for brother Casey, after The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, towards leading-man status.) The last act unfolds a mite too slowly, I thought, but for the most part Gone Baby Gone — for its ruminations on the meaning (and inescapability) of place as much as its attention to Beantown detail — is an intelligent and gripping crime story that’s worth catching. Affleck, Lehane, and co. are confident enough here to ask tough questions without definitive answers, and it’s those uneasy ambiguities in Gone Baby Gone, as much as the local color, that ultimately sticks with you.

As another day dawns in Dorchester (one of what could be almost any of the white working-class neighborhoods surrounding Boston), Amanda McCready, age 4, is still missing, 72 hours after disappearing from her mother’s unlocked second-floor apartment, and where she is now we can only guess. By this point, the press are having a field day with the abduction story, the police are starting to have doubts about the girl’s survival, and Amanda’s Aunt Bea (Amy Madigan) and Uncle Lionel (Titus Welliver, of Deadwood) are looking to bring flesh blood to the search, namely private investigators Patrick Kenzie (Affleck) and Angie Gennaro (Michelle Monaghan). Kenzie and Gennaro have doubts about taking the case — neither particularly wants to turn up a dead girl — but, as lifelong locals, they know they can find people and go places the badges can’t. In the manner of films immemorial, the police officer in charge of the case (Morgan Freeman) doesn’t take too kindly to these P.I. interlopers on his heels, but assigns them two ornery cop liaisons (Ed Harris and John Ashton) regardless. And, once Kenzie and Gennaro have re-interviewed Amanda’s troubled, hard-partying mom, Helene McCready (The Wire‘s Amy Ryan, giving a Best Supporting Actress-worthy performance) and checked out some of her sketchier haunts, they — sure enough — turn up some new leads in the hunt. But the trail’s growing colder by the minute, and as both P.I.’s know, few child abduction stories ever result in a happy ending — why would Amanda’s be any different?

Dennis Lehane, Amy Ryan, Michael Williams (a.k.a. Omar) appears briefly here as a cop…if I keep making connections here to The Wire, it only speaks in Gone Baby Gone‘s favor. As with that show and Bal’more, this movie relishes its urban environment — this is a Boston story through and through, and that strong sense of place brings the film to life more than anything else. Also like The Wire, Affleck’s film doesn’t refrain from acknowledging that the world is often not a storybook place. (The second act of the movie is particularly dark, and while I thought Affleck perhaps overrelied on aerial establishing shots of Boston and images of “regular” people at times throughout, his delicate handling of this potentially explosive section of the film in particular suggests his potential as a director.)

True, much of what is excellent about Gone Baby Gone must be attributed to Lehane’s book. But, there have been a lot of lousy movies made about excellent books over the years, and if nothing else, Affleck (and his co-screenwriter Aaron Stockhard) have brought Lehane’s story to the screen without sacrificing any moral complexity or narrative momentum. As I said, I think the film lags slightly in the third act (and I do have some issues with Monaghan’s character arc by the end, which I can’t really discuss without giving the film away), but the quietly haunting coda at the end redeemed a lot of those issues for me. The occasional shocks and disruptions notwithstanding, it seems, people are what they are, and life goes on as ever in the old neighborhood.

The Haint of Harlem.

Superfly, Serpico, The French Connection…Ridley Scott’s American Gangster plays for most of its run like a greatest hits cover-medley of the cop and gangster thrillers of the 1970s. But, while well-made and eminently watchable, Gangster never becomes truly engaging. (EW’s Owen Gleiberman pretty much nailed it when he called the film “a ghost version of a 70’s classic.”) It’s hard to fault the superior production values or the large, impressive cast, which is chock-full of ringers in even the smallest of roles. But for all the quality on display, American Gangster doesn’t come close to matching the mischievous vibrancy of Denzel Washington’s last 70’s homage, Spike Lee’s Inside Man, nor is it even the best attempt at a throwback 70’s cop flick this year — that would be David Fincher’s haunting Zodiac. Gangster hits its beats well enough, which isn’t surprising given that Ridley Scott’s at the helm. But, however gritty and lived-in at times, it’s still missing the pulse that would make it a truly memorable movie. Frank Lucas may be an O.G., but Gangster, frankly, could’ve benefited from more in the way of originality.

As Gangster opens, we witness the aforementioned Frank Lucas (Washington) lighting a bound man on fire and then unloading a clip into him — from the get-go, this guy clearly has a dark side. We then watch him watching his mentor, “Bumpy” Johnson (Clarence Williams III) doling out Thanksgiving turkeys to the people of Harlem from the back of a truck, driving home, a la Willie Stark in All the King’s Men, the importance of public perception in maintaining a criminal empire. Bumpy lives just long enough in the film to impart some choice lessons in vertical integration before he succumbs to a heart attack, leaving Lucas to take over and consolidate the Harlem drug trade. This Lucas does by bypassing all the usual middlemen — the Italian mafia, crooked cops, etc. — and procuring his heroin supply direct from the source, deep in the jungles of Southeast Asia, thus enabling him to sell purer stuff on the streets at a cheaper price. (The product gets into the country by way of U.S. military planes coming back from Vietnam.)

As this new drug empire grows — and stays mostly under the radar, thanks to Lucas’ emphasis on ignoring flash — we also follow the story of one Richie Roberts (Russell Crowe). As cops go, Roberts is old-school: He prides himself on his honesty and incorruptability despite his intimate connections with some mid-level mafiosi, his flagrant sleeping around (which has turned his failed marriage to Carla Gugino into an ugly custody battle) and the fact that every other po-lice in his unit — and in NYC, for that matter — seems to be on the take. Eventually, of course, Det. Roberts sets his sights on Lucas, and the game truly begins…

But, game or no, everybody knows the dice are loaded. Part of the problem with American Gangster is that there’s no real mystery about how it’ll all turn out in the end. Even if you don’t know a thing about Lucas going in (and I didn’t), these sorts of movies invariably follow a rather predictable pattern, and all the police procedural work, Harlem vignettes, or heroin house of horror asides throughout here can’t hide the fact that Gangster follows it to the letter. Also, while Washington and Crowe are both among some of the best actors working today, neither is given much to work with here. As a hard-working, quick-witted family man who prizes loyalty and doesn’t take any guff from those around him, the Frank Lucas character is right in Denzel’s usual wheelhouse, even despite the additional sociopathic streak. (His turn in Training Day seemed more of a stretch.) And Crowe’s Roberts is well-played but, frankly, not all that interesting as written. Crowe can definitely do conflicted cops — Exhibit A, L.A. Confidential — but this is the first performance by him that I can remember that doesn’t make much of an impression.

And that doesn’t just go for the top two. American Gangster boasts a veritable Murderer’s Row of quality, likable character actors in its credits — not only Williams and Gugino but Chiwetel Ejiofor, Idris Elba, Josh Brolin, Joe Morton, Jon Polito, John Hawkes, John Ortiz, Ruby Dee, and rappers RZA and Common (as well as Cuba Gooding Jr. and Norman Reedus) — but more often than not they just get lost in the shuffle here. (That being said, Armand Assante, overplaying his genteel mafia don to the hilt, does manage to squeeze in a particularly lousy performance.) Not to be too harsh, Gangster isn’t a terrible film, nor even really a bad one. But, however well-made, it’s more by-the-numbers than it is blue magic.

Lust in Translation.

Attempting to be Last Tango in Shanghai by way of Paul Verhoeven’s Black Book, or at the very least to cast straight sex in as taboo a light as the gay love of Brokeback Mountain, Ang Lee’s Lust, Caution is, the lurid promise of its NC-17 rating notwithstanding, sadly a bit dull. As with most of Lee’s oeuvre, the film is ravishingly beautiful throughout, and it recreates WWII Shanghai much more evocatively than, say, Soderbergh’s The Good German did Berlin. But, at two hours and forty minutes, the film also feels overlong, and its central conceit — female agent deep undercover, deep under the covers — is burdened with entirely too much in the way of backstory. Lust, Caution isn’t a bad film by any means, but, its occasional explicitness notwithstanding, it doesn’t make for a particularly memorable one either.

As Lust, Caution begins, it’s 1942 in Japanese-occupied Shanghai, and four wealthy women, seemingly above the harsh impositions of wartime, exchange gossip and veiled state intel over a friendly game of Mahjong. Among this quartet are Yee Tai Tai (Joan Chen), wife of the secret police chief (Tony Leung), and one Mak Tai Tai (Tang Wei), the young and beautiful spouse of a Hong Kong importer. But, as we soon discover (after she leaves the game and makes a suspicious phone call in an English cafe), Mak Tai Tai does not in fact exist. Rather, we are to learn in a very extended flashback (it’s Michael Clayton all over again), she is Wong Chia Chi, a resistance agent whose journey to that Mahjong table began four years earlier, as a displaced schoolgirl in Hong Kong. Falling under the spell of a handsome, earnest young patriot (Wang Lee Horn) then, Wong, a lover of movies, begins appearing in nationalistic plays to much acclaim. And, when it is decided by her schoolyard coterie of six that more drastic action should be taken to fight the Japanese invader, she takes on the role of an importer’s wife to lure a key collaborationist, the aforementioned Mr. Yee, to his demise.

But trapping Mr. Yee poses several quandaries for these budding freedom fighters. For one, there is the rather delicate matter of how an inexperienced virgin could pass for a married woman. For another, this Yee is no provincial rube, but a man who’s at once deeply careful and extremely untrusting. Most problematic, Mr. Yee is no ugly, oafish lout, but the one-and-only Tony Leung, and hardly anybody in this world looks better smoking artfully in period suits than Tony Leung. Nevertheless, the kids go for it…with mixed results. And, when a spy is needed by the real Resistance to trap Mr. Yee a few years down the line, they find one ready-made in Wong, who takes on her role anew with even higher stakes. Only now, she discovers, Mr. Yee is more cruel than he first lets on, and very much into the rough stuff, sexually speaking. And, more to the point, once the Pandora’s Box of her own sexuality has been jarred open by Yee, Wong begins to lose herself in the part, to the detriment of all…

WWII spies, steamy, illicit sex…this seems like it should be an enticing concoction, to be sure…obviously it was right up Verhoeven’s alley in Black Book. But, as several reviewers have put it, Lust, Caution turns out to be much more cautious than it is lustful. Even if you factor out the extra hour of padding here, that’s a problem. Ang Lee’s films, among them Crouching Tiger, The Ice Storm, and Brokeback, have always been noted for their delicacy and artful restraint, which is frankly why he may not have been the best choice for this material, about a couple who lose themselves in sexual passion. The much-discussed sex scenes aren’t as puritanically minded as the nightmare visions of Requiem for a Dream, but there’s a definite coldness and frigidity about them, as if neither participant is having very much fun. They’re not so much erotic as they are animalistic, all acrobatic contortions and grunted yelps. I guess you could argue that’s the point — the two are driven not by love at all but by an inexplicable earthy necessity, and Lee even cuts to a growling German shepherd to forward that idea along. But, if that’s the case, if it’s all just physical — then why — spoiler here — when a key slip-up is made by one of the lovers, doesn’t it happen while in the throes of passion, rather than when one is presented with the sight of a shiny (dare I say gaudy?) bauble?

The acting in Lust, Caution is universally good, with special plaudits going to Tang Wei and Tony Leung. And sex is usually handled so sophomorically in films that I feel bad for faulting Lee’s unabashed use of it to further the story along here. But take away those few explicit scenes, and you’re left with a rather conventional snooze of a cloak-and-dagger movie, however lusciously filmed. And even the sex here could’ve used some of the sensuous warmth of Shanghai-born Wong Kar-Wai’s work. Sadly, when it comes to lust and caution in this film, Lust, Caution pretty much foregoes the red-light, and ends up raising more red flags than a Mao rally.

Limited Appeal.

If you’ve ever seen a Wes Anderson movie, you probably already know if you’ll like The Darjeeling Limited or not. For better or worse, this one is right in his wheelhouse — It is to India and trains what The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou was to Cousteau and boats. I felt pretty much the same about this film as I did about Aquatic — It’s vaguely engaging and mildly diverting at times, but it doesn’t really add up to much, and is basically an excuse for Anderson to parade his usual indulgences for ninety minutes. (Nor is Limited as fresh as Rushmore or as occasionally moving as his best film, The Royal Tenebaums.) I mean, if Wes is your quirky-precious Louis Vuitton bag, don’t let me ruin the fun. But if he isn’t, I suggest taking a plane instead.

Somewhere on the Indian subcontinent, at what passes for rush hour, a flustered American in Organization Man garb (Bill Murray) tries to will his careening taxi through a typically chaotic Third World marketplace, in the vain hope that he can reach his train — the spiffy Darjeeling Limited — on time. Unfortunately for him, this is not his story. Rather, we follow the travails of the three Whitman brothers on this colorful locomotive, who’ve reunited one year after the untimely death of their father to partake in a journey of spiritual bonding. Jack (Jason Schwartzman), the youngest of the three, is currently writhing on the horns of a messy break-up (See The Hotel Chevalier.) Peter (Adrien Brody), the middle brother with a klepto streak, is wrestling with the dilemma of imminent (and seemingly unwanted) fatherhood. And Frances (Owen Wilson), the oldest brother and planner of the trip, is recovering from what looks to have been a self-induced motorcycle accident. (Plus, he’s a bit of a martinet.) These three reluctantly experience the scenic wonders of India at first, spending most of their time quibbling and bickering in fraternal fashion. But, eventually, a tragedy along their travels shakes the trio out of their touristy complacency. And, once they find (a la 3:10 to Yuma) that the train of life can come to an abrupt stop at any time, will the Whitmans then rise above their individual problems and learn the immortal spiritual truth that “brothers gotta hug?” Well, I’ll leave that for you to discover.

And that’s about it, folks…There’s not much else here to speak of. (In fact, the experience of The Darjeeling Limited was almost completely encapsulated by watching the trailer, from the basic outline of the plot to the general mood and rhythm of the film.) I will say that Adrien Brody, fun to watch on most occasions, comes across as right at home in the Andersonverse. And Owen Wilson, whose injuries can’t help but remind us of recent events in his real life, adds a haunted dimension to his character simply by his presence. Still, Darjeeling is a lark — Even with the funeral in the middle going (I’ll let others do the bashing about the dead-anonymous-native-kid-as-plot-point — I’ll confess it did seem a bit off), The Darjeeling Limited has no scene approaching the power of, say, the quietly devastating suicide attempt in Tenenbaums, and no turn as memorable as those of Bill Murray or Olivia Williams in Rushmore. Wes Anderson has shown in the past that he can tell a moving, dramatic story using his signature style. But, Darjeeling is just a rich kid playing with his train set.

Feet of Clay(ton).

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

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

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

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

Beatles for Sale.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ford’s Theatre.

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

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

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

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