TONY PORCO’S MOVIE REVIEW NEWSLETTER (FALL 2005 EDITION)

ON SCREEN:

THE GOSPEL: Many of the biggest names in R&B, blues, and soul music of the last half-century–Sam Cooke, Gladys Knight, James Brown, Al Green, and Sam and Dave, to name a few–started out singing gospel music. When they later moved to more secular material, they brought the intensity and call-and-response of gospel with them, but did not always satisfy their old audiences in the process. The Gospel tells the story of a fictional character (played by Boris Kodjoe) whose career takes the same trajectory. He starts out in the youth ministry and choir of his large church in Atlanta, and then, alienated from his careerist minister father (Clifton Powell), takes a more, um, worldly tack and has a huge pop hit with a song called “Let Me Undress You.” Meanwhile, his erstwhile best friend and fellow youth minister (Idris Elba) stays in the huge church and is groomed by the father/church leader as his successor. Writer/director Rob Hardy keeps a relatively melodramatic script interesting and entertaining through skilled directing and sympathetic acting, especially that of Powell and of the gorgeous Tamyra Gray, playing Rain, a choir singer who is the only woman not impressed with the lead character’s stardom (you can guess what happens from there, of course). Omar Gooding (apparently a relative of Cuba’s) deserves mention too, providing comic relief as the pop star’s driven manager. The direction helps as well, using dramatic closeups and good timing to keep the story moving in both senses of the word. In that sense, it’s somewhat like Character, a Dutch movie I reviewed back in 1999 that also happens to have a theme of father/son interplay and conflict. The gospel performances are also arresting, and make the movie worth watching all by themselves (especially in a theater!) Perhaps most interesting of all, the script doesn’t idealize the church, or the people in it, but does make a case for the redemptive power that the church and its people can have at their best. This more than makes up for the occasional over-drama of the plot, and it makes it a crowd-pleaser that a critic can enjoy as well. RATING: 8.

ON TAPE:

THE LIFE AQUATIC WITH STEVE ZISSOU: I don't know about anybody else, but I always loved those PBS National Geographic documentaries with Jacques-Yves Cousteau. (What am I saying? I still love them!) In Steve Zissou, we get a glimpse of what the real Cousteau might have been like when the cameras weren't rolling–brilliant, but also narcissistic, cynical, and taken with his own eccentricity. We also see him as he simultaneously embarks on two adventures--getting revenge on the deadly deep-sea "jaguar shark" that killed his longtime aide, and getting to know a young man who says Zissou is his long-lost father (Owen Wilson). Bill Murray is just about perfectly cast as the title character, continuing the great career renaissance that started with his role in Lost in Translation (which I reviewed last year). He has a challenging and not always likable role, and brings it off almost all the time (I say “almost all” because his character's actions are sometimes frustratingly inexplicable, and Murray doesn’t always succeed at making them explicable). The rest of the cast is almost as good, especially Willem Dafoe in an unusually comic turn as the second-in-command of Zissou's motley crew, Jeff Goldblum (quite a cast, huh?) as an annoying rival sea explorer, and Cate Blanchett as a troubled and very pregnant reporter doing a story on the explorer and his crew (and acting as the audience character and love interest for Wilson). Even Bud Cort (of Harold and Maude fame) is funny as a geeky accountant, a role something like the one he played in But I'm a Cheerleader that further proves that he, like Murray, is enjoying a middle-age career renaissance. They are all helped by the script, which is at turns a funny parody of undersea adventure movies and a thrilling undersea adventure movie all to itself. (In closing, I should add that director Wes Anderson, in yet another eccentric touch, chose not to include any actual undersea creatures in the film; instead, all of the sea animals that Zissou and his crew encounter are "played" by playful CGI animation. This idea sometimes comes off as silly, and comes off at other times as brilliant and oddly beautiful, especially at the end.) RATING: 8.

THE TAO OF STEVE: The Tao of Steve isn’t about a guy named Steve; it’s actually about a guy named Dex, and yes, that does tell you something worth knowing about it. Dex is an overweight, pompous, and underachieving philosophy major and part-time kindergarten teacher from Santa Fe, New Mexico. Lest you underestimate him, however, he’s actually not too bad at being a kindergarten teacher. More surprisingly, he never seems to have any trouble with the opposite sex, thanks to a proven method he calls the Tao of Steve (as in McGarrett, Austin, and above all McQueen). The method involves being friendly but unavailable (since “we pursue that which retreats from us”), doing something impressive, and then continuing to be distant long enough to make the quarry want to pursue. Of course, a woman (played by Greer Goodman, actually the sister of director Jenniphr Goodman) comes along to complicate all this and make it really hard not to pursue... and of such things, romantic comedies are made. Donal Logue does a great job making the not-always-likable Dex a sympathetic and interesting character, and plays his good traits–he really can be funny and charming–subtly and especially well. The two Goodman sisters are both great foils for him, with the unobtrusive direction allowing the story to unfold at its own pace. Logue’s and Goodman’s characters seem like people with whom you wouldn’t mind hanging out, people who make you laugh with things they say, not with their pratfalls or their human foibles, although those make their funny appearance as well. As with most of the other romantic comedies I’ve seen–Kissing Jessica Stein, which I reviewed recently, comes right to mind–there isn’t much here that’s hugely different from other, similar movies in the past. The whole man-who-doesn’t-grow-up-until-he-finds-a-woman-who-makes-him-do-it thing is certainly not original to this movie, as Roger Ebert correctly pointed out in his review. What makes this movie stand out is the frustrating-but-ultimately-unique-and-likable character with which it is done in this case. (In closing, I should mention that except for one or two Westerns I saw many years ago, this is the first movie set and filmed in one of our favorite places, Santa Fe. Not surprisingly, it has some lovely mountain scenery, and a close-up view of the famous Santa Fe Opera, where Goodman’s character works. On a more prosaic note, when we go to Santa Fe, we’re always amused to see so many familiar chain buildings done up in the Spanish Colonial architectural style–Spanish Colonial Targets, IHOPS, gas stations, and so on. This movie doesn’t disappoint, giving us a look at a Spanish Colonial Baskin Robbins; of course, we got a good laugh out of that. I wonder if the Baskin Robbins got any more business as a result of this movie. If you want to see more scenery like that in this movie, rent The Milagro Beanfield War, a populist drama quite different from this movie that was directed by Robert Redford and shot elsewhere in northern New Mexico. I’ll try to review it in the next few issues.) RATING: 8.