If ever such a thing as a style less film were to exist - Songcatcher would make the list (that is, if a list were to be compiled of such style-less films). For starters, the film purports to find interest in a woman scorned who visits her sister on a backwoods mountain top and coincidentally (she's a doctor of music) discovers that old English ballads had mutated into....are you ready.....bluegrass music. Now, I'm not one to jump to conclusions, but, isn't that just far too little to ask a one hundred six minute film to make full bodied and stirring. Thrown in is a scantly developed (but ripe with a charged love scene) romance, a lesbian affair, the evil outlander who wants to buy everyone out to strip mine the land (a variation on the evil land developer?), a jealously ignorant lackey and others who aren't lucky enough to be on the Deliverance dental plan. The film is so straight forward and so lacking in its own specific tone, it could easily have been an MOW. Janet McTeer gives another thanklessly brilliant performance in a mediocre, overpraised film (remember Tumbleweeds) and Aidan Quinn remarks once again to the screen, "Is I angry or is that just the way I is?". Baffling actor. Is he gifted or so utterly bad that no soul could tell the difference? The musical sequences go on way too long - clearly taking up as much time as possible to keep us feeling like we're actually watching something. By the time we get to Songcatcher's dark crescendo of a climax, it seems so obvious that we feel stupid for not predicting that it would happen in the first place. Often guilty of replacing interest with filler, Songcatcher begins a bad idea for a film and closes having actually been a bad film. How consistent.

(11/2)

Though noble and expertly photographed, The Luzhin Defence is so hollow, so drained of the literate ironies of Nabokov, it shrinks itself into what appears to be a watered down version of Shine masquerading as a Merchant Ivory picture. At center, a confusing characterization (still adequately staged by Turturro, who can do no wrong it seems) seems to rot everything around it. We don't actually understand why Luzhin's condition is so accelerated or so random - even though we're told in extensive flashbacks exactly why it could be (these scenes are directed as if belonging to another film entirely). The Luzhin Defence boils down to the story of a man who focuses so deftly on one aspect of his life that he can't even comprehend another - even when that other is courting the lovely and still brilliant Emily Watson (who remains unscathed, giving another terrific performance in a lackluster film). My guess is that Nabokov was interested in more than the simple parallels drawn between this man's situation and his obsession: chess. This is the film in a nutshell:  it isn't interested in much more than such parallels. Case in point: Stuart Wilson, who plays Valintinov, the jealous former guardian of Luzhin, seethes with a kind of unmistakable but inappropriate evil. He is not alone, though. All the characters seem to have been directed to appear as singular and shallow as chess pieces. Director Gorris appears to be staging the whole affair as a chess match but is only content to keep the two main characters the focal point. Usually this would be fine except that chess requires thirty-two important figures, at least sixteen of which are major contributors to the game. Interested only in lowering Nabokov's grand tragedy to a simple character study (instead of what I perceive to be a tale of losing touch with oneself when one has to think for sixteen pieces), the film never engages us past a simple appreciation for the characters. Back to my first point. All the ironies, allusions, similes and other assorted literary quirks are lost. The meat, in other words is sacrificed so we can savor the garnish. A movie about a guy whose life is screwed up because some bad things happened to him and he turned to chess to tune in out. Nope.

(11/4)

Monsters, Inc. may be the first kid-themed, merchandised vehicle to glide in and out on clever heels and exist on burning fuel generated almost exclusively on rotating variations of hyper-adorability. Though the film is well shaped, it is often too base (and on occasion, familiar). The story line is hell-bent on conceiving the idea that nothing is what it appears to be. The film's most prominent feature is how much each of the characters are what they appear to be. Sully, a huge, comfortable-looking furball, is the near celebrity around Monsters, Inc. (a company where monsters scare kids by teleporting into their rooms via their closet doors. The idea is to generate screams, the primary form of energy in their fair city, Monstropolis. Even as he develops an affinity for the excessively cute little girl Boo, Sully never actually goes through a visible change. Same goes for all the characters, even as Mike (the one eyed goober with Billy Crystal's self-conscious wisecracking attached at the hip) is softened by Boo. These characters are so delightful at the start of the picture that it seems the writers over at Pixar have decided to take a huge risk in barely developing them. It works when we're talking about Sully, Mike and Boo - the film's notable protagonists. What Monsters, Inc. is lacking are some slimy villains. Neither of those we'd count as such really dig up any dark, megalomaniacal dregs in their travels - which includes a subplot about reversing the company to a lazier, less blue collar technique: hooking children up to a scream machine which would yank those ghastly, necessary watts of terror from the tikes by force. In between character tops and flops, Monsters, Inc. manages some daring, nearly bravura sequences,  more camera movements, more ambitious imagined worlds and settings and a pastel color scheme that is perhaps the most eye friendly of Pixar's endeavors to date. Though the film lacks the consistent genius and substance of the Toy Story films, it has the tight appeal that A Bug's Life was missing. This film seems to know its boundaries and, though it's narrative ends up following yet another rescue mission of sorts, Monsters, Inc. is smart enough to put stock in its world and its best characters, keeping those of us too old to qualify for the child's admission price surprisingly interested (even after the film takes a huge dive when the setting moves to the Himalayas). As is the usual case, the artistry and general understanding of the magic youth demands create the kind of dualistic experience that Pixar makes look so effortless.

(11/5)

Roger Deakins has outdone himself. Coincidentally, I had watched him introduce the process and discuss some of his choices on the O Brother, Where Art Thou? DVD a week or so ago. Seeing what he has done with the film noir palette, a handsome chiaroscuro that is both classical and playful - I actually found myself covering an adoring moan with a cough in the theater (to be specific: it was the moment when Thornton stands, in silhouette, smoking a cigarette while the fine focus - the chocolate and vanilla tiles, old ttimey bathroom gizmos, a priceless tub floating Frances McDormand - glows behind him). The film is so skillfully multi-layered - we see a spoof, an homage, a genre entry and an existentialist spin all mixing together with that Coen verve, the hilarity of normalcy and the oddity found in the unlikely worlds of ordinary people. As usual, the film fails to present the standard resolute satisfaction, crying out for a second viewing almost immediately in order to vindicate our suspicions: Is this brilliance or mere entertainment? In every instance to this point, up to this film, the answer has been both an escapist hootenany and a rich, painstakingly crafted piece of art. Thornton gives his best performance since the creepy, defining turn in Sling Blade. Here, he's a straight arrow in a curved world, the only centerpiece on a table with empty chairs. As he slinks through the film giving a host of one word answers and indifferent, often indistinguishable glances, he gathers the kind of quiet momentum necessary to inspire. Like most great-ish performances, Thornton leaves us feeling as he behaves; what remains is a thin residue of mimicry unwittingly placed inside our brain.
Couldn't help wondering if the distracting Shaloub performance was lost merely on me. This inkling was later answered by several people I spoke to who left the theater with him as the watermark, the echo they called to mind to accompany the film. His eccentricity still baffles me as it did in SPY Kids and, to be sure, most of the other films he's appeared in. But it mattered not. The film is an overwhelming, almost uncharacteristic achievement. Reminded me more of Barton Fink than anything. And of Ethan Coen's short stories ('Gates of Eden'). And, perhaps the finest compliment: this film would stand on its own, were it a film noir made by unknowns, whose work we didn't constantly feel the urge to play "auteur theory bingo" with.

(11/9)

Most of the small tweaks (the original script, as with most of Mamet's unshucked material - made only half-sense) turned the film into an indulgent, empty, rather chaotic watch. It is always enjoyable to sit down and listen to Mamet's characters talk. The twists come rapidly and each and every one, the extension of someone having sixty some odd backup plans, rings with satisfying glee. His characters, however, speak and act as shadows. None of them are developed in the slightest, leaving most of what we see to disappear as we trail to the parking lot. Probably my least favorite
of Mamet's films.

(11/10)

I was probably destined to let far too much time elapse before writing this review (the upside is how short I'll keep it). Probably the most frightening thing about crazy/beautiful (besides its befuddling warm reviews earlier this year) is that it confuses itself so often. It doesn't have the developement in its social conciousness set to beef up its romance - which all but dies on the screen in a fit of flimsy, the kind of imponderous kissing and mystery that isn't the least bit satisfying. There are a plethora of sequences which feel as if they've been written and performed for our benefit, rather than being conceived to flow fluidly out of the natural weave of the film. Most of the things said feel less like reoccuring arguments than staged screaming matches meant to stand in for intelligence, hoping to blind us into thinking we're watching some sort of "realistic teen drama". Dunst drops the ball so horribly in her performance, not nearly ranting and raving like a lunatic, but simply by appearing in this film - this badly, badly written film - does she compromise that good feeling I was getting about her. Nothing but a bunch of scenery chewing by an actress far too young to be putting so much stock in her raggedy appearance, hoping it will stand in for her performance. Hernadez is fine, rather charming - wasted here. Bruce Davison, doing GGod Knows What appearing in this film makes a rather elusive, almost arcless senator-too-busy-to-care doubling as a father. His usual distracted to the point of unconciousness occasionally peppered with sputtering emotional rage fits in perfectly here (and I don't mean that as a compliment). The utter unnaturalness, everything devoid of vitality,  programmed to punch our Movie-of-the-Week buttons.

(11/11)

Ah, Tomb Raider. Or, The Big Jolie Gimmick, as I've taken to calling it. Short and sweet: the expensive looking but utterly sedating action sequences are upstaged by slow motion shots of Jolie's breasts bouncing in and out of the frame (read: the tone and genre don't exactly mix, is this a summer movie or is this a story). Jolie is up to the task here, but is the task really worth performing, we wonder? The sappy father-daughter wrinkle in the pages of its hokey, laughable premise only serve the film by letting the air out of what plays like a really bad TV Pilot (read: this pseudo-Indiana Jonesette wallows in a most boring predicament as the loopy narrative continutes shuffling its feet, never really progressing all that much) . Her accent. The fact that the quips aren't at all clever. The villian's relative ambiguity. The fact that the film is about a gigantic liquid clock that can send one - let's say the girl who lost her father - back in time. Sometimes its better to admit you're not having a good time and get off the ride.

(11/12)

Baby Boy is surprisingly intelligent and optimistic. Captures the lockdown of maturity, the limbo of a man who has thrust himself into manhood before he can psychologically become an adult himself. Also worldly - but guilty of the looming gangsta showdown we've come to regret in Singleton's films -Baby Boy somehow manages to work against these odds. Singleton's best film, perhaps, since Boyz N the Hood. I remembered hearing  something about him paying out four alimony checks a month. This film, if that is true, is a deeply personal work.

(11/14)

Preposterous, but also one of the most consistently satisfying distractions I've seen this year. It is true enough that Witherspoon has an easy job - playing up a slyly intelligent blonde whose outgoing persona, in a gradually grating but nevertheless skillful irony, is in unusual harmony with her ingoing wits. Film scores extra points for its lack of romance (the inferred - rather than developed - sparks with Wilson are a welcome surprise here), a late-breaking, admittedly predictable friendship (one we'd not expect to find in this bubbly but usually empty-headed genre) and for the veneer of a message movie in that overtly extravagent and rarely non-daunting style (much like Bring It On - we know the message is loud and clear, but we're struck dumb by the positivity of the film and let it wash over us irregardless). Found the entire third act to stink of My Cousin Vinny syndrome: expecting an audience not to notice blatant absence of creativity - or worse - forgive it because of the film it appears in. Courtroom sequences built around arcane facts only the amateur-posing-as-the professional would know, giving the non-typical expert their day to shine; and once more, ending with one of those freeze frame superimposition epilogues that tells you what happened to unimportant characters as well as the primaries. A quick fix of entertainment and worthwhile, but frustrating in its pursuit of a light flavor, Legally Blonde finds itself too legal and not enough blond by the time the buzzer ought to be interrupting.

(11/17)

The most notable thing to report on this film - as I know any spare accidental who shoould happen upon this review will almost certainly have seen it - is that it evokes a magical world, the kind of escapist dream state a child becomes giddy over and adults are bewitched and haunted and thrilled by at the same time. And from Chris Columbus, who has never made a film that even comes close to giving one such feelings, it is a bit of a feat. My unfortunate news is that Harry Potter, as played by Daniel Radcliffe, seems a brooding spaceman, the kind of wooden poster child picked only for his resemblance to the artists sketchings which adorn the beloved series of books. Watching young Radcliffe attempt to breath vitality into this larger than life cultural hero was maddening. Worse, it was depressing. But, believe it or not, we don't need the title character or his shoulders to hold a film of such imagination, a movie that takes us beyond the place where Rowling wrote her own rules and ushered us into the kind of memory lane we wish had been available to us (for those of us in the 18-24 tax bracket) when we were knee high to a goblin. Every castle spyre, every dark corridor, every drooling creature and every reference to mystical objects and places flaps around us, inviting us into its world. Columbus and co. are smart enough to play up their surroundings - and they've got some snazzy ones: Hogwarts school itself is stirring, a Quidditch match treats us to a rush, a dark forest chills our blood and the final reel contains, well.....you know what it contains. As far as weighing the film against the book, I'll say that the confusing portions of the book are clarified and simplified, the big scenes don't measure up to how you'd imagine them and the opening half hour is trimmed significantly - for better or for worse (I happened to get a sick thrill out of Harry's plight, a famous, incredibly important figure locked into a sort of Cinderfella power struggle he could never seem to win, no matter how many times we curled our smile at how much more clever he was than his aunt, uncle and pudgy cousin). The film itself clocks in at a comfy two hours and thirty two minutes. An audience of youth did not stir. The supporting cast is flawless. Watson and Grint as Hermione and Ron, respectively, do a marvelous job of carrying Radcliffe (at least to the point where it doesn't downplay audience enjoyment of the film that Harry sulks and stares into space like he's contemplating existence while mourning his lost dog). Robbie Coltrane, as the resident legman/plot device, Hagrid, gives a show-stealing performance, bringing himself to the front of our attention rather than disappearing into the scenery as a stock villain (see many James Bond films). Even old hands like Maggie Smith and Richard Harris (or the perfectly cast Alan Rickman) can't seem to hold the eye like Coltrane does. He seems to be having the most fun of anyone.
        In a moment of overmarketed films and box office statistics which are volleyed around like football scores in a bookmaker's office, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone has all the infusions of being a financial imperative: a successful moneymaker. It isn't necessarily a piece of art per say, but it is a rather diverting slice of entertainment. November seems like a perfect time for it, too. Right smack in the middle of the honors season, a piece of admirable fluff goes down smooth and easy. Feels less like a kids film than a relief from all the seriousness.

The trance has not yet evaporated. What a delight! A film that is long enough not to feel as if its residue is fleeting, conceptually sound and varied enough to pass as both a movie and a gimmick all at the same time - without offending the part of me that craves substance above all. The substance, we see, is the joyous abundance of life-praising, the kind of vibrant celebration of how enjoyable it is to be alive in a world where quirk and momunmental change come in the most forgotten corners and the most unexpected shapes and sizes. It was that kind of cinematic druggy smile I wear only once in a blue moon, like finding a carte blanche of universiality deep in your soul and being unable - and unwilling - to let it pass until you've covered your psyche in it. Amelie may actually be the best film I've seen this year. An actual review to come.

(11/23)

I think I'd have had more respect for Pootie Tang if it hadn't been so blatant about how uninterested in its narrative it was. I guess the first sign was the opening sequence, a bright, blinking plug for its soundtrack. The second sign would have to be the episodic rendering of Pootie Tang that's more interested in the cheap laugh than a snappy, clever plotline. Somehow, the incoherant mumbling of the title character doesn't get old. It's the idea that the film uses its main character to get to a certain point and then disposes of him as if these two actions were screenwriting techniques meant to accrue running time minutes. How sad. How very, very sad. Like Deuce Bigalow, this is a film that would have made a better speculative Saturday Night Live sketch that a feature (I use the term loosely) film.

(11/26)

The last two Henry James adaptations, Ian Softley's The Wings of the Dove and Jane Campion's Portrait of a Lady were both, in their own right, flawlessly stylized. The former, which contains a love triangle similar to the one in The Golden Bowl, played like the most entertaining period piece you could possibly imagine: the characters were only dressed up, their deceit and careful plodding felt like a masterful modern crime drama - without the crime. Portrait of a Lady, though too long (and, truth be told, too gloomy), was a dark answer to the trendy Jane Austen favorites: it was the story of a woman finding her place in the world, and finding that this world was an artsy nightmare of feminine self-pity; a grey-shaded shipwreck of a life that seemed painted on the walls. The Golden Bowl, the latest imperfect jewel in the Merchant Ivory crown, lacks any sort of style whatsoever. At all. Straightforward camerawork dots well-lit settings, replete with scores of continuity errors and a nearly risk-free one hundred thirty minute length. Despite the odd clunker of a performance by a smaller-end supporting actress Anjelica Huston, the cast seems to bring the story - a stronger, more strikingly scandalous one - to life. In fact, where we expect Thurman's performance to become steadily grating, the fact is that as she grows more and more diabolical, her wits as an actress begin to kick in. As the distinguished, fleshed out character played by an oddly cast - but nevertheless stunning Nick Nolte - begins to find himself being manipulated by simply everyone, it is he and Thurman - the two we'd never guess would look right next to proven Masterpiece set thespians Beckinsale and Northam - that end up walking away with the movie. Even as the film starts, we watch as Northam, sporting an absolutely perfect Italian accent, seems to carry the opening scenes. Thing is, these are such well-etched, extremely complex characters, you have to keep watching them for a rather long time for them to take the kind of shape that makes the film rewarding. The book's symbolism translates more obvious than it probably should ("Oh, that Golden Bowl that was the apple of everyone's eye has a crack in it?") and I'm not sure whose idea it was to include superimposed chapter titles over action, especially really obvious action: "Adam Verver's treasures are loaded into crates for the long journey to American City". The CG insertion of Thurman and Nolte into turn of the century footage echoes the tone and finally sets the film on the right track (in its closing moments): these people are too modern for their time and are destined to walk the earth apart from their fellow man. Finally, we see the loneliness in four people who were so close to each other - that they were all alone...together. Deep. Right.
 

(11/28)