Category: Reviews

  • ‘Pride and Glory’ is not glorious to watch

    ‘Pride and Glory’ is not glorious to watch

    Colin Farrell and Edward Norton in ‘Pride and Glory’

    Sadly there is very little glory or pride to be found in Gavin O’Connor’s Pride and Glory. an attempt at a gritty New York City police crime drama involving a family with a deep history of service wearing the blue uniforms of NYPD’s Finest.

    Starring two time Academy Award nominee Edward Norton (Primal Fear, American History X), Colin Farrell, Noah Emmerich and Academy Award winner Jon Voight (who has three nominations to go along with his win for Coming Home), this is a movie with a stellar cast of talented actors.  Add a director (O’Connor) who has achieved success both critically (Tumbleweeds) and commercially (Miracle) and yet with all of that going for it, Pride and Glory doesn’t live up to its promise.

    The story is simple enough. While the key players are occupied elsewhere, four street cops under the command of “Sgt Jimmy Egan” (Farrell), who is under the command of “Inspector Francis Tierney Jr”., (Emmerich), who is trying to make it into the upper echelons of the NYPD brass and follow in the footsteps of his father, “Chief Francis Tierney Sr.” (Voight). The problem is, there are problems with the situation involving the deaths of these cops and as the truth begins to come to light, there are questions coming up that no one wants to try to answer.

    Worse yet, it is “Detective Ray Tierney” (Norton) who is asked by his father to join the task force investigating these killings.  He was put into a dead end job after a scandal where he took the fall for something and someone else to protect other cops.  This may be a way back into the good graces of the police powers that be.  In any event he has no choice about taking this case, his former partner is among the four victims. The further that Ray digs, the worse things look for Jimmy and Ray’s investigation is something that both his father and older brother would like to see “handled” to protect Jimmy.

    Edward Norton and Jon Voight in ‘Pride and Glory’

    That is because Jimmy happens to be married to the sister of Ray and Francis Jr., and if things are not complicated enough, Francis Junior’s ability to properly supervise his command is being severely hampered by the fact that his own wife is terminally ill with a debilitating disease that means the upcoming holiday season is probably their last together.

    As always, Edward Norton is excellent. He brings nuance and perspective to every role I’ve ever seen him in and I continue to be amazed as his ability to transcend ordinary material. He is among the best actors of his generation and I wish he would work more and take on more challenging roles. In pedestrian fare like this, his talents are lost among the plodding plot, overly burdened characters and a story that asks its characters to take on loyalty at levels not normally found in real life, even among cops.

    This movie had a lot of potential before it was made. To quote Linus Van Pelt, “there is no heavier burden than a great potential.”  Pride and Glory did not handle that burden well.

  • ‘Iron Man’ gets the job done with thrills and fun

    Robert Downey Jr. is 'Iron Man'
    Robert Downey Jr. is ‘Iron Man’

    Kicking off a movie season that just keeps getting earlier, Iron Man rocks and roars into summer as the latest Marvel comic book film to score big at the box office. Former Oscar nominee Robert Downey, Jr. stages a blazing comeback as Tony Stark, bad boy weapons expert turned hero, by donning a mechanical super suit that’s powered by the world’s classiest pacemaker. The suit is Downey’s most constant costar throughout the film as Iron Man flits back and forth between close-ups of Downey and then of the suit flexing and flying, thus ensuring maximum audience drooling.

    Even before the suit makes it appearance, Iron Man opens with a bang when Stark’s weapons demonstration in an unknown desert region is hijacked by a gang of Middle Eastern baddies packing heat. The origin story is set in motion when Stark realizes that his kidnappers are using his own weapons technology to hold him captive as they vie for world domination. Our would-be hero just ain’t having that and so he forges a rough draft of his super attire out of some scrap metal he cobbles together in the cave where he’s being held. We ask many things from our superhero origin stories but plausibility isn’t one of them.

    As a real life former bad boy himself, Downey glides easily into the role of Tony Stark, the playboy behind the armor, flirting aimlessly with random women and guffawing with all the envious guys. Grown-ups familiar with Downey’s checkered past are supposed to wink at each other knowingly when Downey waxes less than poetically about how Stark is more rakish cad than hero. But it’s Downey who gets the last laugh by adding his name to the growing list of bankable everymen — from Toby Maguire as Spider-Man and Christian Bale’s Batman to Edward Norton’s turn in this June’s The Incredible Hulk — all redefining who audiences today picture when they ponder their supermen.

    Unfortunately, Iron Man’s cartoonish dialogue leave Downey’s long regaled acting chops severely underused. In this superficial special effects extravaganza, his charisma and simmering smile garner only some weak laughs before a few pratfall gags really grab the audience’s attention. As is so often the case in superhero storytelling, the man behind the mask is clearly upstaged by the stellar computer graphics that fashion the man’s super suit and super toys. Iron Man’s superb hyper-realistic special effects are an awe-inspiring tribute to the gift that computer graphics has been to the big screen and namely, superhero films. Still, vivid shots of the hot suit or not, it’s hard to overlook Downey’s smooth delivery of imminently droll lines. Luckily, the raging rock and roll soundtrack cues in at just the right spots to prevent most audience eye rolling.

    And yet, despite the weak dialogue, ever since Halle Berry followed an Oscar win with a return as X-Men’s Storm in X2, more distinguished actors have been taking time off from more Shakespearean pursuits to make appearances in even the most staid superhero flicks. After all, just what was Jennifer Connelly doing in the last Hulk? Iron Man’s boasts an all-star cast that includes Oscar winner Gwyneth Paltrow, a yawn-worthy love interest/personal assistant; past Oscar nominee Jeff Bridges appears as the bald and bearded, smarmy villain (no really, Jeff Bridges); and past Oscar nominee Terrence Howard hunkers down as the buddy, a military contact who eyes the Iron Man suit with longing. Though Paltrow’s role as bland caricature Pepper Potts makes Kirsten’s Dunst’s turn as Mary Jane in Spider-man seem particularly meaty, it seems to be industry standard these days to prop up the main attraction with a group of more than formidable equally bankable talent.

    In the end, the loud smash ‘em and bash ‘em rock-and-roller that is Iron Manresembles neither Batman Begins nor (thankfully) Fantastic Four, lacking the depth of the first and the more cotton candy aspects of the latter. It’s merely a serviceable but entertaining addition to the burgeoning list of superhero franchises and their never-ending sequels. Iron Man gets the job done by offering up the thrilling taste of the fun and vapidity we’ve come to expect from our summer blockbusters while teasing us gloriously about summers to come. Stay after the credits roll and it becomes clear that this caramelized movie vehicle was only meant to whet our appetite: Iron Man 2 is already a go.

  • ‘The Bank Job’

    ‘The Bank Job’

    Jason Statham and Saffron Burrows in ‘The Bank Job’

    Director Roger Donaldson (No Way Out) brings the story of an actual bank robbery to the big screen, with major elements of truth involved that were covered up by British secrecy laws; and somehow it all works. Yet, the final impression of The Bank Job starring Jason Statham, Saffron Burrows, Stephen Campbell Moore, Daniel Mays and David Suchet is that it could have been better. There was potential here for so much more and that it wasn’t realized leaves one feeling disappointed in the aftermath of a decent effort.

    Statham is the lead, as Terry Leather, owner of a car dealership, trying to go legit after a history of shady, villainous dealings and he is in hock to a shylock at the time when Martine (Burrows), an old acquaintance shows up and lets him in on what appears to be the perfect crime. Robbing the safety deposit vault of a bank while the alarm system is off for impending replacement. Seems simple enough but what Terry doesn’t know is that Martine has been suborned by someone working for the British government after she was caught smuggling drugs. So the deal is, she gets someone to pull off this bank job and she gets off on the drug charge.

    Why would the government do this? That’s a spoiler that will have to wait for the moment. Terry gathers his mates and they decide to do the job. What happens in the aftermath of the robbery, and the loss of more than just money by certain shady types becomes more than just problematic for the robbers, it becomes life-threatening.

    Daniel Mays, Saffron Burrows, Stephen Campbell Moore and Jason Statham in ‘The Bank Job’

    What really happened in 1971? There was a bank robbery at that very bank. There were pictures taken of a certain member of the Royal Family that were kept in one of the safety deposit boxes by a criminal known as Michael X. Michael X was actually a “Black Power” organizer in Great Britain, who organized a commune known as Black House. Aside from his organizing, he was also a pimp and a drug smuggler. The film manages to ignore the fact that it was none other than John Lennon who paid his bail and defense attorney’s fees when he was arrested in Trinidad, but that’s another story.

    After a few big headlines about the robbery, a D notice was issued and secrecy was the order of the day from that point forward. Many of the box holders refused to disclose the contents of their boxes and thusly, nothing was recovered. There was major corruption among the local police that was uncovered around this time.

    Donaldson’s direction is taut, and he gets good performances from his actors. Statham, more at home in the action-film genre does his best and he gets away with it. David Suchet is deliciously evil as a local porn king. But the film slows at several points and there are subplots that don’t appear to drive the story, even though they are definitely part of what happened all those years ago. If it weren’t a true tale, it would still be a decent crime thriller. As a merger of drama and documentary, it is a bit better. Buy a big tub of popcorn and enjoy.

  • ‘Breaking and Entering’

    Jude Law and Juliette Binoche co-star in 'Breaking and Entering'
    Jude Law and Juliette Binoche co-star in ‘Breaking and Entering’

    Director Anthony Minghella’s most successful films have trotted all over the globe: from the Sahara (The English Patient) to Venice (The Talented Mr. Ripley) to Romania (which doubled for the Appalachian mountains in Cold Mountain). All of those films have one thing in common: they were based on novels that Minghella adapted for the screen. For Breaking and Entering, his first original script in fifteen years, Minghella comes back home to London. Instead of the epic scales enjoyed by Mountain and Patient, Breaking covers less geography but delves deeper into the space between people, both lovers and strangers, and shows how someone can go from one to the other, in either direction.

    Jude Law will no doubt incur cynical barbs as landscape architect named Will Francis, a role that seems to closely imitate life. The famed philandering bachelor here lives with his estranged girlfriend Liv (Robin Wight Penn, affecting a Scandinavian accent). Her autistic daughter, Bea (Poppy Rogers), suffers from a wide array of afflictions, including insomnia, phobias, and an obsessive exercise regime, that has put the couple to the test and landed them in counseling. It’s clear by the time we meet them that much damage has been done, and that they are at a major crossroads. At one point, he even enjoys the company of Oana (the great Vera Farmiga), a Russian prostitute who enters Will’s car to unartistically spell out Minghella’s grand themes in Breaking.

    Will does not enjoy much better luck at the office. His hubris allows him to think that he can raise the plight of those less fortunate by his designs, and his London neighborhood of King’s Cross is a cross-section of the classes. However, there is still a high crime contingent, and Will and his associate Sandy (Martin Freeman) find their expensive loft office the victim of burglaries, with their computer designs stolen among the loot. Will’s struggle to chase down the perpetrator eventually lands him on a journey to meet Amira (Juliette Binoche), the Bosnian mother of Miro (Rafi Gavron). Unlike Will’s charmed surroundings, Amira lives in a run-down housing project. Her lack of means, combined with her ravishing looks, trigger something in Will, and it is not long before the two characters from different worlds have united in the bedroom.

    As Will embarks on his affair with Amira, Minghella works overtime to make the hero Breaking of breaking sympathetic. His compassion for those worse off for him is supposed to make him more complex, but it plays off a tad too facile to register redemption. It is akin to US magazine’s “They’re just like us!” section, in which hidden paparazzi photograph nouveau riche celebrities doing mundane things like talking on their cell phone and eating ice cream. This in no way makes them look similar to average people; people are far more disconnected from each other by the problems they face and their means of solving them than they are connected by the little things they happen to enjoy equally. And so Will’s compassion, honorable as it may be, fails to build a bridge between his upper-class woes and Amira’s lower-class ones.

    Law is charming, if little more, but his female co-stars are sensational. Farmiga makes the most other trivial character and minimal screen time, and Binoche recalls her early work in the 1980s, turning Amira’s earthiness into pathos. Ultimately, though, it’s Penn who stands out most of all with her spot-on performance, replete with perfect accent and attention to all the minute details that transform a performance from merely posing to really breathing in a character’s shoes. I accepted every frame of her relationship with Bea and with Will. Her ferocity to make every line count is what anchors much of Breaking.

    What works better is Minghella’s ardor for London, and visually (the cinematography was by Benhoit Delhomme), the movie is a stunner. The city itself serves as a symbol for the diversity of its inhabitants, and speaks volumes. So much so, that it’s a shame that Minghella then forces his characters to do the same thing.

  • ‘The Pursuit of Happyness’

    Will Smith co-stars with his son, Jaden Christopher Syre Smith in 'The Pursuit of Happyness'
    Will Smith co-stars with his son, Jaden Christopher Syre Smith in ‘The Pursuit of Happyness’

    The Pursuit of Happyness, Gabriele Muccino’s feel-good winter film, may be cobbled together from the real-life story of Chris Gardner, but the film itself feels a little stale, a San Francisco retread of Kramer vs. Kramer. Luckily — and I never thought I would be one to say this — the film has superstar Will Smith in its corner.

    Smith plays Gardner, a failed salesman with mounting bills and an unsupportive wife (Linda, played by Thandie Newton). Leaps of faith never seem to pay off for the well-meaning soul, whose small household in the Tenderloin district, which also include their five-year-old son, Christopher (Smith’s own son, Jaden Christopher Syre Smith), so it’s no surprise that when Chris interviews for an unpaid internship at Dean Witter Reynolds (the film takes place in the early 1980s), Linda leaves the two for a waitressing opportunity in New York.

    Of course, things only go from very bad to even worse before they can get better. Gardner and his son are evicted from their apartment, homeless the two run from shelter to shelter while father must shepherd his son to daycare, make cold calls and study. Writer Steven Conrad must work within the confines of Gardner’s real life, which could come off as alternately cloying and redundant. However, he structures his movie in such a way that Pursuit seems aware of its own potential narrative pitfalls, and avoids them. (Oddly, though, the film, frontloaded with Smith’s narration, features very little of it in its second half). Even more difficult is Conrad’s ability to keep the audience engrossed; many know that in real life, Gardner ultimately became a millionaire, so the redemption of Smith’s character seems a foregone conclusion. (Even those unfamiliar with Gardner in real life might suspect that there would be no film if the dark, dark clouds offered no silver lining).

    That’s where Smith’s performance comes in. The performance itself — one of dogged determination — is no great challenge, but the spirit with which Smith imbues Gardner’s perseverance is precisely what Pursuit needs to keep on trucking. As one might expect, the chemistry between father and son Smith is believable and precious, too. It might have been a cheat to cast them rather than a professional child actor unrelated to the film’s star, but, hey it works. I do wish Muccino had dwelt a little more on some of the men who did give Gardner his rare breaks, but since this is strictly one man’s story, solid actors like Brian Howe, James Karen and Kurt Fuller will have to let their work speak for itself.

    Like I said, I haven’t been a fan of Smith; I have found his performances unskilled and one-noted, sugar-coated by a smarmy persona. Pursuit may not represent anything superlative, but it is certainly a step in the right direction.

  • ‘Babel’

    Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett co-star in 'Babel'
    Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett co-star in ‘Babel’

    There are two things that determine whether a movie is intrinsically good or not: what it is about, and how it goes about it. In other words, that age-old maxim, style and substance. We live in an age now where anyone who wants to can become a filmmaker and has seen enough behind-the-scenes docs and read enough books to become a master of technique. What seems to impress today’s movie-going audience most daunting tracking shots and rapid-fire editing, important elements to move the story along and keep a viewer at bay.

    But of equal importance is the story itself, plot developments that logically lead from one to another and characters that affect each other in humane ways, and that is something that seems to have become lost among the newer crop of writers and directors. A key example of such oversight is Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Babel, a rather over-hyped trifle that spans a global range but possesses a hollow heart.

    Babel gets its title from the Old Testament, importing a lesson for humankind in which they attempted to build a tower after the flood that would reach unto heaven. Unfortunately, this effort angered their lord, who punished them by making each person involved speak a different language, thereby causing everyone to be disconnected and to fail to understand each other.

    Yes, that is an apt way to describe the international state of affairs, but even people speaking the same language fail to reach each other, as Paul Thomas Anderson’s sprawling masterpiece Magnolia demonstrated. So what hope is there for the multilingual characters that populate Babel’s script, penned by Guillermo Arriaga, all of whom suffer ordeals so trying one would think this film were actually an adaptation of a different scripture from Genesis, the Book of Job.

    Babel tells four separate stories thinly strung together by various characters’ associations with one another at various points. Iñárritu, who has demonstrated a clip-art method of storytelling before in Amores Perros and 21 Grams (with Arriaga), spans four countries and five languages in his attempt to show the disconnect between people, but it isn’t the divide between foreigners that gets amplified, but between family members who are supposed to know each other better than they do.

    There is no logical point of entry for the plot points in Babel; the foreboding feelings begin immediately. Abdullah (Mustapha Rachidi), a Moroccan goatherd receives a gun to be used by his family to ward off the jackals that threaten his herd. When left to their own devices, his two young sons, Ahmed (Said Tarchani) and Yussef (Boubker Ait El Caid), begin firing the gun off in the distance. At first it appears that the gun has a weak trajectory, but then a lone tour bus on the road stops.

    Though we have an idea what happens, Iñárritu backtracks the narrative to show the brittle couple, Susan and Richard (Cate Blanchett and Brad Pitt), who are vacationing in Morocco after weathering some problems -– apparently the loss of their youngest child and his subsequent straying from the family (Arriaga is very stingy with such details, to a fault). By the time the film’s chronology catches up to itself, we see that the sons’ bullet has pierced Susan’s neck, and she needs immediate medical assistance. They are abandoned in a small town with no embassy assistance, waiting for an ambulance.

    This is where Iñárritu’s temporal dissonance begins defying reason. Richard reaches Amelia (Adriana Barraza), their babysitter and housekeeper back in San Diego, to tell them that she needs to watch their two other children longer than they thought due to Susan’s wound. But by the time he calls, his storyline is at a more advanced point in the film’s running time than this early scene does. This means that she will be unable to attend her son’s wedding across the border in Mexico. But had Susan not been injured, wouldn’t they have still been in Morocco during her son’s wedding? Also, for a couple dealing with the death of a child, is it necessary to leave their own children and fly halfway across the planet for several weeks’ time? But I digress. The point is Amelia -– an illegal immigrant -– decides to go to the wedding anyway, chauffered by nephew Santiago (Gael García Bernal), and with the two young children, Debbie and Mike (Elle Fanning and Nathan Gamble). Clearly this will not end well for anyone involved.

    And yet for those not reaching for their Prozac, there’s an even harder-hitting storyline, and it is also the most remote. A teenage deaf girl named Chieko (Rinko Kikuchi) who lost her mother within the last year also begins to unravel in some shocking ways. Yes, she has a connection to the other storylines, but is tenuous at best. More importantly, these plotlines feel arbitrary — some are resolved and some are not. And why do they belong together? Why didn’t Arriaga feel compelled to continue the chain of misery to further countries?

    Babel’s filmmakers will not answer these questions. In fact, they don’t even try. What this means is that all of these disconnected characters are merely pawns, points in their filmic game of connect-the-dots. Luckily, the majority of the cast sketches in some indelible portraiture, especially Barrazza, Blanchett, Kikuchi and Rachidi. But this a movie focused on the big picture, and while Arriaga and Iñárritu deserve credit for the ambition of their scope (and cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto and editors Douglas Crise and Stephen Mirrione deserve much praise for making Babel the fluid ride that it is), unlike so many of the characters in this film, it is clear that they are ultimately the ones at fault for this vacant paean to political correctness.

  • ‘Catch and Release’

    Timothy Olyphant co-stars with Jennifer Garner in 'Catch and Release'
    Timothy Olyphant co-stars with Jennifer Garner in ‘Catch and Release’

    Grief never looked as good as it does on Jennifer Garner in Catch and Release, the first entry in a new subgenre: the zero-hankie tearjerker.

    Catch comes armed with a respectable cache of talent: Garner’s five-year tour-of-duty on television’s Alias remains one of the most remarkable demonstrations of versatility in any medium. And director Susannah Grant, in her directorial debt, has taken potentially preachy topics like single parenthood and sisterly rivalry and spun them into the highly respectable screenplays for Erin Brockovich and In Her Shoes, respectively. But maybe she had directors Steven Soderbergh and Curtis Hanson to thank for the end result of those efforts, since, left to her own devices, Catch devolves into mere chick flick territory.

    Garner is Gray Wheeler, not yet a wife, not quite a widow. Let me explain: Catch opens on what should have been Gray’s wedding day. Only her fiancé, Grady, has died in an unspecified extreme-sporting accident days before their nuptials, and instead of a wedding, their family and friends have instead gathered for Grady’s funeral.

    Catch follows Gray’s journey to pick up the pieces and get on with her life, which, in the context of this film, must start immediately and can only be achieved by finding a new man by the end of the film. (Perhaps Jane Austen would have done the same thing if Mr. Darcy died in a freak horse-riding accident before marrying Elizabeth Bennett.) Fortunately, she has a trio of men to choose from: Grady’s three best friends. There are fellow Boulder, Colorado, residents Sam (Kevin Smith) and Dennis (Sam Jaeger), whose house she moves into, as well as the womanizing Fritz (Tim Olyphant), who has opted for an extended leave from his house in Malibu. As part of an alarming amount of missing details, it is never made known how far back Dennis, Grady and Sam went, and if Fritz dates as far back to the others or not. For that matter, Grant never tells us how Grady and Gray met, or whether their relationship was smooth sailing or faced troubled waters. (But we do see a lot of Boulder, and that city sure does look easy to fall in love with.)

    What does matter is this: Grady was not the man Gray thought he was. He had a private savings account from which he sent monthly payments to a massage therapist named Maureen (Juliette Lewis) in Los Angeles to care for a son he had from an ongoing affair. Grant seems to work overtime in Catch to deconstruct Grady from perfect suitor to lying betrayer, all the easier to make it for Gray to move on and fall in love. In fact, Grant devotes more attention to Grady than any of her living characters. For instance, we never learn exactly what Gray does. And does she have any girlfriends or family members? None of them were present at Grady’s funeral, which — remember — was to have been Gray’s wedding day.

    Catch boils down to a simple question. Who will Gray hook up with? She instantly hates Fritz, who we first meet having anonymous sex with a caterer during Grady’s funeral, so naturally hate will give way to love. But is she meant to be with him, or Dennis, who has carried a torch for Gray for years? Sam doesn’t really fit into the equation, as he is the only portly cast member among beauties. Besides, even when an abortive suicide attempt lands him in the hospital, he is immediately released and his depression is never again addressed.

    The cast here, however, is never a part of the problem. Garner is terrific — plucky, heartbreaking, confused, pious in all the right moments. Catch never degenerates into melodrama between Gray and Maureen, as one would expect, because Maureen never wronged Gray; only Grady has, so everyone treats each other maturely. Olyphant remains underrated as a leading man — he can be sleazy and smoldering in a single glance, and easily holds his own with Garner. Fritz means well, but will he prove to be nothing more than a creature of habit? Or does Gray really belong with Dennis? I wish Grant had given Jaeger a little more to work with than looking doe-eyed and wounded. This could have been a great breakout role for him.

    The performer who does steal every one of her scenes is the exquisite Fiona Shaw as Grady’s bereaved mother. What a searing job she does in her few scenes as she tries to push Gray away and reject the idea that she has an illegitimate grandson. Pay attention to the deceptively simple shrug of her shoulders she gives in her final scene. It communicates volumes about her character’s background, state of mind and emotional resolve.

    I only wish Grant would have done the same with the rest of her film.

  • ‘Children of Men’

    Clive Owen stars in a bleak future in 'Children of Men'
    Clive Owen stars in a bleak future in ‘Children of Men’

    I’m not sure what it says about this critic, but Alfonso Cuarón’s Children of Men, a gloomy look at a dystopian future, is one the most exciting films I have seen in some time.

    Children is loosely based (by no fewer than five scribes: Cuarón, Timothy J. Sexton, David Arata, Mark Fergus, and Hawk Ostby) on the P.D. James novel set in a 2027 London beset by illness, environmental ruin and infertility. (Yes, it sounds like a downer, but trust me — it picks up.) Clive Owen is perfectly cast as Theo, an erstwhile political activist who has turned silent when he is approached by his former lover, Julian (Julianne Moore). Julian is an underground agent, working to aid immigrants escape the myriad prison camps set up by the totalitarian state. Julian enlists Theo’s assistance to transport Kee (Clare-Hope Ashitey) across the country. Kee, you see, is carrying a very big secret. One that may significantly alter the human race.

    Though there are echoes of Blade Runner, Brazil and The Road Warrior, Cuarón’s keen eye makes this a revisionist tale in every sense. Theo is as much of an anti-hero as can be (he wears sandals for half of the picture!) and no character, whether it be Julian or Jasper, Theo’s drugged-out friend (played marvelously by Michael Caine, who I presumed laughed all the way to the bank on this one) or Nigel (Danny Huston), Theo’s powerful cousin, fits in the story exactly as one might presume they would. Owen is terrific. Theo never has much of a chance to question the circumstances with which he finds himself caught up, he must simply roll with the punches, and Owen’s droll demeanor has a way of cutting right through the most perilous of sequences.

    Cuarón’s visual choices are most daring when it comes to the work of his longtime cinematographer Emmanuel “Chivo” Lubezki. With them, what you do not see is as innovative from a cinematic standpoint as what you do. For example, there is not a single close-up in the movie. Instead, Lubezki balances out both character and setting in his shots. Other shots involve a great deal of sleight-of-hand, including one 12-minute scene involving a car ride that is easy enough to dismiss until one realizes that the entire scene appears to have been shot in a single take. A later scene that lasts almost as long in one of the refugee camps also looks as though it only took one take to shoot. Though they never call attention to themselves, these are achievements worth mentioning, and I imagine that they involved a good deal of improvisation on the part of Owen and the rest of the cast.

    Dismal and futile as it is, Children is one great big booster shot to cinematic ennui.

  • ‘The Painted Veil’

    Naomi Watts stars with Edward Norton in 'The Painted Veil'
    Naomi Watts stars with Edward Norton in ‘The Painted Veil’

    The W. Somerset Maugham story The Painted Veil gets yet another screen adaptation, this time directed by John Curran. This version, the first in nearly 50 years, is able to get a little closer to the action, and yet in some ways is so tuned in to the action at hand that is misses the world going on around it.

    Ron Nyswaner (Philadelphia) adapted this version, and minces nary a moment in establishing his scenario: Flibbertigibbet Kitty (Naomi Watts), reeling from her sister’s marriage, pairs off with the dull Dr. Walter Fane (Edward Norton) who she meets at a society function in 1925 London, though she feels no ardor for him. Quickly they move from Europe to China so that he may conduct research, but much of the action occurs within apartments and offices. It is difficult to recognize anything of the Orient in their setting.

    Kitty is utterly despondent with her new life, and quickly pairs off with American diplomat Charlie Townsend (Liev Schreiber). But the affair, an ongoing matter in the first part of the novel, is glimpsed only in one scene. In fact, the same moment when the audience learns they are together is the same one in which they are discovered by Fane and end their tryst. It is important to be concise, but not to the point when atmosphere and character get thrown out the window. We never learn if this was love or just lust. Were they ever worried about being caught? Curran shoehorns an awful lot of plot in his first moments.

    Especially given that it takes ages for the rest of the movie to unfold. Fane finally confronts Kitty, and gives her an ultimatum. She can either accompany him to cholera-ridden Hong Kong, or he will divorce her, assuring her social ruin. The very married Charlie has no plans to leave his wife, thus leaving Kitty with no choice but to travel to one of the most dangerous corners of the world. The passive-aggressive Fane goes out of his way to punish her, but eventually, the shallow, shallow Kitty redeems herself and begins to care for the local children of expatriates. Oddly enough, though, none of these children, or any other prominent characters, are Chinese. Toby Jones, last seen (but probably not by many) as the other Truman Capote in Infamous is terrific as Waddington, another white man who has made a home for himself in Asia, letting himself go to seed in every which way.

    Veil is Watts’ movie from start to finish, and darn if she isn’t fantastic. It’s hard to shed contempt for a character with such frivolous taste, but she finds all of the sympathetic corners of Kitty’s personality, and makes her transition to a more caring woman fully believable. Eventually, the war between Kitty and Walter even subsides, and Norton makes more sense when connecting with her than when rejecting her (as for his accent, though, vaguely European but not British or German or anything identifiable, it is way too phony and takes me out of the movie at every turn).

    Nyswaner excises the last important plot developments from the novel, depriving Veil of an important coda and also making the film’s second half feel way too slow, providing so little to which it can build. By the end of the film, I understood where Kitty’s journey had taken her, but I was never quite as convinced that she did.

  • ‘Notes on a Scandal’

    Cate Blanchett (left) and Judi Dench co-star in 'Notes on a Scandal'
    Cate Blanchett (left) and Judi Dench co-star in ‘Notes on a Scandal’

    It is two completely dissatisfied lives that make Notes on a Scandal such a satisfying treat. The film alone should be notable for pairing two of the screen’s finest talents, Cate Blanchett and Judi Dench in this tale of forbidden fruit and the destructive consequences of temptation.

    Patrick Marber (Closer) adapts Zoe Heller’s sensational novel, taking a few cinematic liberties, but it’s a good call: it makes for director Richard Eyre’s (who also worked with Dench on Iris) finest observation yet of human behavior at its ugly worst. Dench is the appropriately named Barbara Covett, the closest thing there is to a modern-day spinster. In her sixties, she teaches high school, and never married or a mother, she comes home to her cat and diary, in which she derides the behavior of all who cross her path. Hers is a lonely, lonely life.

    But it proves to be more than that when a new younger teacher named Sheba Hart (as in Bathsheba, the Biblical adulterer, played with real understanding by Blanchett) joins the high school staff. Sheba is rather overwhelmed, and Barbara is quick to come to her aid. It isn’t long before Sheba has brought Barbara into her home, introducing her to two children, a rebellious teenage daughter and a son afflicted with Down’s syndrome, and arrogant husband Richard (Bill Nighy). It is perfectly natural to get excited when making a new friend, to find someone with whom one shares common interests, someone who esteems your own opinions. But that is not exactly what Sheba represents to her new friend. Barbara, with all her cocky contempt for “bourgeois bohemia,” acts as unreliable a narrator in the film as she did in the novel, but the film allows us to see more of the ways in which she deludes herself.

    The idea that Barbara might indeed have a homosexual interest in Sheba is more overt here than in the novel. One of Heller’s focal points was that friendship, like any relationship, is a power play, with one member holding more strings over the other. But Barbara doesn’t merely want Sheba’s attention; she is a predator, and truly wants Sheba. When she discovers Sheba breaking the law by having a sexual liaison with underage student Steven Connolly (Andrew Stevens), Barbara starts threatening Sheba, giving her ultimatums so as to get more time from her, and give her her life.

    Eyre and Marber devotes the smallest amount of attention in Scandal to Sheba’s criminal act; in her mind, her unfulfilled life has led her to stray, and Steven’s young age only creates some excitement. The psychology behind the criminal element remains unexamined. Yet Blanchett carefully weaves together this woman’s life. Sheba wants to please all, but is desperately afraid of disappointing everyone, and when her affair comes to light, Blanchett finds the appropriate ways for Sheba to come unglued. She is so consumed by her problems, but even though they seem to be minor, are Barbara’s any greater? Barbara’s life is so empty that she must engineer major travesties in the lives of others, like the Hart family. She punishes people for sins they have only committed in her mind. Dench gives another incomparable, finely-tuned, unsympathetic character study. Barbara looks as dowdy and unkempt here as she did refined as M in Casino Royale, and every gesture communicates her world. Her arms folded up against her show how removed she is from the world, and cast-off glances with studious eyes betray not just her hatred of, seemingly, everyone else, but her own self-loathing.

    These observations are profound. I do wish Marber had not refashioned certain elements from the novel; the movie never tells us whether Steven reciprocated Sheba’s feelings or if their affair was just for kicks and Barbara’s power play was more focused in the novel. Nonetheless, the lesson learned her is loud and clear. Be careful who you let into your life; they just might try to take it over.