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Reviews
Road to Perdition (2002)
A man's got to do what a man's got to do movie with feeling.
This is a "man's got to do what a man's got to do" movie with the added bonus of great acting from two of America's great stars (Newman and Hanks) as well as a look at future star Tyler Hoechlin, who plays Hank's 12 year old son. This movie takes you back to the speakeasy days and it's look is authentic.
Hank's plays an enforcer for mob boss Newman, who looks great at 80 something, with all the sheen of glamour gone replaced by a harrowed and haunted look. Newman's son is a psychotic killer who makes all the wrong moves, but is under the protection of his father because blood is thicker than water. When Hank's son accidentally witnesses the son's latest atrocity, loyalties become strained and Hank's goes on the run with his son.
Here the movie goes down familiar territory...retribution, which is also it's major moral flaw. If Hank's wants to save his son and keep him from following in his footsteps then surely he should disappear and raise his son somewhere else. Nope! He drags his son around and teaches him how to be a getaway driver while he robs banks, act as lookout while he does some enforcing of his own, and only in the end belatedly saves him from doing what his old man is so good at.
Still it's a solid movie with all it's predictable Hollywood morality. Hanks walks off with the movie, and is helped by the subtlety of many of the scenes. My favorite piece of acting comes when he's in a Diner and starts talking to someone and realizes when the guy smiles that it's a stone cold killer who's been sent to kill him, played creepily by Jude Law. Why? Well go see the movie.
Harrison's Flowers (2000)
A war movie without a soul or a sympathetic character.
Andy McDowell can't seem to portray sympathetic characters. In "Four weddings and a funeral" I wanted Hugh to dump her. In "Sex, lies and videotapes" I knew she was frigid before they told us. It has something to do with those intense brown eyes being too close together, and her pent up, whiny angst. Now she plays a woman so obsessed with finding her (given up for dead famous war correspondent) husband that she roars off to a war zone without a backward look at her children. She then allows her husband's fame to sucker 3 other reporters into acting as protectors and guides, and when one of them gets killed she watches silently as another reporter apologizes for the death. She doesn't have a clue that her irresponsibility is the root of his death. This is supposed to be a love story but how can one tolerate a love from a mother who never shows any concern for the consequences to her children and those around her? Who needs another soul-less war movie these days anyway. They have so ground into the dirt the images of hell that they appear dispassionate. The hell of war is the damage it does to the human soul not just the damage it does to the body. When you show only the latter you're showing off technique and side stepping creative bravery.
Lantana (2001)
Best adult movie of the year!!
Thank God for the Aussies! They always manage to show humans being humans so much better than Hollywood ever can. The fact that this movie got no Oscar nominations is embarrassing, as it is far better than any other "adults relating" movie in quite some time. It takes on themes covered in "In the bedroom" and "Monster's Ball" and delivers them in a much more satisfying way. The characters are never larger than life, and the issues are the ones we all know about, and in the case of the murder of a child the issue is to focus on the aftermath not the murder.
There is not a single error in casting or performance, and it helps that the American audience only knows three of the actors, and that all of them are actors, not movie stars. All the characters are flawed, some more than others, yet I ended up caring for most of them. Their sins are of omission as well as commission, born of loneliness and pain, yet like most humans we see the sins before we see what gave birth to them.
The main character is played by Anthony La Paglia, himself originally (and maybe still) an Aussie. He is a cop on the edge. Nothing new here, but the movie decides to show us how his personal life is falling apart rather than show us his life as a cop. We can intuit what is driving him, or leave it alone. His choice of acting out is to have an affair, with a lonely woman from the Salsa dance class his wife has forced him to endure. Rather than to let out his emotions on the floor he decides to go for the bed. Less artistry, less energy, less personal.
The other main character is played by Barbara Hershey, a tense Psychiatrist who can't see that she's projecting her own insecurities on to the story of a patient. She's decided to shelve grieving for her murdered daughter by publishing a best selling book about it. Her husband, a marvelously lifeless Geoffry Rush, grieves privately, almost in rebellion against his wife's publication of their pain. He has shriveled up and grown cold.
The two characters end up meeting, but I won't say how, and in the process Anthony finally gets some indirect therapy from Barbara's husband. In between there are many other riches to be mined from all the wonderful scenes that fill this movie. Don't miss this one!
Monster's Ball (2001)
A finely understated movie about the way human pain can be expressed.
I expected the movie to be about racism, but it wasn't. It's about the expression of pain into anger and the projection of anger onto identifiable objects; such as race and expression of sensitivity. Billy Bob is an up-tight correctional officer overseeing an execution, as is his son (Heath Ledger). The son, however is showing signs of weakness, such as being friendly with the Black neighbors children, and - worst of all - by letting his feelings towards his job show. Both are portrayed as emotionally stunted in two harsh, like father like son, prostitute scenes. Both are chips off the old block of Jim Crowing, misogynistic grandpa Peter Boyle, and both wish silently they weren't.
Into this family comes Hale Berry as the widow of the man they execute. Billy Bob reluctantly helps her out with her grief while struggling with his own, and the two become lovers. The movie now asks us to believe that the relationship allows Billy Bob to shrug off his imbedded hatreds, which we accept mostly due to the movies subtlety of letting things just be.
Berry has received an Oscar nomination. Although I liked her performance, and was not surprised by it, I can't help but think she's getting an all too common Hollywood "wow we did not know this person can act!" award, such as the one doled out to Cher for "Moonstruck". To be frank Berry's presence in this movie does her career much more good than it helps the movie. Hollywood just can't allow us to see average people being played by the average looking. There is absolutely no surprise in Billy Bob having the hots for her (hell Hitler would have the hots for her!) and so his transformation doesn't affect the Richter scale. We know in real life she'll end up as another woman who Billy Bob won't be able to love for the duration.
I did like the pace of the movie and it's willingness to let the scenes speak for themselves. The death row scene is inevitable but not over dramatized as it was in "The Green Mile", although it too shows how inhumane the whole ritualized process is, simply in it's rituality.
Black Hawk Down (2001)
Intense action!
This is certainly the most intense movie in quite awhile. It is pure and simply a war movie without any frills whatsoever. We don't get to know much about anyone, which I think forces the viewer to look at the total picture's view of war and not get stuck on rooting for individuals.
The action scenes are realistic and so gritty that they frankly terrified me. I know I do not have the courage it takes to be a soldier. Added to that is the senselessness of the cause, and the stupidity born of arrogance to assume that Americans are super heroes and Africans are just another incapable enemy.
It chooses to look one sidedly at the conflict, which again forces the viewer to experience the hell these poor guys went through rather than be conflicted by objectivity (in a telling footnote we find out that 1,000 Somali's lost their lives to 19 Americans, and we're kept clear of the hell they went through).
This kind of an approach reminds me of the old Cowboy and Indian movies, where we root for the outnumbered white guys and the Indians are portrayed as layer after layer of killing robots. We never learn about the enemies rationale for hating us; we never see their heroism; we never see their humanity. We are now finding out what that kind of subjective view of the World can lead to.
Swordfish (2001)
Flashy but dumb.
This is your quintessential flashy but dumb Hollywood "high-tech" thriller. I avoided seeing it in the Theater and rented it recently. The only thing I missed was seeing pyrotech mayhem from a bigger vantage.
Travolta, sporting another giggle hairdo, struts through the movie with enough irony to (hopefully) let us know it's all in fun. Hale Berry is DDG as usual, but should have been allowed to be bad ass! She's too pretty to be playing a character who may be naughty or nice without coming off as bland. The boob shot was over rated. I preferred the shot of her in her skimpies.
Now to the, ahem, plot. Travolta hires a super hacker (Jackman) to hack into the DEA and steal Gazillions of dollars. Jackman plays the hacker doing things on the computer that resemble what Hollywood perceives hackerdom to be - virtuoso keyboard strumming! He's on another plane, he uses his third eye! Wow! He gets to prove how fast he is by breaking into the DOD while getting a blow job and having a gun pointed to his head, all in less than 60 seconds.
As with all bad big movies this one starts off well and careens off downhill, ending with one of the silliest car chases ever filmed. Travolta has all the hostages and fellow cohorts aboard a bus being chased by half of LAPD. To get away he -get this- has a giant helicopter pick up the bus. The helicopter travels at less than 100 m.p.h., mostly vertically, as visible as the holes in the plot, and proceeds to crash into everything in sight before smashing down on a roof top so John can make his get away. I can see the special effects guys saying: "Who cares if it doesn't make sense it's never been done before".
Now I know why I rented this movie. At home no-one can hear you scream!
Spy Game (2001)
A great throwback
Finally a thriller that really is smart and action packed! Redford steals this movie, not the least because he's in practically every scene. He's seasoned by time in the sun, and it fits his character. He plays an essentially duplicitous CIA agent with such charm that we of course convince ourselves that he is just a patriot doing his job. It's vogue again to have the ends justify the means.
Pitt gets all the action stuff and little to do in the acting department, but that's all-right, he's pretty. He also gets to play the moral character who doesn't like people being treated like pawns, even though he does it!
The Beirut sequence hits very close to home, and is probably one of the more intense action scenes in any Hollywood movie. We've seen this before from people like DePalma, but after 9-11-01 were not just casual observers.
Discerning eyes will notice that practically all the actors, save our intrepid heroes, are British ("ooh 'Secrets and Lies', ooh 'Masterpiece Theater'"). After years of neither side being able to pull off a decent "across the puddle" accent we are now in an era of being unable to tell the nationality of native English speaking actors!
It's such a glorious ride that I didn't really mind the improbable ending which, if it had happened in real time, would have been an act of war! And in case you haven't noticed the LeCarre irony now has a patriotic edge.
Heist (2001)
A smoother Mamet
This is a fast paced thriller with plenty of Mamet's signature con games going on.
Of all the Mamet movies this one is the least stylized. The dialogue is less stilted, which I can't decide is due to the dialogue itself or the Director's choice to allow the actor's to talk more normally. His choice of Hackman, the least stylized of actors, helps. DeVito is of course DeVito. Sardonic and oozing charm from every superficial pore.
If you've seen other Mamet movies about criminals (especially "the Spanish Prisoner"and "House of Games") you'll easily spot a set up or a con when it's happening. As soon as you see Ricky Jay you know why he's in the picture. The trouble is that Mamet is so busy being convoluted that he forgets the core of a good successful mystery: it all has to make sense in the end.
One of the questions Mamet teases us with throughout the movie is the one about the loyalty of Gene Hackman's wife, and his resolution rings as hollow as a bell. Speaking of Hackman's wife Rebecca Pidgeon is a delightfully tough and sexy character.
K-PAX (2001)
A feel good movie for these times.
This is your basic Hollywood "suspend disbelief" feel good movie. It's best to not be too critical about a movie that can suck you in right from the start, and have you depart knowing that they've given you the opportunity to leave feeling "reality based" or "fairy dusted".
Kevin Spacey plays Prot, declaring openly and shamelessly that he's from another planet. He's taken to a mental ward (suspend disbelief; no-one goes to a Psych Ward for mere delusions these days) and the inmates come to buy his story, and the Psychiatrist (Jeff Bridges,tamping down his usual irritating facial and vocal dramatics) tries hard not to.
Just when we've accepted that Spacey may be a genuine alien Bridges uncovers, through hypnosis, another possibility. Now the movie has us right in it's grip, desperately wanting Kevin to be Mork and not Sybil.
I left feeling good, only later allowing the massive holes in the plot to rationalize their way in to my brain. I decided to be fairy dusted instead. As it is a feel good movie I'll allow the Director his fantasy about the state of mental health treatment for the chronically ill!!
Ghost World (2001)
Not for the faint hearted
This movie does not pull any punches about teen age angst. Two girls graduate from High School and face the future with little to offer, encumbered by the age appropriate self centered 10 degree vision. Thora Birch plays Enid, the more curious of the two, but is also the least able to adjust to the inevitable. She develops a tentative relationship with an older dork, Seymour - played by the man born to play dorks; Steve Buscemi. Slowly enraptured by his obsessive hobby of collecting old and esoteric memorabilia and art, she initially tries to steer him out of loneliness and into a relationship with someone of his age, only to realize that she cannot stand staying lonely, while he starts living a little, with someone less tolerant of his tastes. Her character, mired in depression, only tolerates the unhappiness of others. As others grow she becomes more panicked and confused. Seymour ends up taking the brunt of her confusion. There is no happy ending, which is an honest outcome. Still the Director can't resist ending it with a metaphorical twist, with hope for Enid, and none for Seymour. Again this is honest, as Enid has her life ahead of her while Seymour is mired in his.
Rush Hour 2 (2001)
same old hollywood annoyance
Comedy does not lend itself well to analysis. Like music it's appeal is visceral and spontaneous. I've never been much of a fan of most Hollywood comedies, especially those that have been popular. I just don't see what's funny in "in your face" humor. I prefer subtlety, and I get easily bored if my mind isn't being activated. That being said I obviously did not think this movie was particularly funny. I did laugh at the out takes because there was some spontaneous humor. Chris Tucker makes an ass out of his character by making him shrill and asinine. He follows the current trend of comics, which is to throw as much manic stuff out as you can and hope some of it sticks. (Which, now that I think of it, is what Jerry Lewis did, and after I turned 18 I stopped laughing at him.) He's on speed all the way and not much of what comes out is sharp. The stunts are fine but after a few of these "chop chop" movies most stunts blend into one another, just like the monsters do in the Jurassic Park series.
Planet of the Apes (2001)
Visually stunning but otherwise same old Hollywood plot line.
Tim Burton presents a magnificent movie for the eyes, but alas opts for the usual poor screen play. I left the movie feeling that I had been well entertained. The magicpecial effects, make-up, musical score all produce a feast of movie fantasy. The ape-ing is inspired. Tim Roth, as the fanatical Chimp General, is worth the price of admission alone. Paul Giamatti has some nice moments, but no-one else is given much to do except to imitate apes or fearful humans. The female chimps look too much like the original Kim Hunter, bereft of facial hair and facial creases.
As usual with these kinds of movies the throw away line is ever present, and some make for a good snicker or two. I wonder how many people caught the irony of Charlton Heston defending gun control!
It's really best to see this movie with your inner child on your lap, and leave the critical adult home. This is especially true for the ending which gives a momentary smile of pleasure at it's salute to the original, as long as one doesn't think about how it doesn't make any sense!
Sexy Beast (2000)
Guess who's coming to Dinner?
After all the reviews I found myself waiting impatiently for Ben Kingsley's character to make his appearance. After all we were told he plays as loathsome a character as has stepped onto the screen. They were right. Ben (Don Logan) gets right under your skin once he opens his mouth and the foulness of his personna spews out. This is a guy that definitely needs killing, but no-one seems to have the cojones to do it.
Be prepared for a torrent of the worst swear words the English language has to offer-especially the one considered the foulest of all-spoken so often, and with such venom, that one never becomes desensitized to them.
Ben is someone you don't say no to, and for most of the movie our anti-hero tries to present that word with many democratic faces. Ben's ultimate rejoinder is to jackhammer out "No" so fiercly that he wears down the opposition.
With Ben off the screen things are pretty tame and derivative, although with some quirky nightmare scenes thrown in. The Heist itself is rather stupid in it's implausibility, and Ian McShane gets to be black and Demonic. Yes Ben you have made us temporarily forget Gandhi.
Wo de fu qin mu qin (1999)
A beautiful love story for those who love romance.
This is an old fashioned love story. The lovers never kiss, or touch and speak no more than a few sentences to each other. The love comes mostly from the main character-a woman-who falls in love with a man she knows nothing about. She falls in love with his voice, which she hears issuing from the school-house as she passes, and she falls in love with her ideal: a teacher.
Ziyi Zhang (Crouching tiger....) is so delectable as the smitten girl that she carries the film almost entirely. The one scene of her running; with her shoulders rolling, and her pigtails flying as her body bobs jauntily while she turns and smiles shyly and joyously is one of the screens great gems.
This is a simple movie about life's greatest issues: love, death, and respect for heroes. It avoids complicating the story with anything extraneous, and so avoids raising questions about it's theme. It's like drinking a milk shake, you just enjoy the senses aroused.
A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001)
Too much Kubrick, too little Spielberg.
For those of you who go to the movies to see great Cinematography, this is a movie for you. For those of you who like Kubrick's cool objective intellectual approach, this is a movie for you. For those of you hoping to see Spielberg's fairy tale playfulness (a la E.T.), this is not the movie for you. I did enjoy the movie, and found myself drawn in by the superior artistry of the film. But it is told as a cautionary tale told without humor or wit, as soul-less as the Robots it portrays. I got the impression that Spielberg's wish to honor Kubrick elbowed out his own instincts to humanize the characters.
Haley Joel Osment is superb as the mechanical Pinocchio. His brilliance as a child actor can be measured in the scenes he plays opposite his "brother" Jake Thomas. It's like watching Tom Hanks opposite Ben Affleck! Women (and quite a few men) will find their hearts going out to him as he searches for his mother's love.
Jude Law steals the movie in his scenes, and is reminiscent of a darker Ray Bolger in the Wizard of Oz.
Overall the movie's reach is too large for someone of Spielberg's talents, a director who does well when he plays but not so well when he thinks.
Evolution (2001)
lame and lazy
This is one of those silly movies that the college crowd, and younger, will enjoy. It's a clone of the Ghostbuster series with all the adolescent humor and potty jokes. Duchovny sleep walks through it and all the energy is taken up by Jones and Scott. The people who made this movie were lazy, not bothering to do more than reprise a tired old plot line and passe special effects. Alright, I know it's supposed to be a comedy, and entertainment is what I went for, but it was too limp to hold my interest.
Memento (2000)
a smart and slick film noire
The basics are well known by now. A man (Guy Pearce) without the ability to retain short term memory, looks for his wife's killer. The movie works backwards in time.
The movie working backwards mirrors our hero's inability to make sense of what he is doing, without crib notes from the past, that tell him (maybe) who is who, and what is what. Except, as we(those of us with short term memory) see what is revealed we can put the information together, unlike our hapless hero. In the end we know a lot more, but are left to argue with our movie going buddies about how much we do know and how much was part of a deliberate Rashomon like prism of reality set up by the screen play.
It's probably a great movie to see again just to see the clues that we missed because we didn't know (yet) what to look for.
Carrie Ann Moss and Joe Pantoliano do great supporting work, but Guy Pearce deserves an Oscar nomination for his wound up, confused but tough, desperate seeker of truth in all the wrong places.
Unbreakable (2000)
Another thoughtful, fantastical tale from Shyamalan.
This fantastical tale from the director of sixth sense takes us into another realm of the; "it could happen"-"yeah in your dreams", that Shyamalan creates and takes us into with such gentle persuasion. Bruce Willis is a dull everyman with an unwordly gift...or two, or more. When I realised what world we were being brought into I wanted to shake my head in disbelief, but such is the Director's charm that I wanted more and more.
If you accept the premise you'll probably like this movie. My wife, on the other hand, had a fit of the giggles on a number of occasions. It's just that easy to find the movie either enthralling or ridiculous. It moves rather ponderously, but I didn't mind it, as it sets us up for the complete change of pace towards the end. Shyamalan again shows his uncanny ability to pick child stars, Bruce's son is played by Spencer Treat Clark, who comes close to stealing the movie with his earnest portrayal of a boy wanting his dad to be a somebody. Robin Penn is also good as Bruce's patient wife. Shyamalan again appears in his own movie in a scene I did not quite understand. Was it meant to show Bruce's fallibilities? There is again a surprising twist at the end, and although I was intrigued by it, Shyamalan robs it of it's interest by stopping the movie and wrapping it up abruptly and unsatisfactorily.
Men of Honor (2000)
Predictable tale of courage in the face of racism.
This is clearly a movie meant to be an encouragement to all who fight against injustice. Too bad they paint our hero with such dramatic gusto. Not only does he have to deal with white racism (I know, an oxy-moron), but with a system ready to kill him rather than allow him to reach his goal. We know of course that Cuba Gooding Jr will overcome it all, and that De Niro will become another of Hollywood's bad guys with a heart. But Cuba is too good and DeNiro is too bad for me to really care. The whole thing feels like an NAACP sanitized movie meant to show history as heroic myth.
Most of the action takes place above water as it's hard to put much drama into diver's forced (by their heavy suits) to walk like Frankenstein's monster!
In the end Cuba gets to use the word honor to describe a system that has shown him nothing but abuse and derision. Give me Jack Nicholson's witness box speech from "A few good men" any day.
The Contender (2000)
Enjoyable political movie with a cop out ending.
This movie wears it's politics on it's sleeves. This would be O.K. if it was even handed in it's depiction of the story and it's characters. The liberal Democrats are the good guys and the Republicans are the bad guys - which is how a lot of us look at the "other party", but it's an emotional and dishonest way of looking at reality. Still it's an enjoyable movie with some intelligent writing and good acting. It lacks the sophistication of a great political movie like Advise and Consent. The bad guy, played by Gary Oldman, is drawn as a caricature of a narrow minded, power hungry beetle, from Illinois. His balding pate with it's too obvious hair tufts make him look Dickensian. I guess we should be grateful he was not played as a drawling southerner. How much more interesting and thoughtful movie it could have been if his motives had been explored as being drawn from heartfelt convictions and not as merely vengeful. There is far more villainy to be drawn from depicting someone who believes in the righteousness of the "wrong" cause. Joan Allen is great and solid as the moral center of the movie. Jeff Bridges chews scenery as Mr. Pres., but I missed Martin Sheen. Sam Elliot gets to play some nice "macho" scenes. It's nice to see him not having to ride a horse. But Sam grows the mustache back; it hides some of the weaknesses of that interesting face. What does the movie in, however, is that the powers that be - who have led us to believe we are seeing a movie that will stick to it's principles (i.e. it's the moral high road to stick to one's principles) cop out at the very end, leaving Bridge's magnificent Capra-esque speech ringing hollow.