November, 2002

 Auto Focus

    Bob Crane was a nice guy. All you needed to do was ask him, he'd be happy to tell you. He just had this one little problem in that he liked the porn. He didn't just like looking at it, he liked making his own, thanks in part to being such a gadget freak. Auto Focus based on the book The Murder Of Bob Crane by Robert Graysmith shows this Crane, dedicated, hard working family man with a few deviant desires.
    Crane's downfall into this underworld starts when he meets John Carpenter (Willem Defoe), the local Sony rep who will be more than happy to wire your trailer or you car with the latest and greatest. They get together at a strip club one evening where Crane, amateur drummer, sits in with the band. Soon, he's spending every night sitting in with strip club bands. He falls even further, picking up women for he and Carpenter to have sex with and film, using the brand new home video technology. It's not long before his career and two separate marriages are ruined and he's lying dead in a hotel room, bludgeoned to death (according to the book and movie) by Carpenter.
    Greg Kinnear's Bob Crane is scary at times. It makes you kind of wish that the E cable network show "Talk Soup" never happened so that it would be easier for him to be considered a serious actor. He easily falls in and out of family guy mode. He sells Crane as the ultimate nice guy, even when picking up the latest conquest in a seedy bar. Director Paul Schrader and cinematographer Fred Murphy also do their bit, devolving from brightly lit, well shot family man Bob Crane down to shaky, hand held cameras and dark murky colors as Crane himself devolves.

Grade: A

  I Spy

    At some point, Hollywood has to run out of old television shows to adapt into movies, right? I Spy is completely interchangeable with any number of generic action movies that have come before it. Owen Wilson, with his bumbling, every guy shtick and Eddie Murphy with his stuck up, king of the world shtick did work well, both when they were on screen together and separate. Offsetting that is the fact that this mindless action/buddy picture had wa-a-a-y too much plot. Sorry to say, but with this kind of movie, simple is better. Nobody cares. Most people are there so that they can turn their brains off for awhile.

Grade: C+

 Welcome To Collinwood

    These second generation movies are coming at us fast and furious. Writers and directors Joe and Anthony Russo produce a movie with a few laughs, some quirks, a couple of nice characters, and a whole lot of pleasant memories of better movies.
    It's a movie where all the characters talk as if they were taken from a screenplay (hmmm....) and not from any sort of reality. Everything has a name, while in prison, Cosimo (Luis Guzman) is given a "belini" (big, lucrative job) by a lifer and thus needs a "melinski" (someone to take the rap so he can get out). The belini involves breaking into a safe, so, of course, all the different methods for breaking into safes have their own names. The search for the melinski slowly and laboriously introduces the team who will eventually end up doing the job, including Riley (William H. Macy), a broke photographer who hauls his baby son with him where he goes, Toto (Michael Jeter) a decrepit, slightly crazy crook, and a few others with their own little, screenplay worthy quirks.
    Welcome To Collinwood is the perfect example of a second generation movie. The jokes are too infrequent, the action is to drawn out, the characters are too artificial. By the time it's time to actually do the job and everything goes wrong that can, I had long since lost interest.

Grade: C

 The Man From Elysian Fields

    It's easy to become fixated on the smallest things. Mick Jagger plays Luther Fox, a man who runs an upscale escort service for lonely, rich women. It wasn't his acting (which was fine enough), or his character (a suitably deep and conflicted individual) that I couldn't stop watching. It was the way Jagger drank. Here he'd be in a bar, drinking something suitable to a man of his place, such as a scotch and soda or whatever, and he'd brink the glass up to his face, tilt it slightly, and then snake his lips far into the glass and sip. It creeped me out, but that's my own problem I'll need to work through.
    The movie itself was better than you might expect. Byron Tiller (Andy Garcia) is a failing writer, struggling to the pay the bills, despite the unwavering support of his wife Dena (Julianna Margulies). Fox's Elysian Fields occupies the office next to his, and one day Fox tells Byron to stop in. He has an instinct about Byron.
    It's a paying gig, so he reluctantly agrees to meet Andrea Alcott (Olivia Williams) whose husband Tobias (James Coburn) is on death's door, struggling to finish his last book. Byron, as it is part of the job, falls into bed with Andrea who convinces him to help her husband with the book. He becomes almost part of the family. It is the irony that the job which helps provide for his own family drives Byron away from them.
    It is a solid, well written, well acted drama that you could do worse than to watch. The only problem comes near the end which takes a little too much away from Byron and then gives it back a little too easily.

Grade: B

 Songs From The Second Floor

    It would be pointless to try and explain this movie, as I'm not sure I understood it myself. This much I do know: in the opening scene, we find out that a local corporation isn't doing so well and may have to close. What follows are a series of vignettes with very little in the way of connecting threads about, I think, this small town losing it's collective mind in the face of this adversity.
    Some of the nuttiness: a discussion between a shop owner and an insurance investigator which grows increasingly louder as a group of businessmen walk down the street outside whipping one another, or the inexplicable perpetual traffic jam, or the high ceremony of sacrificing a girl as a cliffside full of dignitaries looks on, or the man who wrote poems until it drove him into an unspeaking madness, or...you get the picture.
    This movie was impossible to understand, yet strangely fascinating in the (dark? satirical? deadpan? gentle?) humor that permeated almost every scene.

Grade: B+

 Punch Drunk Love

    I see that Punch Drunk Love cracked the top ten in box office receipts last week. It kills me to be such a stuck up prick, but there is a part of me that smiles knowing that there were a whole bunch of people who went to see the "new Adam Sandler movie", not realizing it wasn't the "new Adam Sandler movie" rather the "new Paul Thomas Anderson movie". I can imagine any number of people walking out saying "Man! That movie sucked!" If this movie accomplished nothing else, it made people rendered brain dead by mass marketed crap see a good movie, even if they didn't recognize that it was a good movie. You've got to start somewhere.
    Could I sound like any more of an asshole?
    Barry Egan (Adam Sandler) is a shy guy with a bit of a temper problem, which probably stems from his seven sisters ganging up and henpecking him all his life. He's the kind of guy who holds it all in until someone hits a sore spot (like the story of how the sisters called him "gay boy") and all of a sudden he's punching out a sliding glass door.
    Two women come into his life. One, a shady phone sex operator who Barry calls one night just looking for someone to talk to, starts calling him back demanding money. A war erupts when he cancels his credit card and the owner of the phone sex line (Phillip Seymour Hoffman) sends some goons out to extract the cash. He thinks Barry's just another pathetic guy too ashamed to call the police or stand up for himself, and for awhile, he's right.
    The other is Lena (Emily Watson), a coworker of one of Barry's sisters. The two hit it off immediately. Soon, Barry is planning to fly off to Hawaii to meet her on a business trip using free miles from a poorly thought through American Airlines / Healthy Choice promotion. But still that rage is there, culminating in a scene where the two plot lines meet.
    This isn't PT Anderson's best work, plop me down in front of Boogie Nights or Magnolia any day, but this is certainly a strong effort. He takes Adam Sandler and not only reigns him in, but gets him to tap into what, judging by the movie, must be a considerable inner rage. The scary part is that it doesn't seem like all that much of a stretch for Sandler. He's still the same goofy, trying to be likable guy from his other work, but you kind of get the sense that he identified with the script.

Grade: A-

 Frida

    Word is that Selma Hayek lobbied for years to get this picture, a biopic of Mexican painter Frida Kahlo, made. And in a way, you can tell. It has a feel to it where it seems like everyone is having a lot of fun making something that they think is Very Important.
    Hayek is a good choice for the lead. She gives her Kahlo a fire that makes the character come alive, but for some reason, she doesn't sell herself to the role completely. Yes, you're watching someone trying to faithfully be Frida, but you're also watching someone very conscious of the fact that she is an attractive Hollywood actress. The real Kahlo was in almost constant pain from a number of medical problems, but the screen Kahlo barely hints at that, other than in scenes about her problems. Most of the time, you're looking at a glamorous supermodel type on the screen. In one particularly noticeable scene where she beds her husband, painter Diego Rivera (Alfred Molina), the camera pans down her tight, concave abdomen that probably doesn't have an ounce of fat on it.
    The other thing about star driven projects is that all the star's friends show up to take a small cameo role. Now I don't know for sure how the big names were cast, they seem like a pretty diverse bunch, but it seems unlikely that you'd get Edward Norton, Antonio Banderas, Ashley Judd, Didi Conn (Of Grease fame - had to slip that one it), and Geoffrey Rush all together on a project otherwise. The cameos run the gamut, Norton makes a good Nelson Rockefeller, Rush is borderline laughable as Leon Trotsky.
    For a project like this, the script needed to be much better than it was. The story was a greatest hits kind of affair, jumping from one big event to the next. It was hard to gauge what everyday life was like for her because we are never shown. The dialogue was particularly bad, full of platitudes worthy of a network television movie of the week.
    This was an idea with mountains of potential, much of which was wasted.

Grade: C+

Obligatoy Jeff's Movie Glossary Entry:  Begining With The End

 Roger Dodger

    Here's one from the I-thought-he-was-dead file, Campbell Scott plays Roger Swanson, a man in love with himself and so sure of his complete knowledge of women that he'll be more than happy to talk your ear off about it for awhile. It's not funny, Seinfeldian, funny stuff in the medicine cabinet theorizing he does, it is brutal, us versus them strategizing.
    His massive ego takes a hit when his boss and current flame Joyce (Isabella Rossellini) breaks it off. The timing is fortunate, then, when his sixteen year old nephew Nick (Jesse Eisenberg) shows up out of the blue asking for advice about women. Nick's natural reaction? Take the kid out to the bars to get him some action. As the evening goes on, Roger's ap becomes sadder, eventually to the point where you kind of pity this lonely guy, while Nick has learned all sorts of life lessons, not necessarily the ones Roger was teaching.

Grade: B+

 Tully

    Tully, like the earlier and slightly better Swimming is one of those movies light on plot. It takes its time and slowly meanders through the lives of characters, letting us get to know them. Here we meet the Coates family who are Nebraska farmers. Tully (Anson Mount) could have any girl in town he wants, which makes Ella Smalley's (Julianne Nicholson) resistance all the more intriguing. His brother Earl (Glenn Fitzgerald) lives in his shadow. Father Tully Sr. (Bob Burrus) has a secret.
    It is refreshing to go to a movie and not be bombarded. It's a shame a movie like this could never find a wide audience, most moviegoers lack the patience a movie like this demands.

Grade: A-

 Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets

    The comparison is inevitable, two popular series of books made books made into high budget spectacles and coming out within a month of one another. Peter Jackson hit a home run from the first frame with his The Lord Of The Rings: The Fellowship Of The Ring, Chris Columbus delivered a somewhat pedestrian, tentative Harry Potter And The Sorcerer's Stone. Now, one year later we go through it all again as Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets comes out one month before Lord Of The Rings: The Two Towers. Peter Jackson has set himself a high standard to live up to, Chris Columbus left himself room for improvement.
    And improve he does. One of my biggest (albeit minor) complaints with Sorcerer's Stone was the somewhat flat effects, from some embarrassing monsters to the unimpressive quidditch match. This time around, it seems like a few more dollars were spent.
    Or maybe everyone involved is just a little more comfortable. Everything, the direction, the effects, the acting, seems a little more effortless. Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, and Emma Watson have melded as quite the team. Too bad they're only signed through the next movie.
    But as with the first movie, the second suffers from the density of J.K. Rowling's source material. The Harry Potter books have so much going on in terms of story and character development that, even at two hours and forty minutes, some events seem glossed over, some backstory unfilled, and some characters unused or underused, maybe leaving those who haven't read the books a little fuzzy on a few points.

Grade: B+

 Femme Fatale

    Brian DePalma shot this film in such a fetishistically stylized way that it was as if he was under the impression that endless tricky camera moves, close ups of nothing of interests, and lurid shots of his lead Rebecca Romijn-Stamos (and her ever changing accents) would distract the viewer from the fact that the rest of the movie has an idiot plot, borderline acting, and an ending so stupid I had to check if I was asleep and just dreaming.
    Laure (Stamos) is part of a team planning to steal a ten million dollar diamond outfit during a screening at the Cannes Film Festival. Things go wrong, there's some double crossing, and Laure is on the run with the goods. She needs to disappear. Lucky for her, she is mistaken for a woman who is her exact double and who is about to kill herself. Insta-new identity. Cut forward eight years, and Laure, now Lily, the wife of an American ambassador, ensnares photographer Nicolas Bardo (Antonio Banderas) into her web and uses him to try and help steal ten million dollas from her husband. More super-stylized, crafted for no reason other than to be crafted filmmaking happens as things steadily get worse for Lily and Nicolas.
    I was willing to go and sit through the end of the movie, content to give it a D. Then the ending happened. Turns out it was all a dream, a vision of things as they might be. Apologists for the film will point out that this particular ending was foreshadowed early in the movie, as if that makes it ok.

Grade: F

 Half Past Dead

    Man has Steven Segal let himself go. I think part of the reason that Half Past Dead had so many shoot outs and so few fighting scenes is that they could only hide his growing bulk and inability to do what he used to do for only so long.
    Bad guys take over New Alcatraz, a super high tech prison. It's a good thing that Sascha Petrosevitch (Segal) is an FBI agent there on deep cover, otherwise the bad guys might have won.
    The only thing that could have saved this movie was if he were only allowed the line "I'm just a cook" as dialogue. Then the laughs would have been intentional.

Grade: D

 El Crimen Del Padre Amaro

    The tagline for this Mexican film states that this is "One of the most controversial films ever made". I don't know about that. Although, in a religious country like Mexico, I'm sure that showing a bunch of priests with faults may be controversial.
    Father Amaro (Gael García Bernal) has been sent into a small town by the Bishop to be has snitch, and for good reason. Father Benito (Sancho Gracia) is building a clinic with laundered drug money, Father Natalio (Damián Alcázar) is aiding the local guerrillas, and Father Galvan (Roger Nevares) seems to be a little on the flamboyant side. The message seems to be that out here in the middle of nowhere, results are what counts, and the odd immorality should be overlooked. Of course, being a morality play, Amaro has his own indiscretion with the daughter of a local shopkeeper.
    It's a well acted movie. Bernal seems to be in most of the very good Mexican movies (Amores Perros, Y Tu Mama Tambien - the kid's got a good agent). The ending was kind of predictable and owed quite a bit to soap opera.

Grade: B

 Die Another Day

    Here's my theory: Die Another Day is a parody. It is capitulation. It is the producers seeing the success of the Austin Powers franchise, and franchises that skewer other genres (the Screams, the Scary Movies, etc.) and deciding to give in. But since this is an inside job, they can make a real, honest to goodness James Bond film and still be funny.
    It's a standard Bond plot. Bad Guy wants to control the world through use of a satellite that turns the sun's energy into a big energy laser beam. Blah blah blah.
    Here's what you do. Go see the movie, and come back and read my supporting evidence, as I'm about to give away most of the movie.

Why it is a parody:
-The film starts with three lone figures, surfing forty foot waves off of the North Korean coast in order to slip in undetected.
    One removes his mask and we see that this master surfer is Bond.
-After his cover is blown, a land based hovercraft chase/gunfight begins.
-Bond is caught and tortured for fifteen months. Nothing blows the image like seeing a disheveled Pierce Brosnan.
-Upon release, he goes to Cuba. Asking for a "fast car" he is outfitted with a vintage Thunderbird.
-He has competition in Jinx (Halle Berry), an American agent. At one point, Bond stands out in the open, gun in hand, as the
    bad guy security force completely ignores him and shoots at her.
-The line "Bond. James Bond" appears in almost every scene. Apropos of nothing, random characters will ask "Who are you?"
-There's a sword fight. Yes, a sword fight.
-His gadget this time around: an invisible car.
-The two big stunt pieces that close the film. In one, people fight aboard the burning fuselage of a jet which manages to stay
    air worthy for a good ten minutes. In the other, Bond finds himself dangling off the edge of a collapsing glacier in a rocket
    car. He takes the parachute and parasails to safety on the tidal wave.

Grade (assuming I'm right): A-

    Solaris

    So this is how Steven Soderbergh flexes his Hollywood muscle? He takes a somewhat obscure thirty year old movie and remakes it? Is he trying to tell us he's got the pull to do whatever the hell he wants?
    Chris Kelvin (George Clooney) is summoned to a space station studying the planet Solaris by a mysterious message from a colleague (...something wonderful...?). Arriving, he finds half the crew dead or missing, and two alive, unhinged ones. Soon, his dead wife shows up. Intercut with his inner struggle to accept the fact that this isn't his wife, rather the planet reaching into his head and creating her from his memories are flashbacks of their life together, from meeting until her overdose.
    Solaris is well made, you have to give it that, but there is a major disconnect between the critic and the audience. It is arty, beautifully directed, subtly acted, and boring as all hell. It's a plodding, ponderous affair as Clooney struggles with deep questions in the present and the relationship slowly falls apart in the past. And for all the effort the audience needs to invest, there isn't even a satisfying conclusion. The one crucial question that seems to be the point of the story (namely, why is the planet doing this?) is never answered.

Grade: C+