Saving Mr. Banks

"Just Because It's Fiction Doesn't Make it a Lie"*
or
"Cavorting, Twinkling, and Prancing to a Happy Ending Like a Kamikaze"

Mary Poppins was a bitch.  That's been my joke for a long time, especially given the reputation that Disney's film of Mary Poppins (this year voted to the National Film Registry) has of being just as sugar-gooey as cotton candy in an Orange County heat wave.  It isn't.  And I've gotten several startled looks from adults who then see the film and, yes, they do see that aspect of it, despite the step-in-timing chimney-sweeps, the dancing penguins, and the moments of larkiness. It's not all a jolly 'oliday with Mary. In the end, it's a little bittersweet, and she ascends into a Peter Ellenshaw matte painting of London that isn't dabbled in sunlight, but is a melancholy smearing of smoke and darkening skies.

That's probably due more to Travers' own stipulations to the Disney crew than to anything.  Disney could be dark—dinosaurs died and there was "Night on Bald Mountain" in Fantasia, Pinocchio had its moments jack-assery and Monstro swallowing, Bambi's mother died, and 101 Dalmations almost got skinned—and provided moments of terror and threat in its films, as long as everything turned out all right as the final song paraded people up the aisles. But, Mary Poppins would have been a slightly different movie if it hadn't been for Travers' nannying the scripters and Disney with her chalk-lines drawn in the sand.  For that, we should be grateful.

Maybe less so for Saving Mr. Banks, the Disneyfication of the Disneyfication of "Mary Poppins."  It's "based on a true story," which means (as Blake Edwards coined the phrase) it's "true except for a lie or two," and in the western parlance of John Ford, "when the truth becomes legend, print the legend."  They couldn't have made this movie without Disney and "the Disney version," so, obviously the filmmakers are going to take a charitable stand on the studio's side of things (for example, Richard Sherman, who's played by Jason Schwartzman in the film, says that, rather than, as in the film, taking a personal approach when Travers came to work with the film-makers, Disney took off for Palm Springs and didn't come back until she left).  But, the more you find out about P.L. Travers (her nom de plume), the more you realize that they're taking the edges off her, as well.  Travers was a fantasist, and her largest work was the construction of her life, ever-changing, malleable, inconsistent and to her specifications as the mood and the myth suited her. "Mary Poppins" suited her just fine, and her demands for what was and was not acceptable are well documented in the many scripts versions filled with the word "No" in the margins, and the audio tape of the back-and-forth's between her and the scripters and song-writing team (which she insisted on, and which is played as coda over the end-credits).  Emma Thompson, who listened to them all in her preparation for the role, called her "vile."**

"Two artists at the height of their powers-like two gorillas fighting:"*** 
A study in contrasts between Disney (Hanks) and Travers (Thompson)

Fascinating, complicated, but vile in the instance.  And understandable in her concerns for what she considered "family," and that is where the film is at its most charitable and lovely.  Where Saving Mr. Banks shines is in the film's presentation of Travers' carefully hidden back-story, of her growing up in Australia to a charming, but erratic alcoholic father (played by Colin Farrell...think about that, Colin Farrell in a Disney movie), a frail mother (Ruth Wilson), and a precariousness to the family that, until her father is demoted from his bank managership, she had not previously known existed.  The movie goes back and forth between the disappointing assaults on her stipulations at Disney and her memories, some of which inspired the work she fights so egregiously to defend.  Meanwhile, Disney (Tom Hanks, who pushes "folksy" mighty hard to play a role almost too familiar to play), with theme parks to build and other movies in the pipeline, is left vexed and perplexed that the "Disney magic" isn't working at all well on "Pamela."

How could it?  I remember one writer describing the movie adaptation business for one of his works as "holding the coat for the man who's assaulting your child."  Disdainful of animation and films in general and Disney's work in particular, the movie's Travers reluctantly comes to Hollywood, where she is inundated by welcoming gifts in the form of "all things Mickey" in her hotel room to the point where she feels under siege. Any pleasantries are seen with suspicion for agendas, hidden.  And for the Disney dwarves, the task is mining anthracite because they're playing to a vision of Travers from her books, but not from her history and will always come up short until they know the origin story...which she'll never tell.  

The process, by which the movie-makers back-and-forth to keep the starched corners of the character, and the tone from being perpetually giddy, would be long and tedious to sit in a movie, and so compromises have to be made. Let's just say things didn't happen the way they happen in the movie—there was no meeting of the minds and no sharing of histories; Disney was a businessman and entrepreneur who knew a good thing when his daughters saw it and Travers wanted to keep her house.  Battles were chosen; compromises were made...in Mary Poppins and Saving Mr. Banks.  That same give and take, that same grace under fire, to produce the best work regardless of the truth, permeates both films in their way.  The truth is just one more hurdle to a good story.

So, one can gripe—although Thompson is the very definition of "practically perfect in every way" here and should cause no consternation—but if one does, they're being a little bit intransigent and dealing with their own "issues," reflecting, again, the issues of the film.  It's a film that ultimately charms.  Anyone immune to it can, as everyone on both sides of the conundrum seemed to agree, "go fly a kite."

Saving Mr. Banks is a Matinee.  I'm not so sure I'd take the kids.

Julie Andrews, Uncle Walt, and Dr. Travers on best behavior

* P.L. Travers

** In one of those perfect symmetry moments, Thompson, in her satiric acceptance speech winning the Golden Globe for her adaptation of Jane Austen's "Sense and Sensibility" imagined Austen's own disregard for her just-awarded work: "P.S. Managed to avoid the hoiden, Emily Thompkinson, who has purloined my creation and added things of her own. Nefarious creature."

*** Thompson, in an interview, describing why she was drawn to the script and the story.  

12 Years a Slave

Amazing...and in No Good Way
or
"My Sentimentality Runs the Length of a Coin"

I've been avoiding seeing 12 Years a Slave, despite a deep interest in it.  It's one of those film  that, despite the buzz, nobody goes too far into specifics, and only talking in general terms of the experience.  I like the kinds of films that are special enough that the critic community (such as it is) comes together to not spoil it for anybody else, dilute the experience.  

Also, I hadn't seen Steve McQueen's other films (Hunger and Shame), but knew he was considered an interesting, if brutal, voice (and eye), a bold film-maker, but with no editorial bent, except in the canniest scrupulousness. He's not an artist who intends to tell you how to feel, but instead just wants you to feel it—by any means necessary, within the film-making form.

I also wanted to see it, as "The Movies" have had a very poor record of showing slavery as a subject, often treating it as a benign necessity in its past, informing the fabric of our entertainment and our lives, or social-memory, as such.  Part of a film's potential audience has always been housed in The South, and as that section has lagged in its views towards minorities, Hollywood, unless there was a dime in it, would choose not to risk offending its patrons, and so, would, instead, pander, even to the bigot.  Think on this: when only two mainstream movies—Amistad and (ugh!) Django Unchained have taken slavery head on, that is a shameful record.  Even Mel Brooks' Blazing Saddles might be considered more courageous than the whole gamut of Hollywood films. 

The whole story of this film is one that makes you shake your head and say "why has no one thought of this?"*  "12 years a Slave" had been one of the best-selling books of its day—that being 1853—and became known, along with "Uncle Tom's Cabin," due to its inflaming the abolitionist movement of "starting the Civil War."  After 1865, it fell into obscurity until scholars in Louisiana began doing research on it in the 1960's and published an annotated version in 1968.  

My reaction to it is pretty much what I expected—I was devastated.

I would have been disappointed by anything less.

McQueen starts 12 Years... in an odd place in the story-line—about half-way through, at a time when the free man Solomon Northrup (Chiwetel Ejiafor, one of my favorites), now known as the slave Pratt, is working Louisiana cane-fields for a Judge for a season, while his owner Edwin Epps (Michael Fassbender) is having a contagion of cotton weevil destroy his crop.  McQueen introduces us to the environment by moving his camera forward into the work area through the foliage—long, thin leaves that seem to last forever and never move out of the camera's way.  Then, at night, sleeping on a bare floor, the woman next to him guides his hand to her, and when finished, turns away. Northup does the same, and when he does, all but leaves the frame.

At that point, Northup, when observing his paltry dinner pan and the berry juice that runs on it, decides to whittle a stick, use the juice as ink and tries to write a letter to anyone in the North who might help with his situation. The process is frustrating, and it is then and only then, that McQueen goes back to the beginning of the story, of how Northup, born free and a violinist by trade in Washington D.C., is tricked into his situation, sold into slavery in Louisiana, his family away to not notice his kidnapping, and his series of houses to which he is sold.

Interesting structure on McQueen's part.  Northup endures all kinds of hardships, both physical and mental, his only thought to get back to his family, but it is only at the time when he feels he might betray his family, does he take real action to get out.  Oh, he tries to run away a couple times, but if he gets caught, he is very aware that he will be hung, no questions asked, and at one point, he very nearly is, in an excruciating sequence that seems to last forever.  Northup hangs, at the instigation of a man he's beaten (Paul Dano) in a rage, and is saved from being killed, but just barely—the noose tight around his neck, his feet tentatively on soft, unsure ground, his toes barely giving him purchase—while around him, life goes on, the other slaves work, taking no action lest they be punished, and he hangs, his life literally in the balance.

It's an incredible sequence, done in long uninterrupted takes, like many of the episodes of cruelty and torture dramatized in the film, that illustrate, very vividly, the absence of any hope in the life of a slave, of the system of property that was imposed on living, thinking human beings, and the thin thread that constituted the difference between survival and the grave.   It's a world devoid of charity, of any stripe, and belies any claims to the label of civilization.  This is done so well that even a long shot of Northup just looking out around him, that comes deep in the film, with only the sounds of the birds, winds and insects in the background still imposes a feeling of dread, the expectation that the normal will explode in the next second and end you.

It's amazing work, done in ways both screaming and subtle, but makes those moments of quiet anything but peaceful.  There's a lot of 12 Years a Slave seared into my head.   It will surely win a lot of awards, but hopefully won't be forgotten once the gold is exchanged.

12 Years a Slave is a Full-Price Ticket.

A shot of about a minute of Ejiafor's Northup in contemplation may seem a respite
but is a cautionary one as the natural sounds might be predatory.

* And they have.  "12 Years a Slave" was known enough from the renewed interest in the '60's that in 1996, PBS aired a film by Gordon Parks entitled "Solomon Northup's Odyssey" starring Avery Brooks, deep in his "Deep Space Nine" run.

The Ides of March

"'The Situation' in The Situation Room"
or
"A Little Problem with the DnC"

The bobble-head version of George Clooney is back in The Ides of March, the new film directed by...George Clooney.  You remember the bobble-head Clooney, don't you?  It was the loosey-goosey version of the actor that was popular during his "ER" days, a combination of looseness and arrogance, and it made up his persona in his early film career, before the time he decided that he'd get serious about his career after the debacle of Batman & Robin.

Well, that wobble of the head returns in Ides, adapted from the play by Beau Willimon (by Willimon, Clooney and Grant Heslov) called "Farragut North."  I've always seen that wobble as an indication that whichever character he played with it had a lack of moral rectitude, an imperfection of the spine or sensibility that disconnected the head from the rest of the persona—a flaw that lent unpredictability to what actions they'd take, a toss of the head like a toss of the coin.  And it is one of the ways that Clooney telegraphs what his Governor Mike Morris, candidate for President on the democratic ticket, might be capable of.  It keeps you guessing, whatever the words from his mouth might indicate, about the actions this man might take in his run for power.

It is tough to express surprise at the roads political films—or films about politics—might take these days.  It's all about disenchantment with the process and how power—or even the quest for it—corrupts.  It's an old saw that goes back long before Shakespeare and back to The Greeks.  And very few films—or plays—about the Court of Kings, fact or fictional,  can look clear-eyed at the process, thinking that ideals might remain intact.  Even Mr. Smith Goes to Washington deals with the innate corruption of government and pleads for a clinging to of ideals from our public servants...or even an acknowledgment that they are servants, rather than our Masters.  What was nice about things like "The West Wing" was that, despite the maneuverings, manipulations and moral morasses that went with the job, public service was declared an altruistic aspiration, a noble thing, however down and dirty things got to accomplish anything.  Most, though, like The Candidate or All the Kings Men (any version) have it as a "given" that compromise of purpose, process and principles are par for the course, that it is next to impossible to determine the true measure of a political man.  The only variable is how corrupt that man (it's usually a man, and white) can be.  Post-Watergate and The Lewinsky Affair, even a film like Absolute Power assumes, without doubt, that The President of the United States is capable of the most craven of murders.  The Ides of March doesn't swerve from that cynicism.

The film begins with Morris' Head of Communications, Stephen Myers (the ubiquitous Ryan Gosling—if his Drive performance is a "1" and Crazy, Stupid Love is a "10," in dramatics, this is is an average "5") approaching a microphone, coming slowly into focus, a process that is completed when he is at the podium—the shot will be mirrored later in the show.  He begins to slap-dashedly spew homilies about his religion, and then the speech deteriorates into babble.  Not that it is important, he is merely a stand-in, checking a microphone for his candidate at a technical rehearsal for a televised debate.  It would pass without much notice, except at the real debate, Morris uses the same lines words for words defending his lack of religion when challenged on the point.  It is clear, at that point, that Myers is Morris' surrogate, putting words in his mouth, articulating the governor's message, packaging the man to appeal to the lowest common denominator and the highest number of registered voters.  

The campaign manager is Paul Zara (Philip Seymour Hoffman), a jaded veteran of the political trenches, spinning, manipulating and point-man for acquiring the parties' nomination a few months down the road.  Zara is the Big Picture Packager, Myers is Dr. Details.  On the other side is campaign manager Tom Duffy, who is played by Paul Giamatti—and let me just say what a pleasure it is to see Hoffman and Giamatti, two of the best character-spinners in movies today going up against each other.  It is a match made in Political Purgatory.

Before too much gets underway, Clooney introduces another character in a shot that tracks her movements, flouncing, buffed, polished and toned, towards campaign HQ: this is Molly Stearns, intern (Evan Rachel Wood) and just the way Clooney introduces her puts you on alert that she is important to the drama, far more than her job of bringing coffee would indicate. Wood is a fine actress, and as with Down in the Valley, she's able to convey twin faces of innocence and corruption, the theme of the film at which she is the fulcrum. Already one sees where things are going, but one wonders if Clooney has the directing chops to make it fresh.

He does...kinda.  There are nice little touches of how the film seems to bifurcate into twin halves reflecting each other,* the actors make the dialog snap and there's just enough "play" in the film to keep you guessing about what is "real" or political theater. And there's one scene that's shot very simply—a tension-inducing pull-in to a black van that makes you suspect the worse (which, for some it might be) that is rather nifty.

Ultimately, though, as well as the film is presented and played, it is not telling us anything we don't already know...or fear...that hasn't been said for the last 60 years, when, post-Eisenhower and the star-struck Kennedy years, we ditched the notion that politicians are concerned with the People, rather than their prestige and perks.  The Ides of March has no spine of its own to speak of and brings us nothing new, offering no solution (not even providing dramatic satisfaction)...but merely more of the same, just like every election season.

The Ides of March is a Rental.

* Clooney did a good interview with Charlie Rose about the film—Rose has a cameo for verisimilitude, as do a few other familiar talking heads—in which he said "The first half of the film is for democrats and the second half is for republicans." Exactly right.

Win Win

"Do Whatever the F*@# You Have To..."
or
"If You Can Read This, You Are Pinned"

The only member of the Flaherty family, who doesn't greet the latest mini-tragedy with an "Oh, Shit" is the baby, and that's only because she's pre-verbal (It might even become her first word).

Michael Flaherty (Paul Giamatti) is a half-hearted New Jersey attorney whose practice isn't perfect by any stretch, and who's probably never set foot in a court-room, and has a clientele with one foot in the grave.  He also coaches the high school's losing wrestling team of mis-fits.  He's starting to have panic attacks any time someone mentions money, and he is so stressed out that he makes one compromise that will haunt him: he sign himself as the caretaker for one of his clients, then pockets the $1500 a month check so he won't lose his practice.  For that, he moves his lightly-demented client (Burt Young) into a care facility and lets the professionals do his job.

As if it was that easy.  The reason Leo needs a care-taker is his only relative, his daughter (Melanie Lynskey), is in rehab, trying to straighten out, and her son, Kyle (Alex Shaffer), set adrift, making his way to Jersey to check up on the only family he has. Kyle is a string-bean, a good wrestler, speaks in "that" teen monotone that every parent knows and can't duplicate, and has had to cope on his own for so long that he is pretty good at everything.  In order to keep his embezzling from Kyle, Michael takes him into his household, enrolling him in school, and getting him onto the wrestling team.

And everything changes.  Spurred on and inspired by Kyle, the team starts to win—the kid's "go-for-broke" attitude becoming contagious, forcing all in his path to be less cautious, or, at least willing to do "as little as possible," setting up a moral ambiguity about how can live with things going right for doing wrong.

Tom McCarthy wrote and directed Win Win, and like his previous films The Visitor and The Station Agent (he also wrote the story for Pixar's Up), this one is just as quirky and deeply delivered.  The whole thing has an awkward rhythm and comic timing that keeps one off-guard, while all the way rewarding with some genuine laugh-out-loud moments, and keeps one guessing what could possibly happen next.  Yet, the people in the frame feel recognizable in their routines and quiet desperations and McCarthy has judiciously cast it with not entirely attractive character actors who mine it all for what it is worth (which in considerable).  Giamatti is particularly relaxed in this, his brow furrowed, not with its regular actorly intensity, but with a low-level worried cogitation that underlines his every move.  It's one of those rare movies where everybody is note-perfect, including Young, who hasn't been this subtle in years, Jeffrey Tambor, Amy Ryan (playing a decent steadying influence for once—you love her), and Bobby Cannavale, as the guy who manages (innocently) to do the wrong things at the right time.  Even the kids, in their gawky, proto-human ways, "feel" right in their every move, artless, unstudied.  You like this community even when individual actions take you aback and surprise you.  It's one of those heartening spectacles where everybody, characters and artisans alike, are doing the best they can. 

Win Win is a Full-Price Ticket.

Duplicity

"All's Fair in Love and War"

After screenwriter Tony Gilroy's powerful directing debut with "Michael Clayton," one looked forward to what the talented triple-threat would come up with next, considering that film's street-smarts, sharp characterizations and deft direction. What we got is "Duplicity" and it's a wisp of a movie, a comedy without laughs, and a drama without weight; a shell-game; much ado about nothing; more in keeping with Gilroy's in-name-only association with the "Ocean's Eleven" series than his better efforts.

As with "Michael Clayton," the playing field is the backrooms of corporate America, where warring CEO's protect their fiefdoms from interlopers and pitch pre-emptive strikes to keep them at bay. Their knights: a string of white-ops intelligence teams who spy on the competition, using the techniques once used in political battle-fields. That back-drop is nothing new: John le Carré's been using the "corporate espionage is every bit as sordid as political espionage" gambit in his works since the fall of Russia. le Carré even went so far as to suppose spy agencies ginning up threats to justify their budgets and existence, just as they do in the business world. Need a purchase order? Create a threat, and the money rolls right in.

Gilroy sets the tone early by beginning his film with a lo-mo credit crawl where Corporate heads Tom Wilkinson and Paul Giamatti grapple at each other like pawing animals in a zoo. The silliness of these two going at each other in artfully composed tableau should be funnier than it is, but the whole thing feels like such a surreal con that you don't buy it for a second. Hence, the stakes in the story seem minor, even the McGuffin* is tame, as the two adversaries are pharmaceutical companies. In the middle of it are two ex-spies Ray Koval (Clive Owen, nattily rumpled) and Claire Stenwick (Julia Roberts), who know each other only too well, she having stolen some Air Force secrets from him during a one-night stand at a Dubai fete years ago.** The encounter stings Koval, and now, years later, he's realizing that Stenwick is the Player on the Other Side in their current Corporate Wars. It's an interesting study of two people so locked in strategic thought that they might drown standing in quick-sand, so pre-occupied are they with motivation and nuance and who might try to move first. Interesting, but not always entertaining. At times, the mind-games approach "Get Smart!" absurdities, as both sides play the "I'm thinking they're thinking I'm thinking that they're thinking" game. A little of that goes a long way, especially if the protagonists don't have a smile on their faces when they're saying it. And the humor is only of the clever variety in "Duplicity," not particularly the amusing kind.

Still, it's one of those movies that travels well: to Rome, New York, London and the Bahamas, the costumes are fine, but the whole thing has all the zing of champagne left open overnight (composer James Newton Howard tries to add some zip by tossing in some Spanish dance music). It all seems too familiar and a bit too flat.

"Duplicity" is a cable-watcher.

* After Hitchcock's name for "the secret" that parties try to retrieve in a suspense film, usually it doesn't matter what it is—after the story of the man who inquired to another man what was in his suitcase: "It's a McGuffin, for trapping lions in the Scottish Highlands." "But there aren't any lions in the Scottish Highlands!" "Then, that's no McGuffin!"

** This also seems overly familiar with "Prizzi's Honor," "Undercover Blues," and "Mr. & Mrs. Smith" as previous warring spy-couple films.

John Adams

"John Adams" (Tom Hooper, 2008) Tom Hanks' Play-Tone Productions' latest mini-series (after "From the Earth to the Moon" and "Band of Brothers"--both highly recommended) continues with another dissection of an epic topic based on a fine book, this time David McCullough's best-selling biography on John Adams. Adams' life is so full of incident and character that even if he weren't a pedantic, obnoxious little prat, it'd be worth watching. But that Adams is brilliant and his own worst enemy makes for an intriguing series of episodes, as Adams work in Revolutionary America, his stint as an ambassador to France, rubbing Ben Franklin (Tom Wikinson, perpetually peering) the wrong way, and his ambitions towards the Presidency, and then, his post-Presidential trials all make for fine drama (they certainly did back in the day of "The Adams Chronicles"). That John and Abigail are played by Paul Giamatti and Laura Linney, both with an eye towards flintiness only raises the bar of expectation, and their performances are fun to watch. It's history written down-to-earth, so you get to see "The Shot Heard 'Round the World" (it's aftermath, anyway). You get to watch Franklin and Adams editing a somewhat diffident Thomas Jefferson (Stephen Dillane) over The Declaration of Independence (Franklin changes the "We hold these truths to be" from "sacred and undeniable" for "self-evident" as the former "smacks of the pulpit."). We see Franklin as the toast of Paree, George Washington's inaugural (David Morse plays Washington as a quiet, resolute stiff who is only seen angry once, chewing out Alexander Hamilton and Jefferson for their constant bickering).

We also get a hint of life in those times: the sense of how long it took to get anywhere, we see a rather disgusting treatment for pox, and a horrific one for breast-cancer, and how, even in those days of the Nation in its infancy, it was still tough to get things done.

But, there are annoyances. Do we need to see John and Abigail snogging? If you think seeing your parents have sex creeps you out, John Adams humping (geez, even just Giamatti humping) really does.

Then, there's the direction. Tom Hooper's way of shooting at odd angles sometimes can be explained away by architecture, for instance, this shot (used a few times) of a Philadelphia street lets us see the top of the building at upper right:
But, that doesn't explain the "dutch angle" used for this shot of a theater.


You could say that this angle of Adams as Vice-President sitting before Congress, shows him as forceful, or as a man alone and resolute (or, that just in front of him is an anachronistic bit of room-design), but it's a bit clunky and makes you want to look to the right of the television, rather than the figure of Adams, himself...

...but what of this awkward angle for a discussion between Abigail and John that is a bit heated, but, really, is so distracting that you lose the train of what they're discussing.
Glad they filmed this "letter-boxed." I'd have hated to miss any of the blank wall on the sides of that shot. Then there's this angle on Thomas Jefferson sitting in a public house, photographed--for no good reason--through the slats in the backs of the chairs.
The direction is too fusty, too "do-something-different" for its own good, as in the staging of a dinner party held in a tent. How does Hooper approach the scene? How do we enter it? Through the hole in the top of the tent. It's maddeningly confusing, and serves no purpose other than to prove that they had a crane that day to do it. That's swell, but when the result of the shot is disorientation, rather than communication (when disorientation isn't the point of the scene), what's the bloody point? It's needlessly arty. It's nice for a director to showcase his work, but one should tell the story first, rather than pad his "reel" for the next job.

In the meantime, History is passing us by.

The last hour is harrowing, with his days as President behind him, with the Jefferson administration a burr in his side (as Jefferson and he have become feuding politicians), and the vagaries of age and dissipation affecting his entire family, but there is the wonderful compensation of the dramatised segment of Adams and Jefferson, aged men, mending fences in a series of letters that are some of the most celebrated in literature, politics and civics.

And it ends, as it should, with the little bit of a miracle that put a touching finale to their life-work, the type of thing that if it were written as fiction, no one would believe it: the cosmic appropriateness of both men, friends and rivals, then, again, friends, dying on the very same day--July 4th, fifty years after the Declaration of Independence, and 182 years ago, today.

American Splendor

"American Splendor" (Shari Springer Berman, Robert Pulcini, 2003) There's a lot of debate among graphic connoisseurs (comic-book fans) about which of the glut of "spandex movies" have captured the "essence" of its three-color source. 

It's a puzzler, because the media communicate differently. Comics create a story-telling flow through still images--the reader must fill in the gaps* and that covers a lot of story-telling problems and physical impossibilities that films, if they are to represent reality, have to compromise. The geeks argue the "Spider-man" films are a good representative of the comic, but it takes more than re-creating iconic poses. There are those in my circle who consider the first "Hellboy" film to closely follow its graphic predecessor, and it does to a degree, though the insertion of an unlikely "Beauty and the Beast" romance is more in line with Hollywood sensibilities than Mike Mignola's. For a more literal translation of a comic source Robert Rodriguez took Frank Miller's "Sin City" black and white minimalist post-card approach and used it as a storyboard for his film--which exposed the heavy-breathing hyper-silliness of the source material.

The movie I'd vote for? Well, obviously "American Splendor" --the story of schlubby guy Harvey Pekar who chronicles his sorry-ass life in a comic book that he writes and is drawn by various illustrators, achieving something like a mosaic effect, much as the movie does. It (the movie) is, mostly dramatized--Paul Giamatti plays Pekar, and it was his break-out role--but sometimes illustrated, animated, and the real Harvey even pops on to give a dose of reality. In form and content, the film becomes the comic while not straying away from movie "fundamentals" of pace and movement, while also incorporating graphic techniques to give a sense of the book's "style." Of every "comic" movie I've seen, "American Splendor" gives you a sense of the worth of its source, while not compromising it. It may even, like any good film adaptation, inspire you to seek out the source material.

Lady in the Water

"The Lady in the Water" (M. Night Shyamalan, 2006) Didn't go see this, and didn't want to after the critics called it a stinkeroo. Too bad. This is M. Night Shyamalan abandoning the "Big Surprise at the End" scenario, and going into full "Narnia" myth mode. But "Narnia" for non-believers...and the marginalized. A great cast (Paul Giamatti...but also Jeffrey Wright...and Mary Beth Hurt...and Bill Irwin!), with Shyamalan veering between loopy comedy and "heart on his sleeve" earnestness, it's his loosest job of directing and feels like he's tapping a bit more deeply into his culture and myth-making. It has the feel of a Native American tale of redemption. It's not for everybody and he made mistakes casting himself in it, and making a less-than-likable character a critic (though I think a valid point is made there). But one can see folks going to see an "M. Night Shyamalan movie" and being surprised and disappointed when confronted with this. Personally, I think its a big advance. It's certainly not the failure that the Conventional Wisdom claims it is.

The Illusionist (2008)

"The Illusionist" (Neil Burger, 2006) The other turn-of-the-century "magic" movie (the other being "The Prestige"), and although a much simpler story has a much more artful time in presenting its story. Filmed in the half-light sepia tone of a daguerrotype, it boasts fine performances by Edward Norton (probably the best actor of his generation, although he still rarely generates sympathy) and Paul Giamatti (whose purring formal police captain is far removed from the usual schlubs he plays--the guy has great range). Jessica Biel trades up from her role in the "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" remake, and Rufus Sewell makes a terrifically evil Prince Leopold. Worth seeing.

Fred Claus

Sibling Revelry

I know what you're asking: Is this a Christmas Movie where someone has to SAVE CHRISTMAS and do they?

Short answer: Yes.

Come to think of it, just about every Christmas Movie is about SAVING Christmas. From the Martians, from the Grinch, from Tim Allen, from adults, from the Gubernator, from just about everything, except all the right-wing nutters who really DO think there's a War on Christmas. Excuse me, Xmas.

The "SAVING Christmas" movie is so prevalent, it could be a genre all to itself. As long as you threaten Christmas verbally, physically, psychically or by omission, in the real or fantasy-sense, that's all that's required. How many movies or stop-motion animation specials can you name? Swell, I just came up with dinner-table conversation for this Christmas. And believe me, I looked at this blog's budget, that's all you're getting (I need the lumps of coal to heat the house).

So, in "Fred Claus" it turns out that Clement Moore didn't know a thing about Santa Claus' older, dumber, bitter brother. That's right, the Clauses had another son, who after the birth of little Nicholas, was left parched of his parents' affection. I mean, c'mon, how can you compete against a really cute fat baby whose first words are "Ho Ho?" It doesn't take long before Fred has transitioned from Promising To Be The Best Big Brother In The Whole World to throwing things at the little saint's head.

Fred goes off to the Real World, while Nick becomes an icon with a Factory-town at the North Pole with an indentured population of elves. Guess the North Pole is outside the jurisdiction of fair and best practices law. Anyway, Santa has built up quite the little illegal monopoly up there, plus there's the stress of reading every kid's mail, producing the specifically-requested toys for delivery and then shipping them all in one night on a twelve hour turn-around. Add to that, this year there's an Efficiency Expert (played by Kevin Spacey--when did he stop knowing how to be funny?) prowling around who seems determined to Shut Santa Down, though "Why" and "For Whom" goes unanswered (and the possibilities dance like sugar-plums in my head--China? Wal-Mart?).**

Then, Fred calls out of the blue, wanting to borrow money, and Nick is SUCH a Nicely Overwhelming Holiday Icon that he can't say no. Well, he does attach a rider saying that Fred has to work it off at the North Pole determining who is "NAUGHTY" and who is "NICE" and then condemning the former children to an unhappy Christmas. Despite this, Santa still has the snow-balls to say to his wife "I'm a Saint, sweetheart. Tough love is a little difficult for me!"

Not for me, sweetheart. "Tough" love is the only love this flick will get.

It's all meant to be whimsical, but one walks out wanting to "clock" a bell-ringer. The North Pole seems to have all the charm of a Wal-Mart town, with exactly the same sort of benefit-policy for their work-force. To determine who will be stamped "Naughty" or "Nice" Santa and his pint-sized voyeurs in the "Judgemental" Department have a magic snow-globe that they use to spy on every child's behavior. You think Homeland Security is a threat to privacy--you've never ever thought about peeping Santa. Just the emphasis that Santy sees you when you're sleeping and knows when you're awake (just like the NSA!) is probably not too jolly an idea to bring up during these liberty-crushing times, but "Fred Claus" makes it a key plot-point.

The cast does what it can, in its best "Tim Allen/Chevy Chase-in-overdrive" way, but it all amounts to hanging tinsel on a dead tree. Vaughn pulls off some nicely ad-libbed fast-talk. Paul Giamatti as Santa has a bit more sand to it than you might expect--but you just know the rest of the cast said "Hey, Giamatti's in it--there's gotta be something to this," so you have Rachel Weisz (as "Girl-friend"), Miranda Richardson (as Mrs. Santa), Kathy Bates as "Mom" Claus, all vamping, waiting for the movie to become better. And it doesn't.

Maybe next Christmas, kids.* Maybe instead of saving Christmas, someone should try to save the Christmas Movie.

"Fred Claus" is a cable-watcher, but I have a better time in Mall-traffic.

* Okay, there is one scene that works. Fred decides to go to a support group for "overshadowed" brothers, and among them is Frank Stallone, Roger Clinton, and Billy Baldwin. That scene is genuinely funny, as the 'brothers" gamely mock themselves.

** Doesn't all this turning of childhood fantasy into a corporate metaphor a little creepy? Saving Christmas, Pshaw! How about saving childhood?

Shoot 'Em Up/The Brave One

"Guns Don't Kill People....But It Sure Does Help!"

"The Angriest Man in the World," Mr. Smith is sitting on a street bench in a squalid part of town. He's inrtoduced with a Leone-style close-up of only his eyes. Then, cut to his face. It's Clive Owen in full wide-eyed coma look. He brings a carrot up to his face and loudly crunches into it.

What's Up, Doc?

Well, it's certainly not anybody's IQ.

Next, a very pregnant woman runs past him (shot none too elegantly), followed by a speeding car that noisily and gratuitously slams into another car, trapping the driver. He gets out the passenger door, spewing paper and fast-food bags and garbage out of his car onto the street.

There..right there...maybe two minutes into the film is the only amusing idea in the whole movie. And it was only amusing to me because it reminded me of my car.

But that's it--the only thing I enjoyed in the entire film, no help from director Michael Davis. In the sums-it-up "Shoot 'Em Up," Clive Owen's "Mr. Smith" finds himself charged with protecting a baby, just like "Children of Men," but without all that boring social commentary and stuff. With the help of a lactating prostitute (Monica Belluci, shot through a vaseline-greased lens, and utilizing the time-honored 60's-style "Bad Italian Actress" technique), Smith and child evade Mr. Hertz (a bug-eyed Paul Giamatti, reminding me that it was only a few years ago that he starred in stuff "Big, Fat Liar") who has an infinite number of disposable goons, with an infinite number of bullets that seem predisposed to not hit anything, while Smith's gun hits something (usually lethally) every time.

"Shoot 'Em Up" tries to align itself with the Warner Bros. cartoons of Bugs and Elmer but has not the wit, the style or the precise timing (Giamatti starts the movie with a Merrie Melodies lisp, but inexplicably drops it a few minutes in). I was really hoping that at some point Owen would hit him in the face with a frying pan, so we'd see Mr. Hertz's face flatten out, but no such luck. And, of course, after every set-piece or innovative killing technique (Smith kills with a carrot--twice) there are the inevitable one-liners that haven't been so eye-rollingly bad since Roger Moore was James Bond, with all the sophistication of the chat-room droolings of pre-teens. After a simultaneous shoot-out and screw where both participants reach their ...climax, Owen turns to the camera and in his best Terminator-in-Chief drone says, "That's what I call shooting your wad." But then there's "Eat Your Vegetables.." (after a carrot-killing), "That's what I call a hand-job," and the immortal "Fuck you, you fuckin' fuckers!" That kind of lummoxy aside reached its satiric punch-line with the antics of "McBain" on "The Simpsons," but it gives me hope that someday I can get just such a writing job. At the end, Belluci looks at Owen and says "What took you so long?" I half expected the lame-ass line that ended Robert Altman's "The Player:" "Traffic was a bitch."

According to this flick, there's nothing worse than "a pussy with a gun." I dunno, how about "a pussy with a movie camera but without an original idea in his head, a lick of talent, or the smarts God gave a radish?" Yeah. That's worse. A lot worse.

"Shoot "em Up" is a complete Waste of Time.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Oof. Talk about your awkward segues.

"The Angriest Woman in the World" Erica Bain by the end of "The Brave One" is in the same mode: "Who's the Bitch now?" she screams as she mows down one of the men who beat her into a coma, killed her fiancee...and stole her dog. Not only does she get her revenge, but she gets her dog back (oh...spoiler alert!), so everything's all right, right?

Never mind that for the preceding two hours--that feel like four--she's bided her time by capping the asses of whatever scum of the earth crossed her path. At least she's an equal opportunity vigilante: one group's Latino, another is black, and three separate white guys--bonus points for the rich one.

Were I John Hinckley, I'd stay in prison.

The critical rags are calling this "Dirty Harriet,"* but that's all wrong. Its the daughter of "Death Wish," the Charles Bronson viscerally charged revenge-actioner with the same formula and practically the same resolution--except with a gun rather than the earlier film's non-cinematic plea-bargaining. Erica is a radio-journalist--well, an audio-documentarian, whose love affair (and experience) with New York extends as far as her ear-buds, spinning chatty little stories about the "myth" of old New York, and what gentrification is taking away. Tellingly, one of the first things we see her doing is recording her own foot-steps as she walks the city streets. From there, she goes to her little iso-booths and spins her valentines to "the safest big city in the world" (except it's missing a couple of buildings downtown, and not to gentrification). After the attack, she's even more isolating, and butches up her wardrobe, symbolically shedding her skin to become a new person that she doesn't know or understand. Oh, and there's that shooting-people-in-subways thing. "Inside you is a stranger," she narrates to herself. "Why don't my hands shake? Why doesn't anyone stop me?" Pretty soon she's doing it not because she's threatened, but because she can, and in a perverse cat-and-mouse game strikes up a friendship with detective Terrence Howard, who is feeling increasingly powerless to stop the newly-empowered vigilante messing up his mean streets. I came away thinking "never give Terry Gross a gun."

Of all people, Neil Jordan ("The Crying Game," "Interview with a Vampire") directs this,** and his way of showing fear and Erica's world out of whack is with slowly tilting shots with a steadicam (with its gyroscope knocked out), which made me think we were heading for the Penguin's dastardly bird-themed lair. It's a little tough to take this stuff seriously when it reminds you of the old "Batman" show. About the only pleasure in the film is the beyond-cynical banter of Howard and his partner investigating the crime scenes (My favorites: "Guy had a rap sheet longer than my dick" "No priors?" and "Any idea what killed him?" "Could be the fall--could be the crowbar stuck in his head--I'm thinkin' 70/30, maybe 50/50"). And a tiny scene with a police desk-clerk who routinely mantras "I know how difficult it can be, but if you will be patient and have a seat an officer will be down shortly to help you." It makes the same point about institutional disinterest in 20 seconds that it takes the whole of "In the Valley of Elah" to make.

And the acting. Even with this type of material, Foster takes it right down to her marrow, until she no longer looks like the same person. There is a terrific scene of her and Howard in a diner not talking about what they're talking about while "You Don't Know Me" echoes over the PA that's very well done.

Wish it were in another movie.

"The Brave One" is a cable-flick.

* "Dirty Harry," the police-as-vigilante movie was co-written by Rita Fink.

** Yes, but Joel Silver produces. That might be the answer.