Fincher Redo

Does the world need another adaptation of Stieg Larsson's novel "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo"? Probably not. After all there all ready exists a Swedish language miniseries that was trimmed for theatrical release that made over $100 million worldwide and featured a searing performance by Noomi Rapace.  But Americans hate subtitles so an English language version was inevitable. Luckily the task was given to  director David Fincher. While the material is not fresh, thanks to the phenomenal performances and visual style, the movie remains engaging and extraordinary in its own way.

The film centers on Mikael Blomkvist (Daniel Craig), a journalist who loses his credibility and life savings after being found guily of libel. Utterly lost, Mikael is approached by wealthy industrialist Henrik Vanger (Christopher Plummer) with an unusual opportunity: Vanger wants to know the fate of his niece who disappeared over 40 years earlier and believes that Mikael can solve the mystery. On the other side of the story is Lisbeth Salander (Rooney Mara), an anti-social goth who does investigations for a security firm and is a ward of the state who suffers at the hand of her sadistic legal guardian (Yorick van Wageningen). The stories merge when Mikael hires Lisbeth as his assistant and launches his investigation, discovering that the Vanger family houses some dark and terrifying secrets.

Fincher has never shied from the more uncomfortable or challenging elements of a story, be it the ritualistic murders city in "Seven", the nihilistic brawlers in"Fight Club", or the true life violence in "Zodiac", and it serves him perfectly in his execution of"The girl with the Dragon Tattoo". The tone is unabashedly twisted and grim, but the content is never gratuitous or alienating. Every scene of brutality, there are many, serves to either inform the audience about the characters or advance the plot. Even Jeff Cronenweth's cinematography have a hushed, grim tone; the exterior shots showcase Sweden's beautiful snowy landscapes, while interiors are gray and ominously lit, reflecting the dark secrets hidden by the Vanger's wealth. 

Fincher reunites with Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, who wrote the Academy award winning score for "The Social Network." The film opens with a stunning title sequence set to Reznor and Karen O's cover of Led Zeppelin’s “Immigrant Song” that will jar some movie-goers. Reznor and Ross employ an industrial sound with a minimalist approach that blends perfectly with Fincher’s style. Hopefully this director/composer team continue to work together. 

Aided by her limited exposure prior to this film, Rooney Mara is able o disappear into Lisbeth. Dressed all in black, her hair cut short and dead eyes, Mara captures the subtleties of Lisbeth – from her intense gaze to her physical tension when around strangers – and her violent and more emotional moments, such as when she takes revenge against her guardian. There was some concern that the actress wouldn’t be able to hold her own against Rapace’s interpretation. Mara does equal and sometimes exceeds her. 

Unlike Mara, Daniel Craig doesn’t have the benefit of being a new face, and is, instead, identified almost universally as James Bond. But like his female co-star, Craig is successful in masking himself as Mikael in both the character’s strength and extreme weakness. As the movie isn’t an ensemble piece, most actors outside of the two leads don’t have much time in the limelight, but there isn’t a single miscast performer in the group. Van Wageningen is excellent to a disturbing level, while Plummer plays the tortured Henrik Vanger with aplomb. Even supporting players like Stellan Skarsgard and Joely Richardson are captivating in small but crucial roles.

Though some story details do fall through the cracks, Steve Zaillian’s script and Kirk Baxter and Angus Wall’s editing keeps the 158 minute film working at an impressive pace. The story does meander a little in the last 15 minutes but that is due to the nature of adaptation. "The Girl with the Dragon Tatto" may not be  David Fincher’s best work but it is well worth seeing.

Quirky Teen in Wales

The oddly titled "Submarine" tells the tale of Oliver Tate is a boy growing up in Wales in the mid-1980s who sports a shaggy haircut that makes him look like he just stepped off the cover of a 1960s record album. He also looks Bud Cort from "Harold and Maude, " a nice bit of serendipity since the movie is so reminiscent of Hal Ashby's classic. Replace Cat Stevens songs with new numbers from Arctic Monkeys-frontman Alex Turner, make the romance age appropriate, and you've got a pretty good idea what"Submari" is all about. Which is to say that it is a good movie that never quite transcends its influences.

Twenty-year-old actor Craig Roberts takes the lead as Oliver, an imaginative adolescent with adolescent concerns: mortality, peer acceptance and girls. Oliver daydreams the movie of his life and then outlines meticulous plans to make those fantasies come true. Dream #1 is Jordana Bevan (Yasmin Paige from"The Sarah Jane Adventures"), a cute gal who likes the occasional mayhem. Oliver will resort to a little bullying to prove to his mettle and win her heart. Despite a strong desire to be different Oliver is influenced by his surroundings. He has attempted many affectations to change other people's perceptions but most of his efforts have been cribbed from old movies and American soap operas. He stares at the sea like a Romantic Age poet because he saw a film that asserted this is what great thinkers do. Still, no big answers seem to come back from the emptiness.

Oliver's young life is complicated by a growing distance between his parents. Sally Hawkins plays the mother, Noah Taylor plays the father. She once wanted to be an actress, but now works in government administration; he is a marine biologist whose suffers from chronic depression. He describes the mood as being akin to submersion and that is where the movie gets its title.

"Submarine" was adapted from Joe Dunthorne's novel by and is the directorial debut of Richard Ayoade who is better known as an actor, particularly his role as Moss on the British sitcom "The IT Crowd."  The aforementioned "Harold and Maude" and the works of  Wes Anderson (especially "Rushmore" and "The Life Aquatic") can be seen as influences on the film. The dead pan dialogue, off kilter characters, formalistic framing and quirky voiceover place the film squarely in the minute genre of darkly comedic coming-of-age tales starring morbid teen boys who attempt to act above their age. It doesn't reach the heights of those earlier efforts but it is the first attempt from a talented new director.

Director Richard Ayoade on location

Dark Irish Comedy

Gleeson enjoys an actor's life

A typical Hollywood formula is to combine a white guy and a black guy with completely different personalities, add a murder mystery that needs to be solved or drug smuggling ring that needs to be busted up, have the pair bond over some explosions, sprinkle with witty quips and sit back as the masses storm the multiplex. Now writer/director John Michael McDonagh has taken that brew, given it an Irish twist, and created one of the best comedies of the year.

Featuring great turns by its stars, terrific chemistry between its leads and an unorthodox approach to a familiar set-up, "The Guard" is a hilarious politically incorrect comedy with heart.  The story centers on Sergeant Gerry Boyle (Brendan Gleeson), a police officer who serves in the West of Ireland. Upon learning that a team of three international drug smugglers (Mark Strong, Liam Cunningham, David Wilmot) are in town, Boyle is forced to team up with an FBI agent named Wendell Everett (Don Cheadle) in order to bring them to justice. Though initially Boyle is more concerned with "whoring and drinking" he and Everett are unified against a wave of corruption, bribery and blackmail. 

The greatest reason for the film’s success is the pairing and dynamic between Gleeson and Cheadle. Because their characters are so deftly written and layered, all aspects of Boyle and Everett’s personalities bounce off each other perfectly without ever feeling like a tired retread. From Boyle’s casual racism to Everett’s wealthy upbringing; Boyle’s lack of worldliness to Everett’s fish-out-of-water situation, everything about the two is crafted with purpose and wit.  Gleeson is required not only to be a bit of a schlub who, but, thanks to scenes with his dying mother, also a good and responsible man. The range shown in each actor’s performance is absolutely brilliant. The film’s real scene stealer, though, is Mark Strong as a criminal who has become bored by what he does. Strong has been typecast as the stereotypical villain in some major productions and here he shows that he can play deep and complex characters when given the right material.

Some audiences won’t take kindly to McDonagh’s brazen and unabashed approach to comedy, but those that are appreciate irreverent humor and like feeling a little bad when they laugh are going to absolutely love "The Guard."

From the Big Bang to Texas in 138 minutes.

Terrence Malick's latest opus "The Tree of Life" has split movie going audiences into two camps. The walkouts who have little patience for the type of arty, obscure film-making on display and the excessively appreciative acolyte who thrill to have a reprise from the summer mindless blockbuster.   

The story is simplicity itself, something that is perhaps obscured for some by the nonlinear approach. what appears to be its alien approach: Architect Jack O’Brien (Sean Penn) experiences the anniversary of his brother’s untimely death with considerable anguish and difficulty, as seen through a series of reveries that puts him in touch with memories that connect him to the origins of life itself even as he is drawn back to recalling specific episodes from the days of his uneasy childhood in 1950s Texas.His father (Brad Pitt) is a difficult man to love, as he is strict disciplinarian, demanding perfection in every task.  Jack's mother (Jessica Chastain) is the parent he and his two brothers find much easier to adore, as she is nurturing, forgiving, and generous.

Young Jack (Hunter McCracken) is a boy we see growing to resent the treatment he receives from his father, even as he begins to suffer the consequences of it by becoming more and more like him every day. His father tells him “you can’t be too good” to succeed in the world, and as the boy appears to move towards embracing that advice against his own better judgment, he becomes still more aware of how the opposite nature of his mother continues to “wrestle inside” his heart.

 

Malick makes a concerted effort as the film unspools to break down some of the barriers of what we would normally think of as the natural progression of a story’s time line, so that towards the end of the film, past, present, and future all appear to be engaging one another in gestures of deep recognition and awareness. Some viewers have interpreted the key scene where this happens as Malick’s vision of the “afterlife,” but there are sequences that follow that clearly indicate—at least to me—that it is instead the moment of spiritual catharsis that adult Jack’s memories and internal suffering have been building toward through the entire film.

If this story sounds very traditional, it should, because it is. It has to be, in order not to interfere with what I took to be Malick’s genuine purpose, which is to ask the viewer to not become just emotionally involved, but to thoughtfully interact with the religious and philosophical matters of his concern.

 

Opening with a Biblical quote pertaining to God’s response to Job (which we will read very easily as analogous to the experiences of every character), Malick then offers us an opening voiceover that is 100% the key to understanding everything that is to come:

 

There are two ways through life: the way of Nature, and the way of Grace. You have to choose which one you'll follow. Nature only wants to please itself. Get others to please it too. Likes to lord it over them. To have its own way. It finds reasons to be unhappy when all the world is shining around it. And love is smiling through all things. Grace doesn't try to please itself. Accepts being slighted, forgotten, disliked. Accepts insults and injuries.

 

To be just a little reductive, allow me to spell it out: Nature = Brad Pitt, Jack’s Dad.  Grace = Jessica Chastain, Jack’s Mom.

 

Jack, as the adult child of these warring influences, struggles to choose the proper path that will help him to cope with the loss of his brother and reconcile his complicated relationship with his father. The Job passage makes clear that this dialogue is taking place between the characters (through not just Penn, but through Pitt, Chastain and McCracken) and their concepts of God, which is how the creation footage is brought into play.The footage mostly takes shape in an extended sequence that includes the Big Bang, the heaving volcanoes,  the evolution of cells and the much talked about appearance of dinosaurs. The viewer is meant to extend the nature vs. grace argument through Jack's parents and to the difficulty with the paradox in the concept  of a Supreme Being who appears both all-loving and indifferently cruel. Jack's parents are his creators. Within him the paths of nature and grace are jockey for lead position, both exert influence over him. Malick's film uses the simplest of stories to convey the largest of questions.The characters are demanding - sometimes literally, sometimes through suggestion and symbols - How? Why? Answer me. 

 

The film's technical achievements are beyond reproach.Emmanuel Lubezki's cinematography is the front runner for this year's Academy Award. The performances are quality (Pitt is effective as always, Chastain does wonders with little dialogue, the children are delightfully unaffected, naturalistic.) Not every choice please me; Penn's screen time seemed too minor, given it's his dlemma that we are initially believe will be the spine of the film. I should admit that I first thought the final shot - don't worry I won't spoil anything - to be shockingly banal, only to realize a short time later just how appropriate it really was, and how Malick lets the audience know, in those final frames, how they might lessen the internal burdens by making a  connection.  

 

Fuller's War

Dramatically terse and unsubtle, even by writer/director Samuel Fuller’s standards, "Verboten!," one of his least-known films, explores the panorama of Germany Year Zero and wields the usual pressurized melodrama with a social and historical conscience-raising purpose that was Fuller's specialty. The film displays Fuller’s strengths and weaknesses as a director. Made on a low budget, full of odd casting choices, curtailed ideas and fragmented story arcs, it still delivers with a force and clarity of intelligence the desired impact few other directors could ever muster, as it charges into the heady atmosphere of the post-War mixture of utter defeat and lingering horror.


"Verboten!" is a rip-roaring little film, and one that looks remarkably good thanks to Fuller’s vivid eye and the technically excellent work of DP Joseph Biroc. His carefully lit, heavily shadowed, deep-focus visuals seem to keep the energy and beauty of noir film alive long after most such intricacy had vanished from Hollywood cinema. Fuller’s stylistic creativity here seems to have had an impact on other filmmakers, especially in his use of classical music throughout, still an uncommon practice at the time. The concussive strains of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, anticipating its similar usage in "The Longest Day" in establishing the apocalyptic struggle, give way to swooning quotes from Liszt and, most impressively, an electrifying montage of the Werewolves’ crimes and the occupiers’ hunt set to Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries,” 20 years before "Apocalypse Now."  Here Fuller’s ironic counterpoint of high culture and down-and-dirty business is at its most vital.

The Original FutureNoir

Blade Runner's influence on modern cinema is incalculable. The look, a mix of futuristic tech and classic noir, has become a touchstone for most science fiction productions. Ridley Scott's attention to detail has never been more apparent than it is here. Even things you would never in a million years would see in the frame were made up and included, just to give an extra level of reality to the piece.

On a technical level, the craft is impeccable. The opening shot, dubbed "the Hades Landscape" by the crew, is a visual marvel: a breathtaking cityscape, with miles of industrial waste vents, spewing flame and smoke, fills your vision. Jordan Cronenweth's cinematography was the best work he ever did, and he was highly regarded by his peers and enthusiasts alike. The contrast of light and shadow is astounding. Cronenweth wasn't afraid to let parts of the frame linger off to black, nor was he worried about having sources for all of his light. Thus we get these gorgeous shots where a beam of light will simply glide across the background of the scene, despite no obvious item in the frame creating that beam. And we never question it. Cronenweth took Ridley Scott's world of detail and turned it into a place with mystique and personality, and it's one of the most masterful pallets in all of cinema.

Perhaps the greatest achievement in Blade Runner is that even with all the visual spectacle, all the focus on the smallest physical details, the emotional backbone of the piece never got lost. In this film, Deckard is the antagonist. Roy Batty and his compatriots have returned to Earth in an attempt to discover a way to extend their four year life span. Deckard's experiences hunting down the Replicants makes him remember his own lost humanity (one of the many reasons why it makes no sense for Deckard himself to be a Replicant, no matter what Ridley Scott says), but that doesn't make his hunt any more noble. When he kills Zhora, you can feel the pain of her ignoble death. All the characters, even minor ones like Gaff, have deep interior lives. Like the visual details, we may not see all of them, but intrinsically we know that they are there, and it adds more depth to the picture, which the audience can feel. While the visuals may draw us in, it's the emotional core that keeps us there and brings us back.

"Blade Runner: The Final Cut" stands as the ultimate representation of Ridley Scott's vision. It's not terribly different from the previously released Director's Cut, as it has neither the narration nor the happy ending. It included the unicorn sequence, which is slightly longer. Some scenes have been shortened for pacing purposes. Shots from the Workprint have been added in, most notably the hockey mask dancing girls. Small snafus, such as wires attached to the Spinners, have been cleared away for this release. Larger mistakes have also been corrected. In all the previous versions (except the Workprint), Bryant gives an incorrect number of escaped Replicants, due to a scene written with a fifth Replicant that was never shot. That has been fixed, along with the obvious Joanna Cassidy stunt double. The sequence where Deckard questions Abdul Ben-Hassan has been fixed so the dialogue matches the lip movements. And the shot where the dove flies away from Batty has been completely redone to keep the visuals of the film consistent. Most of these changes are subtle, thankfully, not drawing attention to themselves or distracting the audience. The cumulative effect, however, is enormous. The world feels more immersive, the emotional impact more powerful. It took 25 years, but now we finally get Blade Runner the way Ridley Scott always wanted. But part of me will always miss the clunky narration.

Some Men Just Want to See the World Burn

The Dark Knight set numerous box office records and has been pretty much universally praised as not only a great super hero movie but one of best films of  2009. In my opinion it was one of the best films of the year and here are a few reasons why.

Some have pointed to the death of Heath Ledger and the fact that this is his final, complete role as a big factor in the Dark Knight's immediate success. While that is certainly a factor in compelling moviegoers to the theaters, I believe it's overplayed as a factor in the overall quality of the film. Yes, Ledger does an amazing job as Batman's greatest foe, playing him as an uncontrollable schizophrenic force of nature - think an amalgamation of Al-Qaeda and Hurricane Katrina, unpredictable, untamable and unstoppable - and it will go down as his final masterpiece. I will admit there is very dark curiosity but the true strength in this film goes beyond any one performance or great performances (and the film has numerous strong turns).

The true strength of The Dark Knight, in my opinion, is the courage of director and screenwriter Christopher Nolan (and co-writer Jonathan Nolan) to treat the Batman mythos once again as adult content, not throwaway cartoon fodder. While Marvel Comics have been successful translating Iron Man and the Incredible Hulk to the screen this summer by creating a shared universe that is equally smart and vibrant, you always felt like you were looking in on this comic book world. You know the good guys are going to win in the end and no one is going to die on the hero's watch. You know there's going to be a happy ending when the film finishes.

The Dark Knight's Gotham City, in comparison, is closer to the real world. It's one step removed from gritty crime dramas like The Departed or Heat with nods to The Untouchables. Nolan has the balls to allow there to be casualties of war in Gotham's battle to bring the Joker to justice. There is a sense of danger throughout the entire film as some supporting characters are killed to get across that the threat is very, very real. In fact after one death the Dark Knight explodes onto an entirely new level unseen by any comic book adaptation. It's as if two films are playing back to back in one marathon two and a half hour viewing.

The Dark Knight is not about a guy dressing as a bat to bring criminals to justice. It's about the actions and repercussions of what happens when one tries to make a stand for what they believe to be right and then dealing with the after-effects of those actions. We all know the pain of Bruce Wayne wanting to avenge the murder of his parents, it's the driving force behind Wayne becoming Batman. This film follows Wayne as he battles different demons - the guilt of taking the law into his own hands and the ripple effects that comes with it - the escalating actions of The Joker, his beloved Gotham City blown half to bits, , and even Batman impersonators he's inspired paying for their Good Samaritan deeds with their lives.

The film isn't afraid to have Wayne ask, "What have I done?" and doubt the life choices he's made because of how they are affecting others. It's OK for Batman to live with the scars tattooing his back but when they begin to spread to the lives of other good people, it's enough to bring chills even to a man who's trying to use fear as his primary weapon against evil. Like every decision in life, there is bad that comes with the good. For the first time on film, the effects of Batman's vigilantism are explored in a mature, realistic way and it adds refreshing depth to the characters.

A lot has and will be written about Ledger as the Joker. However, Christian Bale has taken Bruce Wayne and made him a three-dimensional fleshed out person with strengths and weaknesses unlike any previous take on the character in the film and TV medium. He is driven by his love of his city and wanting to restore it to the glory it once had under his father's watch and is willing to sacrifice his own well being and status as the guardian angel of Gotham to make that reality closer to happening. Bale plays Wayne as half-martyr/half-obsessed over the ends to his means. When Ledger rants on about how close he and Batman truly are during the climax of the film, you realize that for the first and only time in the entire film, Joker is telling the stone-cold truth. Wayne is one step away from losing himself inside his creation, no matter why Batman was created to begin and Joker is the mirror that keeps Wayne from losing himself in his creation. Wh ile all the Academy Award talk is focused on Ledger posthumously, Bale's performance is as strong.

Comic book fans have been ranting and raving about the artistic merits of their chosen medium and how the films shouldn't be dismissed as fanboy popcorn fantasies. The Dark Knight provides the exclamation point for how impressive comic book adaptations can be on film.

Earlier that summer, Marvel Comics may have perfected the idea of using their characters in a shared universe while building to the dream team "Avengers" film for 2012 and brought the concept of comic book films into a higher level, one of the shared universe all comic readers are familiar with and love. Dark Knight, however, raises the bar for what a comic book movie can and should be on an emotional level, not with awesome fight scenes and phenomenal effects (although this film has both in spades), but by focusing on the core of its characters and having the courage to put them into situations that forces them to fear, to breath, to mourn and to overcome, it forces them to be real.

Sure, there are awe-inspiring moments that only come in fantasy films, but the emotional journey of these characters are what drives the Dark Knight. That's what good filmmaking is all about. In this day of Hollywood force-feeding its audiences endless remakes overgorged on CGI technology, it's easy to point out where moviemaking has lost its creative soul. How ironic that one of the most overlooked literary mediums of all time, the comic book, provides an outlet for the return of a legitimate, heart-felt dramatic motion picture.

One can only hope that the excellence of this film is enough to kickstart the long-stalled feature films based on DC Comics' wonderful collection of characters. While Marvel scores time and time again, DC (owned by Warner Bros. no less) never, ever seem get their projects out of the "starting gate". Let's hope this is the moment all that changes and let's hope all future projects are treated with equal amounts passion and intelligence.

If so, let's all they will contain the exact elements that were the true strength of "The Dark Knight" and that an entirely new audience will be introduced to even more truly wonderful characters and stories.

Not Enough Monsters

A simple lesson for future filmmakers: Do not title your film "Monsters" if you choose not to concentrate on the monsters. For some reason, director Gareth Edwards chooses to turn a promising excursion through extraterrestrial occupation into an irritating mumblecore arthouse feature. Edwards has a great directorial eye, but his handling of the love story/flirtation leaves much to be desired.

The film supplies a marvelous introduction for Edwards, a special effects wizard moving into the directorial chair who was just named as director of the upcoming Godzilla reboot.  This film isn't the picture many giant monster fans imagine it to be. Instead of "Cloverfield" destruction or "District 9" conflict, "Monsters" steps back, endeavoring to create a realist backdrop to support his human love story. The lack of monster mashing is a letdown, since Edwards has created some suspenseful sequences when the Lovecraftian creatures do attack.

However, "Monsters" isn't about the creatures, it's about the couple. Scoot McNairy and Whitney Able appear to be limited performers, unable to bring anything to the script that unfortunately tracks their underdeveloped relationship from tentative partnership to googly eyes.  I give Edwards credit for attempting to create some sensitivity to a potentially chilly sci-fi affair, but the effort lacks any chemistry, rendering long stretches of the feature tedious as the twosome bond through banal conversation. 
Aliens are here, but rarely take center stage but when they do Edwards shows great skill is crafting suspenseful sequences. The filmmakers play with the meaning of the title, revealing the beasts to be protective parents while the military blasts away. The creatures are executed solidly, creating memorable images on a tiny budget. The film might have been better as a short, allowing Edwards to trim the fat and intensify his visual storytelling. It's a drifting picture, but sporadically gripping and mysterious at least good enough to help the viewer get past the unmemorable love story.

Charles Bronson as a Commie !?

Based on the novel by Walter Wager, "Telefon" has not aged well because it’s so dependent on the cold war tension that existed between the USSR and the US in the Seventies. The film is basically a cat-and-mouse game with Soviet agent Major Grigori Borzov (Charles Bronson, that's right Bronson is a commie) tracking rogue Russian scientist Nicolai Dalmchimsky (Donald Pleasence) across America to prevent him from activating sleeper agents. Borzov is assisted by Barbara (Lee Remick. fresh from "The Omen") who asks more annoying questions than necessary, leading the audience to believe she may not be completely  true to the motherland. 

 

The film's middle section is dragged down by repetitive bomb scares. Dalmichimsky is working from outdated intelligence so his targets are all de-classified U.S. Military installations. Once Borzov realizes the pattern and hones in the next target the action shifts to a more linear chase that’s further heightened by Barbara’s loyalties. But the ultimate showdown is deflating because beyond some silly disguises Pleasence's Dalmichimsky is never built up to be a threat.

 

Director Don Siegel uses his flair for montage to craft a his action sequences without dialogue. "Telefon"  is a road movie, much like Alfred Hitchcock's "Saboteur" and "North by Northwest" had their leads criss-crossing America here we see plenty of seventies architecture including San Francisco's Hyatt Regency Hotel (used in "The Towering Inferno") and a modernist house resting on top of a barren rock outcropping.

 

The supporting cast is uniformly good (but trapped in underwritten roles), and it’s nice to see veteran character actors Alan Badel and Patrick Magee playing snotty KGB strategists, and Tyne Daly in a small (and ultimately irrelevant role) as a computer geek.

Trivia note: The poem that activates the Russian sleeper agents was used by Quentin Tarantino in "Death Proof" as the lines Jungle Julia has her listeners recite to Butterfly. The lines are an excerpt of the poem "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" by Robert Frost. "The woods are lovely, dark and deep. But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep."

Breaking Up is Hard To Do (Director's Cut)

The hosts of The Film Thugs podcast, Jim Dirkes and Clarkson Campbell, asked listeners to send in the names of directors, actors or film people who they had given up on. People they liked but just could no longer support. Here are my choices:

I'm an optimist. I really don't break-up with directors but their films do fall in priority. Below is a list of 10 directors who went from must see opening weekend to will see in the theater to maybe I'll catch it on video. If I do see their films theatrically it is because I'm sneaking in after seeing something else. They will not get my money. I've limited myself to guys currently working. Hopefully some if not all of these guys will rebound.

Woody Allen's straight is writing but for the past decade or so it seems that his work could use a few more revisions. His pace of one film a year is admirable but maybe every idea isn't film worthy. The past few films seem like excuses to hang with Scarlett Johansson (I don't blame the dude as I would probably do the same if I was in his position)   

 

Frances Fords Coppela has earned the right to make his small, personal, arty films like "Youth  Without Youth" and "Tetro" but I don't have to watch them. Still they have to be better than his studio paycheck grabbing dreck like "Jack." 

Peter Jackson His films have evolved into self indulgent chaos. A "King Kong" remake where it takes over an hour to see the fucking ape!? "The Lovely Bones" may have been a great screen saver in the '90s but it doesn't work as a melodrama. What happened to the fat, be-speckled, bearded film geek that we all loved so much?     

Kevin Smith After "Jersey Girl" spectacularly failed he ran back to the security blanket of Jay and Silent Bob. He seems completely uninterested in growing as a artist. This one is a real shame for me as Smith and I are the same age. "Clerks" was one of the films that inspired me to become a regular at my local art house and for my money "Dogma" was one of the best films of the '90s. Now he is content to smoke weed, record podcasts and play to his loyal Stepford fans.  

M Night Shamalan "The Sixth Sense," "Unbreakable" and "Signs" signaled a significant run for any director. But then he seemed to lose his head up his ass. The twist in "the Village" seemed tacked on and killed the film for me. I enjoyed the fairy tale aspect of "Lady in the Water" but the fact that he cast himself as the author of a world saving book signaled an out of control ego. That has only grown in recent years and "The Last Airbender" was unwatchable wreckage.

Roland Emmerich Yes that Roland Emmerich. Now hear me out. He made some fun popcorn films. "Moon 44" was a good low budget, direct to VHS sci fi. "Universal Soldier" is a good late night filler and every time I run across "Independence Day"  on cable I get sucked into it for 20 minutes. Even his "Godzilla" film is adequate so long as you don't think of the main creature as Godzilla and you don't watch the "Jurassic Park" romp in Madison Square Garden. But these films are the apex of cinema when compared to "10,000 B.C." and "2012" Both of these films kill brain cells faster than huffing paint.   

Barry Levinson Another guy who started with a bang and is now limping along. "Diner," "The Natural," "Young Sherlock Holmes," "Tin Men" and "Rain Man" fuck those are some incredible films. It is unfathomable that the same man produced "Jimmy Hollywood," "Toys," "Sphere" and "Bandits." 

Brian DePalma A late night airing of "Sisters" was one of the first movies to scare the shit out of me. True I was only 11 at the time but I avoided watching the film for years due to the memory. I'm not a "Scarface" fan (too cartoony for me to take serious) but the rest of the man's filmography is incredible. "Blow Out," "Dressed to Kill," "The Untouchables," "Obsession" Hell I even like "Raising Cain" and "The Bonfires of the Vanaties" is the kind of grand disaster only a genius could produce. But after the success of "Mission: Impossible" he's been in the shitter. "Snake /Eyes," "Mission to Mars" "Femme Fatle" "The Black Dahlia"  not a single watchable film in the bunch. I haven't even bothered to see "Redacted"

Barry Sonenfeld After starting his career as the Coen Brothers cinematographer he directed amusing, stylish films before letting the abomination that "Wild Wild West" on the world. Since he's worked less releasing such bombs as "Big Trouble" and "Men in Black II" Now he's returning with the completely unneccessary third Men in Black. God help us.  

  

Oliver Stone This one's a cheat since I just paid to see "Wall Street" Money Doesn't Sleep" but since Stone didn't write the script it seems like a paycheck movie for him. Stone's early career is incredible but after "Talk Radio" his personal agenda gets in the way of the storytelling. Tom Cruise gave a stirring performance in "Born on the Fourth of July" but Stone's visuals took me out of the film. The visuals work to add to the paranoia in "JFK"  but I think "Natural Born Killers" is simply a well made piece of shit. Plus I'm still angry that I paid to see "Alexander" in the theater plus he has the balls to release three versions of this crapfeast on DVD including one that runs 3 1/2/hours. Who would want to sit through more of Angelina Jolie's Boris Badanov's accent and Colin Farrell's black hole of charisma lead performance.

Clint Sings! (and so does Lee Marvin)

Josh Logan's "Paint Your Wagon" was produced when the big budget musical genre had fallen out of favor with audiences and does not meet the expectations raised by teaming two of the manliest actors in Hollywood, Clint Eastwood and Lee Marvin by putting them in a big budget musical.  

 

In a energetic performance, Lee Marvin plays his usual drunken,but lovable scoundrel who teams up with Clint Eastwood after discovering gold while burying Eastwood's brother. Enter Jean Seberg as the extra wife of a Mormon who is auctioned off to high bidder Marvin. After a musical montage Eastwood also falls in love with Seberg leading to an odd three way marriage.

 

The movie suffers from a hopelessly bloated running time (164 minutes!) and is filled with truly forgettable songs.  The apathy of Eastwood's character leads to his being overshadowed by the charismatic, overblown Marvin. By this time Eastwood has established his tough guy persona so watching him croon lovesick ballads like a second rate Ricky Nelson is disheartening. Where Eastwood's singing has a thin, light quality that may be grounded in his love of jazz, Marvin opts for a less challenging speak-singing style that  provides a mumbled rendition of "Wand'rin Star" that surprisingly rose to number one on the charts. Yes, that's right Lee F'ing Marvin sang a hit single.

 

You would think a film with a three-way marriage, debauchery, polygamy, Paddy Chayevsky script, and the star power of Eastwood and Marvin would be more fun or at least interesting. In the case of "Paint Your Wagon" you would be wrong.

Eastwood Goes to War

For the better part of three decades following the end of World War II was staple fare for virtually every major British and American studio, plundering every important event (and many minor ones too) of the war in order to spin outrageous yarns that often had little to do with the actual events. Some of them are so bad that they become unintentionally funny, running the full gauntlet from sanctimonious drivel to idiotic shoot-'em-ups that want nothing more than to provide an impressive number of explosions and a high body count. "Where Eagles Dare" is an intriguing affair: a Boys' Own style adventure yarn that is a complete work of fiction and seems to have no loftier goal than to thoroughly entertain its audience. While perhaps not as accomplished or as well-known as its similar cousin "The Guns of Navarone"  (which was based on a novel by "Eagles" screenwriter Alistair McLean and shares a comparable style), the film has a legion of fans and the viewer accepts its charmingly ludicrous story at face value.

The plot initially seems completely straightforward. A crack team of British agents, led by Major Smith (Richard Burton), are tasked to infiltrate a castle deep in the Bavarian mountains and rescue a captured American general before he spills the beans to the Nazis about the Allies' plans for D-Day. Tagging along is an American ranger, Lt. Schaffer (Clint Eastwood). However, it soon becomes clear that all is not as it seems. Smith has been advised that there is a mole in his ranks, and when members of his team begin dropping like flies he must work both to discover the mole while at the same time concocting a daring raid and plan of escape.

The truth of the matter is much more complicated and by the time Smith reveals the real reason for the mission and the actual agendas at work, most viewers will have given up trying to make sense of it all. The fact that the mission itself seems completely pointless once we learn the actual objective is best forgotten. The sole American in the troupe, Eastwood's Lt. Schaffer takes in all the outlandish proceedings in much the same way as the audience: completely baffled, but willing to accept it in order to see it through. Complementing Eastwood's stolid but bemused performance is Burton's portrayal of Major Smith, a man who gives the impression that he is always in complete control. Even when (briefly) captured by the occupying Nazis, you get the impression that nothing worries or surprises him unduly, and Burton manages to make such activities as scaling a castle wall and hopping from one moving cable car to another look effortless. The third major player is Mary Ure, whose character of secret agent Mary Elison is a refreshingly active female heroine in a period and genre usually dominated by men. Hammer horror queen Ingrid Pitt is also featured as a resistance fighter who provides access to the fortress.

A lot of the enjoyment of the film is derived from its sheer excess. The location itself, a huge gothic fortress towering above snow-capped mountains and reachable only via cable car, has a superb atmosphere of its own, and Arthur Ibbetson's widescreen photography frames it beautifully. While the first half of the film is played out in a relatively subdued manner, the second half, which sees our bold heroes making good their escape, is a classic study of popcorn excess. Perfectly synchronized explosions ring out in unison, whole stone-walled rooms collapse based on the power of a couple of sticks of dynamite, and Clint Eastwood mows down entire battalions of soldiers thanks to his seemingly endless supply of weapons and ammunition, all pulled from a small bag of holding. Despite incoming machine gun fire from multiple positions, Eastwood's character seems to have no trouble in dispatching multiple opponents in a matter of seconds, whether it be with a machine gun of his own, his trusty pistol, or one of those magic sticks of dynamite. It's all incredibly silly, but it is the sheer lack of believability that makes the film so entertaining. You never truly know exactly what is going to happen next, thanks to the fact that our heroes seem capable of clearing any obstacle laid in the way of their goal.




Of course, no good World War 2 action film is complete without over-played Nazi stereotypes, and "Where Eagles Dare"  has them in abundance. From the monocled General Rosemeyer (Ferdy Mayne) to the simpering pretty-boy Gestapo officer Major Von Hapen (Derren Nesbitt), complete with curly golden locks, none of the villains of this piece are to be taken seriously. These fellows are cackling villains of the first order, all of whom could have stepped straight out of a pantomime: General Rosemeyer, for instance, asks for the Gestapo to be kept out of the interrogation activities until the requisite information has been acquired since "we don't need them cluttering up things with torture chambers". Of course, they all speak perfect English (minus the odd "Heil!" and "Fraulein!" and the fact that they pronounce "the" as "ze"). Indeed, English is the only spoken language in the film, despite a big deal being made of the fact that our heroes speak perfect German. Such is the magic of film, I suppose. It's probably a good thing that none of the German soldiers are allowed to be anything other than cardboard cut-outs, because they are gunned down with such carefree panache that to view them as actual people would make the film a rather depressing exercise.


 "Where Eagles Dare" remains a highly enjoyable action romp and one that remains effective to this day, provided you watch it in the correct frame of mind and don't take it seriously.

The Don's First Eastwood Picture

The first film to pair director Don Siegel and Clint Eastwood was the 1968 release "Coogan's Bluff." They would go on to make six films together including the film that made Eastwood a superstar "Dirty Harry." Eastwood's directing style is also largely indebted to Siegal. Both men like to shot at a fast pace, trusting their instincts and their collaborators. In some ways,the character of Arizona Deputy Sheriff Walt Coogan  is a prototype for Harry Callahan, they share a ask questions later take on police work and sneering dislike for big-city bureaucracy, but this is a lighter picture.

The film gets most of its comedic mileage from its fish-out-of-water elements, whether Coogan is encountering cheating taxi drivers, big-city tough guys, or goofy hippies. The NYC police are primarily represented by Lee J. Cobb's hard-nosed Lt. McElroy, and while his character is a bit of a stereotype, he manages to imbue it with some personality. Susan Clark provides the requisite romantic interest as probation officer Julie Roth, and while some of their interludes are a little on the dull side, she is a bit of a spark plug who puts an interesting spin on her dialogue. 

Action sequences are solid, with a spirited, messy pool hall fight and a motorcycle chase as highlights. Its impressions of the hippie scene, on the other hand, feel more than a little out of touch - like a forty-something screenwriter's idea of what a hippie club would be like. "Coogan's Bluff" is a flawed, minor Eastwood picture, but still interesting, primarily for its place in his iconography; we see him tinkering with his image, moving away from the cowboy image of his television work and Spaghetti westerns and into a more brutal, urban landscape.Plus it points to great things in store for the Siegel/Eastwood combination.

Spaghetti Western comes to America

"Hang 'Em High" holds an important place in Clint Eastwood's career. Not only was it the first film to be produced by his production company, Malpaso, but it was the first American film in which he received top billing. Released in Summer 1968, it rode the popular wave of Sergio Leone's Man with no Name trilogy with Eastwood, and demonstrated the influence that Leone's films had exerted on the Western genre. The plot is a old Western standard of revenge, but it feels pedestrian and plods along providing little entertainment for long stretches of time.

Most of the film is pretty predictable - Eastwood sets out as a vigilante but becomes a man of the law and develops a conscience along the way. There is a half developed rape revenge subplot that features actress Inger Stevens but that seems to have been included so there would be a female presence in the film. Director, Ted Post (who worked with Eastwood on the television series "Rawhide" and collaborate with him again on the Dirty Harry sequel "Magnum Force") works in anonymous fashion, aping Leone's use of the zoom lens and keeping the whole affair moving forward. 

Eastwood's character may not be a "man with no name" of course, but he is decidedly vicious, single minded and not entirely sympathetic. This being Hollywood in the sixties, Eastwood's character is softened up and given a love interest. Unlike Leone's westerns Eastwood is surrounded by great character actors like Ben Johnson, Ed Begley and the ever reliable Pat Hingle. The film also features early work from Bruce Dern, already playing crazy, and Dennis Hopper, who dies too soon after only one insane monologue. The film was shot on beautiful locations, but doesn't look particularly impressive because of a  bland cinematography and poor framing choices. The attitudes in the film are rather confused - it can't decide whether or not it is in favor of capital punishment, and some interesting observations about the development of Hanging Judges into State governments are left as something of an afterthought. There's also a certain gloating sadism that negates any serious thoughts the film has on the immorality of killing.

Odd publicity shot of the cast

Civil War Epic Ends the Trilogy on a High Note

Stylish, stylized, amoral, and brutally violent, Sergio Leone's final chapter of his Man With No Name Trilogy "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" is a stunning, intoxicating masterpiece. Leone's depictions of a world full of rough, selfish individuals devoid of morality fascinate the viewer  with its visual appeal. Leone shifts form extremely tight shots of his characters' eyes and harsh or terrified faces to sweeping, awe inspiring images of vast, barren landscapes. The actions of the characters moving through this emotionally charged world elaborately choreographed and perfectly timed like a dance. The director imbues every minute of the movie with a tangible, edgy excitement. He develops tremendous tension with his leisurely depictions of the film's characters performing various trivial actions, as bathing, checking a gun, or the like while violence looms in the immediate future. Then, punctuating such drawn out moments with the shocking brutality. 

The director cannot, however, take sole credit for the film's success. For one thing, Ennio Morricone's score is consistently stunning and complements the movie throughout, evoking both wistful sadness and overwhelming excitement. It is surely among the most memorable pieces of music ever created for a movie and is familiar to first time viewers. The score of "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" is as vibrant and alive as are any of the film's other qualities.

Finally, I should note that the performances of the three leads are truly wonderful. Clint Eastwood is cold and subtle as the nameless gunman known only as "Blondie." Lee Van Cleef endows Angel Eyes with a sadistic cruelty, and Eli Wallach gives life to the brutal, earthy, and some much needed comic relief Tuco. All add significantly to the movie's appeal. New to Leone's style is the humor throughout, particularly the uneasy alliance between the ‘good’ Blondie and the ‘ugly’ Tuco. But it’s pure gallows, with violence permeating the frame. The film is the rare third part of a trilogy that ends the series on a high note.

The Middle Child of the Man with No Name Trilogy

A sequel to "A Fistful of Dollars" seems like a foregone conclusion considering its worldwide success. But in 1964, there was nothing inevitable about it. Sergio Leone had received no financial compensation from the considerable box office of his first Western and wished to make a personal, partially autobiographical project about growing up in Trastevere during the 1930s. However, he was under pressure to repeat his Western success and Italian lawyer Alberto Grimaldi offered Leone 50% of the profits plus expenses. This was an offer that a man with a wife and children to support couldn't refuse. So he set out on the development of  the ironically titled "For a Few Dollars More," wishing to top his earlier film. This determination shows in the finished product. "For a Few Dollars More" is a more ambitious film than its predecessor in terms of narrative, character and style and it's the film which really shows Leone developing the epic side of his filmmaking which would come to fruition in "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly." It may not be Leone's best film, but it may be his most purely enjoyable; an exercise in narrative filmmaking which brims with style and confidence.

Leone brings back the Man With No Name - this time briefly given the name Manco - in the shape of Clint Eastwood and explicitly makes him a bounty hunter (called bounty killers in the film) with no other motivation than money. This gives the film a specific historical context during the late 19th Century when law and order in the West was maintained in a decidedly fragile state by a haphazard system of local Sheriffs and traveling Judges. Bounty hunters were encouraged as an efficient way of finding and dealing with fugitives. Eastwood's all ready iconic character is joined by a new figure; Colonel Douglas Mortimer played the great character actor Lee Van Cleef. Mortimer is also a bounty hunter but one haunted both by his past as a soldier and a tragic family history. After a brief, witty confrontation , the two men team up with the common goal of bringing to justice El Indio (Volonte), a deranged, dope-addled bandit who is inextricably linked to Mortimer's family tragedy.

The sweeping confidence of the film reflects a director who is finally able to do what he wants in the way he wants. Leone's work is immensely stylish, packed with increasingly exotic use of close-ups and pacing which, while never slow, is a little stately in a manner which often recalls Luchino Visconti. There is more intentional humor in this film than in its predecessor with whole sequences built up for the sake of a humourous pay-off, such as the scene with the apples towards the end. There's a lushness to the film, both in its stunning visuals which make full use of the landscape in a way which Leone would intensify in his next two films, and in its emotional richness, largely supplied by the character of Colonel Mortimer. In "Fistful," there's not a great deal of motivation or even characterisation. In this film, Mortimer's character is all motivation and, partly due to Lee Van Cleef's sympathetic and witty portrayal, he comes across as the main target for our sympathy. Virtually every Spaghetti Western which followed the huge success of this movie in Italy would feature a flashback to explain the motivations of a particular character but few are either as simple or as effective as the one here. Leone keeps this in the background at first, with unexplained memory 'flashes' from El Indio that are later revealed as his connection with Mortimer. The pocket watch watch, with the initially unexplained portrait of a lady, is well used too, providing another angle of narrative suspense.

Everything in"For a Few Dollars More" seems a little bigger than in its predecessor. The violence is a little more graphic and sadistic, Carlo Simi's production design of El Paso - Leone's first great bustling period location - is on a larger scale and the psychopathic, sociopathic behaviour of El Indio is more melodramatic and theatrical. Gian Maria Volonte takes the opportunity to go over the top with both hands, consuming the scenery with relish as one of the nastiest, most irredeemable bad guys in cinema history. In contrast to this slightly garish conception, Clint Eastwood's performance seems all the more restrained and funny. He gets comic effects simply by doing very little and allowing all around him to emote their way into the stratosphere. His character is made even less heroic, again being the hero mostly because of his charisma and finally being slightly redeemed through his friendship with Mortimer. This friendship adds a more human dimension to the whole film, bringing in complex emotions which the first movie ignore. Leone originally wanted Lee Marvin for the role but couldn't afford the actor's asking price and Van Cleef's warm, likable performance is masterful; a mature, if cynical, reflection contrasted with Eastwood's youthful arrogance, even though Van Cleef was a mere five years older.

Leone's style is developing and the movie contains most of the elements which will be considered hallmarks of his film making. Along with the harshly cynical view of the world - good men have to turn to violence because of the greed and corruption around them - and extreme sclose-up shots, we get more religious iconography creeping in - the church in which El Indio delivers his speech about robbing the bank being an example - and the recurring motifs such as the circular dance of death during the final gunfight.All in all "Dollars is a worthy second film in an unintended trilogy with the best saved for last.

The Birth of the Spaghetti Western

Although it wasn't the first Italian Western, Sergio Leone's "A Fistful of Dollars" was the film which introduced many of the conventions of the genre that would become known as the Spaghetti Western. The films which preceded it had been straight transpositions of the American style ; Leone's film broke with this tradition and the result is something which still has the exciting sense of a filmmaker discovering a whole new way of doing things. Over the course of his 'Dollars Trilogy' - comprising "A Fistful of Dollars,""For a Few Dollars More" and  "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly," Leone and his collaborators created a sub-genre which went on to spawn countless imitations - both in Italy and elsewhere - and which had such an impact on the Western genre itself that the American films which followed it were never quite the same. That's a pretty damned impressive for an Italian film made in Spanish locations starring an American television actor for the equivalent of $200,000 during the spring of 1964.

The film is a loose remake of Akira Kurosawa's "Yojimbo" which is loosely based on Dashiell Hammett's novel "Red Harvest." Leone was fascinated by the cynical, shabby hero who seemed so removed from the American Western heroes portrayed by John Wayne, Randolph Scott, and Alan Ladd. There are so many important facets to Leone's first Western but I want to focus on the central figure of the film. What the audience sees is the traditionally heroic central character turned into something quite different. Clint Eastwood, who was playing Rowdy Yates on "Rawhide" and was contractually forbidden from appearing in American films during the show's hiatus could have easily played an upstanding, righteous man beset by evil men. But Leone wanted to do something different. In place of the usual Western hero - perhaps best represented by Alan Ladd in "Shane" or John Wayne in "Rio Bravo" - we have a morally ambivalent figure whose motives are considerably less pure than his counterparts. The Man With No Name watches cruelty without acting to stop it, shoots first without asking questions and brings down instant judgment upon anyone who tries him. If we find him heroic, it's mostly because he's more likeable than the incredibly unpleasant bad guys. The audience is expected to direct whatever sympathy towards Eastwood. After all, he's tough, a great shot, dependable and dryly funny, dispensing occasional quips such as the famous "Four coffins" gag towards the start. In this sense, as Christopher Frayling has pointed out, he's the model for the modern action hero; he can kill as many people as he wants because, ultimately, he's the only thing standing between us and complete moral anarchy. Later directors of Spaghetti westerns would push the audience over into the abyss in films like the spectacularly bleak, surreal cartoon violence of the Django series. However, Leone's use of the hero isn't the revolutionary break from convention as many critics have claimed it to be. The American Western was going in a more mature direction during the 1950s, there's a definite feeling that the hero figure was being gradually deconstructed in Anthony Mann's trilogy of Westerns starring Jimmy Stewart the hero is pushed away from the cliches into new psychological territory, making him increasingly dark, selfish and haunted by past sins. John Ford did something similar with John Wayne in "The Searchers"  and  Paul Newman's playing of Billy The Kid as a juvenile delinquent sadist in Arthur Penn's "The Left Handed Gun" points forward to the creation of a hero who is only removed from the villain by a few bullet holes. Moral ambiguity is everywhere in Leone's universe but it's also omnipresent in the work of Anthony Mann and Samuel Fuller. Indeed, you could hardly call John Ford's 1962 "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" a simple old-fashioned cowboy picture.

The next significant innovation is linked to the first and that's the use of violence. In American films, there was a rule imposed by the Production Code that you couldn't see a gun fired and a man fall down dead in the same frame. Leone throws this away in "A Fistful of Dollars", establishing the classic moments of the gun looming in the foreground and the men blown away in the background. Although the film isn't particularly explicit by his later standards, there's a brutality that very unlike anything in mainstream American film at the time. The gleeful sadism of the bad guys - laughing as they beat Eastwood - must have been profoundly shocking to those audiences whose idea of evil was Jack Palance in a black shirt.

Ennio Morricone's music, combining a vocal chorus with Fender Stratocaster guitar and orchestra, remains iconic and completely subverts stately epic conventions of Western scores by Elmer Bernstein and Alfred Newman. Future Westerns would imitate the score but never equal it.

"A Fistful of Dollars" remains, forty years on, cracking good entertainment. Leone's later films are more complex and ambiguous - there's nothing here to match the moral shadings of Colonel Mortimer or Cheyenne - but if it's a excellent piece of action film-making.

Determined Fighter

It has taken Mark Wahlberg five years to bring the underdog story of  welterweight boxer Micky Ward to the screen in "The Fighter" and it was worth the wait.  Originally set to star Wahlberg and Matt Damon under the direction of Darren Aronofsky until budget concerns derailed the production. So Damon was forced to drop out due to other film obligations and replaced by Brad Pitt.  Pitt and Aronofsky leave the project when the budget is slashed in half. Wahlberg recruits David O. Russell who directed the actor in "Three Kings" and Christian Bale. All in all things couldn't have worked out better.

Russell, shooting almost entirely in Lowell on a fast 33-day schedule and tight $11 million budget, has made a boxing film that concerns itself not only with personal glory but with family feuds and crack addiction and delusion and the necessity of facing brutal truths and looking people you love in the eye and telling them they're history unless they clean up their act...this is what real families do, and why this movie feels so real every step of the way.  

The acting is great from every player, especially from Bale (he's got the big showy part and is a lock for a supporting actor nod from the Academy) but also Wahlberg (he is the film's anchor,) Amy Adams (who is able to shed that goody two-shoes image she's been saddled with from her performances in "Junebug" and "Enchanted") and fierce Melissa Leo as the headstrong mother of Walhlberg, Bale and six of the grungtiest-looking blue-collar sisters you've ever seen in your life, let alone a film -- they all look like they've been eating chili dogs while knocking back shots of Jack Daniels since they were ten.

Ultimately, "The Fighter" moved beyond the cliches of the boxing genre. It is a film that could have been over-dramatized and heavy-handed had it been put in another director's hands, but Russell and his cast create a very specific atmosphere and set a particular mood that lends the film a sense of realism. 

Do You Think It's all Right?

There are three plots at work in "The Kids Are All Right": a married couple hitting the rocks, two kids attempting to connect with their biological father, and a man coasting through his late 30s getting a major taste of adulthood. All of them are pretty good, unfortunately they feel like three different movies crammed into one. 

The couple is Nic (Annette Bening) and Jules (Julianne Moore), who are preparing for the impending college-bound departure of their daughter Joni (Mia Wasikowska). Joni's younger brother, the oddly named Laser (Josh Hutcherson), is pressuring her (as an 18-year-old) to inquire about their biological father's contact information. She concedes, and the two meet up with Paul (Mark Ruffalo), the hippie-ish owner of an organic restaurant.

All five members of the cast are good (and Bening and Moore have some stand-out moments), although none of these veteran actors are stretching their talents. The screenplay, by Lisa Cholodenko (also the director) and Stuart Blumberg, can't shake the sensation that the viewer is watching a film that's been written and crafted in a certain way.  As a director, Chodolenko's smart enough to get out of the way and allow the actors to carry the weight.

The movie is a pleasant, sometimes funny, occasionally moving experience that never seriously falters, but never adds up to anything special. It's not good, it's not bad, it's just sort of all right.
Plus the soundtrack does not feature the Who song of the title.

Early Mann

"The Keep" is the kind of film where unless you've read the book it was based on, you can forget about finding a narrative plot. It's based on a novel by noted horror writer F. Paul Wilson, the first in his six book Adversary cycle and the story probably makes more sense in book form. The book was a  best seller so it makes perfect sense to turn out a motion picture. Michael Mann, fresh from 1981's "Thief", adapts the screenplay, assembles a cast that includes some very interesting actors, gets several million dollars from Paramount, and heads off to England. The end result holds together quite well for about twenty minutes, bringing the German Army (under the command of Captain Klaus Woermann, played by Jurgen Prochnow) to an isolated area in the Carpathian Alps of Romania, which consists of a village and a terrifying fortress called, simply, the Keep. Some foolish soldiers who really should pay more attention to the creepy-old-guy-who-looks-after-the-place start messing around looking for treasure and unwittingly release an evil force from its millennium-long imprisonment. This happens in a jaw-dropping sequence that appears to be a six-hundred foot tracking shot through mid-air. Then some special effects happen, and before you know it, the movie falls completely apart.       

The movie ran over budget, Paramount stepped in, took final edit away from Mann and made the film incomprehensible. The SS (led by Major Erich Kaempffer, (Gabriel Byrne, in his motion picture debut) comes in due to the deaths of German soldiers blamed on rebels but actually the work of the creature. Then they bring in Dr. Cuza (Ian McKellen giving what maybe his worst performance ever) and his daughter Eva (Alberta Watson, the mother from "Spanking the Monkey".)  Then a mystical warrior shows up, and it's Scott Glenn. He's inscrutable, he doesn't have a reflection, and he looks like he's been directed to act like he's on serious medication. He and Eva embark on a tantric sex thing before they've even really spoken to one another, and the good doctor is healed by the evil force, but he doesn't think it's an evil force. Plus, there's a priest in the village and he was a friend of the Cuzas, but then he isn't. Periodically, a very serious, intense argument will break out between characters that seem to be straining for some form of political or sociological weight, to no avail. Prochnow has several shouting matches with Byrne about why he hates totalitarianism, which I'll leave for the political scholars to puzzle their way through. 

The two main adversaries of the piece are not mentioned by name until the last four minutes of the film, and even then only in passing and only once. There is no discipline, narrative or otherwise, which could possibly hold together the last seventy minutes of this film. Author Wilson was so disgusted with the end result that he wrote a short story, entitled "Cuts", about a horror writer who uses voodoo to kill a director who'd misadapted one of his stories. 

And yet this film is never anything less than captivating. Part of this is due to the unique score by Tangerine Dream. It swirls, thuds, and suffuses the frame with an eerie, electric beauty that is quite suitably epic in tone. In addition to that, Cinematographer Alex Thomson is a genius with light, filling the anamorphic frame with an eerie and beautiful incandescence. There are several shots in this film that are quite breathtaking in terms of composition, lighting, and fear-laced beauty. The effects are a mixed bag, though since it's 1983, thankfully there is no CGI. The use of traveling  mattes and reverse-fog is excellent, as are the five or six different ways that Nazis are shattered like china dolls. The excess of lasers at the end seems a little too disco and not as climactic as it doubtless was intended. 

If  Mann holds to his pattern of going back and recutting all of his films (which he has done for all of his features except "The Insider" and this one), perhaps one day we will see a version of "The Keep" that actually makes sense.  But until then, a small but vocal internet cult  will ensure that some people will find their way to "The Keep"  every now and then. The film has not received a official DVD release but is currently available on Netflix streaming.