Copyright
©
1995-2010 Scott Larson
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The Da Vinci Code
Wow, I am better than I thought. After finally seeing this movie, I cannot improve on what I wrote 18 days before seeing it: “In essence, if my impression of The Da Vinci Code is correct, it is merely doing for theology what The X-Files did for exobiology.” That’s really it. Tom Hanks and Audrey Tautou are basically Mulder and Scully. Except that, instead of tracking down aliens and UFOs, they are hunting down info on age-old rival religious sects engaged in a bloody, timeless struggle. I find it extremely exciting that I could discern this before even seeing the movie. Do you understand what this means? It means that I do not need to actually see new movies before writing reviews of them. Without the bother of the logistics of leaving home and going to a cinema, I can post these write-ups much more promptly. Thank you, Hollywood. The real mystery here is why I liked this movie so much better than the majority of “expert” film critics. But what’s not to like? This is more or less a remake of Raiders of the Lost Ark done as a Hitchcock thriller—with the usual twists and turns and double crosses and triple crosses and (given the subject matter) bloody crosses, as well as the MacGuffin to end all MacGuffins. The complaints about this movie? Too dark, lighting-wise. (Didn’t notice.) Tom Hanks’s hair. (Didn’t notice.) Unfair to albinos. (Can’t argue that one; go rent Powder for balance.) Too much prattling/blathering/talking. Yes, there was constant chatter. But I found that entirely entertaining. It was a bit like the second and third Matrix movies, in that much of the fun was seeing how Byzantine and baroque the explanations and back history could get. And I will take endless blather from the likes of Sir Ian McKellen any day. I was just relieved that Paul Bettany’s maniacal monk didn’t turn out to be one of those standard Hollywood monsters that keep coming back after being killed multiple times.
(Seen 5 June 2006)
Dan Dan, Dad & Me 
Many of us know quite a bit now about Michael Collins, the Irish military
strategist who succeeded in forcing the British to negotiate Ireland’s
independence—thanks largely to a certain film by Neil Jordan,
starring Liam Neeson. But what about the man who succeeded Collins
after he was ambushed and killed in 1922? His name was Richard
Mulcahy, and he went on to lead the Free State military, serve as a
defense minister, and lead the Fine Gael party for many years. This
film is by his granddaughter, Lisa Mulcahy, and it promises to be an
informative biography of the elder Mulcahy (the “Dan Dan” of the
title, as he was called by his grandchildren). But the film is much
more than that. Like an epic novel or a primetime soap opera, it
goes on to account for the generations that followed, with
particular emphasis on the filmmaker’s father, Risteárd, who
was quite an interesting fellow in his own right. A physician
specializing in preventive medicine (unusual in Ireland at the
time), he was a lone, early and much criticized voice speaking out
about the danger of cigarettes. He was also one of the first men in
the Irish Republic to obtain a legal divorce from his wife. The film
looks unflinchingly at such details, giving us a bit of a
voyeuristic thrill, as well involving us in the “plot.” The
storytelling is aided by a fair amount of old family film footage
and the choice to make this film essentially a story of the house
the family lived in, right in the heart of Dublin’s Rathmines
district. It will be hard for people who know the area today to
picture it as the country retreat it was not that long ago. In the
end, the film seems to have really been a form of personal therapy
for Lisa, as the project brings her closer to her father. (Seen 22 January 2002)
Dancing at Lughnasa
This is the real thing. This isn’t The
Quiet Man or even The
Nephew. This film evokes all that makes the Irish and
Irish-Americans get misty-eyed about Eire, but without resorting to
shameless caricatures. Dancing at Lughnasa (the name refers to
an ancient pagan Irish festival and sounds a bit like “lunacy”) is a
childhood memoir, which thankfully does not dwell too much on the child
himself or try to see everything from his limited point of view.
Playwright Brian Friel based the stage version on his own early years,
and his bittersweet portrait of five sisters in 1930s Donegal trying to
keep things together in the face of adversity was a hit from Dublin to
Broadway. The film version by Pat O’Connor (Cal, Circle of
Friends) is a different animal from the play, and the tone is
decidedly more melancholy. As the title promises, there is some dancing,
but don’t be looking for Riverdance. The cast is uniformly fine,
and Meryl Steep proves once again that she has a chameleon-like mastery
of accents. No stage “Oirish” here! Her depiction of the oldest sister
who has worked to hold the family together so long that she has become
cross and bitter is on the mark and heartbreaking. It is ironic that the
family is undone by the arrival of a textile factory, as today Donegal is
dealing with the prospective withdrawal of Fruit of the Loom. (Seen 27 September 1998)
Dancing at the Blue Iguana
This may be the most intelligent movie about strippers/exotic dancers
ever made. But, of course, that’s damning with faint praise since the
field is littered with such previous efforts as Showgirls and Striptease. If anyone has a
chance with this tricky subject matter, it might as well be director
Michael Radford, whose previous work has included White
Mischief, the 1984 version of 1984 and the arthouse hit
Il Postino. The problem
with films about strippers is that a lot of viewers won’t be able to
get past the fact that women’s bodies are on display—and that is
definitely true here. But it is not only the women’s bodies that are
stripped bare but also their characters, and by the end we have come
to know most of them more intimately than we could have thought
possible. An extra bonus is that the dancers are played by some of
our age’s most underexposed (no pun intended) and/or underrated
actors—notably Darryl Hannah (Blade Runner, Splash),
who looks like she hasn’t eaten for three years; Jennifer Tilly,
whose voice has thankfully dropped two octaves since Bullets Over
Broadway; and Sandra Oh (Last
Night, The Red
Violin). The film was partially improvised, which is a great
thing for actors but usually not for audiences. Happily, though, no
scene feels as though it is being made up on the spur of the moment
and the movie hangs together quite well and provides some very
perverse humor, particularly in Hannah’s and Tilly’s scenes. (Seen 15 August 2001)
Danny Deckchair
This typically offbeat 2003 Australian comedy raises the question: why don’t we see Rhys Ifans playing more lead roles in romantic comedies? As he ages and softens a bit, can we put behind us the images of him from his grungy roles in flicks like Twin Town and Notting Hill. (In the latter film, in which he played Hugh Grant’s utterly unkempt flatmate, a friend of mine swore she could actually smell him.) As the title character in Danny Deckchair, Ifans displays a goofy (dare I say) charm and puppy dog earnestness as a husband out of step with his suburban neighborhood and his increasingly ambitious wife. Although based on an actual incident involving a guy in America who really did take flight in a deckchair lifted by helium balloons, the film is really a throwback to the wacky kind of comedies that Preston Sturges used to do. Ifans’s aerial journey also deliberately echoes The Wizard of Oz. When he lands in a remote small town, where he fits in much better than he ever did in his Sydney suburb, people call him “Professor” and he meets a soul mate named Glenda, played by warrior princess Eowyn herself, Miranda Otto Despite its fanciful touches, it all gets a bit predictable by the end. (Seen 31 January 2005)
Dante’s Peak
There is really only one reason to see this movie. For a few breathtaking
moments in the penultimate act, you get a real sense of what it would be
like to be in the path of a volcanic eruption, which is, of course,
something we all hope to experience someday. Beyond the special effects,
however, this example of the new volcano disaster sub-genre is strictly
by-the-numbers. Pierce Brosnan is haunted by the woman he lost
cliffhanging, I mean, studying a volcano. The city council doesn’t want
to scare off business by alerting people to the shark, I mean, the
volcano. There is a ragtag team of wise-cracking scientist types who live
only to chase tornadoes, I mean, volcanoes. And Brosnan bonds with two
little kids as he saves them from the dinosaurs, I mean, the volcano.
Heck, a dog even has to make a perilous jump to safety amid all the
destruction wrought by the flying saucers, I mean, the volcano. This is
all fun enough, but it’s only one small town that gets destroyed. Let’s
move on to the next volcano
blockbuster where all of Los Angeles gets blown away! (Seen 21 February 1997)
Darby O’Gill and the Little People
Why do Irish people have such a visceral negative reaction to this movie? Actually, I’m not sure they all do. My personal expert on everything Irish seemed to be enjoying herself quite well as she watched it but, rather than make an assumption about her opinion, I asked her point blank what she thought of the movie. Without hesitation, she gave me a one-word reply that, alas, I cannot repeat. In the end, it is not too hard to understand the reaction. If this movie were about African-Americans instead of Irish people, it would be minstrel show. It is strange to think that, having absolutely no Irish connection through my own family, this Disney entertainment more or less formed my original concept of what Ireland was like. It’s even stranger, upon seeing it again at this point of my life, to realize that in odd ways that no self-respecting Irish person would acknowledge, it’s really not that far off. Sure, it’s pure fantasy, and that’s the point. Walt Disney, an American proud of his own Irish connections, went to some effort for, if not exactly authenticity, then validity. Much of the cast are real Irish actors, including those who play the old codger Darby, the romantic rival Pony Sugrue and Brian, king of the leprechauns. The male romantic lead was at least a member of the extended Gaelic family, an impossibly young Sean Connery. His female opposite was the engaging but ill-fated English actor Janet Munro. Their temper-laden courtship was, in a typical Disney sugary way, clearly meant to evoke the fireworks between John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara seven years earlier in The Quiet Man. There is even a reference to the “castle in Cong,” which is the very first shot in that movie. And of course the movie cannot end without a good brawl. The special effects hold up surprisingly well, mainly because director Robert Stevenson (who directed a bunch of Disney classics, including Old Yeller, Mary Poppins and the original versions of The Absent Minded Professor and The Love Bug) relied on trick perspectives to have Darby interact with the leprechaun king, similar to what Peter Jackson would do with Hobbits four decades later in The Lord of the Rings. Should the Irish really be insulted by this movie? Ah, it’s good enough for them. The truth is, I know more than a few Darbys these days, and they are as cute as anything. (Seen 18 November 2005)
Daredevil
For some reason it had never before occurred to me that, if a superhero
were a practicing Catholic, his priest would know his secret identity.
But then, the superhero in this movie seems to get his masked removed by
someone every few minutes, and half the people in New York seem to figure
out who really is. I don’t remember it being explicit in the comic book
(I read the very earliest ones) that Daredevil was a Catholic, but in
hindsight, with his crop of red hair (in the comic book, anyway) and a
name like Matt Murdoch, it should have been obvious. The religious angle
allows director Mark Steven Johnson to go even further with the
angst-ridden neurotic superhero thing that Tim Burton did so well in
Batman—as well as providing some of the most over-the-top
action-in-a-church imagery we have seen since The Graduate or
The Ruling Class. And speaking of Batman, Ben Affleck is
the least likely movie superhero we have seen since Michael Keaton. But
his early association with Kevin Smith’s comic-book-culture-steeped films
gives him a strangely appropriate resonance. And his moral confusion (his
daytime idealistic lawyer offing unconvicted criminals at night seems
calculated to give the ACLU fits) is strange in its timeliness, as
America keeps telling itself and the world, “I’m not the bad guy!” Rather
than sequels, I recommend a series of prequels for this flick. The best
scenes were really of the young Matt Murdoch, played by Scott Terra.
Note: Don’t leave before the end credits start, or you’ll miss a nifty
tribute to Hitchcock’s Psycho.
(Seen 5 March 2003)
Dark City
I am a bit embarrassed about it, but in 1994 I liked The Crow. It
was your basic adolescent ultra-violent comic book fantasy movie. So now
the director of that film, Alex Proyas, is back with a new film that is a
different animal indeed. Dark City will appeal largely to people
who, like myself, really appreciated The City of Lost Children. It
is basically your German-style expressionistic film noir paranoid
sci-fi alien special-effects fable. The movie is a bit disorienting
because, if you’re not paying a lot of attention in the early part, it
seems like some kind of stylized 1940s type detective story. But it’s all
really about memories and identity and outer space. William Hurt is a
gumshoe who, like everyone else in town, falls asleep every fifteen
minutes around midnight. Rufus Sewell is a man who may or may not be a
killer and who keeps having vague memories of a place called Shell Beach.
This film won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, but it keeps you guessing and
provokes some thoughts, and that’s all I ask of a movie these days. (Seen 11 March 1998)
The Dark Knight
So is this movie really a neo-conservative roman à clé? I laughed when I read an op-ed, by an author named Andrew Klavan, arguing as much when this movie came out last month (even suggesting the bat silhouette on the bat signal was really a “W”). But, after finally seeing this flick myself, I can see that he really does have a point. The parallels to the War on Terror and/or the war in Iraq are hard to deny. Heath Ledger’s Joker is nothing if not a nihilistic terrorist bent on destroying Gotham City’s (if not all of America’s or the western world’s) way of life. The local crime bosses (played by Eric Roberts and others) are basically sectarian militia leaders fighting for turf in a city that resembles pre-surge Baghdad in its levels of violence and corruption. And the methods that the good guys use to battle the bad guys frequently violate the letter and the spirit of the law. If you’re still not convinced, consider that Bruce Wayne’s principled technology guru (Morgan Freeman) resigns because he is asked to do a warrantless search of private telecommunications in order to locate the villains. Is there a political motive behind this film or is director Christopher Nolan just riffing on contemporary themes to make the story seem more up-to-the-minute? Hard to know, but just because he is making a big-budget popcorn movie doesn’t mean that he isn’t going to give us his usual helpings of myriad perspectives, deceptive illusions (perfect for a character like The Joker) and hard moral dilemmas. The film is relentlessly bleak, but one of its rare bright spots springs from one of those moral dilemmas, one involving two ferry boats and a couple of detonators. Amid all the thrills and chills, we get a fair amount of thought-provoking ideas, notably the idea that sometimes fiction and myths are necessary for people to carry on in a dark world. (Take that, mainstream media!) Thus, in a strange way, this movie shares a theme with John Ford’s The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. A word needs to be said about the late Heath Ledger. His portrayal of The Joker is light years away from Jack Nicholson’s turn 19 years ago, and Cesar Romero’s mugging on the 1960s TV show shouldn’t even be mentioned in the same breath. Ledger achieved something fixed between Andrew Robinson’s memorable psycho 37 years ago in Dirty Harry and our nightmare memories of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s internet videos. His performance is a tour de force of unsettling dread, all the more haunting because it comes to us from beyond the grave.
(Seen 23 August 2008)
The Day After Tomorrow
The good news is that the computer effects are pretty cool. Otherwise, as is usually the case with this kind of movie, we pick up all kinds of handy information that is not available outside of movies, i.e. when major catastrophes occur, they mainly affect large cities, while no one much cares what is happening in fly-over country. Or that when a sudden, huge snap freeze occurs, it doesn’t hit everywhere at the same time, but rather it follows just behind people who are scurrying to safety. And there is more silliness. When the biggest natural calamity to hit the world in 10,000 years arrives, the man who is apparently the government’s greatest human asset and his (estranged, of course) doctor wife pretty much drop everything to have a serious chat about what they have or haven’t done right in raising their son. But then the doctor’s load is fairly light; she seems to have just one patient. This is a kinder, gentler disaster movie. Often in these things, the jerks in authority (who never listen to the knowledgeable scientists) wind up dying horrible deaths. But here they merely realize the error of their ways and become contrite. Still, all is not lost. There is a fair amount of humor (intentional or otherwise) along the way. Like Americans crossing a river to flee to Mexico. Or the way that Kenneth Welsh is cast as the arrogant vice-president, apparently because of his resemblance to Dick Cheney. But what are we to make of the dim president who, as played by Perry King, who bears something of a resemblance to Al Gore? The biggest laugh, however, was in the closing credits, where a debt was acknowledged not to Gore’s book on global warming but to The Coming Global Superstorm by Art Bell and Whitley Strieber. Bell has been entertaining late-night AM radio audiences for years with the inside dish on extraterrestrials and the paranormal. Strieber, on the other hand, is summed up succinctly on at least one web page as “Well-known UFO Abductee and Author.” One mystery left unresolved by the movie: the scientists in this flick keep blaming (mostly American) politicians for causing the ice age, but they never explain exactly what caused the last one. (Seen 2 June 2004)
De battre mon coeur s’est arrêté (The Beat That My Heart Skipped)
One thing we learn for sure in this movie is that the Paris real estate business is really tough. If I ever realize my longtime dream of living in Paris, I will definitely make sure to pay the rent promptly. Because, if I don’t, people like Thomas Seyr and his colleagues will come in the middle of the night and do terrible things to punish me. As played by Romain Duris, Tom is intense at everything he does. That includes the aforementioned renter enforcement actions as well as bedding other men’s women and arguing with his widowed father, who insists on keeping a hand in the business even though his grip on things seems to be slipping. Tom, it turns out, also has an intensity for music, as we find out when a chance encounter rekindles an old passion for the piano, setting in motion a stark conflict between two very different worlds. Director Jacques Audiard, who previously gave us See How They Fall and A Self Made Hero, adapted this very engaging flick from a 1978 one written and directed by James Toback, which was called Fingers and starred Harvey Keitel. Duris may have echoes of the young Keitel but, as he swaggers and bops down the street to the music blaring in his headphones, he is like nothing so much as Jean-Paul Belmondo in Breathless, fast-forwarded 45 years. As such, he is more than easy to watch for the film’s 108-minute running time. (Seen 12 October 2005)
De-Lovely
It would be hard to make a bad movie about Cole Porter. I mean, all you have to do is put as many of his songs on the soundtrack and it almost doesn’t matter what’s up on the screen. Sure, it would be nice if the rest of movie were interesting and entertaining, but it would have to be pretty awful to actually detract from the music. This flick by Irwin Winkler (whose lengthy list of producer credits includes the Rocky movies) isn’t the definitive biography of Porter, but at least it is interesting and (thanks in large part to musical cameos from the likes of Robbie Williams, Elivs Costello, Alanis Morisette and Sheryl Crowe) entertaining. The filmmakers have framed the story as a dialog between the aged Porter (seemingly played by the late John Randolph) and the angel Gabriel (himself the subject of a Porter song, here played by Jonathon Pryce). It’s a bit as though Porter is Evita and Pryce is playing Che Guevara. They treat the ensuing flashbacks as a stage musical, thereby justifying an apparently conscious decision to trot out every musical biopic cliché in the book. Kevin Kline does his usual fine job, although his casting brings echoes of the somewhat similarly sexually ambivalent character he played in In & Out. That raises the question: what would this movie have been like with Joan Cusack playing Porter’s wife Linda? That would have been an interesting way to go, but Ashley Judd does just fine. Since I am always looking for insight into hot current social issues from the movies that I watch, I wondered if this film could be seen as an argument for (or against) gay marriage. Nah. It’s just a story of something that happened. It’s not a great movie, but the story is interesting. And the music is, well, de-lovely. (Seen 22 January 2002)
The Dead
What a remarkable way for a major filmmaker to go out. After a career (and life) like John Huston had, what kind of spiritual satisfaction he must have gotten, at the age of 80, to film one of best loved stories of one of the best loved writers of his beloved Ireland. And to have the screenplay written by his own son (Tony). And to have it star his own daughter (Anjelica). And to have it turn out to be such a poetic and beautiful meditation on life and death. It was his parting gift, as he died four months before it was released. A synopsis sounds deadly dull. There is a holiday dinner with much conversation and a few people performing their party pieces. Then the Conroys go back to their hotel, and Gretta spills out a flood of haunting memories her husband Gabriel knew nothing about, evoked by a song someone sang at the party. The emotional payoff is major. The Guardian called it the greatest Irish cast ever assembled. Donal McCann (whose film c.v. includes Cal, December Bride, Stealing Beauty, The Serpent’s Kiss and The Nephew) is the leading man. Other faces that may be familiar to those not lucky enough to have seen them on stages in Dublin and elsewhere include Dan O’Herlihy (the magnate Andrew Packard in Twin Peaks and the mysterious old man in two RoboCop movies) and a young Colm Meaney, at the point where he was about to board the starship Enterprise. Another face very familiar to Galway Film Fleadh devotees is that of Kate O’Toole, daughter of Peter and current Fleadh chairperson. A final gift from the man who gave us everything from The Maltese Falcon to The Treasure of the Sierra Madre to The African Queen to The Man Who Would Be King.
(Seen 12 July 2009)
Dead Letter Office
This delightful serio-comedy/romance by Australia’s John Ruane takes
several emotionally charged elements and then deliberately understates
them to powerful effect. We have a young woman who can barely remember
the father she wrote plaintive letters to as a child. And we have a South
American immigrant still wrestling with demons spawned by the violence
that drove him abroad. And the drably magical setting is a nearly
forgotten postal department that handles letters that can’t be delivered.
Its charms include a homing pigeon that lives in the P.O. because it
doesn’t know where home is anymore and a file of “special cases” that
include letters to God, the Universe, Heaven and other ambiguous
addresses. Miranda Otto, who was alluringly daffy in Love Serenade, has just the
right amount of quirkiness and wistfulness as a young woman
searching for a home she’s never had. And Uruguayan born American
George DelHoyo makes a convincing Chilean who is haunted by the
feeling that home is something he will never have again. (Seen 21 May 1999)
Dead Man
Any movie that has John Hurt, Crispin Glover, and Robert Mitchum in it
just has to be seen! They (along with Gabriel Byrne, Alfred Molina and
others) essentially have cameos in Dead Man, Jim (Stranger Than
Paradise) Jarmusch’s latest effort. Another deadpan black-and-white
comedy in the inimitable Jarmuschian style, this is essentially his
remake of The Paleface with Johnny Depp in the Bob Hope role. Depp
is a city slicker accountant who goes west for a job but winds up making
a spiritual journey. Jarmusch’s vision of the Old West is NRA heaven.
Every single person packs a gun and uses it at the merest provocation.
Gary Farmer (Powwow Highway) is the Native American outcast who
befriends Depp, and Lance Henriksen is a hired killer (and one bad
hombre) hot on his trail. The soundtrack, provided by Neil Young,
consists largely of a few well-placed guitar chords. (Seen
20 May 1996)
Dead Man Walking
Despite the title, this is not a horror flick about zombies. It’s about
capital punishment. Once you know that (and the fact that the title song
was written and performed by Bruce Springsteen) then you realize that
this is going to be one heavy film. But despite the film’s sober subject
(and the fact that the main character is a nun), this is for the most
part a very watchable movie. Yes, there are parts that are hard to watch,
but you won’t feel exploited in doing so. And, yes, it does have a
definite opinion on the death penalty, but to its credit you can’t be
sure what that is until the very end. Such is its confidence in its
position that it does an admirable job of presenting both sides of the
issue. Susan Sarandon (directed by sweetie Tim Robbins) gives a very
moving performance. And Sean Penn, playing yet another sleazeball, is the
best he has ever been as an actor. I defy you to see Dead Man
Walking and not have a spirited discussion afterwards. (Seen 1 March 1996)
Dead-End Drive In
I’ve got to be honest here. I was half-asleep through much of this movie,
which was screened at midnight. This isn’t really the movie’s fault,
although lack of sleep didn’t seem to be a problem for Evil Dead II or Street Trash.
Anyway, this Australian flick takes us back into Mad Max/Road
Warrior territory. It is sometime a few years from now and
civilization is breaking down pretty badly. The latest big movie is
Rambo Takes Russia. A teenager named Crabs (“I thought I had them
once, but I didn’t”) takes his girlfriend to the drive-in. But while he
is having his way with her, someone rips off the tires from his car.
Turns out it was the police. In fact, everybody’s getting their tires
ripped off. And the drive-in has a barbed-wire, electrified fence. In
other words, the powers that be have turned the drive-in into a
concentration camp to better manage the unruly teen population. But Crabs
(love that name!) is a rebel. He thinks of nothing but getting out.
Fortunately, I managed to wake up for the grand finale, where Crabs
breaks out, in one of the best (but too short) car sequences since
Road Warrior. (Seen 6 June 1987)
Dear Wendy
If we didn’t know better, we could imagine that this odd little film was based on a novel by a southern writer like Flannery O’Connor and perhaps directed by someone with a wry perspective, like John Huston. And we might even wonder why Brad Dourif wasn’t cast in the lead role of the confused and deluded young man in a small (apparently southern) American town. (Actually, there was a movie like that. It was 1979’s Wise Blood.) In fact, there are enough authentic touches in this movie that it comes as a surprise that it was made by Danes in Denmark. The writer is Lars von Trier, a famous director in his own right who has given us things like the weird miniseries The Kingdom as well as the feature films Breaking the Waves and Dogville. The director is Thomas Vinterberg, whose c.v. includes the Dogma film Festen and the totally perplexing It’s All About Love. The Brad Dourif role goes to an English lad, Jamie Bell, who was so memorable in Billy Elliot. Also on hand is Bill Pullman (an American!) as the local law enforcement. In some ways, the movie feels like a throwback to 1960s films (Bonnie and Clyde comes to mind) about rebels and misfits whose lives end badly because of the heavy and overly-armed hand of the U.S. government. The 1960s feeling is enhanced by a whiff of A Clockwork Orange (as Bell and his fellow young misfits form a strange club that combines the unlikely elements of dandyism, firearms and pacifism) and some old Zombies songs on the soundtrack. We can tell early on that things will go badly, although not in the way we might think. (Things unravel, improbably enough, when an errand to deliver coffee across the town square goes spectacularly wrong.) What is the message here? The no-brainer answer is an indictment of America’s fabled gun culture. In this movie, people don’t kill people. Guns do. (Seen 5 July 2005)
Death of a President
The main question I had going into to this somewhat controversial feature by Gabriel Range was: is this a work of “entertainment” or is it a “political film.” I’m still not exactly sure, but I would lean toward the designation of “thought-provoking entertainment.” Constructed as a documentary looking back at a presidential assassination in October 2007 and its aftermath, the movie plays out its conceit completely straight. This could well be any number of TV news documentaries we have seen over the years. The film generates a fair amount of tension in the first reel, as we know that the president will be killed but we don’t know exactly when or how. After that, however, it gets a bit slow, as we follow the hunt for the assassin and the ensuing
(over-)reaction of the government. It’s a whodunnit, but one that is awfully drawn out, sort of like an episode of CSI on Valium. For those hoping for a zinger of a political message, I’m afraid that the film plays its documentary “objectivity” to a fault. Pro-Bush and anti-Bush voices are all presented. There are some intriguing, subtle hints toward the end that things could be heading into (pre-World Trade Center) Oliver Stone territory, but that is largely left up to the imagination of the viewer. As for the “wish fulfillment/snuff film” angle that some have decried, the film festival audience was clearly primed and roused for an anti-Bush political wallow. But, interestingly, as the film’s events unfolded, in apparently deliberate echoes of the JFK assassination, the crowd quieted down and, when fake TV news people came on to announce the death of the president, there was not a sound in the cinema. (Seen 8 October 2006)
Deep Impact 
I can’t believe that I’m giving a movie that has Robert Duvall, Morgan
Freeman, and Vanessa Redgrave only one star. But Duvall, who more or less
plays John Glenn, seems to be still refining his character from The Apostle. And Redgrave has
little to do but watch TV (in an apparent nod to Bill Gates’s
monopolistic dreams, the only channel on is MSNBC) and look worried.
I actually thought this was a bad Ron Howard film because 1) in the
opening scenes Charles Martin Smith’s unfortunate astronomer looks
strangely like Ron’s brother Clint, who is always in his films, and
2) the film aspires to the special-effects-around-a-tear-jerker
formula perfected by Howard long before James Cameron’s Titanic. But the director
here is Mimi Leder, whose credits lie mainly in TV (including
ER) and 1997’s The Peacemaker. There is way too much
about how people feel in this movie (plus a fair amount of
improbable nonsense) and not nearly enough special effects. If doom
is hurtling toward earth, I’ll take my chances with Bruce Willis
doing Die Hard in outer
space, thank you very much. (Seen 26 May
1998)
Defying Gravity
Technically, this film falls into the growing sub-genre of films about
the evils of gays being in the closet (cf. The Delta, A Queer Story). But this one
has all the earnestness and wholesomeness of a TV after-school
special. The story is set in a college fraternity where the hero,
Griff, is deluding himself that he is a “normal” guy despite the
fact that he regularly fools around with a former frat brother,
Pete, who is in love with him. The plot revolves around the dubious
proposition that Griff is somehow morally responsible for a violent
attack on Pete, but on the whole the movie has a very welcome
outlook that is upbeat and positive. Refreshingly, straight people
in this movie (with the obvious exception of the gay bashers) are
generally portrayed as sympathetic and understanding, a situation
that writer/director John Keitel says reflected his own coming-out
experience. (Seen 8 June 1997)
The Delta
Set in Memphis, this first-time writing/directing effort from Ira Sachs
is apparently at least partly autobiographical. It is a frustrating film
for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the sound quality
which was frequently marginal. Sachs suggests this was not unintended
since he wanted to create “a world in which the viewer wasn’t necessarily
invited.” (Huh?) The comprehension challenge is all the stiffer since one
of his leading characters (Minh, an Amerasian from Saigon) speaks English
with an impenetrable accent. The story, concerning an extremely brief
affair between Minh and a high school student, has a sudden and
unexpected ending which left me shaking my head. Fortunately, Sachs was
there to explain that the point was, if I understood him correctly, that
if you are gay it is bad to be in the closet because you might cause
somebody else to kill somebody. (Again, huh?) (Seen 26 May
1997)
Denise Calls Up
A while back Almost Live did a skit about a man and a woman who
are fixed up by friends, develop a relationship, and eventually break
up—all by leaving each other messages on their answering machines. At
the time, I thought it was a clever idea for a skit but that it went on a
bit too long. After seeing Denise Calls Up, I realize that
Almost Live never even scratched the surface. During practically
all of the 79 minutes of this movie, we see people meet, fall in love,
have sex, go through child birth, die, and mourn—all without seeing each
other in person! Virtually all communication in this movie is by
telephone (desk, car, cellular) or fax. (Email is strangely absent even
though the characters are almost always at their computers.) The amazing
thing is that it all comes off as plausible! Only minimal exaggeration is
needed to portray this group of New York singles as people so caught up
on their work and their gadgets that their only social interaction is
over phone lines. Just when you think the premise has been taken as far
as it can go, the filmmakers throw in a new twist that has you roaring.
This is simply one of the funniest (and most thought provoking) movies I
have ever seen. Tim Daly (Wings) stars. (And, yes, I am aware of
the irony that I am sending these words to people electronically and that
some of you are people I haven’t seen in months or years and that some of
you I have never even met!) (Seen 3 June 1995)
The Departed
Wai Keung Lau and Siu Fai Mak’s 2002 movie Infernal Affairs was to violent Hong Kong action flicks what Persona was to Swedish art films. It took a standard crime flick convention, the tenuous moral and psychological tether of a cop under deep cover, and created mirror images of it that twisted and intertwined with one another with unlikely symmetry. In hindsight, I clearly underestimated that movie, which has stuck with me ever since. Having seen it in Dublin, it is a strange sensation indeed to now see a faithful remake where almost all the characters are Irish. Well, Irish-American anyway. But Martin Scorsese’s decision to set the new version in Boston (instead of his usual setting of New York) is inspired. While wildly exaggerated, the movie draws on historical tensions not only in that city but, indirectly, also in Northern Ireland. The ever-escalating cycle of violence feels all too familiar. The remake faces obstacles that the original didn’t. A minor one, which affects only those of us who saw the original, is that its faithfulness to the original undercuts the story’s strongest element: the unrelenting suspense of how things will work out. The other obstacle is the fact that the actors are all not only extremely well known but—in the cases of Jack Nicholson (especially), Alec Baldwin and Mark Wahlberg—going over the top. But that trio give this movie something the original didn’t have: a hearty sense of humor. Recently, the excellent Ray Winstone, in answer to a question on one of the BBC radio channels, said there was absolutely no swearing in the movie. Let’s see, a Scorsese film set in south Boston with no curse words. Yeah, that sounds right. The truth is that there is so much swearing in the movie that it becomes a virtual running joke. The foul-mouthed banter between Wahlberg and Baldwin is so amusing that it, among other touches, gives this movie a spirit that helps set it apart from its Asian predecessor and helps to make it an original work in its own right.
(Seen 11 October 2006)
Le Dernier jour (The Last Day)
This movie belongs to a little known French subgenre. It is little known because I just made it up. It is called films français qui m’innervent (or, as the French themselves might term it, French films that make me nuts). Plot-wise, very little happens. I suppose that it can be considered a foreign cousin to that American standard, the movie where someone spends a holiday with their family and everything goes to hell, but that makes it sound more exciting than it really is. Sensitive art student Simon comes home to spend the Christmas break with his family. Marie, an attractive fellow student, follows him home on the train. Once there, his family have various issues that they mostly don’t deal with. Something of a triangle forms among Simon, Marie and a guy in a lighthouse. There is lots of cold weather, moodiness, elliptical conversations and circumspection. Then it’s over. Fortunately, the lead role of Simon is fairly watchable since he is played Gaspard Ulliel, whose performance could be underestimated if not compared to his completely 180-degree turn as the troubled, skin-headed youth in Strayed. According to the IMDB, Ulliel will also play the young Hannibal Lecter in some sort of prequel to Silence of the Lambs. (Seen 22 February 2006)
Detektor (Detector)
A quick plot summary of Detektor sounds like the premise for a
weekly sitcom. Daniel is a psychologist who spends his days dealing with
an array of wacky clients. At night he goes home, where at the age of 28
he still lives with his mother who believes (correctly) that she’s
running his life. His best friend (and fellow metal detector hobbyist) is
a radio personality who uses Daniel’s life as material for his morning
program. Things begin to change, however, when an attractive woman shows
up to collect the necklace that Daniel has found on one of his metal
detecting expeditions. At the same time Daniel finds himself getting
personally involved with a couple of his clients—an older Swedish man
who wants someone to go fishing with and a Satanist with adroit insight
into Daniel’s own problems who also has the impressive ability to kill
flies using only his forehead. By the time all of this is worked
out—plus a search for a long-missing farmer and a brush with a violent
flautist—this Norwegian comedy/drama by Pal Jackman ties up its loose
ends as neatly as any sitcom could hope to. (Seen 12 July
2001)
Devdas
This was my first opportunity to see a production from India’s prolific
Bollywood crew. It was their films—with their colorful and energetic
Hollywood heyday musical style married to opera-like heights of emotion
and tragedy—that inspired Baz Luhrmann in his making of Moulin Rouge!. It turns out, as is
true in so many cases, that the original is preferable to the
homage. Still, this sort of thing—which is very popular in
India—is an acquired taste for those of us steeped in modern western
filmmaking. At three hours length (plus intermission), this spectacle
requires a significant investment in time. The story is simple. The young
titular hero Devdas returns home to Bengal after being educated for years
in London. He was sent there in the first place to separate him from his
adored girl next door, whose family is below his class-wise. But the pair
are still as attached as ever. The families muck things up totally, the
girl is married off to a widower, and Devdas deals with this the best way
he can, which is to move into a brothel and proceed to drink himself to
death. It takes a huge cast, magnificent sets and lots of singing and
dancing to tell this story. And they found incredibly attractive people
to play the main parts. It is no surprise to learn that this is the most
expensive Indian film ever made. If you see only one Bollywood picture,
this is apparently the one to see. (Seen 13 October
2002)
Devil in a Blue Dress
Set in the African-American community of Los Angeles in the late 1940s,
this tale of mystery, deception, and murder is more than a little
reminiscent of China Town and the earlier films that inspired it
(sort of a noir film noir). Denzel Washington plays Easy Rawlins,
the ordinary Joe who gets caught up in a plot that reaches to the highest
levels of power in LA. In typical film noir fashion, he gets
handed ever increasing amounts of cash by increasingly sleazy characters,
leading him to ever increasing numbers of dead bodies, the occasional
beating, and ultimately the title character, played by Jennifer Beals.
(Anybody still remember Flashdance?). He has the additional
challenge of operating in a society where separate-but-unequal is still
the rule. Devil in a Blue Dress is written and directed quite
competently by Carl Franklin, although the ending is so untypical of the
genre that it seems to have slipped in from another movie. (Seen 11 April 1996)
The Devil’s Own
This movie came out only four years ago, but watching it now brings home
just how much the world has changed in a short time. Since 9/11 we are
much more sympathetic to Harrison Ford’s NYPD sergeant, instead of
smirking at the fact that he is so principled, forthright and
uncompromising that he makes Frank Serpico look like a moral waffler. Our
view of New York City is altered too, as is the perception of Northern
Ireland. There is even a passing reference here to Afghanistan that now
gives us a shiver. This was the last film directed by Alan J. Pakula
(whose death on the Long Island Expressway is mentioned twice in L.I.E.), and like other (better)
films of his (Klute, All the President’s Men, Sophie’s
Choice), it is quite thoughtful. It means to compare the (liberal)
American attitude toward ending cycles of violence and contrasting that
with a worst-case example of cyclical violence: Northern Ireland. Ford is
essentially Gary Cooper standing for What Is Right, clashing head on with
Pitt’s IRA gunman as the overly romanticized outlaw. The film illustrates
vividly the contradiction between the liberal American principle of
rejecting violence while at the same time excusing almost anything done
by oppressed minorities. This could have been quite compelling, but the
movie is undone by too many Hollywood action movie touches and Pitt’s
Northern Ireland accent that grows increasingly annoying in each reel. He
did much better as the Irish Traveler in Snatch. (Seen 16
November 2001)
Diably, Diably (Devils, Devils)
This 1991 film by Polish director Dorota Kedzierzawska was the first of
three she has made to date. It won a Special Jury Prize in Cannes and
established her as a talent to be reckoned with. This is “pure” cinema,
which means 1) there is very little dialog and 2) every frame is so
perfectly composed that it could be plucked out and, uh, framed. A
classic story of a young girl’s sexual awakening, it captures perfectly
the fear, frustration and excitement of this particular passage of life.
The young lead, a budding student of ballet (a pursuit since abandoned)
is lovely and a bit frightening with an intense stare that seems in
keeping for a girl stuck in small village where old crones on the street
mutter loudly as you pass by that you’re a slut just like your mother
was. In this austere environment, it is no wonder that the gypsy camp
seems so much more alluring. (Seen 15 May 1999)
I Diakritiki goitia twn arsenikwn (Mating Game)
Olga Malea’s amusing first feature, provocatively titled The Cow’s Orgasm, was about
young country girls doing their best to get some romantic
experience. By contrast, Mating Game is about sophisticated
city girls (three sisters) who have plenty of romantic experience
and are looking (not very successfully) for something more
fulfilling. Fast-paced and frequently laugh-out-loud funny, this
movie gives the impression that Greece is a place where anybody
jumps into bed with anybody at anytime and fidelity is more or less
defined as not having been with anybody else during the past twelve
hours. At the outset, these attractive and gifted women are all
involved with jerks, but within minutes through a series of separate
physical mishaps (the group frequently find themselves meeting in
the local emergency room) they wind up thrown together with three
more men who are somewhat better than jerks. The story’s interest
revolves around who will wind up with whom and what kind of choices
each woman will make—with a fair amount meddling of the sisters in
each other’s lives. As always, they have much better sense when
someone else’s life is involved rather than their own. Personally, I
found the most moving relationship the one between Laura and her
hairbrush. (Seen 22 May 1999)
Il Diavolo in corpo (Devil in the Flesh)
I will skip past the high-minded artsy-fartsy analysis of this movie and
tell you right up front what you really want to know. In this movie,
there is an extremely graphic oral sex scene. I’m talking X-rated. Okay,
now that that’s out of the way: This movie (by Italian director Marco
Bellochlo whose films usually have body parts in the title: Fists in
the Pocket and The Eyes, The Mouth) is about a young woman,
who is going crazy, and the male high school student, who comes along for
the ride. She is engaged to a man on trial for terrorism. Her teenage
lover is mostly just horny which, when you’re a teenager, is called Love.
There are some funny moments, some intentionally. (Seen 30
May 1987)
Die Another Day
The punk spy movie xXx tried to
make the point that James Bond’s time had come and gone. But the writers
of the 007 series have been cleverly making the same point since Pierce
Brosnan took over the lead role. I don’t think there has been a movie
since Judi Dench took over as M in which she hasn’t called Bond a
dinosaur or otherwise implied that he’s been around too long. Things get
even worse this time, as Bond is all but accused of treason and is forced
to take it on the lam. We thus have one of the strongest starts to a Bond
movie in a long, long time. Never fear, however, by the end we are well
re-entrenched in the tried-and-true 007 formula. So, the main interest is
in the fact that the movie is well aware that it is marking the 40-year,
20-movie anniversary of the Bond franchise. There are numerous references
to the earlier films, most notably Halle Berry recreating the famous
Ursula Andress coming-out-of-the-water scene from Dr. No. Other
than giving die-hard film buffs a charge, this isn’t a particularly good
idea since it mainly serves to remind us that we aren’t watching Sean
Connery watching the babe in the swimsuit. Still, in the early scenes we
do see that Brosnan can rise above the cardboard cutout that the James
Bond character has mostly been since Roger Moore took over the role. But
that is long forgotten by the time we get to a special effects scene in
Iceland that is embarrassing for its artificiality. (It’s really bad
because the stunt work has always been the Bond films’ strong suit.) But
then, it has always been Bond’s problem (rather distressingly, for such a
renowned lady’s man) that he tends to start strong and perform early, but
doesn’t always manage to last to the end. (Seen 20 November
2002)
Different for Girls
Richard Spence’s Different for Girls is very similar in spirit and
tone to Christopher Monger’s 1994 film, Just Like a Woman.
Spence’s film does for transsexuality what Monger’s did for
cross-dressing, that is, seeking simultaneously to entertain and to
educate. The story involves two British school chums who are reunited
after many years. One (Rupert Graves) still hasn’t gotten his act
together maturity-wise. The other (Steven Mackintosh in a sensitive
portrayal) is a post-operative transsexual. The humor relies not at all
on coincidences, mistaken identities, or other farcical devices. And
interestingly, the story is less about whether Graves can accept his
friend’s new identity than it is about Mackintosh’s need to stop living
in fear. In the process, we learn many things about how a sex change is
accomplished as well as the problems faced by transsexuals. All in all,
it is an amusing, unusual and touching love story. (Seen 31
May 1997)
Diner
A free movie is a free movie (thank you, Warner Bros.) even if it is 17
years old, so I ventured into the heart of the war zone that is currently
Seattle (thank you, World Trade Organization) to see the inaugural
screening of a mini-festival of Barry Levinson’s Baltimore movies,
offered as a lead-up to his latest, Liberty Heights. If, like me,
you haven’t seen Diner in 17 years, then you find yourself
exclaiming things like, “Hey! I didn’t remember that Paul Reiser [Kevin
Bacon] [Timothy Daly] [Ellen Barkin] was in this movie!” which (take my
word for it) is really annoying to the people in the row in front of you.
Anyway, after I saw this flick in 1982, I mainly remembered the funny
bits: Mickey Rourke’s date finds a big surprise in the popcorn, Daniel
Stern lectures his wife on keeping his records in order, Steve Guttenberg
makes his fiancée pass a complex football test before he’ll marry
her. Now, 17 years older and (hopefully) wiser, I am much more struck by
the undercurrent of sadness about this group of young male friends
desperately trying to hold on to the fun times of their youth in the face
impending adulthood. Most of all, there is an indelible sense of time and
place that demonstrates why the Baltimore films are so personal to
writer/director Levinson. (Seen 30 November 1999)
Dirty Dancing
Have you ever wondered how it came to be that people stopped dancing the
fox trot and started dancing the way people do now (without touching each
other)? Well, it all happened one night in 1963 at a resort in the
Catskills (run by Jack Weston, who is really starting to look old). Of
course, this was before we lost our innocence, which means before JFK was
assassinated and (according to this movie) before the Beatles became
popular. As a disclaimer, 1et me say I was not disposed to like this
movie because it was a last-minute substitution for a movie I really
wanted to see by one of my favorite directors, Ettore Scola. Anyway,
Dirty Dancing suffers from Flashdance-itis. The music and
dancing are fun, but it’s too bad they tried to weave some kind of story
in between. They also have trouble keeping the music and dancing in 1963;
the 1980s keep creeping in. The young lady coming of age here (everyone
calls her Baby) is played by Jennifer Grey, who looked familiar to me.
She can give one of those looks that can pierce several layers of the
earth’s crust and kill someone in China. I was trying to remember where I
had seen that look before and halfway through the movie it hit me: She
was Matthew Broderick’s bitchy sister in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.
She may be a pretty good actress if she ever gets a real role in a real
movie. Anyway, this movie would have you believe that Baby and her
low-life summer vacation boyfriend (whom Daddy doesn’t like), played by
Patrick Swayzie of The Outsiders and Red Dawn, not only
started modern rock dancing but they also may have inspired the Civil
Rights movement. At one point, a disgusting little would-be stud says to
Baby, “I’m sorry you had to see that, Baby.” He could have been talking
about this flick. (Seen 5 June 1987)
The Disappearance of Finbar
This film is a coin with two sides to it. One side is the greater Dublin
working (or rather non-working) class community made familiar to us in
other Irish films, particularly those written by Roddy Doyle. (This one
was filmed in Tallaght.) The other side is a frozen, somewhat
metaphysical Lapland landscape a bit reminiscent of last year’s Cold Fever. Finbar is a lad
who has a lot of expectations placed on his shoulders and he finds
the burden more than he can bear. One night he vanishes, as if into
thin air. Ironically, in doing so he turns himself into a legend,
which amusingly looms larger and larger, finally culminating in an
international hit music video that sounds like an unholy marriage of
Johnny Cash and Nick Cave. The hero of the story, however, is really
Finbar’s lifelong friend Danny who eventually goes on a quest to
find his vanished friend. In the journey Danny and we learn
something about the nature of love and what it means to leave and to
be left behind. Finbar is played by Jonathan Rhys-Myers, who was
last seen offing Liam Neeson in Michael Collins. (Seen 1 June 1997)
Disco Pigs
Adapted for the screen by Enda Walsh from his play, this film is a
“relationship movie” not quite like any other you’ve ever seen. The
teenagers Pig and Runt have a bond that goes back so far that the telling
of it has to begin literally in the womb. Like twins kept in isolation,
these two best friends and next-door neighbors are almost telepathic and
have developed their own peculiar language—something like baby talk but
made even more impenetrable by their Cork accents. In a way, Pig and Runt
are more than like twins. They are like Siamese twins, the kind where
only one of them can survive and only if they are surgically separated
and one of them sacrificed. First-time director Kirsten Sheridan
(daughter of James) cast the two actors who originated the characters on
stage. [Oops. She actually cast one of the actors, Murphy.] Elaine
Cassidy is skilled in the role of Runt, but the movie totally belongs to
Cillian Murphy, who plays the smoldering human powder keg Pig. Murphy’s
big bright eyes and bee-stung lips give his face a child-like and
androgynous quality that haunts. His character, a young man striving to
stay a child, is remotely related to and at the same time leagues away
from his turn as a Dublin lad running from responsibility on Long Island
in Sunburn. (Seen 15 June 2001)
Distant Voices, Still Lives
This much admired 1988 British film by Terence Davies falls firmly into the category of film as art. Technically, it is faultless, and it certainly doesn’t lack a cumulative emotional punch. But it keeps us at a bit of a distance through its elliptical and non-linear narrative structure. It is as though a lifetime of memories of one English family were made of glass and that glass has been shattered and we are catching different bits in random order, shard by shard. The closest American equivalent of a movie doing something similar that I can think of is George Roy Hill’s 1972 film Slaughterhouse-Five. Interestingly, this structure has the effect of making the movie feel like a filmed play. To the extent that there is dramatic tension, it mainly comes in the form of boorish men being tentatively to overtly threatening to their wives. This finds its purest form in the dark figure of Pete Postlethwaite as the family’s tightly wound powder keg of a father. He is like a victim himself, unable to understand why he is so disconnected and angry. If the various vignettes are like memories bobbing to the surface of the filmmaker’s mind, what seems to dominate the reminisces is the singing. People seem to break into song at every family event and every get-together at the pub. Indeed, I think there is more singing by the actors on this movie’s soundtrack than in Mamma Mia!.
(Seen 14 October 2008)
Un divan à New-York (A couch in New York)
This French-German-Belgian production has all the earmarks of previous
romantic comedies, from It Happened One Night to While You Were
Sleeping. It includes the mistaken identities, the uptight man with
the obsessively ordered life (William Hurt), the young woman whose life
is total chaos (Juliette Binoche), the best friends giving bad advice,
etc. etc. But something strange is going on here. The dialog (mostly in
English with some French) has an oddness about it. At times the plot
doesn’t even try to make sense. Indeed, this quirky comedy was directed
and co-written by Chantal Akerman who divides her time between personally
imagined comedies like this and hard-to-watch concept films like
Jeanne Diehl and Toute une nuit. Akerman has said that she
wanted to capture the tone of directors like Lubitsch, Cukor, Donen, and
Capra and at the same time take a humorous look at the psychiatric
profession. She definitely has more success with the latter. (Seen 29 April 1996)
Le Divorce
There have been so many movies over the years by “Merchant-Ivory” that casual filmgoers could be forgiven for thinking that Merchant Ivory is the name of a single person (the way some Red Dwarf fans think that Grant Naylor is one guy). Le Divorce is one more “Merchant-Ivory” film (produced by Ismail Merchant, directed by James Ivory and, as always, written by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala), but it is an atypical one in that it eschews a period setting. It is a modern-day comedy of manners that explores an interesting world, that of Americans living in France or, more specifically, Paris. Having spent a year of my own life in Gaul, I can attest that something strange happens to ex-pat Yanks in the City of Light. They become affected and a bit snobbish—in other words, the sort of people who flock to Merchant-Ivory movies. The movie is populated by a host of familiar faces (Kate Hudson, Naomi Watts, Glenn Close, Sam Waterston, Stockard Channing, Bebe Neuwirth, Matthew Modine) and even includes, in a nice cinematic tip-of-the-hat, Leslie Caron of An American in Paris fame. The cultural clashes between the Americans and the French are amusing to watch, but not quite as much as observing the effect that Paris itself has on the Americans. Hudson takes to the culture so quickly that in no time she not only has a sexy, young, lover but also becomes the mistress of an older married man. Some things just never change, which is why it’s probably inevitable that the story (which almost seems an afterthought) climaxes at the Eiffel Tower. But of course. (Seen 14 December 2003)
Djöflaeyjan (Devil’s Island)
In Devil’s Island, director Fridrick Thor Fridricksson returns to
the territory he previously mapped out in Movie Days: life in Iceland
in the years following World War II. This time he focuses more
critically and ruefully on American influence on Icelandic society
and culture, sometimes with amusing effect. The setting is a public
housing slum that that consists of abandoned American barracks. The
inhabitants seem like Nordic versions of characters from a South
American magic realism novel. Grandma reads cards, has visions, and
is a bit kooky. Grandpa still works six days a week and clings to
the old ways. Tensions develop when the aptly named grandson Baddi
returns from America seemingly possessed by Elvis Presley and James
Dean. The film is at turns funny and suddenly tragic. While not as
lyrically beautiful as Fridricksson’s Cold Fever, Devil’s Island is
further evidence of the director’s strange and wonderful way of
looking at his own country. (Seen 9 July 1998)
Dogma
Despite the fact that this theological satire by Kevin Smith plays more
or less like an extended, in-joke-filled skit than a real, honest-to-gosh
movie, I nearly gave it three stars anyway just for its wit and the fact
that it has some serious ideas to explore and argue. Religious satire is
always dangerous because you’re inevitably going to tread on some
people’s sensibilities, but then that is the point: to shock and provoke.
Personally, I was enthralled with the film’s command of scriptural and
popular religious lore and the way it insisted on viewing it all through
a different lens and following certain concepts to their logical (or
illogical) conclusion. Plus I found myself laughing heartily most of the
way through. Interestingly, most of the theological arguments seemed to
whiz right past my two companions, who (coincidentally or not) are much
more familiar with Catholicism than I am, so it’s probably fair to advise
potential viewers that your own mileage may vary. Basically, this is an
ideas movie disguised as a adolescent humor movie. Now that Smith is a
well-known director, he can get great actors and darned if a lot of them
aren’t the same ones he’s used all along. It’s good to see the likes of
George Carlin and Bud Cort (in small roles), and Alan Rickman is very
funny indeed as The Voice of God. Also, Linda Fiorentino does well as The
Last Scion, essentially a Buffy the Angel Slayer. If you can only see one
end-of-millenium apocalypse movie (by the way, realistically, is anyone
ever really restricted to seeing just one movie?), then this is probably
the one to see. (Seen 2 December 1999)
Dolls
After bringing two H.P. Lovecraft tales to the bloody screen
(Re-Animator and From Beyond), director Stuart Gordon opts
for a change of pace. A sweet little family movie with a timeless message
that can be summed up very simply: Be nice to dolls. Or else. You could
die a horrible, agonizing, bloody, terrifying, awful, gory death. Mr.
Gordon was there in person to explain his unique cinematic vision. One
insight: his wife says that people who like From Beyond are the
same people who like to “look in their handkerchiefs after blowing their
noses.” (Seen 25 May 1987)
Don Juan DeMarco
My friend Dayle has been trying to get me to see this movie ever since it
was first released in 1995. She even gave me the video a couple of years
back. Well, I have finally watched it, and the good news is, even though
it’s no Anger Management, I
liked it fine. The bad news is, since it is the first film I have
reviewed since I revised my ratings system, it
gets “only” three stars. The film’s simple idea, about a burned-out,
retirement-nearing shrink treating a young man who claims to be the
legendary Don Juan, has a nice appeal. The young man is so convincing
that we wonder if he is telling the truth, which means this movie does
for romance what Miracle on
34th Street did for gift giving. But the fundamental appeal is
the actors. We have never seen the legendary Marlon Brando so likeable
before. And Johnny Depp is so hot that’s no wonder that he was become the
requisite romantic male figure in such fluff as Chocolat. And when he tells
Brando that he recognizes him as a romantic who has lost his way, we are
instantly reminded of how sexy Brando was on 1950s movie screens and how
Depp is like the ghost of Brando’s past. Best of all, this flick is a
great date movie, not only for young adults but also for people in middle
age and beyond. (Yes!) (Seen 3 August 2003)
Don’t Look Now
As we were filing out of the late-night screening of this 1973 classic, one discerning filmgoer (no, it wasn’t me this time) said, “This is the masterpiece that The Man Who Fell to Earth thought it was.” Fair enough. This is clearly Nicolas Roeg’s best film, although his two before this (Performance and Walkabout) would have their adherents as well. As a horror movie, Don’t Look Now may seem tame to today’s young gore-sated audiences. But it isn’t just a horror movie. It’s also an art film and a love story. It’s also a reminder of how good scary movies can be when they rely more on mood, suspense and creepiness, leading slowly to a shock ending, rather than providing a shock every five minutes. Few movies have utilized a location (in this case, Venice) to such effect, creating an atmosphere of disorientation and labyrinthine confusion, as well as the uncertainty that comes from dealing with another language and culture. It is the rare combination of shared fright and intellectual stimulation that makes this a truly great date movie. In fact, it is actually the perfect date movie. The extended love scene between Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie has been voted many times as the most erotic scene in any movie ever—especially by women. (Seen 14 July 2006)
Dong (The Hole)
This is probably what film director Tsai Ming-liang said to someone over
dinner one night: “Okay, here’s the idea for my new movie. Of course, it
will feature the same slow, tedious, interminable moping that has by now
become my trademark. But this time the movie will be a virtual
compilation of my best bits from earlier films. We’ll reprise the peeping
tom thing and the crying thing from Vive l’Amour, not to mention
the plague thing and the rain thing and the peeing thing from The River. It will be all about
doom and gloom and depression at the end of the millenium, but for a
change of pace we’ll throw in some superfluous song-and-dance
numbers (with cast members lip synching to songs by Grace Chang),
you know, just like that English guy, what’s his name, Dennis
Potter. For the heck of it, I’ll even thrown in a bit of optimism at
the end.” “But, Ming-liang, who will want to go to see such a film?”
“Don’t worry. There’s at least one festival-attending film fanatic out
there who hasn’t missed any of my movies yet!” (Seen 28
August 1998)
Donnie Darko
So, is this a youth angst film? Or a science fiction film? Or a suburban
satire? Or a love story? Or just a film destined for cult status? Or is
it all of the above? This feature by Richard Kelly is reminiscent of
David Lynch in the way that it introduces fantastic elements (like time
travel) and hallucinatory/dream sequences and peripheral characters who
seem like they will be important, but then doesn’t quite spell out what
it all means. In the end, the movie doesn’t bear too much analysis. It is
quirky and haunting and best enjoyed on its own terms. Its mood,
soundtrack and visuals are generally captivating and involving. The cast
is good and tends to remind us of other touchstone films. Katharine Ross
is on hand (as Donnie’s psychological counselor) to remind us of The
Graduate. And James Duval, as the sinister apparition Frank (a sort
of twisted version of Jimmy Stewart’s Harvey), reminds us of Gregg
Araki’s whacked-out teenage trilogy (Totally F***ked Up, The Doom Generation and Nowhere). And Patrick Swayze
is on hand, mainly, I guess, to let us know that he is still around.
(Seen 12 October 2002)
The Doom Generation
One of the delightful surprises of last year’s film festival was Gregg
Araki’s Totally F***ked Up which he described tongue-in-cheek as a
gay John Hughes teenage comedy. (Araki’s previous film was The Living
End which was described as a gay Thelma and Louise.) Under the
pretext of a guy making an amateur video of himself and his friends,
Totally F***ked Up followed several teenagers through various
comedic and serious adventures. It ended suddenly when the budding
filmmaker (played by James Duval) committed suicide. It was a shock
because it was so unexpected, but we could believe it because these
things happen in real life. In retrospect, we could even see the warning
signs. (It only added to the poignancy that Duval bore something of a
physical resemblance to River Phoenix.) Araki is now back with another
tale about teenagers and the biggest budget he has ever had. Once again
he has a tongue-in-cheek description for it. The opening credits call it
a “heterosexual film” which is a perverse joke since throughout the
The Doom Generation there is a sexual tension between the two main
male characters which, although never consummated, leads to an incredibly
ugly and brutal ending. Once again, Duval is the unexpected victim. This
time around, he is made to look and act like the young Keanu Reeves. His
girlfriend Amy seems to be emulating Uma Thurman in Pulp Fiction.
The film is meant to evoke nihilistic teenage angst, but mostly it just
repeats lame jokes. Every time the trio stops somewhere, some guy
threatens to kill Amy (invariably calling her by some other name) because
she once jilted him. Every purchase rings up as $6.66. The surnames of
the main characters are Red, White, and Blue. (Get it?) Sadly, Araki
seems to be yet another promising filmmaker who has reached the point of
having more money to work with than ideas. (Seen 10 June
1995)
Dot the I
This is another one of those movies made by film buffs for film buffs. We know this early on because it seems as though everyone is going around with a camcorder, and when the heroine (who, despite fleeing a violent relationship in Madrid, has a penchant for walking alone in dark, secluded areas at night) is regularly seen through the lens of somebody’s hidden camera. Despite the sense of menace, we aren’t quite sure if this is a suspenseful drama or a comedy. But don’t worry, the movie knows exactly what it is. It just doesn’t let you in on it until the last several minutes. In the meantime, you can ponder all the clues that keep pointing to something fatal: a hen party in a restaurant called Aux Assassins, a gift of Gabriel García Márquez’s Chronicle of a Death Foretold, etc., etc. We can also just watch the attractive cast, led by Mexican Gael García Bernal (Amores Perros, Y tu mamá también, The Crime of Father Amaro) playing a Brazilian. Matthew Parkill, who directed this flick, leads you to think that it’s an update to Blow Up, but it’s really closer to Deathtrap. (Seen 13 October 2003)
Doubt
As befits the title, crucial information is withheld in this movie so that we cannot be sure of the truth of the tricky situation at the heart of the narrative. But one thing is pretty sure. We are clearly not meant to like Sister Aloysius, the principal of a parochial school, played by Oscar-nominated Meryl Streep. She is humorless, sharp, judgmental, petty and maybe even dangerous. But is she also, as she insists, necessary for things to work? On the other hand, we are clearly meant to find the sunny, affable and approachable Father Flynn, played by Oscar-nominated Philip Seymour Hoffman, likeable, which is not exactly the same thing as actually liking him. Being an American and primed to expect certain messages from Hollywood movies, I accepted the film, written and directed by John Patrick Shanley and drawn from his play, as some sort of allegory of my country’s culture wars. Streep’s character is obviously Torquemada, Joseph McCarthy and Ken Starr all rolled into one, while Hoffman’s is either a hapless victim of a witch hunt (led by a real witch) or, at worst, someone who crossed the line but has done no real harm and, in fact, whose good works far outweigh any lapse in judgment. This is the kind of movie that spurs conversation afterward between friends, perhaps even drawing in a nearby stranger. Irish viewers may well have a different take than mine because of recent history. The two women near me in a Galway cinema were having none of my nuanced analysis. Father Flynn, they judged, was a con artist and molester who not only avoided punishment but was actually rewarded by a corrupt system. Any film that can accommodate such varying views is certainly deserving of its nomination for a writing Oscar.
(Seen 11 March 2009)
Down Came a Blackbird
There are two main reasons to see Down Came a Blackbird. One is
that it is about a very important topic: political torture and how it
affects its victims. The other reason is that it is Raul Julia’s last
film. He died nine days after shooting was completed. It is hard to watch
him in this film, looking drawn and gaunt. (He had had cancer, although
it was a stroke that killed him.) It is particularly eerie when the
script calls for him to read a poem about death. Having said all this, I
have to report that this movie is not as good as it should have been. It
was directed by Jonathan Sanger whose previous effort was a World War II
action movie, Code Name: Emerald. Laura Dern stars as a reporter
who is arrested and tortured in a Latin American country along with her
photographer boyfriend. A year later, in order to get a story for her
newspaper, she finds herself checking into a clinic that helps torture
victims come to terms with their experience. Vanessa Redgrave plays the
Holocaust survivor who runs the clinic. It’s no surprise when Dern’s
character, which has been repressing her feelings, finally opens up and
lets loose emotionally. There are actually clinics like this throughout
the world, and the filmmakers used them as models. The problem
cinematically, however, is that in portraying torture as something that
requires something resembling a 12-step program to get over (“Hi, I’m
Helen and I’m a torture victim”) they run the risk of inadvertently
trivializing it. It is also hard to sustain a drama on this for 100
minutes which is probably why a subplot about an apparent death squad
looking for Julia’s character was included. This film gets an A for good
intentions, and it’s definitely a better way to remember Raul Julia than
Addams Family Values or Street Fighter. But as far as
learning about torture and its consequences, you’d do better to get in
touch with Amnesty International. (Seen 10 June
1995)
Dr. Who and the Daleks
As all faithful Doctor Who fans know, this 1965 movie is the answer to the trivia question (and possible bar bet winner?): what is the only screen production to feature a character named Doctor Who? As the brethren know, the hero of the long-running British sci-fi TV series has never actually be referred to as “Doctor Who,” despite the fact that that is the name of the series. He has always been known simply as “the Doctor.” But three years after the series began, the powers that be decided to cash in on the popularity of the series or, more specifically, of its chief villains, the despicable Daleks with this feature film. But make no mistake, it makes no pretense of being “canon” or having any continuity with the series. This doctor (played by Peter Cushing of Hammer Films fame) is no Time Lord from Gallifrey but rather an ordinary human earthman, who just happens to build his own time and space machine, the TARDIS, and for some reason designs it to look like a police phone box. I can imagine the ambivalence of the fans of the time. On the one hand, there would have been frustration that it did not connect with the series. On the other hand, the set design probably seemed light years ahead of the telly version—although it now looks hopelessly cheesy compared to stuff on TV today. The adventuring ensemble, led by the grandfatherly Cushing, who is surrounded by an attractive young granddaughter, her comic relief beau and another granddaughter, who is a precocious tyke, give this the feel of what Disney was putting out at the time. And, plot-wise, it plays very much like a remake of George Pal’s adaptation of H.G. Wells’s The Time Machine, with the Daleks standing in for the Morlocks.
(Seen 16 March 2009)
Dream for an Insomniac
Jennifer Aniston hanging out in a coffee shop trading quips with her
friends? Not too worry, this isn’t a TV knock-off. Aniston is playing
second banana here in your basic feel-good, starry-eyed, twentysomething
romantic comedy. This self-described semi-autobiographical movie by
Tiffanie DeBartolo trades in some clichés of the genre (a night
out leads to jail, a gay man pretends to be straight), but thankfully
nothing quite happens or turns out the way you would expect. Ione Skye
and Mackenzie Astin are the people who are perfect for each other, but
will they get together? Seymour Cassel, sporting an Italian accent, is on
hand as the owner of the café, which is basically a shrine to
Frank Sinatra. Overall, Dream for an Insomniac benefits from some
nice visual touches and a simple story that clearly comes from the heart.
(Seen 29 January 1998)
Dream with the Fishes
Dream with the Fishes is a mixed bag. Like Box of Moonlight, this is
essentially the story of a strange friendship where one man has a
profound effect on the other. This pair is strange indeed. When we
first meet Terry (David Arquette of Scream), he is trying to
commit suicide. When we first meet Nick (Brad Hunt), he is making an
ineffective attempt to rob a liquor store. Before long, we find that
one of them is terminally ill and off they go on an odd and wild
road adventure. This is all very disjointed. But when we reach the
end of the road, so to speak, the film suddenly turns quite powerful
and moving and almost makes up for everything we have had to go
through to get there. The always-watchable Cathy Moriarty has a
small role as Nick’s aunt. Finn Taylor is the writer/director. (Seen 5 June 1997)
The Dreamers
With Kerry and Bush spending so much time lately reliving what they were doing 30 years ago, this is the perfect moment to see this film. Recent world events also make it timely as a re-examination of the cultural and political tensions and mutual fascination between American and French people. And, in a strange way, this flick may have the perfect metaphor for the Franco-American relationship: the yanks keep peeing in French people’s sinks. This is also one of several details that will bring back a load of memories for certain Americans who lived and studied in France anywhere around the time of this film, the pivotal year 1968. (And raise the question: were we really that pretentious?) Being a Bernardo Bertolucci film, there are his usual trademark themes, including social and political conflict, love of cinema and, of course, the sex. (It is interesting to think that the film-loving protagonists of this movie could well have seen and been discussing Bertolucci’s own Before the Revolution.) Like his Last Tango in Paris, this film has become somewhat notorious because of its sexual content. It certainly is more of a turn-on than Last Tango, if only because the antics are a bit more carefree than what a nearly-fifty-year-old and emotionally devastated Marlon Brando was up to. But somehow the explicit scenes seem designed to shock a 1968 audience. The American in this cinematic ménage à trois is Michael Pitt, who was previously seen getting a bath in Hedwig and the Angry Inch. He appears to have been cast as a James Dean “type” (his character is a Nicholas Ray fan), but he bears a bit of an unfortunate resemblance to Leonardo DiCaprio. (Seen 27 January 2004)
Dreamgirls
Normally, I have little patience with people who dismiss movie adaptations because “the stage version was so much better.” As I always say, movies should be judged mainly on their own merits, rather than by a slavish comparison to their source material. On the other hand, I never even saw Dreamgirls on stage, but it is obvious to me that the stage version would have been so much better. The heart of this thing is obviously its performances, and live performances of this material would clearly be more sizzling than watching filmed and heavily edited ones. Beyond that, the main reason to watch and enjoy this movie is the same reason everyone watched Dynasty and Dallas in the 1980s: the prospect of a really good cat fight. By the time we reach the movie’s climax, we realize that we have wallowed in a high-wattage soap opera. But, as is made clear in the early stages, the film also has serious pretensions. It aims (and to a large extent succeeds) to give us a sense of the history of how African-American music crossed over into the largely white mainstream and (as Tom Eyen’s libretto has it) its soul was sold in the process. What clearly would have worked well for Broadway (but less well on celluloid) is the array of broadly drawn characters which are, when not thinly veiled versions of real people, types. The only one who comes across as real flesh and blood, of course, is celebrated Oscar winner Jennifer Hudson, who throws her whole heart into the flick’s best role and makes everyone around her look like so many cardboard cutouts.
(Seen 6 March 2007)
Driving Lessons
We have been here before. Gawky teenager, not quite mustering the courage to break out from a stilting home life. Eccentric old woman comes into his life and raises his consciousness. Julie Walters, of course, has been here before as well. After all, she helped expose young Billy Elliot to new horizons. Here, she is doing something similar for the lad who is her son in the Harry Potter movies, Rupert Grint. Many have noted that Grint is actually a better actor than the titular fellow he is a sidekick to, and he proves that here in a performance that evokes Gordon John Sinclair in Gregory’s Girl. Screenwriter and first-time director Jeremy Brock drew from his own experiences for this film, specifically his growing up as a vicar’s son and, more interestingly, living for a year in the basement of Dame Peggy Ashcroft around the age of 20. Walters clearly has a grand time playing the grande dame, if the role doesn’t always flatter her. Looking stooped and aged, she appears much older than we have ever seen her before and light years away from the spunky housewife she played in Educating Rita. Apparently to facilitate financing and distribution for the film, Laura Linney is on hand on Grint’s smothering mother, who spouts Christian platitudes through the frozen smile on her face. The movie is sweet enough and generally enjoyable, but it attempts to weave a bit too closely to the center line between wacky and sentimental. (Seen 12 July 2006)
Drôle de Félix (The Adventures of Felix)
The titular hero of this picaresque road movie is a gay French man whose
father was North African. His mother has recently died, he has just been
laid off from the ferry line, and he is HIV positive. Still, the film is
a comedy. The directors Olivier Ducastel and Jacques Martineau (Jeanne
and the Perfect Guy) mine gentle humor from every situation, even one
where people in a waiting room compare drug cocktails. Felix, finding
time on his hands, decides to thumb from Dieppe to Marseilles and look up
the father he has never met, giving rise to a series of vignettes along
the way. Typical of the running gags is the television soap opera that
Felix has become addicted to and by chance or by design manages to catch
every single morning while he is on the road. The overall theme of the
film is not particularly subtle or original, but it is mostly
indisputable: sometimes the virtual family we acquire in day-to-day
living is more meaningful than our biological one. On the whole, this is
a journey that is well worth the time. (Seen 1 June
2001)
Drunks
When you think about it, a movie about an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting is
an actor’s wet dream. I mean, it’s just one extremely dramatic soliloquy
after another. No wonder director Peter Cohn was able to get such major
stars as Faye Dunaway, Diane Wiest, Amanda Plummer, and Howard Rollins
for his first film. Through the course of the movie, they and many others
get to emote to their heart’s content, all with their own tragic story.
(I can already see this as a musical on Broadway!) Interestingly, the
juiciest role doesn’t go to one of the acting heavyweights but instead to
comedian/actor Richard Lewis as Jim, who leaves the meeting early so he
can have a long evening of dramatically falling off the wagon. (Was he
inspired by his cameo in Leaving Las
Vegas?) But the scene-stealer in this movie crowded with scene
sharks is Spalding Gray as the intellectual beer lover doing his best to
convince everyone else that he’s there purely by accident. (Seen 19 May 1996)
The Dukes of Hazzard
Don’t you just hate it when Hollywood takes a beloved classic and then remakes it, cynically, with loads of gratuitous car chases, corny humor and shameless titillation? Of course, in this case, it’s not cynical because the studio is merely being faithful to the source material. I used to see snippets of the early 1980s TV series at my neighbors’ house but, as far as I could tell, it could have been the same episode on every week. And to that extent, the movie seems reverential enough, since it seems like every other movie aimed at its particular demographic. (Hmmm, endless car chases and women in skimpy clothing. I’m guessing the demographic is, um, young males?) The main stars seem not to have seen the TV series or were misinformed about what movie they were making. Burt Reynolds is amusing enough but is nothing like anyone who would have the name “Boss Hogg.” Johnny Knoxville looks dazed, as if still recovering from a Jackass stunt gone wrong. And Seann William Scott mugs desperately, as though he were making yet one more American Pie movie. Which is just as well since director Jay Chandrasekhar seems to be under a similar impression. There are some rewarding moments, however, particularly when the plot has Bo and Luke leave their backwoods paradise for Atlanta, where they experience such 21st century phenomena as taking their turbo-charged wonder car through crawling rush hour traffic and getting politically correct reactions to the Confederate flag on their car’s rooftop. They even discover that there are African-Americans in the American south! (Seen 22 January 2002)
The Dying Gaul
The title refers to a sculpture within a film within a film. The titular young Gaul has been immortalized and (literally) idolized as a statue by one of his enemies (the Romans), i.e. the very people that killed him. Hmmm. Could something similar being going to happen to one of the characters in this movie? The writer and (first-time) director is Craig Lucas, who adapted it from his own play. He previously adapted his own plays for the films Longtime Companion, Prelude to a Kiss and Reckless. One guesses that Lucas’s previous experiences with Hollywood studios did not always go pleasantly, given the rather bitter picture he paints here of the screenwriter’s lot. This is one of those Hollywood insider movies where the screenwriter takes it up the, um, derrière. Quite literally. It’s one of those movies that are hard to tell where it’s going, and that’s really the main thing it has going for it. Comparisons and descriptions (like the ones in the festival program) are more misleading than helpful. Suffice it to say that this is a fairly intense psychological drama. The cast is particularly good. Campbell Scott (who was also a producer) seems to have aged into an older Anthony Perksins, as he plays one of those bullying jerks one encounters in any large organization. Peter Sarsgaard is convincing and totally unrecognizable from the role he played in, say, Shattered Glass. And Patricia Clarkson is so appealing that we cannot decide whether to love her or fear her. (Seen 7 July 2005)
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