Review: Body of Lies

"If only Ridley had cast me instead of Bloom in Kingdom of Heaven, it might have been worth watching."

Body of Lies
4/5

I was excited about Body of Lies more than a year ago, when it was an IMDb page with a different title. The combination of one of my favorite directors, Ridley Scott, with his man-muse Russell Crowe, was enough to get excited about. Throw in a newly-excellent Leonardo Dicaprio, a script by William Monahan (writer of The Departed), and hefty doses of violence, and you've basically got the perfect movie.

Well, Body of Lies is far from perfect, but I certainly enjoyed it very much. I thought last year's American Gangster was more Scott's movie than Crowe's or Washington's; the movie was so chopped up and quick-edited (something I loved) that neither of those actors had extensive chances to dig into their roles. But this movie is undeniably DiCaprio's. Leo plays Roger Ferris, a CIA field agent who risks his life in Iraq at the behest of bureaucrat Ed Hoffman (Crowe). Hoffman is moving up, and he takes Ferris with him, making him acting station chief of the bureau in Amman, Jordan. Hoffman is a blowhard asshole, but he knows talent, and thus Ferris is soon barking orders at and reprimanding agency oldtimers with complete immunity.

Although complex camera work and complex CIA machinations are on full display here, the movie really revolves around the ideology conflicts of three men: Ferris, Hoffman, and Hani, the head of Jordanian intelligence. All of them want the terrorist Al-Saleem, but can't agree on how to go about it. Hoffman is a blatant ugly American stereotype, an overweight suburbanite who thinks he can run the world while taking his kids to school. He gives Ferris unprecedented powers in Jordan, then issues orders behind his back. Hani is his aristocratic opposite; he bestows both favors and torture with an urbane sense of entitlement. Ferris, most comfortable on the streets doing the work personally, seems sharper than either of them, but is also constantly caught between them. Every time Hoffman tries to browbeat Hani, or Hani tries to outwit Hoffman, Ferris ends up paying a price.

There's also a surprisingly cliched and surprisingly still effective love story thrown into the whole bargain, as Ferris romances a nurse he met in a Jordan clinic. The film (like The Departed) goes to great lengths to draw parallels between DiCaprio's potential life with a woman on the periphery of a world of violence, and that world itself. This is actually one of the weakest parts of the movie; although we get a strong sense of Ferris' sensitivity and integrity (something both Hoffman and Hani are lacking in), we never quite understand either his connection to the nurse or to the war on terror. This is the crucial ingredient; although we're viscerally connected to Ferris, we never quite understand how he's connected to anyone else.

As everyone who has written about this film has noted, it contains a strong critique of American foreign policy (at times, Crowe seems to be channeling president Bush for his portrait of Hoffman). But it actually has more in common with the Bourne movies or Spy Game or any Clancy thriller than it does with something like Redacted or Syriana or Lions for Lambs. This is a spy movie with a strong anti-War on Terror undercurrent, but first and foremost, it's a spy movie. It's not a bad one, either.

Review: Burn After Reading

If you find vicious axe murders hilarious, you'll love this movie!

Burn After Reading
4/5

When I heard that the Coen Brothers were making a spy comedy as a follow up to No Country for Old Men, I was expecting a comical antidote to the nihilism of that uniquely bleak movie. Well, Burn After Reading is funny (although maybe not as funny as No Country*), but it's not an antidote to the nihilism of No Country. In fact, Burn After Reading is in fact probably more nihilistic.

I would not have thought that was possible. But No Country for Old Men, as bleak as it was, treated life as a vibrant and valuable thing. Ultimately, there may have been no solution to the murderous Anton Chigurh, but his violence was a terrible thing. Every time he took a life, even if it was a character we didn't know, we cringed. The loss of life was a loss that mattered.

Burn After Reading takes the exact opposite approach. A group of idiots (a personal trainer, a federal marshal, an ex-CIA analyst, the CIA analyst's frigid wife, and a lonely woman) are running around, sleeping with and killing each other, after the CIA analyst's memoirs go missing and the personal trainer and the lonely woman try to blackmail him for its return. As expected, things go wrong, people die, and laughs are had. Frequently, those last two are simultaneous.

That's why I regard this film as bleaker than No Country. The external observer in No Country was Tommy Lee Jones. Every death weighed on him; he was never directly involved in the chase for the mad killer, but we saw the true cost of those murders in Jones' eyes. The observers in this movie are a pair of disengaged CIA higher ups. Like Jones, they don't know what's going on, but unlike him they're unmoved by loss of life. When some of the characters die, when another commits murder, when another is in a coma, their only concern is that the agency come out looking ok. They, like the Coens and the audience, are completely divorced from some truly gory and vicious acts. These deaths are mined for comedy, and it's pretty clear that the characters deserve them, for adding to the world's surplus stupidity.

Which is not to say that this movie isn't funny; hell, death is frequently funny on film, especially in the hands of the Coens (Wheezy Joe, anyone)? But outside of some inspired silliness by Brad Pitt as the personal trainer, this movie is never fun. Clooney, Malkovich, and McDormand are also very funny; only Tilda Swinton and Richard Jenkins are saddled with nothing to do. But even the funniest of Malkovich's rants or Clooney's narcissistic acts or McDormand's cluelessness are anchored by a deep and abiding desperation.

I do recommend this movie. I admired the skill that went into it, and all of the Coens' skills are on full display here: quirky characters, perfect dialogue, inspired deaths, and an attention to detail in all facets of filmmaking. But it's not a fun movie. It's not a happy movie. And it's certainly not an antidote to No Country for Old Men. Rather, it's its more cynical counterpart, in which the devaluation of human life is no longer a tragedy, but a farce. Because of all the laughs, no one will probably condemn it for its nihilism, as they some condemned both No Country and The Dark Knight. But if you ask me, those who are in the business of condemning nihilism should consider this Exhibit A.

This is pretty much what I looked like when I walked out of the theatre.

*Like The Departed, except way bleaker, I found No Country to be a nihilistic tragedy/comedy. All of Woody Harrelson's lines? Brolin's mother-in-law? Tommy Lee Jones' blatantly made up story about the conflict between man and steer? All hilarious.

Review: Vicky Cristina Barcelona

Vicky Cristina Barcelona
4/5

I instantly loathed Vicky Cristina Barcelona. Sure, it showcased beautiful people in a beautiful city, beautifully photographed. But it seemed unbelievably facile. For starters, it is possessed of one of the worst, no, scratch that, the absolute worst voiceover of all time. The bland, uninteresting voiceover works like captions in pre-modern comics: it describes the things that you can see happening on the screen. The voiceover tells us that our two heroines are arriving at the hotel and checking into a different room than that of their Spanish suitor...and we see them arrive at the hotel and check into separate rooms. Mind-blowing. Furthermore, the voiceover also tells us about the characteristics and emotions of the two women, which is one of the most bizarre developments in recent filmmaking: everyone knows that Woody Allen's characters display their emotions via copious buckets of confessional dialouge. A voiceover, in lieu of this process, just felt wrong.

Of course, I reconsidered this stance when Vicky (Rebecca Hall) and Cristina (Scarlett Johansson) started explaining their feelings via dialogue. As Johansson has demonstrated several times, and as Hall demonstrated throughout this film, neither of them can handle Allen's hyper-literate dialogue. The worst voiceover of all-time suddenly seemed sophisticated and nuanced, compared to Hall and Johansson's clumsy butcherings of the English language.

But a number of things happened to defuse my loathing and ultimately transform it into pleasure. Most importantly, the newly-minted international superstar Javier Bardem arrived. Just as in No Country for Old Men, Bardem is palpably charismatic, although this time out he kills considerably fewer people. He plays Juan Antonio, a Spanish painter interested in both Vicky and Cristina. Vicky is an engaged Type A personality who is certainly not his type; Cristina is an aimless psuedo-artist who certainly is. And yet both of them are interested enough in Juan Antonio to travel with him to Oviedo to look at some sculpture.

The person on the right speaks demonstrably better English than the two on the left.

Beyond the sheer magnificence of Bardem, this film's greatest strength is its deceptive complexity. The film's trailer and opening quarter make it appear hopelessly schematic: Cristina is an artistic free spirit, Vicky is hard-nosed realist, Juan Antonio is a suave lady killer, Juan Antonio's crazy ex-wife (Penelope Cruz) is a violent wacko, and Vicky's fiance is a boring Wall Street douche bag. But after allowing us all of these illusions, Allen slowly twists them. The film's only truly sympathetic character is the fiance, who turns out to be a genuinely nice guy with a romantic streak. Cruz is in fact a better artist than Juan Antonio, and is a more efficient ladykiller. Juan Antonio's ladykilling is not so much calculated as hopelessly romantic. And most importantly, both Vicky and Cristina are revealed to be characters of problematic depth, with complex and contradictory desires. Luckily for us, they have relatively few scenes together after the film's opening moments; for some reason, when they're separate, they seem to handle the dialogue much better. This may be because they aren't stumbling over each other's incompetence, or possibly because Bardem, Cruz, and the girls' mentor Patricia Clarkson are such masters that I failed to notice their incompetence.

You could say that almost any Woody Allen movie is about adultery, and you'd usually be right. But what his movies are really about is the way that desire overcomes the channels it's supposed to run through, and finds new and unexpected ways to express itself. Vicky Cristina Barcelona explores a number of the different ways desire can flow. It problematizes all of them and valorizes none of them, but it also finds room to praise love in all its forms. It may not be Hannah and Her Sisters, but it's as good as we're likely to get from latter-day Allen. I, for one, am grateful.

Review: Tell No One

Tell No One
4/5

Tell No One is a tense thriller that owes more than a little to Hitchcock, and probably even more to Frantic, Polanksi's Parisian ode to Hitchcock. Alex Beck (Francois Cluzet) was enjoying a swim with his wife at the lake on his family property when he hears her scream. Going to her aid, someone knocks him unconscious, and when he wakes up, she has been murdered - another victim of the serial killer Serton. Eight years later, Beck is still in mourning, but the seemingly closed case has a break: a government crew laying pipe finds the bodies of two men in the area. Later that day, someone emails Beck to tell him that his wife is still alive, but "they" are watching so he must "Tell No One."

Although Tell No One's everyman protagonist on the run from both police and the dangerous "them" is straight out of Hitchcock, this film is strikingly similar to Michael Clayton in its construction. Godfrey Cheshire identifies Michael Clayton as having a "Jigsaw Puzzle" manner of fragmentation, in which "virtually every scene stands apart from the others, leaving the viewer to discern—or construct—the presumed pattern of meaning that unites them." Tell No One is nowhere near as fragmented as Michael Clayton, but it does partake in the jigsaw puzzle method; event after event occurs, and for the first hour or so it's not clear how they relate to each other. Indeed, quite early in the film it becomes obvious that a major character must have been in on the fake death, but we have nothing to do with this information. It's just another piece of the puzzle that must wait, unused, until we know where to place it.

As Alex, Cluzet is a highly believable everyman, an upper-middle-class pediatrician who displays unsurprising depths of intensity when his world is turned upside down. The entire cast surrounding him, from his gangster client Bruno (who becomes a useful ally in dealing with "them") to his sister to the dogged police inspector who believes he killed his wife, is made up of consummate professionals, who bring a very gallic sophistication to all the roles. All the roles besides Bruno, who is played with appropriate thuggish relish and a keen sense of obligation. But the movie's shining star is Kristin Scott Thomas. When Thomas appeared in 2005's failed black comedy Keeping Mum, my response was: Where has she been? If Tell No One and The Valet are any indication, Paris.

Thomas plays Helene, Alex's sister's wife, a restaurant owner who also appears to be the only human being he speaks to since his wife died. Although she doesn't believe in "them" or the seeming resurrection, Helene is Alex's only ally, facillitating a lawyer and providing financial aid, but above all serving as a friend and confidant. It's one of the film's many mysteries that, while neither Alex nor Helene seem particularly close to his sister, the two share a deep connection.

Perhaps the strongest thing in Tell No One's favor is that, unlike Frantic, Michael Clayton, and even North by Northwest, the dark secret of "them" doesn't turn out to be a matter of national security or national health. This is a more personal drama, eschewing a "thrilling" connection to larger issues for the smaller concerns of Alex and his wife. As such, its ultimate revelations are all the more chilling for being so intimately tied up in their lives.

Review: Mongol

Mongol
4/5

Although Mongol, as the first entry in an epic trilogy, has already been labeled the Mongolian Lord of the Rings, a better description would be Genghis Begins or Khansino Royale (sorry). It's the origin story of Genghis Khan, and as such follows the conqueror, back when he was just called Temudgen, as he seeks power in Mongolia years before his famous conquests. Although the film is far from perfect, it is an impressive example of filmmaking on an epic scale.

Like many epics, the true star of this film is not the title character but the gorgeous landscape and its exquisite rendering in extreme-long shots. Russian director Sergei Bodrov filmed in Kazakhstan and China's Inner Mongolia, and we're treated to beautiful vistas in a vast array of locations: mountains, hills, deserts, and rolling grasslands.

The film's plot more or less follows a love triangle, established in the first half-hour of film, while our principals are children. Temudgen, against his father's wishes, chooses Borte, a girl from a weak tribe, to be his wife. After his father's untimely death, Temudgen - as a threat to the new clan Khan - must flee, and meets and befriends a blood-brother, Jemukha, while on the run. As an adult, Temudgen is pulled in different directions by his brother, who wants him as a second-in-command, and his wife, who dreams of greater things.

Although the opening portion of the film drags, the movie gets going roughly a third of the way through, when we meet our adult actors and both blood and humor start flowing (since we're dealing with Mongols, they frequently flow simultaneously). Japanese actor Tadanobu Asano imbues the tile role with appropriate gravitas, and Khulan Chuulun brings a grave intelligence to role of Borte, who is both Temudgen's long-suffering wife and canny adviser. But Chinese actor Honglei Sun steals the show as Jemukha; he plays the role with a mix of warrior pride, bloodthirstiness, and wicked humor that I found captivating.

Mongol certainly qualifies as classic epic filmmaking, of the kind once practiced by David Lean and driven lately by Ridley Scott and Peter Jackson. Although the film's pace and plot can be spotty, the story is deep and resonant, and the action sequences recall Gladiator with their depiction of gore in jumpy, hand-held camera work. But Mongol is ultimately more than an epic: it is mythic filmmaking. Temudgen is the ur-Mongol, he is the law-giver and order-bringer - he both upholds the old ways and reshapes them to suit his needs. When the time finally comes to strike down his enemies, the heavens themselves open up and offer aid. In short, Genghis Khan is the Mongolian Paul Maud'Dib.

My only reservation is, after I liked and enjoyed the first volume of the Russian Lord of the Rings, Night Watch, the second volume was both lackluster and, unfortunately, not released in theaters in my area. The third volume still hasn't come out yet, as the Russian Peter Jackson was busy making this weekend's Wanted. I can only hope that, in terms of reception and distribution, the Mongolian Lord of the Rings fares better.

Update: The third "Watch" movie, Twilight Watch, might get canceled. Epic trilogy lovers, beware; let's hope Mongol 2 and 3 are immune: http://www.bloody-disgusting.com/news/12664

Mini-Review: Be Kind Rewind

Robocop gets Sweded - Don't Tell Verhoeven!

Michel Gondry's latest film can't match up to the extra-depressing bout of romantic whimsy that was Science of Sleep, anymore than that film could match up to Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Eternal Sunshine was the combination of Charlie Kaufman's best script to date and Gondry's breathtaking direction with a cast that was so deep that Elijah Wood and Mark Ruffalo were somewhere around 6th or 7th billed. Rewind, by contrast, was written by Gondry, apparently in a less unhappy mood than Science of Sleep, and thus features awkward pacing, awkward dialogue, and a terribly awkward performance by my current favorite leading lady of all-time (Mia Farrow). But Jack Black, Mos Def, and the ever-reliable Danny Glover manage to overcome all of Gondry's self-inflicted awkwardness and, with the help of Gondry-the-director's endless supplies of energy and innovation, make this a charming and nostalgic paean to filmmaking.

The plot is pretty ridiculous: Jack Black erases all of the videos at the rental store owned by Danny Glover and managed by his adoptive son Mos Def, after a freak electrical station sabotage accident. Longtime customer Mia Farrow shows up looking for Ghostbusters, threatens to call the out-of-town Glover if there's anything wrong with the store, and voila, a collection of threads tenuously related to a plot is born: Jack Black and Mos Def have to start making their own versions of the films the customers want, since there's no way to replace the outdated VHS tapes (they call this process, for no clear reason, "Sweding").

Most of this film's fun resides in the hilarious versions of Ghostbusters, Rush Hour 2, Driving Miss Daisy, Robocop, and others that Black and Def make for their avid fans. The frame story is considerably less interesting and only fitfully coherent, but it too ends up being worth watching, with a surprising combination of heart-warming elements that depend a bit too heavily on nostalgia but manage to gain a surprising amount of emotional heft.

One final note: As you might expect, a representative of the movie studios does eventually show up in an attempt to halt the Sweding process. In an all-too brief cameo, that representative is played by the actress who used to hold the title currently held by Mia Farrow. Enjoy.

Mini-Review: Starting out in the Evening

Starting out in the Evening
4/5 Stars

My initial response to the highly-acclaimed Starting out in the Evening was very similar to my initial response to the even more highly-acclaimed Juno: seriously? People liked this? But it's annoying!

Unlike Juno, which annoyed me because every character spoke in the same uber-witty manner, my annoyance for Evening was mainly directed at a single character: Heather Wolfe, the ambitious graduate student who's played by Lauren Ambrose to be simultaneously precocious, pretentious, and precious. Wolfe is doing her master's thesis (which seems to be about 200 pages long...) on Leonard Schiller, a former literary giant who has faded into obscurity. Schiller is both flattered and annoyed by Wolfe's interest, and their lively debate on whether or not his last two novels forsook the worthy theme of his first two provides some of the film's best scenes.

Besides that running debate, I otherwise found the relationship between Schiller and Wolfe to be a tedious rehash of any older man-younger woman Hollywood cliches you can think of. But Starting out in the Evening is richer than those cliches, and the director, Andrew Wagner, gradually spends less and less time focusing on Schiller's relationship with Wolfe, and more on his relationship with his daughter Ariel (Lili Taylor) and her sometimes contentious relationship with her occasional boyfriend Casey (Adrien Lester). Taylor plays her character with the right blend of confidence and frustration throughout the film, and the script allows Casey to develop from the bad stereotype he appears to be into a rich and interesting character.

In short, I was not impressed with Lauren Ambrose or her character, but that fault eventually falls away as the film slowly widens its scope to include Ariel and Casey. In the end, although the grad student stuff feels phony, Starting out in the Evening seems right on difficult subjects ranging from literature to romantic love to the strains of aging on familial. It's not perfect, and Langella's performance as Schiller isn't as earth-shattering as others would have you to believe, but it ends up both true and touching, which is more than enough for me.

Mini-Review: Cloverfield

4/5

Cloverfield's premise is pretty simple: a monster has attacked New York at some point in the recent past, and, on the night of the attack, a bunch of beautiful young people were running around Manhattan, documenting said night with a video camera. The entire movie is thus a faux documentary, Blair Witch style, and features a camera that bobs, spins, weaves, twirls, falls, and scrambles away from danger as our 5 intrepid adventurers make their way through Manhattan to a damsel in distress (Spoilers: It doesn't take long for there to be less than 5 adventurers, etc).

I was unfamiliar with everyone involved in this production, with the exception of producer JJ Abrams, and I came away impressed with 3 of them. First the writer, Drew Goddard or, rather, whoever came up with this high concept setup, because it works beautifully. Secondly, none of the actors particularly distinguish themselves (the girls are generally better than the super-bland guys) except, ironically, T.J. Miller who as the cameraman Hud provides a steady stream of commentary while obtaining probably less than a minute of total screen time. Miller comes off as a low-rent version of whoever your favorite witty but fratty comedian is (Will Ferrell, Seth Rogen, etc) and made the whole thing watchable. Finally, working with what must not have been a great deal of money, Phil Tippett created a pretty terrifying monster - something that can't have been easy, given our decades of not being frightened of Godzilla-style giant monsters.

Amid all of the Oscar hoopla, it was nice just to watch unknown actors run around scared while shit blew up. I do hope that they resist the urge for a sequel, because the camera gimmick has no chance of working twice, and making a conventional movie set after the initial attack will just bog down in all of the origin mystery and how-do-we-kill-it scenarios that this film so skillfully avoided. Also, I should note that zombies get to try their luck in a similar handheld camera horror picture coming soon - Diary of the Dead, directed by zombie-master George Romero.