Woody Allen’s 1999 release, Sweet and Lowdown is the portrait of a man to whom everything comes so easy that he is unable to appreciate any of it until reality turns him smack around. Makes one wonder if, or how closely, Allen identifies with this character.

Sean Penn, who takes roles I can’t appreciate all too often, plays this man, adrift in the 1930s, a virtuoso guitarist who keeps reminding people he is probably the second greatest player in the world, only that gypsy Django Reinhardt ahead of him. Instead of putting his head down and seeing where his talent might take him, Penn’s Emmet Ray fritters away his time on schemes, alcohol, and emotions he is unwilling to understand or develop. Samantha Morton is also superb, playing his mute lover, going the whole movie without a word of dialog other than what she can convey with body language.

No doubt that the movie has a great soundtrack. Dick Hyman assembled an all-star line-up to make fresh takes on the sound of the small group swing era featuring guitarist Bucky Pizzarelli as the lead instrumentalist. Much of the music comes naturally in the structure of the film as being played by Ray’s combo, rather than just being background to other scenes.

Allen is, to my mind, one of the top five American moviemakers in my lifetime. In Sweet and Lowdown, he gets away from his obsession with young women to return to a time he adores and writes a complex, meaningful character. In many interviews he has expressed a certain level of dissatisfaction with his work; even this month when he was honored with a major European lifetime achievement award he called himself a mediocre artist. So there is some truth to my thought that Emmet Ray is a commentary targeted at himself, though I believe in the last 10 or so years Allen has learned to be satisfied with who he is and what he’s done (so perhaps all his years of therapy did pay off).

I was a little disappointed in the ending, it was not as conclusive as I would prefer. But Allen’s own life, his career, has not yet ended so perhaps he isn’t ready to write that scene.

Recommended

Phew! Too much time has passed since we saw a movie in the theater (The Tuxedo four weeks ago) rather than on the home screen. Just hasn’t been anything compeling enough to get us to come across with $6 or more. The price is too high for my pocketbook unless I really think it’s going to be good. Except for CinemaSave over in Milpitas, of course.

We both wanted to see The Transporter since seeing the trailer. This looked like a good European take on the Hollywood martial arts action flick. Luc Besson, who co-wrote and produced, is the man behind La Femme Nikita and The Professional, two terrific films. Cory Yuen is one of the top Hong Kong directors and this is his English language debut. Jason Statham, the star, looked very impressive in the trailer. And Ric Young is always good as a sleazy bad guy.

For the most part, the movie delivered. Faltered a bit with the plot resolution but that’s probably the most difficult element to pull off, and plot isn’t the reason for seeing an action film, is it? My big question was why the bad guys had two 18 wheelers when one would have been better for the plot. Statham, though, is a more refined version of Vin Diesel, the year’s other big new action star. Even though Transporter isn’t doing the box office of xXx, it is a launching pad for the Englishman and you should expect to see him again and again starting next year in caper flick The Italian Job with Mark Wahlberg, Charlize Theron, and Edward Norton.

Qi Shu is the love interest here and this is her first big Hollywood role but she’s another Asian cinema star attempting to make it in our market. She’s pretty, sexy, of course, but also funny and a good actor; younger than Michelle Yeoh and older than Ziyi Zhang. Her character is the reason Statham’s Frank Marks gets into trouble, Shu has found out that her underworld father is trying to bring 400 Chinese to France as more or less slaves and wants to stop him.

Yuen and Besson open the film by showing the transporter doing his job: he picks up a gang that have robbed a bank and by way of some vicious driving, very well staged, gets them out of Nice. That’s the only major scene to show off driving skills but then we get to see some very creative martial arts fights. Plot is not ignored here, not in a Besson movie. Frank Marks has a life priot to the film, he once was a very good man whose innocence dissolved in bureaucratic politics; the events not only give him love but restore his true nature. This film brings what baseball calls the high, hard one, with energy to spare.

Recommended

As mentioned in the previous post, I felt pretty rotten today so I mainly hung on the couch. To get the day off to a good start, not counting workout and breakfast, I cued up this Robert Redford/James Gandolfini flick from last year. Perhaps you remember it, the poster originally had a tattered American flag but after Sep. 11 that got changed fast to one featuring the two stars’ head shots.

The Last Castle is a classic two character face off picture. Redford is a disgraced general, court martialed for refusing an order from the President, and Gandolfini is a martinet colonel who runs a military prison for convicted soldiers. The Castle of the title is a historical reference to the original prison on the same grounds as well as to the psychology of the place. Gandolfini, an officer who’s never been on a battlefield, is at first all excited to meet Redford, who wrote the modern classic on battlefield tactics.

But during their first meeting Redford, not realizing the other is in earshot, makes an offhand comment about the Colonel’s prized collection of military artifacts (such as minie balls from the Battle of Gettysburg) and Gandolfini is instantly turned into an enemy. So, in a sense, the conflict here is mostly in the mind of director Rod Lurie, similar to the disaster from a few months ago, K*19. Redford’s character must be lured into the conflict, reluctantly, by abuse and degradation to other prisoners.

I did enjoy this movie, mainly due to the quality of performances. Not just by the two stars but also Mark Ruffalo (who also starred in You Can Count on Me), Clifton Collins Jr. (also in the opened last weekend Rules of Attraction), and Paul Calderon. Aside from an unnecessary minor subplot featuring a daughter, there are no woman in this prison flick.

This film was Lurie’s follow-up to the Oscar-nominated The Contender. I didn’t like that film much at all. As prison movies go, or even military prison movies, I’d take, oh, The Great Escape anyday. The conflict here is far too contrived to be truly interesting and captivating. And the quest for respect on which Redford leads the prisoners devolves directly into an exciting yet impossible battle.

Barely recommended

Another foreign film, this time from France and 1967. Directed by Louis Malle, who said that after 10 years in the business he tried to make a story of rebellion from a comfortable middle class existence, set in turn of the century Europe, just as he had tried to rebel. I think he was even more influenced by the ennui and existensialism of mid-60’s Paris.

Jean-Paul Belmondo stars as Georges Randal, The Thief of Paris, a slick thief who preys on (mostly) absent rich homeowners and, I’m sure you’ll be as amazed as me, all the women can’t give it up fast enough to him. Particularly Genevieve Bujold as his cousin and lifelong love Charlotte and Marie Dubois as Madame Delpiels, a woman trapped in a harsh marriage who Randal stumbles upon during an evening’s work as she is attempting to join his profession.

Julien Guiomar plays a thief masquarading as the priest l’abbe La Margelle. He takes Georges under his wing after the younger man’s first robbery, done more out of anger than anything else, and shows him the professional world. The faux-priest serves more as a sounding board for conversations about life and meaning, though, and I tend to believe that the action in the movie, in bed and a work is simply given to illustrate the meaninglessness of attempting material gain.

With a cool poster:

Recommended for those with a taste of more intellectual romances

I have this thing for off-beat Australian movies. Among the more well-known are The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert and Muriel’s Wedding. But this one is really strange, very psychedelic. One minute our protagonist (played by Johnathon Schaech) is in midtown Manhattan trying to pawn off some cockatoos and the next he’s driving a beat down old VW minibus across the Australian outback.

Welcome to Woop Woop, released in 1997, is actually the next directorial effort from Stephan Elliot (he wrote and directed Priscilla). Elliot will next year be writing and directing the 30th anniversary TV remake of Rocky Horror Picture Show. Anyway, Woop Woop is a town that’s not on anyone’s map, just a bunch–a hundred or so–of Australians led by Rod Taylor who embody the “leave me alone” lifestyle. When one of them needs a mate, they go off and see who likes to fuck them; the lucky winner gets drugged and shanghaied back to the little outpost. And not only is the place ringed by steep rock embankments, Taylor has guards with rifles and shoot to kill orders to keep pontential deserters in line.

Schaech catches the eye of Susie Porter, a tasty blonde hitchhiker who jumps his bones while he drives her to the sea. She decides she loves him, asks him if he feels the same way. The stupid schmuck, thinking it will keep her in bed a little longer, says he does. Let’s face it, if the boy was so smart he would not have needed to scram from NYC.

The actors all do fine jobs but this is a film that you need to be open to, be willing to not worry quite so much about the reality of the lives. And then you will enjoy the job that Elliot has done.

Recommended