Fresh off the amazing original movie version of La Femme Nikita, Luc Besson wrote and directed Leon (released in America in 1994 as The Professional), a film about a naive but effective Mafia killer and the 12 year old girl he briefly adopts. This has long been a favorite of mine, not only for the performances by Jean Reno and Natalie Portman as the title character and the child, but for the way in which Besson puts a huge amount of blood and violence on screen and makes you only pay attention to his characters.

Portman’s father is a slimy man, a minor functionary in the drug business, who runs afoul of dirty DEA Agent Gary Oldman. Michael Badalucco has tried to cut himself in on a bagful of drugs he’s holding for Oldman and when he refuses to return the missing portion, the DEA agent and his crew murder the family. Fortunately Portman’s Mathilda is out buying milk for Leon, who lives in the next apartment, when all this goes down. Reno has no desire, even seems to fear, getting involved by allowing Portman into his apartment while the cops are cleaning up their mess. But he does.

Leon is a naif, a grown man imported from Italy to do the bidding of a Don played by Danny Aiello. He can’t read and doesn’t realize that all the money he believes has been earned through his past wet work will never leave Aiello’s hands. But Mathilda awakens the human being inside a lifeless husk, teaching Leon to read while he teaches her his profession. All she wants is revenge for the murder of her sweet four year old brother. In the end, after she and Leon fight off and kill massive numbers of heavily armed lawmen, Mathilda gets her wish at a heavy price.

There are times when Besson seems to take the movie towards a paen to child love. Portman is clearly prepubescent while some of the looks Leon gives her are more than fatherly and this is echoed in the way the camera captures her as well. Yet he is too much the innocent to be guilty of more than simply forgetting his own age and just wants to protect this precious gift, someone who has offered him more affection than ever been given before.

Highly Recommended

This movie was incredible but there was something that held me up from writing it up until after seeing it a second time–you don’t really think I waited two months to see The Two Towers, did you? Of course you didn’t.

For those very foolish few who haven’t seen it, The Two Towers is the middle film in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, based on the books by J.R.R. Tolkien. The fellowship of nine, formed in the first movie, has been broken and scattered and in these three hours we follow them in three groups. Frodo and Sam have crossed into the lands of Mordor, home of the dark lord Sauron, and are making their way to Mount Duim where they will attempt to destroy the One Ring and with it Sauron’s power. Sauron, in league with the corrupted wizard Saruman, is sending his legions and minions into the lands of Men and Elves not only to find the Ring and return it to him but to conquer and destroy them once and for all.

Merry and Pippin were captured by Saruman’s Uruk Hai-led band of marauders, who killed Boromir during the same confrontation. Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli are tracking them, hoping to free them. Gandolf is missing, presumed dead, after battling the Balrog in the mines of Moria. All three paths seem hopeless, the path for Frodo and Sam through the black lands trackless, Aragorn’s Elf love Arwen is begged by her father to forsake Middle Earth and join the Elven trek to the Undying Lands across the sea.

The acting highlights in TTT are Andy Serkis as Gollum/Smeagle, Viggo Mortensen as Aragorn, and Miranda Otto as Eowyn, honorable mention to Brad Dourif as Grima Wormtongue. Serkis campaigned for a Best Supporting Actor nomination but apparently the Academy wouldn’t allow it; after all, though we hear his voice we never see his face. He had to perform each of his scenes twice, once on the sets with the other actors and a second time alone in front of a blue screen in a special suit with many sensors attached to capture his motion, then the computer specialists replaced Serkis’ image with Gollum’s.

Later in the day I watched Speed on TV and the comparison of Keanu Reeves and Mortensen was very instructive. Reeves was clearly aiming for the subtle, contained energy style of action hero but only Mortensen pulled it off. Consider the scene where the latter pushes open the doors of Theoden’s hall after he is thought lost in battle against Reeves’ entrance into the underground passageway where Sandra Bullock has retrieved Dennis Hopper’s money. Also interesting is the difference in performance by Otto and Liv Tyler’s Arwen; Otto is much more believable in her range than Tyler.

The most amazing work of all, though, is by Peter Jackson who co-wrote the screenplay and directed this monumental effort. Looking at the list of movies that will be released this year, and knowing that there will be many more to come, I will say now that if he does not get the Best Director Oscar (and Return of the King Best Picture) then those awards are a farce. There have been plenty of 150 minute plus films and most of them have long dragging sections, but not here, not even if I consider both LotR films as one. The creativity he’s brought to the visualization and staging of such a complex story as well: Gollum!, Treebeard and the other Ents, the city of Edoras (capital of Rohan) perched high on the mountain, the evil of Orthanc and the pits of Isengard and Barad-dur behind the Black Gates, the Keep at Helm’s Deep and the massive army that assaults it, down to such tiny details as the bodies under water in the Dead Marshes and the blinding light accompanying Gandolf’s return.

The whole thing struck me as very Shakespearean. Epic scale, mad kings, a reluctant return to a throne, romance between feuding families, small people caught up in great events. Many people, writing when TTT was released in December, claimed the whole thing was an attempt to back America’s warmongering but that seems so ridiculous on even the slghtest of examinations for two simple points: nearly the whole cast (plus the director) has come out against war and the scripts were written in the 1998/99 timeframe and principle production took place in 1999/2000! This absurdity reflects the similar controversy that arose when the books were published in the years after World War II as many commentators framed Aragorn, Gandolf, and Frodo as the Allies and Sauron/Saruman as Germany and Japan. But Tolkien rejected that because of course he was commenting on the way modern industry was crushing the last remnants of the rural English life he held so dear. Seriously.

Only 297 days until the release of Return of the King!

Absolutely recommended!

You know The Recruit was on my list. Pacino, spies, even Colin Farrell. Took a few weeks to make time for it but finally got to a matinee this afternoon. Although the experience at the AMC Mercado 20 in Santa Clara was not good, as their idea of a bargain is $7.50 and they show ads before the movie (four of them, and very loudly) versus $6.00 with no ads at the Century 16 in Mountain View. Century just needs to improve their scheduling a bit, that’s all.

Anyway, the movie. Pacino is always great and he gives a good performance here. Not as over the top (Hoo Haa!) loopy as in Any Given Sunday or The Devil’s Advocate. Farrell is turning out to be quite the actor himself and I will be interested to see if, in 20 years, he is another Pacino or another Ford. Or the next Liam Neeson for that matter, since he’s Irish. Speaking of Irish, the hottie in this film is Bridget Moynahan and she’s competent but mostly just another attractive Hollywood space filler as best I can tell. She might be a terrific actress, don’t get me wrong, but the parts she’s taken until now won’t really let you know if that’s true.

What’s good about The Recruit is the twisty, surprising plot and the crisp action. Pacino, especially, keeps warning the other characters (and the audience) that nothing is as it seems, everything is a lie, and only believe the little voice inside your head. Perhaps a little too much of the 115 minutes is spent establishing Farrell’s character at school and in training at “The Farm” and I think this fault lays at the foot of Aussie directing vet Roger Donaldson (who did one of my long ago favorites, Smash Palace, before moving to Hollywood).

To a certain degree, the main action, the final 30-40% of the film, plays more like a really well made TV series episode, but really well made. If HBO did a dramatic spy series… that’s not a bad idea, actually, for someone in HBO’s original programming department to pursue, a series based around Farrell’s James Clayton. Anyway, overall I might compare the movie to Will Smith’s Enemy of the State for pacing and the idea of a man thrust into a powerful spy situation without much expertise.

Recommended

From 2001: Le Fabuleux destin d’Amelie Poulain, or as it was released in America, Amelie. I would write a review but Statto pretty much wrote exactly what I would have. So why bother?

Definitely recommended

For there is nothing lost
That may not be found
If it is but sought.

A gem of a movie, written by star Emma Thompson and directed by Ang Lee (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, The Hulk), based on the classic 1795 novel by Jane Austen. The quote above is just one of the many wonderful little poem fragments scattered about the dialog. Sense and Sensibility, from 1995, is part of the set of similar films made in the surrounding years including Remains of the Day, Howards End, and Much Ado About Nothing–all of which starred Thompson. Can you understand why I was so smitten with her? Even after she made Junior with Ah-nuld. Much Ado, honestly, is one of my all time favorites.

In this film, Lee’s English language debut, Thompson is the eldest of three sisters of a rich Englishman’s second wife; the man dies as we open and his estate passes (by law) to his first wife’s son and the son’s shrewish wife makes sure that little goes to the women despite the father’s wishes. Still the girls are resilient and find a way to remain, in modest comfort, in the upper yet not noble class society of the day. The film truly brings across the mores and behaviors of the era, very stilted, demure, and circumscribed. A proper marriage, with or without love, is exceedingly important–yet our heroines find they can have both, in the end.

Roger Ebert, as usual, has the key insight into why Sense and Sensibility is so enjoyable: “This maddening, intriguing inability to simply blurt out the truth is indispensable to 19th century fiction, and I find it enormously satisfying. Better the character who leaves us to guess at unspeakable depths than one who bores us with confessional psychobabble.”

The cast is veritably stuffed with great names. Besides Thompson, there is Kate Winslett as the middle sister, beautiful and most desired, Hugh Grant as Thompson’s true love, Alan Rickman as one of Winslett’s suitors and Greg Wise as the other, wilder one. Hugh Laurie is particularly good in a small role as the husband of the girls’ cousin, so convincing in showing the consequence of a loveless marriage.

Absolutely recommended

This movie is an excellent example of absurdity; possibly one of the best movie examples of the genre in many years. I greatly enjoyed Confessions of a Dangerous Mind though in order to be complete I should say that the buddy I went with was bored. Since I was laughing about every third minute I can’t explain his reaction.

Sam Rockwell, to me, is the key to this film. He does an amazing job of filling the skin of a real man, one familiar to most of us from when he hosted The Gong Show, bringing out a constant level of jittery energy. Chuck Barris, the man Rockwell plays, not only hosted that lunatic’s asylum, he also created many other fine examples of 1960s and ’70s game shows including The Dating Game and The Newlywed Game. But in his “unauthorized autobiography” and the interviews he gave that form the basis for this film, Barris also claims to have lead a double life as a contract killer for the CIA.

Besides Rockwell, the other really strong performance here is from Drew Barrymore as his longtime girlfriend and eventual wife. Talk about long suffering, Barrymore’s Penny goes frmo an early free love advocate to a love-sick puppy who can barely abide Barris’ inability to commit to a permanent, loving relationship. Though she does look fairly chunky throughout, a definite disappointment though perhaps(?) reflective of the real woman. George Clooney and Julia Roberts have the other two major roles but neither brings sufficent life to their parts; Clooney especially seems to think a cheesy mustache is enough to overcome a perpetual monotone. Roberts has a couple of scenes in which she could have done so much more: after her first encounter with Rockwell, when they make love in West Berlin, and when she meets Barrymore while chastising Rockwell for standing her up (so he can dine with Drew). As for her death scene, forget about it. Puh-lease is the correct response, I believe.

Perhaps, you might say, Clooney’s acting was not all it could be because he was so focused on directing for the first time. How does he do there? Not bad, but not great. The staging and pacing are just okay; I did like the way he put together both scenes Rockwell has with Rutger Hauer. The main credit, though, must go to scriptwriter Charlie Kauffman, who has come out of nowhere (TV shows like Ned & Stacey and Get a Life) to just rock Hollywood with the scripts for Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, and now this–watch out for his next effort, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. I think even the studio execs are scared of what amazing weirdness would happen if they ever let Kauffman direct!

No one I know of believes that Barris was a hitman for the CIA. My buddy suggested that all the scenes involving that aspect of his life were Beautiful Mind-like hallucinations with Clooney playing the Ed Harris role. My own theory is not so dissimilar but caused more by Barris’ actual childhood troubles such as his mother dressing him as a girl until, after several years later, his sister was born and a feeling of guilt he carried for having caused the death of a stillborn twin from his umbilical cord wrapping around the other’s neck in the womb. Probably some chemical imbalances thrown in for good measure.

All these troubles just bubble along under the surface, hardly seen in his daily life by those near him, until his shows are cancelled at the end of the ’70s. Then he snaps, on air during the taping of the last Gong Show. After nearly drowning in this disease he finds relief (cure?) in writing this autobiography. Not quite cured, though he is able to finally marry Penny and live quietly. Good for him.

Trivia note: Did you know George Clooney is exactly two days younger than me? The only movie star that IMDB shows as sharing my birthday is Mary Beth McDonough, who played the middle daughter on the Waltons.

Definitely recommended

Kevin Spacey: Alien or not, you decide. The people behind the movie (director Iain Softley, screenwriter Charles Leavitt, original novel by Gene Brewer) leave it ambiguous right up to the end. And by that I mean the closing credits, they never come out and say one way or the other. Hope you’re not dissapointed. However, after the success of the movie, Brewer was able to publish two sequels and I assume they bring some answer closer to hand. Interesting that Jeff Bridges plays the psychiatrist working with Prot (Spacey’s alien character name) since he played one of the seminal ‘modern’ aliens in Starman so many years ago.

Unfortunately, like so many other worthy attempts, K-PAX does not succeed as a film. The attempt to create a parallel subplot concerning the relationship of Bridges to his wife and children just doesn’t have enough substance, for example, and Softley pushes too hard with visual effects (such as repeated shots of faces merging and mirrored in window glass) to define what should be in the plot.

Not recommended

Making a harsh right turn, we watched the last 40 minutes of the Jet Li film The One immediately after this finished. The violence is such a contrast from K-PAX but the underlying theme of identity in a chaotic universe is quite similar.

I had reservations about watching Life as a House (2001) but Tivo recorded it and I wanted a distraction this afternoon. Not much to the story and it’s all very obvious, especially the connections between the physical and the spiritual/emotional. Well acted and nicely shot and directed.

George Monroe (Kevin Kline) is sick of his job making architectural models but that’s okay because, as the film opens, his boss fires him after 20 years with no notice. As he leaves the office building, he collapses and is taken to the hospital where he tells a friendly nurse that no one loves him or touches him. At the same time, his son Sam (Hayden Christensen, Anakin Skywalker in Star Wars) makes a pathetic attempt to hang himself and when his remarried mother Robin Kimball (Kristin Scott Thomas) dashes up to see what made the crashing noise finds out, she hardly registers an emotion before turning away. The divorce was ten years ago. In other words, everyone’s dead on the inside already and would be more or less happy if the outside died as well.

But it’s not time for that. George decides to use his few remaining months (cancer) to tear down a piece of crap house he inherited from his own unloving dad and force Sam to spend summer vacation helping him build a replacement. A few days of pouting and stealing Dad’s Vicodin, then a ‘friendly’ non-sexual shower with next door neighbor hottie Alyssa (Jena Malone, who will make an amazing temptress in some movie five years from now) is all Sam needs to start growing up.

Sam starts pitching in and, boy, is that last bit of tearing down the old shack cathartic! Surprising no one, not only does Robin realize she still loves George, Alyssa and Sam get together (crowding out her pimping, drugdealing, spoiled boyfriend), then, just as George is dying, after he’s finally told his ex and son, even Robin’s current (dead on the inside) husband catches the spark and the two begin to makeup. Face it, the story is treacle, trite, predictable. Somehow I wasn’t surprised in the least to find out that the script was by the same person, Mark Andrus, who wrote Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood–a man! As Rotten Tomatoes summed Life as a House up: manipulative tearjerker.

Mildly recommended for the quality of acting

You could look at The Majestic in two very different ways. The easy way is a a straightforward dramatic piece where the protagonist starts high, has a tough break, starts to recover, seems to recover, has it taken away, and then in a daring gamble wins it all back. That would be expected, almost formulaic, in a Hollywood movie. And you don’t get much more Hollywood than a movie produced by Warner Brothers.

Or you could look at this collaboration between writer Michael Sloane and his high school (Hollywood High School, actually) pal, director Frank Darabont (Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile), as an attempt to satirize Hollywood a la The Player but even more so because even the script plays it so straight. But the framing scenes, where we see star Jim Carrey sitting in an office chair and hear the clearly recognizable voices of famous movie directors like Carl and Rob Reiner, Gary Marshall, and Sydney Pollack discussing how to improve the script Carrey’s character (Fred Appleton) is writing, seem to almost mock the remainder of the film as too formulaic, too perfect.

Carrey’s writer faces the archetypical problem of Hollywood players in the early 1950s, when The Majestic takes place, of coming to the attention to the witchhunt of the House Unamerican Activities Committee, Joe McCarthy’s fellow Red haters. His character’s name, sort of, in tribute to Dalton Trumbo, is Trimble. Trumbo was a famous screenwriter whose career and life were nearly ruined by the committee on trumped up charges. If you don’t know what the blacklist was, Google will tell you.

Instead of facing up to this trouble, Appleton gets drunk and decides to take a late night drive up the coast; a few hours later he’s driving off a bridge and barely survives the drop. The next morning a dog finds him knocked out, washed up on some beach. An old man, the dog’s owner, comes to his rescue and takes into a tiny little backwater town. Where he is recognized as the lost (and thought dead) since World War II son of Harry Trimble (Martin Landau, such a good actor). Appleton has amnesia, truly, and has no idea if he is Luke Trimble or Joe Blow. I guess they didn’t think of checking his fingerprints, huh?

Eventually his past catches up to him, his car is found, the committee’s investigators confront him, and he regains his memory. But in the meanwhile Luke’s return has brought life back to a dead town. Joy and the 1000 watt Carrey smile and so this turn is devastating. All of sudden the townsfolk admit to Appleton that they realized long before that he wasn’t Luke but “the town needed Luke.” He returns to Los Angeles but, channeling the real Luke’s spirit, defies history, his own character, and the threat of jail (quite a few people went for so-called contempt of Congress in the real deal) to tell the fascists where they can stick their dastardly behavior.

I guess which of the two ways to look at this film is up to each viewer. I certainly didn’t find any mention of the odder interpretation mentioned elsewhere. But as a Deconstructionist might say, the meaning must be taken from the text and not from the author’s intention; either can be held up.

Recommended