Monthly Archives: February 2004

Chicago

Posted on February 29, 2004

After waiting out the lines at crowds at the box office, plus not wanting to fork over hard cash for two tickets, we finally saw last year’s Best Film Oscar winner the night before its successor is named. Seems like we made the right choice: Chicago was enjoyable but not great.

The quality of the singing and dancing by stars Catherine Zeta-Jones, Renee Zellweger and Richard Gere was quite good, certainly better than I expected. Then again, as Rebecca Traister points out in an article in today’s Times, most actors start out doing these kinds of productions in high school and college, and Zeta-Jones did quite a bit of work on the London stage before hitting Hollywood. Zellweger was a powerful beam of light during her productions numbers, more so for me than the others. Props to John C. Riley for his role as Zellweger’s patsy husband and his performance in the Mr. Cellophane number and to Queen Latifah for a very smart job too.

But the performances were not the problem. I can be a big fan of movie musicals–I love a ton of the older ones, though have rarely found much to enjoy post-1970 or so–but here I felt like director (and choreographer) Rob Marshall spent all his energy figuring out how to stage the song and dance bits and not enough on creating a compelling movie. I never could connect with Zeta-Jones’ Velma and Gere’s lawyer was nearly repellant. Perhaps if Marshall had stayed closer to the simplicity imposed by the constraints of a theater and avoided using so much glitz and flash, I would have liked the movie better; as produced, I felt like I was watching a concert with some thin wrappers.

recommended–good but not great

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Scarfies

Posted on February 28, 2004

I suppose that there aren’t too many films made for domestic consumption in New Zealand but I was still very surprised to see that Scarfies won Best Film, Actress, Supporting Actor, Screenplay and Director in 2000. I mean, it was decent, enjoyable, but not that much more than what I’d expect from a low budget Hollywood effort based on the same ideas.

Which are: college students squat in an empty house and discover a big bunch of pot plants growing in the basement, they sell the pot and party with the proceeds only to have the tough guy who set up the plants show up wanting his money. The kids are able to trap him in the now-empty growing room but then have to decide what comes next.

The return of the grower, the turning point in the film, comes about a third of the way in; a classic transition from Act 1 to Act 2. The tone of the movie completely changes too, from college party comedy, to psychological thriller. A Lord of the Flies type situation develops among the five students while the tough ass tries to use whatever divisive chatter he can come up with. That only pushes the students deeper into aggression though.

Overall I found the direction and editing not really up to the quality of even your average art house film; the lack of consistent tone and pace also lost several points as did the subpar production (poor lighting and even sound). Nice first effort for young writer/director Robert Sarkies but he did not go net.

not recommended

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Rabbit-Proof Fence

Posted on February 21, 2004

In the bad days, which in Australia meants before 1970, the Australian government dealt with the Aboriginal population in ways analagous to how Americans treated Native Americans. That is, they were not considered fully human nor really capable of caring for themselves and making proper choices in life. I’m sure the previous sentences are an extreme understatement but from my understanding, one cannot deny that both are shameful situations which fortunately have changed in both countries.

Rabbit-Proof Fence deals with one aspect of how Aboriginal folks were denied freedom. Another historical artifact of the post-World War I period Down Under was the construction of a huge fence in the Western part of the country that stretched coast to coast from north to south to keep some nasty, voracious rabbits out of ranching lands, hence the name of this movie, which is set in 1931.

Three young half Aboriginal/half white girls, ages 8, 10 and 14, two sisters and a cousin whose fathers were white men working on the fence, are unceremoniously removed from their mothers’ care and shipped over a thousand miles away to a school so they can be trained for a life of servitude to whites and married off to whites to, in two generations, eliminate any traces of Aboriginal blood. Or so thinks A.O. Neville (played well by Kenneth Branaugh), government minister and protector of the less-than-people. But the girls are not willing to accept this future and quickly escape; the bulk of the film is their travel, on foot, with no money and barely any concept of the route home.

Director Phillip Noyce, an Australian better known for such big Hollywood films as Clear and Present Danger, Sliver and The Bone Collector, took a big chance and used his clout to make an undoubtedly important film, based on a true story as put down by the oldest girl’s granddaughter. Now “based on a true story” is often the kiss of death for a movie but not in this instance. Noyce and screenwriter Christine Olsen did a superb job using striking visuals of the spare Aussie landscape, very little dialog (much in the girls’ language, with English subtitles) and amazing body language brought out from the girls.

Adding to the film is a spare, emotional score by Peter Gabriel, which employs native instruments and melodies. Christopher Doyle did an excellent job of cinematography.

definitely recommended

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Ghost World

Posted on February 15, 2004

Some films are moving and involving, drawing you into their own small world and Terry Zwigoff’s Ghost World is one of those. Thora Birch and Scarlett Johannson are lifelong girlfriends who graduate from an LA high school as the story begins. Birch is completely lost in the world, adrift from even her one good friend, her single parent father and eventually even from the complete dork (an excellent Steve Buscemi) she meets and befriends him after playing for a fool. A single summer’s slice of life wherein a young woman must awaken from the slumber of school yet filled with some complex emotional interactions and vivid visual imagery.

recommended

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Everyone Says I Love You

Posted on February 8, 2004

Woody Allen spent a lot of time in the 1980s and ’90s trying to make interesting movies without repeating himself. Or at least not repeating himself too badly. When you throw in his love of Gershwin and Porter, there’s no need to be surprised that he made a modern ’30s musical, 1996′s Everyone Says I Love You. Since I’m a known Allen fan, no need to be surprised that I enjoyed this one.

As is often the case, Allen uses an extended family to simplify his need to connect the cast. Alan Alda and Goldie Hawn are the parents, Allen is Hawn’s ex, Natasha Lyonne is the daughter of Allen and Hawn, and Drew Barrymore, Natalie Portman, Lukas Haas, and Gaby Hoffmann play the only other siblings. Barrymore, as the film opens, becomes engaged to Edward Norton but later gets entangled with ex-con Tim Roth; Lyonne travels a bit and has several flings.

Lyonne also has a burning itch to find the perfect woman to match with her father. When they’re vacationing in Venice and bump into Julia Roberts, who’s there with her husband, daughter realizes she knows the stunning beauty, recognizing her as a longtime patient of her friend’s psychiatrist mother (played, uncredited for some reason by Allen regular Dianne Wiest); Roberts, unaware that the girls peep on the mother’s sessions, reveals all her dreams and fantasies and Lyonne instructs Allen for wooing purposes.

Fortunately, I was pretty much able to tune out the musical numbers. I suppose they were fine but, as good as the cast is at acting, they aren’t a song and dance troup of the level of Astaire and Rogers or Sinatra, Kelly and and Ann Miller. Plus this film was made in 1996 and not 50 years earlier and it just didn’t ring true to me. Amusingly Barrymore didn’t do her own vocals but the person who sang for her wasn’t credited onscreen.

recommended for Allen fans

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Lost in Translation

Posted on February 7, 2004

Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson are (separately) stuck in Tokyo for a week, left, for the most part, to their own devices and unable to find activities of interest or to sleep in the unfamiliar environment. He’s a movie star in town to shoot some whiskey commercials for megabucks; she’s the wife of a rock and roll photographer (Giovanni Ribisi) who’s busy with his shoot. They’re staying in the same hotel and after bumping into each other a couple of times, strike up a friendship.

Sofia Coppola wrote and directed Lost in Translation, partly based on similar experiences she had earlier. Over on Rotten Tomatoes I see mainly very positive reviews linked, and of course it has gotten a few Oscar nominations, but I really felt left down by the movie. Yes, the two leads give great performances and Ribisi and Anna Farris (playing a dumb blonde movie star also staying in the hotel) are convincing too but Lost has two major flaws that in the end put it in the good, not great, class:

  1. There are odd production errors, most notably a very visible boom mike, that break the fourth wall for no given reason. If Coppola wanted to say something meta about filmmaking itself she didn’t get it across to us; oddly, none of the reviews I checked mention these flaws but can’t hurl enough superlatives around.

  2. After initially establishing the loneliness and restlessness of the two main characters, the script keeps separating them even though the scenes apart add little or no value to establishing character and seriously detract from the main focus on the relationship. I’m particular thinking of her second shrine visit and his golf outing.

I suppose I’m not overly surprised that LiT landed four Oscar nominations–for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Script and Murray for Best Actor–but I truly think this is one of those times where people swallowed the hype. I credit it to the track record of Coppola (who many felt was unjustly overlooked, even snubbed, for her first major outing, The Virgin Suicides), a radical visual portrayal of Tokyo itself, Murray giving a much more subdued, controlled performance than he’s really ever done before (okay, he might deserve the nomination) and Johannson’s radiance and very hard to ignore opening shot of her fine ass in pink panties.

recommended

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Little Secrets

Posted on February 6, 2004

Another TiVo Suggestion, seemed cute and for some reason more appealing than other available shows. Plus Evan Rachel Wood has gotten much good press for thirteen and I thought I see what this one held. 2001′s Little Secrets is, I have to say, a great movie for young girls: it’s smart, not smarmy, fun and has a couple of cute boys; Wood and her friends learn a valuable lesson in the end, of course, and in a fair way. But unless you’re a parent watching with your under-14 daughter, it really isn’t that much fun to sit through.

no rating

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High Fidelity

Posted on February 1, 2004

Top five reasons why High Fidelity is one of my all time favorite movies:

  1. A romantic comedy with intelligence and wit, a plot that is in constant motion, well-contrasted characters who find organic growth. More laughs and smiles per square meter of film stock than you can shake a stick at.
  2. John Cusack is one of the great American actors whether he gets the credit for it or not. High Fidelity uses his ability for believability and physical humor and contrasts him so well with Jack Black (going over the top) and Todd Louiso (just the opposite, barely animated).
  3. Lots and lots of great music, much of which is woven directly into the plot and not just used as background. And the artists are all over the place: Springsteen, Aretha, Bow Wow Wow, Belle & Sebastian, Liz Phair, Ann Peebles, Illinois Jacquet, Stiff Little Fingers and more.
  4. You can watch it many times and see some new bit or some scene in a new light each time. Plus it’s difficult to get tired of seeing Catherine Zeta-Jones pull off her top.
  5. Bruce Springsteen makes a cameo, sitting back playing his Telecaster and giving Rob sage advice

More top fives about the movie from Ben Guaraldi.

absolutely recommended

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