A 1949 screen interpretation of Ayn Rand’s classic novel starring Gary Cooper and a very young, lovely Patricia O’Neil, I watched this mainly due to the recent publicity surrounding the 50th anniversary of Rand’s other big novel, Atlas Shrugged, and since Rand herself wrote the screenplay. I read both novels back in college but, unlike some well-known people as former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan and rocker Geddy Lee, I saw gaping holes in her logic as well as a serious deficit in sympathy for other humans. Shrugged, oddly, was never made into a movie despite its continuing popularity, though Angelina Jolie is spearheading a production that may be released next year.

The Fountainhead, directed by Hollywood vet King Vidor (Duel in the Sun, Northwest Passage), is the story of Howard Roarke (Cooper). Unwilling to submit to the grinding impersonalization forced on anyone who shows signs of real talent, beginning with college professors, moving on to his early bosses and then media critics after he finds wealthy patrons brave enough to erect his out of the mainstream building designs.

After losing one contract too many when he was insistant on his exact plan being built, Roarke flees the city to work with his hands in a granite quarry. Who should be there but Dominic Francon, running away from her weak-willed fiance (who was Roarke’s classmate and a partner in Francon’s father’s firm), who rides her horse over the hill one day to see what’s happening at the quarry. Of course the two see each other and the attraction is immediate.

Roarke won’t marry her, though, until she becomes as strong an individual as he; instead she marries the owner of the newspaper at which she used to work. A newspaper which, on the urging of its architecture critic, had run a smear campaign against a residential skyscraper Roarke designed. Strangely, Roarke and Dominic’s husband (played suavely by Raymond Massey) become great friends–which makes the girl quite nervous as hubby has never been told about their love–and Roarke’s career takes off.

Finally, Roarke wins the contract for a huge low-income housing development through the subterfuge of submitting his bid under the name of Dominic’s former fiance. The city officials agree to the condition that it be built as designed, absolutely, but then just before construction begins that darn, and influential, newspaper critic (Robert Douglas, slick enough as Toohey to make me wonder if he’s half snake) gets two other architects brought in and they make a huge number of ridiculous changes.

Roarke has been away all this time but returns when construction is nearly complete and is disgusted. He dynamites the entire site and is arrested since he’s stayed to surrender when the police arrive. The entire movie up to this point has simply been an exercise to show us Roarke’s true character, the foolishness of those who would impose their will upon others as well as any kind of collective responsibility, and, though it isn’t easy, it’s ever too late to reach the Randian ideal.

At the trial Roarke defends himself. He essentially asks no questions in his cross of the prosecution witnesses other than to confirm the facts as he sees them, most importantly that he did design the project and his only condition and his only compensation was for it to be built exactly as designed. Nor does he call any witnesses of his own, he simply delivers a combined testimony/closing argument that (according to my Law & Order legal education) counts on jury nullification to win a not guilty result.

In fact Roarke’s entire soliloquy is a statement of Rand’s philosophy. Though Cooper’s delivery is his typical understated yet insistently firm style, it’s a poor climax for a film that has barely crawled along for the previous 90 minutes. Judged as a film, The Fountainhead becomes essentially a university lecture; surely having Rand make a documentary would have been a better choice and somehow I doubt Jolie’s Atlas Shrugged, if it gets made, will be much better.

not recommended

An enjoyable historical romantic comedy based on a fabricated episode of a very young Giacomo Casanova set in Venice in the mid-1700s, this Heath Ledger-Sienna Miller 2005 film from Lasse Hallstrom uses the legendary Lothario as an exploration of the meaning of love.

Ledger is the title character, footloose and fancy-free and a charmer who slices through the clothing of beautiful women of all stations. He’s the bane of Bishop Dalfonso’s (Ken Stott) existence because Casanova has powerful protectors including the Doge of Venice. He’s hard up for cash, though, and has finally pushed too far; to escape prosecution and stay out of debtor’s prison as well Casanova must make a real marriage to a woman carrying a sizable dowry by the festival days away.

Fortunately the lovely, lithe blond Victoria (Natalie Dormer) is anxious to be rid of her virginity and has her noble father wrapped around her pinkie so, despite misgivings about her suitor’s reputation, daddy agrees. The same day the groom-to-be is challenged to a duel by Giovanni (Charlie Cox), who lives across from Victoria and has been lovesick since hair appeared on his chest. He’s a terrible fencer, though, and his older sister, wearing identical clothing and mask, takes his place.

Casanova has seen her before, when the unusually educated Francesca (Miller) scandalized Venetian academics by debating a man, also wearing men’s clothes and a wig and mustache disguise. He falls for her immediately but, aside from his impending nuptials, she is also betrothed to a wealthy cousin (Oliver Platt) as the means to solve the whole in the family accounts after dad died.

Finally, Dalonso’s superiors in the Inquisition have decided he can’t bring Casanova to the bar and replaced him with the utterly no-nonsense Cardinal Pucci (Jeremy Irons). Pucci is not put off by the planned wedding nor the political conflict with the secular authorities.

The way these three plots crash together intelligently and with great wit is what makes me give this a recommended result. Also chipping in are the colorful clothing and city scenery, as well as an outstanding performance by Omid Djallai as Casanova’s manservant.

recommended

On a hot summer night in Manhattan two women are attacked, separately, and end up in the same Intensive Care unit. One lives, barely, though her fiance died at the hands of three Hispanic gangbangers and the other dies, purportedly a suicide. An NYPD detective, assigned the suicide, checks in on the woman who survived; he’s a fan of her NPR-ish radio show. The pair of cops from his squad assigned to her case get nowhere on the vicious assault even though the perps videotaped themselves.

Erica Bain (Jodi Foster) is barely able to get past the fear that keeps her trapped inside her apartment and when she does its to get a handgun. Her radio show mainly consisted of her talking over random sounds she recorded on walks all over the city but now she shrinks at the sound of footsteps on busy streets in broad daylight. The fiance’s family couldn’t (didn’t?) wait for her to be released from the hospital so she makes a trip to his grave, crying until she falls asleep at his feet.

When she wakes up the Sun’s long gone and the subway car she rides home is nearly empty. A soft white teenager is lost in his iPod and two young black guys use the threat of a beating to take it from him. At the next stop he and a father and daughter race off but Erica remains, seemingly lost in her own world. “Locked down,” the former iPod owner later describes her. The two guys can’t believe she stayed and as the train pulls out of the station they move on her. Erica simply pulls the pistol out of her purse and shoots them both dead.

This time NYPD Detective Mercer (Terrance Howard) is the primary in what’s quickly becoming known as another Bernie Goetz vigilante. Two more times the vigilante strikes and, since the cops and everyone else assumes the self-appointed crime fighter is male, no one even considers Erica as a suspect. Mercer and Bain have even met in her media persona role and, from his perspective, are maybe falling for each other.

Then, just after a post-midnight, unable to sleep phone call, the husband of the alleged suicide from the opening is murdered. Since Murrow’s a sleaze, involved in drugs, sex slaves and more, and Mercer fears for the guy’s six year old stepdaughter who might just know a bit too much about her mother’s death, he isn’t too upset at catching the case. Almost certainly Murrow was offed by someone in the business, a competitor or a cheated partner. Then he hears the elevator bell in the parking garage where the murder happened and remembers hearing the same sound towards the end of his call with Bain.

While I usually don’t give so much of the plot here it doesn’t matter. Police procedurals, cat and mouse, mistaken assumptions, all standard fare. Not bad but not that relevant to why you want to see The Brave One. Which you absolutely do because Foster and Howard turn in two amazing performances that ought to get serious consideration come awards season.

The script by Bruce Taylor, Roderick Taylor and Cynthia Mort (I couldn’t figure out if the Taylors are brothers, though they seem to generally work together) is interesting, though obviously reminiscent of Death Wish, Taxi Driver and the much more recent Death Sentence. The complex dance between Foster and Howard’s characters and, for the most part, the consistency of their actions throughout put this movie closer to Scorsese’s classic than the other two.

Perhaps this ought not to be that surprising given that Brave One is directed by Neil Jordan, the Irishman whose made such excellent films as (in chronological, not quality, order) Mona Lisa, The Crying Game (won the original screenplay Oscar, nominated for directing but lost to Eastwood’s Unforgiven), The End of the Affair and The Good Thief. Roger Ebert’s review points to Jordan’s frequent focus on gender subversion in his movies which is perhaps at least partially explained by what he said about his schooling in Ireland: “[Y]ou have an educational system run by celibate men in skirts, which is bizarre in itself.”

Travis Bickle, Paul Kersey and Nick Hume–all men. And as mentioned no one is looking for a female vigilante in this situation either. Erica is able to move freely through the days, to show up at Mercer’s press conference, at a precinct house and even start taking calls on air about the person taking justice into ‘his’ own hands without really attracting any suspicion, because ‘these people’ are always men.

But we get a nice bit of foreshadowing that I bet most viewers miss (I did) when Howard tries to explain to other police why Murrow’s wife wasn’t a suicide. Women, he points out, never shoot themselves in the face because they’re too conscious of what comes afterward. Subtle, but on point.

You will probably read or hear some complaints about the ending, speculation about studio meddling. I agree that denoument is weaker than it could, and should, have been. But after consideration my opinion is that it’s inconsequential because what’s dazzling here are Foster, Howard and Jordan, their ability to bring out powerful, damaging emotions without taking them too far and turning The Brave One into a campy, unintentional farce. No, this is a keeper.

definitely recommended

In 1942 the German army in North Africa led by Field Marshall Rommel was kicking Allied booty, to say the least, and so the Western powers decided to try a sleight of hand approach to cutting Rommel’s attack capability by destroying his fuel depot. The storage tanks were deep in German territory, in the heavily defended Libyan port city of Tobruk, and so previous direct assaults failed.

Tobruck is the story of the mission that worked. A force that combined British ground troops with a special squad of German Jews who escaped Hitler, along with an American oil engineer with deep knowledge of the territory, were tasked with driving overland across the desert and bluffing through to the heavy guns defending the coast. The Jewish troops were all native German speakers, of course, and by wearing Nazi uniforms expected little interference.

If the mission went strictly as planned there’d hardly be material for a movie and there are several episodes that come up. Bunkering down for the first or second night in a wadi, they’re able to hide from an Italian patrol and then trick the Italians into thinking they’ve been attacked by a German squad coming from the other direction. And vice versa and so on.

Then the company takes possession of two German spies, an apparently English father and daughter, who think they’ve found safety as the Jewish troops play their parts as real German troops in their presence. Those heroes harbor a double agent, who sends the spies off to a hidden phone, though the ruse is uncovered and the pair found before any harm’s done to the mission.

Finally, after nearly an hour of screen time, the surviving troops reach Tobruk and make their way to the big guns. The mole has done the necessary, unfortunately, and the Germans inflict heavy casualties, averting the ground invasion planned to coincide with their effort. The Jews die valiantly and the American destroys the fuel dumps, and is the only one (along with his two Brit support troops) to get out alive.

Rock Hudson is the American, George Peppard, affecting a ridiculous accent, is the leader of the Jewish squad and the two key English soliders are played by stereotypical Brit actors, Nigel Green and Jack Watson. I don’t use the term derogatively but that if you thought of a WWII British colonel and sergeant major these two are exactly who you’d picture.

Arthur Hiller directed from Leo Gordon’s script (Gordon also plays Peppard’s sergeant) and mainly I’d say Tobruk is a serviceable war picture. Good, keeps the tension increasing, okay acting yet never gets all that exciting. As one of the IMDB commentors wrote, the movie seems to be stuck trying to create a parallel theme comparing the explicit antisemitism of the British officers with the Nazi’s extermination program.

recommended

Based on the classic John Le Carre novel, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold strikes me as perhaps the first major feature film taking an overtly cynical posture on the way intelligence agencies on both sides of the iron curtain did business. In 1965, released amidst the massive success of the first James Bond movies and just before the anti-war movement went mainstream, the film’s attitude and low tech approach–it was one of the last major releases shot in black and white–didn’t go over well and the film pretty much sank from sight.

Forty years later those are no longer obstacles to appreciating the quality of the acting, direction and screenplay. Richard Burton has one of his best outings as the title character, a spy called Alec Leamas returned from a decade of service running the Berlin station, though one wonders just how difficult playing a burned out drunk was for the former Mr. Elizabeth Taylor.

Some fine supporting performances by Claire Bloom as a beautiful, naive young English communist, Cyril Cusack as Leamas’ MI-6 controller, Oskar Werner as a Jewish East German spy boss at war with Peter van Eyck, his anti-semitic boss, and Beatrix Lehmann as the stern chief of the tribunal where Leamas and the two East German spies face off.

Martin Ritt, who also directed such classics as Woody Allen’s The Front, Sounder, a couple of Paul Newman hits (Hud and The Long, Hot Summer) and Norma Rae, has his A game on Cold, using lighting as a powerful tool to convey emotions and framing shots precisely to help viewers see beneath the dialog. The script by Guy Trosper (Jailhouse Rock and Birdman of Alcatraz) and Paul Dehn (Goldfinger, the second Bond movie), who came on to finish it when Trosper passed away, does very well in getting the meat of Le Carre’s novel on screen with some very crisp dialog and plot construction.

Le Carre is the pen name of David Cornwell, a real life an MI-6 spy. He was still active when this movie was made but shortly thereafter left the agency as one of the dozens of western agents betrayed to the Soviets by Kim Philby; one expects he’d have not stayed much longer in any case as his literary star bloomed. Many Le Carre novels have been made into acclaimed films and mini-series, including his best known work Tinker, Tailor, Solder, Spy starring Alec Guinness, The Little Drummer Girl with Diane Keaton and ex-Bond Pierce Brosnan starrer The Tailor of Panama as well as the 2005 critical favorite Constant Gardener.

recommended

After 20 years, his producers seemed to be having trouble coming up with new big action thrillers for Arnold Schwarzenegger; this 2000 release was the next to last one he made except for the third Terminator, which I don’t count because it was a sequel. At least the producers gave us a villain who was neither a terrorist nor a machine this time, eh?

In The 6th Day, set a few years in our future, the Governator plays Adam Gibson, partners with Hank Morgan (Michael Rappaport) in a leading edge helicopter taxi service. One beautiful day the two are hired to fly multi-billionaire Michael Drucker (Tony Goldwyn) up to a nearby mountain for some skiing. Actually Gibson is hired but he and Morgan switch without telling Drucker’s people as Adam needs to run an errand.

There’s a big surprise when he gets home to his lovely wife (Wendy Crewson) and daughter and it isn’t just the surprise birthday party for him: he’s already inside celebrating. Then, after four hard cases come along and try to kill him, Ah-nold is off and running. We already know who’s chasing him: Drucker is sponsoring cloning research by superscientist Griffin Weir (Robert Duvall), and while the research has pretty much succeeded cloning humans is still against the law. No one outside Drucker’s inner circle can be allowed to know about the active program.

6th Day was written by the husband and wife team of Carmac and Marianne Wibberly and directed by veteran Roger Spottiswoode; it’s the first big production for the writers, who went on to write the I Spy movie, the Charlie’s Angels and Bad Boys sequels, Tim Allen’s Shaggy Dog remake and Nic Cage’s National Treasure, while Spottiswoode previously gave us the Bond movie Tomorrow Never Dies, the Robin Williams/Kurt Russell The Best of Times and Sly Stallone Stop! Or My Mother Will Shoot comedies and the AIDs docudrama And the Band Played On.

Here the first half is entertaining because we know what’s happening but Schwarzenegger’s character is struggling to figure it out for himself and then the movie kicks into top gear after the two Adams connect and work together to take down Drucker. Dr. Weir gives a major assist after finally growing himself a conscience.

Of the big guys post-True Lies action flicks, The 6th Day is my favorite though it doesn’t really reach the same heights as that one, Last Action Hero or the first Terminator.

recommended

Less than a decade from now, a lab-created virus is unleashed and decimates the human population; only a few million of us survive, all of whom live in a single city governed by the sons of Dr. Goodchild, the scientist who found the cure for the virus. After 400 years, though, not all the citizens are satisfied with the state of things and the most disaffected have formed an underground rebel group called the Mohicans. The group’s leadership have decided that direct action is required to make a change in the status quo and dispatch an assassin.

Based loosely on the MTV animated series from the mid 1990s, 2005’s Aeon Flux stars Charlize Theron as the titular character, the Mohican assassin, Martin Csokas as Trevor Goodchild, the current governor, and Jonny Lee Miller as Trevor’s younger brother Oren. Frances McDormand and Pete Postlethwaite have supporting roles as Aeon’s Mohican handler and the ancient Keeper of genetic records.

The script by Phil Hay and Matt Manfreddi (the pair also collaborated on Jacky Chan’s The Tuxedo and Crazy/Beautiful) has to account for the practical differences between live action and animation, and between a continuing series and a 90 minute movie as well, though I think most fans of the original were disappointed in this film. I’ve not seen the old series except for bits and pieces so the comparison wasn’t too important for me yet I felt the writers could’ve done better in keeping all the various aspects more consistent with each other.

This is the movie Karyn Kusama chose as the followup to her critically acclaimed 2000 indie drama Girlfight. I can understand the attraction for her, the chance to develop a similar theme on a much broader canvas, but have to wonder how constrained Kusama was by the studio production execs. They were probably a lot more interested in having as many cool fight scenes and big action sequences as could be stuffed in, and far less emphasis on Flux’s inner turmoil and the philosophical conflict between the Goodchild brothers.

recommended

Teaming up for the second time, Jet Li and Jason Stathem are the opponents in a movie that matches the latest trends in extreme violence. FBI agent Hank Crawford (Stathem) gets in the middle of a war between a Triad gang lead by Chang (John Lone) and a Yakuza family run by Shiro (Ryo Ishibashi), but he really wants Rogue (Li), a Chinese hitman who used to work for the CIA and now does the business for Chang. He also murdered Crawford’s partner and his partner’s wife and young daughter just moments before Crawford arrived with his own wife (Andrea Roth, Dennis Leary’s wife on Rescue Me) and son.

War is pretty much what one expects for a late summer action flick: plenty of action with guns and martial arts smackdowns, cops versus robbers and a bevy of gorgeous babes. In the latter group are Devon Aoki as Shiro’s daughter and number two, Nadine Velasquez (Catalina on My Name is Earl) as Chang’s wife and an uncredited, tall and very well endowed beauty as a hooker who delivers Li’s first payday.

The real hottie in War, though, is the car Jet Li drives throughout: the Spyker C8 Spyder. A Dutch marque not widely seen in the US despite being around since 1914 and having a Formula One entry, you can check them out in person at Spyker of Silicon Valley. However, you better go loaded since the car lists for over $250,000.

The director is Phillip Atwell, moving up to features after making his mark with some high profile rap videos for 50 Cent, DMX, NWA and Xhibit. Atwell does okay, never letting the action slow down and adding flash and movement even in what could otherwise be very talky scenes. The script, from Lee Smith and Greg Bradley, is less exciting though there are a couple of pretty decent twists in the third act; not terrible for the first produced script for either.

recommended