Category Archives: drama

Breach

Posted on February 1, 2008

Chris Cooper and Ryan Phillipe face off as a young FBI investigator, not even yet a full Special Agent, and a 25 year veteran of the Bureau in a very dramatic retelling of the takedown of the worst betrayal by an American spy ever, Robert Hanssen. Sadly, as with so many fact-based films, this 2007 release isn’t quite able to deliver the suspense and dramatic tension of most made up stories.

Breach is intriguing but lacks the kind of heartpounding I generally want to get from thrillers. Throw in a difficult to accept subplot, pressure from Phillipe’s character’s wife about his assignment, and I think this movie just squeaks over the line to…

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Legends of the Fall

Posted on January 29, 2008

This Brad Pitt vehicle seems likely to have been greenlit in the wake of Kevin Costner’s stunning Dances With Wolves. Aiming for a similar epic Western revisionist anti-hero result and adding the burgeoning star power of Brad Pitt backed with Anthony Hopkins as well as the fresh beauty of Julia Ormond, the execs at Columbia surely expected similar huge grosses and perhaps a few golden statuettes of their own.

Sadly Legends of the Fall (1994) was not in the same class as its model. Director Ed Zwick, still mainly known at this point for the hit TV series thirtysomething, was a bit too loose with his focus. Pitt’s Tristan had to contend with his father (Hopkins), compete with his two brothers (Aidan Quinn and Henry Thomas) for Ormand’s heart and disappears for a huge chunk of the second act after finding himself unable to deal with his feelings of responsibility for a tragedy that couldn’t, really, have been down to him at all.

This gets mixmastered by frequent narrations voiced by a native American elder and family friend (Gordon Tootoosis). Frankly, a movie that needs this much help explaining the on-screen action probably should have gone back to scriptwriters Susan Shilliday and Bill Witliff for another draft.

The acting is strong enough, though Quinn as usual does little for me, and the wide open territories in Montana where the  Ludlow clan have a ranch, the film’s primary setting, is awesome; that John Toll took the 1995 Oscar for Best Cinematography seem reasonable. Yet I wonder how much better Legends might have been if the younger brother and related subplots had been edited out.

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The Caine Mutiny

Posted on January 28, 2008

I really love having video on demand on my cable service. Not only does it give me new episodes of The Wire six days early, I can also find something to watch no matter what my mood. The other night I flipped through the free movie listing and found this 1954 classic tale of men at war and more in conflict with each other than the enemy–there’s only one battle scene and even that shows the Japanese only through the arrival of shots from their shore-based batteries.

The Caine Mutiny is primarily set on the minesweeper Caine in the Pacific Theater during the second half of WWII. Made from Herman Wouk’s bestselling novel, the movie was written by Stanley Roberts (who also adapted Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman for the big screen) and directed by Edward Dmytryk, in his first job after spending several months in prison as one of the Hollywood 10 who refused to cooperate with the DC McCarthyism witchhunts of the early ’50s.

Producer Stanley Kramer (yes, the one who not longer after this became a very successful director) gave Dmytryk a first class cast. Toplining are Humphrey Bogart as the martinet Queeg, Van Johnson as the mutineer Maryk, Fred MacMurray (still a serious actor who had not yet turned to Disney tripe nor the father of My Three Sons) as the creepy comms officer Keefer and Jose Ferrer as Maryk’s Navy attorney plus Robert Francis in a very good performance as naive, audience POV character Ensign Willie Keith. Sadly Francis died in a plane crash the year after this was released.

The Caine is a slack ship, the crew just as sloppy and worn down, as Keith arrives fresh from training for his first posting. Shortly thereafter Queeg takes command and he’s unwilling to permit such unbecoming behavior and state of repair. We see him in a series of questionably petty decisions and confrontations, none truly favorable to him, climaxing in a ship-wide hunt for a purported food locker key used to abscond with a quart of strawberry ice cream.

Maryk, Keefer and Keith surreptitiously ride over to the newly-arrived fleet commander’s carrier, armed with Maryk’s diary of Queeg’s behaviors, to see if Admiral Halsey will  relieve their captain. They back out at the last minute, on Halsey’s doorstep, after Keener points out that much of what the three know is actionable Queeg can likely explain away as imposing discipline and the trio’s action as mutiny.

Finally the ship (and the bigger fleet to which it belongs) runs into a terrible storm that goes on for hours, causing them severe damage. Queeg refuses to deviate in the least from their ordered course despite the fact that doing so will alleviate the threat of capsizing.

The storm goes on and on and Maryk’s requests and suggestions to alter heading become more and more strident; finally Queeg retreats into himself, though physically remaining on the bridge, and Maryk assumes command, with the complicity of Keith, who is officer of the deck during this time. They return to San Francisco, the Caine‘s home port, for the climactic trial of Lt. Maryk on chargs of mutiny.

While watching I came to really wonder how much of the story came from Herman Wouk’s own experience on the same kind of ship during the war. The performances are generally strong, with interesting small parts by very young Lee Marvin, Claude Akins and E.G. Marshall; I’m less clear on why Roberts and Dmytryk kept Ensign Keith’s subplot other than as a sop to the female audience.

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Notes on a Scandal

Posted on January 13, 2008

This 2006 drama is a twisted, dark romance from writer Patrick Marber and director Richard Eyre and stars Dame Judith Dench, Cate Blanchett and Bill Nighy with a meaty supporting role for teenager Andrew Simpson. Marber and Eyre are highly regarded for their theater work so it’s no surprise that dialog and body language are far more significant than would typically be the case.

Notes on a Scandal covers the term when Sheba (Blanchett) arrives as the new arts teacher at a London high school where Barbara (Dench) is an institution nearing retirement and 15 year old Steven (Simpson) is enrolled as a 10th Year student. Being so pretty and vivacious Sheba is someone everyone else wants to get close with, and her marriage to the much older, yet loving and caring, Richard (Nighy) doesn’t an obstacle to either friendship or romance.

Barbara, who also provides much needed narration, certainly doesn’t see Richard or Sheba’s two children as problems for the “special” relationship she wants with the newcomer. After all, her last intended young lovely friend scampered away rather than suffer the attention.

Sheba, well, she would have done just fine if she’d only stopped herself from acting on forbidden desires but temptation, as Greg Allman sang, “is a loaded gun.” So hard not to fire at least one bullet, then one more and another and another and then you get sloppy, which is when someone’s bound to see your mess.

Barbara, of course, has been paying Sheba special attention so we’re not surprised when it’s her eyes that do and that’s all this spider needs for springing her trap. Aging predators can’t catch prey as well or as easily; Barbara should’ve learned this from her last result but is desperate not to be alone for her last years.

As I said, this is a very dark movie but quite a good one: Dench, Blanchett and Marber all got Oscar nominations though they lost to Helen Mirren (who played another aging British monarch), Jennifer Hudson (Dreamgirls) and William Monahan (The Departed), respectively.

Definitely worth watching now that Notes has come to premium cable.

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Renaissance

Posted on December 29, 2007

This is a very different kind of animated film, much more of a literary exercise than the standard DreamWorks/Pixar cartoon outing, other commentaries classing the black and white, techno-nightmare fable as cross of Blade Runner and Sin City. Finally released in 2006 after six years cooking, Renaissance is a dark tale set in 2046 Paris about a hard as nails cop assigned to find a beautiful young genetics researcher gone missing.

Daniel Craig voices the snatch squad captain, Karas, with Romola Garai as the missing girl, Jonathon Pryce well-cast as her devious corporate box, Ian Holm as her mentor and Catherine McCormack as Garai’s gorgeous older sister rounding out the top line cast.

Karas, we see straight from the start, is a stereotype, the I do as I see fit copper constantly running afoul of his superiors and so you won’t be surprised that halfway through, after pissing off the case’s prosecutor he gets suspended. His team are loyal to him despite the prospect of serious career damage and, of course, the sister and Karas fall in love. Not many surprises in either plot or characterization.

No, the attraction of Renaissance is the striking visual of his motion capture animation and I wasn’t surprised that the opening credits featured (that is, the ones before the title, usually only given to production companies, stars and the director) those responsible. Director Christian Volckman gives us a future Paris that mixes the mega-urbanity of Blade Runner‘s Seattle and the Fritz Lang 1927 classic Metropolis where daylight seems to be vanishing along with, say, the flora and fauna.

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Primer

Posted on December 25, 2007

This odd 2004 indie production (e.g., $7,000 budget) caught my eye in the program grid and with nothing else on on Christmas Eve afternoon. Weird is an understatement, even for an old time science fiction fan like me. Though this film does indeed fall into the science fiction wing of the library, it isn’t Star Wars/Star Trek big bang SF but rather more from the Stanislaw Lem/William Gibson school of intellectual puzzles and the SF aside, the movie it most reminds me of is Memento.

Frankly I don’t think I can do much good explaining Primer but Roger Ebert takes a decent shot and it did win the Sundance Grand Jury Prize for Drama. Shane Carruth wrote, directed, produced and stars and I give him credit for doing a lot with that slim budget.

You will come away puzzling over nearly everything about this movie, in a good way, if you watch on day when you mind is open for business.

moderately recommended

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The Net

Posted on December 23, 2007

Sandra Bullock stars in one of the earlier (1995) “the internet will doom us all, but at least we can work from home in pajamas” thrillers. The technological conceit at the heart of The Net is surprisingly possible, albeit not quite in the form used–no single piece of security software will ever get to the necessary level of market share to do the damage envisioned in the film without being unmasked by the quite vigilant group of researchers tracking the security market.

Irwin Winkler, who was primarily a producer for 30 years before this on many big movies including the Rocky series and a number of Martin Scorsese’s films, made this his third directorial effort. The Net, though, was his first shot at a big box office event, following two smaller Robert De Niro dramas (Guilty by Association and Night and the City). The script came from the team of John Brancato and Michael Ferris, whose career is littered with sequels (Terminator 3 and the upcoming Terminator reboot, Catwoman) minor films that sound better on paper than on celluloid (The Game).

Bullock plays Angela Bennett, a nearly agoraphobic, mysanthropic top rank computer programmer. She works from home in Santa Monica (for a San Francisco software outfit), orders delivery rather cook, has a social life consisting of hanging out in a chat room with other geeks she’s never willing to meet IRL and ventures out mainly to dutifully visit her Alzheimer’s-wasted mom.

Angela decides to take her first vacation in six years a day after sending a friendly co-worker a new virus for his collection. Dale returns the favor but says he will fly down in his Cessna to talk about his find over breakfast before she leaves for Mexico. As he’s not arrived by the time she needs to head to LAX, Angela calls his office only to be told Dale dies when his plane crashed. We viewers, though, already knew it and also that the crash was caused by some chicanery to the Cessna.

On her vacation’s last morning, sitting out on the beach, Angela connects with a cute British guy named Jack Devlin (Jeremy Northam, in a role that was probably turned down by Hugh Grant as too dark). This is no coincidence, though, as Devlin somehow is constantly exactly on the mark with every choice from favorite movie to dinner on a romantic powerboat followed, of course, by a night of passionate sex.

Jack, you see (and you would see, since Winkler and his writers telegraph nearly every move), is a ruthless mercenary only interested in retrieving that disk Dale sent Angela and making sure there are neither copies nor anyone else who knows of it’s contents. Those questions answered, and the sex finished, Jack’s ready to kill our heroine and dump her body somewhere off the coast of Cancun.

Angela realized this just before and was able to remove the bullets, though for some reason didn’t keep the loaded gun for herself. Anyway she knocks Jack silly with a wine bottle, disables the boat, dumps him overboard and makes her getaway in the main boat’s dinghy. Sadly, it wasn’t a clean getaway and she herself is knocked unconscious after running into some rocks. Her recovery in a local hospital provides Jack with the time to erase the computer existence of Angela Bennett.

On making her way home Angela finds her house emptied of it’s contents and a realtor holding an open house to sell it; unable to convince the realtor, a neighbor or a pair of patrol cops the house belongs to her or even that she really is Angela Bennett, she’s arrested and her life spirals further down.

But this woman is no wimp even if she is a nerd! No sir. And as good as her opponents’ computer skills may be, her’s are better and besides she has her former lover/psychiatrist (a feel good, wants to feel Angela again Dennis Miller) on her side.

You see, what Angela and Dale stumbled onto was nothing less than the attempt to subvert the entire business and government infrastructure of the United States by a group dedicated to taking down institutions that, well, just get too big for the general good. The Praetorians, Devlin’s employers, are lead by another very smart geek, not really seen much on screen or a character in this movie, but you can think of him as an evil Mitch Kapor or Larry Ellison. GateKeeper, his Trojan horse security software app, is gaining more and more marketshare while keeping it’s true purpose hidden.

Overall I think this is an entertaining 90 minutes because for 1993 or 94, when presumably the script was written, the core concepts are pretty insightful and while Winkler may not be a great director (see my review of his best received work, the 2001 Life as a House) he learned from Scorsese and other great ones while producing and knows how to keep the action moving and the plot on point.

mildly recommended

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Smash Palace

Posted on December 23, 2007

This 1981 early Roger Donaldson effort was one of the first I remember seeing from Down Under and was perhaps one of the seeds of my fondness for that part of the world. I admit to all along believing this was an Australian films when, I found out flying home from Auckland on Air New Zealand, it’s actually from the Kiwis. Weird.

Smash Palace was written and directed by Donaldson (who next gave us The Bounty and Cocktail) and stars Bruno Lawrence, Anna Jemison and Greer Robson as Al, Jacqui and Georgie, the family Shaw, and Keith Aberdein as Al’s best mate, local copper Ray Foley. The Shaws own and live at a junk yard (the literal meaning of the movie’s title) out in a remote small New Zealand town and Al stays sane working on cars he occasionally races.

Jacqui has no similar outlet and the isolation is harder on her than Al–he grew up here but she emigrated from an unspecified city in France. Georgie is more puzzled than dismayed because the junk yard is a fine playground for an eight year old. Still, no big domestic issues until Jacqui cannot bear the boredom and finds herself alone and drunk with Ray.

Combined with the prospect of the business going under or giving in to a mediocre purchase offer from an out of town real estate company, Jacqui’s decision to move out until she sorts out her feelings pushes Al over the edge (the figurative meaning of the title) and launches the movie’s third act right into the stratosphere.

While this is a small film, in the same sense of, say, Kevin Smith’s Clerks and Robert Rodriguez’s El Mariachi, as with both of them Donaldson and his core cast deliver an excellent result. Watching this while struggling with sleep on the previously-mentioned trans-Pacific flight I had no choice but to focus on the dialog and emotional interaction and, while I admit sleep would have been nice, this was a very decent second choice.

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The Good Shepherd

Posted on December 16, 2007

In his second directorial effort, Robert De Niro does not live up to the quality of A Bronx Tale, his first, nor his status as a god in the acting category. The Good Shepherd is a good movie when it sticks to telling us the spy side of the story but has two key problems that block it from being really good or excellent.

The problems: despite constantly shifting between the movie’s main time period, the weeks just before and after the Bay of Pigs fiasco in 1961, and an episodic look at how protagonist Edward Wilson (Matt Damon) grew from a Yale scholastic stud and poet into one of the CIA’s top leaders, there’s just too much wasted screen time in the nearly three hours this runs, and, second, Damon plays Wilson as if he were made of rock, which is terrific for a spy but terrible for what is a drama and not a Bourne-style thriller.

De Niro and scripter Eric Roth (Munich, Ali, The Insider, The Postman) are attempting to give us a retro-modern lesson on the founding of the Central Intelligence Agency (referred to as CIA, never “the CIA,” since as one character says late in the movie, you never say “the God”) via the Wilson viewpoint character. They feel we need to learn about Wilson as a person to give the Agency’s actions context and humanity so we see Edward as:

  • a college student at Yale, his induction into Skull and Bones, his only real love affair–with Laura, a lovely deaf Yale coed played by Tammy Blanchard–and his shotgun albeit career enhancing marriage to Clover Russell (Angeline Jolie), sister of a Bones mate and daughter of a US Senator, all in the two years before WWII;
  • his return home after spending the entire war in Europe to a wife with whom he has no emotional connection and a six year old son he’s never met and who he also never bonds with
  • a one night sexual reunion with that deaf woman, 18 years after their last date, after a chance meeting.

These scenes take up at least 45 minutes and probably closer to an hour, which could have been condensed to about 15 minutes without losing any of their plot setup or audience identifying effects.

Damon is generally quite capable of delivering a much better performance than we see here (Syriana, Good Will Hunting, The Departed, the Bourne trilogy) and I can only attribute the difference to De Niro’s instructions. Perhaps he wanted us to believe or understand that the spy’s need to display the ultimate poker face cannot be turned off and on at will; those willing to back up their extreme patriotism with ruthless dedication, that is, have little compunction in sacrificing family either, but instead of extraneous verbiage and scenes this could have been delivered in a few scraps of dialog. However, even in the scenes with Laura or his college poetry class, which I expect are intended to gift us a glance at who Edward might have been, I felt Damon was never allowed to soften his granite body language.

If The Good Shepherd had only focused on the rivalry between Mother (the KGB’s nickname for Wilson) and Ulysses (CIA’s codename for his KGB counterpart, played by Oleg Shtefanko) I think this could have been the success that De Niro, Roth and Damon expected cinematically and as a historical analysis. This rivalry takes center stage in the movie’s final third, rewarding the patient viewer with the emotional energy absent from most of the first 100+ minutes with dramatic spy games that continually raise the stakes and provide a meaningful payoff to the interspersed scenes in which Wilson and his constant companion Ray Broca (John Turturro, who wisely offers his emotions throughout) are analyzing the reasons for the failure to overthrow Castro at the Bay of Pigs.

moderately recommended

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Curse of the Golden Flower (Man cheng jin dai huang jin jia)

Posted on November 7, 2007

Dazzling visuals give this transposed Greek tragedy an epic feel but in the end Curse of the Golden Flower is a tale of betrayal and revenge inside a single family. Chow Yun Fat is the father and Li Gong the mother of the two younger sons–though she appears far too young to be the mother of the older of her boys, well, it is a movie.

Set 1100 years ago during the T’ang Dynasty in China, an ambitious soldier has completed his rise to power and consolidated control of the empire. The Empress, daughter of the ruler of a neighboring kingdom, has reached the end of her usefulness. His three sons are all grown but Wan, the oldest, is a weakling, Yu, the youngest, a bit mad and Jai, the middle, cannot bear the way his father has betrayed his mother.

The annual Chrysanthemum festival is drawing near, an event with special significance for the family. Not only is it the day the Emperor chooses to celebrate the values of his monarchy, it is also the anniversary of the death of his first wife, his eldest son’s mother. Further, the Empress has found out that her husband has added a poison to her daily medicine, a concoction of his own composition.

To celebrate, then, the Empress has arranged that at the opening of this year’s festival a coup will be staged; she will be rid of her disloyal husband and the son of his first wife. This is a royal soaper so in addition, Crown Prince Wan is having an affair with the lovely daughter of the Imperial Doctor and she and her father are the ones adding the poison to the Empress’ medicine–and the wife of the Imperial Doctor is the person who told her of it.

Writer/director Yimou Zhang (House of Flying Daggers, Hero) continues to use the screen as a vast movie canvas, swaths of brilliant color always in motion. Golden Flower is played out on the huge stage of the Forbidden City in Beijing and the coup attempt involves, literally, thousands of soldiers between the two sides. One army is dressed all in gold, the other in steel, and despite the numbers a great deal of stealth is involved. The palace interiors dwarf the cast, the walls and doors huge blocks of fabrics, and the costumes, especially of the royal family, massive affairs that somehow do not restrict movement.

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