BEST OF THE REST - 2006
and some year end releases
Runners up for my 10 favorite films of the year
CASINO ROYALE - Anyone who has seen the British gangster film “Layer Cake” with Daniel Craig as a suave intermediary drug dealer who gets caught in a three way tug of war for some stolen drugs will have no reason to doubt why he was chosen to be the new James Bond. He played a guy who always managed to keep the shine on his shoes and his nails manicured until he’s forced to learn how to play rough to survive. Looking back the role looked like a primer for the re-imagined James Bond. Based on the first James Bond novel by Ian Fleming, this Bond is rough around the edges, earning his double O - the license to kill - the hard way. This Bond film doesn’t have the gadgetry that came to typify the Bond franchise, but the filmmakers spared no expense in making the action and chase sequences just as thrilling and exciting as anything that’s come before. The first chase lasts a good twenty minutes plus with Craig establishing Bond’s athleticism and tenacity. This “first” time he’s after Le Chiffre, an international financier who bankrolls terrorist groups around the globe. Like other Bond villains, he has an unmistakable identifiable characteristic - he sheds tears of blood. Eva Green is the Bond Girl - an agent assigned to bankroll Bond in a winner-take-all card game with Le Chiffre as an adversary. There are enough double crosses and double agents to fill two James Bond movies. “Casino Royale” is not just a first rate James Bond movie, it’s also a first rate spy thriller.
CATCH A FIRE - (Dir. Philip Noyce)- Derek Luke turns in an Oscar worthy performance in this rousing bio-pic about Black family man Patrick Chamusso, an oil refinery worker radicalized by intimidation and torture when he is accused of committing an act of industrial espionage. He loves soccer, coaches the village team and takes off on the wrong day. His only alibi would break up his marriage. Tim Robbins is all for God, country and apartheid as Nic Vos, the head interrogator who tortures Chamusso and then his wife to make him break. Instead Chamusso becomes a full blown terrorist and “Catch a Fire” turns into a thrilling action/espionage movie that is not to be missed.
CHILDREN OF MEN - Talk about a dark vision of the future! It doesn’t get much bleaker than this. “Children of Men” depicts a literally sterile society where there hasn’t been a birth in almost two decades. Clive Owen plays Theo, a paper pusher who was once part of a cadre of revolutionaries that still wants to make what is left of the military industrial complex accountable for the current state of the world. Bombs go off in the drab city of the not too distant future and hordes of vandals roam the countryside. Illegal immigrants are rounded up and shipped beyond the territorial fringes of the country’s borders. Theo’s one time love and die hard activist, Julie (Julianne Moore), enlists his help in smuggling a one in a million pregnant woman out of the country beyond the grasp of those who would put her under a microscope. “Children of Men” is essentially a chase film with a message that works thanks to the skilled craftsmen who created this world without a future and the narrative skills of director Alfonso Cuaron whose resume includes such diverse films as the children’s classic “A Little Princess” and the adult fare “Y Tu Mama Tambien.” Michael Caine lends strong support as a casualty of the stoner’s age of radical idealism. .
THE GOOD SHEPHERD - (Dir.
Robert De Niro) - The history of the CIA from the latter part of WWII through
the sixties provides the framework for this story of one man who gave every
fiber of his being to the agency and his country. “The Good Shepherd” starts
off with the JFK’s Cuban Bay of Pigs debacle in the news, then flashes back to
Edward Wilson’s (Matt Damon) student
days at Yale and his first act of patriotism - siding against a professor
accused of being a Nazi sympathizer. He is welcomed into Yale’s Skull and Bones Society whose members would later
become power brokers in the upper echelons of government.
LITTLE CHILDREN - Director Todd Field dissects the lives of suburban discontents who act out their fantasies and aggressions without regard to the consequences to themselves, their spouses or their kids. Sarah (Kate Winslet) and Brad (Patrick Wilson) are the bored housewife and househusband whose innocent flirtation in a playground turns into a full blown affair. She feels rejected by her husband and he feels his manhood is trumped by his wife’s success as a filmmaker. Their needs are like magnetic poles that pull them uncontrollably together. Other characters act as catalysts propelling Sarah and Brad in different directions until their immaturity comes to the forefront of their relationship. The filmmakers never look down on these people but show them to be flawed individuals who - like little children - never matured enough to handle the responsibilities of adulthood. All have a chance at redemption, even the neighborhood pervert and the ex-cop whose own self hatred makes him lash out at him. Surprisingly “Little Children” is often funny, but whatever humor it has is tinged with an overwhelming sense of futility and sadness.
LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE - Little Olive wins a chance to enter the Little Miss Sunshine beauty pageant and before you know it her family of misfits takes to the road in a beat up frighteningly yellow dilapidated Volkswagon bus. They all have a grudge over each other’s personal foibles and shortcomings but they ultimately band together to help Olive achieve her dream. For Olive’s druggy grandfather it’s all fun and games. He teaches her some strange moves and to grrrrr like a tiger seemingly without any purpose. The pay off comes in the performance that hilariously tops off the movie. Greg Kinnear is an unsuccessful inspirational speaker trying to sell his program for success. Paul Dano is the son who has taken a vow of silence because he’s mad at the world and his family in particular. Steve Carrell is the suicidal Uncle just out of a mental institution who pulls himself together for Olive. Alan Arkin is the grandfather idolized by Olive, and Toni Collette is the mother trying to hold everyone together. Abigail Breslin plays Olive whose dreams of performing her grandfather’s choreography become the fulcrum around which the family bonds together. “Little Miss Sunshine” starts out on a somber note with Collete’s Sheryl picking up her brother from the hospital and Kinnear’s poor showing at a speaking engagement. As each character comes on board and rallies around Olive, the movie picks up steam until it takes off like rocket as they overcome one obstacle after another appointment with destiny is just beyond the horizon. “Little Miss Sunshine” is a very funny movie.
Some worthwhile year end films
BABEL - “Babel” is director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s attempt to tell four tragic stories in biblical proportions. As the title implies, the multiple characters all speak in different tongues, but in equally different parts of the world. They are linked by a rifle fired randomly at a bus load of tourists in a remote part of Morocco. An American woman (Kate Blanchett) on the bus with her husband (Brad Pitt) is shot. They are taken to the closest village, miles from a city with a hospital. The shooting is treated as a possible terrorist attack and turned into an international incident that has a ripple effect: 1) all roads leading to the couple’s location are cut off so help is not on the way; 2) their Mexican housekeeper (Adriana Barraza), an illegal immigrant, can’t cross back into the states after she takes the couple’s kids to Mexico for a family wedding; 3) the villages in the vicinity of the shooting are hounded by the Moroccan police looking for the shooter - a boy who unthinkingly takes a pot shot at the bus; 4) a deaf girl in Japan deals with the death of her mother and the seeming indifference of her father who once hunted in Morocco. “Babel” emphasizes the breakdown of communication between individuals, ethnic groups and cultures. Inaurrato and writer Guillermo Arriaga touch all the hot button issues of the day with terrorism and the plight of illegal immigrants at the forefront. One of the movie’s strongest assets is its unflinching sense of time and place where a single moment or incident can be a flash point in the lives of individuals or nations. As in Inarritu’s previous movies, he flits back and forth through time linking scenes thematically rather than chronologically. The drawback: long after “Babel” scores its points, the movie seems to go on forever. It becomes more overwrought than dramatic.
DREAMGIRLS - I wanted to love this movie. The performances made me want to love it. The historical context of its Motown inspired story of Detroit’s Black music becoming the music of America’s youth - Black and White - made me want to love it. Truth be told I loved the dramatics of “Dreamgirls.” The music, in and of itself was okay but the lyrics to most of the songs sounded awkward to these ears, despite the passion of the singers. And there was plenty of passion to spare.
The parallels drawn between fact and fiction, real people and characters is obvious to anyone familiar with Berry Gordy’s rise to fame and fortune as the entrepreneur and production guru of Motown records and the story behind the success of The Supremes and Diana Ross in particular. Foxx has the Gordy type role down pat as Curtis Taylor Jr. the arbiter of taste willing to sell his soul to achieve his corporate vision. Beyonce is the Ross prototype he packages for public consumption. Meanwhile Jennifer Hudson plays Effie, the lady with the Aretha Franklin pipes. In the real world she would be more Muscle Shoals / Stax/Volt - than Motown. Effie gets squeezed out of Curtis’ artistic vision and ends up giving the movie its show stopping number in a scene that had the audience at the show I attended giving her a standing ovation - in the middle of the movie. The rest of the superb cast has Eddie Murphy as “Thunder” Early, a James Brown prototype who is consistently at odds with Taylor’s view of the world. Director Bill Condon parallels Effie’s and Early’s fall from grace with compassion without passing judgment on Curtis’s ascent to the hilltop treating each of them as a product of their times.
THE GOOD GERMAN - There’s more style than substance in this noirish Post War period piece that tips its hat to such classics as “Casablanca,” Carol Reed’s “The Third Man,” and even “A Foreign Affair” from director Billy Wilder, but there’s the rub. The plot - and subplots - seem cut and pasted from different parts of those movies. It’s directed with journeyman-like precision by Steven Soderbergh, e.g. everything fits neatly into place. Patrick Tully (Tobey Maguire) is an enlisted man who’ll do anything for a buck in Berlin just after the end of WWII. He’s a con artist, low level thief and black marketeer. By coincidence the German woman he’s bedding, Lena Brandt) (Kate Blanchett) turns out to have been involved with Jake Geismer (George Clooney) the war correspondent he’s been assigned to chauffeur around the bombed out city. Meanwhile the US Government is trying to get their hands on a Nazi rocket scientist for their rocket program. The Russians want him for theirs. Others want him for war crimes. Tully would like find him and turn him over to the highest bidder. Tully gets in over his head when he starts dealing with the wrong Russian. Jake picks up the trail of the scientist exposing himself and Lena to danger. There are double crosses, triple crosses, mistaken identity, assassinations, mystery, and a modicum of suspense.
THE HOLIDAY - “The Holiday” is your basic fish out of water story turned into a frothy lighthearted romantic comedy about two women on opposite sides of the ocean who swap houses to get away from failed romances and the pressures of work. Cameron Diaz plays a talented film editor who can make a bad movie look good in the trailers she produces. Even her everyday thoughts drift across the screen as if they were coming attractions meant to entice an audience. Kate Winslet plays a newspaper editor who is tired of letting her talents be exploited by the one man she loves. Diaz goes to Winslet’s small Surrey cottage with its Old World charm and lack of modern conveniences while Winslet has to figure what all the push buttons are for in Diaz’s ultra-modern Bel-Air house. Jack Black plays a music composer who works for Diaz who begins to fall for Winslet on the rebound from his failed relationship. Jude Law is the mysterious stranger who reveals few details about his life who comes knocking unexpectedly on Winslet’s door while Diaz is there. “The Holiday” simply depicts each lady getting used to their new surroundings and surrendering to the new loves in their lives. Eli Wallach does a nice
turn as a retired screenwriter who Winslet befriends. Their are also a few kids in the movie that steal every scene they’re in with their naturalness. “The Holiday” goes down like a good ice cream soda, easily forgettable but enjoyable while it lasts thanks to the personable charm of its stars.
THE LAST KING OF SCOTLAND - As long as Forest Whitaker is on the screen as Idi Amin, “The Last King of Scotland” crackles with electricity. He is mesmerizing as the dualistic Ugandan dictator who ruled his country with a smile for the world and an iron fist for his countrymen in the 1970s. Whitaker makes Amin funny, playful, charismatic, paranoid, treacherous, fearful, monstrous, murderous and unforgettable. He hates the British who are on to him but he has a thing for Scotland. This works in Nicholas Garrigan, a recent Scottish med school grad assigned to a humanitarian mission in Uganda who ingratiates himself to Amin quite by accident. Unfortunately, as good as James McAvoy is as Garrigan, the part, as written is too naïve to sustain credibility throughout the movie. He ends up as Amin’s personal doctor and confidant. ‘Nicky’ consistently fails to see the motives behind Amin’s largesse.
MISS POTTER - I knew little about Beatrix Potter and the origin of the Peter Rabbit books before seeing this film. The filmmakers tackle her life with verve and imagination from her attempt to free herself from the conventions and attitudes toward women of her day, to her first success, her first love, the tragic death of her fiance, and her eventual dedication to preserving the land that inspired her stories. Rene Zellweger plays Beatrix Potter with a remarkable sense of playfulness as befits the author of the Peter Rabbit books. There are animated creatures as one might expect but they are used sparingly and to great effect with Potter greeting them as they being invented and becoming part of her literary world.
NOTES ON A SCANDAL - Dame Judith Dench is the wolf clothed in the role of respectable school teacher who sets her predatory sights on the weak and vulnerable Cate Blanchett. You can practically hear Dench’s Barbara Covett (like covet thy neighbor) smacking her lips as she stealthily movies in for the kill. Blanchett’s Sheba Hart spills all her deep dark secret after bedding one of her students at St. George’s School. Covett plays the role of ‘best friend’ trying to manipulate Sheba into leaving her family and to come to her with open arms. When things don’t go her way, Covett turns on Sheba and exposes her to the all the hurt the world has to offer. Once the cat’s out of the bag, “Notes on a Scandal” unfolds like a trenchant story on the Six O’clock News with Sheba’s family and those of the victim bearing the brunt of the media attention. The most entertaining part of “Notes on a Scandal” is Dench’s reading of her own thoughts as she verbally skewers everyone around her. Her acid tongue gives the illusion of a Venus fly trap reaching out its tentacles to devour its prey. This alone is reason enough to see “Notes on a Scandal”
THE PAINTED VEIL - Somerset Maugham’s classic novel about a dedicated doctor taking his unfaithful wife to the outer provinces of China in the 1920s is brought vividly to life with classic elements of an old fashion soap opera - a spurious lover, a spurned husband and the undutiful wife caught between them. Edward Norton plays the dedicated doctor Dr. Walter Fane with a hesitant shy boyishness that never reaches the heights of his wife’s lustful needs. Naomi Watts’ Kitty is blinded by a misguided sense of romance that mistakes her lover’s dalliance for true love. Lieve Schreiber is the bureaucrat who leads her astray in Singapore. Once her affair is discovered, Fane trades the distractions of city life for the solitude and isolation of a poverty stricken village in the outer provinces of China where tradition and superstition stand as impediments to the health of the community. Fane’s altruism and genuine interest in the people he has come to serve win him the respect of the people. His selfless dedication to saving lives especially during the cholera epidemic that dominates the end of the movie opens Kitty’s eyes to a different way of living that is transforming. The coda at the end of the movie when Kitty meets her former lover years later perfectly sums up the way she chooses to live the rest of her life.
THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS - This movie holds few surprises in terms of content for anyone who saw real life Chris Gardner’s story on ABC TV’s 20/20 a few years ago and most recently to promote the movie based on his memoir about his struggle as single parent left homeless. The movie, based on his memoir, focuses on Chris’ relationship with his son. His unyielding tenacity, charm and innate intelligence enables him to hold onto his son and survive a grueling stock sales trainee program without pay while sleeping in shelters and a public toilet at night. The success of the movie falls squarely on the shoulders of its star, Will Smith and his son Jade as Chris’ son. They project a genuine love for each other that can’t be faked.
ROCKY BALBOA - The “Rocky” franchise gets a boost in this surprisingly engaging update of the iconic character created by Sylvester Stallone. Rocky owns a restaurant where he rehashes his tales of glory and defeat. Rocky is still a lug with a heart. His wife is gone, her brother is still around to nag him and his son is grown. He rehashes old boxing stories when the age of technology puts his name on the lips of boxing fans. A computerized simulation of Rocky against the new champ makes Rocky the winner. The buzz builds to a roar and Rocky finds himself turning fat into muscle for a bout with the champ in a Cable TV media event in Las Vegas. The Rocky myth carries on with the only ending possible. Stallone never overplays the sympathy of Rocky’s age. Every ache and pain is more felt than telegraphed to Stallone’s credit. What really makes Rocky work is an underplayed romance that develops naturally out of Rocky’s caring nature and a realistic father and son relationship.
STRANGER THAN FICTION - The influence of writer Charlie Kaufman who penned “Being John Malkovich” and “Adaptation” is all over this movie about an IRS numbers cruncher whose life appears to be dictated by a best selling author (Emma Thompson) whose written words become a voice in his head. The problem is all her central characters die in the end. Once she discovers the person, and other people she’s written about as fiction, are quite real, she must decide whether to sacrifice her art for his fate and he must decide to either be a victim of her imagination or become the master of his own fate. “Stranger Than Fiction” is slow going at first but once Will Farrel’s Harold Crick opens up to the possibility of love with Maggie Gyllenhaal’s tax evading baker, the story turns into a romantic confection that is hard to resist.
VENUS - Let’s face it. Peter O’Toole can do no wrong even in a piece of fluff like “Venus.” His Maurice is an actor at the end of his life who still lives to act and acts for the ladies. Maurice loves to look, see and watch the movement of young women. It is the blessing and bane of his existence and no doubt played a part in his divorce from his wife, played by Vanessa Redgrave. He takes the wastrel niece of his oldest and dearest friend under his wing and a friendship develops. She eventually lets Maurice satisfy his lustful longings for his spent life through the simple contact of his fingers touching her. Mausrice is an artist living through his senses so the filmmakers never call his lustful desires the actions of a dirty old man. Somehow they get away with it as does O’Toole
WE ARE MARSHALL - Matthew McConaughey scores a triumph as real life coach Jack Lengyel who with Assistant coach Red Dawson (Mathew Fox) helped rebuild the Marshall University football team from scratch after most of its team and coaching staff died in a plane crash in 1970. “We Are Marshall” is a tearjerker from the word go. Every other scene is meant to pull the heartstrings, wring them dry so they can absorb the tears that follow. I was hopelessly taken in by the filmmakers manipulation ready to cry on cue for every other scene. When the new team finally comes together, there is plenty of room for tears of joy whether they won or lost. What ultimately made the movie for me was learning about the creative way Lenyel managed to build the team finding students from other disciplines who were willing to play and the politicking involved to waive recruitment regulations to help resurrect the school’s sports program from the ashes of tragedy. “We Are Marshall” is not a great film by any stretch of the imagination. It can be repetitious at times but it is still nonetheless entertaining and sheds light on a story I knew little about.
Two from director Clint Eastwood that should be seen as two halves to a whole
FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS - This is not a traditional war story in the Hollywood sense. The irony of this film is that it is not about the patriotic flag waving of those old World War II movies I grew up on before the age of cable TV yet the flag raising at Iwo Jima is at the center of this story about the men who were there. In fact, there were two flags raised. The second flag raising is the one in the photograph taken by Joe Rosenthal. Three of the men in the photograph were rushed back to the states and ordered to make personal appearances in a frenzied bond raising campaign to finance the end of the war. Adam Beach plays Pima Indian Ira Hayes whose heroism and sad end is immortalized in the song “The Ballad of Ira Hayes” by Johnny Cash. He is the movie’s true tragic figure. The second Marine Rene Gagnon (Jesse Bradford) rode the crest of the wave trying to make the most of his situation while Navy Corpsman John Bradley (Ryan Philippe) understood the importance of the bond drive he couldn’t help but feel exploited and trivialized while others were still dying on Iwo Jima. Director Clint Eastwood’s unflinching depiction of the brutality of war with its blood splattered scenes stands in stark contrast to the carnival atmosphere of the bond tour. The men’s wranglers and the tours organizers come off as hucksters trying to sell America a bill of goods. Today we realize their importance to the war effort but back then things weren’t so clear eyed. “Flags of Our Fathers” is based on the best seller by John Bradley’s son.
As an addendum, I’d recommend seeking out “The Outsider” from 1961 with Tony Curtis as Ira Hayes. I also recall seeing a teleplay with Robert Blake about Ira Hayes’ last days.
LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA - First let me say that it is better to see “Flags of Our Fathers” before seeing this companion piece. Scenes overlap from movie to movie with unanswered questions from “Flags” addressed in “Letters From Iwo Jima.” The fate of one particular soldier is revealed in this movie and the view of the famous flag raising has a decidedly different affect on the Japanese. Other scenes, like the invasion of the island by the marines are used in both films. Of the two, “Letters From Iwo Jima” is more of a traditional war film telling its story of the famed WWII battle for the Japanese held island from the enemy’s point of view. Just like any war movie, there are the grunts conscripted to do the dirty work, the non-coms who don’t know any other life and the officers desperate to save their men or die an honorable death. Some believe in ritual suicide. Others, like the cook at the center of the story, just want to make it home alive. Eastwood tries to give a balanced view of the Japanese soldiers that is at odds with the traditional Hollywood view of history and even more at odds with the documentaries that showed the barbarism of the Japanese in the POW camps in the Pacific, but it is a point
of view that has never been shown or even perhaps understood. The one message that this and all great war films have is that War is Hell no matter what side you’re on.
The Big Disappointments
BOBBY - Once again good intentions don’t necessarily make good movies. “Bobby” could have made been a decent TV movie with commercial breaks to interrupt the hum-drum pacing. I found sitting through the mini-soap operas of the people in this movie unbearable. Filmmaker Emilio Estevez’s movie never really captures the spirit of Kennedy’s hopes and dreams through his characters.. His ideas are spoken often enough but never felt, despite the presence of such notable actors as Anthony Hopkins, William H. Macy, and Demi Moore among others. To make matters worse, whatever saving grace the movie may have had is totally eclipsed by the compelling newsreel footage of the real life Robert Kennedy. I found the last ten minutes of the movie heartbreaking. It was reminder of what could have been had Kennedy had lived.
HOME OF THE BRAVE - I hate to repeat myself but once again, good intentions don’t necessarily make good movies. Producer turned director mines the traditional format of emotionally scarred and wounded war vets returning home to attack the war in Iraq with decidedly mixed results. “Home of the Brave” follows. Producer turned director Irwin Winler delivers one of the most heavy handed movies about combat vets trying to adjust to civilian life I’ve ever see. The irony is that the best part of the movie were the combat scenes in Iraq. They were expertly staged and had the sting of a real firefight and the roadside bombings that continue to flash across the TV screen. Samuel L. Jackson is the most believable character as part of a MASH unit trying to save as many lives as possible in the combat zone. Once home he begins to drink in self recrimination for not being able to do enough. Of course this has an effect on his family that occasionally has the spark of truth but these tidbits are not enough to ignite this movie. The script by first timer Mark Friedman lacks the psychological insight needed to lift “Home of the Brave” out of the mundane.
A word on “Borat” and director David Lynch’s mental magnum opus
BORAT: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan Am I the only person who didn’t like this movie? It would seem so. I sat in the theater while hordes of laughter surrounded me. Some people sounded like they were programmed to laugh on cue - like canned laughter - just to be hip. Others were genuinely guffawing. While I found a few moments of people duped into believing that the Cable TV star of the Da Ali G Show was a real foreign reporter in search of America, I found his creator Sacha Baron Cohen’s character just as obnoxious as the people whose prejudices he exposes. How much is set up and how much reflect people’s real reactions to the faux journalist ? I didn’t really care.
INLAND EMPIRE - At last! A David Lynch movie so incomprehensibly dull I felt like I had to take No Doze to help me make it through its three hours of nightmarish gibberish. Laura Dern appears to be an actress portraying a hooker who may represent a part of the actress’s former life or maybe something out of her dreams or…or….Oh! I just don’t know! P.S. There are also scenes that are supposed to take place in Poland.
P.S. again. I still love “Mulholland Drive” and think Lynch’s untypical “The Straight Story” is a masterwork.