Category: Reviews

Hero is exactly as good as everyone says it is — oh — then, well, curse you Stephen Hunter, for screwing up my schtick. Do these movie reviewers know no shame?

In point of fact, Hero is infinitely better than Stephen Hunter claims it is. More on the politics of Hunter in a nonce, so that those uninclined can skip that. First, we’ll meditate upon the movie, which is lush beyond imagining both in color (my second Christopher Doyle-lensed film in two nights, so if I am intoxicated with the magic of the projector, do forgive) and in martial arts. Lush is the proper word: I believe that the structure of the movie was concocted in order to provide the opportunity for Jet Li to fight Maggie Cheung more than once, and for Maggie Cheung to clash with Zhang Ziyi in more way than one, and if Donnie Yen only gets the one fight scene, well, it’s one of the better ones in the movie.

Yes, of course they’re good martial arts scenes. Jet Li is a master, Zhang Ziyi is getting her feet under her, and everyone else has been around Hong Kong long enough to know exactly what they’re doing. I.e., not only can they wield their swords and spears and fists with athletic grace, they can continue acting while they do so. Each motion has, as purpose, both furthering the flow of the battle and heightening the intimacy of the emotions.

It’s stylistic as all get out, so you shouldn’t expect Kill Bill; Zhang Yimou is building on top of the Shaw Brothers engendered tradition of historical martial arts movies, not imitating them. Thus, while Jet Li and Donnie Yen battle as fiercely and as quickly as anything you’ll see on screen this side of Ong Bak, the camera is as interested (not more) in the way the water drops onto the stone courtyard in which they fight as it is in the swords. It’s a duet.

And it’s very beautiful. Again: Christopher Doyle, and so on. I’d start to think that he was a one-trick pony, said trick being exquisite color filters, except he’s not; vide The Quiet American. I don’t think he could make a grungy movie, but there are plenty of people who can and not enough who can capture the light filtering through a dozen falling silk curtains the way he can, so it all works out and balances.

Now the politics are about to start. Be warned.

I am inclined to agree with Stephen Hunter when he says that one should not kill thousands of people in order to attain peace. As he says, “That’s the justification of all tyrants — tyrants in nations and tyrants in offices…” However, I wonder if he agrees with himself; one might ask, with some justification given that he takes a shot at Kerry in the course of the review, whether or not he thinks it was worth killing 10,000 Iraqis in order to attain peace in Iraq. Or, closer to home, whether he approves of Abraham Lincoln’s decision to start the Civil War.

He fails to note that, whatever the failings of the King of Qin, Qin is not the country employing three deadly assassins. (In fact, aren’t Flying Snow, Broken Sword, and Long Sky terrorists?) But then, it’s easy to decide that the victors were the bad guys from a perspective two millennia in the future. I suspect, although it is merely speculation, that Mr. Hunter’s real quarrel is with Communist China and that he has failed to separate past from present. But that’s the danger of mixing politics with movie reviews —

And damn, there I go tripping myself again.

Last Life in the Universe is exactly as good as everyone says it is. I’d compare it to Lost in Translation, but then I’d have to get into saying which one is better, and neither of them is: and the expectations might be wrong, of course. So just take a taste of that sad meeting of two divergent people, and move on.

Tadanobu Asano’s Kenji is tired of life. Sinitta Boonyasak’s Noi doesn’t know what she wants out of life. It would be cliched to watch them find each other and come out of their shells, except that the story is punctuated with the unexpected, constantly cutting across the cliches. I went in knowing a little too much about the movie, but even knowing what was coming I was startled by the eloquence of the reveals.

It is an incredibly quiet movie, both figuratively and literally: there are vast swathes of the movie with no music and little incidental sound, and the pacing of the movie will not satisfy you if you’re expecting anything close to action. It is also incredibly beautiful, thanks in part to Christopher Doyle’s cinematography and in part to strong performances from Tadanobu Asano and Sinitta Boonyasak and in large part to Pen-Ek Ratanaruang’s understated direction. The long uninterrupted pans across the Thai landscape are worth looking at, because not only is the surface beautiful, the movie rewards examination.

And then — more punctuation — there are swift bursts of violence, filmed from the side or in darkness or head on so that you can’t avoid them. It’s a movie of contrast. Some slow movies are just slow, paced that way for the sake of the director’s vision of developing story. The Last Life in the Universe is slow so that the few shockingly quick moments are heightened by contrast, just as it’s funny in order to heighten the sorrow (and vice versa). Just as it’s erotic to heighten the distance between people.

You probably missed it in the theaters. It might show up at a film festival, and it will be out on DVD next year.

Zatoichi reminded me of Twin Peaks. Where David Lynch uses the iconic FBI agent as the entrance point into his off-kilter Pacific Northwest, Takeshi Kitano uses the iconic figure of Zatoichi as the entrance point into bushido. Now, obviously Kitano isn’t Lynch — there are no midgets — but there are distinct similarities in the precedence Kitano gives metaphor over reality. Does it make sense for a group of peasants to dance in the middle of a long shot? Does it matter, if the metaphor is there?

Zatoichi is a chambara movie in the same way that Twin Peaks is an FBI series. Kitano’s interested in the people and the tragedies; the swordplay is frequent, but it’s not the flashy lengthy battles one might expect. It’s punctuation that (sometimes) lessens the tension built up by the tight unspoken relationships between the characters.

Hm; come to think of it, the tension is also built up by the score, which is nothing short of incredible. It’s been a while since I’ve seen a movie in which the score was so perfectly integrated into and essential to the movie. I mentioned the peasants dancing; that’s one example, but even when there’s not something whimsically musical going on, the sound design is immaculate.

The other thing I found really striking — well, besides Kitano’s screen presence, which is always impressive — was the texture of the movie. The use of flashbacks is precise and skilled. There’s one scene, another dance scene, in which past is intercut with present to make a certain point about how the past affects the now. Just when you don’t want to see another intercut, just when it’s getting gimmicky, Kitano provides a reaction shot and resets the entire scene. Masterfully done.

There’s also some really spiffy stuff going on with masks and who wears them and who (if anyone) does not. Consider that Zatoichi, in his guise as a masseuse, is in effect wearing a mask. So are an awful lot of other characters. It struck me that the most noble character, or at least the the most honest character, is Gennosuke Hattori the ronin. (Parenthetically, he plays the lead in Last Life in the Universe, which I’m getting more and more excited about every day.) He’s certainly one of only a handful of characters who doesn’t hide behind something.

This is just opening wide (in the arthouse sense of the word) in the US. If you’re patient and you don’t mind giving a movie room to breathe, take the time to see it.

After fifteen minutes of Saving Private Tootsie, I realized that I was watching something for which I had very few if any cultural touchpoints. So, um, yeah — it’s a bold statement about the acceptability of Thai queer culture framed by a Steven Spielberg pastiche and beyond that I am not competent to say. I liked it, I think, but it was a strong reminder that our understanding of film relies on a shared vocabulary.

The ground the transvestites and soldiers travelled on their way back to Thailand, even, was unfamiliar. Landmines were a huge concern, the focus of much of the tension in the movie. That doesn’t resonate the same way with me. There were assumptions about hill tribes that I missed, I think, because I was too busy going “Huh, it’s a world in which it’s completely normal to expect tribes up in the jungles to be heavily armed and autonomous. Also, that kid is wearing a Liverpool shirt. Wow.”

On the other hand, the basic theme of intolerance defeated by simple forced contact is pretty universal, and the sergeant who was unhappy about his gay son was an easy character to follow. So it wasn’t as odd as I’m making it out to be. Just — different.

I tracked down a copy of the new Sean Stewart novel, Perfect Circle, and it’s good enough to be worth waiting eight years for, let alone the four years it’s been since Galveston. So no complaints here.

A little about the milieu, first. It’s the modern world, akin to Mockingbird, with that touch of elemental unexplained strangeness. Like Mockingbird, it’s set in Texas; like many of Stewart’s novels, it’s about family. In the author’s notes for Mockingbird, he says that “I had in mind something that would ‘fit’ with Resurrection Man, but with the quantities of light and dark reversed; a scary comedy, as it were, rather than a brooding novel with occasional jokes.” I think that Perfect Circle is a better match for those words; it echoes the relationship between death and family described in Resurrection Man through a lens crafted of punk music and Texas.

If I was going to write a cover blurb, on the other hand, I’d say something like “Perfect Circle establishes Sean Stewart as the American Nick Hornby,” which would make all the High Fidelity fans happy until they read any of his books besides Perfect Circle. This is why I’m not in marketing.

And come to think of it, Perfect Circle isn’t a comedy, either. So never mind the whole thing and just read it already. There are not one but two chapters on Salon, so you’ve no excuse not to fall in love.

Billy the Kid to Rio: “Will you keep your eyes open? Will you look right at me as I do it?”

I more or less randomly watched The Outlaw today; it was on this set of Western classics I picked up last weekend on Jack Gulick’s advice. Fifty movies for thirty bucks was too good a deal to pass up.

When I cracked open the box, I noticed The Outlaw. I like Howard Hughes, or at least his legend, so I popped it in. I only expected a cheesy Western with a lot of Jane Russell. Imagine my surprise when I got a Billy the Kid played by a guy who looks like a fey Johnny Depp and more subtext than you can shake Lucy Lawless at.

“Doc, if you’re not already fixed up, you can bunk with me tonight.”

“No thanks, Billy, I’ve got a girl. She and her aunt just moved in town. You got a girl, Billy?”

“No, I ain’t got nothing, except that horse.”

“You can’t fool me, a good looking boy like you… you must have a girl somewhere.”

“No, I don’t trust ‘em.”

So the first act of the movie is about how Doc Holliday decides to partner up with Billy the Kid, deserting his old friend Pat Garrett. The second act is Doc and Billy arguing over the beautiful Rio (this is where Jane Russell comes in) and Doc’s strawberry roan; it’s unclear which is more important. The third act resolves it all.

Pat Garrett: “You and me never had any trouble ‘till he came along.”

Besides being charged with tension, it’s actually a pretty decent movie. The final faceoff sequence is about as good as anyone could want. The gunslingers use their weapons like the words they can’t always find, to argue and to sting and to wound. I gasped a couple of times, but then again, I’m suggestible.

The coda doesn’t work quite, but I imagine that’s what you get when you fire Howard Hawks as director and try to finish a movie yourself. I could have done without the over-aggressive score, too. Regardless, none of that stopped me from enjoying the movie a lot.

Tasty. See it if you get a chance.

What Steven Spielberg movie? I’m all about the webs, baby. You’re either gonna see it or not so I’ll just skip the ooohs and ahhhs and cut right to the spoilers and commentary.

Oh, one thing. Step back with me to the halcyon days of 1994. Remember the guy who directed Dead Alive and Meet The Feebles, and the guy who directed the Evil Dead movies? They’re gonna be critically acclaimed directors who make billions of dollars at the box office. No, really.

Very funny old world.

Most of the movies which claim to be based on true stories aren’t. Odd, that the one recent work of fiction that really is rooted in fact doesn’t mention the true story at all. And now, over on IMDB, the commenters mock The Terminal for an implausible premise. Funny old world.

Anyhow: The Terminal is a really tasty eclair. It’s not deep but it’s awfully yummy and you can’t beat chocolate. It’s a very human movie, with a fine degree of attention towards choices and the difficulty of making them. At the heart, it’s about people caring about each other and it manages this without being schmaltzy. I smiled a lot, and I laughed a couple of times.

Tom Hanks pulled off a character with a heavy accent without ever seeming goofy, which is more than I expected, so I suppose now I have to admit he’s a good actor. Catherine Zeta-Jones was beautiful but — as usual — refrained from actually portraying a convincing connection to anyone else on screen.

If the pacing hadn’t collapsed at the end I’d give it four stars.

Yep, I saw it. Chances are most people reading this will have seen it or will intend to see it (and for the rest, read on for a special offer). So instead of reviewing, I’ll ramble.

It’s a Michael Moore movie. From some comments I read previously, I expected it to be less of a polemic, and perhaps more objective. Nope — he’s narrating the thing and even if he doesn’t come out in front of the camera much, it’s still got a heaping helping of Moore sarcasm and innuendo. I think I could have done without mocking members of the Iraq War coalition; even if I don’t think Costa Rica made a significant contribution to the war, I still believe the country deserves the same respect as any other sovereign nation. And I noticed that Moore left out England and Spain when listing coalition members.

On the other hand, it’s also got some astoundingly effective moments and, yeah, a few things I didn’t know. Some of them angered me, and some reminded me that there was a time when Bush didn’t look like he could possibly be as bad as he’s turned out to be. The Lila Lipscomb segments reached brilliance. Specifically, her reaction to the woman who challenged her. Every Republican should watch the movie for that moment if nothing else: that’s the danger you face when you try to brush off criticism.

Which leads me to the special offer. I think people should see this movie, not because it is a magic wand which will convert the masses to frothing Kerry worship but because it shows things you wouldn’t otherwise see. It does not present a complete picture. It does present important elements of a complete picture. So if you weren’t going to see this movie because you think Moore is a pompous blowhard, I will happily purchase and read a political book of your choosing if you change your mind. Even if it’s by Ann Coulter.

(Offer invalid if you pick a book I’ve already read, so be careful — you’d be surprised.)