What Doesn't Kill You

What Doesn't Kill You is an actors' showcase for it's stars and a fine drama for any interested in honesty over style (or honesty as style). Their isn't much pizazz to the way the filmmakers tell this story, but there is plenty to love about writer-director Brian Goodman's autobiographical tale of men making or avoiding the tough choices that make good men just that. I get a sense this is how "organized" crime really works. Strip away the style and larger than life characters of The Sopranos or Goodfellas and I suspect you'll get WDKY - mid-level lackeys miserable and depraved with only the notion that it's supposed to be better to move them on to each new day.

Ethan Hawke has never been better. The twitchiness to his "method" is toned down and instead of the sniveling loser or dreamy eyed slacker, Hawke becomes a witty, dangerous man with vague ambitions and no smarts to achieve more than he's already know. Lead Mark Ruffalo is excellent as well, lending an intensity and vulnerability to his character. Goodman has an ear for authenticity and a no-nonsense sensibility, but he needs to learn dramatic pacing, editing, and develop a more captivating aesthetic to match his actors' skills. I'll say this - he can cast like a crackerjack. The child actors who play Ruffalo and Amanda Peet's (solid as usual in a supporting role) quietly suffering offspring. They don't show off. They're not playing at anything (over-thinking, over-physicalizing, etc.), they're just being real kids in a rotten situation.

WDKY hit me like a ton of bricks, but it's dramatic finale was stale - a kin to a Movie of the Week. It's as though Goodman, in wanting to avoiding a Hollywood ending, didn't know how to provide any sense of closure to match everything that came before it. Still, for the performances and the real dramatic heft to it's story, WDKY (kudos for ending the title at that) is one of my favorite films from 2008.

***1/2

You Can Count on Me

If for nothing else, see this movie for the performances. Mark Ruffalo, Laura Linney, Rory Culkin, and Matthew Broderick are wonderful. Family relationships are probably the most portrayed out of any relationship in cinema (except maybe for a romance), so there can be an attitude of "been there, see that" when it comes to those relationships. But it is rare that a movie so accurately captures the frustrations, undying love, anger and other emotions that come from the ties that bind. I utterly believed these people could be related. Sibling relationships take may different directions in cinema, but it is so very precious when the back and forths of Sammy and Terry are brutally, lovingly, and truthfully portrayed.

I hold Mark Ruffalo's performance as Terry as one of the best performances in film that I have ever seen. There's so much rawness in his Terry. He is quick to anger, but displays a tenderness that makes the character complex. For the longest time, through 13 Going on 30, Windtalkers, and the other peformances since Terry, I was worried Ruffalo could never match the skill he brought to this performance. Then I saw Zodiac and breathed a sigh of relief. Both the lead performances are very likable. Laura Linney hasn't matched her great performance since her first Oscar Nomination, but she'll always have Sammy. Her loving, head-strong, and nurturing character is one for the books.

This movie is full of great scenes where characters just talk. They sit, they stand, they lean on something, but most importantly they talk. They are witty, they are broken, they are hurtful, they are sorry, but most importantly, they are real. Put Linney and Ruffalo on screen and just watch them click, watch them work with each other, challenging the skills of the other and always meeting those challenges. It's wonderful casting and excellent writing. I want to take the scenes, the moments, and frame them and hang them up on my wall next to whatever art and movie memorabilia I have accumulated over the years.

I also want to note how well the movie portrays religion. The writer-director, Kenneth Lonergan, plays a priest in the movie. Even though he is quiet and somewhat aloof, he represents a man of the cloth offering good, solid advice, and truly searching to help and guide the people around him even if it means they find their meaning of life outside where he has found his. Believers are shown as fallible, struggling with their faith and sin. There is shame, regret, and guilt. There is love, trust, and hope. The film is able to show Christianity and not focus on it, to show that Sammy is more than just a church-goer, that Terry is more than just a non-church goer, and that it's hard to be good when it's not Sunday morning.

****1/2

Ed Wood

I saw Plan 9 From Outer Space. I saw Glen or Glenda. They begged the question: how could someone be so stupid to make films such as these?

Ed Wood takes a different approach: Ed Wood was not stupid (at least not completely), but actually a man who was too confident in the fruits of his labors. He was a man so in love with his words, the people he made movies with, and the hope of making something someone could remember him for that he was blind to the futility of his pursuit of quality. I hate the man's movies, but I admire the man. He was in love with filmmaking and wouldn't let anything get in his way of making what he considered his art. A foolish man perhaps, but not the buffoon I assumed he must have been prior to seeing this movie.

To be fair, the reality of Ed Wood's life in the Tim Burton film that bears his name is heightened and exaggerated. I know the writers of Ed Wood are merely interpreting his life, but I never doubted the reality of the film. I believed it completely. The actors (Depp, Landau, Murray, Parker, Arquette, and others), Tim Burton, and the writers helped create characters that are somehow acutely absurd and utterly authentic at the same time.It's played for laughs. They're zany.

So zany...even more so because I have seen the director's films whose productions are depicted in the film. I recommend seeing Plan 9 and Glen or Glenda and Bride of the Atom before seeing Ed Wood. It's hilarious to see the film's writers' reasons for why Wood's films ended up as they did. Sometimes the reasons are oddly poignant, which is strange for such a zany film. When Ed puts his friend and father figure, Bela Lugosi, in his films with a speech about how the actor is still relevant (and making an atomic master race) or a simple moment of smelling a flower in a film where it makes no sense to smell a flower, my heart swelled a bit. The scenes in the context of their respective films are ludicrous. However, in the context of the film Ed Wood, they are priceless proclamations of the maligned director's love for his favorite actor and best friend.

I love this movie. I think anyone who loves movies, want to make movies, or likes to learn about interesting people (even people who make awful movies) should give this movie a watch.

*****

Wonder Boys

SPOILERS



I was thinking about Wonder Boys and its themes. I thought I should write a little about it, but rest assured that a full review will be posted some time this summer.

It took me a few times to really figure out the message of the film. This film used to be my #1 favorite (now it's Magnolia), so I have watched it quite a few times. But it took me three or four times to really get it. It's about making choices. Grady Tripp avoids making choices in his writing (his tenent Hannah tells him so) and he is unwilling to choose a real life with his mistress. His life is a mess, just like the always-growing mountain of pages he calls his book. When he starts making choices, things start straightening out.

There's also the familiar theme of "saving" someone and/or yourself. Grady tells his transvestite passenger that he has to go rescue James Leer. He/she answers that he looks like he could use some rescueing of his own. He rescues and then abandons Leer. But he makes a choice, his first real choice in a series of choices that bring him back around. He rescues Leer again. And this choice starts the road to responsibility. He takes responsibility for his student. He owns up to his affair. He chooses a life with someone he loves. Sure, the film sort of says adultery is okay as long as it's with someone you love, but he comes clean to the husband of his mistress. That's better, right?

Great Movie.

****1/2

The Game

SPOILERS

I've watched a couple of movies in the last week with a Wizard of Oz Syndrome. Heck, in The Game Michael Douglas even said he's pulling back the curtain because he wants to "meet the Wizard."

"And what is the Wizard of Oz Syndrome?" you may ask. Well, it's when you flip around the majority of the reality of everything preceeding the big reveal, the moment our hero or heroine wakes up and says, "I've had the oddest dream. And you were there. And you were there. And..." That is the case with The Game, albeit with a thriller twist. And like most WoOS movies, the satisfaction is in the ending. If it doesn't work, the film doesn't work.

The ending in the Game works for me. It rendered everything before it implausible, but I gladly hand over my disbelief in return for a mind-bending thrill ride with one of my favorite actors, Michael Douglas, and the handiwork of director David Fincher.

I must admit, the film loses some quality of experience on repeated viewings, but very few movies can rival the excitement I felt when I first watched it. First, problems. I found some of the hijinks to fall a little flat this time through. "Hijinks in a thriller?" you might say. Consider them "thriller hijinks." Michael Douglas gets tossed into this game that really kicks off with might be considered an unorthodox "meet-cute" scene not that much different from your average, run-of-the-mill romantic comedy. Only, in the Game, the guy and gal are being chased by police and angry dogs. The snappy dialogue between Douglas and the woman in the scene, played by Deborah Kara Unger, is a real bump out of the film. First, it's not realistic. Second, it's too cute. This movie is actually really dark and that scene really sticks out as one of those "Sesame Street - one of these things is not like the others" moments. Another one of those moments occurs when Douglas interacts with his televison's personality.

The implausibility of the plot does not keep me from loving this film, but it can prove bothersome when the big reveal happens. Even though I labeled this post with a "SPOILER" warning, I'm not going to ruin the twists and turns of the story. Just know that you do have to lay down your better judgment for a moment. It's not difficult to do, I swear.

The film really hits its stride after Douglas starts to unravel the mystery in Christine's apartment. The action picks up, the stakes rise, and all is right in the world of entertainment.

Pluses are many. Michael Douglas gets to do some of his familiar but amazing acting tricks. He plays the rich sour puss. He plays the man at the end of his desperation rope. He plays the vengeful spirit for all its worth. He does all this with considerable skill, which makes the "thriller hijinks" stand out all the more. But he is the audience's eyes and ears into this labyrinth of a mystery. And he portrays all the desperation, frustration, and confusion I felt as I watched The Game for the first time. Because I felt so connected to his character throughout the film, I felt the ending was justified and earned. So, the success of the film should be placed on Douglas' shoulders.

Sean Penn gets to do his familiar acting tricks. He plays it smooth, then lets out his whining shouts in that warbling foul-mouthed child's voice of his. But I like the guy and his talent. His role is small, but Penn knows how to support the lead. Sure, he chews some scenery, but there are few who I would rather watch chow down.

Fincher is the other driving force in the film. He doesn't appear for one second in the film, but his eye for staging a scene is always there. He uses a lot of low angles, hard lighting, and adds a gray tint to the movie. It adds to the already dark tone of the film. The low angles, coupled with various skewed angles portray the confusion of the film. The lighting and camera work during the scenes that take place at night are really remarkable considering many of the key scenes occur outside after dark. Fincher knows how to get the most out of his actors. Much has been written about his obsessive nature as a filmmaker, but I think the results are enough to excuse any hard headedness the guy throws around. He makes good movies. Even when they're so-so (Panic Room), they're made better than most of the movies out there. I say this because he knows how to construct a film. The credits show puzzle pieces splitting apart, and that is essentially what his films are - carefully designed puzzles that he can seperate and put back together at his choosing. The guy really knows how to build suspense and capitalize on the emotions of his audience.

Another big plus is the score. It contains one main theme, but that little piece of music accentuates the chills and thrills that are peppered throughout the film. Timed perfectly with the action on screen, the score often much scarier than what a piece of music has any right to be.

Themes...Well, the movie centers around a "remember what's really important in life" theme. Added to that is the idea that your life is your own; and death doesn't have to be a monkey on your back. While these themes are not exactly subtle, they are nowhere near a hinderance to the enjoyment of the film. And I can't really argue with them. But the real reward for living is the embrace of the good you have and could have if only you would let yourself have it. And it needs to be said even if it's shoved in your face a bit.

***1/2

28 Days Later...

Also on my old site, I found this review for 28 Days Later...which further illuminates my criticisms of its sequel, 28 Weeks Later...



"Sergeant Farrell: Well, I think Bills got a point. If you look at the whole life of the planet, we...you know, man, has only been around for a few blinks of the eye. So if the infection wipes us all out, that is a return to normality.

Zombie movies are littered with excess. Thats part of why we like them. I don't know if anyone ever considered breaking the horror and intensity of the genre down to a personal level before Alex Garland (original novel of The Beach) wrote 28 Days Later and handed it over to director Danny Boyle to make it come alive.

The startling ideas: 1) The zombies are not the undead, but rather are very much alive and infected by a virus transmitted through the infected's blood and saliva. 2) The characters are as rich and as important to the story as the action. 3) The action starts in a medical testing facility where animal rights activists free lab monkeys infected with the virus (called the rage virus for effect). 4) After the mayhem and setup in the testing facility, the story quickly jumps to 28 days later. Manchester is burning and all of England is scattered with wrecked vehicles, loose paper blowing in the wind, and dead bodies. This is striking because every other movie would have been written with the story smack dab in the middle of the outbreak and chaos.

Instead, it picks up when a bicycle courier named Jim (the wonderful Cillian Murphy) wakes up from a coma in an empty hospital room. As he slowly walks through the disheveled hospital and out into the even more ruined streets, the viewer sees the damage as Jim sees it. He, unlike us, has no idea what caused all the wreckage and decay. The atmospheric rock soundtrack rises as his realization of the extent of the terror rises until it culminates with the discovery of a missing persons kiosk in the middle of the city covered with fading and worn photos and desperate messages. After discovering the first of the many infected zombies throughout the film inside a very frightening church, he meets up with two survivors, Selena (Naomie Harris) and Mark (Noah Huntley) who save his life and inform him of the carnage that ensued in the previous 28 days.

In a normal zombie movie, you kill off all the zombies, losing some of your rag tag crew along the way. In 28 Days Later, you just try to survive. That leads to the discovery of Frank (Brendan Gleeson) and his daughter Hannah (Megan Burns) hiding out in a tiny apartment. Frank found a radio message from the army saying the answer to infection was in Manchester. Bickering and bonding leads them to Manchester, where a small group of soldiers waits for women to repopulate the earth.

It's insane, but it all makes sense. People clamor for survival when they see normality slip through their fingers. They change. They do things they wouldn't do otherwise. They kill to live.

All the intensity you can wrap into a tiny independent UK movie is in 28 Days Later. It features great performances from Murphy, Harris, and Gleeson and ushers in the return of Boyle (The Beach, Trainspotting) as a visionary director. What impresses the most is the restraint when any other filmmaker would have started a barrage of action. Apparently, Boyle and his writer Garland know that scares come from raging savages and the promise of loneliness in equal amounts.

I want to write the whole thing down, to share the gem of a movie I found last March, but you ought to experience it on your own. Just watch it. Leave a light on.

****"

Updated 2006 Favorites (with room for changes)

FAVORITES(2006)
1. Children of Men
2. Stranger Than Fiction
3. The Proposition
4. Half Nelson
5. The Fountain
6. Casino Royale
7. Little Miss Sunshine
8. The Science of Sleep
9. Babel
10. A Scanner Darkly

Children of Men

Children of Men is my new favorite film of 2006 and perhaps (time will tell) one of the best films I have ever seen. It's an ultra-suspenseful movie that created suspense out of my utter devotion to the characters. The more danger they got in, the more I pleaded with God for them to be alright.

The story takes place twenty years from now in 2027, with the new cause of the world's problems being the fact that women of the world have not been able to carry children to term for the past eighteen years. The world has lost hope. Seeing through the eyes of the characters, my life is trivial if it is only for me, if the world ends with no new generation to inherit the earth. The world in the movie is desperate for hope. They haven't felt it for so long that they've forgotten what it feels like. Then a yougn woman becomes pregnant. And like the main character in the film and the subsequesnt characters the young woman meets, the hope is new. strange, and deeply felt by myself. I know what hope feels like. I've got some right now. But I was sucked into the movie to the point where their renewal of hope was my renewal of hope. And it wasn't just hope that you get a good parking spot or meet the right girl; it was the hope of the world. Yowza!

The film's suspense is not contrived or fake in any sense. Every difficulty that could come between Theo (Clive Owen) and bringing the young woman to safety comes into existance, but the obstacles are organic. People do not behave in the manner they do in most suspense films, doing things they never should or would do. Nobody walks into a dark room saying softly, "Is anyone home? Billy, this isn't funny" before being spooked by the wild man with the meat cleaver hiding behind the door. The films "action" scenes are breath-taking and great studies in audience participation. I put my hand over my mouth to keep from gasping or shouting several times.

Even though I was immersed in the film, I was always aware of the high quality of the production elements. There are some great, memorable shots that should go down in history as some of the best (certainly of the science fiction genre that this film could be classified in) if this film happens to find a devoted audience on DVD.

The direction by Alfonso Cuaron guides the story and actors well. The film gets a great, award-worthy performance from Clive Owen. I have always been aware of his talent, but in some of his past films he has had some sort of impenetratable aura around him. That voice. That face. His sad eyes even when he's happy. But he is fully committed to his character in Children of Men. He is completely engaging, bringing the audience along for both his figurative and literal journey.

Back to the production values: the camera work was at times stunning. There was a "chase" scene involving a car and a mob of people that put you right in the middle of the vehicle our heroes filled, but somehow fit comfortably in a thimble sized space because the car was full with three people in the back and two in the front. How'd the camera get there? How does it move the way it does? It's constantly changing views to give us every angle possible, but never shaking uncontrollably like most thrillers these days (though I'm sure the film did employ that technique at times).

The main reason to stay is the story. It hinges on a simple premise that happens to be endlessly interesting and involving. It works so well. I'm sure repeat viewings will review flaws in dialogue and plotting, but I don't think I'll ever forget my first time seeing Children of Men. It was an amazing experience.

People have been saying "children are our future" for a long time now, but the absence of children is never really considered as the loss of a future, a sentence to be doomed to live out the present hopeless and downtrodden. That's where the movie begins. It's the journey to the ending that will stay with me. I have to see it again. I'm sure I'll look back at this post in later months and my words will seem pompous and pretentious or something of that nature. But these words do accurately represent the excitement I feel today, a few hours after finishing the movie.

*****

Jeffrey Overstreet Review on Christianitytoday.com

Tentative Top Ten List for 2006

I haven't seen enough movies this past year to set a list in stone, so expect updates.

FAVORITES
1. Stranger Than Fiction
2. The Proposition
3. Half Nelson
4. The Fountain
5. Casino Royale
6. Little Miss Sunshine
7. The Science of Sleep
8. Babel
9. Marie Antoinette
10. Brick