I can’t believe it took me this long to get to the 2008 HBO miniseries John Adams!

This seven-episode miniseries introduces us to John Adams as a prominent lawyer in Boston, defending the British soldiers who shot and killed several Americans in the so-called “Boston Massacre.”  Throughout the rest of the series, we follow John Adams’ long and eventful life through the American Revolution and the fifty years of American history that follow.

This miniseries is a monumental achievement.  Each episode is truly a mini motion picture.  (And not so “mini” at that — most episodes run WELL over an hour in length.)  The production design, the costumes, the sets, and the visual effects that filled in the environment beyond the sets all combine to create an astonishing recreation of pre-and-post-Revolutionary America.

I happen to be fascinated by the American Revolution, ever since taking a class back at Brown with the scholar Gordon Wood (author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning book The Radicalism of the American Revolution, as well as one of the writers quoted by young Will Hunting in the “how about ‘dem apples” scene of Good Will Hunting), and I really enjoyed seeing that period of history brought to such vivid life.  Based on the book John Adams by David McCullough (another extraordinary writer and historian), the miniseries is filled to overflowing with fascinating historical details both large (for instance, I had no idea that Mr. Adams spent so much time abroad, working to garner international support for the fledgling nation during its revolutionary conflict with Britain) and small (I was intrigued to observe the changing fashion in wigs of American intellectuals and politicians).

The sprawling cast is top-drawer.  The series is headlined by several “big name” actors who are, to no one’s surprise, quite terrific — but the cast is also filled out by some very talented lesser-known faces.  The series rests, of course, on the performances of Paul Giamatti as John Adams and Laura Linney as Abigail Adams.  The two are absolutely wonderful, capturing the fierce intelligence and stubbornness of both Adamses, as well as the tender love that they shared throughout their lives.  I wasn’t expecting this miniseries to present a portrait of such a strong marriage, but that is a strong through-line to the story.  David Morse creates an exceptional George Washington (ably assisted by some terrific hair and make-up).  Morse’s Washington might be the most idealized character in the piece, but this ideal come to life is so much fun to watch that I have no complaints.

The biggest surprise of the miniseries, for me, was the quiet, underplayed performance of Stephen Dillane as Thomas Jefferson.  I can’t speak to the historical accurateness of his portrayal, but his Jefferson is an endlessly enigmatic, fiendishly intelligent man, one who also happened to be just as stubborn as his friend John Adams.  I also must make note of the great performances of Danny Huston as Samuel Adams, Tom Wilkinson as Benjamin Franklin, Rufus Sewell as Alexander Hamilton, and Zeljko Ivanek as John Dickinson.  Take my word for it that for every actor I am mentioning, there are scores more just as impressive.

If I have any complaint about the miniseries, it’s that it peaks too soon.  There’s a tremendous intensity to the first two episodes (set in the days leading up to the American Revolution) that the remaining five installments never quite match.  I rather wish that the creators had given a little more time to the events of those first two episodes, and perhaps condensed the rest of the story a little more.  (The events covered in the last episode, in particular, could probably have been told in half the time.  The extended sequence dealing with John and Abigail’s daughter’s breast cancer is heartbreaking, but felt to me like a weird digression from the main narrative.)

No matter.  I’m thrilled to have finally had a chance to watch this epic miniseries.  The DVDs sit proudly on my shelf, and I am certain that this is a story that I will return to soon.

During the production of the final season of Battlestar Galactica, word broke that show-runner Ronald D. Moore was developing a two-hour pilot to a new sci-fi TV series for Fox called Virtuality.  This was exciting news.  Mr. Moore is an extraordinary writer, and I’ve been a fan of his ever since noticing that I always liked the episodes he wrote for Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine better than any of the others.  Then came Battlestar Galactica, a series which — despite the problems I have with its final season — stands definitively as one of the best dramas of recent memory (and certainly one of the finest sci-fi series ever made).  With BSG winding down, I was very pleased to hear that Mr. Moore was developing a new series (in addition to the Battlestar prequel Caprica, which was in the works at around the same time.)

But then, sadly, Virtuality went nowhere.  The pilot was produced, but Fox decided not to go forward with a series.  The pilot was aired once last summer, and that was that.

Recently, a DVD of that pilot episode was released, and having seen it I now have one more reason to hate the Fox network.  Seriously, Fox has created and then cancelled so many great shows that it’s crazy (Arrested Development, Firefly, The Tick, Futurama, Andy Richter Controls the Universe, Undeclared, I could go on and on…).

Virtuality introduces the story of the twelve men and women who crew the experimental space-ship Phaeton.  It’s the near future, and the Phaeton has been launched on a ten-year journey to explore a nearby star-system, Eridani.  Shortly after launch, the mission turns from one of exploration into something much more critical, as environmental catastrophes begin wracking Earth.  The mission to Eridani now represents the best hope for the survival of the human race.  Complicating matters somewhat is that the conglomerate funding the mission is paying for the massive undertaking by recording all of the footage of the mission — and the going-on of the Phaeton’s crew — and presenting that footage as a reality show to viewers back on Earth.  The pressure of having cameras constantly monitoring their every move adds, as you can imagine, to the tension level of the crew.

To combat that, the Phaeton comes equipped with extraordinarily sophisticated virtual reality systems for the crew.  On their off-duty time, crew-members can put on a VR visor and enter a completely three-dimensional and life-like computer-created environment.  (Star Trek fans recognize the familiar concept of the Holodeck.)  However, even this recreational device soon becomes problematic for the Phaeton crew, as one by one the crew-members discover that a mysterious man has infiltrated each of their VR programs.

I quite enjoyed the Virtuality pilot.  It’s nowhere near as gripping as the opening miniseries of Battlestar Galactica — but I enjoyed it far more than the dull pilot episode of Caprica (a series that, interestingly enough, deals with virtual-reality stories of a type similar to what one imagines Virtuality would have grappled with had the show continued).  If the pilot has a sin, it’s that perhaps the first hour is too leisurely paced.  Things really pick up in the last thirty minutes, when a series of Really Bad Things happen very quickly to the crew of the Phaeton.  It’s those intense last thirty minutes — and the many intriguing story-possibilities raised by the events depicted — that really make me regret that there will not be any TV series to tell those stories and to answer the questions raised.

Introducing twelve major characters is a daunting task, but I was impressed at how well we’re able to get to know all of the characters over the course of this hour-and-a-half long pilot.  It’s an interesting array of personalities.  None are quite as flawed as the many broken characters we came to know and love on-board the Battlestar Galactica, but these people are all far more complex than the super-heroic characters found on the many Star Trek series.

The makers of Virtuality took an interesting tack in keeping all of the storytelling and visual effects grounded in the world of the almost-possible.  Yes, the show takes place in the future, when humanity has been able to create a ship capable of travel outside of our solar system.  But the show is filled with extrapolated science, rather than complete make-believe.  We get fascinating hints as to the scientific realities behind the Phaeton — just enough to ground the story-telling in the plausible.  (There are no magic transporters or warp-drives to be found here.)  On the visual effects end, there are absolutely zero “god’s eye” views of the ship (in which the camera pulls back so we can see the starship gracefully swoop by).  No, all of the exterior effects shots are presented as being footage from one of the many cameras attached to the ship’s outer hull.  This gives the show a sort-of “cinema verite” feel that is pretty unique.  (Though I must admit it did dilute, somewhat, the tension of the main space-ship-adventure scene, when the Phaeton makes its treacherous sling-shot maneuver around Neptune.  Keeping things almost-real also results in a number of the sets looking pretty dull.  We don’t get many fancy sci-fi gizmos and gadgets — just a lot of white and grey.  This is probably what a space-ship capable of traveling outside our solar system would look like.  It’s just pretty plain-jane, visually.)

Virtuality isn’t a radical reinvention of sci-fi television.  The pilot episode doesn’t strike me as the type of show that immediately presents itself as something unique and special (like Firefly or BSG).   But it was a solid effort, and it’s a shame that this story ends here.

OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies is a French film that lovingly parodies the 1960’s Sean Connery era James Bond films.  It got very little play here in the U.S., but if you’re a fan of the Connery Bond films then this movie is not to be missed.

OSS 117 actually began as a serious series of spy novels and films in the 1950’s (predating Ian Fleming’s secret agent by several years).  However, Cairo, Nest of Spies is anything but serious.  Now, this film isn’t total insane lunacy like the Austin Powers films.  Rather, this film represents a gentler form of parody.  In many respects, the filmmakers have lovingly recreated the world of 1960’s James Bond — through the sets, the costumes, the colors, the score, etc.  But when it comes to the story, everything is nudged several directions towards the silly.

Jean Dujardin stars as the titular OSS 117, Hubert Bonisseur de La Bath.  He’s a well-dressed, highly-trained secret agent, able of besting a skilled foe in hand-to-hand combat and wooing any lovely lady he sets his sights on.  Sound familiar?  But he’s also rather dim, ludicrously devoted to France’s president, and totally condescending to any culture and religion that is not French.  Dujardin is a riot, and the film succeeds primarily because he’s able to walk the tightrope between being an imbecile, but a lovable one.  He’s able to handle witty reparte as well as broad physical humor (the pose he strikes any time he fires his weapon made me laugh every time).

It can be challenging for a comedic film to work even when watched with subtitles, but despite that I still found Cairo, Nest of Spies to be very, very funny.  I’m sure there were a few jokes that would have worked better if I spoke fluent French, but not many.  It helps that many of the film’s best gags are visual ones.  My favorite moment: a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it gag about OSS 117’s bed-hair when he wakes up in his suite about mid-way through the film. (Though I will comment that I was disappointed that there were several spelling mistakes in the subtitles.  That’s unfortunately amateurish.)

This is an obscure film, but for a Bond nut like myself I am so glad to have seen it.  To any fellow Bond-fanatics out there, I highly recommend you track this down.  (And luckily, a sequel has already been made — OSS 117: Lost in Rio.  It hasn’t been released yet here in the States, but I eagerly await its arrival…)

I’m behind the eight-ball on this one, I know.  Movie-related web-sites across the web have been showering praise on this small-budget Swedish vampire film for the past two years, but I only recently got around to seeing it.  It’s just as terrific as I’d heard.

Oskar is a twelve-year old boy whose parents are separated.  He doesn’t seem to have any friends, at least not any that we see, and he’s terribly bullied by a trio of boys from school.  Oskar likes to hang-out by himself in the courtyard of the building where he lives with his mother.  One night, he meets a girl, Eli, who has just moved into the building.  The two form a gentle friendship.  Of course, once we see Eli’s father/guardian Hakan murder a man in the woods and drain him of his blood, it’s clear that Eli hides a terrible secret.

That plot could easily describe a film that played into a whole lot of dumb, horror-movie cliches, but I was delighted that nothing could be further from the truth.  Director Tomas Alfredson, working from a screenplay by John Ajvide Lindqvist (adapting his own novel) has crafted a surprisingly gentle, tender film that is at once sweet and chilling.  Let the Right One In unfolds through a series of small, quiet scenes.  It’s a very still movie (though that stillness is punctuated by a few moments of intense violence).  The way the camera lingers on the frozen, snow-covered landscape reminds me in some ways of the Coen Brothers’ Fargo, and also in the way the M. Night Shyamalan was unafraid, in his early films (like The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable) to let a quiet long shot tell the story.

All of this would be irrelevant were not the film’s two leads, Kare Hedebrant as Oskar, and Lina Leandersson as Eli, so spectacularly good.  There is no over-acting to be found in this film.  Both Hedebrant and Leandersson are able to express a world of character through their small, underplayed facial expressions, often without speaking a word.  (Or when, as is often the case in real life, the words they are speaking fail to convey what’s really going on in their hearts and minds.)  Whenever I see great performances by child actors, I always credit the director as much as the actors themselves, and so kudos to Mr. Alfredson for drawing such restrained, naturalistic performers out of his stars.

I am not a big horror fan, but Let The Right One In quickly won me over.  I’m so glad to have finally given it a shot.  It’s hard to believe that one could describe a vampire movie as tender, but this one is.  I must also add that it has one of the most powerful final scenes of any film I’ve seen in a long time.  I thought I had the film figured out, but that final scene hit me like a ton of bricks.  It causes the viewer to completely re-evaluate one of the main relationships in the film, and I must admit I’ve been thinking about it ever since seeing it.  It’s hard to shake.  Wonderful.

(A note when watching the DVD or blu-ray.  I strongly suggest setting your disc controls so that  you watch the film in the original Swedish, with the subtitles set to English: Theatrical.  Let the Right One In was originally released to disc with notoriously terrible English subtitles.  You can click here for the full story. That has been corrected in later versions of the DVD/blu-ray, which contain the subtitle option English: Theatrical.  You want to be sure to buy/rent a version of this film with those subtitle options, and trust me that they’re the ones to watch.)

After re-watching Albert Brooks’ film Modern Romance a few weeks ago (read my review here), I decided the time had come to revisit some of his other films.  I started by tracking down Lost in America, his 1985 film that, somehow, I had never seen.

Mr. Brooks (who also directed and co-wrote the film, with Monica Johnson) stars as David Howard.  After failing to get a promotion at work — one that he’d been working towards for years — he tells off his boss in spectacular fashion (the explosion is just as much fun as you might think) and gets fired.  So he convinces his wife Linda, played by Julie Hagerty (Elaine Dickinson from Airplane!) to quit her boring job as well.  They sell their house, liquidate their stocks, buy a Winnebago and set out to roam America and find themselves.  Unfortunately, their first stop is in Las Vegas and, after only one night, they’ve lost all their money.  Left with only $800 to their name, David and Linda have to try to find jobs in the small, midwestern town in which they find themselves.

In my humble opinion, Albert Brooks wrote and directed far too few films.  So it was a great delight to get to discover, for the first time, an Albert Brooks film that I’d never seen.  Lost in America certainly isn’t my favorite Brooks film (that would be Modern Romance), but there’s a lot to appreciate here.  There’s a lot of comedy today that wrings laughs from awkward, painful moments (the original British The Office comes to mind), but Mr. Brooks was pushing those boundaries thirty years ago.  For a “comedy,” there’s a lot of real, human moments to be found in Lost in America (and in all his films, really!).

It’s clear from the film’s opening scene — a slow, slow pan through David & Linda’s home, while a Larry King interview with film critic Rex Reed plays on an out-of-sight radio — that we’re in the hands of a filmmaker with great skill.  It’s a very meta choice to start one’s film with a lengthy monologue from Rex Reed talking about films, and it indicates that Mr. Brooks was after more than just a few yuks.  Lost in America tells the story two people who both find themselves trapped in their lives — trapped by their go-nowhere jobs, by the expectations that they put upon themselves about what they “should” be doing, about the house they “should” be living in, and so forth.  It’s a situation in which, one presumes, many middle-class folk find themselves in at one point or another in their lives.  There’s a strong aspect of “wish-fulfillment” in the plan that David and Linda hatch to take all their money and “drop out” of society.  It’s an intriguing premise upon which to hang a film.

Mr. Brooks, as always, is a riot.  The man plays “neurotic” like nobody else.  His first scene in the film — in which he lies awake at night consumed by worries — is a classic.  But Brooks’ character in this film also shows a little more backbone than some of his other roles.  When he’s denied his promotion, David Howard doesn’t just meekly take it — his built-up frustrations explode in a movie-stealing scene.  Brooks has a terrific connection with Julie Hagerty, a gifted comedic actress who, I feel, has been sadly under-utilized in the three decades since Airplane!. The success of the film rests on our attachment to these two “normal” working Americans, and they make a great screen couple.

What prevents me from loving Lost in America is the ending.  For a movie that seems based in a “wish-fulfillment” premise, I found the film’s denouement to be surprisingly downbeat.  (Interestingly enough, I made a similar comment about the ending of Modern Romance.)  According to the film, it seems there is not, in fact, any way out of our worker-drone lives, and that’s a surprising conclusion for a comedy to come to.  I applaud Mr. Brooks for not bowing to standard movie conventions.  But at the same time, it means that aspects of Lost in America aren’t really that much fun to watch!

Still, I do love a movie that blazes its own path.  Albert Brooks has always had a singular voice.  I wish he’d made more films, but I am thankful for the ones we have.  Next week, I think I’ll take another look at his 1991 film, Defending Your Life…

See you soon!

It’s funny — although I acknowledge that Peter Bogdanovich is a significant, influential director, I must admit with some embarrassment that I’ve seen very few of his films.  Many of his ground-breaking films from the ’70s remain, as-yet-unseen, on my lengthy “to-watch” list: The Last Picture Show, What’s Up Doc?, Paper Moon, etc.  I actually know Mr. Bogdanovich more as a knowledgeable film historian (his audio commentary on the DVD of Citizen Kane, for example, is magnificent and enlightening) than I do as a director.

But I’m a big fan of a film that he made in 2001, The Cat’s Meow.  The film is based on Hollywood whispers (”the whisper told most often”) about the events of a fateful boat cruise hosted by legendary media mogul William Randolph Hearst in 1924 that (might have) resulted in the untimely death of director Thomas Ince.

As the film tells the tale, W.R. Hearst invited an assemblage of show-biz folks (and a few gossip-writers) to join him on a yacht cruise in celebration of Mr. Innes’ birthday.  One of the guests was Charlie Chaplin (played by comedian Eddie Izzard), who may or may not have been involved at the time with Hearst’s very young starlet wife, Marion Davies (played by Kirsten Dunst).  (Of course, Hearst’s relationship with Marion Davies was most famously depicted — not in a positive light — in Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane, which resulted in Hearst’s attempts to block that film’s release.)  Though the weekend was supposed to be a fun getaway, it seems that almost every guest on Hearst’s yacht arrived with their own agenda.  The fun of the film is in watching these powerful Hollywood personalities bounce off one another, as each guests’s true ambitions bubble just below the surface.

There’s a lot of humor to be found in the film, although it shouldn’t be mistaken for a farce.  The Cat’s Meow is actually a pretty sad story — this boat cruise did not have a happy ending for many of its guests.

Mr. Bogdanovich assembled an interesting mix of actors for the film.  I really enjoyed Eddie Izzard’s performance as Chaplin.  He doesn’t really look like Chaplin, but still, the casting is inspired.  Izzard really nails the charisma of Chaplin, without falling into mimicry.  It seems to me that Kirsten Dunst isn’t that well thought of as a serious actress, but I thought she was terrific here as Davies.  Unlike Mr. Izzard, she really does look the part — and she brought a surprising amount of soul to the performance.  (You’ll have a lot more empathy for Marion Davies when watching The Cat’s Meow than when watching Citizen Kane!)  Edward Herrmann (whom my wife was excited to recognize as Richard Gilmore from Gilmore Girls) knocks it out of the park as W.R. Hearst, and I also really enjoyed Cary Elwes (The Princess Bride, Robin Hood: Men in Tights) as the unfortunate Innes.  The man can play smarm.

The film was adapted by screenwriter Steven Peros from his play of the same name.  In many ways the film feels like a play, which is a strength and also a weakness.  The Cat’s Meow is very tightly plotted and tightly written, and it’s a joy to watch these actors move in and out of scenes exchanging snappy patter with one another.  There are also, unfortunately, some scenes that feel very “stagey” where the acting & delivery of dialogue just doesn’t work.  These moments just felt “off” to me — and once I realized that this film had been adapted from a play I understood why.  They’re moments that I could definitely see working in a theatre, but just didn’t play in a movie.  But thankfully, those off moments are few and far between, and most of The Cat’s Meow works like gangbusters.

This isn’t a GREAT film, and it surely pales before Mr. Bogdanovich’s earlier work (which I someday hope to see!).  But it’s a film that I’ve really dug both times that I’ve seen it on DVD, and it sits proudly on my DVD shelf.  If the cast and subject matter interests you, it’s definitely worth a shot.

As with Death at a Funeral (which I reviewed last month), The TV Set is a film that I’ve been wanting to see ever since it was released.  It was one of those films that sounded really interesting to me, and was very well-reviewed, but I just never got around to catching it.  I keep a little notebook with a long LOOONG list of all the movies that I want to see someday.  Any time I read about a film that sounds interesting, I add it to the list.  I’ve been very busy lately, but I’m really happy that I’ve been able to cross some great films off of that to-watch list lately, thanks to Netflix!

The TV Set stars David Duchovny as Mike Klein, a TV writer.  Mike has written and sold a script for a new TV pilot called The Wexley Chronicles, and over the course of the film we follow the process of casting and filming the pilot from Mike’s well-liked script.

I am a big fan of television, and as a result, The TV Set is difficult to watch at times.  That’s because this film dissects, with surgical precision, why so much television is so terrible.  Written and directed by Jake Kasdan (Orange County, Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story) and produced by Judd Apatow, the film is based on Apatow and Kasdan’s experiences making the brilliant-but-quickly-cancelled TV series Freaks and Geeks.  Over the course of the film we, along with poor Mike, watch with horror as the network takes his script — which they liked because of its originality — and, through a thousand small compromises that they force Mike to make, set about to eliminate all of the project’s uniqueness in order to create something that will offend no-one and appeal to the widest audience possible.  The process is summed up in an awkward confrontation between Mike and the network head-honcho Lenny (Sigourney Weaver), in which she tells him flat-out: “originality scares me.”

The cast is superb.  Duchovny is perfect as the talented but also sort of sad-sack Mike.  We can see, in his eyes, the quiet desperation with which Mike is trying to hold on to his vision for the project, and the anguish that each little compromise causes him.  Sigourney Weaver kills as the tough, take-no-prisoners Network boss Lenny.  She is a riot, and to describe Lenny as a formidable presence would be a grand understatement.  Ioan Gruffudd (Horatio Hornblower from USA’s series, and perfectly cast but then stranded by the execrable Fantastic Four movies) plays Lenny’s right-hand man Richard, brought over from England to head up the network’s TV development.  Whereas Lenny only cares about the bottom line (making money), we can see that Richard does want to make good television, but it’s quickly apparent that he can’t and/or won’t stand in Lenny’s way.  Judy Greer (Arrested Development) is Mike’s agent Alice.  Her insistence of trying to make it sound like two people are agreeing when clearly they are in total disagreement is hysterical, and, it seems, typical for Hollywood.  Fran Kranz (who I only recently discovered as the nutty Topher on Dollhouse) plays Zach, the bad actor cast in the show’s lead role at the network’s insistance, over Mike’s objections.  It’s tough the play “bad acting” without slipping into over-the-top silliness, but Kranz nails the performance.  Lindsay Sloan is also great as the female lead of the show who is forced to try to act opposite Zach.

I could keep going!  There’s Justine Bateman as Mike’s pregnant wife Natalie!  There’s Lucy Davis (Dawn from the original British The Office) as Richard’s put-upon wife Chloe!  There’s M.C. Gainey (Tom Friendly from Lost!) as the grumpy lighting-man on set!  There’s Philip Rosenthal (show-runner of Everybody Loves Raymond) as a network exec!  The ensemble is amazing, and every character has a small moment to shine over the course of the film.

I said that The TV Set can be tough to watch at times, and that’s true — but in the best way!  The very qualities of The Wexler Chronicles that Mike is fighting for — that there can be great comedy out of uncomfortable moments, that a show can have rough edges, that not every character needs to be likable, and that an audience won’t turn away even if some unhappy things happen to the characters — are also present in The TV Set.  Sure, Mr. Kasdan and his teams could have played down some aspects of Mike’s suffering as he watches his project unravel.  That might have resulted in a funnier, easier-to-digest film, but it also would have been a film that is much less interesting.

The TV Set is a great film.  It might not appeal to everyone — there’s a lot of inside baseball to be found here, and if you’re not interested in how the sausage is made — that is, the behind-the-scenes processes of  how TV shows are actually created — then this might not be the film for you.  But I found the film to be fascinating — and also very, very funny.  And also very sad.

It’s worth your time — check it out.  And thank the stars above for the few TV shows that actually wind up being GOOD.

Drew McWeeny (who has a terrific blog over at Hitfix.com) has a series called “The Basics,” in which he writes about a film that he considers one of the “essentials” — a film that anyone who takes film seriously should see — and then another, younger writer, William Goss, writes a response.  To read more about this series, click here and then here.  Recently he and Mr. Goss invited other writers to get involved in their film conversations.  Since the last film under discussion was Woody Allen’s Manhattan (1979), I was really excited to chime in.  (Here’s Mr. McWeeny’s piece about Manhattan.  Here’s what Mr. Goss wrote, and here’s what I had to say.)

Now Mr. McWeeny is writing about Albert Brooks’ 1981 film Modern Romance. What a terrific choice!  It had been a few years since I had last seen the film, so I was happy to have an excuse to pull it off my DVD shelf and give it a viewing.

The great Albert Brooks (who also directed and co-wrote the film) plays Robert Cole, one one the most neurotically messed-up characters I’ve ever seen captured on film.  As the movie opens, Robert breaks up with his girlfriend Mary (Kathryn Harrold, who I always think of as Francine from The Larry Sanders Show).  From her reaction it is clear that this has happened before, and I don’t think I’m spoiling anything by saying that this opening-scene break-up doesn’t exactly break that cycle.

Modern Romance is very leisurely paced, with long scenes that aren’t in a rush to get to the punchline.  But don’t let that lead you to think that the film isn’t funny.  Quite the contrary, it is hysterical.  This is one of the most quotable comedies that I know.  It might be my favorite Albert Brooks movie, and that’s mostly because of the script’s tremendous wit.

In his review, Mr. McWeeny comments that he loves the way that Mr. Brooks isn’t afraid to digress in the film.  That pretty well sums up one of the strongest aspects, in my opinion, of Modern Romance.  My very favorite moments in the film are the ones that have nothing at all to do with Robert’s on-again off-again cycle with Mary.  I’m talking about the glimpses at Robert’s job as a film editor, working on a lousy-looking science-fiction picture.  That the film takes ten minutes to present us with a scene that’s all about how editing works (as Robert makes an edit to the sci-fi film that he feels strengthens the suspense of a scene) is just wonderful to me.  It helps, of course, that the greatly-missed Bruno Kirby (When Harry Met Sally, The Godfather Part II) and James L. Brooks (the director of films like Broadcast News, here playing the crappy sci-fi movie’s director) appear in these segments of the film.  These are the scenes that I most look forward to every time I re-watch Modern Romance.

The only place where I disagree with Mr. McWeeny is in his description of the film’s ending as perfect.  I must admit that I always find myself deeply unsettled when the ending arrives.  I’ll tread carefully here, to avoid ruining the film’s conclusion for any newbies.  Let me just say that my sympathy for Mary, who I have come to adore over the course of the movie, overwhelms the humor a little bit for me as the final text pieces arrive.  Perhaps that’s the point, but for me the film — which to that point had perfectly balanced comedy with some frank, awkward moments — looses its balance a teensy bit.  (It’s hard to find a place to end a film that is all about two characters’ never-ending love/hate cycle.)  But any quibbles that I have about the ending do nothing to dilute my overall love for this very funny ride.

It would be overly simplistic for me to assert that they don’t make comedies like this anymore.  Surely there are still great, complex comedies being made that also have real dramatic heft.  (One might site Judd Apatow’s recent film Funny People as an example.)  But Modern Romance does, to me, feel like a type of film that is hard to find these days.  I’ll admit that there’s is a nostalgia factor that might be coloring my opinion somewhat.  As I re-watch it, I can clearly remember being in college and discovering this film (along with Lost in America, as well as so many other great comedies, such as Woody Allen’s previously-mentioned Manhattan, as well as Annie Hall, Zelig, I could go on forever…) and feeling like I had stumbled upon a whole new world of incredible films.  But even separate from those emotions, it’s hard for me to imagine anyone denying that Modern Romance is a comedy classic.  (Though I do know some people who find this film boring.  My heart weeps for them.)

If you only know Albert Brooks from Finding Nemo (which is a great movie, don’t get me wrong), you need to track down this film immediately.

The new documentary Believe: The Eddie Izzard Story tells two interwoven stories: one is an overview of British comedian Eddie Izzard’s life-story, while the other is a more detailed look at the process by which, in 2003, he crafted an entirely new stand-up routine (that would eventually become his world-wide Sexie tour) from scratch.

While fun and interesting, Believe is more the sort of thing that one might expect to see as a special feature on one of Mr. Izzard’s DVDs, as opposed to a documentary feature that stands on its own.  This isn’t really a warts-and-all sort of presentation — Mr. Izzard is presented in an almost uniformly positive light.  Although perhaps that was not the intention of the filmmakers, in the end the film functions more as a promotional piece for Mr. Izzard than it does as a true documentary.

Which is not to say that it’s not a worthwhile promotional piece!  I enjoyed the look at Mr. Izzard’s life — particularly his grueling efforts at creating a name for himself as a performer and, eventually, a stand-up comedian.  It’s an astonishing tale, frankly, of Mr. Izzard’s stubborn persistence in the face of overwhelming odds, and through an impressive array of recovered footage (of Mr. Izzard’s years performing on the street, as well as a number of his early days working the stand-up circuit) it is fascinating to see him slowly develop his comedic style and rock-star glam persona.  (It’s a hoot to watch his early break-out performance of the “wolves” sketch in plain men’s slacks and a garish baggy shift.)  These are the best aspects of the film.  When Mr. Izzard returns to his childhood home and gets teary-eyed reminiscing about his mother, I must confess that I checked out.

In the other half of the film, we see Mr. Izzard travel from gig to gig in small venues across England as he struggles to develop all-new material for his 2003 show (having committed to use NONE of his old jokes) before the launch of his scheduled world tour.  This part of the film is also wonderfully filled with actual footage (rather than talking-head reminisces).  Apparently Mr. Izzard had all of his workshop gigs recorded, and it’s neat to watch him struggle and stammer his way through those early gigs, slowly beating his material into a polished shape.

A similar story was told in the terrific documentary, Comedian, which chronicled Jerry Seinfeld’s efforts to create an entirely new act in the year after the end of his show (and his subsequent commitment to retire all of his old material).  Comedian is a much more polished film, and I think did a better job of showing how a working comedian uses gig after gig to shape an act.  That’s not to say that there is nothing of interest on that topic in Believe — there certainly is.  It’s just that the material in Believe is presented a little more simplistically.

In the end, this is for the hard-core Eddie Izzard fans only.  It’s worth a look, but I doubt it’s something that you’ll find yourself drawn to revisit.  For better luck, go rent Live at Wembly, the just-released DVD that contains one of Mr. Izzard’s final performances from his Sexie tour.  Or, even better, go watch Dress To Kill, Mr. Izzard’s best stand-up performance, and one of the greatest stand-up routines of all time.  ”Cake or Death!”

I’ve been wanting to see Death at a Funeral ever since it was first released (back in 2007), so it’s a funny coincidence that it arrived in my home (via Netflix) the same week that the American remake (featuring a predominantly African-American cast) opened in theatres.

The remake has gotten some decent reviews, but trust me, friends — after watching the phenomenal original version you’ll have absolutely no interest in any other take on this material.

Directed by the great Frank Oz (the voice of Miss Piggy & Yoda and the director of films including Little Shop of Horrors, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, In & Out, and Bowfinger), Death at a Funeral features a mostly British cast.  Matthew Macfadyen (MI5, Pride & Prejudice, Frost/Nixon) plays Daniel, who is attempting to arrange the funeral for his father.  Friends and family are gathering for what is supposed to be a quiet, dignified funeral service at Daniel’s parents’ home.  Of course, you can be assured that an escalating series of lunacy quickly unfolds.  Death at a Funeral is a classic farce, and there’s great joy in watching the filmmakers carefully set up all of the dominoes, in the first 30-45 minutes of the film, that they will spend the rest of the movie knocking over to hilarious effect.

This film is a RIOT.  Mr. Macfadyen is great as the straight man trying desperately to hold things together.  He’s surrounded by a terrific ensemble, including Peter Dinklage (The Station Agent) as an old friend of Daniel’s father with a big secret; Andy Nymen & Ewam Bremner as two of Daniel’s fairly hapless friends; Keeley Hawes as Daniel’s wife Jane (and, seeing as she played Zoe Reynolds in MI5, it’s great fun seeing her paired again with Mr. Macfadyen); Rupert Graves as Daniel’s more-successful writer brother Robert; and many more talented actors & comedians.  But the film belongs to Alan Tudyk (Wash from Firefly) who plays Simon, the nervous fiancee of Martha (Daisy Donovan), Daniel’s cousin.  At the start of the film, Daisy gives Simon what she thinks is a Valium to calm him down.  Of course, the pill isn’t a Valium at all, but a much, er, stronger concoction.  Now, that might sound like a hackneyed comedy set-up, and maybe it is.  But you’re really not prepared for the insanity that Mr. Tudyk unleashes in the film once the drugs that Simon has taken take effect.  This is  one of the great comedic performances of all time, and one of the primary reasons that I’m recommending this film so strongly.

I don’t really understand why Hollywood has chosen to remake an English-language film that was released in the U.S. only three years ago.  And, you know, I’m just not going to waste any brain-power thinking about it.  Just trust me when I say that you should ignore the remake and go seek out the original version.  Remember my motto: when there’s gold out there, silver sucks.

And Death at a Funeral is comedic gold.

I well remember my reaction upon watching Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey for the first time, many years ago.  The star-child appeared, and the end credits rolled, and I turned to my brother and started laughing.  ”What the heck was THAT???”  I had no idea what to make of any of the ponderous weirdness that I had just seen, and I wondered what exactly I had missed.

But even during that first viewing it was clear that there was something special about 2001: A Space Odyssey, and it’s a film that stayed with me.  I found myself driven to revisit the film (several times, in fact, over the years), and to read the novel by Arthur C. Clarke (which, interestingly, was written concurrently with the production of the film).  I can think of few other films about which my opinion has so dramatically changed based on subsequent viewings.  Each time I watched 2001 I found myself enjoying it more and more.  As I peeled back the layers of the onion of the film, to use a familiar but handy analogy, what was once perplexing obtained profound meaning.

It is a challenge to provide a summary of 2001.  If you’ve seen the film, no summary is necessary, and if you haven’t, I’d hate to spoil anything.  I can tell you that the film is divided into several distinct sections.  The movie opens in primordial times (”the dawn of man”) and then jumps forward to the year 2001, when a strange object is discovered on the surface of the moon.  That discovery leads (for reasons I’ll not detail here) to an expedition towards Jupiter.  The experimental space-ship Discovery is crewed by Frank Poole and Dave Bowman, and the computer HAL 9000.  Things go awry.  The final segment of the film is the most perplexing, and the reason for the film’s tag-line “the ultimate trip.”

Right from its opening scenes, it is clear that 2001: A Space Odyssey is a science-fiction film unlike most other science-fiction films.  This is a cerebral undertaking, one that is concerned with posing some BIG QUESTIONS for the audience.  The film spans the entire history of human-kind — that should give you a good idea of Mr. Kubrick & Mr. Clarke’s ambitions!!

In terms of “plot,” there’s not too much that actually happens in 2001.  This, I think (along with the ending, which we’ll get to in a few moments) is one of the chief reasons that this film might not work for many casual viewers.  To say that the movie is leasurely paced would be an enormous understatement.  Events unfold very slowly, and the movie is filled with stately, long shots in which Mr. Kubrick’s camera moves languidly through the extraordinary environments that he and his team created.  There is no dialogue spoken until about 40 minutes in.  The film’s most famous, and most exciting, segment — in which something goes wrong aboard Discovery, causing the HAL 9000 to turn against Frank and Dave, only encompasses about 30 minutes of the film, and we don’t meet Frank and Dave and HAL until over an hour in.

But I have grown to really love precisely those challenging aspects of the film that I have just described.  Mr. Kubrick is not concerned with giving us an “action beat” every 10-15 minutes.  The film’s careful pace and slow build are designed to immerse us in the new worlds which Kubrick and his team painstakingly created (both in man’s ancient past and in our near future).  Mr. Kubrick expends an extraordinary amount of time to present to us all the details of these environments.  Floyd Heywood’s journey to the moon (our first extended sequence once the film’s story shifts to the year 2001) is a prime example.  Kubrick & co. present to us with a wealth of detail about Heywood’s journey: we see how food is served, we see how the flight attendants move through the aisles despite the lack of gravity, we even get a hint at how one might go to the bathroom in zero-g, etc. etc.  These details do nothing to advance the plot but are, it seems to me, meant to illustrate how space travel might, in the near future, become as commonplace as air-travel is to us today.

This might be boring to some, but personally I relish the sensation, when watching 2001, of allowing myself to sink into the world created before me.  Kubrick combines his magnificent imagery with gorgeous music to create sensations in the viewer of other places and other times.  2001 is a staggeringly beautiful film.  The special effects are top-notch and have aged remarkably well for a film made in 1968.  I am continually amazed by the breathtaking beauty of the outer-space effects shots.  They feel “real” to me in a way that many modern films are unable to capture, despite the advanced tools available today.  And the sets are magnificent, particularly the fully-realized environment that Kubrick & co. created aboard the Discovery.  Watching David Bowman jog all the way around the Discovery’s spinning central axis is still a show-stopper.

And the music.  I mentioned that there is no dialogue for the first 40-or-so minutes of the film… and frankly there is very little dialogue even after that!  Thus, it is the music that is required to do a lot of the heavy lifting necessary to move the film forward and keep the audience connected.  Kubrick’s innovative choice of using a variety of classical pieces of music to score his film is one of the elements that elevates 2001 towards the realm of genius.  His choices were impeccable — just think about how irrevocably attached On The Beautiful Blue Danube (by Johann Strauss II) and Also Sprach Zarathustra (by Richard Strauss) have become to 2001: A Space Odyssey!

One of the more difficult aspects of 2001 (and something that frustrated me to no end when I first watched the film) is the way that Kubrick refuses to give the audience a character to connect with, emotionally, during the film.  When we first meet Heywood Floyd, it seems that he is being set up as the film’s protagonist.  But after the encounter with the Monolith on the moon, Floyd vanishes from the film.  When we finally meet Dave and Frank on the Discovery, one might think that, OK, here at last are our heroes.  But we hardly get to know either one of them.  Keir Dullea’s performance as David Bowman is particularly striking by the flat affect that he gives Dave.  We see very little outward emotion from him.  This makes it very difficult for the audience to ever know what he’s thinking — and it provides a powerful impediment towards our being able to connect with his character.  As many reviewers have noted over the years, the most “human” character is the computer, HAL!  He’s the only character, really, in the entire film who expresses human emotions: anxiety, fear, curiosity, etc.

It is clear that this is intentional.  Not only to I find that very concept (that the computer is more “human” than any of the humans) to be compelling and thought-provoking, but I also find myself engaging more and more with Dullea’s Dave Bowman each time I watch the film.  Perhaps it is precisely because of his flat demeanor that he seems like a blank slate onto which I, as a viewer, can transpose my own feelings as the film unfolds — making Dave Bowman an effective “everyman” character to take us through the film’s climax.

Which brings us, of course, to the ending.  As I discuss the ending, it’s difficult to avoid spoilers so please beware if you’ve never seen this film before.  (It’s amusing to consider “spoilers” in connection with a film that is over 40 years old, but I want to be sensitive to potential “newbies” to 2001.)  Bowman discovers the Monolith floating in orbit of Saturn, and one might start to think “Aha!  Now we’re going to get some answers!”  Instead, what follows is one of the most gloriously enigmatic sequences in film history.

The first time I watched 2001 I had absolutely no idea what the heck to make of that totally unexpected (and seemingly disconnected) sequence of imagery.  But subsequent viewings have, I think, allowed me to draw out the meaning of this sequence.  As we witness the rapid aging of David Bowman, we see him ultimately reborn as something entirely new, and at last we can understand the meaning behind the film’s lengthy prologue set amongst the (damn dirty) apes.  2001: A Space Odyssey is a film that depicts the story of the evolution of man, from the primitive apes who knew nothing beyond pure animal instinct, to the cerebral men of a future century whose efforts to create technological tools eventually resulted in a sentient machine almost more human than they were themselves, to the next mysterious stage in human evolution: the star-child.  There’s a certain powerful symmetry to be found there.

This is an adult, complex film.  Mr, Kubrick does not spoon-feed the audience any easy answers.  To the contrary, over the course of this review I have attempted to describe the many way in which he subverts and confounds audience expectations at every step along the way.  This created a very frustrating initial viewing for me (and, I suspect, for many others!), but it has resulted in a film that has grown ever richer and more satisfying each time I see it.

There are so many other little details of 2001: A Space Odyssey that I find myself appreciating, more and more, upon my return visits to this film.  The astounding beauty of our first glimpse of the Monolith on the moon.  The masterfully edited sequence in which Dave uses explosive decompression to re-enter Discovery.  The fascinating detail of the way the ever-older versions of Dave are slowly revealed in the film’s climax, in which each version sees the next, older version, and then once that older version has been glimpsed, the younger one is never seen again, and we (and Dave) find ourselves inhabiting that new, more aged figure.  I could go on.

2001: A Space Odyssey is a milestone of science-fiction, and of film in general.  An accounting of all the sci-fi films that have been profoundly influenced by the aesthetics of 2001 (either emulating those aesthetics, or attempting to respond against them) would be a monumental task.  But 2001 is not simply an important film because of its influence.  It is an important film because it is every bit as compelling and effective as it was when it was first released in 1968.  In many ways I would argue it has actually improved.

If you’ve never seen it, go watch it now.

Then, go watch it again.

I consider Sean of the Dead to be a near-flawless work of comedic genius.  I’m not a fan of Zombie movies, but that didn’t stop me from falling head-over-heels in love with the bizarre, comedic creation of Simon Pegg & Edgar Wright.  Sean of the Dead lead me to seek out Pegg & Wright’s first collaboration: the 14-episode British TV series Spaced.  (Read my review here.)  Somehow, though, I had completely missed Pegg & Wright’s 2007 release: the feature film Hot Fuzz.  Oh, I knew of Hot Fuzz, and I had wanted to see it for some time.  I just hadn’t gotten around to it until now.

In Hot Fuzz, Simon Pegg plays the tough, no-nonsense London cop Nicholas Angel.  He takes his job extraordinarily seriously, and he’s extraordinarily good at what he does.  So good, in fact, that the rest of the London police department hates him, and so they arrange to have him transferred out of London and to the sleepy little British town of Sanford.  Poor Angel doesn’t know quite what to do with himself in his bucolic, crime-free new home.

As was the case in Sean of the Dead and Spaced, Pegg’s character is paired up with Nick Frost.  Mr. Frost plays Danny Butterman, the bumbling but well-meaning police officer with whom Angel is partnered in Sanford.  But while Pegg & Frost’s characters were, in their two prior collaborations, presented as life-long best-mates, here in Hot Fuzz the two take an immediate dislike to one another.  Well, Angel takes an immediate dislike to Butterman.  Butterman, though, idolizes Angel, who he looks up to as a “big city” tough-guy cop like he knows from the movies.  It’s a great pleasure to watch Pegg and Frost paired up yet again.  The two have a terrific chemistry, and they just dominate any scenes that they’re in together.  It’s fun to see them play characters who have, at first, a more antagonistic relationship towards one another.

Hot Fuzz is a very funny film.  Pegg and Frost are extraordinary natural comedians, and the film is filled with a number of other top-notch comedic actors.  There’s a great bit of business early on in the film in which we meet Angel’s supervisors in the London police department, played by Martin Freeman, Bill Nighy, and Steve Coogan.  Jim Broadbent is a lot of fun as the jolly inspector Frank Butterman, Danny’s father and the head of the police department in Sanford.  But my favorite performance belongs to former James Bond Timothy Dalton, who is absolutely hilarious as the dashingly good-looking, possibly sinister Sanford super-market owner.  What perfect casting, and Dalton absolutely knocks the role right out of the park.

Where Hot Fuzz falls down, for me, is in the storyline that eventually develops in Sanford, in which the sleepy town is stricken by a series of possibly connected murders.  There’s a lot of comedy to be had from the storyline of a tough, street-hardened big-city cop bringing his violent, take-no-prisoners ways to a peaceful small town.  But the film quickly abandons that idea.  Since we learn soon after Angel’s arrival that Sanford, despite outward appearances, is anything BUT peaceful, the wind is taken quite out of the sails of that particular joke.  It quickly becomes apparent that Angel’s big-city methods ARE needed in Sanford.  To be honest, that was a bit disappointing to me.  And when the film, in its climax, becomes a tongue-in-cheek version of the type of hyper-violent buddy-cop films that Danny Butterman loves to watch on DVD, I found myself somewhat disinterested in the goings-on.  For a film like this to really work, not only does the comedy have to hit home, but the viewer needs to connect to the more serious, high-stakes story that eventually develops.  (No film accomplishes that dual task better, in my mind, than Ghostbusters.)  Hot Fuzz has a lot going for it, but it’s no Ghostbusters.

After months and months of reading praise for Kathryn Bigelow’s film The Hurt Locker, I finally was able to see the film on DVD.  (Once again, thank you Netflix!)  I am extremely pleased to report that, for me, the film lived up to its hype.

In the bravura opening sequence, we meet Delta Company, an elite unit of the U.S. Army serving in Iraq.  Delta Company consists of the men who get called in to disarm and/or detonate I.E.D.s (Improvised Explosive Devices) and all manner of other sorts of explosives before they can kill any U.S. servicemen/woman or others.  The tense, harrowing first few minutes of the film tell us everything we need to know about the incredible bravery and ability of the men of Delta Company who we’ll be following through the film, the excruciatingly difficult task that they are called upon to deal with every single day, and the high fatality rates of their assignments.

The Hurt Locker focuses on three men in Delta Company.  Anthony Mackie plays Sgt. JT Sanborn — a tough, by-the book officer of great professionalism.  Brian Geraghty plays Specialist Owen Eldridge, the youngest member of the team.  Eldridge struggles with the weight of the life-and-death assignments that he must take on every day, but we never see those concerns affect his performance in the field.  Then there is Staff Sgt. William James, played by Jeremy Renner in a phenomenal, star-making performance.  SSG James is assigned to head up Delta Company after the death of their previous field leader.  James is an extraordinarily talented officer, but we quickly learn that he is not one for by-the-book procedures.  This brings him into conflict with Sgt. Sanborn, who judges James to be reckless and dangerous.  Young Eldridge finds himself caught somewhat in the middle.

That could be the plot of a great movie, but The Hurt Locker isn’t really a drama about conflict within a military unit.  Though we see evidence of that conflict that I have just described over the course of the story, The Hurt Locker isn’t concerned with typical Hollywood war-movie character arcs or story-lines.  Rather, director Kathryn Bigelow has created a film whose main purpose, it seems to me, is to put the viewer right in the middle of the intense, every-moment-could-be-your-last job that these men serving in Iraq have been given.  Through careful direction, tight editing, and above all stupendous acting, The Hurt Locker consists of one nail-biting sequence after another.

The film is episodic in nature.  In less capable hands this could be a weakness, undermining the narrative thrust that a successful film needs to achieve.  But under the sure guidance of Ms. Bigelow, the episodic structure of the film becomes something extremely powerful.  In each new sequence, the men of Delta Company are confronted with yet another harrowing encounter, where death seems to be one small wrong move away.  I kept expecting some larger storyline to emerge.  About an hour into the film, Delta Company is traveling through the desert after having completed an assignment when they encounter a broken-down truck of English mercenaries who have captured two members of the insurgency.  One of the mercenaries is played by Ralph Fiennes.  Aha, I thought, this is going to be the story that takes us through the rest of the film.  Maybe Ralph and his guys aren’t what they seem.  Maybe the insurgents are going to get away somehow and our guys are going to have to track them down.  I’ve seen a lot of war movies, and I could begin to guess how this was going to play out.

Thankfully, I was totally wrong.  We spend an intense 10-15 minutes with Ralph Fiennes and his team in that difficult situation (in which the characters find themselves pinned down by snipers).  But then the film moves on to the next day in the life of Delta Company, and we never see those English dudes again.

As I wrote a moment ago, it would be easy for this episodic structure to fall apart by the end of the film.  I have seen similarly structured movies that are interesting for the first half, but after a while one gets bored by the assemblage of short, disparate adventures.  But in The Hurt Locker, not only did I find myself growing only more engaged with the characters and the film with each “episode,” I would argue that this structure is the very point of the film, and the key to its power.  It doesn’t matter how tough one particular day is in the life of the men of Delta Company.  The next day, and the next tough assignment, is just around the corner.  The Hurt Locker isn’t the larger-than-life story of movie super-heroes — it’s the true-to-reality story of the brave, talented, and very human men (and women) who take on this work.  And that makes it all the more compelling.

If it were about a fictionalized conflict, The Hurt Locker would still be a visceral, edge-of-your-seat action film.  That it attempts to capture the experiences of some of the men and women serving our nation in Iraq gives it an increased resonance that only adds to the film’s power.  This is a masterfully assembled piece of work.  It’s difficult to watch at times, but it is well worth your time.

Though 2009 is well in the past, I’m still trying to find time to watch those 2009 films that I missed (some of which I listed when writing my Best Films of 2009 list).  At the top of my I-really-wanted-to-see-it-but-never-did list from 2009 was Duncan Jones’ little sci-fi film, Moon.

When I say “little,” I am referring only to the budget (5 million dollars).  Because in no other way is Moon a “little” film.  No, Moon is a phenomenal achievement, and it surely would have made by Best Films of the Year list had I seen it in time.

It’s the near future, and the great Sam Rockwell (Galaxy Quest, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, Frost/Nixon) plays Sam Bell, working alone in a small helium-3 mining station on the moon.  His only companion is the station’s computer, Gerty, (voiced by Kevin Spacey, perfectly cast).  Sam is nearing the end of his three-year contract and is anticipating his return to Earth and to his family.  Of course, it’s not going to be that simple.

I’ve barely said anything about the film’s story, but I really think that’s for the best.  This is a film best appreciated going in cold, without knowing any of the plot twists.  Suffice it to say, when a distracted Sam crashes one of the station’s small rovers, he unwittingly sets into motion a chain of events that leads to things quickly going more and more awry in his once-efficient little moon station.

Moon is an acting tour-de-force for Sam Rockwell.  With the exception of a few other people glimpsed briefly on computer monitors, Sam is the only character on screen for the entire film.  But he dominates the screen so thoroughly that I didn’t even really consider that fact until well after the film had ended.  Mr. Rockwell has always been known for bringing a particularly idiosyncratic brand of humanity to the flawed array of characters he has portrayed on screen, and his Sam Bell in this film is a spectacular example.  Once the plot gets going, Sam’s ordered life starts to fall down around his ears, and the way Mr. Rockwell brings to life his increasing desperation, and also his surprising inner reservoirs of strength, is wonderful.  Shame on the Academy for not nominating this spectacular acting performance!!

Writer/director Duncan Jones jokes in the DVD’s special features that the most recent example of an “indie” sci-fi movie that he can think of is Danny Boyle’s Sunshine, which was made for around 50 million dollars. Moon was made for 5 million.  To say that my jaw was on the floor when I learned that this movie was made for such a miniscule budget would be an understatement.  Every single cent of that budget is up on screen, and I would argue that Moon could hold its own with any other big-budget sci-fi film made for many times its budget.  The exterior effects shots are beautiful, and the interior of Sam’s moon station is wonderfully realized.  Then there is Gerty, brought to life through a fiendishly clever combination of visual tricks and just a tiny dash of CGI (not to mention Kevin Spacey’s unique voice).  Bravo to all of the filmmakers and artists involved in this film.

I’m a big sci-fi fan, and I have often lamented on this site how rare it is to find intelligent, adult sci-fi made for the big screen these days.  Moon is all of those things in spades, and I suspect that even non sci-fi fans would really dig this movie, if they gave it a shot.  I am so glad to have seen it, and I can’t wait to see it again.

After watching Michael Moore’s latest (and last?) film, Capitalism: A Love Story (read my review here), I started thinking about his previous movies. Despite my enjoyment of his work, I realized that I’d never actually seen his very first film: Roger & Me.

Hello, Netflix!

Released in 1989 (though Mr. Moore was working on the film for several years prior to that), Roger & Me is an unflinching look at the devastating effect that the shutdown of several General Motors factories (eventually resulting in the firing of approx. 80,000 workers) had on Moore’s home-town of Flint, Michigan.

As Mr. Moore admits on the DVD’s commentary track, he not only had never made a movie before Roger & Me, but he knew very little about what went into making movies. But he (and a small team of partners) taught themselves everything they needed to know (about filming, sound, editing, etc.) over the course of assembling their film. This gives Roger & Me a raw, unpolished, feel which, to my mind, wound up working in Mr. Moore’s favor in enhancing the film’s effectiveness. This isn’t a slick-looking documentary. This feels like a film put together by a bunch of average folks, trying to address a situation that they felt passionately about.  That passion is another key to the film’s strength.

Right from the beginning, Mr. Moore is a major (perhaps THE major) character in his film. Roger & Me opens with a montage of Mr. Moore’s home-movies, as he introduces himself in voice-over and describes his early years growing up in Flint. Mr. Moore’s on-screen involvement in his films has by now grown tiresome to some, but here his presence helps ground the film as a whole. Moore grew up in Flint, his father (and, it turns out, many other members of his extended family) worked for GM. At one point in the film, following a sheriff’s deputy evicting people from their homes who couldn’t pay their rent after having been laid off by GM, Moore discovers that one of the young men being evicted is someone he went to high school with. This is a personal story for Mr. Moore, about HIS community, and his anger and frustration at the way GM abandoned Flint underline every frame of the film.  This lends the over-all film a gravity that a more polished but less-personal film would have lacked, I think.

As always, it can be hard to separate a discussion of one of Mr. Moore’s films from a discussion of his politics. The central question of what sort of responsibility a corporation has to its employees (and the communities in which the corporation grew prosperous) is a thorny one, and perhaps not so simplistic as it is presented here. Still, Moore’s key point, that GM shut down its plants in Flint (throwing tens of thousands of lives into turmoil and devastating Flint) DESPITE THEIR BRINGING IN RECORD PROFITS DURING THOSE YEARS is a hard one to argue against, and Mr. Moore spends much of his film showing us in great detail how hard so many families of Flint had it when the company pulled up stakes.

Mr. Moore has drawn some criticism, over the years, not just for his liberal leanings but also for some of his filmmaking techniques. In 2006, the film Manufacturing Dissent (which I have not seen) accused Moore of dishonesty in the making of Roger & Me. While it does seem that Moore played things a bit fast and loose in his editing of the footage (the eviction scenes intercut at the climax of the film with GM chairman Roger Smith’s cheery Christmas message did not actually take place at the same day), I can’t say that I get terribly worked up about those sorts of editing games. (In that specific example, does it matter if the two events did not actually happen simultaneously? Does that in any way undercut Mr. Moore’s point about General Motors’ uncaring attitude towards the effect of their plant closings on tens of thousands of American workers? Not to me.)

Roger & Me is a tough film to watch (and not just for the did-I-really-just-see-that graphic scene in which a former GM worker, reduced to selling rabbits for meat, kills and skins a rabbit before our eyes). In today’s tough economic climate, the film is more relevant than ever. Whether you agree with Mr. Moore or disagree with him, back in 1989 he was clearly already wrestling with some of the key issues that face our Democratic and Capitalistic society as we move forward into the twenty-first century. Are those two ideas compatible? What sort of nation do we aspire to be? What is stopping us from getting there?

I’ve been reading Drew McWeeny’s writings about film for, oh, probably a decade now.  I first found his work when he wrote for Aintitcoolnews.com, though these days he has a terrific blog over at Hitfix.com.  The dude has some sharp opinions, and while I’m not always in agreement with him, I can always count on his pieces being interesting & insightful, to say the least.  I’m a big fan.  Drew recently started a series called “The Basics,” in which he writes about a film that he considers one of the “essentials” — a film that anyone who takes film seriously should see — and then another, younger writer, William Goss, writes a response.  To read more about this series, click here and then here.

With their latest installment, Drew opened the door for others to chime in with their opinion.  Since the film in question is Woody Allen’s 1979 film Manhattan, I jumped at the chance to share my two cents!

I am an enormous Woody Allen fan.  I have seen every one of his films (with one exception, Interiors, a situation that I’m sure I’ll remedy someday, but I must confess to not being in any rush), and many of them I have seen too many times to count.  But while I recognize that Manhattan is one of Woody’s most well thought-of films, I’ve actually only seen it one time, about 15 years ago.  I remember enjoying it, but I didn’t think it was of the level with what I would consider to be Mr. Allen’s masterpieces, films like Annie Hall, Crimes and Misdemeanors, Bananas, etc.  (It probably didn’t help that I watched Manhattan less than a month after first seeing Annie Hall, a film that absolutely blew me away and that remains easily one of my top ten favorite films of all time.)

So, prompted by this “The Basics” series, I was excited to go back and re-watch Manhattan.  Would my opinion of the film change?

Filmed in gloriously beautiful black and white, Manhattan follows several good-natured but lost urbanites as they try to find some measure of love and happiness.  Woody Allen plays Isaac, a television comedy writer unhappy with his job who dreams of writing a novel.  When we meet Isaac, he’s involved with a much, much younger woman: the 17 year-old Tracy (Mariel Hemingway).  Meanwhile, his married best friend Yale (Michael Murphy) is having an affair with Mary (Diane Keaton).  While Isaac and Mary strongly dislike one another when they first meet (at an awkward encounter in a museum), they gradually strike up a friendship and ultimately start seeing each other.

None of the elements of that plot might sound particularly innovative.  Indeed, change the names and you’d have the plot of about twenty other Woody Allen films.  But, while I still don’t think this film comes anywhere close to the genius of Annie Hall, while re-watching the film I could easily see that there is something special about Manhattan.  The now-familiar elements common to many Woody Allen pictures come together in a particularly successful manner.

Right from the opening moments it is clear that this is a film with more on its mind than one might expect.  Manhattan opens with a series of beautiful shots of Manhattan, taking us on a visual tour of the city set to the entrancing music of George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue.  We then hear Woody Allen’s opening narration, as Isaac attempts to write the opening sentences of his novel by describing the intense love that his main character feels for the city of New York.  The images are stunning, the music is phenomenal, and the narration is a riot.  This is the way to start a movie!

It’s a fun game to play, when watching a Woody Allen movie, to try to suss out just what is autobiographical and what is not.  While I have no real way of knowing just how similar Mr. Allen is in real life to his standard intellectual, nebbishy film character, it seems clear that the sentiments expressed in this opening montage genuinely belong to Mr. Allen.  As the film progresses, we’re continually brought back to shots of different areas of the city (accompanied by Mr. Gershwin’s melodies).  This fascination with the architecture of New York (along with the film’s title, of course), seems to indicate that Mr. Allen was setting out to give his film a broader scope than just a depiction of the love-lives of a few confused New Yorkers.  In many ways, this movie is a love-letter to the city of New York, and I really engaged with that aspect of the film.  Isaac’s identity as a New Yorker is a central part of who he is, and the thought of leaving the city is inconceivable to him.  I wonder whether Mr. Allen felt that way himself, back in 1979.  Either way, that love of New York is central to the film, and I think is plays an enormous part in the great affection that many feel towards it.

There’s some wonderfully inventive and idiosyncratic filmmaking on display here.  I really can’t heap enough praise on Gordon Willis (the man who shot The Godfather, for goodness sake!!) for his astounding work in the film.  He and Mr. Allen were quite daring with their willingness to, occasionally, let their characters step into total darkness before emerging again into the light (for example, when walking down a city street at night).  They also weren’t afraid to keep their camera steady while characters walk in and out of the frame during the course of a conversation.  (That actually happens so often during the film that it’s probably not enough for me to write that Mr. Willis & Mr. Allen weren’t afraid to allow that to happen — I’d say it represents a conscious stylistic choice.)  Far from being distracting, to me it directs the viewer to focus one’s attention on the words being spoken by the actors.

And what a fine cast of actors this is.  The women are particularly notable.  Mariel Hemingway is quiet and wise, not to mention stunningly beautiful, as the young object of Isaac’s affection (though he spends much of the film trying to convince her that they’re no good together).  Diane Keaton is equally engaging (to Isaac, and to the audience) as the older woman (though younger than Isaac, he’s quick to remind us!) who is, in many ways, the exact opposite of Tracy.  Keaton’s Mary is outgoing and chatty, and possesses the life-experience that young Tracy has not yet acquired — she’s been involved in a number of failed relationships, and while those experiences clearly left some scars, Mary hasn’t allowed herself to get too beaten down by life.  Then there’s Isaac’s ex-wife Jill, brought to wonderful life by a young, gorgeous Meryl Streep.  Jill is a dynamo, one who apparently grew quite weary of Isaac’s neuroses and peculiarities.  (So weary, in fact, that she left him for another woman!)

What I really enjoyed about this story is that all three of those women — each of whom represent a powerful place in Isaac’s life — are all presented as fairly well-rounded and complex individuals.  Readers of this blog might recall my profound hatred for Mr. Allen’s most recent film, Whatever Works, primarily because of the disdain he seemed to show to all the women in the film, each one of whom was depicted as essentially brainless.  In both Manhattan and Whatever Works, the central character has entered into a relationship with a very young girl.  But whereas Evan Rachel Woods’ character Melody (in Whatever Works) was depicted as a brainless, gullible fool, Tracy seems to have quite a good head on her shoulders.  She’s infatuated with a much older man, true, but she seems to be able to hold her own quite well with Isaac and his friends, and her reaction to Isaac in the film’s climactic scene is measured and intelligent.  When we first meet Diane Keaton’s Mary, she is presented as having the exact opposite opinions as Isaac does.  But the film doesn’t make fun of those opinions (well, not too much, anyways), and it doesn’t mock her as an over-intellectual know-nothing.  In fact, in some ways, we start to see Isaac come around to some of her ways of thinking by the end of the film.  Then there is Jill.  As Isaac’s ex-wife, we could easily expect her character to be depicted as a cold shrew played simply for laughs.  And while she is quite firm towards Isaac (and doesn’t hesitate to spill the beans on their failed relationship in the book she authored), she also seems pretty tolerant of some of his crazy behavior (she’s pretty chill, for example, that he may or may not have tried to run her and her new partner over with a car!), and the two of them seem to be on decent terms with one another, willing to cooperate in the raising of their son.  It is a delightful thing when a comedic film is able to craft real characters, rather than one-dimensional, one-note caricatures.

OK, so far I have been pretty much singing Manhattan’s praises!  I’m really glad that I gave it another try.  But while I have come around somewhat on this film, I still wouldn’t consider it in the very top-tier if Mr. Allen’s large body of work.  It’s hard to compare it to his comedic romps like Bananas, Take the Money and Run, Play it Again Sam, and What’s Up Tiger Lily? (a ludicrously magnificent and under-loved film!!), all of which have much dearer places in my heart than does Manhattan.  It makes a bit more sense, perhaps, to compare Manhattan to Crimes and Misdemeanors and Annie Hall, two films that, as I wrote above, I consider among Mr. Allen’s very best.  All three are films that are very very funny, while also telling deeper, honest stories.  Annie Hall in particular stands out for me because I feel it contains the very best aspects of Mr. Allen’s work — tremendous humor (tell me that Marshall McLuhan scene isn’t a killer), innovative cinematic techniques (the split-screen scene that contrasts a meal at the Halls versus a meal at the Singers; or the moment when Annie & Alvy’s thoughts are suddenly spelled out for us on the bottom of the screen), and an honest, rich story that doesn’t fall into any hollywood ending cliche traps where boy and girl live happily ever after.

Manhattan possesses all of those aspects — just, for me, a bit less successfully than does Annie Hall, a film where I found myself laughing harder and engaging more deeply with the central relationships.  One aspect of Manhattan that gives me a bit of pause is Isaac’s sexual relationship in the film with a girl who is only 17 years-old.  That’s a bit unsettling even without taking into account any other aspects of Mr. Allen’s personal life.  I’m a liberal guy, but my feeling that Isaac and Tracy’s relationship isn’t the right thing for either of them lingers throughout the film, and that prevents me from really investing in their storyline.

That objection aside, I can nevertheless comfortably state that Manhattan is a tremendously potent film that has aged incredibly well.  It’s the forebearer of so many “romantic comedies” that came after — films that, as Drew puts it so well in his review of Manhattan, are far too-often neither romantic nor comedic.  Just painful.  (I love a good romance, but my wife can tell you how bitterly I’ll resist going to see any of today’s agonizingly unfunny so-called “romantic comedies.”)  Manhattan is a film cut from a different cloth, and I wish more filmmakers (including Mr. Allen himself!) were making films like this today.  (But let’s just make the young girl in the film 21 next time, OK?)

I thoroughly enjoyed Robert Zemeskis’ Contact when it was first released in 1997.  For years now, it’s been a movie that I’ve been eager to add to my DVD collection, but I was holding off for a better special edition than the bare-bones DVD release from ‘97.  It’s been a long wait, but when Contact was finally re-released on disc in a jazzed-up new edition — and on blu-ray, no less — I eagerly snatched it up.

Based on Carl Sagan’s novel, Contact tells the story of Ellie, a young girl whose interest in science and astronomy are fanned by her father.  Through much of the early parts of the film, we follow Ellie’s development as a scientist and her growing fascination with the search for signs of extra-terrestrial life.  It’s a search that increasingly comes to seem like a fool’s errand as, over the years, all of the sources of funding for that research dry up.  If that was the end of the story, of course, there wouldn’t be much of a movie.  Needless top say, Ellie and her team do eventually discover a signal that appears to be extra-terrestrial in origin, and their quest to unlock its meaning leads Ellie on an astounding journey and brings mankind to an incredible turning point.

I’ll stop my summary there, even though I have really only covered the first thirty-or-so minutes of the film.  For me, the most compelling aspect of Contact is watching the story unfold and gradually become bigger and bigger.  I still remember my pleasure in seeing the film for the first time and thinking to myself, with great delight, “just how far are they going to take this??”  Even having seen the film and knowing what’s coming coming, I still find the story to be terrifically engaging.

I am an enormous sci-fi fan.  Sadly, the vast majority of sci-fi films seem to revolve around menacing aliens and action-adventure hi-jinks.  Now, I’m all for a good action movie, and there have certainly been plenty of action/adventure sci-fi films that I have thoroughly enjoyed.  But I love that Contact is a much more cerebral story, one in which the science of the tale is just as important as the narrative’s twists and turns.  It’s also a story that is centered by the character of Ellie’s emotional journey, and that is what gives the film its power.

Jodie Foster is quite compelling as Dr. Ellie Arroway.  She brings a fierce commitment and intensity to the role.  Foster is an actor who always seems to be thinking — you can see it in her eyes — and that is key for her performance as this brilliant and driven woman.  I love that the central character in this sci-fi story is a woman, and I love that she is as complex and interesting a character as we see here.

The ensemble that surrounds Ms. Foster is also top-notch.  David Morse (The Negotiator) is very tender as Ellie’s father, and he steals the few scenes that he is in.  I love David Morse, and it’s terrific to see him in this sort of role (as opposed to the scary bad-guys he usually plays).  William Fichtner (a face I guarantee you recognize, even if you don’t know his name — he’s been in a ton of TV and film roles, and recently he was the bank manager menaced by the Joker in The Dark Knight) brings an interesting spin to what could easily have been a boring role as Ellie’s friend and fellow scientist, Kent.  Tom Skerritt (Picket Fences) is terrifically smarmy as David Drumlin, Ellie’s superior who is convinced that she’s wasting her life.  Then there’s James Woods and Angela Bassett as members of President Clinton’s cabinet, Jake Busey as a menacing preacher, John Hurt as an enigmatic multi-billionaire… I could go on.  The cast is a delight, and every one of these skilled actors brings a lot of life to their characters (many of whom only appear in a few scenes and so have a very short time in which to make an impact).

Then there’s Matthew McConaughey as Palmer Joss.  Joss is a man with whom Ellie finds herself continually entwined over the course of the years chronicled in the film.  The two have an undeniable connection, right from their first meeting.  They have a great many similarities, but an entirely different set of belief systems:  Joss is a man of God, while Ellie is a woman of science.  This might seem like the plot for a dumb “opposites attract” story, but thankfully Contact is a much more interesting film than that.  Yes, Ellie & Joss are opposites who do attract one another, but what is really of interest is the contrasting of their two philosophies and ways of looking at the universe, from which most of the emotional energy of the film comes.  While Ellie is the central character of the film, I very much appreciate the filmmakers’ efforts to give Joss’ philosophies equal weight and merit in the story.  I know that some people think of McConaughey as the film’s weak link, and without question Jodie Foster is a far superior actor than he is.  But I must say, I quite enjoy McConaughey in this role.  His surfer-boy good looks and lackadaisical manner make Palmer Joss a much more interesting fella than a lot of the spiritual folks we usually see on film, and I think he has a nice energy with Ms. Foster.  It’s an unusual role, but I buy it.

Visually, Contact is a stunner — and the film looks positively GORGEOUS on blu-ray.  Robert Zemeckis’ affection for visual effects serves him quite well in helming this large-scale, epic story.  Contact is a film whose scope just grows and grows as the narrative progresses, and Zemeckis and his team bring the sci-fi aspects of the tale to believable life.  The man knows how to tell an adventure story with a sci-fi bent (Back to the Future), and he does a great job at balancing the script’s philosophical underpinnings and strong focus on character with the story’s exciting suspense and, eventually, adventure aspects.  He’s assisted by a smart script (adapted from Mr. Sagan’s novel), but it’s his sure hand as a director that keeps everything together.  (Watching this film again makes me sad that Mr. Zemeckis’ latest movies, in which he has been exploring the world of motion-capture technology – The Polar Express, Beowulf, and A Christmas Carol – have left me so disinterested.)

Contact is a great film, and it was a delight to revisit it again after so many years.  This sits proudly on my DVD/Blu-ray shelf.

Burt and Verona (John Krasinski and Maya Rudolph) are expecting their first child.  When they learn that Burt’s parents are moving away, they realize that they have nothing tying them to Denver any longer.  (Verona’s parents have passed away.)  So Burt & Verona decide to travel around the country, visiting various friends and family-members in an attempt to find a new place to live that they think will be a good place to raise their baby.  What at first seems like a fun adventure turns dispiriting rapidly as they discover that everyone they visit has fairly crazy ideas about parenting.

Written by Dave Eggers (author of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius) & his wife Vendela Vida and directed by Sam Mendes (American Beauty, The Road to Perdition, Jarhead, Revolutionary Road), Away We Go is a quirky film filled with quirky characters.  Your tolerance for that approach to creating characters will determine how annoying you find this to be as the movie progresses.  The characters are, for the most part, painted in pretty broad, caricature-esque strokes.  They are funny and painful and sad, but not all that deep.  I really enjoyed the individual performances of the actors playing the various folks who Burt & Verona visit  – Allison Janney, Jim Gaffigan, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Josh Hamilton, Chris Messina, and Melanie Lynskey (who, by the way, had a heck of a year in 2009 with this film along with her roles in The Informant! and Up in the Air) — so much that this trend didn’t really bother me too much until I sat back and thought about the film afterwards.

In my review of Woody Allen’s 2009 film, Whatever Works, I described my frustration at the enormous condescension that Mr. Allen’s screenplay seemed to be showing towards every character in the film with the exception of the Woody Allen stand-in character played by Larry David.  I felt the same sort of condescension here.  Burt and Verona are presented as the only sane characters in an entirely insane world.  Burt’s parents (played by Catherine O’Hara & Jeff Daniels) might be hysterical (I’d like to see a whole movie about these two!), but they and are jaw-droppingly self-centered and, shockingly, have no apparent interest in their grandchild-on-the-way.  Verona’s friend Lily (Janney) is crass and her husband (Gaffigan) is a buffoon.  Burt’s cousin LN (that’s not a typo) and her husband Roderick are bizarre hippie-intellectuals who have sex in the same bed where their children sleep and breastfeed other people’s babies.  Burt & Verona’s friends Tom & Munch are by far the most normal of the bunch, but even they have their problems (which I won’t spoil here).  I understand the point that Eggers & Vida were going for, that new parents need to find their own way in the world and not try to mimic anyone else’s parenting techniques or lifestyles, but I think Away We Go would have been a much deeper film if it hadn’t been so quick to go for the laugh at the expense of the characters who Burt & Verona meet.

What saves the film for me are the understated, heartfelt performances that Krasinski and Rudolph turn in.  Both have proven themselves to be extraordinarily funny TV comedians (on The Office and SNL), but I was quite pleasantly surprised by what fine actors they both show themselves to be in this film.  Rather than going for broad comedic performances, both actors keep themselves reined in, using subtlety as opposed to over-the-top exaggeration.  At the same time, both Krasinski and Rudolph bring a lot of warmth and humanity to their characters.  Burt and Verona are both flawed and very human, but we really feel their love for one another and their fervent desire to do right for their child on the way.  Although they’re in their thirties, there’s a sense of immaturity to Burt and Verona.  Not frat-boy behavior like you’d see in The Hangover, it’s more a sense that they haven’t quite figured out what they want their lives to be yet.  That journey is at the heart of Away We Go.

I saw this movie a few months ago, when my wife and I were at a similar point in life as Burt and Verona: on the cusp of becoming first-time parents.  This gave me a connection with Away We Go that I might not otherwise have felt.  Even trying to separate that emotional connection out from my judgment, I can still say that there is a lot to enjoy in Away We Go.  There is some terrific humor to be found, and the core of the story is compelling.  And any movie that contains the unique scene in which Burt begins to suspect that Verona is pregnant is A-OK in my book.  I just wish that the characters surrounding Burt & Verona on their journey had been given more complexity.  I’m a big fan of Sam Mendes’ work, but with Revolutionary Road (read my review here) and now Away We Go, I can’t say I’ve felt nearly as engaged by his films lately as I was by American Beauty and The Road to Perdition.  But I do still respect him as a potent creative force, and I look forward to seeing what he does next.  (James Bond???)

Before seeing his latest film, The Lovely Bones, I thought it fitting to seek out a gaping hole in my Peter Jackson viewing filmography: his 1994 film, Heavenly Creatures.  I’ve been hearing/reading about this film since the lengthy pre-release build-up to The Fellowship of the Ring.  (By the way: Wow!  It’s hard to believe it’s been almost a decade since Fellowship, which was released in 2001!!)  Heavenly Creatures seems to be rather well thought-of, and since the Lord of the Rings films have made me a life-long Pater Jackson fan, it seemed crazy that I had never seen this movie.  It’s a situation I was happy to remedy last month.

Heavenly Creatures tells the true-life story of the friendship between two young New Zealand girls in 1953/4.  Melanie Lynskey plays Pauline.  An artistic, shy introvert, she is friendless and miserable at the Catholic school which she attends.  Her world changes, though, when Juliet Hulme, played by Kate Winslet, arrives at her school.  Juliet is from a wealthy family, and her travels with (and without) her parents make her seem extraordinarily worldly to Pauline.  Like Pauline, she is artistic and bucks authority, but Juliet more outgoing and brazen.  The two bond almost instantly.  Deep friendships like these happen between schoolgirls all the time across the globe, with less tragic outcomes.  But here, the increasingly unhappy home lives of each of the girls pushes them to become more dependent upon one another’s company, and they begin to withdraw more and more deeply into their shared fantasies.  Feeding off one another, those escapist fantasies soon take a terrible turn.

Heavenly Creatures is the first screen role of both Melanie Lynskey and Kate Winslet.  It’s no surprise that this proved to be a star-making turn for Ms. Winslet, as she displays terrific abilities and assurance for such a young actress (not to mention great beauty).  As for Ms. Lynskey, I was delighted to realize that this was her first screen role as well.  She’s nowhere near as well-known as Kate Winslet, but if you were an avid movie-goer in 2009 then I’d wager you’ve enjoyed her work.  (She had key roles in Away We Go, The Informant!, and Up in the Air.)

Heavenly Creatures is an interesting film.  I found it to be a bit hard to get into, at first.  There was something about the first 45 minutes that kept me, as a viewer, from being sucked in to the story.  I wasn’t sure if it was the script, the acting, or the directing, but everything seemed a bit “stagey” and over-wrought (filled with dramatic zooms and music that didn’t seem to quite fit the proceedings).  With a based-on-a-true-story like this one, I was expecting a more naturalistic tone.  But as the film progressed, I realized that Heavenly Creatures is not only Pauline & Juliet’s story, in many respects the film is crafted so as to be from their viewpoint.  So of course things seemed overly-dramatic — EVERYTHING is overly dramatic to a pair of 14 year-old girls!

As the film progresses, we see Pauline & Juliet’s fantasy life grow and deepen, and in several inventive sequences we, the audience, are included in their fantasies.  It is here where one can begin to suspect what might have drawn Peter Jackson — the man who would go on to direct The Frighteners, The Lord of the Rings, and King Kong — to this film.  That’s not to say that Heavenly Creatures is a visual effects extravaganza!  Oh no, the effects are very low-key, and confined to a few scenes.  But these effects sequences are handled with great skill, and are an inventive and effective visual way at allowing us to understand Pauline & Juliet’s developing fantasy world.

I found myself most engaged with the film during it’s brutal final 20-or-so minutes.  Once the girls decide on their horrifying course of action, Mr. Jackson takes us step-by-step through their preparations, their anticipation, and finally through the terrible moment itself.  This is an agonizing sequence to watch unfold, and it is finally here where we see Mr. Jackson’s skills as a filmmaker on full display.  The suspense and growing dread at what one knows is coming was positively painful to bear, and I found myself almost begging the movie to cut away!  Powerful stuff.

I can’t say that I was thoroughly taken by Heavenly Creatures.  Perhaps the film had been built up a bit too much in my mind.  There is, without a doubt, a lot to enjoy: Kate Winslet and Melanie Lynskey’s first screen performances, the fantasy sequences, and those tense final 20-or-so minutes.  The film is perhaps most interesting as a peek at several great talents (Winslet, Lynskey, and Mr., Jackson himself) that were about to emerge than it is a fully successful motion picture in its own right.

Still, I’m glad to have finally seen it, and it proved to be an interesting point of comparison with Peter Jackson’s 2009 film, The Lovely Bones.

Sometimes I get DVDs and I watch them immediately, devouring the movie and the special features within 24 hours.  Sometimes I’ll get a DVD and, for one reason or another, it will sit on my shelf for months and months.  Such was the case with the Director’s Cut of Ridley Scott’s 2007 film, American Gangster.

I enjoyed American Gangster when I first saw it in theatres.  I didn’t love it the way I love some of Scott’s other films (Alien, Blade Runner, Gladiator, and the vastly underrated Kingdom of Heaven), but I quite liked it, and when I saw that an extended version of the film was available on DVD in early 2008, I snapped it up.  I’ve really enjoyed the extended versions of several others of Ridley Scott’s films, most particularly the extended version of the afore-mentioned Kingdom of Heaven, which is a revelation in contrast to the theatrical release, so I was excited to see this new version of American Gangster.  But, for whatever reason, I just never got around to watching the DVD until recently.

American Gangster tells two parallel stories.  One half of the film is about Frank Lucas, played by Denzel Washington.  The movie opens with the death of Frank’s mentor, the powerful Harlem drug-dealer Bumpy Johnson.  Frank marshals his keen intellect and all that he learned from Bumpy in order to take control of the Harlem drug scene.  His boldest move was to travel to Southeast Asia in order to purchase heroin straight from the source, enabling him to bypass all the other crime-figure “middle managers” and sell a more powerful product at cheaper prices than his competition.  That coup, combined with his patience and his near-fanatical focus on avoiding the spotlight, enabled him to amass an extraordinary amount of power and money all while operating under the noses of what local law enforcement officials weren’t on the take.

Russell Crowe plays Richie Roberts, a New Jersey cop with a fierce sense of honesty.  In an infamous story depicted early in the film, he finds a million dollars in cash but turns it over to his superiors in the department rather than keeping it for himself.  In contrast to those qualities, his personal life is a disaster, and when the film opens his wife (the wonderful Carla Gugino) has decided to divorce him.  Richie eventually gets himself involved with (and becomes a key figure in leading) the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, where his investigative skills and a decent amount of luck puts him on the trail of Frank Lucas.

American Gangster is a film dancing on the edge of greatness.  Washington and Crowe both turn in powerhouse performances, and they’re both so engaging that both halves of the film’s story-line feel equally significant and interesting.  (A great script and some fine editing help with that as well.)  They are supported by a wonderfully deep ensemble, including Josh Brolin’s scene-stealing turn as the corrupt New York Detective Trupo; Chiwetel Ejiofor (who I first saw in Serenity and who has been amazing in each of the 10,000 films he has been in since then) as Huey Lucas, one of Frank’s many brothers who for a short while serves as Frank’s right-hand man; Cuba Gooding Jr. (who is terrific, demonstrating just how good he can be when used well) as the flashy Nicky Barnes; and Idris Elba (Stringer Bell from The Wire!) as one of Frank’s competitors, Tango.  But my favorite supporting actor has to be Armand Assante’s phenomenally bizarre and iconic performance as the powerful Italian mobster Dominic Cattano.  His performance is an inch away from falling into over-the-top silliness, but he never crosses that line.  He’s only in a few scenes, but many of his lines (delivered in his terrific accent) are the ones that I most remembered after finishing the movie.

Ridley Scott is a phenomenal director, and his unique talents really shine through in this film.  The special features on the DVD emphasize the enormous size of the film — there are 135 speaking parts and hundreds of short scenes taking place all over Manhattan, New Jersey, and also Vietnam, Bangkok, etc.  Mr. Scott’s experience in juggling epic films (Gladiator, Black Hawk Down, Kingdom of Heaven) surely helped him keep everything under control and pull the film off.  (In his commentary track, Ridley speaks several times of the importance, for him, of not dwelling on how much needed to be accomplished — rather, he says, he just took each day at a time, putting together the film piece by piece.)  Scott is also famous for his involvement in the production design, the location scouting, and everything else that goes into the look of a film — costumes, props, etc.  That enormous care that he and his team poured into those details is evident in every frame of the film, which does a superb job of capturing the feel of New York in the 1970’s.  Nothing feels out of place.

So why did I write, above, that American Gangster is a film dancing on the edge of greatness?  What prevents me from unabashedly recommending this film as a triumph?

Mainly, it’s that the whole thing feels rather familiar.  There have been a lot of amazing movies chronicling the rise and fall of crime figures (The Godfather films, Goodfellas, Casino, Scarface, etc. etc.), so while everything that one watches as American Gangster unfolds is pretty great, it is tainted by a bit of a feeling of “been there, done that.”  For me, at least.  (As an example, the climax of the film is structured as a montage — we see footage of Richie’s closing the net on Frank’s partners and accomplices, all while Frank is in church with his mother, and the whole sequence is scored to the music of the singing in church.  I’d be impressed by the stark contrast that sequence created between Frank’s facade in church and the realities of his life if Francis Ford Coppola hadn’t done pretty much exactly the same thing in his famous climax to the Godfather more than thirty years ago.)

OK, some small spoilers ahead, so be warned.

The only aspect of the film’s story that really struck me as being totally unique were the events of the film’s very final moments. In a series of text pieces, we learn that after spending years working to take down Frank Lucas, and serving as the prosecuting attorney in the case that put him behind bars, Richie Roberts and Frank Lucas struck up a friendship.  The two men wound up working together as Frank provided evidence that allowed Richie to expose an enormous amount of corruption in the New York city police department.  Years later, Richie became a defense attorney, and his first client was none other than Frank Lucas, as Richie argued (successfully) that Frank’s sentence should be reduced as compensation for his aid in all those other cases.

That is an astonishing turn of events, and I really enjoyed learning more, in the DVD’s special features, about this most unlikely of friendships that ultimately emerged between Frank and Richie.  That’s why I think it’s an enormous failure on the film’s part that that twist was saved for a “wow” moment in the film’s final minutes.  Despite the movie’s length (the theatrical cut was about two hours and forty minutes, and the Director’s Cut clocks in at almost three hours), I feel like the film needed another half-hour at the end to more thoroughly explore that extraordinary turn of events.  THERE’S the part of the story — the TRUE story, mind you — that really is unique, and could have separated this tale from all the other similar crime films.  A big missed opportunity, I think.

I was hoping the Director’s Cut would address some of those concerns.  There are an additional couple of minutes added on to the very end of the film that give us a few more scenes between Richie and Frank that take place years after the main events of the film.  These are some nice moments, but I was still hoping for more.  As for the rest of the changes to the film: it’s funny, there are apparently about twenty minutes added on, but other than the new ending I didn’t notice any other differences.  True, I saw the theatrical version over two years ago, but I usually have a good eye for changes made in these sorts of extended cuts.  (Take a look at my anal accounting of all the adjustments made to the extended episodes of Battlestar Galactica’s final episodes on DVD!)  I guess it’s a good thing that all the new additions blend seamlessly into the film, but I must report that this new cut doesn’t dramatically change any of the film’s story-lines or its over-all impact.

It may not be the most groundbreaking film every made, but American Gangster is an entertaining tale well-told by a bunch of craftsmen at the top of their game.  If you like a good crime saga, check this one out.