Woody returns to New York

Whatever Works is Woody's followup to the stellar Vicky Cristina Barcelona. Larry David with a Woody Allen script? A must see. Plus, Patricia Clarkson is said to play a a nutjob and a nemesis to David's character. With Evan Rachel Wood, Ed Bagley Jr., and Henry Cavil.

Forget the half-baked action films, sequels and me-too films coming out this summer-- this is the film event of the summer (or at least it is for Woody Allen fans!).

5 of My favorite reviews

Ace in the Hole (Wilder, 1951)
Comment: Wilder's best noir.

Before Sunset (2004, Linklater)
Comment: Arguably the best film of this decade.

Hiroshima mon Amour (Resnais, 1959)
Comment: One of the most beautiful films I've ever seen.

Persona (Bergman, 1966)
Comment: Bergman's greatest achievement.

Vicky Cristina Barcelona (Woody Allen, 2008)
Comment: Woody's best since Crimes and Misdemeanors. Here's hoping Woody casts the beautiful and talented Rebecca Hall again.

Most read reviews since January 2008
1. The Big Lebowski (Coen Brothers, 1998)
2. The Notebook (Nick Cassavetes, 2004)
3. Gilda (Charles Vidor, 1946)
4. There Will Be Blood (P.T. Anderson, 2007)
5. Before Sunset (Richard Linklater, 2004)

Much more than a horror film

The Shining (1980)

Directed by Stanley Kubrick

The magic in Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining is the way in which one may perceive the nature of the events unfolding in the film. A simplistic view of the film would surrender to the notion that the horrors of the overlook experienced by Jack (Jack Nicholson), Wendy (Shelley Duvall) and Danny (Danny Lloyd) are in fact supernatural and the film is pure fantasy. The previous caretaker Delbert Grady (Phillip Stone), his two twin (Louise and Lisa Burns) daughters, Lloyd the bartender (Joe Turkel), the motif of gallons of blood gushing from the elevator and the seen and unseen in Room 237 can be explained as ghosts or illusions. It’s a simplistic view of the film which appeals to mainstream tastes and casual filmgoers. There’s nothing wrong with viewing the film this way, but The Shining can be enjoyed even more as a psychological horror piece by questioning the sights and sounds of the Overlook hotel—is it objective reality or fantasy?

A more sophisticated view of the film and one in which I tend to agree with is viewing the film as one of inconceivable imagination and madness. The cook Hallorran (Scatman Crothers) who possesses the same psychic gift as Danny describes the ghosts of the Overlook as being “pictures in a book.” It’s my opinion that the ghosts the Torrances see in the Overlook are imagined. Jack was never served Bourbon by the bartender, never talked to Grady in the garish red, pop art-like bathroom and furthermore, was never let out of the storage room by him. Everything that is seen is the byproduct of Danny’s way of coping with his surroundings—his psychic abilities and incredible imagination, or Jack’s descent into madness (and later in the film Wendy’s hysteria) and the fact he’s a recovering alcoholic with no booze available.

Kubrick introduces ambiguity in the narrative for those of us who believe this theory. There are the scenes when the characters of the Overlook physically intervene with the Torrances. I maintain Jack never did have a drink because there is no glass or bottle left over and furthermore, Wendy makes no mention of Jack falling off the wagon or smelling alcohol on his breath, etc. Jack’s psychotic behavior is the result of his fragile state of mind brought upon by the increasing feeling of sensory deprivation or the removal of external stimuli (often called cabin fever).

Another scene in which a ghost (Grady) seemingly intervenes with Jack is when he is locked in the food storage room by Wendy after being clubbed with a baseball bat down the stairs by her. More often than not, the popular notion held by many is that ghosts, if they exist, are non-living entities which often haunt the living, but they do not have the ability to alter the physical environment. This is why I don’t believe Grady let Jack out of the food storage room. A rational explanation says that Wendy never locked Jack (She does struggle with the lock) in the storage room and he only escapes from the room once he feels stronger after recovering from the malaise brought upon by the hit to his head. Although, some may say Grady does unlock the door for Jack because we hear the sound of the bolt unlocking. However, this is never certain because Danny does hear the two little girls asking him to play with them and they must be imaginary, right? How does one explain the marks of strangulation on Danny following his venture into Room 237? In each case, what is real and what is imagined is certainly open to argument.

One of the most chilling and suggesting scenes in the film is another instance when the supernatural seemingly intervenes physically with the real, concrete world is when Danny is playing with toy trucks and cars on the maze-like carpeting of the hallway and a pink tennis ball slowly rolls into the frame. As viewers we are given the same perspective as Danny. We wonder where the ball came from, think we know who rolled it, but can never be certain exactly where it came from. The Shining may have been the only horror film directed by Kubrick, but he understood the notion that the most fear and tension is created by the unseen and inexplicable (Alfred Hitchcock proved this to be true with crime pieces and it’s probably true for cinema in general).

Influences

As with any film directed by Kubrick, The Shining is impeccably crafted with its direction, editing and cinematography (let’s not forget those striking snap-zooms or Garrett Brown’s steadicam) being of the highest caliber. I don’t think there is any question Alain Resnais’ masterwork Last Year at Marienbad (1961) was a heavy on influence on Kubrick for The Shining. From the slow tracking shots in the Overlook’s hallways to the pink and gold colors of the ballroom (Marienbad was filmed in black and white and the interiors were dressed with pink and gold wallpaper) to the puzzling conclusion of the film which suggests the idea of a perpetual time loop and the instability of memory. Moreover, there is a Marienbad-like scene which evokes ‘X’(Giorgio Albertazzi) pursuing ‘A’ (Delphine Seyrig)where Jack discovers the waiter Grady is the previous caretaker who murdered his family.

Jack Torrance: You WERE the caretaker here, Mr. Grady.
Delbert Grady: No sir, YOU are the caretaker. You've always been the caretaker. I ought to know: I've always been here.

More than anything, as Resnais did with Marienbad, Kubrick involves us in the story and challenges us to be active viewers always questioning what we see. In this way these films illustrate cinema at the height of its power. This brand of us cinema entertains, challenges and suggests but it never fully reveals its secrets because to do so would divest it of its magic.

Unforgettable imagery

The Beauty of Steadicam

Garrett Brown’s invention is a stabilizing mount for motion picture cameras which isolates the camera operator’s movement from the camera. This allows for smooth shots even for quick movements or long tracking shots over uneven surfaces. There is no need to set up rails or use dolly shots. Brown followed Danny Lloyd with the steadicam mounted to a wheelchair just 2 to 3 inches off the floor. This scene is an excellent example of the steadicam at work:

A Sweet Ride

Gran Torino (2008)
Directed by Clint Eastwood
Screenplay by Schenk. Story by Dave Johnson & Schenk.

At the age of 78 director Clint Eastwood is a marvel of the film industry. Every year or two he makes a picture which is either very good (like The Changeling) or great (i.e. Letters from Iwo Jima), and sometimes he even makes two pictures in one year! Thankfully, Eastwood shows no signs of slowing and doesn’t see any reason why a director’s later years can’t be spent making fine motion pictures.

The latest offering from the Eastwood treasure chest is Gran Torino, a meditation on xenophobia, fatherhood and the degenerative influence of gangs and lowbrow culture on impressionable youth. Gran Torino is uncompromising in its use of racial slurs, yet at the same time it is often very funny (but never trivial), poignant, tragic and hopeful. It is the mark of a great filmmaker that can make a picture which makes the audience laugh, cry and think.

Eastwood is Walt Kowalski, a veteran of the Korean War, a tough as nails, stubborn as a goat, mean ol’ growling son of a bitch never afraid to tell it how he sees it even if it means using racial slurs (on everyone, even his Italian barber played by John Carroll Lynch) or rifle in hand, telling people to get the hell off his lawn. After Walt’s wife passed away the old man is even more suspect of those living in his neighborhood, namely anyone different than himself, specifically the Hmong people and the two-bit gangbangers that give them a bad name. Walt refuses to flee the neighborhood and always keeps a rifle or handgun nearby. It conjures memories of Eastwood the gunslinger from his spaghetti western pictures. Walt is a man seemingly living on an island as the world passes him by, yet he still has his dog Daisy and his prized possession, a 1972 emerald green Gran Torino which he had a hand in constructing at the Ford plant he worked at for 30 years.

The impetus for change is set in motion when one of Walt’s Hmong neighbors, Thao (Bee Vang) reluctantly tries to steal the Gran Torino as part of an initiation into his cousin’s gang. Naturally, Walt threatens to kill Thao and orders him off his lawn on another occasion. Walt gradually mellows (just a tad) toward Thao’s family and this is due mainly to Thao’s sister Sue (Ahney Her), a spirited young woman who brushes off Walt’s coarse behavior and helps him to understand the Hmong. Walt even becomes a hero to the Hmong locals when he scares away the Hmong gangbangers who confronted Thao at home. The Hmong shower him with flowers and food and generally make him feel uncomfortable as he’s treated like a king (although later he cannot help but accept a gift of chicken dumpling). They revere him because they know what would happen to Thao if he were to join his cousin’s gang. Young Hmong males mostly join street gangs and die young while the women go to college.

Most may come away from Gran Torino describing the picture as mainly a discussion of racism. Although, one of the film’s main themes is clearly racism, it is certainly not the only theme at work. Gran Torino shares much in common thematically with Eastwood’s masterpiece Million Dollar Baby (especially when looking at each film’s third acts) and also involves the church and a persistent young do-gooder priest (Christopher Carley). Whereas that film was concerned with a father-daughter relationship, Gran Torino delves a bit into an examination of the father-son relationship. Walt is never able to really relate to his sons primarily because he admits that he doesn’t know how to be that kind of father. He even admits to having more in common with his Hmong neighbors than his own family. Though he may never show it, Walt feels satisfaction in being a father figure to Thao in securing him a construction job and generally showing him how to act like a man and be confident around women.

Gran Torino deals with a subject which has been explored endlessly in cinema—the negative influence of gangs on youth. However, in this case the subject serves not only to show us how gangs are evil but to help Walt understand the Hmong. It is through this theme that Walt begins to understand that no matter one’s ethnicity, gangs and injustice in general, have a negative influence on one’s people. I think more than anything, injustice and rudeness disgust Walt.

Gran Torino may deal with themes that have been explored many times before, but it is the way that Eastwood plays with genre conventions that keep the audience guessing. There are at least two major instances in which we think something is certain to happen but are surprised by a simpler and more effective outcome. Lastly, let us not forget Eastwood’s excellent jazz score, fine invisible camera-like direction or his ability to coax admirable performances from the untrained Hmong actors. Gran Torino is yet another great entry in the Eastwood cannon and should not be missed. ****

Two for the Road

Revolutionary Road (2008)
Directed by Sam Mendes
Screenplay by Justin Haythe, based on the novel by Richard Yates.

If a little dreaming is dangerous, the cure for it is not to dream less but to dream more, to dream all the time.
-Marcel Proust

Some people are unhappy because they realize they could be working a job which gives them pleasure and fulfillment, being blissfully in love and living a passionate life. Many realize this is possible but few do anything about it. The few that try to achieve these ideals are our great romantics. These people must live and operate in a setting full of character and culture or they will suffocate. They feel and suffer more than others, yet they possess the innate gifts of expression and imagination- they are the dreamers.

Such is the case with Frank (Leonardo DiCaprio) and April (Kate Winslet), a young couple that appears happily married to others (especially to their archetype 1950’s married couple neighbors) but struggles to accept their prosaic suburban lifestyle in Connecticut in the 1950’s, an era when conformity ruled as many young people married after World War II, moved to the suburbs and started a family. Ironically, Frank and April met at a party where she was drawn to him because he was different. He didn’t know exactly what he wanted to do with his life but he knew it would be grand. Things didn’t turn out the way Frank had hoped as he nears thirty years old working the same dull office job his father worked for twenty years. Likewise, April’s ambitions of becoming an actress never panned out and she is instead relegated to producing dreadful school plays. Both are personal failures and naturally, it affects their relationship. April’s solution is to move the family to Paris where she will find a high paying job as a translator and Frank would have time to find himself.

More than anything Director Sam Mendes’ Revolutionary Road is built on marital conflict, a character-driven drama led by the charismatic DiCaprio and Winslet who can seemingly do no wrong in any role (Both have a penchant for taking on excellent projects). Although, to pigeonhole Revolutionary Road as a film merely concerned with suburbia as a hindrance to the American dream would be short-sighted. There are several subtexts below the surface.

The film examines the mundane moments in marriage, infidelity, pride in one’s occupation, familial responsibility, passionate love and the elements which are needed to maintain a happy and healthy relationship. DiCaprio and Winslet’s chemistry is strong throughout and despite the heavy subject matter at times and the mistakes made by each, it is difficult to take sides with one character. I say this because each character is flawed but wants what is best for each and the audience wishes only to see them happy.

The film boasts some fine supporting performances as well. The friendly but officious landlady Mrs. Givings played by Kathy Bates always seems to arrive at the Wheelers’ doorstep at inopportune times and she deals with conflict by ignoring it. This is in opposition to Frank and April having it out every so often in heated arguments. Mrs. Givings’ son John (Michael Shannon) provides some comic relief as a brilliant mathematician on leave from a mental institution. Ironically, John is the only one who fully understands why the Wheelers' desire to move to Paris. Others perceive it either as a hasty decision or fleeing from something at home.

All in all, Mendes’ latest effort is excellent, although it seems to be tickling greatness at times but cannot quite reach the next level of becoming a great film. It just seems to be one more memorable scene away from the necessary three once theorized by the great director Howard Hawks, although Revolutionary Road does have one of the subtlest, yet effective climaxes in recent cinematic history. To those who have seen the film I am not referencing the very last scene but the scene before it which is the real climax of the film in my estimation. In any case, Revolutionary Road is worth one’s time and money and will provoke plenty of thought and discussion. ***1/2

Ignoble

Nobel Son (2008)

Directed by Randall Miller.
Written by Jody Savin & Randall Miller.

* (out of 4)

Director Randall Miller’s Nobel Son features one very good performance in Alan Rickman’s deliciously degenerate lothario college professor Eli Michaelson, a man of high intellect and even greater ego. Unfortunately, there’s not too much else to like as the film’s plot and the schemes within are largely preposterous. It’s the tale of a Nobel Prize winner nobody likes in Rickman, his absented minded son, a sociopath kidnapper, $2 million dollars and an overwritten, over-the-top scheme. Miller lacks any artistic vision with the picture and scenes are often cobbled together to just get a reaction out of the audience (Though one cannot expect much from an individual who directed an episode of Salute Your Shorts).

The most embarrassing scene in the film involves Sarah Michaelson (Mary Steenburgen) the mother of a kidnapped graduate student (Bryan Greenberg) and a media circus on the Michaelson’s front lawn. How does Mrs. Michaelson rid her front lawn of a nosey female news anchor? She threatens the newswoman by pointing a gun at her through the picture window (this scene is even much more cringe-inducing than the radiologist scene in Juno). In true bad movie fashion, the police officers that were with the Michaelson’s do nothing to stop Mrs. Michaelson who has essentially committed a crime.

Even worse than this laugher of a scene is Miller’s use of house techno music to accompany much of the film, especially the frenetic montages which detail the scheme unfolding. The film is a poster child for Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) and the personification of the “MTV” style of direction which sadly permeates much of the 21^st century landscape of cinema. I think this haphazard style of direction persists because many film dilettantes misinterpret this “hands-on/in your face/look at me I’m directing” style of direction as somehow having post-modern qualities. Essentially this style is pseudo-postmodern crossed with terrible MTV reality show crossed with an overbearingly quirky commercial.

Naturally, Nobel Son is one of those films which try to make up for the deficiencies in its screenplay and direction by throwing an abundance of quirky characters at the audience. The aforementioned preposterous plot builds fairly OK up until a certain point when the viewers will most certainly question the changing motives and loyalties of the characters. Miller tries to disguise such idiocy by giving us characters like Barkley Michaelson, a graduate student doing his thesis on cannibalism, his love interest City Hall (Eliza Dushku) - a beautiful but mentally deranged “writer”, a clever kidnapper that becomes dumb midway through the movie (Shawn Hatosy), a friendly neighbor recovering from OCD (Danny DeVito) and a detective and Michaelson family friend in Max Mariner (Bill Pullman) who is always two steps behind the scheme (If you thought Pullman’s line readings in Independence Day were terrible…).

Outside of Rickman’s amusing role there is really nothing else to like about Nobel Son. Also, I’m not sure whether to attribute Rickman’s performance to the fine actor’s skill or the fact he may have been miserable working with such a putrid script and an inept director. One star goes to the film for Rickman but this is still a film one will want to avoid like the plague.

My Homage to Woody Allen's Manhattan

I was inspired by the opening of Woody's great film to create this short film of my own. The cinematography is not nearly as good as Gordon Willis' but I tried my best (shot with Sony Cybershot PSC D-73, $200 camera).

I hope you'll enjoy: