Wednesday, January 18, 2012
How do you solve a problem like J. Edgar?
By Edward Copeland
After watching J. Edgar, I prepared to write my usual review, assessing the film overall for its direction, writing, performances and other technical qualities, but something kept sticking in my mind, preventing me from focusing on those aspects. My brain kept drifting back to a different question, one that has puzzled me in many movies for a long time but that reared its ugly head — literally — once again as I watched J. Edgar. Why in the 21st century, with all of the advancements that have been made in visual effects, does old age makeup still turn up so often looking so laughably bad as it does? It does such a disservice to the performers trying to act beneath the horrible messes slapped upon their visages. How can you concentrate on the performances of Leonardo DiCaprio, Armie Hammer and Naomi Watts in their characters' later years when their faces have been marred by such silly appliances? It doesn't always hurt — Jennifer Connelly won an Oscar for A Beautiful Mind despite the awful makeup that covered her at the end of that movie (or, more recently, Kate Winslet's awful aging in The Reader). What's more mystifying is when you look back at a film such as Arthur Penn's Little Big Man in 1970 and how great the old-age makeup on Dustin Hoffman was in that film. Enough on that subject. With that off my chest, I believe I'm ready to discuss the rest of J. Edgar now, truly a mixed bag of a movie if ever there were one.
John Edgar Hoover served as the first director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, an agency whose creation he spearheaded in 1935 after leading its predecessor, the Bureau of Investigation, since 1924. Between the two bureaus, Hoover held the top job for nearly 50 years and in eight presidential administrations from Coolidge to Nixon. Hoover truly defined what it meant to be a man of contradictions. He led the way in modernizing many crucial techniques in criminal investigations such as fingerprinting and forensics but also frequently stepped outside the law to amass information on perceived enemies, either to himself or the country. His private life contained its own secrets, namely his close, perhaps gay, relationship with top assistant Clyde Tolson. At least as the movie portrays it, Hoover's paranoia about being gay stemmed from his mother, who once told him, "I would rather have a dead son than a daffodil for a son."
To compress a life full full of such huge historical events alongside the inner life of a man would be a challenge for any screenwriter and any director. While Dustin Lance Black (Oscar-winning writer of Milk) and two-time Oscar-winning director Clint Eastwood give it the old college try in J. Edgar, the sheer weight of all those years and all that material crushes them, leaving the film somewhat rudderless despite good performances.
Black's screenplay structures Hoover's life around the premise of a 1960s era Hoover (well-played by Leonardo DiCaprio, even beneath the hideous makeup) dictating his version of the events of his life to the first of several young agents, embellishing as he did in real life how much credit he deserved for various FBI triumphs. He practically claims to have shot and killed John Dillinger outside the movie theater himself, though he omits how in a pique he punished the agent who actually ended the '30s era bank robber's crime spree. Hoover, so closed-up and concerned about how he was perceived, would be a difficult role for any actor to pull off, so I don't think everyone realizes what a great job DiCaprio accomplishes here outside of those few rare moments of faint tenderness he allows himself to share with Clyde Tolson (equally well-played by Armie Hammer, so good as the Winklevoss twins in David Fincher's brilliant The Social Network.)
Because so much happened in U.S. history between 1924 and 1972, it would be damn near impossible to hit on everything that Hoover touched so the film concentrates on Communist radicals in the U.S. following the Russian Revolution, the kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby and the war on the criminals such as Dillinger in the 1930s. It also hits upon Hoover's efforts to form the FBI in the first place.
The uncertainty of his relationship with Tolson gives the film some heart. There's one scene where after a dinner together when the two men ride off together, Hoover nervously places his hand on Tolson's that's reminiscent of scenes in Jean-Jacques Annaud's The Lover and Martin Scorsese's The Age of Innocence.
Some of the more unsavory sides of Hoover's nature get short shrift such as his plans to sabotage Martin Luther King with stories of infidelity and Communist associates thinking it will get King to refuse his Nobel Peace Prize. He gets one scene with Robert Kennedy (Jeffrey Donovan) where he shows him evidence of sexual excess he has on his brother but nothing more comes of it until he hears of JFK's assassination, call his brother and tells him the president has been shot and hangs up.
Judi Dench and Naomi Watts turn in solid performances as the two important women in Hoover's life. Dench plays his mother whom Hoover lived with until her death and you see where most of his psychological blocks formed. Watts gives a subtle turn as Helen Gandy, Hoover's lifelong secretary who has as little interest in men or a family life as Hoover does in women. The film also shows her shredding Hoover's secret files upon his death while Nixon's men search frantically for them.
Aside for the dreadful makeup, J. Edgar looks exquisite in terms of cinematography, costumes and production design. Eastwood does his best trying to keep the film moving as it bounces between the various time periods, but the flaws with J. Edgar run deeper. The film lacks a compass, moral or otherwise, and desperately needs a point of view about Hoover. Imagine if this were an Oliver Stone film. Granted, his one brief touch on Hoover in Nixon had Bob Hoskins portraying him French-kissing Wilson Cruz as a pool boy, but that film itself was a surprisingly well-rounded look at Nixon himself.
J. Edgar, while DiCaprio turns in a very good performance in spite of the constraints, doesn't present a well-rounded Hoover. Everything the film has to say about the man seems drawn from quick pencil sketches on a napkin. DiCaprio manages to bring a depth to Hoover that the screenplay itself doesn't supply. In fact, based on the script's portrait, J. Edgar Hoover comes off as a smart but paranoid Forrest Gump who happened to be present at many of the key moments of the U.S. in the 20th century. Someone as consequential and important as he was, for both good and ill, needed a treatment that went beyond a Cliffs Notes version.
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Labels: 10s, Arthur Penn, Dench, DiCaprio, Dustin Hoffman, Eastwood, Fincher, Jennifer Connelly, Naomi Watts, Oliver Stone, Scorsese, Winslet
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Friday, January 07, 2011
You will see Woody go through the motions — again
By Edward Copeland
At the outset of Woody Allen's You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, the film's omniscient narrator (Zak Orth) quotes Shakespeare's famous MacBeth line about life being full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. It's hardly the only thing that's familiar about the movie, but it is one of the few steals that receives an audible footnote.
Sadly, You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger begins as if it might be a good one. Perhaps it's the fact that it opened with so little noise that my expectations were nonexistent or maybe those tried-but-true white-on-black opening credits still contain enough juice to transport me back to the days when a new Woody Allen film almost inevitably meant you were about to see something worthwhile.
Unfortunately, the longer the film goes on, the more it seems as if Woody has concocted another time waster without purpose. He still assembles talented and interesting casts, but it ends up playing like another case of a writer-director who has simply run out of things to say.
Like most of his recent films, Allen sets his latest relationship comedy in a European locale, this time returning to London. You can change the buildings, the cities — even the accents — but it's becoming clear that you can't teach this old filmmaker new tricks. This isn't the case with all directors who have entered their golden years. (Look no further than Alain Resnais' Wild Grass. Better yet, perhaps Woody Allen should, for inspiration if nothing else.)
The title refers to forecasts that Helena (Gemma Jones, who gives the film's best performance) gets from a fake fortune teller (Pauline Collins) to help her cope after her husband Alfie (Anthony Hopkins) divorces her in a few-decades-too-late midlife crisis. Their daughter Sally (Naomi Watts) indulges Helena, even though it drives Sally's husband Roy (Josh Brolin) crazy. "She needs medicine, not illusions," Roy tells his wife.
Roy isn't on firm ground realitywise either. He completed medical school but instead of becoming a doctor, decided he was meant to write. After one successful novel though, he's just spent years rewriting and struggling to re-create the feat with dense and unreadable followups. He also has become obsessed with the guitar-playing beauty (Freida Pinto) he spies from his apartment window.
Tired of depending on her overbearing mother to pay their bills, Sally takes on a job as assistant to an art gallery owner (Antonio Banderas) whom she develops a crush on when she hears he's unhappily married. Meanwhile, her father impulsively marries a young golddigger (Lucy Punch), who seems as if she's a knockoff of Mira Sorvino's Mighty Aphrodite character, only swapping ditzy charm for hateful spite and lacking any humorous appeal to make up the difference.
It's all very, very familiar from movies both inside and outside the Woody universe. What's particularly discouraging is that not only is the territory terribly reminiscent of things we've seen before and often, many of the story's turns have been used so frequently in so many stories that most can be seen coming a mile away.
Fortunately, You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger is short and doesn't lag much, despite its predictability, though it doesn't have the flow of Woody's best ensemble pieces. Hopkins' storyline in particular, even though his character has close ties to the others, seems as if it's sealed off from the rest of the movie most of the time.
When the film finally wraps, Orth's narrator returns to tell us it's time to close the book on this tale of sound and fury signifying nothing. Of course, the full MacBeth quote says that life is a tale told by an idiot. Woody Allen isn't an idiot, but he is a filmmaker who has been running on fumes for a long time now. He's made so many great films that I still dream that he has at least one more great work in him, but with each new film I grow more pessimistic about that possibility.
Oh, well. Hope springs eternal.
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Labels: 10s, Banderas, Hopkins, Josh Brolin, Naomi Watts, Resnais, Shakespeare, Woody
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Monday, January 03, 2011
This film is more than all right
By Edward Copeland
While all the buzz surrounding Annette Bening this year has circled her solid work in the overrated The Kids Are All Right, she turns in a much-better performance as the largest figure in another superb 2010 ensemble, the one assembled by writer-director Rodrigo Garcia in the criminally overlooked Mother and Child.
The Kids Are All Right and Mother and Child have more than just Bening in common: Both films' plots concern adoption. In Mother and Child, it tells three central stories: Karen (Bening), who gave up a daughter she gave birth to at 14; Elizabeth (Naomi Watts), a lawyer with the inability to form permanent relationships who was given up for adoption as a baby; and Lucy (Kerry Washington), who is determined to adopt a child since she and her husband Joseph (David Ramsey) can't conceive.
Beyond the three main characters, this film's rich cast includes Eileen Ryan, Cherry Jones, Jimmy Smits, Elpidia Carrillo, Carla Gallo, Marc Blucas, S. Epatha Merkerson, Shareeka Epps, David Morse, Amy Brenneman, Elizabeth Pena, Lawrence Pressman and, in his best and most unique performance in ages, Samuel L. Jackson as Watts' boss at her law firm. Ahmed Best even turns up in a small role without a trace of Jar-Jar Binks.
I hate to keep comparing Mother and Child to The Kids Are All Right, but the first film so perfectly illustrates the problems I had with the second. Both are blessed with excellent casts (the difference being that Mother and Child's group of players is much larger), but whereas in Kids the acting saves an inferior and predictable script, in Mother and Child, the performers only enhance Garcia's screenplay, which did surprise me in several spots with the turns it made. On top of that, since the underlying structure proves so much stronger, Mother and Child affected me far more emotionally than Kids, which felt as if it were running through its story by rote.
Still, though there isn't a weak link in the cast, some individual praise must be doled out. Bening has given herself a helluva year, even if I didn't care for her other big movie. She's been good for a long time, but too often as she's aged, she's seemed stuck in a shrill sort of mode in films ranging from American Beauty to the wretched Running With Scissors. With Karen here and Nic in The Kids Are All Right, she gives relaxed performances that seem as if they mark new territory for her. What's even better is that for an actress who started out as a sex bomb who could act in films such as The Grifters, these two films show her unafraid to age on film and with so many actresses warping their facial muscles into misuse, that alone deserves accolades.
Watts, who almost always turns in a good performance as well, gives one of her best here as Elizabeth. Coming so soon after I saw her competent work as Valerie Plame in Fair Game, Elizabeth in Mother and Child is a wonder. This may be her best turn since she first gained notice in David Lynch's Mulholland Dr.
As I mentioned earlier, it's really refreshing to see Jackson in the part he plays here. I can't remember the last movie I saw him in in which he didn't shout. His part isn't large, but it isn't showy either and it's just good to see him be instead of BE. I'd also be remiss if I didn't specifically mention Cherry Jones. I never got to see her in the stage version of Doubt and Meryl Streep took her role as the nun in the film version, but she does get to don a habit here, though at least this sister is a kind and conscientious one.
Garcia directs the film well, keeping the film moving smoothly as it segues between its stories, though it's his script that's the real star here. Mother and Child deserves more attention than it received.
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Labels: 10s, Bening, D. Morse, Lynch, Naomi Watts, Samuel L. Jackson, Streep, Theater
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Saturday, January 01, 2011
And yet no one went to jail
By Edward Copeland
Reliving the Valerie Plame affair in Fair Game, based on the books written by Plame herself and her husband Joe Wilson, if you didn't have any anger before over what the Bush White House did to a loyal CIA agent in the name of politics and a war they wanted no matter what the facts were, that old rage will well up once again. In Doug Liman's film, it comes up even more so because before we get to the events of the leak of Plame's covert status, we actually see what her job entailed and what the Bush politicos callously threw away for their own warped reasons and the cost it took in American lives, those of other intelligence sources and, of course, the truth. Still, no one who committed crimes (and crimes were committed) went to jail for their roles. It's outrageous and the film will make that outrage feel fresh once again.
Naomi Watts stars as Plame and Sean Penn plays Wilson (in one of his least-mannered performances) and while many of the details of the film will be familiar to anyone who watched the episode unfold in the media, what makes director Doug Liman's film most interesting are the details that were left by the wayside.
Fair Game begins by showing us Plame at work for the agency, making frequent secret trips overseas making contacts and protecting sources in the battle against weapons proliferation. Her husband knows her real job, but her friends believe she works for a phony business service. Early on, at the behest of the Defense Department, her section gets contacted to check out stories on aluminum tubes supposedly sought by Saddam Hussein and the possibility that Saddam had tried to acquire yellowcake uranium from Niger.
Never mind that the aluminum tube story had been investigated and disputed long before since the equipment was horribly outdated and unacceptable for uranium enrichment, the Bush White House pressures the CIA to check it out again. As it happens, Wilson, the last American to meet Saddam face-to-face and someone who had strong contacts with high-ranking officials in Niger, is suggested as someone who could check out the African side of the story. Plame admits her husband's expertise in the area, but that's the extent of her involvement in his getting the assignment.
Wilson takes the trip to Niger and finds that it would be logistically impossible to remove that large an amount of yellowcake from the country without leaving physical or written evidence. He returns, issues his report that the story is a nonstarter and believes that it's the end of it. Unfortunately, the Bush gang, represented especially by the unctuous Scooter Libby (played to smarmy perfection by David Andrews) are ghouls who can't say no and, much to Wilson's surprise, President Bush says those 16 words that mean so much in his 2002 State of the Union speech about Saddam attempting to acquire quantities of uranium from Africa.
Just to be certain, Wilson calls a source of his to make certain that Bush isn't referring to a different African country than Niger, but no, that's the lie that's being spun, followed by the big p.r. push from Cheney, Rice and the gang about not letting the "smoking gun be a mushroom cloud." An outraged Wilson pens the infamous op-ed in The New York Times about what he didn't find in Niger and the White House declares war on him and his wife, including outing her identity as a CIA operative in Robert Novak's column, which still is a crime.
The rest of the story should be fairly familiar to anyone who followed it, but if you've forgotten some of the details, you are certain to get riled once again (and to question the wisdom of the Obama Administration for letting sleeping liars sleep free for the crimes they committed).
Still, as well known as the tale is, Fair Game proves quite compelling thanks to a solid cast and Liman's solid direction. Of course, the true Bush believers will have no interest and partisans already will have been converted, but those who are fuzzy on the facts owe it to themselves to see this film. A little history never hurt anybody.
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Labels: 10s, Naomi Watts, Sean Penn
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Saturday, July 24, 2010
From the Vault: Mulholland Drive
Twin Peaks co-creator Mark Frost once said the TV series he spawned with David Lynch was more about the journey than the destination. That sums up Lynch's film career, from Eraserhead through his exquisite G-rated surprise, The Straight Story, to his latest release, Mulholland Drive.
Mulholland Drive began life as a television series. After ABC passed on the two-hour pilot, Lynch got financing to expand the film into a stand-alone theatrical release. Lynch's new film returns to the land of dreams and nightmares, self-parody and general silliness that is a joy when it works (as in Twin Peaks on television) but unbearable when it doesn't (see Lost Highway).
In many respects, Mulholland Drive turns out to be his most satisfying excursion into this realm.
It's pointless to describe the story of Mulholland Drive, which, in vague terms, tells a story of Hollywood focusing on a troubled director and two women, one an aspiring actress, the other an amnesiac.
However, the plot is just an excuse to explore Lynch's recurring theme of duality and, in some cases, multiplicity.
As is the case in most of Lynch's work, his cast is at the mercy of his whims, so much so that you're uncertain about their talent. This time, Lynch proves his point within the same film, most notably with Naomi Watts as the naive, wanna-be starlet.
Watts' performance is so wide-eyed that she sparks laughs as she uncovers Hollywood's seamier side. The tables are turned on the audience when Watts replays a scene in a casting director's office, putting an unexpected spin on dialogue the viewer heard only moments before.
Mulholland Drive isn't perfect. The first hour and a half is spellbinding, but it wears out its welcome in its final hour as it spins in darker, less coherent directions.
Then again, Lynch has produced another movie as fever-dream, and logic doesn't apply. If you're not a Lynch fan, Mulholland Drive will prove frustrating. If you are, sit back and enjoy the ride.
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Labels: 00s, Lynch, Naomi Watts, Twin Peaks
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Friday, June 26, 2009
The Wright stuff
By Edward Copeland
After having sat so recently through the pointlessness of the "thriller" Taken, Tom Tykwer's The International engaged my brain and my senses more than it probably had any right to, but I'll take two hours of riveting, if muddled at times, intelligent thrillmaking to an hour of mindless violence (let's face it: Taken's first half-hour was just domestic squabbling to stretch out the running time) any day.
Tykwer, who had showed his stuff with films such as Run Lola Run and The Princess and the Warrior, teams Clive Owen and Naomi Watts as an Interpol agent and an investigator in the NYC district attorney's office trying to take down an international bank involved in some worldwide arms dealing. Get this: the film doesn't even try to shoehorn a romance between its attractive leads into its compelling story.
The film also works as a wonderful travelogue bouncing to recognizable sites around the world. I hate to keep going back to Taken since the plots of the two films are so different, but where Liam Neeson's character never runs into any roadblocks in his quest in that film, Owen and Watts seem to be thwarted every moment they start to get somewhere and it only ratchets up the suspense.
What's even braver of Tykwer and the script by Eric Warren Singer is that it has the guts for ambiguity in its ending.
All the actors are strong in the film, including supporting turns by Armin Mueller-Stahl and Jack McGee, but Owen really powers the enterprise. His obsessed, running-on-fumes agent with a checkered past is a great character turn instead of your standard leading man action hero turn. Watts doesn't get as much to do, but she does fine as well.
Tykwer's direction is taut and the film's fabled Guggenheim Museum setpiece deserves the kudos it received. It earns comparisons to Hitchcock, not because the film, as good as it is, is anywhere near his level but by using such a recognizable landmark for an exciting piece of cinema.
If the thought of a new Michael Bay-directed large-pieces-of metal-blow- things-up-real-good turd deafening theatergoers this weekend depresses you, stay home and save your ears and your brain cells by watching The International instead.
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Labels: 00s, Clive Owen, Hitchcock, Liam Neeson, Naomi Watts
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Monday, March 09, 2009
All Around the World
By Jonathan Pacheco
Apparently, I'm a bit of a Tom Tykwer fan and never knew it. His name sounded familiar to me, and it was only when I looked up his credentials that I realized why: he's made some darn good films. The director is responsible for the uber-hip Run Lola Run, The Princess and the Warrior, Heaven (a part of Kieslowski's final, somewhat posthumous trilogy), and most importantly to me, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer. Tykwer has a little bit of an identity as a certain type of filmmaker, so I was a bit surprised to see him taking on a film, The International, that at first glance is much more mainstream — a thriller about an Interpol agent, Salinger (Clive Owen), and an American Assistant District Attorney, Eleanor (Naomi Watts), investigating the corruption of a major international bank.
I really have to take a moment and highlight the cinematography of this film. Like a lot of the best camera and lighting work, the cinematography of Frank Griebe (who also shot the gorgeous Perfume) blends into the theme of The International, only revealing itself as truly outstanding when you take a moment to reflect on it. The muted colors, mostly blues, whites, and shades of grey, fit perfectly into the world of banks, Interpol, and corporate conspiracy. Many of the shots were backlit by bright, overexposed sunshine bursting through giant glass corporate windows, creating semi-silhouettes out of each character. There were also a few moving shots that surprised me in their duration and direction. If you think of your typical TV show such as Fringe or CSI, you’ll notice that they contain dozens of aerial establishing shots of major downtown areas. The camera flies over Boston or Las Vegas for all of two seconds, and then we cut to the scene down below. The shots are basic, possibly stock, and really have no punch or zip. I noticed a few times that The International took this idea and went just a little bit further. In one instance, it took the same idea, using those “generic” helicopter shots, but instead of cutting once it establishes the location, it keeps moving, passing over the tallest building, tilting down to reveal action behind it, below on the streets.
It establishes a general setting (the city), but rather than settling for that, it moves beyond the typical shot and reveals action behind what you thought was important. This could be taken as a sort of metaphor for the film (moving beyond the big shiny high-rise to reveal the reality behind it), but I think it mainly stems from a love of architecture, either from the cinematographer or the director. There are many "beauty shots" of buildings, a pivotal sequence takes place in the spiraling Guggenheim, and, in one of my favorite shots of the film, we are treated to an overhead view of a political rally gone wrong. When an attack takes place at an Italian plaza, we get a rather symmetrical bird’s-eye shot of the stage and surrounding area, almost as if we’re looking at a blueprint while hundreds of tiny people dash in every direction.
All of these can seem like relatively insignificant and minor tweaks to a cinematography scheme that we seem to know so well, but that’s the point; tweaks here and changes there can create such a satisfyingly fresh visual experience without having to be I Am Cuba or Watchmen.
But a film shall not live on cinematography alone. While I won't pretend to know anything about international banks beyond what this film spoon-fed me, I could see that the story that resides underneath the visual surface isn't airtight, nor is the story-telling, as seemingly important developments, tangents, and theories are abandoned in favor of shiny new plot turns. While it sounds frustrating, it's not something I noticed until after the film was over, finding myself thinking, "Hey, what ever happened to that one thing? They never explored that...."
In a way, it's as if the writer, Eric Singer, had a few scenes and lines that he knew he wanted in the final product, regardless if they fit. That's the only reason I can think that an investigative thriller would turn into a straight shoot-'em-up just for one long sequence. Or why every once in a while, in the middle of a very natural conversation, a character will rattle off a line that sounds like it came from an inspirational poster. The character of Eleanor is almost exclusively compromised of these scripted lines, relegating the talented Watts to uttering dialogue like, "We just had a major breakthrough in the case!" and "Let's make sure he didn't die in vain...." Not all is as cliched as it sounds, though. The film makes some very smart choices, such as underplaying the connection that Eleanor and Salinger have. At times, it was a bit refreshing, really.
The point is that The International is engaging, if in ways that are slightly different than what you've come to expect, and even if it's not a film that will linger with me for very long. Tykwer has done greater work, but he's not too shabby here either.
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Labels: 00s, Clive Owen, Naomi Watts
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Monday, March 03, 2008
Not ha-ha funny (Deja vu)
By Edward Copeland
The Tonys have a general eligibility rule for their awards when it comes to Broadway revivals: If the staging is essentially the same and by the same director as the original production, he or she is ineligible. The same applies to performers if they are playing the same role they did before.
Michael Haneke's American remake of his own 1997 film Funny Games brings this to mind since except for a new cast and a new language, it is nearly a shot-by-shot recreation of his original film.
Since the two versions are so similar, all you can really compare are the casts. Both sets perform particularly well, especially Naomi Watts, though I still prefer Susanne Lothar in the original.
Tim Roth gets the role of the father this time, but it's nearly as underdeveloped as Ulrich Muhe's was in the original, though Muhe managed to bring more to it.
Michael Pitt and Brady Corbet as Peter and Paul/Tom and Jerry/Beavis and Butt-head in the new version pretty much end up in a draw with Arno Frisch and Frank Giering in the original.
The problem with remaking Funny Games is that it probably will only work for those who haven't seen the original. It's so much like the original version that it's as if you're watching the same film again and this is not a movie that gets better the more you see it.
Its points seem more obvious and some of the breaking of the fourth wall and other tricks seem even more gimmicky the second time around. The differences between Haneke's two versions are so minimal that I'd tell anyone planning to watch one to quit after one.
Personally, I found the original a little better simply because it was new, but if someone starts with the remake, they will likely have a better reaction to it and should skip the original.
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The Tonys have a general eligibility rule for their awards when it comes to Broadway revivals: If the staging is essentially the same and by the same director as the original production, he or she is ineligible. The same applies to performers if they are playing the same role they did before.
Michael Haneke's American remake of his own 1997 film Funny Games brings this to mind since except for a new cast and a new language, it is nearly a shot-by-shot recreation of his original film.
Since the two versions are so similar, all you can really compare are the casts. Both sets perform particularly well, especially Naomi Watts, though I still prefer Susanne Lothar in the original.
Tim Roth gets the role of the father this time, but it's nearly as underdeveloped as Ulrich Muhe's was in the original, though Muhe managed to bring more to it.
Michael Pitt and Brady Corbet as Peter and Paul/Tom and Jerry/Beavis and Butt-head in the new version pretty much end up in a draw with Arno Frisch and Frank Giering in the original.
The problem with remaking Funny Games is that it probably will only work for those who haven't seen the original. It's so much like the original version that it's as if you're watching the same film again and this is not a movie that gets better the more you see it.
Its points seem more obvious and some of the breaking of the fourth wall and other tricks seem even more gimmicky the second time around. The differences between Haneke's two versions are so minimal that I'd tell anyone planning to watch one to quit after one.
Personally, I found the original a little better simply because it was new, but if someone starts with the remake, they will likely have a better reaction to it and should skip the original.
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Labels: 00s, Haneke, Naomi Watts, Remakes
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Friday, September 21, 2007
Raging borscht
By Edward Copeland
David Cronenberg's latest film Eastern Promises presents a bit of a conundrum for me. I really liked it for the most part and it contains superb performances, especially from Viggo Mortensen and Armin Mueller-Stahl, yet somehow, it keeps you from completely embracing it. It's a film I enjoyed, if that's the right word, yet somehow it left me feeling empty and I'm not sure I'd rush out to see it again anytime soon because it seems to lack layers that deserved to be plumbed further.
The film takes place in a section of London dominated by exiled Russians, many of whom have transferred their criminal enterprises to England after having been chased out of their homeland years ago under Communist rule.
Mortensen stars as Nikolai, a driver for a prominent mob family who run their operations beneath the cover of a high-scale Russian restaurant. Nikolai mainly works for Kirill (Vincent Cassel), the ne'er do well scion of the family's boss Semyon (Mueller-Stahl).
Mueller-Stahl is a great character actor whom I forget about far too often for his consistently fine work until I see a performance like this. He perfectly knits a kindly yet sinister aura around Semyon and employs many nice touches, such as a scene where the mere click-click-click of his tongue proves ominous.
The essential story concerns a young Russian girl who dies while giving birth, prompting a hospital midwife (Naomi Watts) to try to find her family by translating her diary. Watts' character is half-Russian, with a British mom (Sinead Cusack), a late Russian father and a feisty and racist Russian uncle (Jerzy Skolimowski) who believes the dead deserve their secrets.
Watts is fine, but her character is very underdeveloped. There is a thread mentioned of a lost child of her own, but it, much like her entire character, seems more like a plot device than a person. However, the male actors such as Skolimowski and Cassel really get to shine.
Still, the star is Mortensen and this may be his finest performance, even if the film itself doesn't equal his collaboration with Cronenberg on A History of Violence. This is Cronenberg's second film in a row that downplays the gore a bit as well as his obsession with female genitalia, both real and symbolic. Now, Mortensen does get the well-publicized fight scene where he's fully nude, but this definitely is Cronenberg on slow simmer.
In fact, that's part of the problem with Eastern Promises. Nikolai is icy cool and it seems very appropriate, but the entire film seems to be set at the temperature of a Siberian gulag, depriving the audience of some expected payoffs. In fact, at times Eastern Promises veers perilously close to parody, but it never crosses the line. (I do have to admit though that the first shot of Watts riding her motorcycle in black reminded me of the introduction of Steve Martin in Little Shop of Horrors.)
In the end, I'm not sure where to come down on Eastern Promises. It was worth watching, if only for the performances and some of Cronenberg's touches, but the icy chill it cast on me left me as ambiguous about its worth as its ending.
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Labels: 00s, Cronenberg, Naomi Watts, Viggo Mortensen
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Friday, January 27, 2006
King Loooooooooooooooong
By Edward Copeland
Great special effects alone does not a good movie make. This is most decidedly the case with Peter Jackson's bloated remake of King Kong. As a general rule, I try to avoid remakes of good and great films on principle, but with the mostly positive reviews of King Kong, I finally relented and watched it. I should have stuck by my initial thoughts.
That's not to say there isn't a lot to admire in Jackson's film — as one would expect, the technical work is outstanding — but the 3 hour running time is absolutely ridiculous. I'm sure it might be possible to make a 3 hour thrill ride, but not when the main attraction of the ride doesn't show up until after an hour and 10 minutes of exposition.
Some critics have tried to make the comparison that Jackson's choice not to show us the great ape until more than an hour into the movie is akin to Steven Spielberg holding off on showing us the shark in Jaws. Setting aside the fact that the delay in showing the shark had more to do with technical problems than a plan, there are two important differences: 1) the shark is always a presence, even if you don't see it and 2) the surrounding story and characters are so involving in Jaws that it doesn't matter.
Unlike the Hobbitologists out there who believe that Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy was some kind of holy sign sent to humans in the form of three way-too-long movies, I wasn't a big fan of the films. I thought the first installment was good, but not great and I didn't care much for parts two and three, even while I admired parts of all the films.
It seems that getting away with three blockbusters in a row than ran more than three hours went to Jackson's head — because there is no reason King Kong needs to be this long. The great 1933 version told the whole story in barely more than 90 minutes — and it's still the best version. In fact, if it weren't for the great effects and outstanding art direction and cinematography, I can't say that Jackson's version is that substantially better than the 1976 remake.
I remember standing in line to see the 1976 version — I was 7 years old and had not yet developed my anti-remake philosophy — and though I eventually realized its lameness, it did have some things that were superior to Jackson's version. While Naomi Watts is a huge improvement on Jessica Lange, I can't say that Adrien Brody and Jack Black are really better than Jeff Bridges and Charles Grodin were in their similar 1976 roles.
In fact, Watts is probably the best non-effect in this movie. You have to suffer from a one-scene romance between her and Brody that really belongs in a movie of the 1930s, but thankfully Watts' Ann Darrow really seems to grow to care for the giant ape — and who can blame her? Kong has more charisma and depth than Brody's character does.
While there are some great action sequences, I found that even some of the effects looked phonier than they should — especially the dinosaur stampede on the island. (Sidenote: a friend of mine pointed out than in all the versions of this story, it's odd that everyone goes crazy about the giant ape but no one seems compelled to mention that there is an island that has living dinosaurs on it.)
Another thing that I think was a little better in the 1976 version is that it at least included scenes that showed Kong on the ship sailing back to New York. Jackson's version cheats — we see Kong passed out and captured, but there is nothing to indicate how they get him on the ship or if anything happens on the ship. The next scene has us back in New York for Kong's Broadway debut, though I'm sure Jackson probably has those scenes in the can for the inevitable extended 4-hour DVD version.
Don't get me wrong — I don't think the 1976 version was good either. In fact, the most memorable thing to come out of that version for me was a Colorform play kit that I wish I still had, if only to have a tangible, iconic version of the World Trade Center I could hold in my hands now.
Even though Jackson's film has made a lot of money, it's considered a financial disappointment in the United States. Hopefully, Jackson has learned a lesson — a movie doesn't have to be long just because you can get away with making it long.
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TO READ ON, CLICK HERE
Great special effects alone does not a good movie make. This is most decidedly the case with Peter Jackson's bloated remake of King Kong. As a general rule, I try to avoid remakes of good and great films on principle, but with the mostly positive reviews of King Kong, I finally relented and watched it. I should have stuck by my initial thoughts.
That's not to say there isn't a lot to admire in Jackson's film — as one would expect, the technical work is outstanding — but the 3 hour running time is absolutely ridiculous. I'm sure it might be possible to make a 3 hour thrill ride, but not when the main attraction of the ride doesn't show up until after an hour and 10 minutes of exposition.
Some critics have tried to make the comparison that Jackson's choice not to show us the great ape until more than an hour into the movie is akin to Steven Spielberg holding off on showing us the shark in Jaws. Setting aside the fact that the delay in showing the shark had more to do with technical problems than a plan, there are two important differences: 1) the shark is always a presence, even if you don't see it and 2) the surrounding story and characters are so involving in Jaws that it doesn't matter.
Unlike the Hobbitologists out there who believe that Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy was some kind of holy sign sent to humans in the form of three way-too-long movies, I wasn't a big fan of the films. I thought the first installment was good, but not great and I didn't care much for parts two and three, even while I admired parts of all the films.
It seems that getting away with three blockbusters in a row than ran more than three hours went to Jackson's head — because there is no reason King Kong needs to be this long. The great 1933 version told the whole story in barely more than 90 minutes — and it's still the best version. In fact, if it weren't for the great effects and outstanding art direction and cinematography, I can't say that Jackson's version is that substantially better than the 1976 remake.
I remember standing in line to see the 1976 version — I was 7 years old and had not yet developed my anti-remake philosophy — and though I eventually realized its lameness, it did have some things that were superior to Jackson's version. While Naomi Watts is a huge improvement on Jessica Lange, I can't say that Adrien Brody and Jack Black are really better than Jeff Bridges and Charles Grodin were in their similar 1976 roles.
In fact, Watts is probably the best non-effect in this movie. You have to suffer from a one-scene romance between her and Brody that really belongs in a movie of the 1930s, but thankfully Watts' Ann Darrow really seems to grow to care for the giant ape — and who can blame her? Kong has more charisma and depth than Brody's character does.
While there are some great action sequences, I found that even some of the effects looked phonier than they should — especially the dinosaur stampede on the island. (Sidenote: a friend of mine pointed out than in all the versions of this story, it's odd that everyone goes crazy about the giant ape but no one seems compelled to mention that there is an island that has living dinosaurs on it.)
Another thing that I think was a little better in the 1976 version is that it at least included scenes that showed Kong on the ship sailing back to New York. Jackson's version cheats — we see Kong passed out and captured, but there is nothing to indicate how they get him on the ship or if anything happens on the ship. The next scene has us back in New York for Kong's Broadway debut, though I'm sure Jackson probably has those scenes in the can for the inevitable extended 4-hour DVD version.
Don't get me wrong — I don't think the 1976 version was good either. In fact, the most memorable thing to come out of that version for me was a Colorform play kit that I wish I still had, if only to have a tangible, iconic version of the World Trade Center I could hold in my hands now.
Even though Jackson's film has made a lot of money, it's considered a financial disappointment in the United States. Hopefully, Jackson has learned a lesson — a movie doesn't have to be long just because you can get away with making it long.
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Labels: 00s, Grodin, J. Lange, Jeff Bridges, Naomi Watts, Peter Jackson, Remakes, Spielberg
TO READ ON, CLICK HERE
