Having watched way too many movies in addition to the recent finales of Battlestar Galactica, Heroes, Veronica Mars, Lost, The Office, and Scrubs, and the upcoming ones of The Sopranos and Entourage, here are some reviews.
Far and away the best movie we've seen this year is Hot Fuzz, from the same people who brought you Shaun of the Dead. Lest you think this is some bizarre pick, I'll note that it's currently #109 on the IMBD Top 250, and the only release this year to top it so far is Grindhouse, which we haven't seen. Hot Fuzz is just about the perfect British humor takedown of American action movies that the world has ever seen. Based around a supercop from London sent to the perfectly idyllic countryside for making his colleagues look bad by comparison, the movie somehow manages to provide two different satires of the same genre. In the first half, we have the subtle brilliance of a film edited like an action film, with all the quick cuts, slow-mos, multiple angles, and other familiar tricks, even though nothing in particular is happening other than some brilliant jokes and physical gags. In the second half, when all hell breaks loose, we have shootouts, fistfights, explosions, and cruel but hilarious imitations of the two best cop movies ever (their judgment, not mine), Bad Boys 2 and Point Break (any film that allows its actors to mock Keanu Reeves scores bonus points in my book). Hot Fuzz is probably the first film in years to have multiple "fall out of your chair" moments, and is basically a must see if you possess any kind of sense of humor.
Pirates of the Caribbean 3 is a big, exciting mess, never really making much sense but delivering a decent number of laughs and gorgeously filmed action scenes. It's probably worth seeing on the big screen, since it just won't seem as impressive on a small screen. Shrek 3 is a smaller movie, funny but a bit less consistent than either of its predecessors, and can probably be safely waited upon until it comes out on video.
From the Netflix releases, I have to give some props to "Happiness of the Katakuris", a truly bizarre Japanese movies that plays like a cross between The Sound of Music and The Evil Dead. The claymation (?!?) parts make it even stranger. I'd try to describe it further, but it really doesn't make any sense. We were pretty disappointed by The Weather Man, which didn't really go anywhere at all, and Munich, which did, but took way too long to get there. The Squid and the Whale was understated but very good, personal as only well-told semi-autobiographical works can be, with a good performance from Jeff Bridges, among others. Confetti, starring Martin Freeman (Tim from the British version of The Office), was a good quirky British comedy, and we were surprised how much we liked Now You Know, directed by Jeff Anderson (Randall from Clerks), which basically slots into the subgenre of "quirky comedies about life in New Jersey that feel a deep ambivalence toward the Garden State".
Harry Potter #5 (the movie) comes out on July 11, 10 days before Book 7 appears in print. More on films then.
Showing posts with label Movies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Movies. Show all posts
Sunday, June 3, 2007
Thursday, March 22, 2007
Truth twenty-four times a second #4: The Lives of Others
First of all, some bloggity news to pass along. A certain paternal relation of mine has finally decided to set up his own blog, Mad Poet at the Gate, featuring a number of poems ranging from Koans to reminiscences about science fiction writers. It seems to be a household thing, as his wife has a blog, too. Seriously, if you appreciate language, check them out. Even if you don't, check them out, and maybe you will. If nothing else, you can try to figure out how one writes in Kanji on an English-language blog...
Last night, I got to see this year's best foreign film Oscar winner, The Lives of Others, in the theatre. I have to admit, it was good, and even though the academy pretty clearly made a mistake by selecting it over Pan's Labyrinth, it's not a horrible choice. Choosing Crash last year for Best Picture, for instance, was a much poorer judgment.
The Lives of Others is set in mid 1980's East Germany, when the Stasi, or Secret Police, still ruled the country through fear and a vast web of informers, and the early signs of Glasnost and the fall of the Wall were still completely invisible to just about everyone. Like a lot of the books and movies I've seen recently, and most of our daily political news, it concerns the use and misuse of power. At it's heart is the Stasi agent assigned to monitor a seemingly loyal playwright, who gradually realizes that his assignment has much more to do with the personal agendas of the powerful than with any real state interest. It is here that the film manages to make it's most profound moral statement, in that Wiesler, the Stasi agent, can hardly be considered to be pure of heart for realizing the evil of his orders. After all, he has been instrumental in ruining countless lives, many of whom were likely innocent, all in the name of duty. His affront at being used against a personal rival, rather than an enemy of the state, is as much from a personal sense of pride as from any innate goodness. Still, without giving away the ending, we have a clear case where Wiesler manages to fundamentally do good in the world, where most would have not, and that must count for something.
More than anything else, films like this (and Pan's Labyrinth in its own way) show just how dangerous it is to place loyalty to an ideology as one's primary goal. As we've seen in Iran (I'll be reviewing Reading Lolita in Tehran in a few days), in North Korea, in the US invasion of Iraq, and countless other places, ideologues typically believe in pretty sounding words that fail miserably in practice. One could strongly suggest that it took Marxists about a century to pretty much prove this point completely, as East Germany demonstrated just a few years later. When ideologues gain power, the results range from bad to tragic, with almost no room for any good outcome. For the pawns in their games, it doesn't matter if you are a loyal soldier (cough...Scooter Libby...cough) or a well-meaning crusader whose strings are being pulled from above (paging the US Attorneys): you are still a pawn, and in the end their moral failing will compromise you one way or the other.I have a great deal of sympathy for the fired US Attorneys, but it is important to remember that they were willing to be quiet about what seems to be a vast plan to obstruct justice until the Department of Justice decided to rub it in their faces. Up until that point, justice was just as perverted, but they felt none of the current compunction to speak out. Then again, as we argued before, even if injured pride moves you to do the right thing, you've still done the right thing...
As a film, The Lives of Others, features any number of strong acting performances in a story told very tightly until the surprisingly loose, John Irving-like ending. If the academy was fooled, it was because they went with a good Actor's movie over better Director's movie. It's almost excusable, but disappointing to see one of the truly visionary films of the past few years lose to a well-told but significantly less ambitious film. Still, though, this one is very much worth seeing. Remember, as the second best foreign film of the year, it is probably the second best film of the year as well (The Departed might make the top 10, if I'm feeling charitable, but last year was not a proud one for American film). More than any I saw last year, it is a deeply humanistic film, one that really does a tremendous job in finding the humanity amidst our boldest and bravest choices and most craven moral compromises.
Last night, I got to see this year's best foreign film Oscar winner, The Lives of Others, in the theatre. I have to admit, it was good, and even though the academy pretty clearly made a mistake by selecting it over Pan's Labyrinth, it's not a horrible choice. Choosing Crash last year for Best Picture, for instance, was a much poorer judgment.
The Lives of Others is set in mid 1980's East Germany, when the Stasi, or Secret Police, still ruled the country through fear and a vast web of informers, and the early signs of Glasnost and the fall of the Wall were still completely invisible to just about everyone. Like a lot of the books and movies I've seen recently, and most of our daily political news, it concerns the use and misuse of power. At it's heart is the Stasi agent assigned to monitor a seemingly loyal playwright, who gradually realizes that his assignment has much more to do with the personal agendas of the powerful than with any real state interest. It is here that the film manages to make it's most profound moral statement, in that Wiesler, the Stasi agent, can hardly be considered to be pure of heart for realizing the evil of his orders. After all, he has been instrumental in ruining countless lives, many of whom were likely innocent, all in the name of duty. His affront at being used against a personal rival, rather than an enemy of the state, is as much from a personal sense of pride as from any innate goodness. Still, without giving away the ending, we have a clear case where Wiesler manages to fundamentally do good in the world, where most would have not, and that must count for something.
More than anything else, films like this (and Pan's Labyrinth in its own way) show just how dangerous it is to place loyalty to an ideology as one's primary goal. As we've seen in Iran (I'll be reviewing Reading Lolita in Tehran in a few days), in North Korea, in the US invasion of Iraq, and countless other places, ideologues typically believe in pretty sounding words that fail miserably in practice. One could strongly suggest that it took Marxists about a century to pretty much prove this point completely, as East Germany demonstrated just a few years later. When ideologues gain power, the results range from bad to tragic, with almost no room for any good outcome. For the pawns in their games, it doesn't matter if you are a loyal soldier (cough...Scooter Libby...cough) or a well-meaning crusader whose strings are being pulled from above (paging the US Attorneys): you are still a pawn, and in the end their moral failing will compromise you one way or the other.I have a great deal of sympathy for the fired US Attorneys, but it is important to remember that they were willing to be quiet about what seems to be a vast plan to obstruct justice until the Department of Justice decided to rub it in their faces. Up until that point, justice was just as perverted, but they felt none of the current compunction to speak out. Then again, as we argued before, even if injured pride moves you to do the right thing, you've still done the right thing...
As a film, The Lives of Others, features any number of strong acting performances in a story told very tightly until the surprisingly loose, John Irving-like ending. If the academy was fooled, it was because they went with a good Actor's movie over better Director's movie. It's almost excusable, but disappointing to see one of the truly visionary films of the past few years lose to a well-told but significantly less ambitious film. Still, though, this one is very much worth seeing. Remember, as the second best foreign film of the year, it is probably the second best film of the year as well (The Departed might make the top 10, if I'm feeling charitable, but last year was not a proud one for American film). More than any I saw last year, it is a deeply humanistic film, one that really does a tremendous job in finding the humanity amidst our boldest and bravest choices and most craven moral compromises.
Saturday, March 3, 2007
Well maybe I am the f@ggot America, I'm not a part of a redneck agenda
First a followup from yesterday, and then the newer stuff, including a movie review for a very good film that I really should have heard about long before now.
The media blackout on Coulter basically continued today, but for a halfhearted effort from the NYTimes, which first compared her to Hillary Clinton (yes, they are both polarizing, Hillary for proposing a halfway decent healthcare plan and Coulter for being a bigot), and then attempted to apologize for all the speakers who preceded her at the CPAC meeting, failing to note that last year at this very venue she contented herself with just making raghead jokes. This was premeditated, no matter how dumb the media chooses to play it, when they play it at all.
I brought up Atrios yesterday, and today featured one of the best descriptions of his blog and methods from the also-excellent Ezra Klein. Discussing Atrios' world-famous "wanker of the day" award, Klein explains exactly what it does and does not represent:
BTW, in case anyone wondered about the US Attorneys reference I made yesterday, the same exact wanker media/good blogosphere dynamic is summed up perfectly here at Talking Points memo, which also has pictures of Mitt Romney with Coulter, and this little chestnut on the whole affair, sent in by a reader:
So, on to the movie reviews. On the recommendation of one of my colleagues, I finally saw Idiocracy, by Mike Judge, the guy who created both Beavis and Butthead and King of the Hill, and wrote and directed Office Space. It stars Luke Wilson as a completely average American who is accidentally placed in hibernation for 500 years, during which time the stupid people in the world so completely outbreed their smarter brethren that the entire country is plunged into idiocy. This should not be taken as racist (maybe classist), more a comment on today's race to the bottom popular culture. Given Judge's past, it should come as no surprise that TV, along with global corporate greed, proves to be a popular target for Judge to parody. The satire is a bit loose, but the movie is sustained throughout by a clever and funny visual feel (everyone wears shiny clothing more littered with ads than your average NASCAR driver), and a selection of targets that few would want to defend (mostly corporate conglomerates and their incessantly stupid advertising, along with dreadful reality TV). It's certainly worth renting, and given its complete lack of notoriety should be easy to find in a video store.
One of the funnier points that the movie makes is that there is an unfortunate association made in popular culture between intelligence and feminization. Judge does this by having his idiots of the future call lots of things "gay", satirizing the same macho bullshit redneck culture attacked by Green Day in the lyrics giving us tonight's post title (from "American Idiot", just like last night) and personified by Coulter's remarks and her intended audience, who can think of few things funnier than a faggot joke.
One of the reasons I am proud to consider myself a liberal is that this shit does not fly with us. We don't make it a point of principle to constantly attack the "other", whoever they may be at the moment, and are willing to defend them, as Elizabeth Edwards, John's wife, did today:
I'll note that even though times may be changing slowly, they are changing. It may not men much to hear these words from someone randomly on the street, but these are prominent (hall of fame caliber) athletes, albeit in one of the two more liberal major sports (the NBA, because of the large African-American player percentage, along with Hockey, because of the European/Canadian influence). Even one of the most conservative institutions in America, the military, is seeing a change in perceptions. According to a 2006 Zogby poll:
Thankfully, with Democrats now in charge of Congress, Rep. Marty Meehan's bill ending the "Don't ask, don't tell" policy will likely come to the floor, even though the assholes at the Pentagon aren't pleased and say that it will be divisive. in a sense, they may be right. it will end up dividing the assholes and bigots from the rest of America, and about time. There is simply no place left in reasonable discourse for out and out bigots, and it's about time we started pushing this as strongly as possible.
The media blackout on Coulter basically continued today, but for a halfhearted effort from the NYTimes, which first compared her to Hillary Clinton (yes, they are both polarizing, Hillary for proposing a halfway decent healthcare plan and Coulter for being a bigot), and then attempted to apologize for all the speakers who preceded her at the CPAC meeting, failing to note that last year at this very venue she contented herself with just making raghead jokes. This was premeditated, no matter how dumb the media chooses to play it, when they play it at all.
I brought up Atrios yesterday, and today featured one of the best descriptions of his blog and methods from the also-excellent Ezra Klein. Discussing Atrios' world-famous "wanker of the day" award, Klein explains exactly what it does and does not represent:
Among other things, the lefty blogosphere was founded on a critique of the mainstream media that argued, contrary to popular belief, that the media was not actually liberal. The individuals who comprised it may have been tolerant on cultural issues, but years of sustained attacks from the right had cowed reporters into a hollow set of "objective" protocols that served to obscure truth rather than enhance it. Simultaneously, decades of sustained attacks on liberals had spurred "serious pundits" to underscore their independence by routinely attacking the left. The result was a media which may have voted Democratic, but was fairly hostile to progressivism.And let us all say, amen.
"Wanker of the Day" is not an argumentative feature, it is a reinforcing one. It exists to repeatedly provide evidence for a critique of the media that is only now leaving the margins. Atrios's epiphany was that you had to actually prove it day after day, not merely argue it. Since this was a somewhat counterintuitive take on reportage, it had to be buttressed -- and not just once, but repeatedly. Now, you can argue about the language ("wanker") or even deny the feature's legitimacy, but it does have a point -- it's not simply rhetorical extremism or red meat.
BTW, in case anyone wondered about the US Attorneys reference I made yesterday, the same exact wanker media/good blogosphere dynamic is summed up perfectly here at Talking Points memo, which also has pictures of Mitt Romney with Coulter, and this little chestnut on the whole affair, sent in by a reader:
From TPM Reader RB:You'll note the clever meta trick of publishing said reader comment on a progressive blog with an audience...and again, let us all say amen, brother.
As I read the reaction/fallout from Ann Coulter’s remarks at CPAC this week I’m annoyed by the entire progressive reaction to it and most of the many other outrages committed on a daily basis by the Republican Party.
Why doesn’t a progressive with an audience say something to the effect “This is who and what the once proud and honorable Republican Party has turned itself into. It is a party of hate, intolerance, incompetence, greed, treason, fanatical, hostile to science and reality, and totally corrupt. They have no honor and no shame. They’re fascists and a cancer on our great nation, plain and simple and this is just another example of that.”
So, on to the movie reviews. On the recommendation of one of my colleagues, I finally saw Idiocracy, by Mike Judge, the guy who created both Beavis and Butthead and King of the Hill, and wrote and directed Office Space. It stars Luke Wilson as a completely average American who is accidentally placed in hibernation for 500 years, during which time the stupid people in the world so completely outbreed their smarter brethren that the entire country is plunged into idiocy. This should not be taken as racist (maybe classist), more a comment on today's race to the bottom popular culture. Given Judge's past, it should come as no surprise that TV, along with global corporate greed, proves to be a popular target for Judge to parody. The satire is a bit loose, but the movie is sustained throughout by a clever and funny visual feel (everyone wears shiny clothing more littered with ads than your average NASCAR driver), and a selection of targets that few would want to defend (mostly corporate conglomerates and their incessantly stupid advertising, along with dreadful reality TV). It's certainly worth renting, and given its complete lack of notoriety should be easy to find in a video store.
One of the funnier points that the movie makes is that there is an unfortunate association made in popular culture between intelligence and feminization. Judge does this by having his idiots of the future call lots of things "gay", satirizing the same macho bullshit redneck culture attacked by Green Day in the lyrics giving us tonight's post title (from "American Idiot", just like last night) and personified by Coulter's remarks and her intended audience, who can think of few things funnier than a faggot joke.
One of the reasons I am proud to consider myself a liberal is that this shit does not fly with us. We don't make it a point of principle to constantly attack the "other", whoever they may be at the moment, and are willing to defend them, as Elizabeth Edwards, John's wife, did today:
Although her words did not hurt us, they may have hurt some in the gay community. We are all sick and tired of anyone supporting or applauding or introducing hate words into the national dialogue, tired of people thinking that words that cause others pain are fair game. And we are sick and tired of people like Miss Coulter thinking that her use of loaded words about the homosexual community in this country is remotely humorous or appropriate.The same dynamic is always in play whenever homosexuality is brought up: idiots go on the attack against what they perceive to be an easy target, and those of us who aren't assholes are left to argue against them. In response to a former NBA player coming out of the closet, we had this lovely quote from former player Tim Hardaway:
"You know, I hate gay people, so I let it be known," Hardaway said. "I don't like gay people and I don't like to be around gay people. I am homophobic. I don't like it. It shouldn't be in the world or in the United States."Somehow, he perceived this as the proper Christian response, as would Ann Coulter as well, which is even scarier. The intelligent comeback came from former players Charles Barkley and Reggie Miller, respectively, and credit to them for saying it:
“I played with gay guys, I’ve got gay friends. I don’t care if a person is gay or not, only God can judge a person. But any jock who thinks he’s never played with a gay guy is sadly mistaken. Any team you’ve been on, at some point, you’ve played with a gay guy.”
“It’s a lack of education. For everything we’ve overcome as African-American athletes with a lot of the racial discrimination, I believe he needs some type of counseling or help to overcome his phobia. This is another black eye that David Stern has to deal with.”
I'll note that even though times may be changing slowly, they are changing. It may not men much to hear these words from someone randomly on the street, but these are prominent (hall of fame caliber) athletes, albeit in one of the two more liberal major sports (the NBA, because of the large African-American player percentage, along with Hockey, because of the European/Canadian influence). Even one of the most conservative institutions in America, the military, is seeing a change in perceptions. According to a 2006 Zogby poll:
Nearly one in four U.S. troops (23%) say they know for sure that someone in their unit is gay or lesbian, and of those 59% said they learned about the person's sexual orientation directly from the individual, a Zogby International poll of troops who served in Iraq and Afghanistan shows.
More than half (55%) of the troops who know a gay peer said the presence of gays or lesbians in their unit is well known by others. According to the "don't ask, don't tell" policy, service members are not allowed to say that they are gay.
...
According to the new Zogby data, however, nearly three in four troops (73%) say they are personally comfortable in the presence of gays and lesbians.
Thankfully, with Democrats now in charge of Congress, Rep. Marty Meehan's bill ending the "Don't ask, don't tell" policy will likely come to the floor, even though the assholes at the Pentagon aren't pleased and say that it will be divisive. in a sense, they may be right. it will end up dividing the assholes and bigots from the rest of America, and about time. There is simply no place left in reasonable discourse for out and out bigots, and it's about time we started pushing this as strongly as possible.
Sunday, February 25, 2007
Truth twenty-four times a second: 2007 Academy Awards
I'm not sure what the situation is most years, but this year there is precious little suspense for most of the major awards. Helen Mirren won literally every film critics society award for Best Actress, as did Forrest Whitaker for Best Actor, almost (they both won tonight). According to the Hollywood Stock Exchange, Martin Scorcese was a lock for Director going in and going out, as was Jennifer Hudson for Supporting Actress (she won). Alan Arkin for Supporting Actor was a darkhorse winner, though this is the "Jack Palance" category. Apparently, Norbit may have actually killed Eddie Murphy's chances, as many critics guessed. Best film was predicted to be a two-horse race between The Departed and Little Miss Sunshine, with Departed, the favorite, winning.
Overall, I'm a bit disappointed in the best picture nominees. I liked both of the favorites, but neither struck me as best film of the year. I can only hope that Children of Men, Last King of Scotland, The Prestige, or maybe The Queen are better (sure Babel and United 93 may be better as well, but both have been described as being so godawfully depressing that I can't say that I'm in a rush to see either).
Further thoughts: African Americans have previously won 2 Supporting Actress awards (Hattie McDaniel in 1939 for Gone with the Wind, and Whoopi Goldberg in 1990 for Ghost), one for Best Actress (Halle Berry in 2001 for Monster's Ball), four for Supporting Actor (Louis Gossett, Jr. for Officer and a Gentleman in 1982, Denzel Washington for Glory in 1989, Cuba Gooding Jr. for Jerry Maguire in 1996, Morgan Freeman for Million Dollar baby in 2004), and three for Best Actor before tonight (Sidney Poitier for Lilies of the Field in 1963, Denzel for Training Day in 2001, and Jamie Foxx for Ray in 2004). Tonight's two awards add to that total by 20%, and make the third time in six years that Black actors and actresses received multiple awards in a given year, but the first time it happened when the host wasn't black (Whoopi for 2001, Chris Rock for 2004).
Overall, the quality of films this year was good, but concentrated amongst Foreign films and to a lesser extent independent films. This is something of a pattern. Of the IMDB top 100 rated films, 18 have been made since 2000. Three are Lord of The Rings, 5 are foreign (City of God, which was simply amazing, highest among them, and the only non-LotR film since 2000 in the top 20). That leaves ten from America in the past 7 years: Memento (deserves it), Eternal Sunshine (?!?!?), The Pianist (haven't seen it, but seems legit), Requiem for a dream (good, but should be lower), Hotel Rwanda (haven't seen it, seems right), Sin City (?!?), The Departed (good, but should be lower), Million Dollar Baby (haven't seen it), Batman Begins (?!?!?!), and Kill Bill 1 (?!?). Brokeback Mountain should have made that list, but overall, I can't say it reflects all that well on the Hollywood system, nor to a lesser extent on IMDB (Eternal Sunshine as #39, Sin City as the 68th best movie ever, and Batman Begins at #90. Seriously, WTF?). Given the budgets out there, I'd expect more from the studios. I'll note that there is a systematic bias at play: IMDB penalizes the overall ratings of movies with less than 25,000 votes, so independent films don't rank as highly as they would otherwise. Little Miss Sunshine loses 100 spots under this system from #110 to #202, for instance. Still the pattern seems to be cyclical, as the Top 20 heavily favors the 1950's (Seven Samurai, Rear Window, Twelve Angry men), the 1970's (Godfathers 1 and 2, Cucckoo's Nest, Star Wars), and 90's (Shawshank, Schindler, Pulp fiction, Usual Suspects, Goodfellas). Hopefully, around 2010, Hollywood will rebound, or maybe modern technology will finally make the studio system obsolete.
Overall, I'm a bit disappointed in the best picture nominees. I liked both of the favorites, but neither struck me as best film of the year. I can only hope that Children of Men, Last King of Scotland, The Prestige, or maybe The Queen are better (sure Babel and United 93 may be better as well, but both have been described as being so godawfully depressing that I can't say that I'm in a rush to see either).
Further thoughts: African Americans have previously won 2 Supporting Actress awards (Hattie McDaniel in 1939 for Gone with the Wind, and Whoopi Goldberg in 1990 for Ghost), one for Best Actress (Halle Berry in 2001 for Monster's Ball), four for Supporting Actor (Louis Gossett, Jr. for Officer and a Gentleman in 1982, Denzel Washington for Glory in 1989, Cuba Gooding Jr. for Jerry Maguire in 1996, Morgan Freeman for Million Dollar baby in 2004), and three for Best Actor before tonight (Sidney Poitier for Lilies of the Field in 1963, Denzel for Training Day in 2001, and Jamie Foxx for Ray in 2004). Tonight's two awards add to that total by 20%, and make the third time in six years that Black actors and actresses received multiple awards in a given year, but the first time it happened when the host wasn't black (Whoopi for 2001, Chris Rock for 2004).
Overall, the quality of films this year was good, but concentrated amongst Foreign films and to a lesser extent independent films. This is something of a pattern. Of the IMDB top 100 rated films, 18 have been made since 2000. Three are Lord of The Rings, 5 are foreign (City of God, which was simply amazing, highest among them, and the only non-LotR film since 2000 in the top 20). That leaves ten from America in the past 7 years: Memento (deserves it), Eternal Sunshine (?!?!?), The Pianist (haven't seen it, but seems legit), Requiem for a dream (good, but should be lower), Hotel Rwanda (haven't seen it, seems right), Sin City (?!?), The Departed (good, but should be lower), Million Dollar Baby (haven't seen it), Batman Begins (?!?!?!), and Kill Bill 1 (?!?). Brokeback Mountain should have made that list, but overall, I can't say it reflects all that well on the Hollywood system, nor to a lesser extent on IMDB (Eternal Sunshine as #39, Sin City as the 68th best movie ever, and Batman Begins at #90. Seriously, WTF?). Given the budgets out there, I'd expect more from the studios. I'll note that there is a systematic bias at play: IMDB penalizes the overall ratings of movies with less than 25,000 votes, so independent films don't rank as highly as they would otherwise. Little Miss Sunshine loses 100 spots under this system from #110 to #202, for instance. Still the pattern seems to be cyclical, as the Top 20 heavily favors the 1950's (Seven Samurai, Rear Window, Twelve Angry men), the 1970's (Godfathers 1 and 2, Cucckoo's Nest, Star Wars), and 90's (Shawshank, Schindler, Pulp fiction, Usual Suspects, Goodfellas). Hopefully, around 2010, Hollywood will rebound, or maybe modern technology will finally make the studio system obsolete.
Saturday, February 17, 2007
Truth twenty-four time a second #3: Tristram Shandy, a Cock and Bull Story
Sorry for the bait and switch, but Cheif Illiniwek will have to wait another day, since explaining myself on why people put too much faith in symbols vs. concrete effects and rights instead of moral obligations. Instead, a film review will have to suffice for tonight. Tristram Shandy is, among other things, one of the greatest books of all time, the second great English novel (after Samuel Richardson's Clarissa), the second post-modern novel ever written (after Don Quixote), and the book I am currently re-reading for my book club. For those who are interested, I have already written a short review fo the novel, but a longer one will follow here when I finish going over it again. Anyway, enough of the tangents, on with the review.
TS: a C+B Story is a movie about making a movie about a book about everything except what it is ostensibly about (the Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman). It's been said that the book is essentially unfilmable, as it consists almost exclusively of tangents and meta-commentary and long anecdotes having nothing to do with what would be the plot of the novel, if it actually had a plot, which it doesn't. Thus, the meta-move idea is perfect. Even if the book is unfilmable, you can still make a film about making a film, with the actors playing actors (I would suggest "All the world's a stage" here, but Yorick is the Shakespearean reference that Laurence Sterne preferred). I wonder how much of the book's humor would be lost on someone who just saw the film; they try to explain things, but much of the humor requires several chapters to set up in the book, and there just isn't time. Thus, Dr. Slop's Catholicism and Uncle Toby's tics that force him to whistle rather than express conflicting opinions are glossed over, chestnuts for the enterprising viewers who have previously read the book (that itself was a chestnut for the readers, though the heat of said chestnut may be debated). Still, the movie is constantly funny throughout, both as a satire of the moviemaking process as well a reasonably faithful retelling of many of TS's most humorous set pieces, and that is an achievement in itself.
Oddly enough, this is the second consecutive time that an indirect movie has been made out of an early post-modern classic, though this one was intentionally so, whereas Lost in La Mancha, the story of Terry Gilliam's failed attempt to shoot Don Quixote, was simply the best that could be made out of a very bad situation. In many ways, I think it would make the original authors very happy. Both Cervantes and Sterne were vastly ahead of their time, and both realized that a novel is an author's form of commenting on anything he wants, including the novel itself. That this is expressed in movie form, by commenting on the movie making process as it relates to filming a book (especially a book about itself), is only fitting.
TS: a C+B Story is a movie about making a movie about a book about everything except what it is ostensibly about (the Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman). It's been said that the book is essentially unfilmable, as it consists almost exclusively of tangents and meta-commentary and long anecdotes having nothing to do with what would be the plot of the novel, if it actually had a plot, which it doesn't. Thus, the meta-move idea is perfect. Even if the book is unfilmable, you can still make a film about making a film, with the actors playing actors (I would suggest "All the world's a stage" here, but Yorick is the Shakespearean reference that Laurence Sterne preferred). I wonder how much of the book's humor would be lost on someone who just saw the film; they try to explain things, but much of the humor requires several chapters to set up in the book, and there just isn't time. Thus, Dr. Slop's Catholicism and Uncle Toby's tics that force him to whistle rather than express conflicting opinions are glossed over, chestnuts for the enterprising viewers who have previously read the book (that itself was a chestnut for the readers, though the heat of said chestnut may be debated). Still, the movie is constantly funny throughout, both as a satire of the moviemaking process as well a reasonably faithful retelling of many of TS's most humorous set pieces, and that is an achievement in itself.
Oddly enough, this is the second consecutive time that an indirect movie has been made out of an early post-modern classic, though this one was intentionally so, whereas Lost in La Mancha, the story of Terry Gilliam's failed attempt to shoot Don Quixote, was simply the best that could be made out of a very bad situation. In many ways, I think it would make the original authors very happy. Both Cervantes and Sterne were vastly ahead of their time, and both realized that a novel is an author's form of commenting on anything he wants, including the novel itself. That this is expressed in movie form, by commenting on the movie making process as it relates to filming a book (especially a book about itself), is only fitting.
Friday, February 2, 2007
Truth twenty-four times a second, #2
Even though Pan's Labyrinth was playing last week at out local multiplex along with a bunch of other Oscar-nominated films, we decided to see The Departed there, and waited until it opened at our local Art theatre in town. I can safely say, it was worth the wait and then some. Volver was good, as was The Departed (even though I still prefer Infernal Affairs, the original Hong Kong version). This movie was fantastic, easily the best movie from last year that I've seen (I missed too many to have any right to talk about "the best movie of the year" in general). First though, just to get this out of the way, the advertising for the movie is a bit deceptive; even though the lead actress was 11 during the filming, the level of violence and mature themes (not sex, in this case, just themes one needs to have some maturity in order to process) basically rules this movie out for pre-teens and younger. That said, on to the actual review.
Pan's Labyrinth, as best noted by Stephanie Zacharek of Salon, is a fairy tale in the classic sense: not a happy children's story, but a much darker morality tale that serves as an introduction to life's horrors and moral quandaries. Set in 1944 Spain, as Franco and the fascists were cementing their hold over the country, the movie tells the parallel tale of a young girl dealing with a dark fantasy world (which one could argue is her figurative take on her actual surroundings), while those around her deal with the more mundane horrors of warfare without the benefit of a runaway imagination to soften the edges. Guillermo del Toro, the director, does a masterful job of blending the real with the fantastic, both visually and in the storytelling itself. If some characters are more starkly evil, it is because they serve as the negative counterexample that every fairy tale requires. Good in this approach is more layered, full of failings but made noble by its decency and humanity.
Refreshingly, this is anything but a Hollywood movie, able to surprise you by its twists and turns. It's primary lesson, that you cannot blindly follow orders and must instead act as you think is right, is not treated as a simple concept to be learned but rather one that is nearly impossible to achieve. Throughout, no one is allowed innocence; neither a child being forced to deal much too early with an adult world nor the adults who must constantly balance betraying their principles in the short run in order to maintain them in the grander scheme, often at terrible cost. If anything, the movie's harshest condemnation is not just for the embodiments of evil, but also for a society that blindly watches as third parties are caught up in the crossfire (several hundred thousand Iraqis might be able to comment on this topic if they hadn't been killed over the past few years).
Of course, to focus merely on the lesson is to give short shrift to the telling: this is a movie of gorgeous images, masterful pacing, and a not inconsiderable dose of magic. Much like City of God, it is much too engrossing to be considered depressing, capable of transporting you like great storytelling can. I can't recommend it highly enough.
Pan's Labyrinth, as best noted by Stephanie Zacharek of Salon, is a fairy tale in the classic sense: not a happy children's story, but a much darker morality tale that serves as an introduction to life's horrors and moral quandaries. Set in 1944 Spain, as Franco and the fascists were cementing their hold over the country, the movie tells the parallel tale of a young girl dealing with a dark fantasy world (which one could argue is her figurative take on her actual surroundings), while those around her deal with the more mundane horrors of warfare without the benefit of a runaway imagination to soften the edges. Guillermo del Toro, the director, does a masterful job of blending the real with the fantastic, both visually and in the storytelling itself. If some characters are more starkly evil, it is because they serve as the negative counterexample that every fairy tale requires. Good in this approach is more layered, full of failings but made noble by its decency and humanity.
Refreshingly, this is anything but a Hollywood movie, able to surprise you by its twists and turns. It's primary lesson, that you cannot blindly follow orders and must instead act as you think is right, is not treated as a simple concept to be learned but rather one that is nearly impossible to achieve. Throughout, no one is allowed innocence; neither a child being forced to deal much too early with an adult world nor the adults who must constantly balance betraying their principles in the short run in order to maintain them in the grander scheme, often at terrible cost. If anything, the movie's harshest condemnation is not just for the embodiments of evil, but also for a society that blindly watches as third parties are caught up in the crossfire (several hundred thousand Iraqis might be able to comment on this topic if they hadn't been killed over the past few years).
Of course, to focus merely on the lesson is to give short shrift to the telling: this is a movie of gorgeous images, masterful pacing, and a not inconsiderable dose of magic. Much like City of God, it is much too engrossing to be considered depressing, capable of transporting you like great storytelling can. I can't recommend it highly enough.
Saturday, January 27, 2007
I need a camera to my eye, to my eye reminding, which lies have I been hiding, which echoes belong
I just saw my second Oscar-nominated film for best picture today, and will have my brief take on it and the Oscars in general in a second, but first a couple of stories that go to the heart of how the picture we have about events in Iraq is woefully incomplete.
The past week has seen two examples of fine journalism that should be broadly commended. First was the story of the battle for Haifa Street, the main front of our attacks on Sunni insurgents/militias in Baghdad. According to a superb NYTimes article by Damien Cave and James Glanz, American troops are getting the usual help from the Iraqi army on joint American-Iraqi patrols, i.e., none whatsoever. Basically, we're cleaning out Sunni fighters, ostensibly for security, more practically so Shiite militias can trail behind our soldiers and clear out as much of the remaining Sunni population as possible. Second was the AP getting to the truth of the story behind four soldiers kidnapped in Karbala before they were executed 25 miles away (or "briefly kidnapped in raid", according to the FoxNews propaganda service). From the AP, which is an actual news source:
A week ago, the Defense Department lied to the AP, the people of America, and the entire world, further eroding their minuscule credibility, as follows:
In the underreported bad news (again covered well by the AP), we turn to the story of just who was on the helicopter that crashed last weekend in Baghdad, killing 12 American troops:
One of those Colonels was Brian Allgood, the Chief Army surgeon in Iraq. The crash happened either while new Secretary of Defense Robert Gates was finishing up a tour of Baghdad, or soon thereafter. Let me suggest that the first successful shootdown of a military helicopter in months, taking out a shocking number of officers, was the result of militants being tipped off to the value of the target. This reeks of an inside job.
Now, on to the movies. Today, we finally saw The Departed, which was very good, and will almost certainly win Scorcese his first Best Director award, even though I suspect that Alejandro González Iñárritu probably deserves the prize for Babel (more on this in a second). The movie was very good, with fine acting performances all around (Nicholson as the crazy Mob Boss, DiCaprio and Damon as the respective police mole in the mob and vice versa, Wahlberg and Sheen as the police unit leaders, and Vera Farmiga as the woman caught in the middle) and great location shooting in Boston. I still can't get over the fact, though, that the movie is a remake of the Hong Kong flick Infernal Affairs, which was just as good if not better. Too much credit is often given to screenwriters who adapt novelists, as if the good lines belong to the guy who quoted the lines, rather than the one who write them in the first place, and a similar dynamic applies to remakes. Simply put, the original takes more vision than the remake. If you have to see one of the two, try the original first. Infernal Affairs is available in every video store in the known universe, and its worth the time.
At the movie theater, we entered the Oscar competition drawing they had, so here were my picks:
Film: I picked Babel, which I haven't seen since I've heard that it is phenomenally depressing (for similar reasons, I am wary of 9/11, Holocaust and war movies, and saw neither Flags of our Fathers nor Letter from Iwo Jima, the latter of which is nominated in this category). I think The Departed has an outside chance, better than Little Miss Sunshine, which I really liked, and The Queen, which I've yet to see.
Director: Scorcese takes this one over Eastwood and the directors of Babel, The Queen, and United 93 (missed it, see above).
Actor: Forest Whitaker was my pick, because I can't imagine the award going to Leo for Blood Diamond, Ryan Gosling, Peter O'Toole, or Will Smith. impressively, I've seen none of these.
Actress: Helen Mirren will win, as dignified mature British actresses always do, over the equally dignified and British but recently awarded Judi Dench, equally British Kate Winslet, equally dignified Meryl Streep, and Penélope Cruz, who was the best of all the actresses I've seen in these respective roles. She was also the only one i've seen in these respective roles.
Supporting Actor: Eddie Murphy takes the comeback lifetime achievement award over Honsou and Haley, who I haven't seen, as well as Arkin and Wahlberg, who I have. Arkin and Wahlberg were both very good, but neither role really struck me as Oscar material.
Supporting Actress: Cate Blanchett was born to win Oscars, and has the fact she's from the British Commonwealth and approaching "dignified" working for her. No one knows who Barraza or Kikuchi are, Breslin hasn't even hit her teens, and Jennifer Hudson was previously seen on American idol. I've only seen Sunshine from this group.
Foreign Film: Pan's Labyrinth in a heartbeat. I'll be seeing it next weekend.
Oddly enough, Volver didn't get a nomination for Foreign Film, but Cruz is up for Best Actress. This is ridiculous. For one thing, I don't see why we have to pretend that foreign films qualify for all the other awards. If the Academy was serious about this, than English-speaking actors would only occasionally get a nomination for an acting prize, and rarely if ever win (same for the technical awards). America may have the second-largest film industry in the world after Bollywood, but the rest of the world makes many more films than we do, and the Academy just doesn't make the time to review them all, since their focus is, has been, and will be on English-language film. Instead, we get token nominations from the rest of the world when leaving them out would be too criminal, but these nominations are tokens all the same. In the end, few people really mind because most of the Americans reading Oscar recaps in People magazine and on Entertainment Tonight don't like to watch movies with subtitles anyway. So, kids, remember that on a night where we celebrate the best of Hollywood (or at least claim to do so), the best cinema is often lost in translation (unlike a few years ago, when it was Lost In Translation). Hopefully, more on this theme next week when I review Pan's Labyrinth.
The past week has seen two examples of fine journalism that should be broadly commended. First was the story of the battle for Haifa Street, the main front of our attacks on Sunni insurgents/militias in Baghdad. According to a superb NYTimes article by Damien Cave and James Glanz, American troops are getting the usual help from the Iraqi army on joint American-Iraqi patrols, i.e., none whatsoever. Basically, we're cleaning out Sunni fighters, ostensibly for security, more practically so Shiite militias can trail behind our soldiers and clear out as much of the remaining Sunni population as possible. Second was the AP getting to the truth of the story behind four soldiers kidnapped in Karbala before they were executed 25 miles away (or "briefly kidnapped in raid", according to the FoxNews propaganda service). From the AP, which is an actual news source:
U.S. Confirms GIs Seized In Sneak Attack: Contrary To Previous Reports, It Now Says 4 Soldiers Were Abducted And Killed By Militants In Karbala
The U.S. command on Friday confirmed that four American soldiers were abducted during a sophisticated sneak attack last week in the Shiite holy city of Karbala. It said three were shot to death and a fourth was fatally wounded with a gunshot to the head when they were found in a neighboring province.
A week ago, the Defense Department lied to the AP, the people of America, and the entire world, further eroding their minuscule credibility, as follows:
"The group used percussion bombs and broke into the building, killed five Americans and kidnapped two others, then fled," the governor said, adding that Iraqi troops later found one of the SUVs with three bodies of uniformed men.
The U.S. military, which has said that five U.S. soldiers were killed and three were wounded while repelling the attack, denied that two U.S. troops were kidnapped.
Lt. Col. Christopher Garver, a military spokesman, said all American forces "were accounted for after the action."
In the underreported bad news (again covered well by the AP), we turn to the story of just who was on the helicopter that crashed last weekend in Baghdad, killing 12 American troops:
Two colonels, one lieutenant colonel and two command sergeants major were among the 12 soldiers killed last weekend in a Black Hawk helicopter crash northeast of Baghdad, the Pentagon said. One of those killed on board was based in Fort Huachuca.
It appeared to be the largest number of key officers and command sergeants killed in a single incident during since the Iraq war started nearly four years ago.
The U.S. command has not said why so many key officers were aboard a single helicopter, which went down Saturday in Diyala province, one of the flashpoints of the Iraq conflict.
One of those Colonels was Brian Allgood, the Chief Army surgeon in Iraq. The crash happened either while new Secretary of Defense Robert Gates was finishing up a tour of Baghdad, or soon thereafter. Let me suggest that the first successful shootdown of a military helicopter in months, taking out a shocking number of officers, was the result of militants being tipped off to the value of the target. This reeks of an inside job.
Now, on to the movies. Today, we finally saw The Departed, which was very good, and will almost certainly win Scorcese his first Best Director award, even though I suspect that Alejandro González Iñárritu probably deserves the prize for Babel (more on this in a second). The movie was very good, with fine acting performances all around (Nicholson as the crazy Mob Boss, DiCaprio and Damon as the respective police mole in the mob and vice versa, Wahlberg and Sheen as the police unit leaders, and Vera Farmiga as the woman caught in the middle) and great location shooting in Boston. I still can't get over the fact, though, that the movie is a remake of the Hong Kong flick Infernal Affairs, which was just as good if not better. Too much credit is often given to screenwriters who adapt novelists, as if the good lines belong to the guy who quoted the lines, rather than the one who write them in the first place, and a similar dynamic applies to remakes. Simply put, the original takes more vision than the remake. If you have to see one of the two, try the original first. Infernal Affairs is available in every video store in the known universe, and its worth the time.
At the movie theater, we entered the Oscar competition drawing they had, so here were my picks:
Film: I picked Babel, which I haven't seen since I've heard that it is phenomenally depressing (for similar reasons, I am wary of 9/11, Holocaust and war movies, and saw neither Flags of our Fathers nor Letter from Iwo Jima, the latter of which is nominated in this category). I think The Departed has an outside chance, better than Little Miss Sunshine, which I really liked, and The Queen, which I've yet to see.
Director: Scorcese takes this one over Eastwood and the directors of Babel, The Queen, and United 93 (missed it, see above).
Actor: Forest Whitaker was my pick, because I can't imagine the award going to Leo for Blood Diamond, Ryan Gosling, Peter O'Toole, or Will Smith. impressively, I've seen none of these.
Actress: Helen Mirren will win, as dignified mature British actresses always do, over the equally dignified and British but recently awarded Judi Dench, equally British Kate Winslet, equally dignified Meryl Streep, and Penélope Cruz, who was the best of all the actresses I've seen in these respective roles. She was also the only one i've seen in these respective roles.
Supporting Actor: Eddie Murphy takes the comeback lifetime achievement award over Honsou and Haley, who I haven't seen, as well as Arkin and Wahlberg, who I have. Arkin and Wahlberg were both very good, but neither role really struck me as Oscar material.
Supporting Actress: Cate Blanchett was born to win Oscars, and has the fact she's from the British Commonwealth and approaching "dignified" working for her. No one knows who Barraza or Kikuchi are, Breslin hasn't even hit her teens, and Jennifer Hudson was previously seen on American idol. I've only seen Sunshine from this group.
Foreign Film: Pan's Labyrinth in a heartbeat. I'll be seeing it next weekend.
Oddly enough, Volver didn't get a nomination for Foreign Film, but Cruz is up for Best Actress. This is ridiculous. For one thing, I don't see why we have to pretend that foreign films qualify for all the other awards. If the Academy was serious about this, than English-speaking actors would only occasionally get a nomination for an acting prize, and rarely if ever win (same for the technical awards). America may have the second-largest film industry in the world after Bollywood, but the rest of the world makes many more films than we do, and the Academy just doesn't make the time to review them all, since their focus is, has been, and will be on English-language film. Instead, we get token nominations from the rest of the world when leaving them out would be too criminal, but these nominations are tokens all the same. In the end, few people really mind because most of the Americans reading Oscar recaps in People magazine and on Entertainment Tonight don't like to watch movies with subtitles anyway. So, kids, remember that on a night where we celebrate the best of Hollywood (or at least claim to do so), the best cinema is often lost in translation (unlike a few years ago, when it was Lost In Translation). Hopefully, more on this theme next week when I review Pan's Labyrinth.
Monday, January 22, 2007
Truth twenty-four times a second
As a Netflix subscriber, I don't have the time to review every movie I see, nor could I reasonably expect anybody out there to give a flying one about what I thought about Harold and Kumar go to White Castle (it's fantastic, BTW). Still, there are some movies out there worthy of mention, so look for this to become an occasional series. Ironically enough, the post title comes from Jean-Luc Godard, none of whose films I've ever come close to enjoying. Oh well.
Last night, we caught Volver, by Pedro Almadóvar at our local art theatre. I'm rather a big fan of his, having seen just about everything he's done except for a few of the 1980's madcap gender-confused semi-erotic farces that I can never entirely keep straight. The first NC-17 movie I ever saw was Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down, back when I was a 15-year-old college freshman. Suffice it to say, the movie really deserved a run of the mill R-rating, but I gained a love for Spanish cinema that lasts to this day. More recently, Almadóvar has taken to more focused but equally as bizarre stories, mostly focusing on strange relationships and love polygons, most recently with the paralyzed (Live Flesh), comatose (Talk to Her) or the transgendered (Bad Education). This film, like All About My Mother, is about as straightforward as he gets as a director because it features what he does better than just about any director in the world: write and film movies that give actresses a chance to shine. By reputation Almadóvar, who is gay, does a better job in directing women than men, and this is especially true when it comes to relationships. His men often come off either as caricature or farce, whereas the women are strong and multi-dimensional. Here, his primary muses are Penélope Cruz, who, as many people on the internet have noted, is a vastly better actress in Spanish than in English (just compare Abre Los Ojos and Vanilla Sky), and the wonderful Carmen Maura, who last acted for Almadóvar in his best film, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown. This is clearly a film of and about women; there are four male speaking roles as best I could count, with at most 10 lines of dialogue in the entire film.
Instead, this is a story about the lives of families, the secrets that are kept and sometimes repressed, and the ways in which experiences are passed on down the generations. Throughout, he makes the interesting choice to let the audience see the twists before the characters themselves; in many ways the plot twists are not important in and of themselves, but as events to which the characters must react. Impressively, Cruz is given a somewhat unsympathetic part to play, up until we learn the role played by her past. As a result, her part manages to achieve nuance without the mawkishness demanded by the standard American dramatic formula. Maura, as her mother, is given the lead role for much of the comedy, but always with a bittersweet edge. Still, as films go, this one is a true pleasure to watch, an underrated factor in movie-watching. Too often, I can't bring myself to watch a great film because I know it will be godawful depressing (Babel fits this category), occasionally missing out on a movie that I had misjudged before seeing it. City of God, the most engaging story of death and poverty in the slums of Brazil ever filmed, thankfully avoided the latter fate. Volver is not a 'happy" film, and touches on any number of truly dark subjects, but it manages to treat its actresses and their daily troubles with a great deal of respect while allowing its audience an enjoyable two hours of cinema. It's worth going out and seeing if it plays near you. Otherwise, rent Women On The Verge and All About My Mother and wait for it to come out on DVD.
Last night, we caught Volver, by Pedro Almadóvar at our local art theatre. I'm rather a big fan of his, having seen just about everything he's done except for a few of the 1980's madcap gender-confused semi-erotic farces that I can never entirely keep straight. The first NC-17 movie I ever saw was Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down, back when I was a 15-year-old college freshman. Suffice it to say, the movie really deserved a run of the mill R-rating, but I gained a love for Spanish cinema that lasts to this day. More recently, Almadóvar has taken to more focused but equally as bizarre stories, mostly focusing on strange relationships and love polygons, most recently with the paralyzed (Live Flesh), comatose (Talk to Her) or the transgendered (Bad Education). This film, like All About My Mother, is about as straightforward as he gets as a director because it features what he does better than just about any director in the world: write and film movies that give actresses a chance to shine. By reputation Almadóvar, who is gay, does a better job in directing women than men, and this is especially true when it comes to relationships. His men often come off either as caricature or farce, whereas the women are strong and multi-dimensional. Here, his primary muses are Penélope Cruz, who, as many people on the internet have noted, is a vastly better actress in Spanish than in English (just compare Abre Los Ojos and Vanilla Sky), and the wonderful Carmen Maura, who last acted for Almadóvar in his best film, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown. This is clearly a film of and about women; there are four male speaking roles as best I could count, with at most 10 lines of dialogue in the entire film.
Instead, this is a story about the lives of families, the secrets that are kept and sometimes repressed, and the ways in which experiences are passed on down the generations. Throughout, he makes the interesting choice to let the audience see the twists before the characters themselves; in many ways the plot twists are not important in and of themselves, but as events to which the characters must react. Impressively, Cruz is given a somewhat unsympathetic part to play, up until we learn the role played by her past. As a result, her part manages to achieve nuance without the mawkishness demanded by the standard American dramatic formula. Maura, as her mother, is given the lead role for much of the comedy, but always with a bittersweet edge. Still, as films go, this one is a true pleasure to watch, an underrated factor in movie-watching. Too often, I can't bring myself to watch a great film because I know it will be godawful depressing (Babel fits this category), occasionally missing out on a movie that I had misjudged before seeing it. City of God, the most engaging story of death and poverty in the slums of Brazil ever filmed, thankfully avoided the latter fate. Volver is not a 'happy" film, and touches on any number of truly dark subjects, but it manages to treat its actresses and their daily troubles with a great deal of respect while allowing its audience an enjoyable two hours of cinema. It's worth going out and seeing if it plays near you. Otherwise, rent Women On The Verge and All About My Mother and wait for it to come out on DVD.
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