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MIRAMAX |
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H E R O
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H O U S E O F F L Y I N G D A G G E R S
A decade ago, Zhang Yimou was renowned for political parables set in the early 20th century and starring his muse-mistress Gong Li. Now he's Mr. Martial Arts, the creator of two worldwide hits that are also lessons in sumptuous storytelling, and with a magical new leading lady, Zhang Ziyi. In Hero she joins a starry cast (Jet Li, Maggie Cheung, Tony Leung Chiu-wai) that lends glamour and gravity to a Rashomon-like fable of action and passion among would-be assassins of China's first emperor. The fight scenes are thrilling, the color design ravishing. And when Cheung and Leung, the warrior-lovers, finally settle their scores, viewers see one of the most startling, poignant farewells in film history. The slighter, lighter Flying Daggers has three duplicitous charmers (Zhang Ziyi, Andy Lau and Takeshi Kaneshiro) spinning, soaring and sword-playing in an autumnal forest. Though the action scenes in both these films have sensational verve, the more enticing battles are of the heart. A glance, a smile, a tear can cut deeper than any saber.
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S I D E W A Y S
When happy, horny Jack (Thomas Haden Church) and his deliciously depressed pal Miles (Paul Giamatti) drive up the California coast for a week of buddy bonding, Miles just wants to savor the local wines, and Jack the local women. They get sooooo much more. From this not-so-hot premise comes a comedy alive at every moment to the intoxicating properties of friendship, romance and Pinot Noir. Director Alexander Payne elicits charismatic work from both men and from the sexy, gloriously weathered Virginia Madsen. They play people so quirky and beguiling, you want to spend a life with them; two hours isn't nearly enough. |
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B A D E D U C A T I O N
After two flat-out masterpieces (All About My Mother, Talk to Her), Pedro Almodóvar spins a film-noirish web around the sad headlines of clerical abuse of children. The writer-director always puts extraordinary creatures in extreme situations while lavishing sympathy on every character, including the evil ones; here the priest, up-close, is nearly as pathetic as he is predatory. His sanctity is a mask, but everyone in the movie wears disguises, especially Mexican wonder-boy Gael García Bernal as an actor-drag queen-victim-conniver. Almodóvar wears a mask too: a Janus-face to cover his rage at the harm done to the innocent. Bad Education can be seen as a brilliant debate on how art can conceal the deepest sin, and reveal it.
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C L O S E R
Director Mike Nichols' faithful, lucid transfer of the Patrick Marber play would be important even if it weren't terrific, for it avoids the narrative and emotional laziness of most films. Modern cinema is the fairy-tale business: the manufacturing of clear-cut heroes and villains, the posing of ethical dilemmas that are a cinch to resolve. That's not the way life is. Closer is like life, but with prettier people who talk smarter about the pain they feel and inflict. The two men (Jude Law, Clive Owen) and two women (Julia Roberts, Natalie Portman), who dance in and out of one another's lives and beds, are too complex, too loving, too alive, too damned human to be always right—or wrong. When the film is over, you can condemn or justify each character, as if he or she were someone as close to you as... you.
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E T E R N A L S U N S H I N E O F T H E S P O T L E S S M I N D
Each year I reserve a spot on my Best list for the film that my vaunted colleague Richard Schickel has chosen as his Worst. Dick hated Moulin Rouge in 2001 and Cold Mountain last year, so I had to love 'em. Now I am obliged to praise the Charlie Kaufman-Michel Gondry science-fiction romance. Obliged and honored, for this is a declaration of love against all odds and all reason. Joel (Jim Carrey) discovers that his girlfriend Clementine (Kate Winslet) has had her memories of their affair erased by a mad scientist. Joel tries the same procedure, only to realize that he cherishes the rotten memories of Clementine as much as the sweet ones. Comedy? Horror movie? Eternal Sunshine is all that and this: the first and finest Alzheimer's love story.
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I N F E R N A L A F F A I R S
The cops have planted a mole in Hong Kong's nastiest Triad group. The Triads have planted a mole in the police force. Each infiltrator has to find the other without losing his cover, and his life. This idea—so simple, so reverberative—sets up a thriller rooted in character, as nooses tighten around the two rogues (Tony Leung Chiu-wai, from Hero, and Andy Lau, from Daggers), testing their loyalties to the organizations that bred them. This splendidly tense melodrama, directed by Andrew Lau (no relation to Andy) and Alan Mak, is to be remade by Martin Scorsese with Leonardo DiCaprio and Matt Damon. It might be great, but why wait? The unimprovable original is out on DVD. See it with someone you think is a friend.
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T H E F I V E O B S T R U C T I O N S
Denmark's Lars Von Trier (Breaking the Waves, Dancer in the Dark) is the European cinema's reigning provocateur. His big U.S. release this year was the English-language, Kidman-starring Dogville. But his best was this funny, illuminating experiment with veteran director Jørgen Leth. Larkish Lars proposed that Leth remake his 1967 short The Perfect Human five times, each with bizarre restrictions: in Cuba with shots lasting only a half-second, in the Bombay red-light district, as a cartoon, etc. Whatever humiliation Von Trier imagined, Leth makes the results fascinating. So is the film that documents them. It's a kind of reality-TV show for art-movie lovers—an up-market Fear Factor—and, finally, proof that art is created not despite but because of the impediments surrounding it. A master class in the exasperations of filmmaking has rarely been so entertaining.
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R A Y
Starting with the title—the man's name, but also the shaft of light that music brought to a blind man's world—this bio-pic of Ray Charles is both simple and profound. Director Taylor Hackford briskly spins the story of Charles' rise to rhythm 'n blues stardom and his ornery dalliances with women and drugs. The movie is true to the legend without sentimentalizing it overmuch, and it's savvier than The Aviator about the ruthless business sense a "genius" needs. The superb ensemble cast supports a now-he's-a-star turn by Jamie Foxx. Is he terrific? Yes, indeed.
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T H E S E A I N S I D E
You couldn’t me pay to see this movie, if you told me the bare plot: that it’s the tale of a middle-aged man, paralyzed in a diving accident, who decades later petitions the state for the right to end his miserable life honorably. But wait. Alejandro Amenábar, after the pyrotechnics of Open Your Eyes and The Others, finds a spare, direct style to match the plangent material. And Javier Bardem, a safe bet for an Oscar nomination, invests heroic power and delicacy in a man who believes that "living is a right, not an obligation." Still not persuaded? All right, I'll pay you to go. Don't be surprised if you refund the gift, with interest and thanks.
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(T I E ) F A H R E N H E I T 9 / 1 1
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T H E P A S S I O N O F T H E C H R I S T
Michael Moore and Mel Gibson probably couldn't sit at the same dinner table for two minutes without getting into a food fight. But the two most ornery and resourceful mavericks of the movie year have a lot in common.
Who knew, before Mel found out, that having studios refuse to distribute your film could be a great career move? Every mogul in Hollywood said no to one of its biggest stars who had directed a Bible film. The Passion fracas also showed that there's no better publicity than your enemy's enmity. U.S. liberals took to the talk shows and op-ed pages to denounce Gibson's film, usually without having seen it. These attacks—which simply validated the conservative suspicion that a liberal is a man who will defend to the death your right to agree with him—gave the film priceless ink and air time. It galvanized the Christian right and lured the curious into theaters. Two months later, The Passion was the ninth top grosser in movie history.
Fahrenheit's pre-release followed the Passion scenario so closely, Mel could've sued for plagiarism. Moore's film was dumped by Disney, picked up by small distributors, scorned by fans of the President (including his father), adopted fervently by the organized Left. It became a meta-movie cause celebre, and eventually the all-time top-grossing documentary. One other similarity, to justify the inclusion here: these are two daring, fervent, relentless, smartly made movies that left no viewer indifferent.
And wouldn't it be neat if the Oscar voters nominated both films for Best Picture? It won't happen: Moore might get a nod, but not Gibson. Some Hollywood elders are still miffed they turned it down; others had believed that a film about the participation of Jews in the death of Jesus would stoke anti-Semitism. (It didn't.) Still, imagine the sublime conflict: the outraged Left and the religious Right replaying the 2004 values campaign—this time over a statuette. Real melodrama ... revenge ... action!
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B E I N G J U L I A
Critics routinely overrate movies that are indifferent examples of endangered genres that the critics loved when they were kids. The sophisticated theater comedy, for example. Somerset Maugham's novel Theatre is the source for Istvan Szabo's rollicking relic, with Annette Bening as a slightly aging actress who falls for the attentions of a young conniver, then plots her revenge. As a registered FOOF (Friend Of Old Films), I'm supposed to love antiques like this, but its snooty airs and cloistered airlessness drove me nuts. It's bad enough that Bening—who'll get an Oscar nomination—practically pops a vein in her strain to attain diva status, and that she is photographed so cruelly, she could sue the cinematographer. It's worse that I can't think of a current 40ish actress who would be guaranteed to breathe life into this specter. Are there no smart enchantresses of an age between Cate Blanchett (35) and Meryl Streep (55)? |
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