Monday at the Movies - September 29, 2014

Welcome to another edition of “Monday at the Movies.”  I don’t review as many documentaries on here as I should, so I’ll work on rectifying that over the coming months. 

The Woman Who Wasn’t There (2012) – As if the events of September 11 weren’t horrifying enough, this documentary trots out the most grotesque of all the sideshow freaks in the traveling circus of terrorism’s aftermath.  I don’t know how much readers are aware of the story of Tania Head, but whether you know the horrid “twist” (reality mimicking art, in this sense) or not the documentary unfolds with all the building dread and slow-burn anxiety of a well-done psychological horror flick.  In a nutshell (spoilers?) Tania Head lied about being in the World Trade Center on 9/11 and rose to a prominent role in a survivor’s support group, even ousting legitimate survivors in what seems to have been a mad grab for power.  Head herself is only featured in archival footage, having obviously avoided the filmmakers, though as Louis Brandeis said, “Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants.”  While the film never provides a rationale for Head’s actions, it does a meticulous job tracing out her web of lies and the inevitable collapse of the charade as more of her friends realize just how severely they had been duped.  This is a very well-made documentary, avoiding the dry recitation of a History Channel special and instead giving Head’s victims – themselves doubly injured, having already survived 9/11 – the floor in a fascinating exposé that has more in common with Hitchcock than Ken Burns.  Unfortunately, as I’ve mentioned, the film never answers why someone would fabricate a story like Tania Head did, but perhaps that makes the documentary more effective as a narrative about an ineffably monstrous person.

That does it for this week’s edition of “Monday at the Movies.” We’ll see you here next week!

Monday at the Movies - September 22, 2014

Welcome to another edition of “Monday at the Movies.”  We won’t pretend that today’s review has anything to do with birthdays or coincidences of the calendar – rather, here’s a movie watched and reviewed in the past week (you know, just like this feature used to be).

The Truman Show (1998) – Half Philip K. Dick and half Plato’s allegory of the cave, Peter Weir's The Truman Show is a prescient critique of reality television (a full two years before Survivor) with a strong dose of existential philosophy and a little Christian creation theory for good measure.  Jim Carrey stars as Truman Burbank, who unwittingly stars in a reality show orbiting entirely around him.  In short, he’s the only genuine thing in the simulacrum of Seahaven; think Leave It to Beaver meets Big Brother.  While his whole life is being directed by television auteur Christof (a smartly understated Ed Harris), Truman discovers holes in his own reality as he wonders why he can’t leave town and whether he’s the center of the universe.  Carrey, at the time known mostly for his broad strokes comedy in Ace Ventura and The Mask, delivers a more restrained performance here; there are a few flashes of slapstick and the facial clowning which made Carrey famous, but by and large the film is more cerebral than that and explores the character’s psyche quite well, in a frankly brilliant screenplay by Andrew Niccol.  Indeed, this is a very smart film, and it never panders to the audience by overexplaining the high concept; in the hands of a lesser crew, the interview sequence with Christof would have been overladen with exposition, but instead The Truman Show uses it to explore some of the implications of this particular reality program, rendering Christof not as a mustache-twirling villain but as an antagonist with a high emphasis on aesthetics over ethics.  Eventually the film addresses a key existential theme – the necessity of choice in freedom – and the film’s conclusion subverts our expectations by denying us a key confrontation but leaves us with the only ending this story could have.  The Truman Show comes highly recommended, both as casual entertainment and as thought experiment.

That does it for this week’s edition of “Monday at the Movies.” We’ll see you here next week!

Monday at the Movies - September 15, 2014

Welcome to another edition of “Monday at the Movies.”  Continuing our string of bizarre coincidences, tomorrow is screenwriter Justin Haythe’s birthday, he of the largely ill-conceived Lone Ranger reboot.

Revolutionary Road (2008) – If you want to remember the postwar era fondly, the door to Turner Classic Movies is that way.  Director Sam Mendes helms this adaptation of the eponymous novel by Richard Yates, and you’ll find it astounding to believe this is the same director behind both Skyfall and American Beauty.  Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet play Frank and April Wheeler, a couple for whom the sheen of marital bliss is quickly cracking; the two deliver reliably solid work, and the tension between the two is divinely palpable.  As unfaltering as these two performances are, they’re also relentlessly depressing.  They’re fantastic performers, and we enjoy them on-screen for it, but good Lord – it’s very trying to watch two of your most beloved thespians berate each other for two hours in a self-destructive, mutually abusive marriage.  The goal here is a warts-and-all exposé on the darker side of the late-40s American optimism, with a heavy dose of Peyton Place thrown in for those who still held the suburbs as idyllic.  On that count, Revolutionary Road is a bleak success, but feel good it ain’t.  To lighten the mood, though, Michael Shannon wanders into the frame every so often, and – as is usually the case with him – it’s as though he’s in an entirely different movie, one I can’t say I wouldn’t rather have watched.  His supporting role as the son of the Wheelers’ realtor neighbor (Kathy Bates) comes with equal parts mental derangement and frightening outburst, a fine and effective complement to the repressed Frank and April.  The real treat is in watching him act, with an occasional tic or bizarre vocal inflection making his the only real fun performance to be had in a film that is creatively successful but otherwise oppressing to watch.

That does it for this week’s edition of “Monday at the Movies.” We’ll see you here next week!

Monday at the Movies - September 8, 2014

Welcome to another edition of “Monday at the Movies.”  Tomorrow is Michelle Williams’s birthday, so we’re going to pretend that this next review isn’t a complete coincidence and act like we timed this perfectly.

The Station Agent (2003) – For those who weren’t already aware of Peter Dinklage’s star-making performance in Thomas McCarthy’s directorial debut, the rising star of Dinklage thanks to his household status in Game of Thrones will be inviting newcomers to what is a truly compelling feature, imperfect in the way that most debuts are but worth experiencing the remarkably brief runtime.  Dinklage delivers a phenomenally moving performance as Fin, the eponymous man who lives in an abandoned train depot, and it’s a remarkable role since the film never patronizes to the audience by demanding sympathy for a protagonist with dwarfism; instead, Dinklage’s quiet solemnity and the occasional condescension from a passer-by make the case eloquently for basic human dignity.  Patricia Clarkson and Bobby Cannavale costar as Fin’s friends, who break through the insulation he’s erected around himself, and the film is highly enjoyable in developing the relationship between this unlikely trio.  Fortunately, the film also treats its audience with respect by not forcing the clichéd “damaged people” love affair between Dinklage and Clarkson; that plotline goes to a young Michelle Williams, who’s less a broken soul and more charming librarian who bonds with Fin over his need for a library card.  Unfortunately, the film stumbles a bit when it gives equal time to Clarkson’s plotline about her separation from her husband; under the weight of two despondent protagonists, the film buckles, and there are a few beats where the depressing quality almost overwhelms.  I applaud the film for its anti-Hollywood ending, in which love doesn’t quite conquer all, for it makes a more affirming statement about friendship, and as the characters smile at the end, it’s a gift to the audience that we too feel that we’ve found a new batch of misfits with whom we can spend time.

That does it for this week’s edition of “Monday at the Movies.” We’ll see you here next week!

Die Another Day (2002)

After forty years and half as many movies, the James Bond franchise has legs like few others (Godzilla comes to mind for longevity), and on the surface Die Another Day pays homage to a lot of great moments from the long history of the series.  The film itself, however, is the epitome of a trainwreck:  it starts strong and quickly derails, all the while remaining a ruin away from which you can’t tear your eyes.

After months of torture in a North Korean prison camp, James Bond (Pierce Brosnan) is released in a hostage trade orchestrated by M (Judi Dench) to root out a British conspirator.  Bond pursues Korean terrorist Zao (Rick Yune) to Cuba, where he learns that American spy Jinx Johnson (Halle Berry) is also on the case.  Together, the two follow the trail to British diamond baron Gustav Graves (Toby Stephens) and his orbital laser satellite.

From that plot synopsis, you already have a sense of the biggest problem with Die Another Day – its staggering unevenness.  The film sprints from setpiece to setpiece with little connective tissue between scenes other than someone coming in and expositing to Bond, “This is where you need to go next.”  The more dangerous message of these weak transitions is the intimation that Bond is rusty and doesn’t know his way around a secret mission anymore.  Consequently, the inorganic quality of the plot results in a film that is neither a triumph nor a catastrophe.  There are moments when Die Another Day is quite entertaining, but the moments when it isn’t prevent the whole from coalescing into a fulfilling moviegoing experience.

Case in point – at about the midpoint of the film, there’s a fantastic fencing match between Bond and Graves.  It’s energetic, fantastically choreographed and directed, and essential in developing the personalities of the two men.  The stuntwork is quite excellent, and the scene positively crackles.  Like any good setpiece, it’s easily divorced from the larger narrative, enjoyable on its own merits, but everything surrounding the duel is incomprehensibly disconnected; it’s anyone’s guess why the two men duel in the first place, nor does it make much sense for Graves to invite Bond to his secret lair after the duel.

And when the whole film proceeds in such a way, it’s just exhausting.  The fundamental flaw of the film is that in nearly every aspect of the narrative, Die Another Day is unable to commit to one direction.  In the character of Jinx, the filmmakers have an opportunity to give Bond an equal number, a female American agent every bit as skilled as he is; instead, Jinx is as often (if not more frequently) a damsel in distress.  Halle Berry is very good in the role, equally smart and sexy, but the role itself is somewhat thin.  After one particularly great fight sequence in the bowels of a plummeting airplane, Jinx dispatches her adversary and then quite literally sits down and waits for Bond to save her.

The Jinx of the first half of the film would never have done that, but it seems that halfway through Die Another Day everything in the film goes topsy-turvy and stops making sense.  The film’s opener, with hovercrafts and silly puns, is ludicrous enough but remains safely within the loose realism of the Bond films.  Once we get into the second half, with space lasers and ice palaces, the film surrenders entirely to poor CGI effects and absurd gadgetry far beyond what the boundaries of credulity can accommodate.  As if the invisible car weren’t preposterous enough, the film sees Bond surfing multiple times, and in the film’s climax Gustav Graves dons an electrified suit of armor for no apparent reason whatsoever; there’s a gag about making his suitcase device more ergonomic, but you won’t find this gizmo in an IKEA near you. 

It’s a real shame that Die Another Day goes so far off the rails, not only because it’s Brosnan’s final outing as 007, though it is tragic that the promise of Goldeneye was never fully met during Brosnan’s tenure.  The presence of story beats that actually work well – the motivation of the villain to live up to his father, the traitor within MI6 as an update on the classic henchman trope, and M’s unwavering faith in Bond – each make the film that much more excruciating because there are glimpses of a Bond film that could have been.  Instead, we get a movie with more explosions in the opening sequence than any other entire Bond film, turning up the volume instead of the intellect.

Perhaps the worst aesthetic offense is the moment when M tells Bond, “While you were gone, the world changed,” suggesting a post-9/11 self-awareness and a recognition of the new state of geopolitics.  Unfortunately, though, the film never really engages with that idea.  While positing a new paradigm for Bond, the film goes for broke in the direction of the worst excesses of the franchise; the space laser recalls Moonraker, while the hyper-technology seems like an unironic version of the exploding pen Never Say Never Again pulled off with a knowing wink.  With all the other callbacks to earlier films – Jinx’s bikinied exit from the ocean a la Dr. No, the Union Jack parachute ripped from The Spy Who Loved Me, and even more overt allusions like the Thunderball jetpack’s cameo, among others – the fortieth anniversary of the film franchise seems to attempt to argue implicitly that Bond doesn’t need to change.  The end result, however, tells an entirely different story; this is a Bond in desperate need of a new wind of change (so long as he doesn’t attempt to surf on it).

Die Another Day is rated PG-13 for “action violence and sexuality.”  There’s a quick flash of blood in one scene of impalement and an occasional slash during a duel sequence; other characters die with no blood visible, while the film shows glimpses of Bond being tortured in North Korea.  As noted above, nearly everything explodes in this film.  Bond sleeps with two women (a low number for him), but all we see are bare backs.

James Bond and The Cinema King will return in a review of Casino Royale (2006) on October 7, 2014!

Monday at the Movies - September 1, 2014

Welcome to another edition of “Monday at the Movies.” Now that we’re back to our regularly scheduled programming, I can admit that I was in Disney World the past two weeks... so in recognition of that fact, let’s look at a movie covertly filmed in The Cinema King’s favorite vacation destination!

Escape from Tomorrow (2013) – More an experience than a movie, Escape from Tomorrow is on the one hand a David Lynch-esque narrative about family man Jim White (Roy Abramsohn) and his slow descent into madness after losing his job while on vacation with his family at Disney World.  This film is oddly compelling, a surreal journey through the Happiest Place on Earth as seen by a man with a detaching grasp on sanity.  It’s weird, in a puzzle-box kind of way, but the audience’s attempts to put the pieces together never really come to fruition; the more memorable miscellaneous pieces – like the mysterious cat flu, the shady scientist operating beneath Spaceship Earth, and the deranged princess-turned-abductor – never really coalesce into a unified statement.  Eraserhead it isn’t, though it’s trying very hard to be.  For me, the more interesting element of Escape from Tomorrow is not the bizarre (and often unintentionally funny) plot of the film; I’d recommend seeing the film more on the grounds of director Randy Moore’s somewhat remarkable achievement of surreptitious filming on Disney grounds.  Indeed, it’s more engaging to watch the film as a frequent tourist, pinpointing where shots were filmed (especially when the shooting location changes between Disneyland in Anaheim and Disney World in Orlando, while the narrative setting remains consistent).  It’s more fun to think about how Moore accomplished certain shots, where and when he had to assemble a clandestine cast and (I’m guessing minimal) crew, and where he had to cheat using mock-ups, both practical and computer-generated.  There are intriguingly strange setpieces, as when the family rides it’s a small world amid an array of demonic dolls and possessed children, but the film is ultimately more a technical curiosity than a narrative success, one of those films that is more fun to ponder and discuss than actually to watch.

That does it for this week’s edition of “Monday at the Movies.” We’ll see you here next week, and don’t forget that this Sunday is the Double-Oh-Seventh of the month, Brosnan’s final Bond!