Cinema Girl

HOME PAGE

PATRON SAINT

Hunter Thompson

Monday, September 29. 2008

Miracle at St. Anna

I've always loved Spike Lee's work. He approaches film with a piercing imagination, shows a deft hand with the editor's knife and manages to wring the best out of his actors. In Miracle at St. Anna, I suppose Spike was attempting to make his Saving Private Tyrone, honoring the highly decorated 92nd Infantry Brigade, the first all-black combat unit during WWII.

Too bad, but Spike lost focus somewhere along the line and fell short... too complicated, too long, too much meandering, but otherwise brilliant.

In all fairness, I haven't read the James McBride novel that inspired the film.

Little Angelo is protected by 'Gigante Chocolato', the Chocolate Giant, played by Omar Benson Miller. Looking on is Pvt. Bishop Cummings (Michael Ealy).

I can imagine that some of the twists and turns in the story might ride smoother with the detail allowed in a literary treatment. If Spike's error was made in an attempt to keep too closely with the book, as an author I can somewhat forgive.

A Brooklyn postal clerk pulls a WWII vintage German Luger pistol from under his desktop and shoots dead a customer buying stamps. When police, with a inquisitive young journalist in tow, search the shooter's apartment, they find the head of a renaissance statue that once adorned a bridge in Florence, Italy, destroyed by the allies in 1944.

The aging postal clerk turns out to be Hector Negrone, a former member of the 92nd Infantry, 'Buffalo Soldiers', and what follows is the story of how Hector came to posses that precious artifact.

Flash back to the war; Hector's squad gets separated for the rest of their brigade after an ambush by the Germans at a river crossing scatters the 92nd. One of the four, Train, a mountain of a man, carries the head strapped to his side, a protective talisman, he believes. In a small abandoned farmhouse where the men plan to hide out, Train finds a young Italian boy trapped under some ruble. The boy, Angelo, calls Train Gigante Chocolatto--the chocolate giant.

And so the real story--Angelo's and Train's story--finally begins. The soldiers take the boy to a village where they are celebrating the departure of the German Army from the area. The men, despite their race, are well-received and cared for by the townsfolk. They meet partisans who have captured a German that the often incoherent boy seems to know.

Magical realism takes hold, unseen forces at work to save the boy and his Buffalo Soldier guardian angels.

I'd tell you more, but I'd have to make a really long story really short. This where Spike start wandering off the main line, spending too much time with the Italians and not enough with the Americans, except in flashbacks... lots of them. Lee also rode onto a number of sidetracks making racial points about the era. things that probably don't need to be said, or have been said so many times before. For this film, that sort of thing just seemed superfluous and distracting.

Near the end of the film, we're at Hector's pre-trial hearing for the murder of his Italian immigrant customer, a man about his own age. A mystery benefactor has hired some high-powered lawyer to represent Hector and pays off his two-million-dollar cash bail. In a scene oddly reminiscent ofThe Shawshank Redemption, when Red finds Andy and a Bahamian beach, Hector finds his benefactor drinking margaritas, sitting in a lounge chair on a Bahamian Beach.

Guess who?

It's worth seeing, despite the flaws. Spike Lee is too skilled for this film not to have its moments.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5.0
Fat Laughing Buddhas

Posted by Bill Lambert in Cinema Girl at 17:39 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

Saturday, August 23. 2008

The Dark Knight

In The Dark Knight, the City of Broad Shoulders ably stands-in for mythical Gotham. No art deco sound stage or CGI hovering gargoyles here; director Christopher Nolan sinks into the grime and filth of the Chi-town back-alleys, taking the Batman saga a giant leap off a tall building further down toward darkness and insanity.

Gotham has grown tired of Batman's game. Their attention span exceeded, Gothamites are impatient to discover the B-guy's identity, while the media plays guessing games about his agenda. Egged on by a consortium of thugs, criminals he's laid waste now call our man-in-tights sadistic and criminal. The police and the mayor are getting edgy and express alarm and outrage at the Batman's pounding brand of vigilante violence.

Then Heath Ledger slithers in from stage left as the Joker and everything plummets magnificently into a deeper hell.

While filming "The Dark Knight", Maggie Gyllenhaal's face constantly reminded Heath Ledger of her brother Jake and the fabulous times they shared in that pup-tent up on Brokeback Mountain.

I thought some of the raves about Heath Ledger's chops in this film had to be due to a sympathetic post-suicide afterglow, but it was a role more lived than acted. Ledger's immersion into that twisted scowl was complete, and despite the comic book theme, totally believable. The Joker's scarred face filled the screen for a fat chunk of the movie; captivating, mesmerizing, convincingly evil, surely born under the blade that carved that never-ending clownish grin into his face.

"Why so serious?" he asks, a cue to the audience that someone is about to die.

[This is film villainy destined for legend. In death, Heath Ledger ascends to become the James Dean of his generation.... so much talent wasted, a life sadly unfulfilled.]

Not for love of money, but as a monument to his madness, the Joker hires himself out to the Gotham City bad guy consortium to finally rinse that Batman out of their filthy hair.

Nolan, an 'actor's director', drew the best from his star-studded cast. Christian Bale (Bruce Wayne/Batman), Maggie Gyllenhaal (Rachel Dawes), Michael Caine (Alfred), Morgan Freeman (Lucius Fox) and Gary Oldham (Chief Gordon) all delivered prime tenderloin in surprisingly meaty roles for an action flick. Perhaps the only semi-clinker was turned in by Aaron Eckhart as Harvey Dent/Two-Face, who played the character a shade too 'comic book', at times mismatching the overall somber mood.

I mentioned this was an action film? See it in IMAX... get there now, and by any means possible. The Dark Knight is the first full-length feature with sequences filmed with IMAX camera equipment. Some of the scenes of Batman gliding through skyscraper canyons over Chicago and Hong Kong were simply magnificent, as were the fight scenes. Special kudos to Nolan and his crew for the motorcycle chase sequences. Unlike the fake CGI crap in the latest Indiana Jones movie, the murder and mayhem all blend together seamlessly.

This one gets a 5.0. There's nothing to dislike and a lot to love, especially the screenplay, written by Nolan and his brother and long-term collaborator, Jonathan. One of the things I loved about the dialogue: all the characters referred to the caped crusader as, THE Batman, rather than the more familial, respectfully simple, 'Batman'. That slight deviation from prior films accents a further separation of our anti-hero from the society he tries so hard to save.

Brilliant.

Rating: 5.0 out of 5
Fat Laughing Buddhas

Posted by Bill Lambert in Cinema Girl at 17:08 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

Monday, July 28. 2008

Journey to the Center of the Earth - 3D

Someone needed a movie to show off some whizz-bang 3D effects, and somehow, somewhere, they decided on this one. Brendon Fraser plays bumbling college prof Trevor Anderson, who takes off with his nephew after his lost brother by following the steps in the Jules Verne novel. For eye-candy, they happened to meet up with a mountain guide so beautiful she made my saliva glans ache. Of course as the journey and the film progressed, more and more of her clothes mysteriously kept coming off, yet another reason to love 3D and the only reason one would ever hope this film could be longer. Brendon Fraser will never come off as an action hero... even a bumbling one. For me, he'll always be Link, the Encino man. Hey... he might have even been at his peak then.

Brendon Fraser's breakout perfomance in a non-speaking role as Encino Man helped make Pauley Shore everything he is today.

Okay... now that we know what the latest technology is capable of, why don't we make a real movie? The 3D effects, in truth, were stunning--especially cool on some of the "layered" shots, usually a panorama with actors in the foreground.

Someday we'll go to the theatre for a full three-dimensional experience through immersive virtual reality equipment on some rig that looks like a tanning salon. Praise the lord, Journey to the Center of the Earth takes us a small step closer.

Rating: 1.5 out of 5
Fat Laughing Buddhas

Posted by Bill Lambert in Cinema Girl at 16:14 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

Saturday, October 20. 2007

Gone Baby Gone

I've met Dennis Lahane, spent a little time with him at a writers' conference he put on at Eckerd College in St. Petersberg, FL, last year.

Dennis is wicked smart, and strung as tight as a tenor banjo. There's a lot of energy there, which makes him a great teacher as well as a great writer.

About a year ago I ran into Dennis at a book signing for author Tom Franklin in Newtonville. "Gone Baby Gone" had just finished filming and Dennis had seen some of the early takes and visited the set. He said he liked what Ben was doing with story.

Dennis, not a fan of what Hollywood does with a lot of novels, said, "Affleck gets it,"

In Ben Affleck's adaptation of Dennis Lehane's novel, Private Detectives Patrick Kenzie (Casey Affleck) and Angie Gennaro (Michelle Monaghan) have a relationship just as mysterious as the crimes they try to solve.

Indeed he did. In The Departed, Martin Scorcese's Boston working-class heavies had an air of evil aristocracy about them, however, they lived the good life. Dennis Lehane's Boston is an even darker place, one with no rules for survival, populated by lost, destitute souls perilously at the edge of the urban cliff. It ain't pretty, with a decidedly Boston accent. Ben Affleck did an outstanding job of covering the audience with the external and internal grime unique to the Dorchester working under-class.

Private Detectives Patrick Kenzie (Casey Affleck) and Angie Gennaro (Michelle Monaghan) are hired to find a missing toddler by her aunt, since the girl's mom is a zonked out bar-fly well on the way to becoming a crack whore. The two team with a Boston Police special missing persons unit, led by Jack Doyle (Morgan Freeman) and Remy Bressant (Ed Harris, in an outstanding turn). Things quickly become complicated, not as they first seem. The bad guys begin to look better and the good guys begin to look worse as the film goes on, travelling through the underbelly of the seedy neighborhood until a differing viewpoint on a moral conflict threatens to break the two young detectives, also lovers, apart.

Alas, this was the shortfall. The relationship between Kenzie and Gennaro was never explored quite enough to make this climax matter as much as it needed to. We know they are lovers, but barely. Perhaps there is something in Angie's past that drives her, motivates her, that we need to know. It would have helped make the ending make more sense.

Don't get me wrong... this is likely one of the best films of the year. With a little more attention paid to character development in the screenplay, it might have been even better.

Rating: 4.0 out of 5
Fat Laughing Buddhas

Posted by Bill Lambert in Cinema Girl at 17:42 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

Monday, October 1. 2007

Across the Universe

For most of a long life I've listened to the Beatles. As a matter of fact, I have the Love CD in the car (the George Martin & son remix for the Cirque du Soleil Vegas show of the same name) and listen to it endlessly... and loud. I'd most likely see any film featuring Beatles music on the sound track... well, at least any film not directed by Oliver Stone.

I was not at all disappointed. Newton native Julie Taymor, noted for her Shakespearen productions, uses an attractive main cast of young unknowns plus cameo appearances by music and film legends to hit just about every mark with her Beatle's tribute Rock Opera tour de force, Across the Universe.

Taymor weaves a loosely-connected montage of music-videos into a story of love found, lost, and found again -- a tour of the turbulent sixties through the eyes of a group of struggling artists who share a run-down walk-up in Greenwich Village.

Jim Sturgess, Evan Rachael Wood and Joe Anderson are high on lots of interesting substances during most of "Across the Universe".

A description of the first scene after the credits should tell you most of what you need to know.

Jude (Jim Sturgess), a Liverpool shipyard worker about to leave for America in search of a father he never knew, boogies with his girlfriend in "The Cavern Club" while a group of leather-clad moptops rock onstage. Meanwhile, in Dayton, Ohio, Lucy (Evan Rachael Wood) sultries a version of "I want to Hold Your Hand" to her recently-enlisted (and doomed) boyfriend at their senior prom.

Jude and Lucy are destined to meet up in New York City and get by with a lot of help from their friends, all of whom seem able to belt out a fair tune. With the turmoil of the times and the Vietnam War as backdrop, they manage to cope with life and young adulthood and seem likely to grow up to become you and I.

The only slight turn-off: overuse of character names from Beatles' music... such as the enigmatic "Prudence", whose only purpose seemed to be to somehow get that name in; and Bono as "Dr. Robert", offering a surprisingly weak version of "I Am the Walrus".

"Hey, Jude" wasn't really about Julian Lennon. Jude and Prudence are everyman and every-woman. There was no need for the cute names, and I found it all a distraction.

It's not the story, plot, or actors that shine as much as the music itself and the rich visual experience, despite the lone clinker from Bono. I wish they had this in IMAX... it would be the ideal film for that type of whizz-bang, over-the-top presentation.

Rating: 4.5out of 5
Fat Laughing Buddhas

Posted by Bill Lambert in Cinema Girl at 11:11 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

Tuesday, April 10. 2007

Grindhouse

You're a kid again, at the Saturday Matinee, maybe the drive-in theater. It's 1960, and you're watching action/horror flicks like Grandma used to make. That's the premise, I guess, for three-hours plus of mayhem and flowing blood, written and directed by Robert Rodriquez and Quentin Tarrantino.

The boys must have had fun making this, including interspersed "Previews of Coming Attractions" and campy period filler graphics--part of the authentic experience. We should all have jobs like that... paid big bucks to indulge any macabre fantasy without a care paid to poor taste.

This a double-feature heaped into a single helping. After a preview of Machete ("They fucked with the wrong Mexican..."), Rodriguez' Planet Terror snaps crackles and pops into life, or rather death, as zombies attempt to take over the planet. All you need to know is embodied (oh so well) in the heroine, Cherry, a buxom Go-Go dancer who's zombie-eaten right leg gets replaced by a 9mm automatic with grenade launcher. Zombies by the hundreds are torn to gooey shreds by the cutting edge of Cherry's leaden spray, and the girl can dance, even without a pole.

In the second feature, Death Proof, directed by Tarrantino, Kurt Russell plays a has-been stunt driver turned stalker--a nice guy who likes to use fast cars to mess up pretty girls. All the Tarrantino hallmarks appear: lingering close-ups of women's feet, full-screen butt shots, surfer music and a bit of the ol' ultra-violent.

This all is fun and works well, at least for those with a strong stomach and a natural sense of detachment from human pain. If you can't stand the sight of puss and bloody zombie phlegm oozing down the front of someone's face, I'd suggest taking the dog for a walk in the park instead.

Tarrantino makes cameo appearances in both features. He shouldn't. For some strange reason he seems to want to play "tough guys". He just doesn't get it... he's a geeky artist, not a killer or a rapist, and never will be. Scrap that crap, will ya Q-man? Sheesh...

Rating: 3.5 out of 5
Fat Laughing Buddhas