Film At 11

"Thank You for Smoking" - A Great American Satire

2006-06-01T16:12:00.000-04:00

"Thank You for Smoking"

Rating: 8/10

Written by: Jason Reitman (based on a novel by Christopher Buckley)

Directed by: Jason Reitman

MPAA: Rated R (for language and some sexual content).

Runtime: 92 min.

CAST...

Nick Naylor: Aaron Eckhart

Polly Bailey: Maria Bello

Jack: Adam Brody

Lorne Lutch: Sam Elliot

Heather Holloway: Katie Holmes

Bobby Jay Bliss: David Koechner

Jeff Megall: Rob Lowe

Senator Ortolan K. Finistirre: William H. Macy

Budd "BR" Rohrabacher: J.K. Simmons

Doak "The Captain" Boukin: Robert Duvall

The plaque on the wall reads, "God Bless America: Where Money Can Buy Anything." The wall is in a Washington D.C. restaurant, behind a booth where three powerful lobbyists -- one representing the tobacco industry (Aaron Eckhart), a liquor lobbyist (Maria Bello), and a gun lobbyist (David Koechner) -- meet regularly for lunch. Aaron Eckhart plays Nick Naylor, a handsome genius who is such a master with words that he can make a boy with cancer and no hair feel guilty for having cancer. Eckhart is brilliant as the star of Thank You for Smoking. David Koechner plays gun lobbyist Bobby Jay Bliss to a "T," and Maria Bello is the funny, seasoned liquor lobbyist Polly Bailey. The trio have three of the toughest jobs in Washington: trying to convince more and more people to buy tobacco, guns and liquor. How do they live with themselves? Why shouldn't we hate them? Well, this film provides a hilarious perspective on those questions.

Thank You for Smoking succeeds on every level. It is laugh-out-funny. It is mean. It is kind and touching. And, it lands its satirical jabs without pounding us over the head with dumb humor. For that we can thank director Jason Reitman ("Father's Day," "Dave," "Ghostbusters"). He paces the film perfectly -- it lasts only 92 minutes, and could have run much longer and stayed funny. In that hour-and-a-half we get a lesson and a point of view -- not on how bad cigarettes are, but on how silly, and, sometimes, just plain dumb, the American population and its government can be. Tobacco and lobbyists are only a McGuffin which launches us into the subject the movie is really about.

The moral center of the movie is Nick Naylor's young son, Joey (played perfectly by Cameron Bright). Naylor is divorced, and Joey splits his time between his mother and father. Joey cherishes his father, and has developed his father's verbal gift for winning arguments and debates with anybody, about anything. Naylor describes his own gift with words early in the movie when he says, "Michael Jordan plays ball. Charles Manson kills people. I talk." Joey watches Naylor deftly field questions and objections about smoking while converting his responses into positive statememts about his product and its makers.

But the real issue isn't smoking. The real issue is what a select few powerful people (such as Naylor and his lobbyist friends and bosses) say and do to convince people that they should believe the fallacious, positive spin blurted out by the lobbyists, simply because the spin is so convincing. We get a lesson on spin during one of the film's great moments, when Joey's simple-minded teacher assigns his class a speech titled, "Why America Is the Best Country In the World." Nick Naylor (correctly) tells Joey why the speech's premise is flawed and how to manipulate the flaws in the assigment's title, ensuring Joey an "A" on the speech.

Even though Naylor's boss, "BR," (J.K. Simmoms) and the big big boss (Robert Duvall as "The Captain") are corrupt, Naylor (barely) manages to retain enough moral consciousness to hang in there, even when his trade secrets are used in attempt to ruin him in a sexual ruse by reporter Heather Holloway (Katie Holmes in a brief but pivotal role). William H. Macy, as activist Senator Ortolan K. Finistirre, is also a Naylor-hater, suppliying relentless grief to his daily life. Under that kind of pressure, even someone as gifted as Nick Naylor can suddenly find themselves up the creek without a paddle to row the canoe, or worse, without a conoe. Katie Holmes's unethical feature story about Nick Naylor lack of ethics, combined with Macy's badgering, provide the movie's turning point. Conflicts arise concerning a son's upbringing, employer/employee loyalty, self respect and self esteem all converge.

Amidst all the big-company lies and all the problems that those lies cause, Naylor must make the most important decisions ever about his own life. Quickly. As he works on restoring his own dignity, the movie makes us look inward at our own choices. It does so with wit and intelligence that makes us laugh out loud. It also gets us to stop laughing just long enough to think about our own life-choices. But who cares? It's only a movie, right?

-2001pm
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"Mission:Impossible III" - Not Quite A Dream Cruise

2006-05-26T19:42:00.000-04:00

"Mission:Impossible III"

Rating: 7/10

Mission: Impossible III (2006)

Written by: Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman and J.J. Abrams
Directed by: J.J. Abrams

MPAA: Rated PG-13 (for intense sequences of frenetic violence and menace, disturbing images and some sensuality).
Runtime: 126 min.

CAST...Tom Cruise: Ethan Hunt
Ving Rhames: Luther Strickell
Keri Russell: Lindsey
Phillip Seymour Hoffman: Owen Davian
Bahar Soomekh: Ms. Kari
Lawrence Fishburne: John Brassel
Jonathan Rhys Meyers: Declan
Billy Crudup: John Musgrave

Mission:Impossible III, or "M:i:III," as the poster reads, went through more changes in directors and cast members than Tom Cruise would care to talk about honestly. That's why it took so long for the movie to be released. But somehow, after all the changes and time wasted getting the crew in place, they got a movie out of it. And they got away with it, too, because Mi:III is not bad. It's not great, but it's not bad -- good enough for a 7 out of 10 rating.

What they did right is this: they assembled a real crew of special forces mercenaries, just like the TV show did in the 1960s. The previous two M:I films consisted basically of a pretty girl or two, Ving Rhames and Tom Cruise, and a bunch of bad guys and explosions and stuff. Come to think of it, M:i:III consists of a pretty girl or two, Ving Rhames and Tom Cruise and a bunch of bad guys and explosions and stuff. But, in M:i:III we get a group of several more good guys -- enough to form a real team of people working to save the world so we all can live happily and drive around in our SUVs while paying fifty dollars to fill up the gas tank for a week.

I didn't care one bit about Tom Cruise's character in M:i:III, Ethan Hunt. The acting just isn't there. The M:I franchise is just a vehicle for Cruise to look cool. But I did care about Ving Rhames' character, Luther Strickell, and the rest of the crew, too, particularly Bahar Soomekh as Ms. Kari and Jonathan Rhys Meyers as Declan, who turned in very good performances -- a tough thing to do in a movie filled with chase scenes and Tom Cruise chewing up scenery and doing his own stunts (except, there was no jumping up and down on a sofa in M:i:III).

The M:i:III plot doesn't matter, except that there is one and it's not hard to follow. It's the good-guy mercenaries, along with super-evil bad guy Phillip Seymour Hoffman, who turns in a great performance as Owen Davian, working as a team that earn this film a successful rating. Director J.J. Abrams gives us that "Alias" meets "Lost" TV show feel on a steroid-inflated budget (Abrams is the main man behind both TV shows). Most of the chase scenes are good, the explosions blow up real good (why did they have to do that to a perfectly good Lamborghini?! Mama mia!), and the good guys come out on top. That's all you need to know to walk in, grab some popcorn and enjoy a springtime blockbuster.

-2001pm

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"The Da Vinci Code" - It's Only A Movie

2006-05-22T16:41:00.000-04:00

The Da Vinci Code

2001pm Rating: 7/10

Written by: Akiva Goldsman
Directed by: Ron Howard

MPAA: Rated PG-13 (for disturbing images, violence, some nudity, brief drug references, thematic material and sexual content)
Runtime: 149 min.

CAST...

Tom Hanks: Robert Langdon
Audrey Tautou: Sophie Neveu
Ian McKellen: Sir Leigh Teabing
Jean Reno: Captain Fache
paul Bettany: Silsas
Alfred Molina: Bishop Aringarosa
Jurgen Prochnow: Andre Vernet

This is one time I wish I hadn't read the book before seeing the movie. I wanted to have the experience of seeing the movie "cold" without any prior knowledge of the plot twists. Dan Brown wrote the book "The Da Vinci Code": a murder mystery with more hidden clues and codes to unscramble than the National Security Agency could ever think of. The movie, starring Tom Hanks and Audrey Tautou, tries to throw the entire book at us in about two-and-a-half hours. By being faithful to the book, director Ron Howard has taken on far too much here. But, to his credit, somehow he molded Brown's book into a film that I recommend.

The Da Vinci Code sparkles with intrigue -- mostly. But it sparkles in more spots than not, and it comes on strong in the right places. Other directors most likely would have failed miserably trying to make this film. Howard didn't. For example, he uses really cool visual special effects to allow us see exactly what symboligyst/code-breaker Tom Hanks sees while unscrambling anagrams and solving puzzles presented throughout the movie. There are also great visual effects that let us see inside Hanks' photographic memory as he visualizes a group of objects and puts them in the correct order to solve a code. In his mind he sees what you might expect to see a puzzle-solving graphics expert produce on an Apple computer. The film would have been clearer and more fun if Howard would have used more of those cool effects. He had to leave room, though, for (too many) action chase scenes, plus the plundering backstory of a self-flagellating zealot albino monk named Silas, played by Paul Bettany. Howard spends way too much time on Silas. I wanted more code-breaking and less monk-eying around.

Audrey Tautou plays Sophie Neveu, the beautiful historian and fledgling symboligyst who is also the victim's granddaughter, who meets Hanks at the beginning of the film in the Louvre. They are summoned there to consult with French police and FBI-like special agents on a murder. They meet standing over the prone, posed body of the elderly murder victim. The victim manages to leave clues that are meant only for Hanks and Tautou. As a matter of fact, the victim took so much time leaving clues for Hanks and Tautou it's possible he went to McDonalds and ate a super-sized meal before going back to the Louvre's parquet floor to die. But it's in the book. Either you suspend your disbelief before seeing the film or you don't. It's best to go in ready to believe anything is possible. Don't think too much. You'll get a headache.

The Da Vinci Code tells us of secret societies within the Catholic Church, centuries and centuries old, and of mysteries the societies are trying to protect -- at any cost, including multiple attempts to kill Hanks and Tautou when they get too close to solving the mysteries (the ultimate mystery being the "Da Vinci Code" itself). Hanks and Tautou are wrongly accused of the original Louvre murder, and find themselves being chased by the bad guys AND the good guys. Jean Reno, who may or may not be a good guy, plays Captain Fache, nick-named "The Boar" by his colleagues because he charges ahead without regard to anything in his way until he gets his man. Reno is a great actor who is under-utilized in a role that demands more.

Then there's Ian McKellan. McKellen makes this film fun to watch. He plays Sir Leigh Teabing, a multimillionaire eccentric British historian and also an expert on codes and symbols, whom Hanks and Tautou meet up with during their quest to solve the code. Introduced well into the film, McKellan plays his role near, but not quite over, the top. His expertise in codes and the mysteries of the Church provide us with most of the knowledge we need to get us to the end of the movie without confusion. I think he had fun with this role, and it shows. His scenes with Hanks also create a wonderful push-and-shove for the book fans and haters, their dialogue at times speaking for both those who believe everything in the book and those that think the book is blasphemy. In fact, the biggest difference between the book and the film is that, in this film, Howard gives a voice to the book-complainers. So there. There is a supporting cast that includes Alfred Molina (Spiderman 2) as Bishop Aringarosa, a Church zealot and mentor to Silas. But this film is all Tom Hanks, with a healthy dose of Tautou and a smaller dose of Reno.

Some people who haven't read Brown's book may be a little confused by all the anagrams, numeric codes and secret societies, because there is not enough time for Howard to present all the proper information. But that doesn't matter. The Da Vinci Code is pure murder mystery, plus chase scenes and European travelogue and cops and bad guys. (Note: Toward the end, look for one very funny, very short scene involving Tautou and Hanks standing by a pond.) All in all, the murders, the mysteries, and the wild European travelogue chases make The Da Vinci Code fun springtime ride for the mind and for the senses.

-2001pm
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"United 93"

2006-05-03T02:10:00.000-04:00

Movie: United 93 (2006)

2001pm RATING: 9/10

Written and Directed by: Paul Greengrass

MPAA: Rated R (for language, and some intense sequences of terror and violence).
Runtime: 111 min.

CAST…

Lewis Alsamari: Saeed Al Ghamdi
JJ Johnson: Captain Jason Dahl
Trish Gates: Sandra Bradshaw
Polly Adams: Deborah Welsh
Cheyenne Jackson: Mark Bingham
Opal Alladin: CeeCee Lyles
Starla Benford: Wanda Anita Green
Nancy McDoniel: Lorraine G. Bay
David Alan Basche: Todd Beamer
Richard Bekins: William Joseph Cashman
Susan Blommaert: Jane Folger
Ray Charleson: Joseph DeLuca
Christian Clemenson: Thomas E. Burnett, Jr.
Ben Sliney: Himself

It is never the wrong time for a great film. United 93 is a great film, and will be seen as a great film generations from now. It exceeded any and every expectation I had, and put to rest any doubt as to whether or not this story needs to be told less than five years after 9/11. United 93 is conveyed from a point of view that is so unique in its objectivity that it is astounding. From beginning to end, there is no way to know what will happen next in this story, even though we saw what happened that day over and over again. That is because, essentially, the point of view we are given only allows us to watch and react to events as they occur in real time. We are placed in an airplane, a few control towers, and a military security building, but we are helpless, because we aren’t given any advance information that anything bad is going to happen.

The film begins and we hear a Muslim prayer spoken by a hijacker. We’re taken to an airport where we board a plane with ordinary people – I found myself feeling like just a regular person looking at all the other regular people on a regular plane. You won’t recognize more than one or two of the actors. They’ve been chosen and cast perfectly. We hear what we normally hear on a plane: airport background sounds; people talking at random about nothing special. United 93 does not force archetypes on us (the beautiful blonde stewardess, the handsome Euro-businessman in the expensive suit, the noisy airplane brats that have to be shown the cockpit before they’ll stop screaming). We know nothing about anybody. Thank God. But we’re all on the plane together, waiting on the runway to take off.

United 93 places us in various control towers at local and regional levels. Many of the control tower personnel in the movie are the real people that worked in the towers on 9/11, not actors. I counted over a dozen. I was amazed as I watched these people re-enact that day from their control towers. The words we hear are the words that control tower people really speak: They swear once in a while; they are allowed to stumble-stutter through a grammatically incorrect sentence without stopping the cameras. We are taken inside the National Air Traffic Control Center often as the film progresses. There are TV screens displaying maps of the United States, with countless dots representing every airplane in the air over the country. Ben Sliney, playing not just himself, but himself on 9/11, heads up the national center. He’s told of a possible hijacking early on, digests the information, then returns to his primary job of keeping the nation’s entire body of air traffic in the air and on-time whenever possible. He can have that job. I don’t want it. I haven’t had a job-related heart attack, and I’d like to keep it that way as long as possible.

More hijackings happen and there is frustration and confusion in the control towers. The towers share their information, but a controller can’t reach into the radar screen and make an airplane go where he wants it to go. All we can do is watch the radar, just like the controllers. By now everyone knows something very bad is happening. There is supposed to be a military liaison at the national control center, but Ben Sliney keeps getting told that the person isn’t there. He is frustrated. So are we. Protocol calls for the President to make the calls in this type of situation. The President can’t be located, we’re told. More frustration.

We’re taken to a military operations center. The military is told of the hijackings and tries to form a strategy. But, a strategy for what? All they know is that planes have been hijacked. Then someone points to a television set. CNN News has a live picture up of a smoking hole in the World Trade Center. They say a small plane hit the building. The controllers see the pictures and realize a small plane could not have flown completely through a building like that. And so it is deduced that the first hijacked plane, which has disappeared from the radar, hit the Trade Center building. Next thought: It’s an accident, right? When you steal an airplane you fly it around and make demands about political prisoners and money, don’t you? Then, live, we and the controllers see the second plane fly directly into the World Trade Center, right on CNN. Only then was it clear that this was a planned attack. On the U.S.? On New York? By whom?

The president still can’t be located. There are two more hijacked planes in the air, though. The military decides to bring these planes down using the most immediate tools at their disposal. There are two available fighter jets in Michigan. Unfortunately, they are unarmed. What next? It is decided the fighters will be crashed into the airliners -- the fighter pilots will eject on impact. Meanwhile, a third hijacked airplane crashes into the Pentagon. Another plane, believed to be hijacked, turns out to be safe. That leaves one more hijacked plane in the air, flying toward the east coast from Cleveland. United Airlines flight 93.

We’re aboard United 93 now. The hijackers have taken over. The pilot and co-pilot are dead. In the back of the plane the passengers, crouched down in their seats, have just learned what is happening by using the airplane’s air-to-ground telephones, and their cell phones. They've learned their plane will be crashed into a building, not flown around until political demands are met. A man, whose wife is watching CNN TV news, gets the up-to-the-minute details of the story and passes that information on to the others on the plane. Messages -- goodbye messages -- are left on answering machines for loved ones.

And then, “Let’s roll.”

Those incredible words are spoken by one of the passengers as they – we – storm the cockpit. United 93 was headed for the U.S. Capitol. It crashed in Pennsylvania. WE crashed in Pennsylvania. Director Paul Greengrass has honored us as much as he honored United 93's passengers, because he allowed us to be among heroes for just a few minutes. Greengrass himself is a hero for making United 93. So are the many actors in this film who were actually there on 9/11. They did the best they could with the knowledge they had. We know that now because of this film.

-2001pm

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"American Dreamz"

2006-04-26T13:11:00.000-04:00

American Dreamz (2006)

2001pm RATING: 7/10

Produced by: Paul Weitz
Written by: Paul Weitz
Directed by: Paul Weitz
MPAA: Rated PG-13 for brief strong language and some sexual references.
Runtime: 107 min.
CAST…
Martin Tweed: Hugh Grant
President Staton: Dennis Quaid
Sally Kendoo: Mandy Moore
Chief of Staff: Willem Dafoe
The First Lady: Marcia Gay Harden
Omer: Sam Golzari
Martha Kendoo: Jennifer Coolidge
William Williams: Chris Klein

Paul Weitz directed “American Pie.” If you liked or hated “American Pie,” it’s because of Paul Weitz. His new film is “American Dreamz.” I liked “American Dreamz,” and it’s because of Paul Weitz. Just as “Pie” is a comedy/satire that shoves easy, simple, rude visual and verbal jokes and satirical jabs right in your face, so is “American Dreamz.” The movie is a laugh-out-loud funny satire that probably would have better if it were cut as an “R” movie. But then the teen audience, who may appreciate “Dreamz” the most, and who pays all the actors’ salaries, wouldn’t have been able to see it.

In the opening scene we meet Martin Tweed (Hugh Grant playing his version of “American Idol’s” Simon Cowell). He’s the host and judge of America’s top-rated TV show, “American Dreamz,” which is ramping up for a new season of talent competition. There is no attempt to keep us from knowing “American Dreamz” is actually the top-rated U.S. TV talent show, “American Idol.” Tweed is so self-absorbed that he barely looks up from his latest ratings sheet as his beautiful girlfriend breaks up with him in his Hollywood home. Grant plays Tweed to perfection, in a role he could have very easily overplayed.

Over at the White House, Dennis Quaid is newly re-elected President Staton , who is obviously George W. Bush. (Quaid is excellent. He nails Bush’s look and mannerisms.) Willem Dafoe is Staton’s Chief of Staff (Dafoe is Dick Cheney -- I laughed out when I saw Dafoe’s Cheney makeup), and Marcia Gay Harden plays the First Lady, looking adorable as a Laura Bush clone. Dafoe tells the president it’s time to greet the public after winning his second term as president. The president decides he wants to read a newspaper instead -- something he’d never done before as president. He reads one paper, then another, and soon he spends all day in his pajamas, holed up in his bedroom reading a library’s worth of books, to the dismay of Dafoe and Harden. Dafoe finally convinces the President to come out of hiding, which culminates in Quaid being a guest judge on the “American Dreamz” season finale.

Meanwhile, in rural Ohio, the ruthless Sally Kendoo (Mandy Moore in a surprisingly good performance) and her mom, Martha (Jennifer Coolidge), are strategizing so Sally can compete on “American Dreamz.” Sally dumps her handsome, adoring boyfriend (Chris Klein) because he’s getting in the way. She gets an agent (Seth Myers from Saturday Night Live), and is chosen to be on the show.

Another thing you must have in a Paul Weitz-in-you-face bombastic political satire is at least one Middle-Eastern terrorist. So Weitz gives us Omer, a failed terrorist exiled from a hidden training camp near the Afghan border. After a day of tough terrorist training, Omer loves dancing and singing along with show tunes in his tent after everyone else is asleep. Omer is booted from camp and lands in Orange County to live with his California cousins. Of course, Omer ends up as a contestant on “American Dreamz.”

The film’s climax comes during the live airing of the “American Dreamz” season TV finale, with a Hasidic Jew, an Arab, and a blonde beauty as the three finalists, with the President of the United States and a Simon Cowell-like guy deciding who should win. The ending is ridiculous – and funny. Are we laughing at a TV show, a movie, or ourselves?

“American Dreamz” either hits home runs or strikes out. There is no middle ground. The satire is served up on a platter. You either love the jokes or you cringe at their simple-minded delivery. I was lucky to see the movie in a public theater that was over half full. At the end, I heard something you don’t hear at many movies: applause. As bad as the strikeouts were, the home runs were better, and people walked out laughing. Including me.

-2001pm

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"V for Vendetta"

2006-04-13T17:47:00.000-04:00

V For Vendetta (2006)

2001pm RATING: 8/10

Directed by: James McTeigue
Writen by: Andy Wachowski (screenplay) & Larry Wachowski (screenplay)
CAST...
Natalie Portman: Evey
Hugo Weaving: V
Stephen Rea: Finch
Stephen Fry: Deitrich
John Hurt: Adam Sutler
Tim Pigott-Smith: Creedy
MPAA: Rated R for strong violence and some language.
Runtime: 132 min.

A beautiful, petite, smart brunette named Evey (Natalie Portman) walks down a dark alleyway late at night and is assaulted by thugs who want more than money. The mace spray she pulls out of her purse is useless. Evey is thrown to the pavement, unconscious. Suddenly, a mysterious masked man appears out of nowhere and kicks the bad guys’ butts six ways from Sunday. Between body armor and martial arts mastery and accurately thrown knives, the man is indestructible. When Evey finally wakes up, she is lying in a bed in the secret lair of the masked man. Are we watching another typical comic book hero movie? No way.

It’s November fourth in England in the year 2020. A civil war in America has spread overseas, but the British government has stopped the war in England by establishing a totalitarian regime. The evil dictator Adam Sutler (John Hurt) is running the country. Innocent citizens have been killed in prison camps where biological warfare experiments are conducted. The only people allowed out after curfew are government security enforcers. The TV station is state-run: the only “news” available on TV is written and produced by the government. Television is the only time the dictator Sutler is ever seen. There’s a popular variety show hosted by a man named Deitrich (Stephen Fry in a wonderful supporting performance), but that too is censored by the government. It’s hell on Earth for Englanders.

The masked man who rescues Evey calls himself “V,” for reasons we learn during one the film’s most poignant scenes. He is played by Hugo Weaving in a difficult role, because we never see him talk through his mask. We only get to hear his voice, and watch him use body language to convey his emotions. (We learn V’s mask is fashioned after the image of Guy Fawkes, a religious fanatic who unsuccessfully tried to burn down the Houses of Parliament on November fifth, 1605. V has dedicated his life to emulating Fawkes.) Evey bonds with V quickly in the secret hideout. He feeds her fried eggs on pieces of toast and butter – the first real butter she’s had since childhood. Evey is stuck in V’s hidden lair, unable to show her face in public again since she faces certain death if recognized.

When the clock strikes midnight to signal the arrival of November fifth, V also strikes. Furiously. He goes on a rampage, violently killing government officials and blowing up government property, resurrecting -- and expanding on -- the original mission of Guy Fawkes, who died in his attempt to destroy Parliament. V’s strike against the government sets the dominoes in motion, and, from this point on, nobody is safe: heroes’ lives are in danger from government retribution, and villains are no match for V.

“V for Vendetta” is first and foremost a visual film, with its dark rooms, alleyways and shadows. (It’s based on a 1982 graphic novel by Alan Moore and David Lloyd, who distanced themselves from the film, as they have for other films based on their work.) The film is not as comic-bookish in look or feel as I expected – not like “Batman” or “The Mask,” for example. But it has just enough of a 1984 Apple Macintosh computer commercial feel to it. What we see is not quite the real world, but close enough. V’s past is revealed to us in flashbacks that are not forced. The film churns through heroic plans that both succeed and fail, near-misses, dangerous escapes, and violent acts against people who, if you’re rooting for V, deserve what they get.

Throughout the film, V is called, by different government officials, a “terrorist.” The “T Word” is used frequently, and was, I believe, deliberately put in the script to get us to react. Is V really a terrorist, or is he a revolutionary freedom fighter working for the common good of all people? That’s what the Wachowski brothers are asking us to decide. I believe there are good arguments on each side, thanks to the brothers themselves. They haven’t tried to force anything on us. The film leaves plenty of room for us to dislike its hero – a risky strategy by the filmmakers that worked. It is one of the reasons this film rises above so many others in this genre.

The films successes also lead to some of its failures. We are bombarded with so many scenes of visual information combined with plot details that, at times, we get lost in the imagery and the details. But I found myself actually enjoying getting lost in what I was watching. Natalie Portman’s performance is the focal point, and she is superb in her portrayal of Evey. We feel everything she feels. We empathize with Hugo Weaving’s V, even as we’re deciding whether or not he’s doing the right thing. The supporting characters are cast perfectly – good or evil, everyone is convincing. “V for Vendetta” brings out all the guns (and knives) and all the butter, and lets us decide which is better.

-2001pm

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"CLOSER"

2006-04-11T14:43:00.000-04:00

Movie: Closer (2004)

RATING: 8/10

Directed by: Mike Nichols
Written by: Patrick Marber (adapted from a screenplay by Patrick Marber)
CAST...
Natalie Portman: Alice
Jude Law: Dan
Julia Roberts: Anna
Clive Owen:Larry
MPAA: Rated R (for sequences of graphic sexual dialogue, nudity/sexuality and language.)
Runtime: 104 min

Natalie Portman can play a 16 year-old or a 26 year-old with her hands tied behind her back. In "Closer," she's a 20-something girl who is the centerpiece of a film that lets us watch four wonderfully flawed characters follow their hearts into places that make us feel a little like voyeurs. Clive Owen, Jude Law and Julia Roberts round out this cast of ordinary people that keep getting caught at the top of some kind of Evil Tree of Romantic Temptation with no way down, and no fire department to rescue them.

Now, Portman, Roberts, Law and Owen are four good looking people. You could probably turn off the sound and enjoy the film as eye-candy. But to reach the film's core you have to listen. The dialog between these characters is either so tenderly innocent or sharply cruel that you want to smile warmly or slap one of them for being so stupid. The emotional charge in "Closer" is fueled by passion, temptation, love, cruelty, hate ... and sex.

Portman meets Law in the film's opening scenes, and a relationship develops. Roberts and Owens are also paired up as the film opens, as husband and wife. Periodically, "Closer" shifts back and forth in time (never to the point of confusion), but what we see in the beginning is kind of like looking down the lane at bowling pins right before you roll the ball at them. Owen's character, a doctor, is a disaster waiting to happen. Portman is a happening waiting for a disaster. Roberts, a photographer, is more complicated to figure out, but her marriage is in trouble as soon as she meets Law, an author, whom she is photographing for a professional book cover. Law's future is a little harder to predict.

Portman's character is reminiscent of Meg Ryan's romantic leads: You like her so much you don't want to see her feelings get hurt. Throughout the film everyone's feelings get hurt; relationships form, they fall apart, and they form again. Owen looks so emotionally trampled in one scene where we see him enter a bar it's almost funny. Almost. But he won the Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actor because it's not funny. It's as real as it gets. Portman won the Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress because we believe everything she is feeling, too. Roberts' and Law's characters are just as believeable and real, but played out a little more quietly.

There's a surprise at the end. A little gift for the audience -- one closeup in an airport scene -- that you have to pay attention to see. It is just one of many scenes that separate "Closer" from the rest of the pack as a film about believeable people, and what those people can do to each other that brings as much love as pain.

-2001pm
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"INSIDE MAN"

2006-04-11T14:38:00.000-04:00

Movie: Inside Man (2006)

RATING: 7/10

Directed by: Spike Lee
Written by: Russell Gewirtz
CAST...
Denzel Washington: Detective Keith Frazier
Clive Owen: Dalton Russell
Jodie Foster: Madeline White
Christopher Plummer: Arthur Case
Willem Dafoe: Captain John Darius
Chiwetel Ejiofor: Detective Bill Mitchell
Carlos Andrés Gómez: Steve
Kim Director: Stevie
MPAA: Rated R (for language and some violent images.)
Runtime: 129 min.

A medium-tight shot of Clive Owen talking right into the camera launches us into director Spike Lee's "Inside Man," a psychological thriller that is the most mainstream film Lee has ever made. The "Spike Lee film mystique" disappears quickly as we concentrate on what Clive Owen is saying, and why he's saying it. He's talking to us from what looks like a third-world prison cell. The only real information we're given in the opening 15 minutes or so is that there is going to bea robbery at a big Manhattan bank, Clive Owen and three others are involved and there's a lot more than a bank robbery happening here.

There's almost a calmness amidst the excitement as the robbery is committed -- even mildly violent scenes are more mild than violent -- as Lee gives us all the camera angles we need to see who's involved and the details of how the crime is committed. The smoke clears and there are now 40-50 hostages as the NYC cops arrive and we meet Denzel Washington, a 2nd-grade detective/hostage negotiator trying to make 1st grade detective, but he's hit a roadblock because he can't account for missing money he's accused of stealing on a prior case. We also meet Willem Dafoe as a police captain who wants to storm the bank and get it all over with, and Christopher Plummer, the bank's elderly founder, who has a secret hidden in the bank that is more important than any valuables the robbers may steal. Plummer's secret is so important that he calls in Jodie Foster, who turns in the finest performance of a person who has no
reason for being in a film as you'll ever see. Foster is a problem fixer for those at the highest levels of politics and business in New York and possibly the world -- she even walks past sweaty guys and an in-use men's bathroom to talk to the mayor in a private office -- and the mayor welcomes her presence. The problem is, we don't know who Jodie Foster really is, we never find out, and it doesn't matter anyway because the movie didn't need her in the first place. But at least she turns in a great performance to keep her record of great performances virtually untarnished.

Foster's character isn't the only problem with "Inside Man." Without giving away the film's plot twists, Owen and the other three robbers are keeping hostages -- they don't have to hold hostages for for any other reason than the fact that it's in the script. Washington is trying to negotiate with Owen to meet his questionable demands, but they play each other to a draw and we don't get to see any crafty negotiator tricks that we would have love to have seen. We learn what Christopher Plummer's secret is (he did a bad bad thing), and we learn the robbery is a mechanism to right Plummer's past wrongs. Plus, we get a little Albanian language and history lesson along the way. The ending serves up a surprise twist in the plot (not only to wrap up the film, but to satisfy the audience, too), leaving the main characters with what they morally and materially deserve.

What saves this film are the performances by Washington, Owen, Foster, and Plummer. (Willem Dafoe plays what amounts to a bit part, but he plays it perfectly, too.) Spike Lee even gives us a few real good laughs -- more humor than you expect out of your usual psycho-thriller, including a scene with a young boy, a video game and Owen, the "bad guy," that results in a good laugh and a stellar commentary on what has become normal and acceptable in our society.

For a thriller, "Inside Man" doesn't break into a sprint and leave us gasping for breath at the end. It kind of walks along and provides interesting scenery along the way. But the questions you'll ask yourself walking out are questions that should have been answered during the movie. Overall, "Inside Man" is a nice walk around a familiar neighborhood that won't leave you out of breath.

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