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THE STORY OF THE WEEPING CAMEL (2004) and THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE (2004)
08.29.04 (4:58 am)   [edit]
[b]THE STORY OF THE WEEPING CAMEL[/b]
[b]Starring: [/b]Janchiv Ayurzana, Chimed Ohin, Amgaabazar Gonson, Zeveljamz Nyam, Ikhbayar Amgaabazar, Odgerel Ayusch, Enkhbulgan Ikhbayar, Uuganbaatar Ikhbayar, and Munkhbayar Lhagvaa
[b]Director: [/b]Byambasuren Davaa and Luigi Falorni
[b]Writing Credits: [/b]Byambasuren Davaa and Luigi Falorni
[b]Distributor: [/b]ThinkFilm (US 2004)
[b]Rated: [/b]Not Yet Rated


and

[b]THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE[/b]
[b]Cast: [/b]Denzel Washington, Liev Schreiber, Meryl Streep, Anthony Mackie, Miguel Ferrer, and Jeffrey Wright
[b]Directed by: [/b]Jonathan Demme
[b]Written by: [/b]Daniel Pyne and Dean Georgaris
[b]Distributor: [/b]Paramount Pictures (US 2004)
[b]Rated: [/b]R for violence and some language

As Reviewed by: [b]Martin Scribbs[/b]

We saw a preview last weekened when we went to see [i]Garden State[/i], and my wife was sold hook, line, and sinker. "Awww! The little camel movie!" She was singing about Albert the Camel and his many variously numbered humps all the way in to see [b]THE STORY OF THE WEEPING CAMEL[/b].

Not that I needed any arm-twisting. I had heard nothing but raves about [b]CAMEL[/b] since its NYC open in June. If anything, the movie had become more needed by late August, after a summer full of [url=http://www.tblog.com/template...]bloated, soulless crap[/url]. [b]CAMEL[/b] is spare in its visuals of the vast and (to my eyes) trackless Gobi desert. It is economical in translation (chit-chat isn't subtitled). And the film concerns itself with just one beautiful story, that of an extended human family trying to reunite a colt and the mother who rejects him.

We just so happened to see [b]THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE[/b] a few hours later. [b]CANDIDATE[/b] also describes an unhealthy mother-son relationship, that of U.S. Senator Elanor Prentiss Shaw (Streep) and her son, Congressman Raymond Shaw. Whereas the mother in [b]CAMEL[/b] refuses her offspring after a hard delivery, in [b]CANDIDATE[/b] Elanor has wholly appropriated her son for her own political ambitions, blocking out all friends or lovers he might have had on his own. The human family in Mongolia is extended and close knit, relying on their mutual insights and support. In Demme's thriller, Elanor and Raymond are all alone, at the pinnacle of worldly power but without real social communion.

I don't think I'm telling tales out of school to say that Raymond has been brainwashed. His political career is that of an unwitting pawn. Demme's explains the mechanics of the brainwashing in some detail -- the neurology, implants, memory erasure, false memory creation. But in the end, as one character says to the-only-man-who-knows-th e-truth Ben Marco (Denzel Washington), why bother? "Sleep deprivation and electroshock will get you there at a fraction of the price."

So will TV, the ultimate leveller of cultures. In [b]CAMEL[/b], little boy Unga is fascinated with the televisions and computer screens he sees at a neighbor's village and at a trading post. Over the closing credits, we get to see the family put up a satellite dish. It elicits a chuckle, because the wily Unga has obviously wheedled his parents into buying the expensive setup. But, on reflection, that closing shot is more sobering than anything Demme had to offer. Almost every politician is a pawn of some ideology or power -- a Vice President in the thrall of corporate buddies isn't even the stuff of fiction. But to lose one camel-herding family on the outskirts of the Gobi desert, to dilute their rich culture with flashing glass images of cartoons and commercials, would be a genuine shame.

I hold out hope. Perhaps the little camel, in the middle of the night, knocked out their dish. Can you imagine how long it takes to get a satellite dish repairman to come to the outskirts of the Gobi desert?

LIC
 
BONHOEFFER (2003)
08.21.04 (5:32 am)   [edit]
[b]Cast:[/b] Martin Doblmeier (narrator); Klaus Maria Brandauer (voice of Bonhoeffer)
[b]Directed by:[/b] Martin Doblmeier
[b]Written by:[/b] Martin Doblmeier
[b]Distributor:[/b] First Run Features (US 2003)
[b]Rated:[/b] Not rated

Reviewed by: [b]Martin Scribbs[/b]

Germany, 1933. Adolph Hitler has just assumed power as Chancellor. He preaches "the resurrection of the German people," and froths about "the salvation of homeland." Three days after Hitler's ascension, as the German nation still convulses with celebration, a young Protestant theologian takes to the airwaves. In an address entitled "Christ is Our Fuhrer," the speaker declaims any worldly leader who would make an idol of himself and his office and thus mock God. The Gestapo cut the transmission.

That was Dietrich Bonhoeffer, getting in on the ground floor of anti-Nazism. So began a road for Bonhoeffer which would end at the the gallows of Flossenburg concentration camp in 1945. The Nazis suspected that the churchman had tried to kill Hitler, and had smuggled Jews out of Germany. To Bonhoeffer's credit, the Nazis were right on both counts.

How did Bonhoeffer so readily apprehended the right side in the struggle for Germany's soul? True, Hitler looks stark raving mad in footage of the era, and Nazism has become almost universally accepted as the limit case of an evil political system. But, as the documentary [b]BOHNOEFFER[/b] lays out, the Dietrich had been reared in an ethos of post-WWI pacifism and political agnosticism. And not until years after Bonhoeffer started his resistence did he become privy to the depths of depravity to which the Nazis had sunk (though he did learn earlier than most -- his brother-in-law was in military intelligence). It would have been very easy for Bonhoeffer and his fellow pastors of the Confessing Churches to stay out of national politics. Many German churchmen, those of the First National Reich Church of Germany, did.

[b]BONHOEFFER[/b] suggests a few factors that made Dietrich different, and which spurred him on to early resistance:

* Bonhoeffer had spent time in New York in the 1930s, at Union Theological Seminary. There he was introduced to the Abyssinian Harlem Church, led by the charismatic preacher Adam Clayton Powell. That church crystallized for Bonhoeffer the sore need of Christian communities to agitate for racial equality. Because of the shameful manner in which the United States treated its blacks, Bonhoeffer immediately sensed that "the Jewish question" raised by Nazi policies needed to be at the forefront of German church concern. Bonhoeffer's seminarians recall that he played Amercian Gospel music regularly, and preached in a direct way completely unusual for the time. "The black Christ is full of rapturous vision," Bonhoeffer wrote in his account of the Church in Harlem. Had Bonhoeffer not brought the same vision back to Germany, he may not have been the charismatic theologian of the resistance.

* One of Bonhoeffer's seminarians recalls his teacher's instruction that "when you read the Bible, you must think that here and now God is speaking to me." Bonhoeffer's later writings emphasized that Christian duty isn't set in stone for all time, but rather "a man forever re-examine what the will of God may be." This is not a Christianity our Christian fundamentalists would be comfortable with, as it relegates the Word of God to a role secondary to prayerful introspection. I'm not sure this is a method our agnostics would find amenable either, since it depends on a radical openness to follow whatever course of action the Spirit suggests, including being a double agent (as Bonhoeffer was) and plotting to overthrow regimes. However, [b]BONHOEFFER[/b] makes the case that Dietrich's thoughtful Christianity was the moral sustenance on which the anti-Nazi resistance fed. "Throw yourself on the mercy of God -- do what you think is right and follow through." These are powerful, and I'm not sure the film sufficiently appreciates, problematic words.

* Lastly, Bonhoeffer had an orientation towards the present which seems to set great leaders apart. He wrote to a friend:

"One must completely abandon any attempt to make something of oneself, whether it be a saint, or a converted sinner, or a churchman, a righteous man or an unrighteous one; a sick man or a healthy one. By this worldliness I mean living unreservedly in life's duties, problems, successes and fairness, experiences and perplexities. In so doing we throw ourselves completely into the arena of God, taking seriously, not our own sufferings, but those of God in the world-watching with Christ in Gethsemane."

***

While [b]BONHOEFFER[/b] doesn't probe as deeply as one might like into the details and implications of Bonhoeffer's theology, it is an invaluable study of where we find our most valuable resource: men and women of conscience.

LIC
 
OUTFOXED: RUPERT MURDOCH'S WAR ON JOURNALISM
08.18.04 (5:01 pm)   [edit]
OUTFOXED: RUPERT MURDOCH'S WAR ON JOURNALISM
Cast: George W. Bush, Eric Alterman, Bill O'Reilly, Al Franken, Geraldo Rivera, and Walter Cronkite
Directed by: Robert Greenwald
Written by: Robert Greenwald
Distributor: Carolina Productions (US 2004)
Rated: Unrated

As Reviewed by: Gabriel Shanks

If you are one of the snarling masses who denounce Michael Moore as anti-American demon spawn (and it seems there are a lot of you these days), chances are good that you should take Robert Greenwald off your Christmas list too. For where Moore is a scruffy idealistic populist at heart, a socially-driven showman hawking his politics-as-entertainment wares, Greenwald is merely pissed off. In his documentaries Uncovered: The Whole Truth About the Iraq War and his latest effort, OUTFOXED: RUPERT MURDOCH'S WAR ON JOURNALISM, Greenwald forgoes the humor, the self-aggrandizement (and the structural sense) of his Fahrenheit 9/11 kinsman to go for the political jugular. If Moore is the shaggy dog hero of the Left these days, then Greenwald is the pit bull.

And to paraphrase Jerry Seinfeld, that's not necessarily a bad thing. In a country historically built upon the belief that dissent should be embraced and protected, a gadfly like Greenwald is both necessary and needed. What he may like in style, aesthetics, and even ideas, Greenwald more than makes up for in passion for his subject. In OUTFOXED, the subject is legendary media magnate Rupert Murdoch...at least theoretically; while Murdoch has an enormous global empire of television stations, magazines and newspapers, Greenwald spends the overwhelming majority of screen time in OUTFOXED taking down one sliver of that massive media stockpile. Specifically, the filmmaker has set his sights on Fox News Channel, the highly rated cable network that has changed the face of journalism by introducing a clever blend of partisanship and marketing savvy.

As any rational person knows who has watched Fox News for more than three minutes, it is a conservative mouthpiece facetiously operating under a flimsy cover of "news". Objectivity is non-existent, and countless media studies have documented its overwhelming Republican bias. As an entity, FNC is akin to Rush Limbaugh in talk radio -- not journalism at all, per se, but rather a mass-market proponent of a particular point of view that has wide social, ethical, and political implications.

Whereas Limbaugh is upfront about his predilections (most of them, anyway), Fox News Channel is not...and therein lies the rub. FNC refuses to publicly admit their bias; indeed, their most famous slogan is "fair and balanced" (which might amount to corporate fraud, as one guest in OUTFOXED suggests). The complex balancing of public image and devious reality is done with sophisticated marketing techniques. which attract their conservative audience while simultaneously buffeting criticisms from the left. As Greenwald shows, these tactics range from the obvious (graphics almost always include the U.S. flag in the background, playing upon reactionary patriotic emotion) to more subtle tactics (anchor Bill O'Reilly, cutting off the microphones and/or turning off studio lights on guests that he cannot best in his nightly mudslinging).

But there's more at work here, and Greenwald does a fair job of pointing it the more complex and far reaching implications. Noting Murdoch's longtime affiliation with the Republican Party and his direct control of the message at Fox News, Greenwald exposes the central core of the network's matrix. What may first seem to be journalism and news is actually subtly-framed commentary...which may be many things, but is *not* news, at least not in the way it has been practiced for the last century. A channel devoted to commentary and opinion may lose its claims to journalistic integrity, but it wins the political war Murdoch is after...the hearts and minds of the unchallenging American populace. Opinions, after all, cannot be proven false, even when presented behind a news anchor's desk as facts...which allows all of the on-screen pundits to distort, rearrange, or lie about the truth of whatever subject is being discussed. (Greenwald shows some priceless examples in archived FNC footage from 1996-2004, but not nearly enough for my tastes.)

More importantly, though, is the creeping realization that there is an added bonus to a commentary network masquerading as news...it can never lose a political argument. For even on the rare occasion when a voice from the Left triumphs, the researchers, anchors, and producers of FNC have muddied the argument to such a degree that the truth is forever obscured. An example might be Fox News' treatment of John Kerry having "voted against the War in Iraq." Although an objective reading of his voting record shows that Kerry supported both the war and the military (and wished only for more accounting of money spent by the Bush Administration), Fox News pundits repeated the talking point ad nauseum for weeks on end until the lie became the truth in the minds of many citizens. Polls show that Fox News can change national perception, an awful power for an organization so clearly biased.

Greenwald doesn't help his cause very much, however, when OUTFOXED trots out over a dozen former Fox employees to dish and damn their old bosses. While many of them make salient points, one cannot escape the feeling that their perspective is slanted and selective. To be fair, it is probable that Greenwald could find no Fox employee to appear in a film critical of his or her employer...but then, Greenwald isn't really interested in the other point of view, either. The opening speaker, for instance, compares Big Media to the Corleone family of Coppola's film The Godfather...when that's where you start, you know you aren't in for equal time.

Powerfully, however, Greenwald presents in OUTFOXED the gold standard of American media objectivity -- Walter Cronkite, who, in his measured tones and grandfatherly demeanor, expresses damning concerns about the future of journalism if the trends of Fox News remain unchecked. Fracturing the country with fabricated facts, absolutist theatrics and chasm-wide wedge issues, Fox News Channel fundamentally lacks integrity. We can only hope that both sides of the American political divide wake up to the dangers of an untrustworthy media. Let us hope that Greenwald, the pit bull behind OUTFOXED, can help us begin to see the way.
 
ALIEN VERSUS PREDATOR (2004)
08.14.04 (5:35 pm)   [edit]
[b]Cast:[/b] Alien, Predator, Others
[b]Directed by:[/b] Paul W.S. Anderson
[b]Written by:[/b] Paul W.S. Anderson
[b]Distributor:[/b] 20th Century Fox (US 2004)
[b]Rated:[/b] PG-13 for violence and some language

As Reviewed by: [b]Martin Scribbs[/b]

[i]OK, let's see. Zeus had a headache....aaaaaand..... out popped a swan.... and.... the swan turned out to be a woman with a ribbon around her neck..... oh, geez, I dunno, they all spoke Esperanto.[/i] --Paul W.S. Anderson's Greek Mythology.

Paul W.S. Anderson really botched what should have been an interesting mythological backdrop for [b]AVP[/b]. Anderson's script jumps and starts, wheezes and groans as though it were thrown together in an all-nighter after a week of substance abuse at Keith Richardsian levels. I hope Andersen was having fun, because sitting through [b]AVP[/b] isn't.

The trailers showed a human expedition being led into a pyramid 2000 feet beneath the surface of the polar cap. Alexa Woods (Sanaa Lathan), expert ice guide, reasonably balks at leading a completely untrained crew into one of the most isolated and deadly regions of the earth. Then with mild persuading, at the level of "c'mooooooon," she stupidly relents. Alexa sets down three ground rules: Keep in communication at all times, never go anywhere alone, and no-one try to be a hero. She, with all the crew, thereafter promptly and completely disregards those edicts. If Anderson intended Alexa to be any sort of Ripley surrogate, he failed miserably -- this may be the most candy-assed hardass to ever disgrace the silver screen.

When the doomed crew gets to the co-ordinates, they find a ghost town on the ice. Oh yeah, Alexa tells them, there was a whaling station here, from which every soul mysteriously vanished in 1904, and it was a huge deal at the time. Well, that's certainly the sort of information I'd withhold from my artic expedition until the last possible minute -- who'd be interested to know something like that? Just local color, really.

Although the expedition's archeologist assures the team that the pyramid combines features of Egyptian, Aztec, and Cambodian design, there's nothing spectacular or memorable in the sets. Oh yeah, and another expert chimes in [i]in media res[/i] that the pole wasn't always covered by ice. And, I guess, people....lived there? And built temples? And then migrated wholesale to Asia, Africa, and South America? I dunno.... Good ol' P.S.W.A.'s [b]AVP[/b] is as fuzzy as a ship full of tribbles.

Anyhow, yeah, big monsters throw down. Some decent fight scenes. Just about all the humans die. My favorite part of the movie was how Alexa actually picks a side to fight on, and winds up as some sort of an exchange student for a race of intergalactic monsters.

So, if you're aching for a movie with lines like, "Well, that tunnel didn't dig itself," and "My enemy's enemy...is....my friend?," time to head on down to [b]AVP[/b]. I can't wait for the Fall movies to start... these brainless summer actioneers start to drag you down.

LIC
 
DEVIL'S PLAYGROUND and JACOB'S CHOICE
08.07.04 (6:13 am)   [edit]
[b]Devil's Playground: Which Path Will They Choose?
(NR)/2002/ Lucy Walker dir./ 77 min./ viewed on DVD[/b]

[b]Jacob's Choice: You Can't Live in Two Worlds
(NR)/40 min./ viewed at Amish f/x Theater, Bird-in-hand, PA [/b]

Imagine the power went out in your life. No TV, DVDs, radios, CD players. The telephone is dead. Forget about the Internet. You lose your car and resort to a horse and buggy. And, because of the dictates of some local religious leader, you're limited to wearing dumpy clothes, eschewing makeup, dating only with his permission, and keeping with your own kind.

Planning on going to college? Forget it. You'll be done with school at 13. Welcome to a life of grueling physical labor.

Now suppose you got back all of these modern comforts, and more. Just one catch... to keep it all, you have to abandon your family and close-knit community, break faith with your religion, decline the promise of salvation, and find your way in a world of overwhelming freedom such as you've never known. Welcome to the Amish dilemma.

The Amish restrict baptism to conscientious adults. The day he or she turns 16, every Amish boy and girl is limited from the strictures of church discipline. Some return to be baptized Amish; others never do. The decision whether to return is respected as a matter of individual faith. These movies, [b]DEVIL'S PLAYGROUND[/b] and [b]JACOB'S CHOICE[/b], follow Amish youths through their rumspringa (ROOM-spring-ah) or "running around" period.

***

[b]DEVIL'S PLAYGROUND: AMISH GONE WILD[/b]
"Devil's Playground" refers to our world, the world of the English, i.e., non-Amish. Although Amish families often live in English neighborhoods, the divide between us and them is stark. An Amish child typically comes from a very large family; is brought up speaking Pennsylvania Dutch as a first language; and is taught in a one-room schoolhouse with no indoor plumbing.

What happens when they enter our world as full-fledged participants? Meet Faron, an Amish crank dealer. He has a price on his head because he wore a wire as a snitch. And Velda, hospitalized for depression and excommunicated after getting baptized but fleeing her own Amish wedding. And Gerald, disgusted by the wanton life he's led while away from home.

No-one in Nancy Kelly's fascinating documentary speaks ill of their family. Even those who decide never to return seek the approval, however grudging, of their parents. For their part, baptized Amish seem absolutely confident that their ways are correct and will endure. (The Amish relationship to technology is profound -- they analyze and accept or reject each device depending on its likely effect upon the community. Telephones are disruptive. Cars take young people too far away, too fast. Getting one's picture taken leads to vanity. Modern medicine, on the other hand, is warmly embraced.)

But some of Kelly's subjects realize that their choice has been rigged -- as one boy says, if you don't go back to the family farm or craft shop, you're not equipped to do anything in the English world but the meanest of factory drudgery. Still and all, there is amazingly little resentment among the rumspringa teens, especially when compared with their relatively pampered English counterparts. Indeed, 90% of Amish youth go on to be baptized. The other 10%, like runaway bride Velda, cling to a presentiment that there's more to life then the Amish yet know.

[b]DEVIL'S PLAYGROUND[/b] is a classic exposition of the choice between freedom and order, between a closed society and an open one. The viewer must perform the analysis herself; no anti-Amish voices are heard, just those of the plain folk and their neighbors. Still, this film is milk and honey for the English soul. It raises and deals with substantial issues of choice and dedication.

***
[b]JACOB'S CHOICE[/b] is a piece of installation art at the Amish f/x Theater in Bird-in-Hand, Pennsylvania. This improbable venue is located in Lancaster County, from whence all Amish in 23 States and Canada are diaspora. The titular choice is between the Amish and English styles of life, and it plays out over four screens simultaneously. Well, not so much screens as the sides of a faux barn exterior against which the piece is projected.

With all the subtlety of an afterschool special, [b]JACOB'S CHOICE[/b] shows a rumspringa teen enthralled by his car and "organized baseball team," to the exclusion of his family chores and long-suffering, already baptized girlfriend Katie. After a family tragedy, Jacob finally decides... well, let's just say it played very well in Bird-in-Hand.

What this film adds is the long-term perspective absent from [b]DEVIL'S PLAYGROUND[/b]. On a gauzy screen known as a Pepper box, the ghosts of Jacob's ancestors appear. These include martyrs in Europe, brutally executed for singing hymns or the like. The screens erupt in fire, a crackling sound and the jeers of the mob surround the audience, smoke rises up, and we are bathed in yellow and red lights. That was the closest to understanding martyrdom that I may ever come, at least on a visceral level.

Even more effective are the tales of Amish immigrants who braved a long ocean voyage aboard the Charming Nancy. Each reads a roll of those who died during the trip as endless waves of blue sea crash down around the audience. Finally, the mourners draw into a chorus, "and many more dead, and many more, and many more..."

After seeing [b]JACOB'S CHOICE[/b], I better understood why the teens of [b]DEVIL'S PLAYGROUND[/b] would show such devotion to their heritage. To suffer by one's self is a tragedy; to lift a common burden can be joy.

"Easy lives don't lead to easy choices, " Jacob's grandfather told him. But it's easy to recommend Jacob's Choice as milk and honey for those planning a trip to Dutch Country, PA.

LIC
 
SECRET WINDOW (2004)
08.07.04 (5:51 am)   [edit]
[b]Cast:[/b] Johnny Depp, John Turturro, Maria Bello, Timothy Hutton, Charles Dutton
[b]Directed by:[/b] David Koepp
[b]Written by:[/b] David Koepp and Stephen King
[b]Distributor:[/b] Sony Pictures (US 2004)
[b]Rated:[/b] PG-13 for violence/terror, sexual content and language.

As Reviewed by: [b]Martin Scribbs[/b]

Scientists have discovered our universe's most common elements aren't, as previously thought, carbon, helium, and hydrogen. Instead, most common are:

* Failed film and TV adaptations of logorrheic Horror MadLibs-completer Stephen King

* Energetic and creative performances by Johnny Depp wasted in losing causes

* Movies that use mental illness as a special effect and plot crutch

Oh baby, [b]SECRET WINDOW[/b] has it all.

***
Stephen King's prose is wonderully and fearfully made. On rare occassion, his complete understanding of atmosphere as charged by human emotions gets a one-to-one translation on-screen. [i]Carrie[/i], [i]The Shining[/i], [i]Stand By Me[/i], and [i]The Shawshank Redemption[/i] all convey perfectly the King vision of the world, equal parts innocence, knowing sadness, mushrooming execrations, and catch-as-catch-can humanism. [i]The Stand[/i], King's most panoramic story, got a TV treatment which suffers only when compared to the monumentality of the written work.

That said, often King's work comes DOA to the screen. [b]SECRET WINDOW[/b] suffers from the same defect as dozens of other King adaptations -- it's trying too directly to scare its audience. King's best flicks scare only incidentally, at oblique angles, out of the corner of your eye, until the final, terrifying denoument. Here, a hick (Turturro) shows up at a horror author (Depp)'s backwoods retreat, screwdrivers the protagonist's dog, torches the writer's house, and blows away a security guard. To paraphrase Pauline Kael, for all this subtlety, the makers of [b]SECRET WINDOW[/b] might as well have called it [i]Boo...Boo!...[b]BOO![/b]: The Movie[/i]. And, unlike the best King adaptations, there's nothing BUT scare in [b]SECRET WINDOW[/b] -- I triple-dog dare you to give a tinker's damn about any of the characters.

***
Johnny Depp, as Mort the writer. You reply, "I will always care about Johnny Depp." I understand, he [i]21 Jump Streeted[/i] his way into your heart, you insist that your boyfriends wear eyeliner and talk like pirates, and you refuse to believe he would ever sully himself by being in a movie that [i]Blow[/i]s. Sorry. Depp may be, probably is, the best actor regularly working, but he can only do so much. He can't rewrite the script to give added dimension to his character or the story-world his character inhabits. He can't conjure an interesting movie out of just his own interesting performance. Otherwise [i]Once Upon a Time in Mexico[/i] might have been worth watching.

***

Is there a more geriatric ending in existence than, "but it turns out she had multiple personalities"? As one lunch counter jockey said to another in [i]The Hudsucker Proxy[/i], "that gag's got whiskers on it, Lou!"

In [b]SECRET WINDOW[/b], as in [i]A Beautiful Mind[/i], the film tries to get mental illness across to its audience in the normal cinematic ways. Coy clues are followed by a dramatic reveal, and then all hell breaks loose. The thing, is mental illness isn't like that. The best description I can think of comes from [i]Insomnia[/i], as Al Pacino's cop tells his suspect for a homicide (Robin Williams): "You're about as mysterious to me as a blocked toilet is to a fucking plumber." That's it, that's all -- mental illness isn't remarkable, profound, dramatic, or anything remotely Hollywood. It's a blocked pipe in the brain, a chemical problem, as glamorous as chronic arthritis. Leave it alone, Hollywood -- if you had the remotest idea how to portray serious mental illness, you'd never try to use it as a prop crutch.

Keep it up and I'll wish you out to the cornfield.

***

In short, skip [b]SECRET WINDOW[/b]. Wait ten minutes until the next King adaptation arrives.

LIC
 
THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE
08.02.04 (12:25 pm)   [edit]
THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE
Cast: Denzel Washington, Liev Schreiber, Meryl Streep, Anthony Mackie, Miguel Ferrer, and Jeffrey Wright
Directed by: Jonathan Demme
Written by: Daniel Pyne and Dean Georgaris
Distributor: Paramount Pictures (US 2004)
Rated: R for violence and some language

As Reviewed by: Gabriel Shanks

Remakes are tricky business. Case in point: [b]THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE[/b]. If you've seen John Frankenheimer's bizarrely mesmeric 1962 political drama, there will be little that takes you by surprise in Jonathan Demme's new souped-up 2004 version starring Denzel Washington, Liev Schreiber, and the glorious Meryl Streep. It seems the adage may be true, even in Hollywood: the more things change (technology, end of the Cold War, corporate influence), the more things stay the same (greed, avarice, powerlust).

But even if you're new to this particular world of political intrigue and intriguing politics, [b]THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE[/b] may leave you wanting. Since director Demme ([i]Beloved[/i], [i]Philadelphia[/i]) reveals the central secret of the film pretty early, the remainder of the running time is spent waiting for the characters to catch up to the audience. Already armed with the plot twist, the wait can be pretty tedious. Sifting through a murky, convoluted conspiracy involving the first Persian Gulf War and a monolithic conglomerate called Manchurian Global, it is easy for the attention to wander. There's little that is truly compelling onscreen, either in the narrative or in the surprisingly mild performances of Washington and Schreiber. Only Streep, in a scene-stealing (and scenery chewing) performance, is worth watching. She manages to be funny-scary, deliciously over-the-top while maintaining a sharp villainous edge.

There are some lovely design touches to [b]THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE[/b], including some spot-on modern costuming by Albert Wolsky and superb cinematography by Tak Fujimoto. The problem lies with Demme, unfortunately; the film just seems addled and confused much of the time. Small parts taken by actors of import (Miguel Ferrer, Jeffrey Wright, Bruno Ganz, Dean Stockwell) suggest that some scenes were left on the cutting room floor in an effort to ramp up the tension. Whatever the case, [b]THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE[/b] is not only less arresting than its predecessor, but less arresting than our current political election, which seems to have more than enough drama of its own. In this case, art really could have imitated life, and been better for it.
 
COLLATERAL
08.01.04 (10:13 am)   [edit]
COLLATERAL
Cast: Jamie Foxx, Tom Cruise, Jada Pinkett Smith, Mark Ruffalo, Peter Berg, and Javier Bardem
Directed by: Michael Mann
Written by: Stuart Beattie
Distributor: Dreamworks Pictures (US 2004)
Rated: R for violence and language

As Reviewed by: Gabriel Shanks

Moviegoers who see the ads for the new action thriller COLLATERAL may be understood for dismissing it as the latest Tom Cruise movie. The actor's face, covered with marks and scars, looms large on the posters, surprisingly topped with a shock of silver hair. It is such an unusual sight, this Cruise-but-not-exactly-Cr uise, that moviegoers might miss the mention of Jamie Foxx, who is the film's actual leading man (despite being billed after Cruise in the credits and missing on half the posters entirely).

But in truth, this is neither a Tom Cruise movie nor a Jamie Foxx movie...COLLATERAL is, first and foremost, a Michael Mann movie, the singular director whose resume includes neo-classics like The Insider, Heat, and Manhunter. Like the best of Mann's work, COLLATERAL is electrically charged by its sense of place, its superb pacing, vivid cinematography, and suspenseful editing. It finds a rhythm all its own, never rushing its story but never dragging for a second. Although it makes a number of important mistakes which blunt its effectiveness overall, COLLATERAL could still be a film-school textbook on how to design a cinematic thriller.

From its classy, crisp opening moments, COLLATERAL bombards the viewer with bold imagery and sounds...we are in Mann country. To be specific, we are in downtown Los Angeles, a haze of glittering skyscrapers, zooming cars, and the eerie quiet of urban business districts at night...a world empty but pensively waiting for something to happen. We join a taxi driver, Max (played by Foxx), as he routinely picks up and drops off his charges, including a brittle lawyer named Annie (Jada Pinkett Smith) and a mysterious businessman, Vincent (Cruise). There's a lazy tension in the scenes, a thickness in the air that could be cut with a butter knife. The lights shine gaudily, the banter is genial, and all is good in La La Land.

Then...BOOM! You knew some Big Event was coming, but when it does -- a man falling suddenly out of a window -- it still takes you completely by surprise. Mann shifts COLLATERAL into high gear, and we're off on a chase around L.A. in a tale that involves high-stakes drug warfare and many innocent bystanders. The story doesn't always hold together, but with literally dozens of gripping twists and turns, the screenplay (by Pirates of the Caribbean's Stuart Beattie) is relentlessly entertaining.

Entertaining, yes, but never enthralling...and with a picture like COLLATERAL, that depends on structural implausibilities to maintain its integrity, one needs the film to do more than merely keep your attention. Beattie's premise keeps most of the film inside Max's cab. But such a set-up creates relationships that are forced and unnatural...who really has meaningful conversations about life with their cab driver? Slipping and sliding from terror to comedy to melodrama (sometimes all in the same scene), the crashing tonal changes simply don't work. Often in the heat of a tense moment, Beattie is unable to resist getting cutesy...a silly joke here, a bit of physical slapstick there. Audiences may chuckle, but the larger battle is lost; in a film meant to explore real connections between strangers and the intersections of life and truth, COLLATERAL sadly feels only false and fake.

But Oh! What glorious fakery. Even with weak material, director Mann is able to spin some suspenseful magic here and there. Foxx (Any Given Sunday) proves to be a rather charming Everyman, making Max's natural decency into a rapidly evolving personal ethic. Beattie's script sometimes forces too much heroism and bravado on poor Max, but Foxx rises to the challenge and able leaps the holes in his character. Solid character work by Jada Pinkett Smith and distrustful cop Mark Ruffalo (as well as bold cameo performances by Peter Berg and Javier Bardem) help COLLATERAL rise beyond its four-wheeled microcosm into a day-glo sheen on L.A. cool.

As for Cruise -- the man on the poster -- COLLATERAL is quite a departure. More than any film in his career, Cruise veers from his standard archetype of the broken man-child. Here he's not gorgeous, nor is he a youngster with a lot to learn. At once savage and serene, Cruise's Vincent is as self-aware as any man you're likely to meet. Bold and unremitting, Cruise reaches a new acting plateau in COLLATERAL, proving that, twenty years after Risky Business, there may be a wider palette inside him after all.
 

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