It is a very simple idea. Train 17 high def cameras on a single player, in real time, for the duration of a soccer game. The player is Zinedine Zidane, and the game was one he played for Real Madrid in 2004 as his career was coming to an end (but before the 2006 World Cup final that formally ended that career). What you get is the portrait of a single player, largely isolated from his team and the events around him. Even the crowd noise is turned way down and an ethereal Mogwai soundtrack plays over the murmur of the crowd. The cameras never leave Zidane. You don’t see a goal being scored, or a foul committed, unless Zidane is involved, just his face. Occasionally his teammate David Beckham wanders across the frame sporting his flock of seagulls haircut. Roberto Carlos exchanges a smile and a look of relief with Zidane. There are endless shots of his cleats and socks, of the sweat pouring off his face. Only occasionally is a piece of the TV footage of the game inserted to give some context. What you get is a portrait of a craftsman, of all the stuff you never see when you watch a soccer game on TV. It is far more mundane because you are not following the ball; you are watching Zidane following the ball. His economy of movement, at the end of his career, is remarkable. Never a wasted movement, but the ability to spring into action and return to a state of rest the instant the potential of a play is over. There is some pretentious and self-important nonsense (French soccer players seem to be regarded as philosophers, ever since the banalities of Eric Cantona — wonderfully skewered in the “Philosophy Football” t-shirts one can buy), and a strange sequence of world news events that were occurring the same day as the game. But the point is made when you see footage of a car bomb in Najaf, and as you watch a bloody stretcher in the distance, a boy passes the edge of the frame wearing a #5 Zidane jersey.

This is probably only for aficionados, but there is a quiet beauty to watching a craftsman at work. And perhaps fittingly, it ends with Zidane’s volcanic temper leading to a red card near the end of the game. He walks off the field, disbelief on his face, alone.

Death Race is a thoroughly satisfying little action movie, all the better for being entirely predictable: the good cons win and the bad cons and prison governors lose. There is a not a stray storyline, a hint of complexity, or an emotion that outlasts the time it takes to downshift a Mustang V8 Fastback. Even the wincingly bad dialogue is kept to a minimum. It is exactly what the previews and the title suggest. Good guy, ex-steelworker and one time race driver, Jason Statham, is framed for the murder of his adored wife in order to participate in a top-rated prison death race by evil prison governor, Joan Allen. Statham is befriended by cuddly, loveable cons like Ian McShane and a tough but cute navigator from the women’s prison, Natalie Martinez. Mayhem ensues.  Roger Corman is credited as a producer, but despite the claim in the credits, this remake is nothing like the original. It is hard to fault, unless, of course, you expect more from your movies than simple setup, fine driving, and explosions galore. And Joan Allen emerges with, if not her dignity intact, at least a couple of sly scenes.

This was good giddy fun. Kicking off nicely even before it starts with four faux movie trailers that introduce each character, the latest Ben Stiller film is as good a movie about movies I’ve seen in a while (in fact, the faux movie trailers seemed uncannily at home with trailers for College and Righteous Kill). In brief, here’s the story and my take: (more…)

About once every three months I head to the local blood bank where I am hooked up to a machine which removes all of my blood, cycling in first some kind of plasma stuff then replacing my old, tired corpuscles with some from a chubby, fresh-faced 14-year-old Iowan. (Ex-fresh-faced, alas.) Anyway, I’m trapped there for two hours, and can’t move my arm. Whatever movie I’ve brought along and put on, I watch all the way through.

Today, I brought Smart People (more…)

This is Kar Wai Wong’s first movie filmed in the United States. It is a very loosely linked set of three tales of obsession and lost love. Nora Jones stars. Hers is the first story, with Jude Law as the friendly cafe owner who holds her hand as she tries to get over a past relationship, and slowly falls for her. Then Jones travels west, where the second story (and easily the best) centers on David Strathairn, who spends his nights on a barstool pining for his ex-wife. Finally Jones meets up with Natalie Portman, as a gambler with father issues, before returning to New York and Jeremy (Law).  It is typically lush, and Kar Wai Wong does silences, and brief moments of slow motion as well as anyone. But the story is too thin to contain a movie, and the performances are weak, with the exception of Strathairn. This is ultimately a little disappointing coming from the director of Chunking Express, In the Mood for Love,  and 2046.