Men living by their code

I got out to see Mamet’s latest, Redbelt, which he refers to as an update of the classic fight flick, and it’s a strong homage, for better and worse. We follow a scraping-by, virtuous jujitsu master/instructor Mike Terry (the reliably great Chiwetel Ejiofor) who’s trapped–by some scheming and unreliable Hollywood types, an ambitious wife, mounting debts, and his own bullheaded determination to follow a fighter’s code–into a choice between competition or the loss of everything he holds dear. Besides Ejiofor, there’s a great cast (particularly regulars Ricky Jay and Joe Mantegna, clearly delighted to be foul-mouthed lowlifes throwing their weight around), and for about 2/3 of the picture the dialogue and plotting are knotty and delightful, allowing us plenty of time to chew on what’s happening, and to read Terry against the grain: he’s calm, determined, likable, “perfect”–and perhaps misguided, foolish, selfish, and so on. For a good long while, the idea of living by a code seems both virtue and vice, and the film buzzes on that tension.

Then, in its last third, people do a lot less talking and start throwing fists and feet instead of four-letter words and opaque aphorisms, and I don’t think that’s necessarily what I want from a Mamet film. It becomes a fight flick, not entirely predictable but tonally, thematically, and (alas) ideologically in line with the kinds of sentimental affirmations of the “loser” whose code (backed up by his real talent) is worth sticking to.

Meh. But great fun for a good portion of its running time, and so I’d suggest a rental, for sure. But a far, far, far more interesting (although admittedly very different) take on the foolish virtue of sticking to one’s idealism can be found in the ink-black Danish comedy Adam’s Apples, which follows the religious Ivan (Mads Mikkelsen), a man impervious to any disruptions in his belief in the goodness of humanity, in the inevitable success of turning the other cheek, in the power of meek acceptance and affirmation of everyone around him. Ivan bedevils one of his ex-con wards Adam (Ulrich Thomsen), a neo-Nazi who puts up a photo of Hitler in his small room, who stares dumbfounded as Ivan blithely misreads or just plain misses the malice in the actions all around him, who develops a seething passion aimed at breaking Ivan’s belief. It’d be entirely worth seeing for its casual, almost joyful misanthropy, and it is often laugh-out-loud funny. But I was even more taken by its unwillingness to affirm or flatly refute Ivan’s beliefs; rather, the film draws even more pointed laughs from the possibility that a buffoonish faith might actually have force in one’s life, even if it’s never anything but buffoonish. What starts as a vicious parody in the end seems a far more complicated, still very funny and biting investigation of faith.

Soviet Cinema and Soccer

After the despair that Chelsea fans (myself included) feel after last night’s Champions League final, at least an excuse to connect the loss to movies. Someone on a Chelsea fan blog linked each Chelsea player to a classic of Soviet cinema:

Cech – The Diamond Arm – Gaidai 1968
That double save in the 1st half and he saved a penalty Continue reading Soviet Cinema and Soccer

The Political Economy of Film

Does anyone know of good sources on the material production of US movies, both studio and independent? I’m particularly interested in the treatment of actors as workers. This became salient recently when a friend who is a union rep. with SAG told me about a multi-union wildcat strike on the set of a David O. Russell movie (which sounds like a train wreck waiting to happen). There are apparently complicated rules about pension funds and how much of a film’s financing has to be put in escrow to pay actors before filming can begin, and so on. This is an area I know next to nothing about, so if anyone can suggest a source for this kind of information, I’d be grateful.

Chim Chim

I’m amazed to say this, but a film based on a television cartoon, a film with an excess of production energy and an equally-excessive layer of dipshit dialogue, a film edited with an eye toward epileptic shock, a film with a lot of jokes predicated on a hammy fat kid, a film with about fifty chimpanzee reaction shots …. it isn’t half-bad. In fact, it’s maybe three-quarters-good. I had steeled myself for teeth-gritting ennui as Max stared with empty goggle eyes through the 2+ hours of frantic Speed Racer nonsense. But this film was incessantly pleasing to the eye, a candy-store of colors, clever anime-inspired and/or loopily-inventive cinematic tricks, and uncampy affectionate recreation of mediocre-cartoon tropes. I hereby nominate Spritl and Chim as easily the most entertaining “irritating-kid-and-animal sidekicks” in the history of cinema, by which I mean the only irritating-kid-and-animal sidekicks one would even want to see. Anthony Lane in the New Yorker repeats an old Groucho Marx joke as a way of criticizing the film’s primary audience as four-year-olds — I guess I’m in touch with my inner four-year-old, ’cause this was way more fun than anyone has a right to expect.

Oh, and the central notion that corporations are evil was a pleasant ‘though (see Iron Man discussion) self-contradicting message for a big-budget technospectacle to embrace. There was surprisingly little (if any?) product-placement in the film (‘though the ramped-up pitch to kids for all things Speed began at the ticket counter, where we all got “Pit Passes” with coupons for Target and Hot Wheels).

Bernard and Doris

This HBO flick, directed by Bob Balaban, has some just astonishing, low-key acting — Ralph Fiennes seems to disappear into so many different kinds of roles, despite his rather singular looks. Here he’s a slightly-campy butler hired on by the lonely harridan tycoon Doris Dukes (an equally great Susan Sarandon). The movie is perversely unstructured, in ways that I like; it resists the beats and tempo of the three-acts we’re so used to in movies, it jumps from time to time, there are rarely big moments of crisis or conflict or catharsis. Instead, it burrows under the skin of each character through the prism of their strange, hard-to-categorize relationship.

This isn’t going to keep you on the edge of your seat, but the acting alone kept me engrossed. There’s a scene about mid-film in a hothouse, as the two late at night repot some orchids, where not much is really said and nothing truly plot-shifting happens, that is about the finest acting I’ve seen in some time. After seeing Fiennes tear off a hock of ham with glorious pleasure in Bruges, it was amazing to see him take the same techniques (a shifting of his physical carriage, precise and intimate movements of hands and eyes, a use of his voice that in pitch and rhythm gives us more information about the character) for a wholly different kind of act.

Iron Man

Against my expectations, I really enjoyed this. It is worth watching for three reasons:
1) Robert Downey Jr. He is more or less perfect for the role displaying his cynical brand of humor leavened with some low key but effective acting (especially early on when he is imprisoned by some Taleban-esque Afghans).
2) the dialogue is clever, quick and genuinely funny in places. Downey’s lines with Gwyneth Paltrow and Jeff Bridges (both of whom handle their roles well) have the sort of zing that you don’t normally associate with a summer blockbuster.
3) the Iron Man him/itself. The usual superhero backstory is about how Bruce Wayne became Batman, or Peter Parker became Spiderman. Here the backstory is shorn of any real psychological drama. It is about mechanics and pulleys and “arc reactors” and stabilizers and such like. What we get is a strong sense of whizz-bangery (and several funny scenes of Downey testing the equipment).
Good old-fashioned entertainment. As one of my kids noted, it is rare that an audience applauds a movie like this when the final credits roll.

Gardens of Stone

Anyone seen this? I came across a reference to it in a review of “coming home from war” movies, I think in The New Yorker. I had never heard of it, and now, having watched it, I’m not too surprised. It’s a pity, though, because this movie could have been so much better. The Gardens of Stone are military cemeteries, specifically Arlington National Cemetery in 1968-69 at the height of the Vietnam War. An elite army detail known as the Old Guard has the responsibility of managing the burials and ceremonials surrounding them, and is of course marked by the mounting US military losses. James Caan is the older officer who is having doubts about the war. Most of the men (and they are all men) are happy to be out of harm’s way, but one young soldier (D.B. Sweeney) desperately wants to get to Vietnam. He does. Since the movie opens with his funeral and his voice over before flashing back, the consequences are no surprise. Continue reading Gardens of Stone

Street Kings

It seems like forever since I watched a movie. I had Lust, Caution out from Netflix for six weeks, and even then it took me three nights to watch it. So it had to be just the right movie to ease back into the practice of watching in preparation for the summer blockbuster season. Nothing that forces me to re-live the trauma of an aging relative, or worse, sit across the aisle from some dickhead in a plastic Iron Man costume. Thank goodness for Keanu Reeves. If you can get past the utter stupidity of the plot, Street Kings delivers solid B-movie entertainment. Keanu is a gung-ho cop with the LAPD who cuts corners to catch his suspects, and is as happy blowing them away as taking them in for questioning. Forest Whitaker has lots of fun playing his superior who runs this elite, corrupt Vice unit. We even get Hugh Laurie as the witty internal affairs guy with the phony American accent he has honed on House. The corruption and betrayal become more and more intricate, but it’s best to ignore it all and concentrate on the gun fights. Lots of them. Keanu is even referred to as “the gunslinger” on a couple of occasions. But here he is in his element, the best since Speed when Dennis Hopper wisely advised him not to think too much. Occasionally Keanu begins to look pensive, as when trying to figure out the web of intrigue, but these brief moments of painful acting are soon relieved with a spray of bullets. Fun.

Pain is funny. Or funnyish.

We recently saw two very good films that zero in on people in pain. In The Savages, there’s a scene where Philip Seymour Hoffman, having wrenched his neck during a game of tennis (and an argument with his sister Laura Linney about his idiocy in his relationship with a woman), stands with his head bound up in an absurd weighted contraption, meant to “balance” him. Linney looks on and laughs, and he can’t help it–bursts into giggles, too. And ‘though the pain doesn’t go away, not the nerve in his neck nor the loneliness of their lives nor the anguish of their family history and current reality (dad sinking into dementia, and needing to be put in a home), the laugh reframes the pain as less a personal blight than something the two share. Continue reading Pain is funny. Or funnyish.

The Orphanage

A gothic manor house located in a particularly beautiful, particularly remote spot on the Spanish coast is purchased by a woman who lived there decades before when it functioned as a Catholic orphanage. She and her husband, along with their six-year-old son, work to restore the home and transform it into a school for mentally disabled children, but when her child starts communicating with unseen forces and soon vanishes into thin air, the past finds a way to eerily push itself into the present. This film is creepy and atmospheric and evocatively affective–perhaps due to the fact that it’s plot ingeniously appropriates and recontextualizes the story of Peter Pan. There is a set piece about twenty-five minutes in that is stunning, and the ending’s perfect balance of the uncanny and the mythic will break your heart.