Sunday, February 26, 2006

CAPOTE



Official Capote Site
Drama/Biography
Starring:Philip Seymour Hoffman, Catherine Keener, Clifton Collins, Jr., Chris Cooper
Rated R (for language, violent images)
Running Time: 98 Minutes
Released:September 2, 2005


4 Out Of 5 Bites

by Glenn Johnson

Cast whatever accolades one may at the feet of Philip Seymour Hoffman's rendition of Truman Capote, but this is an undeniably accurate effort of a character reproduction of the real thing as one may see.

Hoffman captures the self-absorption of the literary star exquisitely, right down to the glibly-lisped one-liners and story-telling panache that tickles the ears of his raptured socialites who encircle his feet. With nonchalance, Capote is always looking down, perhaps faintly through his nose, at whatever is before him. But you never get the sense that- if even in his own warped way- genuine caring is beyond him. It is just that his motivation is steeped in his star-ridden aspirations and his desire for attention ever muddle the lines.

Director Bennett Miller's Capote is a reference point for narcissism's inability to separate genuine concern for more self-serving ends, highlighting the gay author's friendship with convicted murderer Perry Smith (Clifton Collins). Capote's investigation began as an effort toward a magazine article, but quickly transitioned to a book once Capote realized the dramatic wealth present in the story. Capote becomes smitten by Smith and quickly blinded by his lure toward the convict in prospects of the impending possibility that his book might never be completed as long as there are stays of execution for the prisoners. Capote had secured legal counsel for the convicts early on, partly as much to enable more intimate time with Smith as to garner material for the book. But the move compounds the greater need Capote feels to finish his work and satisfy his publisher, his adoring crowd and subsequently his desperate ego needs.

The pair form a bond that is challenged by Capote's larger-than-life agenda. Capote wants to help, but he can't define the line between callous self-regard and compassionate concern.

Journalistic endeavors and the manipulative ways it employs to get "good story" is also central here, with underhanded betrayals and glad-handing bribery as the modus operandi with which to get in. Once "in," Capote could never have fathomed the exacting toll it would take on not only his professional life, but his personal life as well. It is this knowledge of the denouement of Capote's life in actuality that marks the film with vigor.

In 1959, Capote comes across the news of a Kansas family gunned down and subsequently contacts the editor of the New Yorker with the idea of a magazine article that quickly turns to a book proposal. Capote swooshes into the tiny place with his requisite fanfare and the hope that his work would detail how this small community was dealing with the news. He just begins to befriend a Kansas Bureau of Investigation agent (Chris Cooper) for some insider information when the two murderers are apprehended out west.

After their conviction, Capote entrenches himself in the story behind the story- mainly of the murderer Smith- because he sees so much of himself in him. One wonders if the pity Capote feels for Smith is only a newly discovered vehicle to access his own lost sadness for himself. He says of Smith and himself: "It's as if Perry and I grew up in the same house. And one day he went out the back door and I went out the front."

He tells his friend and research assistant, Harper Lee (Catherine Keener), that he might have a nervous breakdown if their appeal for a stay of execution is granted. The film depicts in the grayest of fashion the line between what is true compassion and self-absorbency, because for Capote, you get the feeling he may not even be able to delineate that himself. After the execution, Capote tearfully pines that he couldn't have done anything to save them. To which, Lee responds tellingly: "Maybe not, Truman. But the truth is, you didn't want to."

The six years of life that passes in the effort to finish the project would ultimately see the publishing of Lee's novel To Kill a Mockingbird and craft a movie in the meantime. The era would begin to spell out a spirlling downward of Capote, who did manage to finish In Cold Blood, a new genre that would change the face of modern literature to come. Unfortunately, heavy drinking and the ensuing emotional disintegration from the experience arguably quickened his demise. As a snapshot study of the some of the contributing factors to that, Capote has every leg to stand on and should not be missed, if not for Hoffman's performance alone.

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Monday, February 20, 2006

Final Destination 3

Official Final Destination 3 Site
Horror
Starring:Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Ryan Merriman
Rated R (for language, some strong sexual content/brief nudity, mild violence)
Running Time: 93 Minutes
Released:February 10th, 2006


1 Out Of 5 Bites

With this deplorable installment, the filmmakers perpetuate the lie that you never finally arrive at a suitable destination...not the first or the second time, and with this latest attempt, a death on the cutting room floor would have sufficed.

In its defense, the original in the series played upon some really palpable physical and emotional scenarios, i.e., that the fact you can't ever really outrun death has a taxing toll on those who attempt it. We can "get" that the first time, but to hoist a trilogy on the concept inevitably dwindles into nothing more than a blood-festive free-for-all in the race to depict the mulitiplicity of ways a teenager's body can be mutilated, disemboweled, chopped and/or crushed. Virtually anything that exists just might be the what does in each unsuspecting victim. Sometimes the way the person is going to die is foreshadowed way too early. But who cares, as long as you get to watch?

Glen Morgan and James Wong return from their hiatus in FD2 to direct the gore, which begins on a roller coaster ride gone impossibly amuck, cast as a premonition seen by Mary Elizabeth Winstead. Her photos of the night at the carnival/fair/amusement park become the means whereby the future victims' demise will be predicted.

Shortly into the 93 minute debacle, one becomes aware that, for most who'll find themselves there, the only real reason to be in the theater while the film is projecting is that: 1) you'll see some grisly deaths; 2) you'll almost certainly see unnecessary nudity and, 3) did I mention gruesome deaths? Since neither of these reasons amounted to anything sufficiently compelling to either see it or remain, the moviegoer will know what it is into which they are entering. And this brings me to the reason why I saw it: to gain some more insight into the thanatophilia, or death-love, that runs rampant in our culture.

Cinema offers ways to enter as close to the things we have feared or been fascinated with the most. Much has and will be said in evaluating the perpetual effect of being consistently exposed to graphic displays of death and sex in our culture. This is just one film in a litany of many past and many more to come to exploit what has become a somewhat fetishistic pasttime....to participate in as many detailed depictions of death as possible, as relayed by one's media of choice. Some of this is not by conscious choice, but it is hard to account for the public craving for such. Either the producers are giving what we want or they are imposing upon us what they think we want....or, worse, what they want us to want.

But beyond that, the film is prankishly infantile with some patently annoying performances by twenty-somethings acting like they are teenies. For most, it will just merely choke on its voyeuristic vomitus, unless you own a copy of Return To Horror High and have it's theme song as a ringtone on your cell phone. In such a case, rush- don't walk- to see FD3.

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DVD: Cinderella Man

Official Cinderella Man Site
Drama/Biography/Sport
Starring Russell Crowe, Renee Zellweger, Paul Giamatti
Rated PG-13 (for language, some boxing violence)
Running Time: 144 Minutes
Theatrical Release/DVD Release:June 3rd, 2005/December 6th 2005










4 Out Of 5 Bites

You can't help but pull for these underdogs- the Braddocks- this former boxing shadow-of-himself man and his thoughtful, loving wife and children. In fact, boxer Jim Braddock (Russell Crowe) became the loveable effigy, a revered poster-child for hope in a post-depression era full of regular people just trying to get back on their feet again.

Cinderella Man is material begging for Hollywood attention, based loosely on the events surrounding Jim Braddock's rise to fame and survivability after losing it all after the Great Depression. Of course, if Braddock was merely a dock worker and not a famed, esteemed boxer before the downfall, there may not have been as much to work with here. Boxing is the easy analagy to what the Braddocks must face in the larger ring of life.

But this is not really a boxing movie, though the boxing scenes are artful and believeable, avoiding Rocky-esque manipulations and physical implausibilities in the ring. Long-time, real-life boxing trainer Angelo Dundee appears in Braddock's corner as the cut man, who would offer Paul Giamatti clever and substantive things to say as Braddock's trainer, Joe Gould. Enough homework was done to establish believability in the ring.

There are certain available cliches and narrative vehicles that the Braddock story naturally affords director Ron Howard in this film. One of which is the aforementioned analogy of boxing to the real life fight for survival in post-Great Depression era. Braddock is an upstanding and likeable man, founded on his principles and dependable. His hard times aren't resultant from his bad decisions and his efforts to survive includes doing everything he can do, even to the point of poignantly stooping to recieving handouts from those who know him well. He is guided by the needs of the family he fathers and husbands and ultimately returns to the boxing arena via a slim shot and flowery, mouthy machinations of his trainer, Gould.

He gets the chance to box again, and to keep going if he keeps winning. Once the champ and now underdog, he garners the attention of the community and others like it who vicariously place their hopes in the hopes of Braddock in the ring. The monster he faces, is one that can literally kill him....Max Baer (Craig Bierko), who had already killed two men in the ring. The protagonist and antagonist could not be more opposed in their pairing; Baer, the womanizing Hollywood-ish showman and against the stable, resolute and principled Braddock. Considering the corpus of his character and behavior across his life (especially after his rise to fame), Braddock is the fodder for a saintly drama, not for one tainted with the ill-repute brought on by his ego or foolishness.

The first hour of the movie is heavy and dark and you wonder if the family will ever get a break. Always on the verge of starving, freezing or succumbing to illness, the family is tried to the extent of their sensibilities as the threads of their trust is tested.

The lead-in to the great showdown with Max Baer is wrought with anticipation and tension, even involving Braddock's wife, Mae (Renee Zellweger), in the pre-fight hype. The fight will be a grabber for those who may not be familiar with the story, but maybe not as much as the "getting there."

Cinderella Man sets out to be exemplary in its telling, but most of all, in its performances, Paul Giamatti's stands out. Crowe and Zellweger notch a solid effort, but it is Giamatti's resident quirkiness, ready to blossom at any minute, that steals the show.

Why this film got snubbed for a best picture nomination is a secret known only to the voters, especially considering Brokeback Mountain's consistent nods as the one to beat. Cinderella Man is one you can uncompromisingly feel good with, from beginning to end.

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Munich




















Official Munich Site
Crime/Drama/Thriller/Historical
Starring :Eric Bana, Daneil Craig, Geoffrey Rush
Rated R (for language, nudity, graphic violence)
Running Time: 164 Minutes
Released:December 23rd, 2005


3 Out Of 5 Bites


In the Munich Olympic Games of 1972, eleven Israeli Olympic team members were taken hostage and killed by Palestinian terrorists. Much of the drama was followed closely by ABC with live coverage of the murders and some of this footage is woven into the movie, with the familiar voice of Jim McKay reporting on the broadcasts.

Munich dives into the lives of an affable, five-man group of Israeli hit-men tasked with taking out the planners of the Palestinian Black September movement. This hit-and-run response team would follow leads to names supplied by Israeli intelligence and methodically kill them. The men are given fake identification and hefty bank accounts with which to carry out their retaliatory attacks.

The film chronicles the lives of these men together on this common goal, noting how the killing affects them through time. This perspective is primarily seen through former Mossad agent, Avner Kauffman (Eric "Hulk" Bana), who is really the lone "star" in the movie.

We see the group together for the first time over an exquisite, introductory dinner prepared by Bana. Eating together is an intimate endeavor and this is not a fact lost to mid-Eastern cultures. The effect is rather chilling when considering that casual intimacy and the bond that would be forged together under the unified goal of assassination over the coming weeks.

Whether ordinary, family-loving, devout or idiosyncratic, each in the five seek to engage our pathos in a way that would redirect us away from whether or not the Israeli response was warranted. Instead, it compels us to compare group's response to their own growing disdain of their violent ways to the current culture of violence and war in which we, the viewers, now live. They begin to fathom their doubts about their mission as the killing machine marches on, hunting down suspected Palestinian group planners. They are even suspicious of their informants and even one another to the extent of being relationally isolated, which proves to weaken not only their mission, but the resolve that fuels it.

Spielberg hasn't made a movie here that you'll "love" when you walk out of it. There aren't any really weak performances in Munich either, only murky confusion about the mission overall. How much is enough? To what extent will one go to achieve the goal of the state? Are the collateral sacrifices worth it? Sometimes the interaction between the men hint at addressing these questions and others, but this seems to aid us more than it does the movie itself.

Since killing is big governmental business these days, one will appreciate the turmoil displayed by the five men over the passage of time. To get there, one will have to endure a cascade of episodic violence and tension that seems to be designed to sway us from judging the Israeli response so that, in the end, we are left holding the final, internal struggle Avner has in contemplating whether or not life can proceed after the killings. His character is the deepest study in the move from self-assurance to doubt.

Munich acknowledges that terrorism is the new war fought with innovative and unconventional ways in rapidly changing political landscapes. This much, the viewer will grasp. To its detriment, we lose a handle on the clarity of moral obligations of the state politic in its responses to not only this event, but future ones. This ambiguity in the film may more reflect an actual one at present. Which state or individual acting on its behalf is more "right" in their offensive and/or defensive behaviors that support their respective causes? Is the answer simply relative to the frame reference? Whatever the cause for this ambiguity, be it by will or by circumstance, it is still the choices we make that mould us as individuals and nations and each of these choices can irrevocably affect us or someone else down the line.

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Monday, February 06, 2006

Brokeback Mountain

Official Brokeback Mountain Site
Drama/Romance
Starring Heath Ledger, Jake Gyllenhaal, Randy Quaid, Anne Hathaway, Michelle Williams
Rated R (for language, some strong sexual content/brief nudity, mild violence)
Running Time: 134 Minutes
Released:December 9th, 2005



2 Out Of 5 Bites


The affair that begins furiously on that thar Brokeback Mountain is a daring, but pitifully pretentious parade of a selfish gay affair that banks our emotional sympathies upon the star-crossed lovers' tragic attempts to validate their hidden relationship. As a down-payment, it could be argued that we are asked to suspend the moralizing and coalescing around any valuation of the "traditional" family makeup of a man and a woman (and all the other ways the arguments are made for "normative," heterosexual, monogomous relations between a man and a woman in the context of marriage).

But, director Ang Lee's take on Annie Proulx's short story seems not to be suggesting that anyone suspend such valuations, which, inherently, might be the problem.

The 1963 Wyoming, in which the film opens, is a scenic monument and Lee superimposes the gay fling over that big sky as if to beg an analogous equality therein. The reserved Ennis Del Mar (Heath Ledger) shows up at a rancher's headquarters just ahead of Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal), who already looks as if he's up to something. Both are looking for summer work and they find it as sheepherders. In due time and owing some thanks to some whiskey and frigid temperatures, Twist and Del Mar consummate their physical interests and desires that mask their stunted emotional selves.

Twist seems to be the initiator, having passed numerous, longing looks toward the bumble-mouthed Del Mar that unabashedly foreshadow his intentions. When Twist makes his move, Del Mar appears somewhat upended, but, proving to be no victim, he becomes the aggressor. Del Mar insists to Twist that this is a one-time deal since he (Del Mar) is to be married in short time.

Neither Del Mar nor Twist were interested in the most obvious "right" thing to do, given the fact that their hot submission to their passions were to affect many more lives in irreversible ways. In one fail swoop of compromised sobriety, judgment and sexual libido, they give in to that which they think they deserve to afford themselves, and it is actually the very thing that robs them of fulfillment.

The devastation of the secret relationship, once discovered, is rampant in it's destruction on both men and the women they would later marry and the children they would father. The willingness they both have in continuing the deception is highlighted, but confusingly so, because it simultaneously comes off chronicling the debaucherous affair in a frolicsome pitch that should have been reserved for the marriage relationships into which they both entered while painting a picture of the relational fractures without a meaningful congealment in the end. It is a tragedy for tragedy's sake that doesn't harbor a worthy commentary against the chain links of their adulterous liasons as much as the film argues for why both men's relationship was a just one from the beginning. The effectual perspective, then, is that the real downfall was that they didn't stand up to their fear and the conventional, pervasive public opinion (real or perceived by them) and, in so doing, consequently go ahead with their outwardly gay relationship.

After a four-year hiatus from one another, Jack descends into the life of Del Mar again, who doesn't really seem to be hacking it too well as a rancher, father and husband. He is his backward self, but doesn't really seem to come to life until Jack's correspondence, which begins several more years of rendezvous under the guise of fishing trips.

They analyze their dead-end lives they have willingly entered into and wrestle with their reasons for not having gone off on their own together from the beginning, which only stirs up emotional strife between the two. Twist, during a heated argument between them on one trip, bemoans, "I wish I knew how to quit you." This has less the import intended if one looks at the fact that their place is one of their own choosing. As such, it becomes a laughable tag line for what the film hoped would have been an instrument endearing some to the lover's plights.

But perhaps that is the (minimally) effective tragedy of Lee's film; these two had no frame of reference for making responsible choices regarding intimate relationships, especially relationships that circulate around dominant male-figures in their lives. Del Mar recounts how, as a child, his homophobic father took him to the place of a murder scene where a gay cowboy was mutilated. Twist is depicted in constant adversarial positions with his father-in-law until he finally stands up to the "ignorant s.o.b." (in as many words) at a Thanksgiving dinner, no less.

This is not the typical romantic, angst-ridden story-telling vehicle with which we have been sold, considering the hype surrounding the film. At times, their relationship has much less to do with "romance" than it does with the way the film relishes in it's ability to display its homoeroticism- sometimes bluntly, sometimes subtly- but overpresent nonetheless. The performances are quirky, with Ledger's Del Mar being the most memorable, even if his dialect is hard to understand, sounding at times as if he is speaking through cotton balls in his cheeks, a la Marlon Brando. Gyllenhaal's Twist is much less believable, overposing in scenes as if to propose the new gay cowboy image. At least with Del Mar, there is a deepened mystery of character underlying what we see and what we wish we could see, but Gyllenhaal's depth is truncated by one or two shout-bursts from what is otherwise just a linear performance.

Michelle Williams plays Del Mar's wife, who inadvertently discovers her hubby in a lip-lock with Twist. The movie props itself upon her inability to confront her adulterous husband while continuing to compare it to the descent of Twist into the other sexual dalliances south of the border from his home in Texas, consistently consigning his family to wandering around in an emotional aloofness. Randy Quaid as Del Mar and Twist's boss is a mentionable performace as one might expect from Quaid, here, the dead-pan, no-nonsense cowboy businessman who discovers his hired help have other interests.

The picture is an ongoing highlight of the continuance of their affair, while building up to some sort of climactic ending to the forbidden relationship (tritely alluding to the Matthew Shepherd case a few years back). The way the relationship is resolved, if it is, is not from the place of maturation in light of the pain caused in their taboo endeavors, but from the grief of their own loss and what could/should have been. Neither man develops positively, but they only deepen in their downfall, having been solidified in character bit by bit by the decisions they made along the way.

The film may break ground in the genre available with which the homosexual movement has to depict its issues, assuming that is their perspective. In avoiding its own stereotypes pronounced an anathema in our socio-political climate, it blindly enters into cheap portrayals of Texans as poorly dressed, dim, dull and tacky. Wyomingans are pallid, uninteresting and liable to be mistaken for walking stiffs.

Brokeback is not lacking in cinematography or guts. It might even excel in portraying some levels of human fallenness. But it certainly offers nothing freeing and redemptive in the stead of the massive human relational casualties it contains. It will alienate some who see it as a new step in an agendized arts climate and endear itself to others looking for a more empathic voice in cinema for sure, but it certainly has not warranted the adulation of the Hollywood elite for refreshment in filmaking. It breaks new ground in its brashness, but thematically, it tends toward predictability and washes up generally trampled in an over-hyped critical stampede.

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