The Fountain

It isn’t easy to make a masterpiece, even if your ambitions are in the right place, you’re a talented director with a knack for visual effects and you’ve seen “2001: A Space Odyssey” hundreds of times. “The Fountain” is an extravagant film about immortality, but sadly, it’s not the sort of film that will be remembered for eternity.

“The Fountain” spans thousands of years from the age of a Spanish conquistador raiding the Mayans to a surgeon in present day to a time beyond time or space where a man with a shaved head levitates around a bubble floating in the cosmos as he cares for a dying tree. The man in all three time periods is played by Hugh Jackman, and in each he is bound by a promise of love to his wife. In the present she’s Izzy (Rachel Weisz), a dying writer. In the past she’s Queen Isabella. In the future she’s the tree. Continue reading “The Fountain”

Wonder Boys

It isn’t often to see intellectual comedies this side of Woody Allen. Perhaps it’s because few actors can crack wise about other “faux intellectuals” the way Woody can. “Wonder Boys” is a clever, wry film based on Michael Chabon’s inventive novel that certainly tries.

It stars Michael Douglas as the Woody Allen surrogate, English Professor Grady Tripp. Grady is a writer who struck gold once and is now plagued not with writer’s block but an inability to stop writing. As his sophomore book grows ever longer, he finds it hard to focus and come to an ending.

Distracting Grady are his students James (Tobey Maguire) and Hannah (Katie Holmes), the boy a dark, socially awkward kid with a writing gift of his own, and the girl renting a room from Grady but not afraid to move into his. His quasi-gay publishing editor Terry Crabtree (Robert Downey Jr.) also pesters him, his wife has left him and his boss and lover Sarah (Frances McDormand) is pregnant.

He also has a dead dog in his trunk.

“Wonder Boys” is a movie about how a man finds his destination in life, especially when there are so many wacky, interesting people around and things going on. Continue reading “Wonder Boys”

M (1931)

“M” gave the movies its first serial killer, but it would be horribly reductive to label it as just a crime procedural. Despite essentially being a “silent” foreign film on the cusp of a new era in storytelling, Fritz Lang’s “M” is so overwhelmingly acclaimed and popular (it currently sits at #53 on the IMDB Top 250 with over 46,000 user votes) because it is a brilliantly calculated, masterfully chilling and intensely suspenseful movie that seems to be timeless.

Someone has murdered a series of children in pre-war (obviously, since the movie was made in 1931) Germany, but the film is not about the man but about the city itself. With no leads, the townspeople turn on themselves. Everyone is a suspect, no one can be trusted, and the ones doing the most to end the killings are the least trustworthy of all: other criminals losing business.

“M” was later used as Nazi propaganda material, but the psychological turmoil Lang conveys through the police force’s painstakingly thorough and systematic investigation and how nothing can be done to make the unease vanish is Lang’s own critique political critique on the incumbent Nazi party.

Think of how significant of a historical relic this film is. Here we are captivated by a film without a central character, without ever actually witnessing a murder and that is not just wordless but has near inaction and silence. In everything that is done, nothing is accomplished, and somehow this generates a whirlwind of anxiety, futility and even sexual tension.

It’s important to understand when watching “M” that the movie was made when directors were reinventing the ways they told stories on film. The movie was released only four years after the first “talkie,” “The Jazz Singer,” was released in America, when the sound craze spread nationwide.

For Lang, he continued to follow the strictly economical editing and cinematography rules that governed his silent films like “Metropolis,” but everything that simply makes our skin crawl in “M” is based not just on what we hear but what we don’t hear. One of the film’s most effective suspense trick is the killer’s whistling. It’s a simple, obvious device that’s become common place, but Lang must have been a pioneer in imagining that as the whistling got louder or faster, we would be told all we needed to know about the victim’s imminent danger, and further, as it stops, what had been done.

There’s also the scene in which the murderer is hiding in an attic trying to break his way out of a locked door. His clanking on the lock followed by his clanking stopping is what gives him away, nothing visual. It flies in the face of silent film standards perfected over three decades.

And it has possibly the first great sound performance in the legendary Peter Lorre. Lang’s camera doesn’t have to do much to reveal Lorre’s insanity. His eyes seem to pop out of his skull as he agonizes over how he must kill, how he has as little control as the other criminals who view him as a monster. His terrified tone builds and builds until we almost feel sympathy for this man. Who is the real monster? The man or the system? The murder or the society incapable of fixing it?

Lorre was presented so vividly to the world when he uttered “M’s” last words. From “Casablanca” to “The Maltese Falcon,” his work would never be the same again, but he always maintained his mystique as one of the great character actors. And Lang too would have a similar fate in America. Shortly after “M,” he fled from the Nazis and became a great director of noir. Yet his reputation too would always be compared to his German films, movies so fantastical and chilling that to this day they remain some of the best films ever made.

Rapid Response: Ugetsu

Kurosawa orchestrated the epic, Ozu sketched a portrait and Mizoguchi composed the ballet.

These are the three great directors of classic Japanese cinema, each of them varying in themes, style and even critical reception. Yet whereas the other two were tacticians, Kenji Mizoguchi was the one with style, grace and eloquence.

“Ugetsu” is his great fable, adapted from a well known Japanese fairy tale. Yet it begins so domestically, hardly the set up for a ghost story. Still though, Mizoguchi provides us with an eerie sense of where the story may be taking us.

The lesson to be learned is to avoid arrogance in the face of ambition. Two brothers, one trying to strike it rich by practicing pottery, and the other seeking fame as a samurai, boldly put themselves and their families in danger during wartime so they can achieve these goals. And although the men are the main character in this story, it’s more affecting and painful to watch these loving women call out to these men that are so stubborn. It made me consider the axiom that behind every man there is a great woman. But what woman stands behind a foolish man?

For a time, the film abandons the women. The potter becomes possessed by a beautiful spirit woman, Lady Wakasa (Machiko Kyo), oblivious to how she creates a false paradise for him. And meanwhile, his faithful wife’s fate remains unknown. As for the man aiming to become a samurai, he achieves his dream by sneakily killing another samurai and stealing the head of a general. His downfall from his high horse comes when he finds his wife serving as a geisha, tarnished after being raped by enemy soldiers.

The final fantastical twist is what makes “Ugetsu” so famous and acclaimed. Mizoguchi handles the moment, as he does the rest of the film, in such a dreamlike trance. The film’s pacing is so delicate, moving to the score’s minimally percussive beat and ancient Japanese wailing.

And in its parable morality, “Ugetsu” remains a timeless fantasy.

Rapid Response: Fanny and Alexander

One of the most spiritual and profound directors in all of film is Swedish director Ingmar Bergman. “Fanny and Alexander” was intended to be his last film, and it is his most autobiographical and complex. At 3:08, a theatrically trimmed version from the original 5+ hours, “Fanny and Alexander” is deep, engaging and life encompassing in the many themes it evokes.

Really, it has enough themes for five movies. Yet every character is brilliantly complex and challenged. Even the varying set pieces and ideas Bergman considers never feel thin. They are rich tapestries to this broader story, at times being peaceful and elegiac and at others being cold and ghastly.

“Fanny and Alexander’s” quasi ghost story succeeds so fully because Bergman’s chilling, uncertain tone persists throughout the film. Each scene is directed with such grace and haunting beauty. This is a film that seduces and entrances you. Continue reading “Rapid Response: Fanny and Alexander”

Rapid Response: The Earrings of Madame de…

The opening shot of “The Earrings of Madame de…” is of the earrings and not the eponymous character. In fact the first glimpse we get of the nameless Countess played by Danielle Darrieux is her reflection in her mirror. Like all the clothes and luxurious jewelry she lingers over, she is an object. She has no name, and yet the two men in her life have a desperate attachment to her. She is one of their belongings, and Max Ophuls film is about the identity and choices we are allowed when we become so attached to others, and how those same people have the power to mold and manipulate us to make us their own.

“The Earrings of Madame de…” is a curiously simple film about identity and our choices. Today a film considering these themes would be an elaborate sci-fi, but this one works just as well with a love-triangle plot. A woman sells a pair of earrings given to her as a wedding present by her husband, and the earrings eventually end up in the hands of a baron trying to court her. This results in a tapestry of lies that carefully and stylishly unravels. Continue reading “Rapid Response: The Earrings of Madame de…”

The Night of the Hunter (1955)

Charles Laughton’s one and only film “The Night of the Hunter” is an all time classic.

One of the greatest of all American directors only made one film in his career. Charles Laughton made “The Night of the Hunter” in 1955 after a long and reputable career as an actor, only to see his film fail financially and be critically misunderstood. Laughton died seven years later, but today his film is seen as a true cinematic achievement.

It’s story is not completely unique, but it is a fine example of a film that bends genres, that escapes confines of time and reality without distancing itself from something relatable and that endures in its quality and impact.

Robert Mitchum plays the film’s iconic villain, the “preacher” Harry Powell. Powell claims to be a man of God, walking around with the words “love” and “hate” tattooed on his fingers to illustrate the Lord’s way of governing mankind. When he meets Ben Harper (Peter Graves) in prison and learns that Ben hid $10,000 somewhere on his property, he believes it to be a message from God.

But the secret location of the money is hidden with Ben’s two children, John and Pearl. They’ve pledged an oath of loyalty to their now executed father to protect one another and never reveal the location of the money to anyone. When Powell tracks down the family and marries their widowed mother Willa (Shelley Winters), “The Night of the Hunter” becomes a suspenseful tale of faith and trust.

It’s a brilliantly conceived thriller with a minimal concept. One party is loved and trusted by everyone else, and the other is uncertain with no one who will listen or believe. This was hardly a new concept and far from the last of its kind. But “The Night of the Hunter” models Roger Ebert’s adage that a film is not what it is about but how it is about it. Continue reading “The Night of the Hunter (1955)”

The Fighter

David O. Russell takes the boxing movie and makes it into a rich family dramedy.

I wasn’t looking at Mark Wahlberg when he was training in the boxing ring. I wasn’t watching his gloves either, moving swiftly and smoothly from blow to blow. I was watching Christian Bale playing Wahlberg’s coked out brother as he’s training in the ring along with him. In “The Fighter,” he’s not just bobbing and weaving to block the punches.

Bale portrays Dicky Eklund, the brother of Wahlberg’s Micky Ward. Ward is the fighter, training to win a title, looking for romance and struggling with his own sense of self. Dicky already had his chance. 14 years ago, he knocked down Sugar Ray Leonard and became the pride of Lowell, Massachusetts. Now it’s 1993, and he’s addicted to crack, but still he’s the life of the party. Continue reading “The Fighter”

Rapid Response: The Passion of Joan of Arc

Carl Theodore Dreyer’s groundbreaking silent film still feels daring and provocative today.

The history of “The Passion of Joan of Arc” is all there on the screen. To watch it is to see a film that looks unlike any silent film ever made, and to hear its back story is to realize that it is an anomaly of all cinema.

Carl Theodore Dreyer, a Danish director working in France, made a stripped down version of a famous French story, cast an actress (Maria Falconetti) that had never and would never make a movie again, and he defied spacial rules that had governed cinema for years and would continue to for decades after.

With that, “The Passion of Joan of Arc” is a series of shocking images without even musical accompaniment that was certainly ahead of its time and still bold and disturbing today. Continue reading “Rapid Response: The Passion of Joan of Arc”

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part II

“Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part II” is a film of reunion, redemption and reconciliation. The fans that have grown up with the characters of what is now the largest franchise in movie history have not come for the end, but have come to say goodbye.

In a homecoming roll call of old friends and enemies, “Harry Potter” comes to a close in this eighth and final sequel. Yes, this is the conclusion to a story already split in two, but this is more of an opportunity for everyone to reflect on the life that started nearly 10 years ago today, and how we now realize how the magic will live on.

It’s for the legendary Maggie Smith to put on one last fiery show. It’s for Robbie Coltrane to charm us one last time, the big lug. It’s for Michael Gambon to take a long-awaited final bow. It’s for Helena Bonham Carter to literally explode on screen. It’s for Ralph Fiennes and Alan Rickman to finally revel in their own villainy.

And it’s for Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint and Emma Watson to show they’ve at last grown up.

The kids proved to be the best of casting choices a decade ago, and here they show maturity, not teen angst, as the fate of the wizarding world rests upon their shoulders. Continue reading “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part II”