Movie Review

(In theaters, February 2006) It’s a musical with naked ladies: what else can I say? Judi Dench has a fine turn as a matriarch with a flair for controversy, presenting a nude musical revue in WW2 London. (Nervous viewers can relax: she does not disrobe in this film.) It’s a slight comedy that would go well with Calendar Girls in tone and subject matter, which is to say so innocuously naughty that it could very well pass for family entertainment. The nudity certainly isn’t anything to be concerned about, given how unremarkable it quickly becomes. Otherwise, the script is fine (despite an ill-advised tragic subplot and a last-minute speech that overlays higher motivation over a crass business decision) and the film is nicely wrapped up. A minor film, but a good show.

(In theaters, February 2006) Few people expected Woody Allen to tackle a crime/romance thriller as his next project, but he did so, and Match Point is the honourable result of the experiment. Far from the kind of whiny self-referential comedies that have become a staple of Allen’s oeuvre for the past decade, Match Point tackles luck and rotten characters underneath sociable exteriors. The romance gradually cedes way to drama, and then to suspense as Chekhov’s rule comes into play. It’s not bad at all, especially given the lack of such drama on big screens these days. Acting credentials are all good, as would befit a character study. The directing could use some tightening-up, but there are a few good suspense sequences, and some awfully confident camera shots throughout. Devotees of funnyman Allen won’t be surprised to note the wry humour running through the entire film, or the superbly ironic final twist. Despite a few lengths, this isn’t a bad time at the movies at all.

(In theaters, February 2006) On paper, this has all of the characteristics of a quirky black comedy: An ordinary man accidentally meeting a neurotic assassin, joining forces in order to solve each other’s problem. It’s not difficult to imagine the kind of riotous material that could come out of this premise. Alas, The Matador falls flat more quickly that you can imagine, neither stretching nor embracing the limits of its own tunnel vision. While Pierce Brosnan turns in a fabulous lead performance as an amoral assassin on the precipice of self-destruction, his character transcends the film around it, making the rest look hollow and faded. Hope Davis makes the most out of a thin character, but she and Greg Kinnear are pretty much the average couple they’re supposed to portray, and that’s part of the problem: For all the uncouth world-weariness of Brosnan’s anti-hero, The Matador grinds to a halt whenever Kinnear is involved. More sarcasm, more self-awareness might have helped, but instead we’re stuck in low-budget, low-imagination limbo. The film chuckles over its last bit of edginess, not realizing that it had created higher expectations for itself.

(On DVD, February 2006) I’m sure that some people, somewhere, like this film. They call it “a touching portrait of family values”, “a small-scale American tragedy”, “a heartfelt meeting between city and country” or even “a complex drama in shades of complexity”. Fine. They had a good time; I can only envy them, because as far as I’m concerned Junebug vaults at the top of the pile of the dullest movie experiences of the year. More boring than even Aeon Flux, if that’s possible. Granted, I really don’t go for small-scale family drama films: It took the film’s lone Oscar nomination to convince me to seek it out. Still, you would at least expect a plot of some sort, or even a way to stay awake. Instead, the film drips heavily like molasses, featuring scene after scene of uncomfortable bonding experiences and small-scale miseries. No wonder one character spends the entire movie sleeping on the couch: it doesn’t take much time for us to identify with him. By the time Something Horrible happens, we’re way past caring. It ends without a conclusion, with people driving away from the havoc behind them, saying something like “I’m glad this is over.” Seconded.

(On DVD, February 2006) Don’t be surprised to see the MTV film logo at the beginning of the film, seeing how it’s all about the power of music in getting someone out of the ghetto. It’s a bit more complicated than that, of course, but not by much. The protagonist may be a middle-aged pimp seeking a last chance at past dreams (in an exceptional performance by Terrence Howard) and the ending may be a touch unconventional, but the underdog story remains intact. What’s different are the details, from the characters’ squalid lives to the way they put together their shot at glory. A long but enjoyable sequence depicts the making of a demo tape while later, talent has to be complemented by a bit of hustling in order to triumph. MTV movie indeed. The film itself isn’t particularly pleasant (it’s hard to be a pimp without some misanthropy) and some sequence run for too long, but the strength of Howard’s performance and some of the background details make it all worthwhile.

(In theaters, February 2006) Frankly, I’m still not too sure what to make of this film. An uneasy hybrid between drama and thriller, with a sprinkling of social issues that never completely melts into the main plot-line, Freedomland attains a remarkable middle ground between quality and boredom. Some parts are so familiar that they play on auto-pilot: Samuel L. Jackson turns in another effortless performance as a intense policeman, and Julianne Moore delivers yet another performance as a bad mother who can’t find her child. The dialogues are similarly cut from other films of the same genre, while the direction, especially when it works, has no distinguishing characteristics. But it doesn’t always work, and Freedomland ofter veers into self-serving stylistic moments that seem consciously tacked-on. It doesn’t help that Julianne Moore’s character immediately evokes feelings of loathing: that the film then spends its duration proving us right is no recipe for surprising twists. But worse is the feeling that some weighty issues about racial tensions, middle-aged alienation and criminal tendencies are raised in service of an insubstantial story. Freedomland brings to mind weighter fare such as Mystic River or L.A. Confidential is how it does not manage to successfully integrate wider social issues in a thriller template. Indeed, Freedomland feels somewhere between drama and mystery, not as a successful hybrid, but as a failed attempt that couldn’t commit to either one of those storytelling poles. Even Crash, as wildly preposterous as it was, ended up being a far more satisfying film.

(In theaters, February 2006) Action grandpa Harrison Ford is back throwing punches in this limp thriller, at a time where even his stunts doubles are more likely to worry about broken pelvises than landing a good hit. Yet another suspense film in which a man must save his family from ineffectual criminals, Firewall gamely tries to get on with today’s technology, but only succeeds in highlighting how silly it is. The technical details are wrong (Hurrah for continental wi-fi coverage!), but even nit-picking IT jargon pales in comparison to the script’s other problems. Paul Bettany’s villain is weak enough to be stopped by a good spanking, but Ford himself doesn’t look so dynamic at an age where he should be contemplating retirement-home hobbies. (We’ll let the whole marrying-a-woman-twenty-years-younger shtick slide on the basis that Hollywood producers are always fond of wish-fulfilment fantasies, and that Ford himself seems to be having no problem dating younger women.) Actually, Ford isn’t half bad as either a security expert or an older family man, but it’s when he starts playing the action hero that Firewall becomes very amusing: a better script would have recognized the problem and played the character to his strengths. But that’s a tall order for a script that simply goes through the motions of a thriller without much conviction, peppering the dialogue with technical terms it doesn’t understand and making only the most cursory efforts at drawing credible characters. Some twists happen too late for us to care, which is to say that Firewall can’t hold anyone’s interest for more than a few minutes. It may do if all you’re looking for is a very conventional thriller… but otherwise, forget about it.

(On DVD, February 2006) Seen from the perspective of a French-Canadian, life in Los Angeles often takes on an alien quality that makes it hard to distinguish reality from exaggeration, especially when it’s seen from the distorted prism of cinema. Small surprise, then, if this tale of racism in modern L.A. often feels too unbelievable to be entirely credible. I don’t know the state of race dynamics in today’s southern California, but Crash paints a damning portrait that leaves few ideals standing once it’s done smashing all its characters to pieces. Unfortunately, the way it does so smacks of arbitrary plotting and authorial intent: It’s as if characters, in-between scenes, traded an instruction card saying “You’re now going to do something incredibly stupid.” The result is a film that may aspire to much, but ends up playing the same note over and over again, resulting in a melodrama that can’t be taken too seriously. (Indeed, by the end of the film, I was referring to character in term of their standing on the “Wish They’d Be Hit By a Bus” scale.) What’s unfortunate is that there is some very good material in here, from the ambiguous characters to the chaotic nature of their interaction to the film’s deep acting talent to the cinematography. A number of scenes, as unlikely as they are, still resonate well after the end of the credits. But that’s not nearly enough. The film may self-consciously rely on the vagaries of chance and coincidence, but it only ends up making the experience frustrating and, yes, ridiculous. There aren’t any easy answers here, but there are a lot of silly questions.

(On DVD, February 2006) I’ve seen this film before, except that it featured a horse and was called Seabiscuit. I know, I know, but what can one say about two depression-era sports drama released two years apart, especially when they’re both meant to represent an elusive “triumph of the American spirit?” As you may guess from the premise (down-on-his-luck boxer gets a second chance), this is old-fashioned Hollywood movie-making in more ways than one: sweeping period recreation coupled with solidly conventional moral values. Thankfully, Ron Howard’s workmanlike direction is efficient, and once you get past the inevitable “ooh, we’re poor” moments to get into the sport sequences, Cinderella Man becomes surprisingly effective. Russel Crowe does fine in the title role, and “Da Vinci” Nicholas Campbell has a crunchy supporting role as a sport journalist. Perhaps too conventional to be worth more than a good look, this is nonetheless a professional work of mainstream cinema. Yes, it’s still Seabiscuit in a ring. But don’t let that dissuade you from this film if ever you find yourself in the mood for something so classic it could have been made at any moment since the seventies.

(In theaters, February 2006) Oh yes, baby: Top Gun, French Mirage style! As a shameless attempt to replicate the boffo success of Hollywood blockbusters, Les chevaliers du ciel is more successful than most: Fast planes, competent protagonists, attractive female characters and superb cinematography… what could be better? Sure, the script is filled with howlers (the rationale behind the cannonball run, for instance, is ludicrous), but the rest of the film holds up so well and we almost know when the screenwriters are playing with us. While the ending is disappointing and some details don’t make much sense (of course, the American pilot paid her way through school by stripping; how kind of her to have kept up in shape), they don’t hold a candle to the fabulous aerial scenes. This is where the film shines, with eye-popping footage of fighter jets doing what they do best. Reportedly filmed without digital trickery, this techno-thriller kicks Stealth in the teeth and makes a proud statement for the French Air Force. As a certified plane nerd, I geeked out several times during the plentiful aerial sequence, including a deeply effective moment during which the beauty of multi-million supersonic flight is explored. It’s a welcome change to see some European hardware on-screen. Les chevaliers du ciel may have been conceptualized as a French answer to Top Gun, but it ends up as a challenge to Hollywood; now let’s see the Americans top that!

(In theaters, January 2006) The disconnect between real-life and the movie-world is seldom as blatant as in the thriller genre, where reality seldom has anything to do with the feverish action-packed stories offered to us. Intelligence work, for instance, is more often a matter of statistical analysis than thrilling car chases, but how do you make desk work interesting? Sometimes, however, reality proves to be as exciting as fiction, and that’s the case here with this fictionalized account of one Israeli counter-terrorism operation following the 1972 Munich massacre. Director Steven Spielberg delivers a film with the look and feel of classic seventies thrillers, an uneasy mixture of the realistic and the luminous, taking place in a world recognizably our own. What’s more, Munich also borrows a little bit of seventies-era ambiguity in refusing to takes sides for or against the anti-terrorism assassinations. While Spielberg can’t escape a bit of over-the-top horror in depicting the initial terrorist assaults, the script also suggests that the quest for vengeance may be counterproductive. Good intentions, but they unfortunately lead straight to the film’s major flaws. While Munich stands on its own as a cautionary tale about the value of one’s personal and national morality, it overplays its hand during an overlong third act, using a hammer when a scalpel would have done just as well. It reaches a climax of sort during a wholly unnecessary sequence where lovemaking is interspersed with flashbacks to the Munich Massacre. Too much, too blunt –especially given how effective the film was in raising those very same issues in the previous two acts. Otherwise, there’s a lot to like in this film, from the acting (Craig Daniel even previews “the new James Bond”, and I’m reassured) to the often-unflinching violence. Truly a film that borrows well from a previous era, and may just set a good example for others.