OK, here is the list--not in the order of preference, but in the order in which I saw them. Overall, I saw about 50 movies this year, which isn't bad. But, of course, the list is highly selective for that reason. So I did my best, but I didn't just come up with ten to fill out the places--I had to make choices, leave a few candidates off (they are included at the end as Honorable Mentions). These, then, are really the ten best films I saw this year, in my humble opinion. Go ahead, tell me how wrong I am--please.
PENELOPE (104 min.)
A charming fractured fairy tale with a message for impressionable young adults but humor for their jaded parents. Christina Ricci is Penelope, an heiress born with the nose of a pig, the result of an ancient curse. Her search for love becomes a journey toward self-acceptance, with magical results. The humor is quirky enough to keep the sugar-coating off the obvious moral, and Ricci is wonderful. She is very ably supported by James McAvoy, Catherine O’Hara, and Reese Witherspoon (who also produced). Filmed in 2006, but not released until this year. Don’t ask me why.
IRON MAN (126 min.)
The superhero action film came of age in 2008 with three fine installments drawn from America’s comic book subculture: Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, and The Dark Knight (Batman). Two have made my list of the year’s best. First released was Iron Man, which has to be the first superhero movie with better dialogue and character development than action sequences. The latter are routine, although that iron suit is way cool. With his swinging, cheeky portrayal of Tony Stark/Iron Man, Robert Downey Jr.’s bizarre start-and-stop career may finally have gained the traction it needs to…well, take off. His on-screen chemistry with Gwyneth Paltrow as Stark’s long-suffering personal assistant/love interest Pepper Potts gives their scenes together real sparkle, and if their tart dialogue exchanges get you thinking of Cary Grant sparring slyly with Rosalind Russell or Irene Dunne in classic romantic comedies--they should.
THE RAPE OF EUROPA (117 min.)
This powerful documentary flew way under the radar. Inspired by the book of the same name by Lynn H. Nicholas, it documents the Nazis’ systematic looting of Europe’s art treasures during World War II. At this late date, you wouldn’t think any film could make the Nazis look worse, but Europa accomplishes just that. Not only were they power-mad mass murderers, they were also reckless thieves who tried to steal everything of value that stood in their path. Europa describes the epic scope of their burglary, the heroic efforts of the Allies to find and restore the stolen art, and the heartbreaking legal battles that continue over ownership claims by descendants of those long dead (many, Jews who died in concentration camps). This excellent film makes sadly clear that World War II is not yet over, and the Nazis’ legacy of cultural destruction is still with us today.
A FRIEND INDEED (90 min.)
As inspiring as a documentary can get, A Friend Indeed tells the amazing story of local legend Bill Sackter, a mentally challenged man improperly institutionalized for 44 years before being released. He was brought to Iowa City in the 1970’s by Barry Morrow, a friend who had become his legal guardian, and here he was given the job of running the coffee shop at the UI School of Social Work (now known as Wild Bill’s Coffee Shop). He made the most of it. Warm, friendly, funny, Bill reached out to people, befriended many, influenced more, won awards, saw his life turned into a TV movie starring Mickey Rooney, and received national recognition, all in a few short years (he died in 1983). This wonderful film by local filmmaker Lane Wyrick recounts Bill’s life in photos, footage, and interviews with Bill himself and with those who knew him best, and loved him much. It’s the best film about getting a second chance you’ll ever see. Not in distribution, it is being shown around the country at festivals and in special showings, after having made its debut this past summer in Hancher Auditorium one week before flooding ravaged the UI arts campus. The dvd is currently in preparation. You can read more about the film and its makers at http://www.billsackter.com/.
THE DARK KNIGHT (152 min.)
What remains to be said about this amazing film? The Dark Knight raises the bar for superhero action films so high, it’s hard to envision what could top it. Nothing like the late Heath Ledger’s Joker has appeared on the screen before. He’s Evil Unbound, Chaos Incarnate, the Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse. Christian Bale’s Batman/Bruce Wayne wrestles with moral choices and personal loss so deep that Batman finally attains the status of tragic hero previous films have claimed for him. And the film's vision of Gotham City in the grip of the Joker's crime wave presents a truly frightening image of a world turned irrational by terror. Sound familiar?
THE PERFECT CAPPUCCINO (89 min.)
This documentary is my personal favorite film of 2008, and I don’t even drink cappuccino. But filmmaker Amy Ferraris does--lots of it--and she documents her devotion to the frothy Italian drink by searching the highways and byways of America to find the best that’s available. Oh, you can get it at your local Starbucks, you say? Ferraris has a thing or two to say about Starbucks, neither of them good. Her film charmingly combines personal essay and social commentary as she investigates America’s coffee habit and critiques Starbucks’s business ethics and the quality of the coffee it serves under the guise of espresso and its variants. Then she travels to Italy to show us how real espresso and cappuccino are made. Narrated amusingly by Ferraris herself, her movie is funny, thought-provoking, critical but never angry, and genuinely unique. Unfortunately, it also is available only at festivals and special screenings, until its dvd release early next year (February or March). You can read about it at www.cappuccinomovie.com/index.php, and in my full review elsewhere on this blog.
TRAITOR (114 min.)
Another film that passed by virtually unnoticed, Traitor is both an absorbing thriller and an insightful character study. Don Cheadle is superb as a federal agent who goes deep undercover to infiltrate an Islamic terrorist group and take it down from inside. The problem is he’s a devout Muslim himself and is acting out of conscience. When he begins to question the motives of those he’s serving, he truly becomes a man without a country. Cheadle is one of America’s finest actors, and his subtle performance gives life to his character’s inner torment, even as he masks it in outward stoicism. Guy Pearce offers strong support as the FBI agent relentlessly tracking him down. In addition to being a taut thriller, Traitor powerfully addresses the troubling moral challenges of America’s “war on terror,” challenges much less straightforward than some of our leaders would have us believe.
LET THE RIGHT ONE IN (114 min.)
A truly odd but fascinating take on the vampire film, this Swedish import takes its subject matter very seriously and deliberately avoids conventional chills or horror. While there is some blood, the shocks it delivers are mostly psychological. Oskar, a lonely 12-year-old boy habitually picked on by bullies at school, is befriended by a mysterious girl named Eli who lives in his apartment building but whom he sees only at night. The friendship that develops between them leads to the first stirrings of love, and eventually to a bond that is stronger than at least one of them is prepared for. A poignant coming-of-age tale, Let the Right One In captures the loneliness and pain of early adolescence with great sensitivity. It also demonstrates that often the most effective genre films are those that incorporate subject matter and themes typically outside their genres. Slow-moving and detached in tone, the film nevertheless gets under your skin and then concludes with an ingenious plot twist that I found more disturbing than the usual vampire gore. I’m still shuddering at the thought of it.
APPALOOSA (114 min.)
I love westerns, and when one this good rides into town, it’s cause for me to start shooting up the local saloon. The terrific thing about Appaloosa is the way it both honors the rules of the genre and bends them in creative ways (see my full review at http://www.littlevillagemag.com/). Ed Harris--who directs as well as stars--and Viggo Mortensen are itinerant lawmen hired to protect a New Mexico town from a predatory rancher. Their professionalism and long partnership prepare them for this kind of challenge; what they aren’t prepared for is their encounter with a provocative woman (Renee Zellweger) who keeps everyone guessing about her motives. The three leads are all superb--especially Zellweger, who takes possession of the film as commandingly as her character does the man’s world in it. Harris reveals a keen ear for dialogue (he co-wrote the script, too) and a sharp eye for the scenery and iconic imagery that make the western one of the visually richest of all genres. Appaloosa is the best American western since Unforgiven.
QUANTUM OF SOLACE (106 min.)
I will just say this straight out--I liked this film better than Casino Royale, and I liked that film a lot. Daniel Craig and the new-look Bond world of these two movies have me really excited about the franchise again. What Quantum brings to the Bond canon--besides the dynamic Craig appearing even more comfortable in his role than the first time--is a leaner, stripped-down approach to the famous secret agent’s adventures. Casino Royale felt overstuffed at times. Quantum begins in the middle of a car chase, and the action lets up hardly at all for the next 106 minutes. It’s the most exciting, most purely entertaining Bond outing since Tomorrow Is Forever (Pierce Brosnan’s best, which had a similarly relentless approach to the action). But it somehow finds time to explore Bond’s character, deepen his relationship with M, and introduce an unconventional, tragic heroine (Olga Kurylenko), whose bond with Bond is based on mutual respect rather than sex (although, of course, the attraction between them is strong). Mathieu Amalric is the creepiest Bond villain ever, a truly unnerving man, and the plot about exploiting ecological disaster for power is both timely and credible. Whatever your opinion of James Bond movies, this is good stuff. Check it out--you will at least be shaken, if not stirred.
Honorable Mention: Bottle Shock, Pride and Glory, The Incredible Hulk, Changeling, Milk
Sunday, December 21, 2008
Friday, December 19, 2008
Best Films of 2008
Be sure to check out my picks for Best Films of 2008, coming soon. I'm working on the list right now, checking out which movies were naughty or nice this past year. It will be posted before Christmas. I know you can't wait! But you'll have to--for a few more days.
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
Australia
This film is still in the theaters; I just saw it a couple of weeks ago. It's a throwback to old adventure-and-romance movies of 1930's and 1940's Hollywood. Not a great film, but a fun one to see at the theater. And, because it has a kind of epic sweep to it, it really deserves to be seen on the big screen. I still prefer seeing films in theaters anyway, because they were made for that kind of viewing environment, and lose something in the home, no matter how good your dvd or blue ray set-up is. I definitely have mixed feelings about the director, Baz Luhrman. I hated Romeo + Juliet, and while I admired many aspects of Moulin Rouge, I found it difficult to watch. Too excessive, which I realize was part of the point. I prefer the more relaxed style of Australia, although I admit it is not the artistic success that Moulin Rouge was. But it has lots of charm, and it covers an important aspect of Australian history that Americans probably know nothing about, the theft of the "Lost Generations." So it has a serious side, too, which is well combined with the lighter parts. (A slightly different version of this review is posted at http://www.littlevillagemag.com/).
AUSTRALIA
One of the great pleasures of the movies is seeing what a purposeful filmmaker can do with an old genre or story by attempting to remake it in her or his own image. Such was the case with Baz Luhrman’s last film, 2001’s Moulin Rouge, his hyperkinetic reinvention of the movie musical. Now, in Australia, he takes on the historical film with similarly ambitious and innovative designs, though somewhat less successful results.
Despite a title that suggests a film as sprawling as an entire continent, Australia actually employs a fairly intimate story, which it attempts to stretch across a wide canvas. Focusing on the short span of 1939-1942, Luhrman showcases his homeland in a time of turmoil, on the brink of World War II. English noblewoman Lady Sarah Ashley (Nicole Kidman) journeys Down Under to join her husband, who is managing a remote cattle station while his finances at home suffer. Determined to sell the station to save the family fortune, she arrives to find her husband recently murdered, perhaps by an Aborigine mystic named King George (David Gulpilil). With the help of a handful of servants and a charismatic Aussie roughneck known simply as Drover (Hugh Jackman), Lady Ashley attempts to save the station by moving her 1500 head of cattle overland to the port of Darwin, where the army is buying beef to feed the troops gathering for war. But opposing her is the appropriately named King Carney (Bryan Brown), a larger-than-life cattle baron in an 11-gallon hat who is trying to corner the market in beef and make a killing. Aiding him in his war profiteering is the duplicitous Neil Fletcher (David Wenham), a former employee of Lord Ashley recently dismissed by his new mistress for his brazen dishonesty.
All the classic elements of a good old-fashioned yarn are in place here, and for much of the film’s first half, the results are engaging enough to deliver just that: an Australian western cross-bred with romantic-comedy adventure ( Red River meets The African Queen). But as the proper English lady melts into the arms of the free-spirit adventurer, the romance turns poignant and Out of Africa comes calling, never to quite go away. Australia has the virtue of not trying to gloss over its plot clichés, stereotyped characters, or obvious borrowings from other films—rather, it embraces them and has fun with them en route to a serious change in tone at midpoint. The image of Australia as untamed and rowdy is played up for all it’s worth in the opening scenes, and the clever meeting between Lady Ashley and Drover occurs during a bar fight that could have been staged by John Ford. But there are more serious intentions underlying the roughhouse, and the film’s second half becomes a grim historical drama centered around the horrific destruction of Darwin by the Japanese a few months after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. The attack on Darwin is well staged, if a bit scant on detail, but the film gets bogged down in the standard ploy of positioning lovers against a backdrop of impending doom, which constantly threatens to tear them apart. And so the enjoyable, old-fashioned movie romanticism of part I gives way to the overwrought, will-they-or-won’t-they-survive melodrama of part II.
What rescues Australia from its derivative nature and gives it a more unique identity is the space it creates for Aboriginal culture and magic. The two halves of the film are ingeniously organized around the point-of-view of Australia’s Aborigine population, represented by King George and his grandson, Nullah, a ten-year-old of mixed race under Lady Ashley‘s protection. Their viewpoints are so closely associated with Australia’s wild landscape from the outset that it’s as if the land itself—pictured in stunning views of lush vegetation, sunset-painted rock formations, and shimmering spans of desert—is watching the white settlers’ futile attempts to tame an environment whose spiritual dimension lies, untamable, beyond their comprehension. In an almost supernatural way, King George observes nearly everything that happens from his own special—and sometimes, it seems, invisible—vantage point. Complementing his grandfather’s vision, Nullah provides the movie’s voice. His sometimes song-like narration offers not only wry commentary on the whites he lives with but introduces a second historical theme, the tragic history of the “Lost Generations,” mixed-race children stolen from their families and trained to be servants in European households. The film’s outward events of adventure, romance, and war are molded around the core of this previously hidden story, and Lady Ashley’s ascent to true heroine status comes with her brave defiance of the racist practice.
The two principals, Kidman and Jackman, are an easy-on-the-eye couple, to say the least, and they demonstrate authentic screen chemistry to match. There’s no reason for their characters to meet except to fall in love, and they oblige with conviction. Kidman plays a feisty, liberated woman with the proper panache, and some good comic timing, her brittle, overbearing manner convincingly softened first by grief, then by determination, and finally by love. As she commits to the land that takes her in—it’s Australia we’re all meant to fall for, of course—she commits even more deeply to the orphaned Nullah, whose sweetness, vulnerability, and wisdom are winningly captured by newcomer Brandon Walters in the most emotionally genuine performance of the film. His affecting scenes with Kidman help the actress find the tenderness she needs to transform Lady Ashley into a person of real depth.
The men, on the other hand, offer an amusing clinic on screen machismo, befitting the brawny land they symbolize. Jackman is as comfortable in his role as he is in his skin, which is pretty comfortable, judging by the amount of it on view. He’s got the swagger of his lusty part down pat, but a tragic back story provides that part with some welcome shading, and Jackman is comfortable with that as well. As the senior villain, Brown is full of almost cartoonish bluster, and his screen time is thankfully limited. It’s Wenham that fascinates as the brooding, soft-spoken Fletcher, nemesis of Lady Ashley, a venomous presence who slithers through scenes, never talking directly to, or looking at, those he’s attempting, very effectively, to intimidate.
But the real star of the film is the sumptuous visual style: the bold colors, elegant compositions, and breathtaking natural scenery enhanced by computer graphics that Luhrman and cinematographer Mandy Walker combine to impart a dream-like quality to the imagery, a stylized look that well serves a movie blending romance, history, and native magic. There’s more than a touch of fantasy in all this, and it’s therefore wholly fitting that the Hollywood film most referenced in Australia is The Wizard of Oz, with its parallel tale of a woman journeying to a faraway land and encountering an odd assortment of heroes, villains, and a wizard of sorts.
In Australia, Luhrman has certainly tried to do for the historical film what he did for the musical, recreating it in his fervid imagination. His film is an old-fashioned story told in a new-fashioned way, but despite its genuine flights of inspiration, it’s ultimately too weighed down by its ambitions to fully realize them all. Bold and entertaining, Australia is definitely worth a visit, but to say it will be a rather odd trip at times is something of a down-understatement.
AUSTRALIA
One of the great pleasures of the movies is seeing what a purposeful filmmaker can do with an old genre or story by attempting to remake it in her or his own image. Such was the case with Baz Luhrman’s last film, 2001’s Moulin Rouge, his hyperkinetic reinvention of the movie musical. Now, in Australia, he takes on the historical film with similarly ambitious and innovative designs, though somewhat less successful results.
Despite a title that suggests a film as sprawling as an entire continent, Australia actually employs a fairly intimate story, which it attempts to stretch across a wide canvas. Focusing on the short span of 1939-1942, Luhrman showcases his homeland in a time of turmoil, on the brink of World War II. English noblewoman Lady Sarah Ashley (Nicole Kidman) journeys Down Under to join her husband, who is managing a remote cattle station while his finances at home suffer. Determined to sell the station to save the family fortune, she arrives to find her husband recently murdered, perhaps by an Aborigine mystic named King George (David Gulpilil). With the help of a handful of servants and a charismatic Aussie roughneck known simply as Drover (Hugh Jackman), Lady Ashley attempts to save the station by moving her 1500 head of cattle overland to the port of Darwin, where the army is buying beef to feed the troops gathering for war. But opposing her is the appropriately named King Carney (Bryan Brown), a larger-than-life cattle baron in an 11-gallon hat who is trying to corner the market in beef and make a killing. Aiding him in his war profiteering is the duplicitous Neil Fletcher (David Wenham), a former employee of Lord Ashley recently dismissed by his new mistress for his brazen dishonesty.
All the classic elements of a good old-fashioned yarn are in place here, and for much of the film’s first half, the results are engaging enough to deliver just that: an Australian western cross-bred with romantic-comedy adventure ( Red River meets The African Queen). But as the proper English lady melts into the arms of the free-spirit adventurer, the romance turns poignant and Out of Africa comes calling, never to quite go away. Australia has the virtue of not trying to gloss over its plot clichés, stereotyped characters, or obvious borrowings from other films—rather, it embraces them and has fun with them en route to a serious change in tone at midpoint. The image of Australia as untamed and rowdy is played up for all it’s worth in the opening scenes, and the clever meeting between Lady Ashley and Drover occurs during a bar fight that could have been staged by John Ford. But there are more serious intentions underlying the roughhouse, and the film’s second half becomes a grim historical drama centered around the horrific destruction of Darwin by the Japanese a few months after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. The attack on Darwin is well staged, if a bit scant on detail, but the film gets bogged down in the standard ploy of positioning lovers against a backdrop of impending doom, which constantly threatens to tear them apart. And so the enjoyable, old-fashioned movie romanticism of part I gives way to the overwrought, will-they-or-won’t-they-survive melodrama of part II.
What rescues Australia from its derivative nature and gives it a more unique identity is the space it creates for Aboriginal culture and magic. The two halves of the film are ingeniously organized around the point-of-view of Australia’s Aborigine population, represented by King George and his grandson, Nullah, a ten-year-old of mixed race under Lady Ashley‘s protection. Their viewpoints are so closely associated with Australia’s wild landscape from the outset that it’s as if the land itself—pictured in stunning views of lush vegetation, sunset-painted rock formations, and shimmering spans of desert—is watching the white settlers’ futile attempts to tame an environment whose spiritual dimension lies, untamable, beyond their comprehension. In an almost supernatural way, King George observes nearly everything that happens from his own special—and sometimes, it seems, invisible—vantage point. Complementing his grandfather’s vision, Nullah provides the movie’s voice. His sometimes song-like narration offers not only wry commentary on the whites he lives with but introduces a second historical theme, the tragic history of the “Lost Generations,” mixed-race children stolen from their families and trained to be servants in European households. The film’s outward events of adventure, romance, and war are molded around the core of this previously hidden story, and Lady Ashley’s ascent to true heroine status comes with her brave defiance of the racist practice.
The two principals, Kidman and Jackman, are an easy-on-the-eye couple, to say the least, and they demonstrate authentic screen chemistry to match. There’s no reason for their characters to meet except to fall in love, and they oblige with conviction. Kidman plays a feisty, liberated woman with the proper panache, and some good comic timing, her brittle, overbearing manner convincingly softened first by grief, then by determination, and finally by love. As she commits to the land that takes her in—it’s Australia we’re all meant to fall for, of course—she commits even more deeply to the orphaned Nullah, whose sweetness, vulnerability, and wisdom are winningly captured by newcomer Brandon Walters in the most emotionally genuine performance of the film. His affecting scenes with Kidman help the actress find the tenderness she needs to transform Lady Ashley into a person of real depth.
The men, on the other hand, offer an amusing clinic on screen machismo, befitting the brawny land they symbolize. Jackman is as comfortable in his role as he is in his skin, which is pretty comfortable, judging by the amount of it on view. He’s got the swagger of his lusty part down pat, but a tragic back story provides that part with some welcome shading, and Jackman is comfortable with that as well. As the senior villain, Brown is full of almost cartoonish bluster, and his screen time is thankfully limited. It’s Wenham that fascinates as the brooding, soft-spoken Fletcher, nemesis of Lady Ashley, a venomous presence who slithers through scenes, never talking directly to, or looking at, those he’s attempting, very effectively, to intimidate.
But the real star of the film is the sumptuous visual style: the bold colors, elegant compositions, and breathtaking natural scenery enhanced by computer graphics that Luhrman and cinematographer Mandy Walker combine to impart a dream-like quality to the imagery, a stylized look that well serves a movie blending romance, history, and native magic. There’s more than a touch of fantasy in all this, and it’s therefore wholly fitting that the Hollywood film most referenced in Australia is The Wizard of Oz, with its parallel tale of a woman journeying to a faraway land and encountering an odd assortment of heroes, villains, and a wizard of sorts.
In Australia, Luhrman has certainly tried to do for the historical film what he did for the musical, recreating it in his fervid imagination. His film is an old-fashioned story told in a new-fashioned way, but despite its genuine flights of inspiration, it’s ultimately too weighed down by its ambitions to fully realize them all. Bold and entertaining, Australia is definitely worth a visit, but to say it will be a rather odd trip at times is something of a down-understatement.
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
Pride and Glory
Another surprise from the summer. When I first saw the previews, I thought, "Another cop movie, ho hum." But there was something about it that looked interesting in spite of that, and the cast was intriguing, so I took a chance. I'm really glad I did. This film is violent, intense, and difficult to understand at times (a lot of the dialogue is spoken really fast, with various accents, and in the midst of other conversations and surrounding noise), so you have to pay attention, but it is really worth the effort. Amazingly, it has something new to say about police corruption and its effect on the community. It didn't seem to do much business at the box office, but that's probably because it was too dark for summer, didn't have a big star, and none of the characters wore a cool costume.
PRIDE AND GLORY
The most interesting contemporary police dramas seem to be about corruption on the force, and I would guess that’s not just because breaking the law has always been more interesting to filmmakers than upholding it (it has to storytellers in general), but because of the impact police criminality has had on much of the social unrest in our recent history. Pride and Glory, the grim new cop film co-written and directed by Gavin O’Connor, places itself in this context with no qualms about covering familiar ground—its attack on the subject is direct, unrelenting, and scored with raw, violent images. It is frequently not a comfortable film to watch.
The movie is populated by characters the audience should be used to seeing by now, from the close-knit multi-generational Irish cop family to the wiseguy-like crew of crooked police officers to the chaotically tattooed inner city drug dealers. And the story is not brand new either: an investigation into the killing of four policemen during a drug bust peels away layers of police complicity and deception, pitting officers against each other, and of course brother against brother. Edward Norton takes the lead as Ray Tierney, a once-promising member of New York’s finest scarred literally and figuratively by his past indiscretions, who is given a chance at redemption by leading the investigation into the multiple shootings. What he uncovers is a disturbing trail of crimes and cover-ups that leads back to his brother-in-law, Jimmy Egan (Colin Farrell) and Jimmy’s supervisor, Ray’s older brother Francis (Noah Emmerich). Once he begins to tumble to his family’s dark secrets, Ray runs up against his father, Francis Sr. (Jon Voigt), who tries to contain the damage by pressuring Ray into keeping his findings quiet until he can deal with the two men on his own. Against his better judgment, and at great personal sacrifice, he does, until events, spiraling out of control, force him to a decision he’s too long evaded.
What the plot lacks in originality, writer-director O’Connor makes up for with sincerity and street smarts. The film has both a gritty, unkempt look and an urban nightmare quality that fuses police procedural with psychodrama in a powerful format. Opening at nighttime on an inter-departmental football game that looks like a scrimmage in a war zone, Pride plunges the unprepared viewer directly into the action with an intensity that rarely lets up. In scene after scene, hard-charging hand-held camera shots pull us into the frame, where we are forced to eavesdrop on furious conversations conducted at breakneck speed and with awe-inspiring profanity. Even the quiet, domestic scenes are directed with an edgy, noirish quality—the result of natural, often dim lighting and unconventional framing—that keeps our relationship with the characters uncertain, despite the intimacy of the settings.
Because Pride has no major twists or surprises, it is able to focus on the characters, creating tension as the plot coils tightly around each, subtly shifting their positions in relation to each other with every new development. Doing without the megawatt star power of other recent cop dramas (The Departed, Righteous Kill), Pride gives the members of its eclectic cast plenty of room to find their own rhythms within the narrative. Norton is solid if unspectacular as the spiritually wounded Ray. He’s the conscience of the film, and it’s his search for a way out of the moral dilemma he’s inherited that carries the film toward its unhappy resolution. Much better is Voigt, the clan’s tippling patriarch, who espouses his Old School Code--“We take care of our own”-- with the fervor of a man trying to resurrect a world he still passionately believes in, even while he dulls the knowledge that it’s caused only heartbreak with booze. Voigt has mostly been wasted in trivial parts for years, so it’s good to see him again in a role that matters, and even better to see him equal to it. Excellent support is offered by Noah Emmerich, who discovers a quieter register for the elder brother, Francis Jr., a good man caught in a situation he lacks the courage to change. In a moving and unusual subplot, Francis is shown taking care of his cancer-stricken wife, Abby--played with great tenderness by Jennifer Ehle—who manages, despite her own despair, to inspire her husband to at last recognize his greater responsibilities.
But it’s Colin Farrell that gives Pride its glory. Finally giving the performance he’s been promising for years, Farrell tears into Jimmy Egan like a man possessed. The cop-as-thug has become such a familiar figure in cinema lately that he’s practically an urban legend, perhaps most memorably embodied by Harvey Keitel in Bad Lieutenant (1992) and Denzel Washington in Training Day (2001). Farrell meets their challenges head on and creates a character who’s a destructive force of nature, terrorizing criminals, citizens, other cops, perhaps even himself, with equal fury. Both villainous and haunted, Farrell’s Egan is a frightening contradiction, half devoted family man and half demon. Late in the film, when he tells Ray, “I will never apologize for what I‘ve done,” it’s both confession and boast, the tragic declaration of an ego at war with itself, poised precariously between overweening pride and self-condemnation.
Pride and Glory takes its most provocative step in the last act, shifting from family tragedy/crime thriller to the broader perspective of social problem film. The renegade cops are abandoned to the consequences of abusing their public trust, and the final minutes horrifically portray the community’s retribution. The film ends as a cautionary tale about the long-term impact of this abuse on a society that has lost faith in the institutions that are supposed to protect it. There’s a political message in this, and police corruption suddenly is no longer just plot substance but metaphor as well. What Pride and Glory ultimately seems to be about is the culture of corruption that corrodes every level of society, and of course infects the soul of every sufferer, whether perpetrator or victim. As the Tierneys regroup for their attempt to reclaim the trust they had abandoned, the film fades out on a guardedly hopeful note. But it’s an inconclusive one, befitting a movie which documents so fiercely the many opportunities for betrayal.
PRIDE AND GLORY
The most interesting contemporary police dramas seem to be about corruption on the force, and I would guess that’s not just because breaking the law has always been more interesting to filmmakers than upholding it (it has to storytellers in general), but because of the impact police criminality has had on much of the social unrest in our recent history. Pride and Glory, the grim new cop film co-written and directed by Gavin O’Connor, places itself in this context with no qualms about covering familiar ground—its attack on the subject is direct, unrelenting, and scored with raw, violent images. It is frequently not a comfortable film to watch.
The movie is populated by characters the audience should be used to seeing by now, from the close-knit multi-generational Irish cop family to the wiseguy-like crew of crooked police officers to the chaotically tattooed inner city drug dealers. And the story is not brand new either: an investigation into the killing of four policemen during a drug bust peels away layers of police complicity and deception, pitting officers against each other, and of course brother against brother. Edward Norton takes the lead as Ray Tierney, a once-promising member of New York’s finest scarred literally and figuratively by his past indiscretions, who is given a chance at redemption by leading the investigation into the multiple shootings. What he uncovers is a disturbing trail of crimes and cover-ups that leads back to his brother-in-law, Jimmy Egan (Colin Farrell) and Jimmy’s supervisor, Ray’s older brother Francis (Noah Emmerich). Once he begins to tumble to his family’s dark secrets, Ray runs up against his father, Francis Sr. (Jon Voigt), who tries to contain the damage by pressuring Ray into keeping his findings quiet until he can deal with the two men on his own. Against his better judgment, and at great personal sacrifice, he does, until events, spiraling out of control, force him to a decision he’s too long evaded.
What the plot lacks in originality, writer-director O’Connor makes up for with sincerity and street smarts. The film has both a gritty, unkempt look and an urban nightmare quality that fuses police procedural with psychodrama in a powerful format. Opening at nighttime on an inter-departmental football game that looks like a scrimmage in a war zone, Pride plunges the unprepared viewer directly into the action with an intensity that rarely lets up. In scene after scene, hard-charging hand-held camera shots pull us into the frame, where we are forced to eavesdrop on furious conversations conducted at breakneck speed and with awe-inspiring profanity. Even the quiet, domestic scenes are directed with an edgy, noirish quality—the result of natural, often dim lighting and unconventional framing—that keeps our relationship with the characters uncertain, despite the intimacy of the settings.
Because Pride has no major twists or surprises, it is able to focus on the characters, creating tension as the plot coils tightly around each, subtly shifting their positions in relation to each other with every new development. Doing without the megawatt star power of other recent cop dramas (The Departed, Righteous Kill), Pride gives the members of its eclectic cast plenty of room to find their own rhythms within the narrative. Norton is solid if unspectacular as the spiritually wounded Ray. He’s the conscience of the film, and it’s his search for a way out of the moral dilemma he’s inherited that carries the film toward its unhappy resolution. Much better is Voigt, the clan’s tippling patriarch, who espouses his Old School Code--“We take care of our own”-- with the fervor of a man trying to resurrect a world he still passionately believes in, even while he dulls the knowledge that it’s caused only heartbreak with booze. Voigt has mostly been wasted in trivial parts for years, so it’s good to see him again in a role that matters, and even better to see him equal to it. Excellent support is offered by Noah Emmerich, who discovers a quieter register for the elder brother, Francis Jr., a good man caught in a situation he lacks the courage to change. In a moving and unusual subplot, Francis is shown taking care of his cancer-stricken wife, Abby--played with great tenderness by Jennifer Ehle—who manages, despite her own despair, to inspire her husband to at last recognize his greater responsibilities.
But it’s Colin Farrell that gives Pride its glory. Finally giving the performance he’s been promising for years, Farrell tears into Jimmy Egan like a man possessed. The cop-as-thug has become such a familiar figure in cinema lately that he’s practically an urban legend, perhaps most memorably embodied by Harvey Keitel in Bad Lieutenant (1992) and Denzel Washington in Training Day (2001). Farrell meets their challenges head on and creates a character who’s a destructive force of nature, terrorizing criminals, citizens, other cops, perhaps even himself, with equal fury. Both villainous and haunted, Farrell’s Egan is a frightening contradiction, half devoted family man and half demon. Late in the film, when he tells Ray, “I will never apologize for what I‘ve done,” it’s both confession and boast, the tragic declaration of an ego at war with itself, poised precariously between overweening pride and self-condemnation.
Pride and Glory takes its most provocative step in the last act, shifting from family tragedy/crime thriller to the broader perspective of social problem film. The renegade cops are abandoned to the consequences of abusing their public trust, and the final minutes horrifically portray the community’s retribution. The film ends as a cautionary tale about the long-term impact of this abuse on a society that has lost faith in the institutions that are supposed to protect it. There’s a political message in this, and police corruption suddenly is no longer just plot substance but metaphor as well. What Pride and Glory ultimately seems to be about is the culture of corruption that corrodes every level of society, and of course infects the soul of every sufferer, whether perpetrator or victim. As the Tierneys regroup for their attempt to reclaim the trust they had abandoned, the film fades out on a guardedly hopeful note. But it’s an inconclusive one, befitting a movie which documents so fiercely the many opportunities for betrayal.
Monday, December 8, 2008
Burn after Reading
Burn after Reading was one of the big disappointments of the summer for me. I've been a fan of the Coen Brothers ever since I saw Blood Simple over twenty years ago. That film pretty much blew me away. Other favorites include Raising Arizona, Miller's Crossing, Barton Fink, The Hudsucker Proxy, Fargo, The Big Lebowski, and O Brother, Where Art Thou? Unusual Cruelty is pretty good, too. No Country for Old Men was impressive but disturbed me so much that I have a hard time saying it's a favorite. I want to see it again, but I'm still shaking from my first viewing, so it will have to wait. The film I write about below puzzles me. It is certainly well-crafted, but it didn't do much for me at all. It just seemed like a misfire. But the Coen Brothers will be back, I know it. They're too good to settle for making mediocre movies.
BURN AFTER READING
A new Coen Brothers film is always an event, and their first film after the remarkable No Country for Old Men, winner of last year’s best picture Oscar, should have been the most anticipated of their careers. So it’s pretty surprising that Burn after Reading slipped into the theaters with relatively little fanfare, and even more surprising that it’s such a disappointing effort. I’m not entirely sure why this is. The Coens are certainly in their element here: the plot revolves around mistaken identities and mix-ups, murder, blackmail…and liposuction. Behind it all is the CIA, cheerfully sweeping all the messy details under the rug and covering up anything it can’t explain to its own satisfaction. Should be a romp for them, but instead it’s a labored and harsh comedy that never finds the mischievous joy which usually makes Joel and Ethan’s trademark cynicism so much fun to watch, even as it unsettles.
The story is typically convoluted. Treasury Department employee George Clooney is having an affair with the wife of a CIA operative (John Malkovich), who has just quit his job over a demotion and is writing a tell-all book about his years under cover. The wife (Tilda Swinton), preparing for a divorce, downloads their financial records from his computer and unwittingly copies classified government information onto the disk as well. This disk mysteriously turns up in the locker room of a local gym, Hardbodies, where employees Frances McDormand and Brad Pitt join forces to coax a reward for its return out of the ex-spook. McDormand, 50ish and still looking for Mr. Right, is convinced that only cosmetic surgery will keep her attractive enough to compete in the computer dating scene, but her insurance won’t pay for it so she needs money badly. Yet despite her misgivings, her dating service hooks her up with Clooney, who is not only two-timing his wife but his mistress as well. Hilarious hijinks ensue.
Or they would be hilarious if some of the characters were more appealing or the complications truly amusing. The Coens have nearly always been successful at mining humor from the nastier side of human nature, but the double-dealing in Burn lacks the seductive charm of earlier comedic thrillers such as Blood Simple or Fargo, or even parts of No Country. The new film also lacks the discipline that makes the Coens’ best movies among the most ingeniously constructed and tightly edited you’ll ever see. Bringing together disparate characters in colliding storylines is nothing new to them, but in contrast to their usual deftness, the plots in this one never quite mesh, leaving the viewer with the feeling that, although the connections are dutifully made, the point behind them all is missing. Burn never establishes a consistent tone or point-of-view around which to organize the chaos. It’s a collection of random events that offers no reason to see it otherwise.
Much of the blame for this must go to the brothers’ direction of their actors. Clooney and McDormand are both quite good individually, but there is little chemistry between them, and their scenes together are flat as a result. Pitt excels in his small role, proving once again that although he has the looks and the tabloid credentials for major stardom, he makes his greatest impact in supporting roles and character parts. His goofy exercise instructor, Chad, is the most completely comic performance in the film, and delightful as it is, it throws the film, which otherwise has a rather sinister vibe to it, a bit off balance. The same could be said of J.K. Simmons, who has some great moments as the befuddled CIA chief who needs things explained to him several times before he understands what’s gone down (in that, he’s an obvious stand-in for the audience). But he’s from a different CIA than is otherwise depicted.
Nowhere is the clash in acting styles more harmful than with Malkovich and Swinton, who belong to a different movie altogether, a downbeat domestic drama. Both play unpleasant people unpleasantly, without a single spark of humor to relieve the gloom of their characters. Malkovich is such a pain-in-the-backside that he elicits no sympathy for the raw treatment he gets from his employers or his wife. Since his fate is central to the scheme of things, this delivers a serious blow to the whole enterprise’s attempt to win over its audience. And what Clooney’s good-natured womanizer sees in the dour Swinton is a mystery the film never tries to solve, much to the detriment of its credibility.
Then there is the ominous musical score by Carter Burwell, which expertly creates a feeling of unease and suspense as the film jumps back and forth between simultaneously unfolding stories. It would be perfect in a serious thriller, but it darkens the mood of this film’s comic world too much, undercutting its sardonic take on the foibles of the characters and their blunderings toward an intertwined destiny. A lighter score would have brought out those colors; I can’t remember ever seeing a film in which I thought the music, good in itself, was so wrong for the action it accompanied that it effectively contradicted the meaning of it. Until now. It’s an error in judgment one simply does not expect from these two talented and highly experienced filmmakers.
Burn after Reading has plenty of witty moments, a few good performances, and some nifty visuals—enough to remind us of what the Coen Brothers’ vision is all about. But everything they do in this film they’ve done before, and better, elsewhere. Whether it’s inspiration, or just execution, or both, that Burn is lacking, the outcome is a decidedly minor entry in their body of work. I wouldn’t condemn it to the stake, but I hope they give their next project more serious attention. Maybe first they should watch some of their old movies more closely.
BURN AFTER READING
A new Coen Brothers film is always an event, and their first film after the remarkable No Country for Old Men, winner of last year’s best picture Oscar, should have been the most anticipated of their careers. So it’s pretty surprising that Burn after Reading slipped into the theaters with relatively little fanfare, and even more surprising that it’s such a disappointing effort. I’m not entirely sure why this is. The Coens are certainly in their element here: the plot revolves around mistaken identities and mix-ups, murder, blackmail…and liposuction. Behind it all is the CIA, cheerfully sweeping all the messy details under the rug and covering up anything it can’t explain to its own satisfaction. Should be a romp for them, but instead it’s a labored and harsh comedy that never finds the mischievous joy which usually makes Joel and Ethan’s trademark cynicism so much fun to watch, even as it unsettles.
The story is typically convoluted. Treasury Department employee George Clooney is having an affair with the wife of a CIA operative (John Malkovich), who has just quit his job over a demotion and is writing a tell-all book about his years under cover. The wife (Tilda Swinton), preparing for a divorce, downloads their financial records from his computer and unwittingly copies classified government information onto the disk as well. This disk mysteriously turns up in the locker room of a local gym, Hardbodies, where employees Frances McDormand and Brad Pitt join forces to coax a reward for its return out of the ex-spook. McDormand, 50ish and still looking for Mr. Right, is convinced that only cosmetic surgery will keep her attractive enough to compete in the computer dating scene, but her insurance won’t pay for it so she needs money badly. Yet despite her misgivings, her dating service hooks her up with Clooney, who is not only two-timing his wife but his mistress as well. Hilarious hijinks ensue.
Or they would be hilarious if some of the characters were more appealing or the complications truly amusing. The Coens have nearly always been successful at mining humor from the nastier side of human nature, but the double-dealing in Burn lacks the seductive charm of earlier comedic thrillers such as Blood Simple or Fargo, or even parts of No Country. The new film also lacks the discipline that makes the Coens’ best movies among the most ingeniously constructed and tightly edited you’ll ever see. Bringing together disparate characters in colliding storylines is nothing new to them, but in contrast to their usual deftness, the plots in this one never quite mesh, leaving the viewer with the feeling that, although the connections are dutifully made, the point behind them all is missing. Burn never establishes a consistent tone or point-of-view around which to organize the chaos. It’s a collection of random events that offers no reason to see it otherwise.
Much of the blame for this must go to the brothers’ direction of their actors. Clooney and McDormand are both quite good individually, but there is little chemistry between them, and their scenes together are flat as a result. Pitt excels in his small role, proving once again that although he has the looks and the tabloid credentials for major stardom, he makes his greatest impact in supporting roles and character parts. His goofy exercise instructor, Chad, is the most completely comic performance in the film, and delightful as it is, it throws the film, which otherwise has a rather sinister vibe to it, a bit off balance. The same could be said of J.K. Simmons, who has some great moments as the befuddled CIA chief who needs things explained to him several times before he understands what’s gone down (in that, he’s an obvious stand-in for the audience). But he’s from a different CIA than is otherwise depicted.
Nowhere is the clash in acting styles more harmful than with Malkovich and Swinton, who belong to a different movie altogether, a downbeat domestic drama. Both play unpleasant people unpleasantly, without a single spark of humor to relieve the gloom of their characters. Malkovich is such a pain-in-the-backside that he elicits no sympathy for the raw treatment he gets from his employers or his wife. Since his fate is central to the scheme of things, this delivers a serious blow to the whole enterprise’s attempt to win over its audience. And what Clooney’s good-natured womanizer sees in the dour Swinton is a mystery the film never tries to solve, much to the detriment of its credibility.
Then there is the ominous musical score by Carter Burwell, which expertly creates a feeling of unease and suspense as the film jumps back and forth between simultaneously unfolding stories. It would be perfect in a serious thriller, but it darkens the mood of this film’s comic world too much, undercutting its sardonic take on the foibles of the characters and their blunderings toward an intertwined destiny. A lighter score would have brought out those colors; I can’t remember ever seeing a film in which I thought the music, good in itself, was so wrong for the action it accompanied that it effectively contradicted the meaning of it. Until now. It’s an error in judgment one simply does not expect from these two talented and highly experienced filmmakers.
Burn after Reading has plenty of witty moments, a few good performances, and some nifty visuals—enough to remind us of what the Coen Brothers’ vision is all about. But everything they do in this film they’ve done before, and better, elsewhere. Whether it’s inspiration, or just execution, or both, that Burn is lacking, the outcome is a decidedly minor entry in their body of work. I wouldn’t condemn it to the stake, but I hope they give their next project more serious attention. Maybe first they should watch some of their old movies more closely.
Sunday, December 7, 2008
Choke
Choke came and went pretty quickly this summer, which was a shame, because it is really good. Quirky and frequently tasteless, but always funny, it's based on a novel by cult writer Chuck Palahnuik. I had not read anything by him before, but as I write in the review below, I decided to read this book after seeing the movie. This I did, in fact, and I liked it a lot. I will read more (his most famous novel is Fight Club). The movie actually follows the book pretty closely, and does a great job of transferring its spirit and style to the screen, always a hard thing to do but particularly in this case because the book's impact is largely through prose style.
CHOKE
OK, you’re writing a screenplay, and you want to include all the elements from the following list: sex addiction, dementia, historical reenactment, aging, strip clubs, Jesus, masturbation, con artistry, salvation. Good luck. On the other hand, for a clue on how to proceed, check out Choke, written and directed by actor Clark Gregg from a novel by Portland writer Chuck Palahnuik (Fight Club), and winner of the special jury prize at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. I haven’t read the book, but if the film adaptation comes anywhere close to doing it justice, then it is probably by turns offensive, darkly funny, and oddly thought-provoking. Chances are you won’t be able to put it down. But as the protagonist, Victor Mancini, is fond of saying, “There’s only one way to find out.”
Actually, there are two. I recommend you start by seeing the film. It’s about this guy, the ironically named Victor, who has a problem--or rather, several. He’s a sex addict who can’t commit to the recovery program of his support group (during meetings he has sex with the teen prostitute he’s sponsoring instead); his mother, whom he’s supporting in an expensive care facility, suffers from dementia and no longer seems, or perhaps wants, to recognize him; and his job as a reenactor in a colonial village for tourists is a little short on career satisfaction. Oh, and there’s his coworker and best friend, Denny, a compulsive masturbator who can’t keep out of trouble in the village (he’s always locked in the stocks) and who has fallen in love with a stripper at the club they frequent, Titillations. Not to mention the pretty young doctor who has taken over his mother’s care and whom he automatically hits on until he realizes he actually likes her more than he wants to have sex with her. Or the scam he runs on prosperous-looking patrons in local restaurants by pretending to choke so they come to his rescue, thereafter feeling so responsible for him that they send him money, which he uses to help pay his mother’s medical bills…
In short, Victor’s life is a mess. In the eyes of most—himself included--Victor is a loser. How he works his way out of the untidy complications of his life is the problem Choke sets itself, and one that accounts for the unusual trajectory of the film. It begins as a slacker comedy, gradually takes on psychological ballast, and finishes as a character study of a deficient man’s search for wholeness and personal salvation. Sex, slackerdom, and salvation--maybe you just have to see this one to believe it.
The irony at the heart of the film is that Victor doesn’t want salvation--he’s a loser by choice, a man who knows how haunted he is by his past but doesn’t let self-awareness stand in the way of enjoying his self-destructive behavior. Flashbacks scattered throughout the film reveal key details of his relationship with his bizarre mother, a delusional predator who repeatedly kidnaps him from foster homes to take him on cross-country journeys to nowhere, all the while haranguing him semi-coherently about how she’s teaching him to realize his special gifts. But Victor never surrenders to self-pity or even sentiment--he acts like a jerk because he genuinely believes he is one. Presented halfway through the film with the prospect of being something more than he is--way more (remember the Jesus element)—he declines, insisting he’s neither worthy of the honor nor interested. The casual sex is a bonus. But his callous, one-night-stand approach to life is clearly also his way of avoiding self-realization until he works through his Oedipal drama. It’s not the most original diagnosis in the world, but for a film that poses as a raunchy slacker comedy, it comes across as pretty heartfelt.
The cast inhabits the scruffy, fringe-of-society characters as if they’ve known them all their lives. Sam Rockwell brings a loopy charm to Victor, in a performance that could be a star-making one if this were a higher profile film. But chances are that too few will see it. Anjelica Huston tackles his mother, Ida, with a ferocity she hasn’t shown in years. She’s carved an interesting career niche for herself playing mothers-from-hell, as in recent Wes Anderson films (especially last year’s The Darjeeling Limited). But her best bad mama is still Lilly in The Grifters (1990), which resonates eerily with this film. In both, her she-wolf mother looses its cub--a commitment-phobic con artist--on an unsuspecting world, and both parent and child suffer the consequences. Here, she splits her screen time between the young femme fatale Ida in the flashbacks, and her aged, bed-ridden counterpart, bringing a poignancy to the latter that is heart-rending to watch. It’s virtually a dual role, and Huston is terrific in each.
Rounding out the major parts is Brad William Henke as Denny, who infuses every line of dialogue with such sweet-natured sincerity that he makes his character seem almost saintly, despite his tendency to grab his crotch at the worst possible times. And Kelly Macdonald makes the doctor into a winsome, innocent figure, the most sympathetic presence in the film. As Victor’s diametric opposite, she is not only the inevitable love interest but the necessary one, since no one else could pull Victor out of his self-exile from life toward salvation with as much authority.
That salvation—albeit of an ironic kind--is what first-time director Gregg and his cast have in mind is apparent in the religious imagery that permeates the film and the transformations of several characters’ lives through romantic love. These are fairly standard devices; unique to this film is the way it works changes on its two central motifs, sex and choking. Both begin as sordid aspects of Victor’s stunted existence, but by the end of the film have grown into the means by which he achieves his victory over himself and the inner traumas that have prevented his self-fulfillment. Heavy stuff for a movie about a guy who can’t keep his pants zipped up, but the details are less important than the goal reached. Director Gregg, despite this being his first feature film, does an expert job of walking a tightrope between the ridiculous and the painful, and of compressing all the disparate elements of the story into a whole so cohesive that its complexity is effectively disguised. In addition, he contributes a nice acting turn as Lord High Charlie, the insufferable master of the colonial village who makes life miserable for Victor and the hapless Denny.
Despite its attempts—usually hilarious—to be outrageous and offensive, Choke ultimately wants to be, and is, a rather sweet film about the importance of human connection, imbued with a wry but forgiving view of the ways that sex both hinders and helps us make the connections we need. To prove my point, it concludes with the single most romantic scene in a public restroom that I’ve ever seen, a nice summation for a movie that is by turns offensive, darkly funny, and oddly thought-provoking. Think I’ll read the book now.
CHOKE
OK, you’re writing a screenplay, and you want to include all the elements from the following list: sex addiction, dementia, historical reenactment, aging, strip clubs, Jesus, masturbation, con artistry, salvation. Good luck. On the other hand, for a clue on how to proceed, check out Choke, written and directed by actor Clark Gregg from a novel by Portland writer Chuck Palahnuik (Fight Club), and winner of the special jury prize at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. I haven’t read the book, but if the film adaptation comes anywhere close to doing it justice, then it is probably by turns offensive, darkly funny, and oddly thought-provoking. Chances are you won’t be able to put it down. But as the protagonist, Victor Mancini, is fond of saying, “There’s only one way to find out.”
Actually, there are two. I recommend you start by seeing the film. It’s about this guy, the ironically named Victor, who has a problem--or rather, several. He’s a sex addict who can’t commit to the recovery program of his support group (during meetings he has sex with the teen prostitute he’s sponsoring instead); his mother, whom he’s supporting in an expensive care facility, suffers from dementia and no longer seems, or perhaps wants, to recognize him; and his job as a reenactor in a colonial village for tourists is a little short on career satisfaction. Oh, and there’s his coworker and best friend, Denny, a compulsive masturbator who can’t keep out of trouble in the village (he’s always locked in the stocks) and who has fallen in love with a stripper at the club they frequent, Titillations. Not to mention the pretty young doctor who has taken over his mother’s care and whom he automatically hits on until he realizes he actually likes her more than he wants to have sex with her. Or the scam he runs on prosperous-looking patrons in local restaurants by pretending to choke so they come to his rescue, thereafter feeling so responsible for him that they send him money, which he uses to help pay his mother’s medical bills…
In short, Victor’s life is a mess. In the eyes of most—himself included--Victor is a loser. How he works his way out of the untidy complications of his life is the problem Choke sets itself, and one that accounts for the unusual trajectory of the film. It begins as a slacker comedy, gradually takes on psychological ballast, and finishes as a character study of a deficient man’s search for wholeness and personal salvation. Sex, slackerdom, and salvation--maybe you just have to see this one to believe it.
The irony at the heart of the film is that Victor doesn’t want salvation--he’s a loser by choice, a man who knows how haunted he is by his past but doesn’t let self-awareness stand in the way of enjoying his self-destructive behavior. Flashbacks scattered throughout the film reveal key details of his relationship with his bizarre mother, a delusional predator who repeatedly kidnaps him from foster homes to take him on cross-country journeys to nowhere, all the while haranguing him semi-coherently about how she’s teaching him to realize his special gifts. But Victor never surrenders to self-pity or even sentiment--he acts like a jerk because he genuinely believes he is one. Presented halfway through the film with the prospect of being something more than he is--way more (remember the Jesus element)—he declines, insisting he’s neither worthy of the honor nor interested. The casual sex is a bonus. But his callous, one-night-stand approach to life is clearly also his way of avoiding self-realization until he works through his Oedipal drama. It’s not the most original diagnosis in the world, but for a film that poses as a raunchy slacker comedy, it comes across as pretty heartfelt.
The cast inhabits the scruffy, fringe-of-society characters as if they’ve known them all their lives. Sam Rockwell brings a loopy charm to Victor, in a performance that could be a star-making one if this were a higher profile film. But chances are that too few will see it. Anjelica Huston tackles his mother, Ida, with a ferocity she hasn’t shown in years. She’s carved an interesting career niche for herself playing mothers-from-hell, as in recent Wes Anderson films (especially last year’s The Darjeeling Limited). But her best bad mama is still Lilly in The Grifters (1990), which resonates eerily with this film. In both, her she-wolf mother looses its cub--a commitment-phobic con artist--on an unsuspecting world, and both parent and child suffer the consequences. Here, she splits her screen time between the young femme fatale Ida in the flashbacks, and her aged, bed-ridden counterpart, bringing a poignancy to the latter that is heart-rending to watch. It’s virtually a dual role, and Huston is terrific in each.
Rounding out the major parts is Brad William Henke as Denny, who infuses every line of dialogue with such sweet-natured sincerity that he makes his character seem almost saintly, despite his tendency to grab his crotch at the worst possible times. And Kelly Macdonald makes the doctor into a winsome, innocent figure, the most sympathetic presence in the film. As Victor’s diametric opposite, she is not only the inevitable love interest but the necessary one, since no one else could pull Victor out of his self-exile from life toward salvation with as much authority.
That salvation—albeit of an ironic kind--is what first-time director Gregg and his cast have in mind is apparent in the religious imagery that permeates the film and the transformations of several characters’ lives through romantic love. These are fairly standard devices; unique to this film is the way it works changes on its two central motifs, sex and choking. Both begin as sordid aspects of Victor’s stunted existence, but by the end of the film have grown into the means by which he achieves his victory over himself and the inner traumas that have prevented his self-fulfillment. Heavy stuff for a movie about a guy who can’t keep his pants zipped up, but the details are less important than the goal reached. Director Gregg, despite this being his first feature film, does an expert job of walking a tightrope between the ridiculous and the painful, and of compressing all the disparate elements of the story into a whole so cohesive that its complexity is effectively disguised. In addition, he contributes a nice acting turn as Lord High Charlie, the insufferable master of the colonial village who makes life miserable for Victor and the hapless Denny.
Despite its attempts—usually hilarious—to be outrageous and offensive, Choke ultimately wants to be, and is, a rather sweet film about the importance of human connection, imbued with a wry but forgiving view of the ways that sex both hinders and helps us make the connections we need. To prove my point, it concludes with the single most romantic scene in a public restroom that I’ve ever seen, a nice summation for a movie that is by turns offensive, darkly funny, and oddly thought-provoking. Think I’ll read the book now.
Saturday, December 6, 2008
Bottle Shock
This film came out this past summer. It was never intended to be a blockbuster, but it seemed to get pretty good reviews and has a terrific cast, so I regard it as one of the overlooked gems of 2008. It's based on actual events, but I don't know enough about the history behind it to say how accurate it is. If this isn't how it all really happened, it should be, put it that way.
BOTTLE SHOCK
If you are tired of summer blockbuster action movies and the latest star-vehicle “comedies,” then the cleverly titled Bottle Shock is a late summer treat that will ease your way into the heavier fare of fall. A fictionalization of actual persons and events, Shock is the seriocomic telling of a famous 1976 winetasting contest in France in which California vintners from the Napa Valley did what was then considered the impossible: they beat their French competition by taking first place in two major categories. Proving itself equal to the world’s foremost wine culture was of great significance to the California wine industry, but director Randall Miller and his team of screenwriters choose not to treat this tale of cultural battle lines and Yankee victory over the Old World in grand patriotic manner. Rather than puffing up the event with epochal meaning, they keep their sights closely trained on the human side of the story. There’s an abundance of sweeping aerial shots of California countryside and sun-dappled portraits of sprawling vineyards, but despite the epic imagery, Bottle Shock remains small, personal, and warm. And--good news for many viewers--you don’t have to know anything about wine to enjoy it.
An attractive cast convincingly gives life to an assortment of gently idiosyncratic folk, whose crisscrossing relationships organize the film’s central conflicts along cultural, generational, racial, and romantic lines. Setting events in motion is Steven Spurrier (Alan Rickman), a stuffy British wine seller living in Paris, where his shop has failed to catch on, despite his devotion to the French’s own belief in their superior wines. At the urging of a friend, Spurrier organizes a blind tasting competition between French and American vintages, then journeys to California wine country to line up participants. The aim of the contest, however, is to promote himself rather than the American wines he’s convinced are of poor quality. As one of the Napa vintners quickly discerns, in order to ingratiate himself with his French masters, he is setting up the Americans to fail, an unthinkable humiliation in their Bicentennial year. But Spurrier is about to receive a shock… Rickman’s resume overflows with similarly arrogant, supercilious characters, but here, like the film itself, he chooses his colors from a softer palette. Severus Snape may lurk behind every curl of Rickman’s lip, but the actor imbues Spurrier with a sweetness and a strained dignity that is both unexpected and welcome, removing the edge from his snobbery and rescuing him from caricature. It’s a subtle performance, without question one of Rickman’s best in years.
Matching wits with him is Bill Pullman as Jim Barrett, owner of the heavily mortgaged (and ironically French-named) Chateau Montelena winery. Barrett has forsaken his partnership in a prestigious law firm to pursue a fading dream of tending grapes and making great wine, and this obsession has cost him his marriage and put him into constant conflict with his hippie son Bo (Chris Pine), a perpetually stoned college dropout who works--barely--for his father in lieu of making any hard decisions about his life. Pullman has never been better, offering a portrait of a wounded man clinging desperately to his dream that is finely shaded and surprisingly unsentimental. His tight-lipped speech and awkward gait as he shambles about the grounds of his failing vineyard capture the barely contained fury suffused with growing despair that gives the film its melancholy heart.
Chris Pine, on the other hand, strikes a false note or two as the Prodigal Son Bo. His performance is endearing but suggests more 80’s slacker (think Sean Penn in Fast Times at Ridgemont High) than 60’s counterculture holdover. The conflict between him and his father forms the backbone of Bo’s coming-of-age story, which deftly avoids most of the clichés this type of drama is subject to through sparing use of dialogue and a running gag that has them entering a makeshift boxing ring and pummeling each other whenever one of them feels a blow-up coming on.
Fine support is added by Freddy Rodriguez as Gustavo, an Hispanic field worker in Barrett’s employ, who is secretly making his own wine and dreams of one day owning his own vineyard. Unfortunately, in the film’s major misstep, the force of Gustavo’s challenge to the racial barriers of the 1970’s is blunted by his inclusion in an unnecessary romantic triangle that has him vying with best friend Bo for the affections of Sam, Montelena’s improbably beautiful blonde intern (Rachael Taylor). Taylor’s performance is spirited, but her role is too obviously obligatory, and the film loses focus during these scenes. The important question of whether Gustavo will break into the all-white world of winemaking is supplanted by too-often-seen-before exchanges of hurt feelings and sexual jealousy, and Rodriguez figures little in the last act of the film.
Bottle Shock’s most charming turn comes from Dennis Farina, who sheds his tough-guy image and dons outrageous leisure suits to play Maurice, Spurrier’s friend, the one who originally sells him on the idea of including California wines in the contest. Overall, the film does an admirable job of evoking the 1970’s without too many crowd-indulging sight gags (hair styles, clothes), but Farina’s flashy attire provides the right kind of chuckles, perfectly capturing his character’s exuberance and innocent self-satisfaction, while allowing the audience to laugh at some of the last century’s worst fashion excesses.
Bottle Shock is not a film for the impatient. Fittingly for a movie about savoring wine, it moves at a leisurely pace, carefully exploring each aspect of the story and placing each character in its proper relation to the others and to the whole. Randall Miller’s direction is often prosaic but is sure-handed enough to bring everything together in orderly fashion for the amusing climax, which for all its inevitability is skillfully presented as a surprise. Some of the film’s best comic moments occur here, when the self-assurance of the panel of French experts begins to crack as they argue among themselves over which wines are French and which American. Yet, in keeping with Bottle Shock’s overall lack of combativeness, the French are never offered up as targets. They are merely foils, perhaps even just background. The real target is the snobbery and assumed superiority that Spurrier embodies, an attitude that is both his mechanism of defense and the chink in his armor. Watching him overcome his prejudice against the wines he wants to despise is the film’s main character arc, and perhaps its chief pleasure. Pointed dialogue and a playful Afterword declare Spurrier to be unnerved, even a bit scandalized, by America’s win, but Rickman’s sympathetic portrayal suggests otherwise, perhaps even hinting at some conspiratorial satisfaction at seeing the French who have spurned him finally brought down.
Many will want to compare this film to Sideways, the 2004 comedy about another journey through California’s wine country, but clearly its closest cousins are sports films, those in which the underdog team triumphs over the heavy favorite in the final Big Contest (I couldn’t help thinking of Hoosiers or 2004’s Miracle, which dramatizes the U.S. hockey team’s upset of the Soviet Union in the 1980 Olympics). Miller and company have steered their film away from the hyperbole and runaway emotionalism of those movies in favor of personal triumphs and the healing of bruised relationships, and it is a good decision, especially because it allows the film room to balance its two views of the insular world of wine connoisseurship, smoothly shifting back and forth between respect and genuine affection, especially for the winemakers, and a wry, lightly tongue-in-cheek take on the business of criticism and contests. The result is a fine, highly entertaining film that takes itself and its understanding of the human condition not too seriously but just seriously enough--well balanced, not too coy, a hint of sarcasm perhaps, but with a mellow, thoughtful aftertaste.
BOTTLE SHOCK
If you are tired of summer blockbuster action movies and the latest star-vehicle “comedies,” then the cleverly titled Bottle Shock is a late summer treat that will ease your way into the heavier fare of fall. A fictionalization of actual persons and events, Shock is the seriocomic telling of a famous 1976 winetasting contest in France in which California vintners from the Napa Valley did what was then considered the impossible: they beat their French competition by taking first place in two major categories. Proving itself equal to the world’s foremost wine culture was of great significance to the California wine industry, but director Randall Miller and his team of screenwriters choose not to treat this tale of cultural battle lines and Yankee victory over the Old World in grand patriotic manner. Rather than puffing up the event with epochal meaning, they keep their sights closely trained on the human side of the story. There’s an abundance of sweeping aerial shots of California countryside and sun-dappled portraits of sprawling vineyards, but despite the epic imagery, Bottle Shock remains small, personal, and warm. And--good news for many viewers--you don’t have to know anything about wine to enjoy it.
An attractive cast convincingly gives life to an assortment of gently idiosyncratic folk, whose crisscrossing relationships organize the film’s central conflicts along cultural, generational, racial, and romantic lines. Setting events in motion is Steven Spurrier (Alan Rickman), a stuffy British wine seller living in Paris, where his shop has failed to catch on, despite his devotion to the French’s own belief in their superior wines. At the urging of a friend, Spurrier organizes a blind tasting competition between French and American vintages, then journeys to California wine country to line up participants. The aim of the contest, however, is to promote himself rather than the American wines he’s convinced are of poor quality. As one of the Napa vintners quickly discerns, in order to ingratiate himself with his French masters, he is setting up the Americans to fail, an unthinkable humiliation in their Bicentennial year. But Spurrier is about to receive a shock… Rickman’s resume overflows with similarly arrogant, supercilious characters, but here, like the film itself, he chooses his colors from a softer palette. Severus Snape may lurk behind every curl of Rickman’s lip, but the actor imbues Spurrier with a sweetness and a strained dignity that is both unexpected and welcome, removing the edge from his snobbery and rescuing him from caricature. It’s a subtle performance, without question one of Rickman’s best in years.
Matching wits with him is Bill Pullman as Jim Barrett, owner of the heavily mortgaged (and ironically French-named) Chateau Montelena winery. Barrett has forsaken his partnership in a prestigious law firm to pursue a fading dream of tending grapes and making great wine, and this obsession has cost him his marriage and put him into constant conflict with his hippie son Bo (Chris Pine), a perpetually stoned college dropout who works--barely--for his father in lieu of making any hard decisions about his life. Pullman has never been better, offering a portrait of a wounded man clinging desperately to his dream that is finely shaded and surprisingly unsentimental. His tight-lipped speech and awkward gait as he shambles about the grounds of his failing vineyard capture the barely contained fury suffused with growing despair that gives the film its melancholy heart.
Chris Pine, on the other hand, strikes a false note or two as the Prodigal Son Bo. His performance is endearing but suggests more 80’s slacker (think Sean Penn in Fast Times at Ridgemont High) than 60’s counterculture holdover. The conflict between him and his father forms the backbone of Bo’s coming-of-age story, which deftly avoids most of the clichés this type of drama is subject to through sparing use of dialogue and a running gag that has them entering a makeshift boxing ring and pummeling each other whenever one of them feels a blow-up coming on.
Fine support is added by Freddy Rodriguez as Gustavo, an Hispanic field worker in Barrett’s employ, who is secretly making his own wine and dreams of one day owning his own vineyard. Unfortunately, in the film’s major misstep, the force of Gustavo’s challenge to the racial barriers of the 1970’s is blunted by his inclusion in an unnecessary romantic triangle that has him vying with best friend Bo for the affections of Sam, Montelena’s improbably beautiful blonde intern (Rachael Taylor). Taylor’s performance is spirited, but her role is too obviously obligatory, and the film loses focus during these scenes. The important question of whether Gustavo will break into the all-white world of winemaking is supplanted by too-often-seen-before exchanges of hurt feelings and sexual jealousy, and Rodriguez figures little in the last act of the film.
Bottle Shock’s most charming turn comes from Dennis Farina, who sheds his tough-guy image and dons outrageous leisure suits to play Maurice, Spurrier’s friend, the one who originally sells him on the idea of including California wines in the contest. Overall, the film does an admirable job of evoking the 1970’s without too many crowd-indulging sight gags (hair styles, clothes), but Farina’s flashy attire provides the right kind of chuckles, perfectly capturing his character’s exuberance and innocent self-satisfaction, while allowing the audience to laugh at some of the last century’s worst fashion excesses.
Bottle Shock is not a film for the impatient. Fittingly for a movie about savoring wine, it moves at a leisurely pace, carefully exploring each aspect of the story and placing each character in its proper relation to the others and to the whole. Randall Miller’s direction is often prosaic but is sure-handed enough to bring everything together in orderly fashion for the amusing climax, which for all its inevitability is skillfully presented as a surprise. Some of the film’s best comic moments occur here, when the self-assurance of the panel of French experts begins to crack as they argue among themselves over which wines are French and which American. Yet, in keeping with Bottle Shock’s overall lack of combativeness, the French are never offered up as targets. They are merely foils, perhaps even just background. The real target is the snobbery and assumed superiority that Spurrier embodies, an attitude that is both his mechanism of defense and the chink in his armor. Watching him overcome his prejudice against the wines he wants to despise is the film’s main character arc, and perhaps its chief pleasure. Pointed dialogue and a playful Afterword declare Spurrier to be unnerved, even a bit scandalized, by America’s win, but Rickman’s sympathetic portrayal suggests otherwise, perhaps even hinting at some conspiratorial satisfaction at seeing the French who have spurned him finally brought down.
Many will want to compare this film to Sideways, the 2004 comedy about another journey through California’s wine country, but clearly its closest cousins are sports films, those in which the underdog team triumphs over the heavy favorite in the final Big Contest (I couldn’t help thinking of Hoosiers or 2004’s Miracle, which dramatizes the U.S. hockey team’s upset of the Soviet Union in the 1980 Olympics). Miller and company have steered their film away from the hyperbole and runaway emotionalism of those movies in favor of personal triumphs and the healing of bruised relationships, and it is a good decision, especially because it allows the film room to balance its two views of the insular world of wine connoisseurship, smoothly shifting back and forth between respect and genuine affection, especially for the winemakers, and a wry, lightly tongue-in-cheek take on the business of criticism and contests. The result is a fine, highly entertaining film that takes itself and its understanding of the human condition not too seriously but just seriously enough--well balanced, not too coy, a hint of sarcasm perhaps, but with a mellow, thoughtful aftertaste.
Friday, December 5, 2008
The Perfect Cappuccino
The first review I wrote is about a terrific documentary which I saw at the Hardacre Film Festival in Tipton, Iowa. This festival is held every year, at the beginning of August, in Tipton's beautifully preserved downtown theater, the Hardacre. It's a real pleasure to watch movies in old stand-alone theaters like this one. The festival features many different types of film--features, documentaries, short narrative, experimental, etc. It's a great event. Check it out at www.tiptoniowa.us/hardacre/. The Perfect Cappuccino is not in distribution, but it is being shown around the country at various festivals and single screenings. Information on it can be found at www.cappuccinomovie.com/index.php. It is due to be released on dvd sometime in Feburary of 2009, I believe. I loved this film, and I have never even tasted cappuccino! I drink coffee, but not the good kind. Here is my review of this very fine film:
THE PERFECT CAPPUCCINO
Of all the films I saw at the 2008 Hardacre Film Festival in Tipton, Iowa, the most delightful surprise was a documentary called The Perfect Cappuccino. The film has what I considered at first an unpromising premise: a woman, filmmaker Amy Ferraris, searches through the coffee shops of America for a cup of cappuccino the equal of those she’s tasted in Italy. But it’s not long before the film reveals that this simple idea is merely the pretext for a highly entertaining and surprisingly complex exploration of weightier themes. Narrated by Ferraris herself, her warm, friendly voice lends a distinctive charm to the film, especially the beginning, which recounts her fateful trip to Italy as a 16-year-old with her high school class, where she discovers cappuccino in the coffee shops that dot the streets of every Italian town and begins her lifelong love affair with the drink.
This is a documentary of the personal essay variety, and Ferraris quickly proves herself someone worth listening to, even on this seemingly most idiosyncratic of subjects. But the film is filled with surprises, and the first is the melancholy turn it takes as she bemoans the impossibility of finding anything close to the experience of drinking well-prepared cappuccino at home in the U.S. Her complaint isn’t because she’s overcritical or a snob, but because she runs headlong into the fact that despite a growing culture of coffee consumption in sidewalk shops and coffee bars over the past two decades, America’s coffee habit has been dominated by a single company, whose mass-produced cappuccino and other espresso-based drinks are a far cry from the personal artistry of the Italian baristas whose creations so captivated Ferraris’s taste buds as a teenager.
This company is, of course, Starbucks, the Seattle-based coffee giant that seemingly has a store on every corner in every American city and at least two in every mall. Much of the film’s second act details Ferraris’s attempts to figure out why Starbucks has become so successful and why the American public is so taken with its bewildering variety of coffee-laced drinks, drinks that she feels have more to do with clever marketing than with any true appreciation of coffee as a beverage with a unique character and a rich and fascinating history.
This is Michael Moore territory, of course, the lone figure taking a stand against the big corporation, a formula Moore introduced brilliantly in his first film, Roger and Me, and has duplicated and refined in many subsequent TV shows and films. But despite her real issues with Starbucks (including a Moore-like inability to interview company representatives, despite her numerous appeals and their repeated promises to talk), Ferraris wisely avoids the confrontational style and absurdist grandstanding that have become Moore’s signature, and which have made his films so polarizing. Instead, she takes a gentler approach, weaving her film subtly back and forth between the attempts to satisfy her personal need for genuine cappuccino and the deeper concerns about corporate America that Starbucks’s rapid growth and near-monopolistic market domination force into the movie’s foreground. The tone of the film grows more troubled as a sadder Ferraris asks questions about the way business is done in America--questions that have been asked often before but never answered--and wearily interviews bemused Starbucks patrons about why they keep going back and what they like about the drinks they consume.
The interviews provide some of the film’s best moments. Clueless Starbucks patrons offer some humorous asides, but the real power of other voices in the film come from the Italian experts--baristas and businessmen both--who have devoted their lives to espresso culture and provide insight, and an objective basis, to Ferraris’s passion. Listening to them talk, one begins to truly sense why the right approach to preparing and drinking coffee is important, and why America’s casual and uninformed acceptance of an inferior version of the experience is yet another example of our arrogant disregard for western cultural tradition.
Not that the U.S. is a complete coffee wasteland. Ferraris covers the recent movement of independent coffee brewers and shop owners that are springing up throughout the country--referred to here as the “Third Wave”--and spends a great deal of time with the owner of DoubleShot Coffee, a small espresso shop in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Brian, the owner, obsesses over the roasting of his own coffee beans not just out of perfectionism but as a way to establish his independence from the onslaught of chain store coffee shops. And in his case the onslaught is real. He becomes the target of a lawsuit by Starbucks, which believes it owns the copyright to the term “doubleshot” as used in its canned Starbucks Doubleshot drinks. This lawsuit, and its impact on Brian and his regular customers--a Cheers-like cast of characters--provides the film with its most potent drama, and Brian emerges late in the film as its de facto hero for his refusal to submit to the considerable pressure Starbucks brings on him to change the name of his business.
Although Ferraris points out that the lawsuit is just one of hundreds Starbucks files each year as a way to keep its competition at bay, it resonates with the audience because of Brian’s quiet resolve and commitment to principle. His calm demeanor and appealing, low-key personality belie the anger he admits to feeling, and tempers--if only slightly--the almost unnerving stubbornness with which he refuses to bend. He’s a quintessential American Type from fiction and movies: a man of few words but strong convictions and an independent streak who faces down seemingly impossible odds with an almost reluctant dignity, the hero of a thousand westerns. The viewer is forced to watch this part of the film unfold slowly over the course of its last half, and Ferraris, a professional film editor by day, skillfully leads the story of Brian and DoubleShot to a surprising and satisfying conclusion, creating the kind of suspense one rarely finds in fiction films today, but which film buffs will recall fondly from those of years past.
Whether this movie will persuade devotees of Starbucks or other coffee chains that what they’re drinking is unworthy stuff, a debasement of Old World culture and charm, is anyone’s guess, of course. The perfect coffee, or espresso, or cappuccino ultimately--like beauty--is in the eye, or in this case the mouth, of the beholder, because it is a wholly personal aesthetic choice. But Ferraris’s film is so engaging, it should make even the most hardened philistine of coffee slurpers want to explore the world she portrays, a testament not only to her movie’s technical sophistication but to the persuasiveness of her voice. It is a remarkably fresh and appealing voice, self-effacing and funny, but deadly serious in its conviction that big business is committed to stifling the emergence of a genuine coffee culture in America. In the film’s one true Michael Moore moment, she is filming the outside of a Starbucks store when the manager opens the door and yells at her to stop. She replies that she has the right to film anything she wants from a public sidewalk, and he quickly retreats. She says it quietly, however, without anger, stating her rights as matter-of-factly as if she were telling someone the time of day. The moment typifies the ease with which this film is able to move beyond its highly personal subject to the level of universal appeal and import, in addition to capturing its surprising power.
In case you’re wondering, Ferraris’s search for the perfect cappuccino does not end in vain. She finds it in the end, but revealing this will not spoil the film’s conclusion for you because even the way her search is rewarded has its own unexpected twist, one with a particular poignancy to it. Just one more surprise from this utterly charming, unique, and extremely thoughtful film.
THE PERFECT CAPPUCCINO
Of all the films I saw at the 2008 Hardacre Film Festival in Tipton, Iowa, the most delightful surprise was a documentary called The Perfect Cappuccino. The film has what I considered at first an unpromising premise: a woman, filmmaker Amy Ferraris, searches through the coffee shops of America for a cup of cappuccino the equal of those she’s tasted in Italy. But it’s not long before the film reveals that this simple idea is merely the pretext for a highly entertaining and surprisingly complex exploration of weightier themes. Narrated by Ferraris herself, her warm, friendly voice lends a distinctive charm to the film, especially the beginning, which recounts her fateful trip to Italy as a 16-year-old with her high school class, where she discovers cappuccino in the coffee shops that dot the streets of every Italian town and begins her lifelong love affair with the drink.
This is a documentary of the personal essay variety, and Ferraris quickly proves herself someone worth listening to, even on this seemingly most idiosyncratic of subjects. But the film is filled with surprises, and the first is the melancholy turn it takes as she bemoans the impossibility of finding anything close to the experience of drinking well-prepared cappuccino at home in the U.S. Her complaint isn’t because she’s overcritical or a snob, but because she runs headlong into the fact that despite a growing culture of coffee consumption in sidewalk shops and coffee bars over the past two decades, America’s coffee habit has been dominated by a single company, whose mass-produced cappuccino and other espresso-based drinks are a far cry from the personal artistry of the Italian baristas whose creations so captivated Ferraris’s taste buds as a teenager.
This company is, of course, Starbucks, the Seattle-based coffee giant that seemingly has a store on every corner in every American city and at least two in every mall. Much of the film’s second act details Ferraris’s attempts to figure out why Starbucks has become so successful and why the American public is so taken with its bewildering variety of coffee-laced drinks, drinks that she feels have more to do with clever marketing than with any true appreciation of coffee as a beverage with a unique character and a rich and fascinating history.
This is Michael Moore territory, of course, the lone figure taking a stand against the big corporation, a formula Moore introduced brilliantly in his first film, Roger and Me, and has duplicated and refined in many subsequent TV shows and films. But despite her real issues with Starbucks (including a Moore-like inability to interview company representatives, despite her numerous appeals and their repeated promises to talk), Ferraris wisely avoids the confrontational style and absurdist grandstanding that have become Moore’s signature, and which have made his films so polarizing. Instead, she takes a gentler approach, weaving her film subtly back and forth between the attempts to satisfy her personal need for genuine cappuccino and the deeper concerns about corporate America that Starbucks’s rapid growth and near-monopolistic market domination force into the movie’s foreground. The tone of the film grows more troubled as a sadder Ferraris asks questions about the way business is done in America--questions that have been asked often before but never answered--and wearily interviews bemused Starbucks patrons about why they keep going back and what they like about the drinks they consume.
The interviews provide some of the film’s best moments. Clueless Starbucks patrons offer some humorous asides, but the real power of other voices in the film come from the Italian experts--baristas and businessmen both--who have devoted their lives to espresso culture and provide insight, and an objective basis, to Ferraris’s passion. Listening to them talk, one begins to truly sense why the right approach to preparing and drinking coffee is important, and why America’s casual and uninformed acceptance of an inferior version of the experience is yet another example of our arrogant disregard for western cultural tradition.
Not that the U.S. is a complete coffee wasteland. Ferraris covers the recent movement of independent coffee brewers and shop owners that are springing up throughout the country--referred to here as the “Third Wave”--and spends a great deal of time with the owner of DoubleShot Coffee, a small espresso shop in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Brian, the owner, obsesses over the roasting of his own coffee beans not just out of perfectionism but as a way to establish his independence from the onslaught of chain store coffee shops. And in his case the onslaught is real. He becomes the target of a lawsuit by Starbucks, which believes it owns the copyright to the term “doubleshot” as used in its canned Starbucks Doubleshot drinks. This lawsuit, and its impact on Brian and his regular customers--a Cheers-like cast of characters--provides the film with its most potent drama, and Brian emerges late in the film as its de facto hero for his refusal to submit to the considerable pressure Starbucks brings on him to change the name of his business.
Although Ferraris points out that the lawsuit is just one of hundreds Starbucks files each year as a way to keep its competition at bay, it resonates with the audience because of Brian’s quiet resolve and commitment to principle. His calm demeanor and appealing, low-key personality belie the anger he admits to feeling, and tempers--if only slightly--the almost unnerving stubbornness with which he refuses to bend. He’s a quintessential American Type from fiction and movies: a man of few words but strong convictions and an independent streak who faces down seemingly impossible odds with an almost reluctant dignity, the hero of a thousand westerns. The viewer is forced to watch this part of the film unfold slowly over the course of its last half, and Ferraris, a professional film editor by day, skillfully leads the story of Brian and DoubleShot to a surprising and satisfying conclusion, creating the kind of suspense one rarely finds in fiction films today, but which film buffs will recall fondly from those of years past.
Whether this movie will persuade devotees of Starbucks or other coffee chains that what they’re drinking is unworthy stuff, a debasement of Old World culture and charm, is anyone’s guess, of course. The perfect coffee, or espresso, or cappuccino ultimately--like beauty--is in the eye, or in this case the mouth, of the beholder, because it is a wholly personal aesthetic choice. But Ferraris’s film is so engaging, it should make even the most hardened philistine of coffee slurpers want to explore the world she portrays, a testament not only to her movie’s technical sophistication but to the persuasiveness of her voice. It is a remarkably fresh and appealing voice, self-effacing and funny, but deadly serious in its conviction that big business is committed to stifling the emergence of a genuine coffee culture in America. In the film’s one true Michael Moore moment, she is filming the outside of a Starbucks store when the manager opens the door and yells at her to stop. She replies that she has the right to film anything she wants from a public sidewalk, and he quickly retreats. She says it quietly, however, without anger, stating her rights as matter-of-factly as if she were telling someone the time of day. The moment typifies the ease with which this film is able to move beyond its highly personal subject to the level of universal appeal and import, in addition to capturing its surprising power.
In case you’re wondering, Ferraris’s search for the perfect cappuccino does not end in vain. She finds it in the end, but revealing this will not spoil the film’s conclusion for you because even the way her search is rewarded has its own unexpected twist, one with a particular poignancy to it. Just one more surprise from this utterly charming, unique, and extremely thoughtful film.
Introduction
My name is Phil Beck, and this is my first entry. I created this blog to feature some of the writing I am currently doing about films. I am a lifelong film buff, having been introduced to classic Hollywood films at a young age by my parents, Pat and Jack Beck. They encouraged me to watch them when they showed up on TV, and we often watched them together. I remember sitting in front of our old black-and-white set in the 1960s, watching It Happened One Night, Little Caesar, The Adventures of Robin Hood, and many more of my early favorites. I loved going to the movies when I was a kid, and we went often as a family (which includes my younger brother, Roger, also a film buff). But at a young age, I especially liked going by myself, or with friends, to the Saturday matinees at the Skokie Theater (in, of course, Skokie, Illinois, where I grew up). The theater would be filled with screaming kids, mostly boys, yelling at the screen, throwing candy at each other, running up and down the aisles. While I did my share of those things, I was more often watching the movies because I was fascinated by everything up on the screen. I saw lots of Japanese monster films, Jerry Lewis comedies, and other typical kid fare, but I also remember one afternoon watching The Bridge on the River Kwai, and practically not blinking the entire time. I discovered foreign films in high school through a Public Television series called Film Odyssey, hosted by Charles Champlin. On that program, I saw films like The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, The Seven Samurai, The 39 Steps, The Blue Angel, and many others, all so different from the films I was used to watching. This opened a whole new world for me. When I first went away to college, at the University of Missouri, I would go to see movies shown on campus 3 or 4 nights a week. I wanted to see everything, and I tried to. It was there I discovered, among others, two fascinating filmmakers, Jean-Luc Godard and Yasujiro Ozu, director of two of my favorite films, Tokyo Story and Late Spring.
Later, in graduate school at the University of Iowa (in Iowa City, where I still live), I first majored in English and got an M.A., then switched over to Film and Broadcasting, where I studied film theory, criticism, and history, and got a second M.A. While I was never the most distinguished writer or scholar in the film program, I wrote a few papers I'm still quite proud of, even got one or two of them published in film journals of the time. That was long ago, however, and I did not pursue a career in academia, but took a job in the library at the university's School of Law, where I have been for the past 21 years. I have therefore been through several phases of involvement with films in my life, but the one thing that has remained constant is my interest in watching and thinking about films. This past summer, I began to write reviews of some of the more interesting movies I was seeing, because I missed writing about film and I felt I had something to say that others might find of interest. I have had a couple of reviews posted at the website of a local arts and culture publication, The Little Village, which you can find online at http://www.littlevillagemag.com/. In addition to my reviews, many good articles on films by the paper's staff writers are posted there, and I recommend them all. The other reviews I have written, and will continue to write in the future, I am going to post here. I am inviting comments and criticism, because I would welcome a dialogue with as many people as possible about the films I have chosen to write about. You can add your comments after each entry, or you can email me at goodphilla@aol.com. I hope you find what you are about to read interesting in some way. Thanks for checking out this blogspot.
Phil Beck
Later, in graduate school at the University of Iowa (in Iowa City, where I still live), I first majored in English and got an M.A., then switched over to Film and Broadcasting, where I studied film theory, criticism, and history, and got a second M.A. While I was never the most distinguished writer or scholar in the film program, I wrote a few papers I'm still quite proud of, even got one or two of them published in film journals of the time. That was long ago, however, and I did not pursue a career in academia, but took a job in the library at the university's School of Law, where I have been for the past 21 years. I have therefore been through several phases of involvement with films in my life, but the one thing that has remained constant is my interest in watching and thinking about films. This past summer, I began to write reviews of some of the more interesting movies I was seeing, because I missed writing about film and I felt I had something to say that others might find of interest. I have had a couple of reviews posted at the website of a local arts and culture publication, The Little Village, which you can find online at http://www.littlevillagemag.com/. In addition to my reviews, many good articles on films by the paper's staff writers are posted there, and I recommend them all. The other reviews I have written, and will continue to write in the future, I am going to post here. I am inviting comments and criticism, because I would welcome a dialogue with as many people as possible about the films I have chosen to write about. You can add your comments after each entry, or you can email me at goodphilla@aol.com. I hope you find what you are about to read interesting in some way. Thanks for checking out this blogspot.
Phil Beck
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