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Zodiac (2007)
Zodiac is something altogether different from a genre best known for cannibalism, skin suits, and express shipping of human heads. It has more in common with All the President’s Men than director David Fincher’s 1995 masterpiece, Seven. This is a serial killer thriller steeped in police procedural, closed door deliberations, and the slow drip of a decades long investigation into the Zodiac killings that terrorized California from the 1960s and 70s. Watching close to 3 hours of procedure with nary a car chase or a shoot-out may not sit right for fans of the genre, but I enjoyed the film for the same reasons people will decry it — the details. I loved how methodical this film is, how dogged and stubborn it is, and I found myself being enveloped into the minutia of the case.
It all began with a young couple looking for a bit of privacy in 1968. They park at a lover’s lane and nervously engage in a bit of the old “neckin.” A passing car interrupts them, and then that car returns with its headlights blasting into the couple’s faces. This man then takes out a gun and starts firing, killing the woman and badly injuring the young man. Robert Graysmith (Jake Gyllenhaal) is a political cartoonist for the San Francisco Chronicle when a curious letter has stirred up a lot of discussion. It’s a cryptic message with a puzzle attached made up of symbols and codes. The author demands his puzzle run in the newspaper, and if not, more will suffer at his hands. There are further attacks along the California coast and the mysterious figure finally gives himself a name at the end of one of his letters: Zodiac.
San Francisco detectives David Toschi (a great, raspy Mark Ruffalo) and William Armstrong (Anthony Edwards) are called in after Zodiac executes a cab driver in the city. The Chronicle‘s star crime reporter, Paul Avery (Robert Downey Jr.), pesters the police for details and eventually gets under Zodiac?s skin. Graysmith becomes obsessed with the case through a life-long love of puzzles and the case eventually consumes him, dooming his marriage to a pretty girl (Chloe Sevigny). Thanks to the tutelage of Avery, Graymsith becomes an amateur detective of his own, and his zeal to solve the case outlasts the actual police.
The Zodiac killer was really the first mass media serial killer. As the news of brutal attacks spreads, the media ate it all up and enlarged the figure of Zodiac to grand heights. And he was eager to help inflate his image, taking credit for crimes and slayings that were not his doing. The killer used the media age to terrorize the populace and increase his notoriety, similar tactics used by today’s stream of terrorists. The detectives didn’t just have to navigate all the shifting evidence but the formation of an urban legend.
This is before the day of DNA and super computers, so all progress comes from good old-fashioned police work. Long hours are spent pouring over mounting evidence while coordinating around bureaucracy; because Zodiac has struck in several different small communities it can take a saint’s patience to figure out the correct jurisdiction and compile the various parts in various offices. The film packs a lot in its running time introducing scores of information, suspects, witnesses, and varying theories, but the film cannot be faulted for pace; nearly every scene takes place weeks, months, even years after the last.
Zodiac is Fincher’s most restrained work even at a gargantuan running length. Fincher is a master tactician with slick visuals but has a penchant for getting too dazzled by needless visual flourishes (did the camera really need to zoom through the handle of a coffee pot in Panic Room?). He tones down the excess but still maintains a refined visual palate that makes the film feel fluid. The period detail is incredibly reconstructed, giving an authentic feel for a very serious story. But Fincher knows that with Zodiac the impetus lies with the story, and he devotes his considerable style to the service of the story. The mood balances nicely with intrigue, humor (after Zodiac singles out Avery fellow journalists start wearing “I’m Not Avery” buttons), and some truly terrifying moments involving the Zodiac attacks. The violence is sparse but when it does occur it is shocking, particularly watching a knife plunge repeatedly into the writhing body of a woman at a lake. One key element of sustaining such an ominous mood is fabulous song selection. Very often pop songs can be counter-productive to a movie, coming across as a lazy attempt to cobble together a soundtrack to shill. With Zodiac, “Hurdy Gurdy Man” becomes a powerfully haunting medley for the killer and the sonic linchpin for the film.
Fincher does an excellent job of transporting us back in time and recreating the sense of paranoia that grappled many. There is a great scene late in the film where Graysmith comes to the sudden realization that he may have walked right into the spider’s parlor. The scene plays out to an agonizingly uncomfortable length, and you too feel like running out the door as fast as your legs can take you. By not knowing definitively who the Zodiac may be, the film gets a boost of suspense from a multitude of creepy suspects. In an interesting decision, Fincher uses different actors of different shape during the Zodiac attacks, playing against the varying reports from witnesses and survivors.
There?s a sizeable danger trying to find a climax to a case that remains open to this day and where no one has been officially charged. Zodiac does as good a job as possible to present a fitting, mostly satisfying conclusion. The movie presents the best theory and points a convincing finger at who Zodiac perhaps really was.
Zodiac is expertly crafted but has a handful of minor flaws that hold it back. The overall script is rather nimble with how it dishes new information to digest, however the intricacies can amass and become too great, and some scenes congest too much without needed forward momentum which causes the flow to get caught up in an expository pile-up. Still, the film is demanding but not overwhelming and not without reward. The film follows the ups and downs of the Zodiac investigation, and that means characterization runs short and simple. I fear the only false note amongst a vastly talented cast is Gyllenhaal, an actor I adore. He works fine in the portrayal of a young kid in the newsroom trying his hand at crime solving, but it’s the film’s second half where the actor falters. He fails to sell the obsession and desperation that dominates his life, instead looking wiped out but no worse for wear, like the temporary results of an all-nighter before a big test.
It was five years since Fincher’s last film, and he wasn’t sitting on his laurels when he crafted Zodiac, an exceptionally intelligent and demanding movie. Decades pass, suspects weave in and out, evidence and testimony contradict one another, it’s all a lot to keep track of but I found myself absorbed in the case just like Graysmith. This is a serial killer movie that could bring the smarts back and redefine the genre, that is, if fans are willing to sit through 3 hours of police work. If not, well they might get their kicks out of the more genre loyal The Zodiac, released in 2006. And that movie’s only 97 minutes long.
Nate’s Grade: A-
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Hannibal Rising (2007)
People love a good villain, and is there any greater villain in modern movies than Hannibal Lector? The flesh-eating, etiquette-minded fiend was most memorably portrayed by Anthony Hopkins in the Oscar-winning Silence of the Lambs. Even though he was only in the film for a whopping 16 minutes (the shortest screen time ever for a Best Actor), Hopkins stole every second. The character has resurfaced in additional movies like 2001’s Hannibal and 2002’s Red Dragon.
The history behind Hannibal Rising is that long-time film producer Dino Di Laurentiis owns the rights to the Hannibal character and essentially told author Thomas Harris, the man behind every Hannibal book, that he was making another movie starring America’s favorite cannibal, and it was going to be a prequel set amidst his boyhood days, and he was going to do it with or without Harris. With a proverbial gun pointed at his head, Harris decided if anyone is going to ruin his character it might as well be himself. He simultaneously wrote a new Hannibal book and a screenplay for it, both tied to be released within a few short months of each other. The results are about what you would expect for an artistic venture born from people wanting more money.
Hannibal Lector is a young kid living in Latvia. His family even has an ancestral castle but this doesn’t matter because it’s 1944 and the Germans and Russians are going at it. His father and mother are mowed down by gunfire as his family flees to a cottage in the woods for protection. Sadly, this will not be the worst thing that happens to Hannibal. A group of deserted soldiers, led by Grutas (Rhys Ifans), finds the cottage and takes refuge in it, hiding from their superiors, the ongoing battles, and the viciously cold winter. Long story short: there’s nothing to eat and the soldiers kill and eat Hannibal’s sister to survive. Flash forward to 1956, and Hannibal (Gaspard Ulliel) is a rebellious Stalinist youth. He escapes his boarding school and heads out to France to find his aunt, Lady Murasaki (Gong Li). She teaches him about the ways of the samurai and sharpens his fighting skills, because that’s what Asian people do in Hollywood movies. Hannibal is haunted by nightmares of his sister’s murder and his inability to protect her. He vows to find the current whereabouts of the men who took her from him and exact bloody revenge.
I guess when you get down to it I never needed to know the back-story to Hannibal Lector. He was such a dominating, frightening, and fascinating presence in Silence of the Lambs, someone who could worm his way inside your head and download everything he needed to know to exploit you. And yet, the man still adhered to his own set of standards, as Clarice remarked that he only ate the “rude.” He’s like a kinky literary professor. In 2005, Hannibal Lector was declared by the American Film Institute as the greatest film villain . . . ever. What I’m trying to get at is that no explanation for what made Hannibal into the demented figure he is would ever be satisfying. I don’t need to know why Hannibal is how he is, just as I didn’t need to know why Willy Wonka is; they just are. There’s also a logistical quirk: because we know this is a prequel, it means Hannibal Lector is never in any danger. He has to survive to populate more books and movies. Hannibal Rising was doomed to fail the second anxious studio execs got dollar signs in their eyes.
The film really drops the ball by turning the most unique villain in modern literature into a mere creepy kid out for vengeance. Hannibal Rising is a gloomy revenge flick dressed up to feel more astute and highbrow, but it’s nothing but a run at Charles Bronson Death Wish territory. Hannibal tracks down his sister’s killers one by one and plots his bloody revenge, and with each death the film seems to deflate. The character is given a stable of psychological devices you’d find in trashy serial killer page-turners. The fact that he remains moderately sympathetic is a testament our warm feelings for a guy that eats people. Hannibal Rising also ducks risky territory by making the marked men bastards even 10-something years later. They’re either corrupt authority figures or petty criminals; Grutas even runs a houseboat that he cycles sex slaves in and out of. Splendid. Now, it would be truly daring if the film had the courage to show these men as people trying to do right in the world, continually haunted by the choices they made to survive. That would call into question the nature of violence and forgiveness. The film even hints that Hannibal might have unknowingly eaten his sister as well. The psychological ramifications of that could be really interesting. But no, that’s too much, so what we get are a bunch of sneering stock baddies for Hannibal to systematically pick off.
Hannibal Rising shows its agenda with one very telling scene. When young Hannibal is living with his aunt he scours through her collection of samurai art. Then one mask catches his attention and he places it against his face, and wouldn’t you know it, the mask looks very similar to the one he will eventually wear like 40 years later. Why even include this scene? In 1991’s Silence of the Lambs, Hannibal wore this famous mask for all of one scene. The filmmakers are tipping their hat at what we know with Hannibal; the film is more concerned with reminding us about our memories of a character off screen than the one that’s in the story.
Despite all these failings, Hannibal Rising still manages to be passably entertaining. I credit director Peter Webber (Girl with Pearl Earring) and actor Gaspard Ulliel. Webber keeps the pacing light for a two-hour movie and adds a fine Gothic feel with a crisp, autumn look. He tries hard to bring some art to an overly glorified revenge flick. Ulliel (A Very Long Engagement) is something of a minor revelation. He digs deep into his character and finds a perverse pleasure in his portrayal of the cinema icon. He’s scary and weird but manages to still be grossly entertaining even when he’s doing gross things. It’s the sheer power of his performance that makes the film worth watching. I didn’t see this coming from the cute, boyish lovesick kid from Engagement, but Ulliel creates a clockwork-like performance of sinister eeriness. When he glares, his eyes burning with sharp intensity, he has this little dimple on one side of his face, like a permanent mark from evil grinning. He has a terrific look to him and I’d dare say there would be plenty of surprised moviegoers that find themselves thinking Hannibal Lector is a tad sexy. Hopefully Ulliel is destined for better things after mastering English so well, something his Engagement co-star seems to still be struggling with in American movies.
There really is no reason for this movie to exist. It’s not bad by any means, it’s just entirely unnecessary. It’s passably entertaining and has some grisly gore to it but much of it is pure genre. I’m more interested with the older, wiser Hannibal than this young pup. In the pursuit of the almighty dollar, Hannibal Rising sure wants to be a tasty dish. The problem is that this dish has already gone cold.
Nate’s Grade: C
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Little Children (2006)
Director Todd Field (In the Bedroom) and author Tom Perotta (Election) have created the most incisive, mordant, and entertaining peek into suburban life since 1999’s American Beauty. You really feel the carnal yearning that Kate Winslet and Patrick Wilson have as they inch their way to an affair. I’ve never felt the raw appeal of an affair perhaps like this before. Even more amazing, the film explores an entire neighborhood of characters and breathes life into them. Little Children feels like a great novel, with a scalpel-sharp narrator offering glimpses into the inner workings of these people. You get a great sense of worth in the film and it’s easy to fall under its spell. Little Children is a wonderful movie that looks at the complexities of people without judgment but with plenty of sly humor. It’s a fine work of satire and sensuality, and Winslet is becoming so good at delivering powerful performances that she’s being taken for granted as perhaps the best actress of her generation.
Nate?s Grade: A
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Children of Men (2006)
Alfonso Cuaron is a master filmmaker and a gifted storyteller. He excels at telling entertaining stories whether they be about kids or adults. His Harry Potter film is still the most watchable and imaginative, and his earlier children’s movie, 1995’s A Little Princess, has enough power to still get me misty. Even when Cuaron sets his sights on a sex comedy (Y Tu Mama Tambien) he can’t help but turn it into an affecting art movie. This man just knows how to tell a good story. Children of Men, a bleak science fiction thriller, is just the latest example of how effortless Cuaron makes it all blissfully appear.
In the year 2027, and the world is on the brink of annihilation. It’s not plague or rampant warfare that are the obvious culprits. The reason for mankind’s end is something more natural and depressing — women have stopped being able to make babies. England seems to be the lone country with some fraction of stability. Illegal immigrants are rounded up and housed in refugee camps for deportation. Cages full of crying and pleading foreigners are on many street corners. In a world of danger and hopelessness, always count on the kindness of xenophobia.
Theo (Clive Owen) is a bureaucrat that combats the future with cynicism. He can barely escape getting blown up for his morning coffee. Theo used to be an activist and married to Julian (Julianne Moore), the current leader of the Fishies, deemed a terrorist group by those in power. She finds him and asks for one last favor. Her people need transit papers to get Kee (Claire-Hope Ashitey), a refugee, and Miriam (Pam Ferris), a former mid-wife, to safety. Then Theo discovers the importance of his assistance. Kee is eight months pregnant. The government would never admit that that the first baby in 18 years belongs to a refugee, and political groups would like to use Kee and her baby as a rallying point for an uprising. But first Theo must get her out of harm’s way.
The idea of a world of infertile women is fascinating and full of big questions. This dystopian future must confront its own mortality in a very real way. Theo asks a friend hoarding classic art why he bothers. There will be no one alive in 100 years to even see them. Miriam says strange and heartbreaking things happen to a world that forgets the sound of children’s voices. Plenty of heady discussion is generated from a premise that affects every person on the planet. Why can’t women have babies? No explanation is given and none would seem credible. A religious faction believes this is the punishment of a vengeful God. People forget what babies even look like and what is commonly done for their care. The film also has a stark and timely portrait about the treatment of illegal immigrants. Children of Men is an intellectually stimulating movie that never rubs your nose in it. It trusts the intellect of the audience enough to leave many unanswered questions left to chew over and debate long after the movie ends.
The answers Children of Men finds seem reasonable and appropriate. Home suicide products exist for people that want to take back some control over their life, or at the least, are sick of waiting for the even more inevitable. It also seems entirely likely that this future world would turn the youngest living person (“Baby Diego” at 18-years-old) into a celebrity worthy of incredible mourning upon his untimely demise. These coping elements feel dead-on and only enhance the realistic tone of the film.
The film is a beguiling think piece but it also succeeds magnificently as a straightforward thriller. The majority of the second half is built around chase scenes and navigating to perilous outposts of safety that eventual crumble. Cuaron has a dizzying sense of believability as he puts together his world, and his roving camera feels like an embedded reporter on the front lines of chaos. The gorgeous cinematography and realistic set design contribute to the visceral sensation Cuaron sets alive with his visuals. There are long stretches where the camera continues rolling for nine minutes uninterrupted. I was left spellbound and felt trapped in this world just like the people onscreen. I was also wondering how much planning it took to coordinate and choreograph these long takes.
There are two very memorable scenes to quicken the pulse and both of them involve Cuaron’s mobile unblinking camera. The first involves a car chase perhaps unlike any I’ve ever seen before. Theo is leading an escape at dawn and robs the other cars of their keys. However, his own escape car refuses to start and the bad guys take notice. The sequence seems to last forever as Theo is forced to literally roll the car down a hill to outrun his pursuers who continually catch up with him. The second sequence follows Theo making his way through a refuge camp in the midst of a violent uprising being put down by heavily armored government troops. We watch every excruciating second of his survival as he navigates past gunfire, tanks outside a hotel, and then climbs through the different levels of the hotel being bombarded until we see, at a distance, where Theo’s trek all began. Exhilarating might just be the best word to describe Children of Men.
But nothing feels cheap or too sentimental in this world. This is a harsh and dark world where anything can happen, so the audience is left in constant peril worrying about the fates of every person onscreen. Like Casablanca, it strips away idealized notions of bravery and duty and just shows humanity for what it is and what it can be. That is gutsy but then that’s Cuaron as a filmmaker.
Speaking of Casablanca, Owen seems like a modern-day Bogart in this role. He’s ruggedly good looking but also a sly charmer. I’ve stated before my undying man-crush on Owen and Children of Men has only added to it. Owen has a remarkable way of playing detached but still noble and conflicted. He has the best slow burn in movies. The moments of wonder for him become our moments of wonder and worry. The rest of the actors appear in limited functions but provide good work. Michael Caine practically steals the movie as a crude yet philosophical hippie.
This is science fiction at its best. Children of Men is stark and realistic and truly immersive; you really feel like a member of this tumultuous future. It works simultaneously as a thought-provoking what-if scenario and as an exciting thriller. Simply put, this is a highly engrossing movie that separates itself from the pack. Cuaron has created a disquieting and entertaining sci-fi think piece that succeeds on its numerous merits. I knew half way into the movie that the newly minted wife, Mrs. Me, was only going to want a baby more from what we were watching. At least she now has a new argument: “It’s for the good of humanity.”
Nate’s Grade: A
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Flags of Our Fathers (2006)
Clint Eastwood’s WWII epic is all about scaling down legend, deconstructing myths, and illustrating how truth can become hazy in the name of the greater good. It’s very well made, noble, reverent, intelligently written but somewhat empty at its center, feeling far too mechanical to become one of the great war movies of modern times. The structure is needlessly scattered into three interconnected storylines: 1) the ongoing battle of Iwo Jima between Japan and the United States, 2) the stateside bond tour by three of the six men responsible for raising the flag in the iconic photograph, and 3) a son in present day writing a book about his father’s war experiences in the Pacific. I really don’t feel that splintering the narrative added anything to the story; in fact, there’s a late segment that’s a barrage of character deaths that would have been far more powerful had it not been assembled into an afterthought of a montage. The battle moments are tense and bloody, with just a tinge of Saving Private Ryan familiarity (shaky cam POV, washed out colors, chaotic editing, graphic gore). I would have actually preferred more battle action but oh well.
Most of the film focuses on our three soldiers (Ryan Phillippe, Jesse Bradford, Adam Beach) dealing with the pressure of a spotlight they feel is undeserved. You see, the raising-the-flag picture, perhaps the most famous war photograph of all time, was a group of men replacing a flag. There were no bullets buzzing over heads, no bombs blasting; it isn’t even the first flag. The men wince at being called heroes. They’re made to become U.S. military shills, encouraging the nation to keep buying those war bonds. This segment provides lots of moments of interest by illuminating a chapter few know — the story behind the story. These moments of insider info have some juice to them, led by a suave SOB performance by John Slattery as the man in charge of drumming up dollar signs.
Phillippe is an actor I’ve been keeping tabs on ever since 2000’s Way of the Gun, and he is the moral center of the movie, showing grit and humility. It’s mostly a performance of stoic silence, but he has a very strong scene when he confronts a war widow wanting the truth and he lies between his teeth to comfort her. Beach (Wind Talkers) gets the best role as a solider of Native American blood that is still seen as a second citizen in his own nation. There are plenty of revealing moments of casual racism (people call him “chief” more than his actual name) that explain why he took to the bottle with such ferocity. Beach is an emotional wreck and deeply haunted by the disturbing memories of war. He has to be practically pried off of a widow he is clinging to and crying uncontrollably. The cast is full of young Hollywood actors and it might due some good to become acquainted with their faces before stepping into a theater. It can get confusing. Yet another reason a disjointed narrative is a bad idea.
Where Flags of our Fathers cannot make the leap from good to great is in the area of character. After two hours, you don’t really feel like you know anyone better. There’s a distance that stops the audience from fully investing. I think Eastwood and the film have such noble aims that the movie becomes more of a statement than entertainment. There isn’t any conclusive climax; the film seems to directly go right into a voice-over heavy resolution. On a technical front, Flags is very impressive and Eastwood has created his most visually lush film to date. From a human standpoint, it falters and flags. It’s admirable and attractive but I doubt come Oscar time that this war-weary ode to heroism will have many followers.
Nate’s Grade: B
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Running with Scissors (2006)
Ever since author James Frey imploded into a million little pieces, the memoir has come under intense scrutiny. At issue is the validity of the written word, whether these people are being honest as they recount their tortured yet inevitably redemptive lives. What is the difference between nonfiction and memoir, and does it implicitly imply personal bias? Running with Scissors is the 2002 best-selling book detailing the bizarre childhood of Augusten Burroughs. It’s a book with lots of out-there claims but they’re all held in check by Burroughs’ tart observation and witty writing. When translated to the silver screen, Running with Scissors loses credibility without the author’s voice. I doubt many people going in cold will even believe what they’re seeing.
In the 1970s, Augusten (Joseph Cross) is a gay teen growing up in the care of his alcoholic father (Alec Baldwin) and his deeply delusional, bipolar, wannabe poet mother (Annette Benning). When their marriage hits one of its many slags they seek out a therapist, Dr. Finch (Bryan Cox). He has a room he dubs his “masturbatorium,” a resemblance to Santa Claus, and a family just as whacked as he is. His oldest daughter, Hope (Gwyneth Paltrow), helps him in his practice and thinks that pets talk to her, even from beyond the grave. Natalie (Evan Rachel Wood) is the rebellious daughter who likes to play doctor via electric shock therapy. Agnes Finch (Jill Clayburgh) is the matriarch of this cracked family that also enjoys eating some dog kibble here and there. When Augusten’s mother signs over adoption papers he becomes the reluctant newest member of this dysfunctional family.
The trouble with translating a book is that you lose the author’s voice and commentary. Running with Scissors maintains the horrifying living conditions for Augusten and the stable of oddballs, but lost is the author’s snappy humor that carried him through this tumultuous time. It’s definitely weird but it’s far from engaging. Without the wit and dark humor from Augusten’s voice we’re left with a series of loosely bandaged scenes about crazy characters and crazy anecdotes, little of which contains further importance. This is a fan of the book talking here, and I’m afraid that the film adaptation has heightened some of the weaknesses of the book, namely the loose storyline. When pieced together as a film, Running with Scissors can become slightly tiresome and overly reliant on background details. The film treats its wild, kitschy production design and 70s nostalgia as a character on par with anyone. It makes for great production design, true to the spirit of the book, but also serves as a narrative distraction. Too much attention seems to be put on getting things to look right than getting the screenplay to feel right.
Without the author’s voice the results lose credibility. It’s funny to see a Christmas tree up year round, and it’s funny when Dr. Finch is convinced God is communicating to him through his bowel movements, but it all just comes off as another joke like the art direction and nothing more. When fully added together without any sense of pathos, it all seems like a joke. The subplot involving Augusten’s sexual relationship with a much older schizophrenic patient (Joseph Fiennes) seems mishandled without much insight. Running with Scissors presents all examples of dangerous, sometimes illegal, behavior and doesn’t bat an eye, nor does it pass judgment. While this may irk some and seem irresponsible it’s just another case of little mattering. Running with Scissors, as an adaptation, presents little of consequence.
Director Ryan Murphy also adapted the screenplay and knows a thing or two about dysfunction and trashiness, having created the risky TV show Nip/Tuck. His adaptation has a blunted feel, but it also seems too broad. Then again, maybe only fans of the book would notice. He has a good feel for his actors and can stage some nice shot selections, but man, someone needs to slap his hand away from the AM radio. Running with Scissors is crammed with so many popular 70s tunes that it becomes a crutch, with Murphy hitting the soundtrack button whenever he needs some kind of character catharsis. It doesn’t work and comes across as indulgent and simplistic. There are so many zippy classic pop songs you may think Elton John is owed a writing credit.
The acting is one of the elements that help give life to this adaptation. Benning has been generating Oscar buzz for her deeply self-involved portrayal of a mom held hostage by her illness. Benning digs deep and displays a comic range of absurd behavior and wild paranoia. She’s all over the place and you can’t help but loathe her, that is, if you ever take her seriously. But then, once overly medicated, she gives an entirely secondary performance as an emotionless zombie, and we feel a sliver of sympathy, a true surprise. It’s a good, meaty role, however, I actually think Clayburgh gives the more Oscar-worthy performance. In a lot of ways she’s resigned to her fate and yet manages to be the gauzy heart of the picture. She tells me more with her wrinkles than Benning does in her gesticulating outbursts.
The rest of the cast work admirably. Cross is our focal point of the story and does a fine job of, essentially, gawking and looking perplexed. He’s like a blank, gangly canvas, and I wonder what else Cross is capable of than a performance built around indignant reactions. Wood is developing into a lovely adult actress and has some of the best foul-mouthed lines. It’s just nice to see Paltrow in a movie again. Baldwin has transformed from leading man into incredibly versatile supporting actor that excels as comedic lunkheads. Cox remains one of my favorite character actors of all time. There’s nothing this man cannot do. The actors all do a good job of filling out their zany characters while leaving their own imprint.
The issue with Running with Scissors is that when you strip away the author’s caustic voice, then the movie strains credibility, even with the knowledge that it?s based on a personal memoir. The movie gets all the wackiness but misses out on some of the finer points and humor that helped save Augusten from his unorthodox housing. The story feels dulled and stretched too broad, and yet it still manages to be intermittently entertaining despite these flaws. The actors range from good to great and the art direction is fantastic, even if Murphy expects it to do more work than his screenplay. Running with Scissors isn’t as nervy, engaging, or provocative as its source material. Then again little else is. Consider the film Running with Safety Scissors.
Nate’s Grade: B-
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The Devil Wears Prada (2006)
One part fantasy, one part incisive satire on the fashion industry, The Devil Wears Prada, on paper, may not be more than another formulaic entry where a young innocent gets caught up in the temptations of power and influence. I know little about the fashion industry other than what I can gleam from TV’s insanely watchable Project Runway and even I was charmed. Andrea (Anne Hathaway) is an idealistic journalism student paying the bills working as the assistant to Runway magazine’s ferocious editor in chief, Miranda (Meryl Streep). Andrea’s plain style of dress draws sneers and snickers from her rail-thin, nose-raising colleagues, and some smart snark from Miranda, who always seems to eviscerate people without raising the timber of her voice. The movie is typical with its rise-and-fall power structure, but even though it may be lightweight, The Devil Wears Prada is lots of fluffy fun, and all signs of life point to Streep. It’s almost a foregone conclusion that you’ll get a worthy Streep performance, but she’s totally unleashed in The Devil Wears Prada. Every time she sweeps into a scene she commands attention and steals the movie. We’re all just living in this woman’s world on borrowed time, and she knows it. Streep is in grand comedic form, dominating the movie with glares; just an inching of her facial expression can cause titters. It’s a juicy role and, mark my words, the most Oscar-nominated actress in history is going to get another nom for this performance. Hathaway proves to hold her own as well beyond those dark doe-eyes and cherry stem lips. The movie starts to drag in a third act trip to Paris, and Andrea’s empathy seems to get a bit out of tune (she feels worse about being better at her job than a co-worker than missing her boyfriend’s birthday). The Devil Wears Prada is an enjoyable, easily digestible piece of high-gloss fluff elevated by Streep’s dominating turn as a fashion lioness.
Nate’s Grade: B
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The Da Vinci Code (2006)
Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code has been a best selling novel for three years running. Continents of trees have been felled to produce the 50 million published copies worldwide. Brown’s novel details a centuries long cover-up of some crucial background on Jesus Christ, as well as certain omissions about the role of women in Jesus’ discipleship. The book has been condemned by Christian watchdog groups as heresy, never mind that it is clearly labeled “Fiction.” Debunking fiction is simply redundant. Now Hollywood has adapted The Da Vinci Code into a massive movie, directed by Ron Howard. I must be one of eight who have not read the book, so I entered the theater with little expectation and no idea where the story would take me. Is this a great threat to the Christian church, as some argue, or is it just another dime-store thriller that lucked into becoming a national phenomenon?
Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) is a Harvard professor of symbolism lecturing in Paris. He’s called in by a police captain (Jean Reno) about a local murder. The curator for the famous Louvre museum has been killed and his death leads to a series of coded clues about a deeper conspiracy involving Leonardo Da Vinci. Sophie (Audrey Tautou) is an investigator, and the granddaughter of the museum curator. She helps Robert escape and the two of them set off on an adventure through France and England, finding clues that lead them closer to the location of the Holy Grail. They get help from Leigh Teabing (Ian McKellen), an old friend of Roberts that has his own theories about what the Catholic Church may be so desperate to keep hush-hush. All the while Silas (Paul Bettany), an albino monk, is on the warpath to dispatch all who know too much, including Robert and Sophie.
There are just so many harebrained, hokey moments in The Da Vinci Code that can rip you right from the movie. Why does Sophie have to pay someone to leave a park bench when she and Robert can just walk out of earshot? Why does a bank teller, with his own devious intentions, drive Sophie and Robert to safety and then threaten them at gunpoint? Surely letting them be captured by the police would have served his needs better. Oh, the bank also has a payable escape clause, like it was a Scooby-Doo mansion. But the hokiest moment comes in the opening minutes. The museum curator, an old man who couldn’t hobble away from his attacker, gets shot in the gut, a quite painful place for a bullet to lodge itself. So he’s fatally shot in the stomach, but the man still has time to scribble coded messages on three separate paintings at different points in the museum, strip down, pose, write a message on the floor and a symbol on his chest. And remember, he’s an old man on top of all this. It’s like he had a checklist he pulled out in case he was ever mortally wounded at the Louvre.
The characters aren’t any better. There’s little to any depth to these people and most of them are irrational stock roles. The Jean Reno cop character is laughable in how doggedly he’s convinced Robert is his man. Apparently, a priest told the cop Robert confessed. Case closed? Perhaps the cop, in his furtive rush to judgment, should do some outside research. The museum curator?s time of death, something any crime scene tech could denote, would prove that Robert would be ruled out, given that the man was giving a lecture in front of hundreds of alibis. That’s verifiable science, but no matter. Would not a place as heavily trafficked as the Louvre, with so many priceless pieces of art, have security cameras? I think that alone would tell you who murdered the museum curator. These details make the Reno character stupid and unbelievable. The police work hasn’t been this sloppy since the Police Academy saga.
There’s a late scene where a character addresses another and more or less says, “No one will suspect us, my partner. Let us split our winnings together. I will take your identity to my grave. What? Yes I will take a drink from your flask you’re offering me but not drinking from yourself.” The film could not hit you over the head harder with what is to come. I’d expect these kinds of half-hearted character turns from a rote made-for-TV thriller, but The Da Vinci Code has too much intended intellectual prestige to wallow in this manner.
This is not a good film adaptation. This isn’t structured like a thriller, let alone a movie. There?s no sense of momentum and the story is really an ongoing series of mini-climaxes, sputtering out to no payoff. Puzzle-solving and word games can work on the page, with the reader feeling like they’re right along, but onscreen it cannot work in a story of images. Howard highlights certain letters a la A Beautiful Mind, but then it simply becomes less a puzzle and more just witnessing how a character’s mind breaks down the code, nothing more. As a thriller, Brown seems to do just enough to push his narrative further, but he frequently writes himself into a corner and relies on plot contrivances to save his ass. There’s a scene at Leigh Teabing’s mansion involving a gun standoff, and how does Brown get his characters out of it? By conveniently having a bird fly and distract the evil gun-bearing monk. Talk about a cheat. The Da Vinci Code‘s lame behavioral explanations and short cuts are expected in a rote thriller, but Da Vinci doesn’t want to be seen as one.
But that’s the fundamental error of The Da Vinci Code: it wants to have it both ways. The film, and I’d judge that the novel as well, wants you to shut your brain off and swallow these trite lapses in judgment and reality, forgiving the movie for zero character development and polluting the narrative with stupid genre stock roles, but then it also wants you to pay close attention and activate your brain to untangle the origins of symbols, conspiracies, and church doctrine. This flick was destined to fail at birth. You can’t be a brainy thriller and fill the story with hokey moments and lapses in thought, and likewise you can’t be an enjoyably straight forward thriller if you bookend all your action sequences with talky sit-downs to explain the minutia of your story. The Da Vinci Code is thusly pulled in two directions and grinds its gears to the very end.
This is not a very entertaining flick, in fact is nearly put me to sleep a half dozen times. The Da Vinci Code has tiny bursts of action, and most are easily swept away before the viewer can get a grip. These moments are then succeeded by lengthy, ponderous sessions of heavy exposition. It’s like characters will breathe a sigh of relief at another ludicrous escape and then say, “Well, now let’s discuss in detail some more convoluted theories.” The dialogue reeks, and characters spout plot points whenever they’re needed. The conspiracy doesn’t even make sense. Why would the Church protect a secret that could supposedly destroy its hierarchy? If Jesus was not divine then what difference does it make to go after relatives 2000 years removed? And if Jesus did have heirs would there not be thousands in 2000 years time, not one convenient individual? Even The Da Vinci Code‘s ending seems to soft peddle its “dangerous” message, where Robert, after learning all he has, says it’s all about what you believe.
If it wasn’t for Bettany and McKellen I really would have nodded off. Silas is by far the most interesting character in the whole film, and the only one with a penetrable personality. A deeply religious albino killer monk is a great character, and Bettany makes him scary but also frightfully sympathetic. I was rooting for Silas to knock off the film’s heroes and go on a better adventure of his own. McKellen is handed most of the monologues and he gives his character all the gravitas needed. Thank God for these two actors, because Hanks is miscast and Tautou isn’t nearly as endearing as her work with Jean-Pierre Jeunet. There’s a really good international cast assembled for The Da Vinci Code and the movie manages to mishandle most of them.
The Da Vinci Code played out on the big screen is ponderous, talky, boring, poorly adapted and poorly written. Some things work better on a page than onscreen, and I guess if this is the final product than the whole damn things works better on the page. The story is brimming with lame, hokey moments you’d see in a lazy TV thriller, but then the story also wants to talk you to death with its convoluted storyline. The action sequences are brief, the dialogue is smothered by lengthy exposition, and the plot just isn’t that entertaining. The cast is mostly wasted in thankless stock roles. So let me get this straight. After seeing The Da Vinci Code, the biggest threat the Christian church is facing is … bad movies? I think they’ll be alright.
Nate’s Grade: C-
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Thank You for Smoking (2006)
As soon as I saw a trailer for Thank You for Smoking I was in love. I found the book for cheap and read it with months to spare before the film reached my local theater. Admittedly, my expectations were high because the book was wonderful, and Thank You for Smoking as a movie is equally wonderful and a very good film adaptation.
This is a wickedly funny satire that skewers all sides in the political debate about Big Tobacco, and the film doesn’t take a stand, which is refreshing. It has a firm grip on its humor and gleefully gives its finger to political correctness. There?s a lunch group called the M.O.D. (Merchants of Death) squad where reps for Alcohol, Firearms, and Tobacco, of course, argue over whose product is harder to spin. It’s likely the snort-because-you-can’t-believe-they-said-that movie of the year. The tar-black humor in Thank You for Smoking rolls off so casually. This is a comedy that respects the intelligence of its audience and doesn’t dumb down its barbs or its satire. Aaron Eckhart was born to play the role of Nick Naylor, tobacco’s master spin artist and public charlatan. Naylor is conniving, slippery, and yet immensely likable not in spite of these traits but because of them. Eckhart is downright charming and you can see how he could dupe a nation, even if he’s only doing it for the challenge. Thank You for Smoking has one of the finest assembled casts in a long time, and every member fires on all cylinders. This is a film brimming with confidence and it’s evident with every frame. You almost might feel guilty for wanting to capture a contact buzz from how polished, assured and witty the flick is.
I never thought I’d say so but it sure looks like adapter/director Jason Reitman has a far more promising future right now than his dad, Ivan. Jason, the son, keeps the movie brisk, packed with characters, subplots, jokes, and a visual whimsy. This is a terrific adaptation of a terrific book, and Reitman really hones in on the mechanics of debate and lobbyist practices with aplomb. A scene where Nick teaches his adoring son the tricks of debate with ice cream is outstanding. Thank You for Smoking crackles with dialogue to die for, like Nick’s boss BR (J.K. Simmons) saying, “We sell cigarettes. They’re cool, and addictive, and available — the job is practically done for us.” My only complaints with the film, besides that it’s too short at just 90 minutes, is the manufactured danger seems a bit too slight and too easily overcome. Nick quite simply vanquishes whatever threat his reporter sex buddy Heather (Katie Holmes) posed. Otherwise, Thank You for Smoking is a superb movie all around and there’s no reason you shouldn’t see it. Take the hit.
Nate’s Grade: A
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Freedomland (2006)
There’s one thing I’m going to remember about Freedomland more than anything — seeing this movie cost me about $300. Allow me to explain. Upon returning home from seeing this terrible film, I received an e-mail from a friend alerting me that a secret code had been floating around the Internet. This code was to be used at Amazon.com, and when punched in at the check-out, your order would be free as long as it totaled over 80 dollars. Just as I was about to check out with over $300 of goods the window closed and the code was no longer working. If I had not seen Freedomland then I would have gotten this news earlier and would have been able to obtain my booty. Alas, I did see Freedomland, a drama that attempts to shed light on racial woes. Movie mogul Joe Roth, the head of Revolutions Studios, doesn’t direct movies fairly often and when he does they’re not great (America’s Sweethearts, Christmas with the Kranks). I knew exactly what I was getting into when I entered the theater; I just didn’t know it was going to cost me $300.
In 1999 New Jersey , Brenda (Julianne Moore) walked dazed and bloodies through an urban neighborhood to a hospital. She tells detective Lorenzo Council (Samuel L. Jackson) that she was the victim of a car jacking while she was traveling through an urban area. She says a black man threw her from her car and drove off. Brenda’s four-year-old son Cody is still in the car. This sets the neighboring communities abuzz. Brenda’s hot-headed cop brother (Ron Eldard) is ready to turn the black projects and high rises upside down, unafraid of whom he may harass. The black community is in an uproar over the treatment, succinctly pointing out that many black children go missing but the news vans and police cars only come out when the missing happens to be white (for further proof, look to the still ongoing coverage of Natalee Halloway). Karen (Edie Falco) runs a team of mothers who volunteer nationwide to help find missing children. Lorenzo has his own doubts about Brenda and the details of her story.
Plain and simple, Freedomland just does not have enough story to justify its existence. It goes nowhere and practically drifts to its long-awaited conclusion. You’ll see the light at the end of the tunnel around the halfway mark, and then Freedomland limps to its foreseeable ending, devoid of any twists and turns that aren’t telegraphed a mile away. It got so pathetic that I was actually hoping, against all odds, there’d be some gonzo M. Night Shyamalan-esque twist at the very end to jar me out of my complacency. No such luck. The marketing folks of Freedomland seemed to advertise a twist ending, which is hard to believe since everything plays out exactly like you?d first suspect. Moore’s overacting hysteria makes the audience doubt her from the start; plus the fact that Brenda’s like, “Oh yeah, I almost forgot, my SON is in the hijacked car.”
This is a movie so mishandled by Roth that every moment feels false, and when it doesn’t feel false it feels trite and awkward. Take a moment when Lorenzo takes Brenda to an empty urban high-rise. He?s got her pinned in a corner, very literally, and is pressing to know if she killed her kid. The framing of the scene would almost suggest something quasi-romantic, with Lorenzo leaning very closely into Brenda and his arm against the wall beside her. At the very least, it?s really intrusive. And then at the end of Brenda’s “he was all I got” monologue the two actors seem to just stare at each other, like they’re mentally waiting to hear the word “Cut.” The weird framing and the editing make the scene feel amateurish.
But Roth doesn’t stop there. Freedomland itself is a gigantic mislead, and the old abandoned building has about five minutes of total screen time. It’s not enough to even qualify as a red herring, let alone justify it as a movie title. Apparently, this building has been rotting in the woods for decades, and yet Lorenzo lets a large volunteer search party just trounce around inside. I’m pretty sure any policeman worth their salt would need to get a team to make sure the building was structurally sound before letting civilians snoop around in a potential crime scene. That’s not enough stupidity. Later while the people are exploring the Freedomland building, Karen says the floorboards may give way at any moment, and then she leaves Brenda by herself with said unreliable floorboards. Do these people even understand what they’re doing?
Freedomland seems so message-hungry and preoccupied with making some Big Statement that it forgets to be entertaining. Roth is clueless how to juggle all his plot elements, letting the racial tensions turn both sides into offensive stereotypes. The white cops have short fuses and have no hesitation to assault innocent black people (they’d be suspended and then reviewed). The black community in Freedomland, while seeming to have nothing better to do than assemble and shout at the police, stir up their community ills whenever the plot deems it necessary. Some black people are seen setting the community’s own property on fire, swept up in the rising air of a riot. Rafik, a youth given a lot of foreshadowing, instigates the riot and an entire wall of angry black faces proceeds, never mind that this brash decision results in many innocent people being beaten. The movie seems to say that all blacks are victims or instigators. Freedomland is so earnest to be earnest that it misses the mark when it comes to all the details. How else to explain why the film is inexplicably set in 1999. Someone didn’t tell the film’s costume designer, because Rafik is wearing a “G-Unit” shirt, a rap group that didn’t come into light until after 50 Cent’s commercial rise in 2003.
Perhaps the film’s ending is Roth?s biggest misfire. Lorenzo visits Cody?s shallow grave, now festooned with flowers and personal messages. He reads one that says, basically, “Cody’s death made us all look beyond our differences and realize what we have in common, the ability to feel sad.” What? Is Roth actually justifying the death of a child and subsequent racial fallout as being medicine for society’s ills? This seems ridiculous to me, especially after sitting through two hours of a movie where no one came together, unless you’re talking about the human connection of fist-to-face.
The acting in Freedomland is so unrestrained and shows another of Roth?s directorial weaknesses. Moore, always so reliable a performer, goes out of her mind and gives what should be the worst performance of her career. She’s so over the top, so Looney tunes, so wildly out of control with no bearing, she’s practically bouncing off the walls; it’s kind of embarrassing to watch. Her hysterical theatrics provide several moments of unintentional laughter, particularly a moment where Lorenzo is interrogating her and she just blurts out, “I love you.” Freedomland does her no service by handing her some dreadful dialogue and drawn out monologues. I think it may be time for Moore to star in something a little happier instead of more movies where she’s predominantly crying or grieving. And is it me, or does it seem like Moore has a habit of losing her kids in movies (maybe she should start tethering them to her waist)? Note to Julianne Moore: just because you get to cry and scream doesn’t mean you should take the role. Did you actually read the script to Freedomland?
Jackson, left directionless with an underdeveloped character, reverts to his standard operating procedure when it comes to authority figures … namely staring and yelling. Lorenzo has some character traits (asthma, a son in prison) that are either dropped or have no payoff or insight toward his character. He?s a cop in the middle of it all, and yet Freedomland feels like just having Jackson as an actor should cover the characterization part. At this point, Jackson can do these roles in his sleep.
Falco, far more subdued than everyone else in a very yell-heavy movie, leaves the biggest impression and gives the movie life when she’s onscreen. Falco’s character is what Freedomland should have been based around, not Moore’s shrieking loon of a mother. Falco has the film’s only great moment, effortlessly shifting a story about her own loss and need for closure back to Brenda. The patience and control Falco has in that scene only reminds me how much I need The Sopranos back on the air.
Freedomland is so starved to say something grandiose about racial tensions that it neglects being entertaining. When the movie is entertaining, it’s mainly because of the wild, embarrassing overacting and the nonsensical human behavior. At its worst, Freedomland is offensive to cops and blacks and moviegoers in general with working grey matter, at its best Freedomland is a muddled, incompetently directed movie that drifts unchallenged toward its expected and welcomed end. Roth should leave directing to people that have a better feel for taking control of actors, material, and editing. For those that said the racially-charged Crash lacked tact, I invite them to take a trip to Freedomland. It’s trite, it’s dull, it’s funny when it’s not meant to be, and it’s one of the worst films of 2006.
Nate’s Grade: D+
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