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Secretary (2002)
Secretary is a new romantic comedy with a few kinks to it. Its actually the most romantic S&M movie ever. It’s the first S&M romantic comedy since maybe Garry Marshall’s disastrous 1994 Exit to Eden. Im still trying to get the image of Rosie O’Donnell in a bondage mask out of my ongoing nightmares.
Lee Halloway (Maggie Gyllenhaal) is fresh from a stop at a mental institution for her hazardous habit of cutting herself to feel relief. Her overbearing mother stashes the entire kitchen cutlery in a locked cabinet. The sheltered Lee resorts back to a kiddy make-up box stashed under her home bed. Instead of colorful brushes and arrays of lipstick, she has a selection of sharp objects. Lee goes job hunting to step back from her habit, and is hired as a secretary to E. Edward Gray (James Spader). He is a rigid taskmaster who delights in pointing out typographical errors with his red marker, his weapon of choice. Gray enjoys his dominance and Lee complies, even if its routing through garbage. He ticks away Lee’s flaws like a checklist of annoyance but also appears to have genuine concern for her. When he notices her wounds Gray confronts her and convinces Lee to stop cutting herself.
The turning point arrives when Gray orders Lee into his office one afternoon. He commands her to bend over his desk and then delivers a sound spanking. Lee stares at her purple rump with fascination, like something has been awakened inside her. Soon enough Lee purposely makes typos so she can re-assume her spanking position.
Maggie Gyllenhaal is a cinematic find with a fearless and breathtaking performance that is at once delicate, nervous, self-controlled, seductive and delightful. Gyllenhaal, with her heart-like face and pert lips, radiates star quality. She allows the audience into Lee’s head and we quickly fall in love with this peculiar yet charming heroine. If there is any justice in this world Gyllenhaal should at least get an Oscar nomination (she didn’t). Spader can do this left-of-center creepy character stuff in his sleep.
Secretary on the surface may seem like a fetish flick but it’s no different than boy (sadist) meets girl (masochist) and falls in love. Director Steven Shainberg treads carefully around serious subject matter, like Lee’s self-mutilation, to focus on these two very special characters. Secretary isn’t making any loud statements on sadomasochism or post-feminism, it’s just showing us that S&M is the route these two people take to find true love. It doesn’t judge them for their unconventional tastes and neither should we. This is one of the finest romances in recent memory and it seems to come from one of the most unlikely places.
Sadomasochism has been predominantly shown involving pain or some leather-masked madman evoking torture. Secretary may be the film that shows there can be pleasures with pain. Some people regard what Lee and Edward do as sick, perverted, or downright wrong. Secretary is a foot in the door to get people to understand what willing sadomasochism really is about. We all have fetishes and interests, and S&M is the number one fetish truth be told. This isn’t your everyday romance.
Obviously, this is a movie that will not appeal to everyone. The relationship between our leads is surprisingly complex but gentle and even sweet (if thats the proper word for an S&M romantic comedy). Secretary shows that it truly takes different strokes and, despite an overly silly ending, is the most pleasing romance of the year. Youll never look at red felt pens the same.
Nate’s Grade: A
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Human Nature (2002)
Screenwriter Charlie Kaufman jumped on to Hollywood’s A-list when his feature debut Being John Malkovich was unleashed in 1999. Malkovich was a brilliant original satire on identity, be it celebrity or sexual, and was filled with riotous humor but also blended beautifully with a rich story that bordered on genius that longer it went. Now Kaufman tries his hand expounding at the meaning of civilization versus animal instinct in Human Nature. As one character tells another, “Just remember, don’t do whatever your body is telling you to do and you’ll be fine.”
Lila (Patricia Arquette) is a woman burdened with excessive body hair ever since she was old enough for a training bra (with the younger version played by Disney’s Lizzie McGuire). Lila feels ashamed by her body and morbidly humiliated. She runs away to the forest to enjoy a life free from the critical eyes of other men. Here she can commune with nature and feel that she belongs.
Nathan (Tim Robbins) is an anal retentive scientist obsessed with etiquette. As a young boy Nathan was sent to his room for picking the wrong fork to eat his meal with. He is now trying his best to teach mice table manners so he can prove that if etiquette can be taught to animals it can be ingrained toward humanity.Lila and Nathan become lovers when she ventures back into the city, eliminating her body hair for now, because of something infinitely in human nature – hormones. The two of them find a form of content, as neither had known the intimate touch of another human being.“Puff” (Rhys Ifans) is a grown man living his life in the woods convinced by his father that he is an ape. One day while walking through the woods Nathan and Lila discover the ape-man and have differing opinions on what should be done with him. Nathan is convinced that he should be brought into civilization and be taught the rules, etiquette and things that make us “human.” It would also be his greatest experiment. Lila feels that he should maintain his freedom and live as he does in nature, how he feels he should.
What follows is a bizarre love triangle over the reeducation of “Puff,” as Nathan’s slinky French assistant Gabrielle (Miranda Otto) names him. Lila is torn over the treatment of Puff and also her own society induced shame of her abundant amount of body hair. Nathan feels like he is saving Puff from his wayward primal urges, as he himself becomes a victim of them when he starts having an affair with Gabrielle. Puff, as he tells a congressional committee, was playing their game so he could find some action and “get a piece of that.”
Kaufman has written a movie in the same vein as Being John Malkovich but missing the pathos and sadly, the humor. ‘Human Nature’ tries too hard to be funny and isn’t nearly as funny as it thinks it is. Many quirky elements are thrown out but don’t have the same sticking power as Kaufman’s previous film. It’s a fine line between being quirky just for quirky’s sake (like the atrocious Gummo) and turning quirky into something fantastic (like Rushmore or Raising Arizona). Human Nature is too quirky for its own good without having the balance of substance to enhance the weirdness further. There are many interesting parts to this story but as a whole they don’t ever seriously gel.
Debut director Michel Gondry cut his teeth in the realm of MTV making surreal videos for Bjork and others (including the Lego animated one for The White Stripes). He also has done numerous commercials, most infamously the creepy-as-all-hell singing navels Levi ad. Gondry does have a vision, and that vision is “Copy What Spike Jonze Did As Best as Possible.” Gondry’s direction never really registers, except for some attractive time shifts, but feels more like a rehash of Jonze’s work on; yep you guessed it, Being John Malkovich.
Arquette and Robbins do fine jobs in their roles with Arquette given a bit more, dare I say it more, humanity. Her Lila is trapped between knowing what is true to herself and fitting in to a society that tells her that it’s unhealthy and wrong. Ifans has fun with his character and lets it show. The acting in Human Nature is never really the problem.
While Human Nature is certainly an interesting film (hey it has Arquette singing a song in the buff and Rosie Perez as an electrologist) but the sum of its whole is lacking. It’s unfair to keep comparing it to the earlier Malkovich but the film is trying too hard to emulate what made that movie so successful. Human Nature just doesn’t have the gravity that could turn a quirky film into a brilliant one.
Nate’s Grade: C+
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Mulholland Drive (2001)
Mulholland Dr. has had a long and winding path to get to the state it is presented today. In the beginning it was 120 minutes of a pilot for ABC, though it was skimmed to 90 for the insertion of commercials. But ABC just didn’t seem to get it and declined to pick up David Lynch’s bizarre pilot. Contacted by the French producers of Lynch’s last film, The Straight Story, it was then financed to be a feature film. Lynch went about regathering his cast and filming an additional twenty minutes of material to be added to the 120-minute pilot. And now Mulholland Dr. has gone on to win the Best Director award at Cannes and Best Picture by the New York Film Critics Association.
Laura Harring plays a woman who survives a car crash one night. It appears just before a speeding car full of reckless teens collided into her limo she was intended to be bumped off. She stumbles across the dark streets of Hollywood and finds shelter in an empty apartment where she rests. Betty Elms (Naomi Watts) is a young girl that just got off the bus to sunny California with aspirations of being a big time movie star. She enters her aunt’s apartment to find a nude woman (Harring) in the shower. She tells Betty her name is Rita after glancing at a hanging poster of Rita Hayworth. Rita is suffering from amnesia and has no idea who she is, or for that fact, why her purse is full of thousands of dollars. Betty eagerly wants to help Rita discover who she is and they set off trying to unravel this mystery.
Across town, young hotshot director Adam Kesher (Justin Theroux) is getting ready to go into production for his new film. He angers his mob producers by refusing to cast their chosen girl for his movie. After some harassment, threats, and a visit by an eyebrow-less cowboy assassin (God bless you David Lynch), he relents.
In the meanwhile, people are tracking the streets looking for Rita. Betty and Rita do some detective work and begin amassing clues to her true identify. As they plunge further into their investigation the two also plunge into the roles of lovers. Rita discovers a mysterious blue box and key in her possession. After a night out with Betty she decides to open it, and just when she does and the audience thinks it has a hold on the film, the camera zooms into the abyss of the box and our whole world is turned upside down.
David Lynch has made a meditation on dreams, for that is at the heart of Mulholland Dr. His direction is swift and careful and his writing is just as precise. The noir archetypes are doing battle with noir expectations. The lesbian love scenes could have been handled to look like late night Cinemax fluff, but instead Lynch’s finesse pays off in creating some truly erotic moments. Despite the population of espresso despising mobsters, wheelchair bound dwarfs, and role-reversal lesbians, the audience knows that it is in hands that they can trust. It’s Lynch back to his glorious incomprehensible roots.
Watts is the true breakthrough of Lynch’s casting and she will surely be seen in more films. Watts has to play many facets of possibly the same character, from starry-eyed perky Nancy Drew to a forceful and embittered lesbian lover.
One scene stands out as a perfect example of the talent Watts possesses. Betty has just been shuffled off to an audition for a film and rehearsing with Rita all morning. She’s introduced to her leathery co-star and the directors await her to play out the audition scene of two kids and their forbidden love. As soon as the scene begins Betty vanishes and is totally inhabited by the spirit of her character. She speaks her lines in a breathy, yet whisper-like, voice running over with sensuality but also elements of power. In this moment the characters know, as the audience does, that Betty and Naomi Watts are born movie stars.
It’s not too difficult for a viewer to figure out what portions of the film are from the pilot and what were shot afterwards. I truly doubt if ABC’s standards and practices allows for lesbian sex. The pilot parts seem to have more sheen to them and simpler camera moves, nothing too fancy. The additional footage seems completely opposite and to great effect. Mulholland Dr. has many plot threads that go nowhere or are never touched upon again, most likely parts that were going to be reincorporated with the series.
The truly weirdest part of Mulholland Drive is that the film seems to be working best when it actually is still the pilot. The story is intriguing and one that earns its suspense, mystery, and humor that oozes from this noir heavy dreamscape. The additional twenty minutes of story could be successfully argued one of two ways. It could be said it’s there just to confound an audience and self-indulgent to the good story it abandons. It could also be argued that the ending is meticulously thought out and accentuates the 120 minutes before it with more thought and understanding.
Mulholland Dr. is a tale that would have made an intriguing ongoing television series complete with ripe characters and drama. However, as a movie it still exceeds in entertainment but seems more promising in a different venue.
Nate’s Grade: B
Reviewed 20 years later as part of the “Reviews Re-View: 2001” article.
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Freddy Got Fingered (2001)
The beauty of Tom Green (if you’ll cal it such) works in the realm of television. His bizarre humor and meddling nuisance on the streets worked in a “Can’t believe he’s doing this” way. He thrives in this environment where he can wreck havoc amongst the unknowing. Take him out of this environment into a scripted venture where people are acting against him, and the reality is killed along with why it was funny in the first place. It’s not so much funny that Tom Green can hump dead animals on camera, it’s so much funny that he’ll do it in front of bystanders.
As it stands, Freddy Got Fingered is plot-less. It is basically Green doing one weird and bizarre antic after another with little relation to anything. It’s basically a meandering mess, almost like an abstract artist’s work if that artist were insane. Freddy Got Fingered is Green’s attempt at cinematic gross-out stardom. Sure, he does things that would be considered in poor taste but they are scripted and lose their appeal. Green guts an animal and wears its skin like a poncho, he bites the umbilical cord of a birth, he even eroticises a horse and aids in its… release. But all the charm is gone when it’s Green just doing zany things in a closed environment. What is the fun of seeing people do scripted reactions to Green’s antics? He needs to be in the real world, he needs to piss people off, he NEEDS reality. A movie will do no justice to Tom Green and this one surely does not.
Nate’s Grade: F
Reviewed 20 years later as part of the “Reviews Re-View: 2001” article.
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Panic (2000)
The story behind Panic goes something like this. The film was dropped by Artisan because they got test screening results back and apparently it wasn’t what they wanted. After this set-back it was going to be dumped to the wasteland of direct-to-cable like so many other troublesome pictures studios feel would not earn a buck if they were bleeding on the side of the road. After some fighting, particularly from critic Roger Ebert, a production house decided to distribute Panic in a very limited release. So what does this cinematic game of musical chairs mean? It means if you have a chance see this film.
Panic is a story about characters first and foremost. William H. Macy plays the son end of a father-son team of hitmen, with Donald Sutherland as the oppressive patriarch. Macy is a man who is never truly happy, almost like it is an impossibility for him at this point in his life. His wife (Tracey Ullman) is flaky and gives into her paranoia of her hubby having an affair with a younger chickadee. Macy meets an attractive and mysterious ingenue (Neve Campbell) while waiting for therapy. He begins on an obsession he can’t explain and fantasizes about her as the escape and ticket to happiness that is outside his reach.
The acting is as rich as the characters. Macy plays low-key but suits the subservient ghost that his character has become. Sutherland is haunting as the controlling father figure and the flashbacks between him and young Macy are disturbing as he plants his seed of control. Even at age six Macy’s character is referring to his father with “sir” tagged to the end of every sentence.
Neve’s character is the most in depth she’s ever been dealt, though her runner-up is a girl constantly chased by men in black robes with knives. Ullman is a nice presence and the audience really can sympathize with her. The child who plays the son of Macy and Ullman is one of the most adorable child actors I have ever seen. He lights up the screen every time he is present.
The story is brisk at a mere hour and a half. It is written and directed by a former writer of ‘Northern Exposure’ and ‘Homicide’ and the attention to characters shows. The film moves not through plot occurrences but through characters acting. When Macy discovers that the final hit he has to do is on his own therapist (John Ritter) his journey is one involving everyone around him in his life. The strains and pulls on this man are encompassing to watch.
Panic is a glimpse at a quiet movie told about the life of a man caught in his father’s grasp. Macy is a man conditioned to saying “he’s sorry” even if it is not deserved. His character is rich and Panic is a strongly acted gem if you can locate it.
Nate’s Grade: B+
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Snatch (2001)
Snatch is really more of the same for writer/director Guy Richie as he retreats back to his magical land of London gangsters with Dick Tracy-esque names and thick cockney accents intermixing in comically violent and ironic ways. He’s like a more stylized version of Tarantino, if Tarantino ever got to have sex with Madonna. So if you like the niche Richie has trapped himself in for the moment (like myself) then you’ll like Snatch. The film is coursing with energy to spare and never loses its sense of fun, which carries over into audience smiles (at least for me and my gal it did). Brad Pitt is a riot as the hardly intelligible Irish gypsy and part time boxer.
Nate’s Grade: B+
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The Emperor’s New Groove (2000)
Originally The Emperor’s New Groove was a grand Disney formula flick known as The People of the Sun concerning the Aztecs and included six Sting songs. We would have had this “same old same old” if it weren’t for someone who courageously raised their hand and said “Isn’t this stupid?” God bless that person. The original theme was scrapped as well as all the songs excluding one. The patented Disney formula was ditched for a fast pace and zany antics that haven’t been seen from Disney hands since Aladdin.
The central message of Emp’s Groove is still a moral lesson – this one over vanity and self-centeredness. David Spade voices a young prince named Kuzco with no regard for any of his followers. He plans on building a special waterslide by destroying the village of Pancha (John Goodman). Spade’s scheming high priestess Yzma (Eartha Kitt) concocts a potion to kill the Emperor with the aid of her dim-witted but loyal assistant Kronk (Patrick Warbutton). Through a mix-up the potion doesn’t end up killing Kuzco but turning him into a llama. So now alive and trying to regain his throne Kuzco can only find help with Pancha, the one he had wronged earlier.
The vocal talents of the four leads are particularly inspired with Warbutton on a different plane of comedy. Warbutton provides the film’s biggest laughs and is a genuine master of timing and vocal inflections. When Disney sequelizes this straight to video (as they do everything now) I hope it centers on Warbutton’s Kronk character. Kitt is fun in an over-the-top parody and Spade provides delicious sarcasm so simply.
What’s being advertised as hilarity is more or less spotty. Some jokes work but others are full of tedium. There are stretches of tedium that shouldn’t be there for something with “zany antics.” Yet, the 15 minute ending is the best piece of the film with multiple comic payoffs.
The anti-Disney Disney movie is anti enough. the jokes need to come more often and it takes a while to truly get into. It has its moments but The Emperor’s New Groove is not new enough. Although, I’m thankful that we got what we did instead of what we could have.
Nate’s Grade: B-
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The Road to El Dorado (2000)
Tulio (Kevin Kline) and Miguel (Kenneth Branaugh) are two 16th Century Spanish con men who somehow speak in English accents and appear to have a secret gay relationship. I calls ’em as I see ’em people. Through a strange comedy of errors the boys end up marooned on a far off land with a horse in their possession as well as a mysterious map. The map leads to the unfold treasures of the mysterious fable of the city of El Dorado. They partner with a saucy native (Rosie Perez) with hips bigger than shoulders and a pining to be taken away.
Dreamworks has scored big with previous strong ink and paint outings, but El Dorado seems to be a disappointment. At times the banter between Kline and Branaugh is lively and humorous but the energy is never sustained for long. El Dorado lulls unexpectedly quite often. Katzenberg created the very successful Disney animated formula, and still sticks by it regrettably. The Iron Giant showed originality can work, so why is no one listening?!
The animation is surprisingly shoddy at times. The contrast between 3-D and 2-D animation is easily noticeable, unlike the work in Prince of Egypt. Perez seems miscast, what with her Puerto Rican accent, and close to all the characters are poorly underwritten, even the damn horse.
Elton John and Tim Rice buddy up after their successful pairing with the Diz blockbuster The Lion King to unleash wave after wave of senseless drivel. None of the monotonous songs are memorable, or even downright humable. After seeing these pop regurgitation it’s easy to see that everyone makes a bad step. Consider this one.
El Dorado is an animated attempt toward the bumbling road pictures of Hope and Crosby, but this tank is too low on gas for the entire trip.
Nate’s Grade: C+
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Being John Malkovich (1999)
I think I’ll simply surmise the emphasis of this review in one opening sentence: The most refreshingly and exhilarating original movie in years. MTV music video chief royale Spike Jonze directs a modern day fable that is a hallucinatory trip through the looking glass and into man’s thirst for celebrity. While Malkovich is stuffed with enough brilliant gags to kill the Austin Powers franchise, it is also a deeply articulate and insightful piece about the longing for love and fame. The movie is often thought-provoking while side-splitingly hilarious.
I will not spill one lick of Charlie Kaufman’s plot to ensure the viewing audience the pleasure of astute surprise, and there is plenty. Malkovich is the first film in a long time to have just as many unexpected twists and turns in the final 30 minutes as it does in the first 30 minutes. The acting is wonderful consisting of John Cusack’s greasy puppeteer loser, to Cameron Diaz’s frumpy animal loving wife, to Catherine Keener’s man-eating ice queen, to even a wonderful inspired parody of John Malkovich as himself playing himself.
Being John Malkovich isn’t afraid to tackle weighty subjects such as gender identity or the hunger to be somebody, but it never looks down upon the characters or the audience but instead treats each with nurturing respect. The movie is a breeze of fresh air in a field cluttered with too many formulaic fluff appealing to mass audiences and consumer goods. Malkovich is destined to become a cult classic and deservedly so. The flick is a spurt of creative madness bordering on genius that one wonders how it ever made it into release with today’s society and studio heads. God bless you Spike Jonze and you too Charlie Kaufman. Fare thee well.
Nate’s Grade: A
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Fight Club (1999)
Fight Club is a movie that will kick you in your teeth. It’s the adaptation of a sort of anarchist handbook by David Fincher, the man who gave us the grisly masterpiece Se7en. Fincher’s latest re-teaming with Brad Pitt is a disturbingly gritty tale of politics and violence.
Ed Norton plays our un-billed narrator through the harrowing tale of fascist propaganda and anti-social behavior. Norton dwells in a world of cubicles and consumerism. He meets Brad Pitt’s Tyler Durden on a flight and the two instantly connect. Norton moves in with Pitt into something resembling the Munster’s house once his own apartment has exploded. Pitt and Norton find the therapeutic realization through fighting. These fights grow larger and build up into clubs where all the guys are fighting to get in to get their head slammed on concrete. These clubs start turning into neo-fascist soldiers of fortune as they try to ambitiously grow and destroy the reality of consumerism. It kind of spins out from there and never returns back.
David Fincher’s direction is ultra slick and highly stylized. He is one of the most lavish and intriguing visual artists of this decade. He really knows how to pump out excitement and vivid hypnotism from striking images and tones strewn apart every inch of letter-boxed form. Norton has the same commanding presence and magnetic performance that he flashed so brilliantly in last year’s American History X. Norton is the one that runs the emotional gambit and shows just how it should be done. Brad Pitt takes on a role none have seen (Does anyone remember Pitt splicing porn images into children’s films with Legends of the Fall?) and once again proves there’s a calculating and superb actor behind the pretty face. Helena Bonham Carter goes leaping against type to play the bumbling Goth love interest with such charm and humor. And Meat Loaf will really surprise as a pathetic breast enhanced friend to Norton.
Fight Club speaks to a world where men feel they have been robbed of what has historically defined them; a world with Oprah, The English Patient, and self-help groups telling them to cry, be kind, rewind. All of the social consciousness has made some men feel less like their upright ancestors. So Fight Club‘s proposition is that to freely express your emotions you need to either be pummeled into ground round or be the one doing the pummeling. The notion is a tad laughable. Fight Club is a flick with so much on its mind to say that it brisks from topic to topic sometimes not dwelling as much as it could. The twist ending is unnecessary and is something that truly comes out from left field.
Fight Club has been criticized for its promotion of violence, but if anyone actually sees the film the violence is gruesomely repellent. No kid is going to walk out of this and think it would be cool to start a Fight Club in their local suburb. The movie is an interesting mirror to our always-on-the brink commercial society, and its push toward a kinder gentler civilization and its effects on the male psyche. Despite some oddities at the end and some fascistic rhetoric, Fight Club is an exciting blend of suspense, action, and dark humor. Go ahead and break the first rule of Fight Club – tell your friends about the adrenaline kick this movie is.
Nate’s Grade: A
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