Poll Results: Coen Brothers

We have the results for our latest poll that was all about The Coen Brothers (or The Brothers Coen as I like to call them to make 'em sound all Dostoevskyish).

In case you missed it, here was the question: Based on this list of critically acclaimed Coen Brothers movies, which one(s) would you consider to be their best?

And the results are as follows:

Miller's Crossing (34%)
Fargo (29%)
The Big Lebowski (27%)
TIE: No Country for Old Men and Blood Simple (21%)
Raising Arizona (14%)
Barton Fink (13%)
O Brother, Where Art Thou? (11%)

Thanks so much for voting-- you guys have the greatest taste!

Cue Albert Finney's "Danny Boy" scene:

As a huge fan of Miller's Crossing, I was thrilled that it ranked as the best film. For the first several days of the poll, The Big Lebowski was leading the pack but then Fargo picked up some momentum and it became a very close race. Although, I'm surprised that Barton Fink came in second with O Brother earning the fewest votes, I agree with most of the rankings but probably would've placed the Texas Two (No Country & Blood Simple) ahead of Jeff "The Dude" Lebowski. On a related note, thanks for making No Country for Old Men one of my most read reviews and I'd like to especially thank UK's Guardian Unlimited for quoting it as well.

In celebration of the Oscar nominations being announced last week, I thought it would be fun to tie into the awards for the next Film Intuition poll. Looking at five-time nominee, the great Kate Winslet, I'm asking you to choose which Winslet performances were the most deserving of awards. Yes, that's right, although she hasn't walked away with an Oscar yet, audiences have been relishing in her work for more than a decade. For fans of the actress, check out the hilarious BBC HBO series Extras, wherein Kate appears as herself taking the part of a nun in a WWII film to boost her Academy chances but still manages to find the time to step out of character to offer raunchy love advice to one of the extras.

Enjoy the poll!

Cassandra's Dream

Director: Woody Allen

Synonymous in Greek with “she who entangles men,” the name of Greek mythological goddess Cassandra, which is half of the title of Woody Allen’s third UK cinematic venture Cassandra’s Dream, appeared previously in the director’s Greek influenced Mighty Aphrodite. As Wikipedia reported, the character of Cassandra briefly appears saying, “I see disaster. I see catastrophe.” However, the doomed predictions of Cassandra take the form not of a person in his newest thriller but instead of a boat purchased by two brothers in South London at the start of the film, which foreshadows the tragic events to come.

Whether it’s his position working in the family restaurant helping out his ailing father, or with the beautiful waitress he shares a bed with until he feels a need to trade her in, or in his constantly evolving modes of transportation driving posh cars he borrows from the auto body shop where his mechanic brother Terry (Colin Farrell) works, Ian Blaine (Ewan McGregor) is the type of man who’s never satisfied with his lot in life. Everything about Ian seems temporary until he encounters two new ventures he’s decided will be a sure thing—the first is a chance to get his foot in the door by investing in California hotels and the second appears with the arrival of flirtatious and sexually confident actress Angela (Hayley Atwell) whom he rescues with a broken down car on the side of the road, never mind the fact that he has his current date in the front seat of his own borrowed automobile. Playing hard to get makes Ian decide to play even harder in securing her affections and soon he’s decided that his two schemes of love and money go together when he begins to imagine jetting off to California for good with Angela after she teasingly asks him to run away with her one night. In what may have well have been a hypothetical lover’s question, suddenly the plot is propelled forward by Ian who’s determined to make everything work out to his advantage.

His equally determined brother Terry is a dreamer as well, although one whose weakness seems to be for betting in the form of dice, dogs and cards instead of betting on high class hotels and shapely brunettes. When he loses an overwhelming sum in an evening of high stakes poker, he and his brother Ian decide to consult their Uncle Howard (played with sharp cunning and confidence by Tom Wilkinson who excelled at playing the opposite traits in 2007's Michael Clayton). Idolized Howard, the family’s Golden Boy, has become an international success and he’s discussed as the Blaine family savior repeatedly throughout Cassandra's Dream. Family is family, of course and Howard is willing to help out his nephews but his financial assistance comes with an impossibly high price revealed in a tense rain-drenched conversation where the swirling camera manages to catch the viewer feeling just as off-balanced as the two Blaine brothers when they’re given the terms of the murderous agreement.

Of course, the perfect crime is never perfect as the two begin to cope with the perilous arrangement when faced with the prospect of investigating just what the two are capable of in order to realize their ambitions. While at first, I thought that casting tough "man’s man" Farrell as the sensitive heartbreaking Terry and Moulin Rouge, Down With Love star Ewan McGregor as the slick yuppie was a contradictory choice despite the fact that Farrell’s brooding blue collar handsomeness and the seductively polished McGregor physically fit their roles superbly but soon I was so lost in the story, that I actually forgot the actors and their previous credits. I was especially impressed by Farrell who manages to frustrate and win us over all at the same time and the interplay between the two was so devastating that The Big Picture’s Colin Boyd included his belief that “a touch of Lenny and George from Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men can be seen in the performances” at the start of his Cassandra review.

Pulsating with a driving score by Notes on a Scandal composer Philip Glass, the film which comes off the heels of the similarly themed Sidney Lumet ’07 masterpiece Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead seems at first glance to be Allen rehashing the same moral decay and brotherly dynamic he’d explored in Crimes and Misdemeanors or the equally American Tragedy (although set in London, of course) tinged Match Point but as The New York Times wrote, Allen’s “latest excursion to the dark side of human nature, is good enough that you may wonder why he doesn’t just stop making comedies once and for all.” While it’s hard to imagine the world without another Woody Allen comedy, movies like Cassandra’s Dream which are so much richer and prone to philosophical and cinematic debates afterwards prove all of the critics who stated the auteur Allen had overstayed his welcome wrong. Perhaps, like Lumet, with several decades of life experience behind them, they’re finally able to tell the stories that resonate more deeply with them rather than worrying about a younger director’s fixations on box office scores and test audience reactions and filmgoers are lucky enough that they still want to share it through cinema.

The Pallbearer

Director: Matt Reeves

When I first saw The Pallbearer, I remember having a hard time believing that a character in their mid-twenties would have absolutely no memory of someone that was in not just their high school graduating class but supposedly in their circle of friends. Yet, now that I’m in my mid-twenties myself and it’s been less than a decade since graduation, I’m having trouble picturing even a handful of my classmates. Singer John Mayer might call it a “quarter life crisis” or perhaps the human mind can only hold the memory of a certain number of people but whatever the case, it’s this predicament magnified tenfold that twenty-five year old Tom Thompson (David Schwimmer) finds himself in near the beginning of Matt Reeves’ film, The Pallbearer.

Aimless Tom is trying to find his niche in the career world although it probably isn’t helping his plight any when he tells prospective employers in interviews that he hopes he’ll get the job so that he can move out of his mother’s house and get a place of his own. The sole single friend in his trio of handsome, successful, and smooth Scott (Michael Vartan) who lives with Cynthia (Toni Collette) and his engaged friend Brad (Michael Rapaport) whose fiancé Lauren (Bitty Schram) is clingy, nagging and controlling, Tom is given his own second chance for love when the girl that got away—Julie De Marco (Gwyneth Paltrow)-- his hopeless high school band crush returns to town. It’s around this same time that he is alerted by blonde, sexy, Ruth Abernathy (Barbara Hershey) that her son has passed away and as the deceased’s best friend, Tom is asked to be a pallbearer and deliver the eulogy. The catch is that Tom has no memory whatsoever of Ruth’s son but out of politeness, pity, and guilt decides to go along with it and although the intentions are good, the deception grows even more cringe-worthy when Ruth seeks solace in Tom’s arms. Before you can say, “we’ve got to hide it from the kids, Mrs. Robinson,” Tom finds himself in a Graduate like love triangle with the young, beautiful Julie and the older, no-nonsense Ruth that helps propel the plot along for the rest of the running time. Although Tom is slightly less likable than Hoffman’s Benjamin Braddock and the whininess and grungy stripe-heavy apparel make him a character with whom it's hard to relate, the winning cast and some inventive bits of dialogue keep us interested in the tragicomedy that admittedly plays much better than second time around when one can relax a little now that the initial creepiness of deception has worn off.

Visions of Light

Complete Title:
Visions of Light: The Art of Cinematography

Directors: Arnold Glassman, Todd McCarthy & Stuart Samuels

In the beginning of the stunning documentary Visions of Light, Do the Right Thing cinematographer Ernest Dickerson recalls watching the black and white 1940’s British classic Oliver Twist and being taken in by the film’s look but his reaction wasn’t articulated until his uncle complimented the film’s impressive photography. Film photography or cinematography is one of the most exquisite art forms involved in the process of moviemaking—the way it heightens themes, punctuates action, lights an actor’s face or dances with shadows can make or break a film, yet the visual way it tells the story is often overlooked in the minds of audience members who usually focus instead on the performances, story or more tangible details. Winner of three Best Documentary awards from critics’ circles in Boston and New York and the auspicious National Society of Film Critics, Visions of Light is a must for film lovers and for those studying the medium in postsecondary education or working in the field professionally.

While the early 90’s work is dated and leaves out some of the sweeping and spectacular visuals that have captured the hearts of filmgoers since its release, it provides wonderful history and firsthand accounts from directors of photography in following the evolution of the process from its beginnings in silent pictures that evolved by the way it was elevated in German expressionism, to new technology invented in machine shops by innovative pioneers as they overcame the limitations of the introduction of sound and microphone placement, not to mention its integral role in launching stars in the 30’s up through today. As devotees of 30’s cinema may recall, Greta Garbo had her cinematographer under contract to make sure she was always filmed by him and while the cameramen did have to work within the vanity of the star system, some truly memorable works of creative genius followed, especially in the form of Gone With the Wind until that was overshadowed by the significant release of Citizen Kane. Kane is, as some of the cinematographers interviewed note, a textbook for the job and its impact on the way that Kane still holds up today cannot be diminished; in fact, Welles was so aware of its importance that he shared his title card with cinematographer Gregg Toland. With investigative, if slightly brief looks at film noir and a good segment dealing with the films and cinematographers responsible for groundbreaking works in the 60’s and 70’s in films like The Conformist and cameramen such as Conrad Hall, Gordon Willis, and Haskell Wexler, it’s a riveting documentary sure to inspire film fans to start watching the movies they love with a new frame of reference and seek out the way that the photography plays an invaluable role in the film’s execution of storytelling.

Youth Without Youth

Director: Francis Ford Coppola

An existential meditation on metaphysics, evolution, doppelgangers, reincarnation and all of the ethical and philosophical questions that go with it isn’t exactly the most audience-friendly topic of cinematic contemplation. Perhaps knowing that most studios wouldn’t be interested and he’d only be playing to a very select audience, writer/director Francis Ford Coppola, working from the Mircea Eliade novella, raised the funds to finance his return to filmmaking after a ten year absence with profits from his California vineyard (IMDb). Despite a gorgeous trailer that teases audiences into believing it to be a war film, we’re quickly thrust back into the past with an old-fashioned credit sequence that sets the mood of the ponderous Youth Without Youth which, beginning in 1938 introduces us to a seventy year old Romanian linguist whose suicidal plans are interrupted when he is struck by lightning. Instead of being killed instantly, Dominic Matei (Tim Roth) baffles the medical staff during his post-burn treatment when inexplicably he begins to not only heal the flesh burns but also grows a new set of teeth and is soon transformed into a much more youthful man. Does lightning serve as the fountain of youth? While it seems like an easily dismissible proposition, the film grows steadily more confusing and complicated for the first mind boggling hour that tests viewer’s patience (so much that the film was annihilated by prominent critics’ negative reviews) but we become hooked when a love story develops as Dominic meets a Swiss tourist named Veronica who appears to be a reincarnated version of his lost love Laura.

While it’s impossible to completely forgive the film its pretentious air that comes off at times as smug and elitist, the wonder of Roth’s difficult performance along with the majestic beauty of the Independent Spirit Award nominated cinematography by Mihai Malaimare Jr. and clever usage of visual trickery and effects recalls vintage American works The Third Man and Notorious and echoes some of the themes and philosophical contemplation of international classics such as Last Year in Marienbad and Solaris. Although I can’t wholly recommend the film that may have benefited from a tighter narrative and editing to shorten its overly long running time, Francis Ford Coppola hasn’t lost the ability to dazzle even in misguided attempts like Youth Without Youth that may actually do well to be a stunning background visual at a low-key party, shared perhaps with a bottle of Coppola’s wine.

The Business of Strangers

Director: Patrick Stettner

It may be a hip and humorous pop culture catchphrase when Donald Trump says, “You’re Fired,” but I can only imagine that it’s quite a different story when it’s said to someone’s face in the harsh light of day and it’s probably significantly worse when it’s said to an unseen individual on a cellular phone when the person the speaker wants sacked is just two feet away. Such as the case for young technical assistant Julia Stiles who, coming from a delayed flight, arrives forty-five minutes late to provide visuals for her tough talking superior, businesswoman Stockard Channing as she fails to close a deal and wants the offending Stiles dismissed. Of course, to be fair, Channing’s Julie Styron is having a rough day after business strategizing leads her to believe she may be out of a job but her moodiness is improved considerably when the opposite occurs and she’s put in charge of the company. Stiles’ Paula Murphy, returning to the airport hotel after her flight is canceled runs into Julie (Channing) in the bar and is surprised to find the woman has not only changed her tune but tries to make it up to her with drinks and conversation which leads to a fast bond as the women begin a game of provocative questioning, power struggles, and escalating dare based camaraderie that increases with not only the more alcohol they consume but also the more they get to know one another. The darkly comical, cynically addictive set-up evolves into some far more devious and dangerous when a company head-hunter who’d arrived to try and help out Julie is spotted by Paula who had a horrifying experience with the young man years earlier and along with Julie schemes to get revenge that starts off teasingly and then grows more frightening as criminal activity is introduced.

Nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at the 2001 Sundance Film Festival, The Business of Strangers was labeled by some critics as a female version of In The Company of Men. However, Strangers works not only on the level of a thriller but also even more so as a fascinating character study of business dynamics between women who’ve been in the male dominated industry for so long that they have plenty of battle scars which are exposed when they try to settle the score on headhunter Nick (Frederick Weller). Intriguingly, for me, not only did the film evoke LaBute’s Company of Men but also the equally diabolical writer David Mamet, with whom Julia Stiles has worked in a few of his pictures including State and Main and recently in the much darker non-Mamet directed Edmond based on his controversial play about evil lurking in the minds of men and no doubt the terrific Stiles learned a thing or two from Mamet that she applied for her Strangers role. The back-and-forth dialogue between Channing and Stiles feels sinister and hyper-real, revealing more to the audience with the subtext and the inflections and body language employed by the actresses who earned numerous nominations and a few accolades for their turns in this difficult film that plays even better with a repeat viewing in order to evaluate all of the verbal and nonverbal information being offered. Hard to shake once you've seen it, it's tough going but not a film you'd want to fire.

Suburban Girl

Director:
Marc Klein

Although it was screened at the Tribeca Film Festival, the directorial debut of A Good Year and Serendipity screenwriter Marc Klein failed to garner a wide theatrical release, quietly appearing on video store shelves last week. Klein, adapting the stories “My Old Man,” and “The Worst Thing a Suburban Girl Could Imagine,” from Melissa Bank’s inventive and funny chick lit novel The Girl’s Guide to Hunting and Fishing and weaving them into a cohesive structure managed to craft a romantic comedy that’s fresh, fun and admirably intelligent which, despite its generic title of Suburban Girl, deserved a much bigger audience than it received. At first glance, it seems like a hybrid of Shopgirl and The Devil Wears Prada but whereas Prada focused mostly on work dynamics and there was an uneven match of opposites in Shopgirl, this clever May/December tale benefits from a terrific lead character brought to life by the woefully under-utilized Sarah Michelle Gellar. Playing what has become the standard female role in most works of chick lit and films such as How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days and several others, Gellar plays Brett Eisenberg who rises from her humble beginnings in middle class suburbia with her brains, taste and flair with a pen to a position as an associate editor in a Manhattan publishing house. Named for the memorable siren in Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, writing seemed to be in the family genes as her brother was given an equally literary name of Ethan (from Wharton’s doomed Ethan Frome) and Brett’s residence in New York is in the family apartment that was owned by her late aunt, a successful wordsmith and publisher in her day.

Eager to climb the ranks in the publishing world and help bring out the best in her authors, workaholic Brett idolizes the legends that came before her and drags a friend along to meet successful, highly respected editor and writer Archie Knox (Alec Baldwin) who finds himself charmed initially by the beauty of his young admirer and later by her sophisticated sense of humor and intellect as they proceed to engage in the first of several scenes of irresistible brainy banter sure to delight fans of screwball comedy. Although she’s been in a relationship for a year, half of the time her slacker boyfriend Jed (Chris Carmack) has been overseas "finding himself" in Europe and after sending her one postcard in the six months he’s been away, Brett begins to appreciate the attention given to her by a man more than double her age whose quick and clever mind has become an aphrodisiac.

Admittedly the “ick” factor does sink in relatively quickly as we realize that perhaps Baldwin’s Archie had been involved in a relationship with her aunt and there’s such a visible difference in ages that it makes one do a double take. However, intriguingly I actually found myself more willing to forgive this coupling than the one in Shopgirl as Gellar’s mature Brett seems to be a woman fully of her own mind and less as easily manipulated as the more insecure clinically depressed younger woman played in the other film by Claire Danes. Plus, Baldwin jumps into the role headfirst, charming audiences with his wit and swagger similar to the way he dominates Tina Fey’s excellent 30 Rock and neither Gellar nor Baldwin ever sidestep the real emotions that may be at play in Klein’s intuitive script which doesn’t shy away from father and daughter issues plaguing the film’s main characters. Bright and energetic, try to overlook some of the contrived, sunny chick flick montage shots and girl power clichéd soundtrack because Suburban Girl is one romantic comedy that manages to do something unique with the tired genre mold.

Before the Devil Knows You're Dead

Director: Sidney Lumet

Rounding out his cinematic hat-trick that began with turns in The Savages and Charlie Wilson’s War, Academy Award winning actor Philip Seymour Hoffman gives a fiercely powerful and icy performance in Sidney Lumet’s Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead. Yes, that’s right-- it’s not a typo—eighty-three year old director Sidney Lumet (Network, Dog Day Afternoon) has made his most powerful, harrowing and complicated ensemble drama in more than two decades with this story which takes its title from an Irish toast proclaiming its wish that others have (and I’m paraphrasing) a good amount of time in Heaven before the Devil knows you’re dead.

Opening with a frankly gratuitous and exploitative sex scene that may serve as a warning to viewers that the worst is yet to come in its saga of greed, betrayal and family dysfunction that will follow, the film picks up quickly as we’re shown a botched, violent jewelry store robbery that sets everything in motion. Afterwards, Lumet employs a brilliant Rashomon like technique of going back and forth to show the different points of view of various characters and events. We’re also introduced to two very different brothers—Philip Seymour Hoffman’s amoral yet successful, cool, calculating and easily devious businessman Andy Hanson who’s hiding a serious drug addiction and his more attractive and sensitive younger brother Hank played by Ethan Hawke. While on the surface, the two look nothing like one another, they provide a nice balance of how two children from the same family can grow up so differently from one another. As their father Charles (Albert Finney) tells Andy, as the first born son, he had it rough and there’s plenty of old wounds beneath his posh exterior that seem to open up whenever his brother (always called “the baby” of the family) gets out of things easier and is used to having his messes cleaned up for him by Andy. However, the childish squabbles and trivial problems of their upbringing haven’t prepared them in the least for the unspeakable situation they find themselves in during adulthood when both brothers-- desperate for cash-- decide to pull off what they naively assume will be the perfect, victimless crime of robbing an insured jewelry store without violence. Of course, these things always play out better in their imagination for as the audience knows right from the start, things go terribly and bloodily wrong for Andy and Hank.

Devastating, gloomy and unforgiving in its depiction of the very worst evil lurking in the hearts of scheming men, the film earned two justifiable Best Ensemble accolades for its stellar cast. However, some viewers (especially women) will soon get tired of the way that Academy Award winning actress Marisa Tomei is used mostly for her body as she is naked in a majority of her earliest scenes and one wonders just why someone of her caliber would take such a thankless part even though it’s possibly indicative of the male dominated ’07 cinematic ventures with very few parts being offered for women. Although despite this one major flaw and a beginning that will surely send some audience members straight for the door, Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead is a stark and intelligent modern Greek tragedy and proof once again of the genius of Hoffman who, as a few audience members shared while walking out, may very well go down in history as one of our country’s finest actors.

Head Above Water

Director:
Jim Wilson

While my friends enjoy Scene It, poker, Taboo and Charades, it seems that movie characters often prefer to play “Hide the Dead Body” given the number of times a person ends up dead-- one way or another-- and instead of dialing the men in blue (the police that is, not the Las Vegas group), they start grabbing bags or sheets or shoving it from sight. In a movie like Clue that incidentally is based on a party game, it’s done for laughs when the bodies just won’t stay dead but it’s also a device used by thrillers or comedic thrillers such as in this 1996 American remake of the Norwegian film Hodet over Vannet.

A few years before the world realized that There’s Something About Mary, actress Cameron Diaz found herself the target of affections from a trio of other slightly deranged males in Head Above Water. Putting her wild days of booze, pill popping and Billy Zane behind her, young, beautiful Nathalie marries her much older judge George (Harvey Keitel). At first George reminds viewers of the dashing Colonel Brandon from Sense and Sensibility—not conventionally handsome but attractive in his devotion to his young wife but soon the audience, like Nathalie begins to realize that there’s much more to both George as well as her none-too-content to be platonic friend Lance (Craig Sheffer) that meets the eye. The masks come off after Zane returns while the men are on an overnight fishing trip and after a night of flowers, chocolates and vodka Zane's found dead in Nathalie’s bed. Fearing the worst from her controlling husband whose fits of jealous rage in the past may have had Tony Soprano taking a few notes, Nathalie decides to play (you guessed it) Hide the Dead Body until of course, she is discovered by her husband and rather than phoning 911, they decide that they can’t take a chance that twelve angry men and women would decide to send them to prison on suspicion of murder. As is always the case, one lie builds on another until we realize there’s something dangerously sinister about the whole bunch but the film is surprisingly effective—breezy and unpredictable at the beginning until the tone and color palette changes when things take a criminal turn in a work that Variety called a “fine showcase for Diaz’s fast-developing acting skills.” Although for my money, nowhere near as fun as a game of Scene It with good friends, watching Keitel and Diaz play Hide the Dead Body is far more entertaining than several of the darkly comic amoral thrillers like Very Bad Things and The Last Supper (also starring Diaz) that populated the 90’s.

Raising Helen

Director:
Garry Marshall

Like the films made by his sister Penny Marshall (A League of Their Own, Jumpin’ Jack Flash), the same recurring theme frequently pops up in the films by Garry Marshall which is of the fish-out-of-water paradigm where main characters find themselves as outsiders stuck in situations and places in which they never wanted to be. Although more gender balanced in Penny’s oeuvre with Awakenings, Big and others, in the films of Garry Marshall we usually find a happy and free-spirited female character who needs to be tamed into a more traditionally accepted gender role. Whether it’s the appallingly sexist Overboard, the ugly duckling tale of Princess Diaries, or the hooker with the heart of gold premise of Pretty Woman, it shows up again and again and in the worst form in the atrociously anti-feminist Georgia Rule. Although on principle, I dislike this plotline for obvious reasons, some of Garry Marshall’s films have still been entertaining and heartfelt, including the cynical yet escapist and popular Pretty Woman but that “lesson” that each heroine learns in each successive film becomes more and more apparent such as in the trifle Raising Helen that succeeds mostly because of the charms of lovely leading lady Kate Hudson.

In the film, Hudson plays a successful executive assistant at a modeling agency working under the supervision of Helen Mirren who spends her days helping coordinate models and photo shoots and evenings dancing away with her clients in exclusive Manhattan clubs. Reality comes crashing down cruelly when her older sister Lindsay (Felicity Huffman) and husband are killed and twenty-something Helen learns she has been given custody of her two nieces and one nephew. Predictably she realizes that her wild lifestyle of hedonism and materialism doesn’t mesh with motherhood. Dutifully, she moves her brood to Queens where she ends up working as a secretary and later saleswoman at a car dealership and enrolls the kids at a Lutheran school where the principal and self described—1, 2, 3, cringe-- “sexy man of God,” Pastor Dan (John Corbett) becomes Helen's unlikely romantic interest. Meanwhile, she battles with the new level of responsibility in her life and tries to balance parental control with affable aunt-hood by consulting her no-nonsense sister Jenny (Joan Cusack) as things get increasingly more out of control. Sitcom light and a bit too convenient with the overabundance of shortcuts offered to the characters involved, Raising Helen is still one of his better party girl turned mother figure coming of female age films and one that can be enjoyed-- unlike the adult themed Pretty Woman and younger skewed Princess Diaries-- by a wider variety of ages.

The Deal

Director: Stephen Frears

On the surface, The Deal seems like a companion piece to the critically acclaimed Academy Award winning motion picture The Queen as both films share the same director (Stephen Frears), writer (Peter Morgan) and even the same actor (Michael Sheen) portraying the same character. That character of course is former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and while in The Queen he wasn’t the primary focus, The Deal marks the first entry into Morgan’s “Blair Trilogy,” according to Variety. Recently shown on HBO after first being acquired by The Weinstein Company and produced by Granada Television’s Channel 4, the film was dropped by its first production company as who were worried about the film’s controversial political content (IMDb).

Reportedly based on author James Naughton’s book The Rivals, The Deal’s “rivals” in question are none other than Tony Blair and current Prime Minister Gordon Brown (played in the film by David Morrissey). As an American, I knew little about the Labour Party or Brown and my only knowledge of Tony Blair came from newspapers and CNN so after I began watching Frears’ film, I stopped it within minutes to go do greater research on the history of the party and feel that prior knowledge does greatly enhance one’s understanding of the politics. However, talented writer Peter Morgan is a superb storyteller and his screenplay is less politically motivated and more focused on the human dynamics and interaction between the two great men as they began as colleagues in the 80’s until political ambition, drives, and a spoken hypothetical agreement is called into question years later when, according to the film, Blair usurped the spotlight and they became friendly rivals. While Sheen stole the scenes he was in opposite the great Helen Mirren in The Queen, the real star of The Deal is Morrissey who gives a fully realized performance as Brown, managing to capture the passion, intellect and integrity as well as the flaws with the utmost respect. For his performance, Morrissey earned a Best Actor award from the Royal Television Society, UK and BAFTA and although, I may have had a different reaction to the piece being that I had little in the way of prior acquaintance of the facts and figures, so it’s be excellent to hear what viewers from the UK thought, for my money, I felt more invested and caught up in The Deal than I did by the more polished and cinematic award winning Queen.

The Gingerbread Man

Director:
Robert Altman

After three decades of releasing such masterpieces as M*A*S*H, Nashville and The Player, director Robert Altman realized there was one genre he’d never pursued and with The Gingerbread Man he finally jumped at the chance to helm his first official thriller (IMDb). Based on an abandoned work from one of the 1990’s most popular authors, legal mystery novelist John Grisham, this southern tale of lust and mayhem tries hard to channel the sultry and hazy toxic combination of adultery and scams utilized in Lawrence Kasdan’s brilliant Body Heat to lukewarm effect in this atmospheric character drama that benefits from a stellar cast. Shakespeare veteran Kenneth Branagh adopts a Savannah, Georgia gentlemanly drawl as successful, smooth and morally questionable shark of a lawyer Rick Magruder who spends the time he isn’t winning in the courtroom or mugging for the press, being a slightly disinterested father of two small children during the divorce proceedings from wife Leanne (Famke Janssen).

Prone to a fast lifestyle of drinks, laughs and flirting with anything in a skirt including loyal girl Friday Lois Harlan (Daryl Hannah), Rick finds himself caught in a web of passion and intrigue after he plays knight in shining armor on a rainy night, offering the waitress of a catering company that had been hired for a party in his honor a ride home in his sports car after her vehicle was stolen. When Mallory Doss (Embeth Davidtz) climbs into his car with a cigarette and fishnet stockings, film fans who have seen more than one vintage film noir know precisely that this femme fatale will lead him down a wrong path and after the two fall into an impulsive one-night stand, Rick overlooks one of literally several warning signs that all magnify the fact that Doss is trouble with a capital T. It seems her deranged, schizophrenic, barefoot woodsman father Dixon (a menacing Robert Duvall) is stalking his daughter and Rick, wanting to once again assert his masculine control, intervenes by getting him picked up from his cult of wandering misfits and brought in for mental observation, before he’s (of course) bailed out of the joint by his crew and decides to get even on Magruder, Mallory and Magruder’s children as well.

While there are some gaping plot holes large enough to drive a truck through that make the final and admittedly predictable act go far beyond our ability to suspend disbelief, the moody visuals and terrific ensemble featuring the regular charms of Branagh and Hannah as well as a endearing and fresh mischievous turn from character actor Robert Downey Jr. as the private investigating sidekick of Branagh’s keep one amused. However, it doesn’t stand up to other films in the genre including the neo noir Body Heat nor will it stand the test of time as a memorable entry in Altman’s impressive career—there’s plenty of thrills to be had in some of Altman’s other pictures to leave the genre trappings of Gingerbread Man aside. Note: according to IMDb, dismayed at the amount of off-color language added in Altman’s screenplay revision, John Grisham adopted a pseudonym and the film’s script is credited to Al Hayes.

Bodies, Rest & Motion

Director:
Michael Steinberg

Quoting his father, young indoor housepainter and unlikely philosopher Sid (Eric Stoltz) advises Beth (Bridget Fonda) that “if you stay in one place long enough, luck knows where to find you.” Of course, Sid, unlike the often transient characters in Waterdance director Michael Steinberg’s Bodies, Rest & Motion has lived in small, sticky and desolate Enfield, Arizona his entire life. Based on the play by Roger Hedden and adapted by the scribe for its cinematic transfer, Bodies, Rest & Motion never fully abandons its theatrical roots and staginess in this conversational ensemble chamber piece which takes place over roughly forty-eight fateful hours in the lives of four aimless twenty-somethings.

Waiting until the night before he and his live-in girlfriend Beth are planning to move to Butte, Montana which he’d read is “the city of the future,” to tell his old flame and Beth’s best friend Carol (Phoebe Cates), slightly sleazy, rootless and irritable fired television salesman Nick (Tim Roth) is the type of guy who inexplicably attracts great women and just as inexplicably escapes from their lives, hoping that he can leave his boredom and problems behind the more miles he puts between himself and his old life. Taking off without Beth, Nick opts for what he thinks is an easy out, bolting from Arizona and later calls Carol who must break the news to his girlfriend. Understandably upset yet I think deep down resigned to the fact that Nick is who he is, Beth ends up seeking solace with adoring Sid who takes an immediate liking to Beth when he arrives to paint the place in readiness for the next tenants but takes his time and gets involved in the goings-on.

Nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at the 1993 Sundance Film Festival and winner of the Director’s Week Award at Fantasporto, Bodies, Rest & Motion benefits from intelligent source material but doesn’t manage to hook its viewers until a little over the half hour mark after unlikable and self-absorbed Nick makes his getaway. The authentic sounding Native American score is wonderful but it doesn’t fit in with the piece and makes the film call too much attention to itself. However, the actors (especially Stoltz and Fonda) all keep us watching, even when one realizes that it’s essentially a southwestern Reality Bites and may have been superior on the stage.

Trust the Man

Director:
Bart Freundlich

If there’s one thing that I’m sure Miss Manners and Dr. Ruth would agree on, it may very well be that men’s discussing toilet behavior or general bodily function is probably not the world’s best way to get into a woman’s heart. I’d even be as bold as to say it’s probably not in the top 100 and it definitely isn’t something moviegoers want to see several times in the first ten minutes of writer/director Bart Freundlich’s latest romantic comedy/drama about the ups and downs of relationships. However, the reputation of the film’s actors including Julianne Moore (wife of Freundlich), David Duchovny, Billy Crudup and Maggie Gyllenhaal keep us watching even when we realize that not only can we not identify with the four characters onscreen but we’re not exactly sure that we care that much about them as well, despite feeling a certain kinship with the long-suffering female characters who we feel are both worthy of better male counterparts and a more sophisticated plotline to escape the juvenilia.

The film centers on two couples who are slightly past their expiration date and must realize whether or not they’d like to try and keep things fresh and stay together. Rebecca (the luminous Moore) is a talented actress beginning a challenging play with a pompous director whose concentration is blown by her relationship with sexually demanding Tom (Duchovny), her beloved husband who has quit his loathsome employment in advertising to be a stay at home father only to discover he’s not sure just what to do to fill his time. In between grocery shopping and flirting with another mom at his son’s preschool, Tom phones and meets Rebecca’s brother Tobey (Crudup), an equally immature freelance writer whose days are filled going to therapy and moving the car he never uses from one side of the street to another to find legal parking. Having never graduated to a mature e-mail address, Tobey uses his obscene screen-name to chat with his girlfriend of seven years Elaine (Gyllenhaal) while she busily multitasks at her publishing job and plugs away on her children’s book. When the idea of a long-term commitment and child enter Tobey and Elaine’s relationship, the two break-up only to find that their struggles echo the ones of their married good friends Tom and Rebecca as the men, predictably must learn to come-of-age belatedly and accept responsibility in their life in an overly stagey and contrived finale set in Lincoln Center. Although more accessible and entertaining than the director’s over-praised The Myth of Fingerprints and self-centered male drama World Traveler, as simply a film without comparison to the director’s other works, Trust the Man isn’t all that trustworthy of a movie rental in the overpopulated forty-something (second) coming of age independent comedy subgenre.

Carlito's Way

Director: Brian De Palma

To say that Brian De Palma loves movies is an understatement. Film buff De Palma has turned cinematic homage into an art form referencing pictures that span the globe and nearly every work he creates can be analyzed not only in the manner of entertainment but film students will delight in exploring the varied influences that pour from several frames. Some are more prominent than others such as Obsession, De Palma’s uneven spin on Hitchcock’s Vertigo, Scarface which was a remake of the 1932 gangster classic, Blow Out that came from Antonioni’s foreign Blow-Up and of course, De Palma’s most discussed homage of the shootout on the staircase with a baby carriage going down the train station steps in The Untouchables that was directly inspired by Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin.

In Carlito’s Way which reunites the director with both the star of Scarface (Al Pacino) and one from Casualties of War (Sean Penn), De Palma has another climax that’s indicative of the one used in Untouchables although it was his second choice after hoping to shoot the film’s finale in the World Trade Center which after the first attack was unavailable in ’93. That homage, while accidental, is one of a few others that call attention to themselves in more subtle ways such as using the same name for Al Pacino’s character’s nightclub (El Paraiso) as a food stand from Scarface and filming a tense hospital scene that recalls Pacino’s brilliant work in a similar scene from Coppola’s The Godfather and indeed, the exterior is the same as the one in the mafia classic (IMDb).

Carlito’s Way which was adapted by Jurassic Park and Spiderman screenwriter David Koepp from two novels by Edwin Torres chronicles Carlito “Charlie” Brigante (Pacino), who after being released from prison in the 70’s on a technical appeal after serving five years finds himself struggling with the decision to go straight after he is caught in the crossfire of a brutal shootout and drug deal gone bad. Using the money he claims from the crime to buy his way into the New York nightclub business, the Puerto Rican ex-con tries to reconnect with old flame Gail (Penelope Ann Miller) and rectify his feelings of indebtedness to his shady attorney David Kleinfeld (Sean Penn). Nearly impossible to recognize under the makeup, wig and costuming of the time period, Penn who was nominated for a Golden Globe for his performance (along with Miller) reportedly signed on to do the film solely to make enough money to fund The Crossing Guard, his second work as a director (IMDb).

Featuring impressive character work by actors ranging from an impossibly young Viggo Mortensen as a wheelchair bound con, John Leguizamo as a dangerous up-and-comer that Pacino (possibly reminded of himself) tries desperately to avoid, and Luis Guzman among others, Carlito’s Way is a compelling if minor gangster film that is unfortunately hindered by a lame voice over at the film’s end that is so filled with clichés and pseudo "wiseguy" speak it may cause unintentional laughter. Disappointing to end the film on such a forgettable, B-movie cheesy note but even weak De Palma is better than a majority of post Scarface gangster films that would populate the Tarantino-inspired (a De Palma fan himself) late 90’s.

Holy Smoke

Director:
Jane Campion

In the abundance of post-production press that actors complete to try and promote their most recent film, again and again we’re given clichéd one-liners about the people with whom they’d worked with lots of self-congratulations and pats on one another’s backs. Often it reminds me of the scene in Bull Durham when Kevin Costner teaches up-and-comer Tim Robbins that there’s only a handful of sentences he needs to say to reporters in exuding his passion to “do what’s best for the ball club.” Trust is a word often used by actors who say they have great trust for the directors whose artistic visions they tried to realize. While many say they trust their directors, actor Harvey Keitel went one hundred steps further and managed to walk his talk. How much did he trust his Piano director Jane Campion? The answer would be: so much that in their collaboration Holy Smoke he is shown wearing a dress and makeup, chasing down young, beautiful Kate Winslet through the Australian desert. Now that-- my friends-- is trust and far more revealing than hearing an actor recite their favorite curse word to James Lipton on Inside the Actor’s Studio.

In Holy Smoke, we are taken along for the ride as gorgeous, independent and strong-willed Ruth Baron (Kate Winslet) embarks on a voyage of self-discovery in India while traveling with friends. Wandering into a guru’s trippy display of his powers, she abandons the Neil Diamond soundtrack that’s been playing in the background (an odd choice) and Campion’s film takes a psychedelic cue as the young woman falls under the influence of the religious leader. Fearing the worst, that Ruth has now become a member of a cult after she refuses to return home, has little in common with her former personality traits and adorns a sari, Ruth’s parents hire PJ Waters (Keitel), an admittedly chauvinistic cult deprogrammer whose swagger and macho demeanor announces his presence even before he’s given much in the way of dialogue. These few carefully chosen shots make viewers realize that his masculine pride and vanity will be his downfall after he meets beguiling Ruth who decides, once the two are holed up together for intensive deprogramming rituals, that two can play the same game as she exacts calculating personal revenge and mind games follow.

Keitel and Winslet’s scenes together are wonderfully potent, maddening, shocking, surprisingly funny and so addictive that we find ourselves completely willing to forgive the film its many shortcomings even after it begins to stay long past its welcome and we question the validity of the storyline and characters once PJ crosses the first of several lines and becomes romantically involved with Ruth. If as Leonard Maltin wrote in questioning PJ’s credibility, “This is supposed to be his 190th case; what were the other 189 like?” In addition to wondering about PJ, the audience also feels shortchanged about Ruth, having seen very little of the character before she’s manipulated and entranced by the guru. One of the most enlightening scenes—which would probably have been left on the cutting room floor in most other films except by the sing-along happy Cameron Crowe—has Ruth singing along to “You Oughta Know” at the top of her lungs and the way she drives Alanis Morissette’s lyrics home make you realize that there’s so much more to the lovely girl than meets the eye and we wish that in addition to the actors’ trust, Campion (who penned the film along with sister Anna) would have trusted her audience enough to give us more in the way of background information since we feel there’s much that we oughta know.

Buffalo Soldiers

Director:
Gregor Jordan

Based on the 1993 book by author Robert O’Connor, director Gregor Jordan’s Buffalo Soldiers seemed to be the latest cinematic entry in the darkly comical military films from the tradition of Dr. Strangelove, M*A*S*H, Catch 22 and Three Kings but two days after its debut at the Toronto Film Festival, an event occurred that would forever alter viewer’s perception in the form of 9/11. Shelved more than two years until a rerelease at Sundance where infamously an angry woman thrust a bottle of water at the cast in her disgust at what she perceived was Anti-American sentiment, there was a question of whether contemporary America would ever be ready for Buffalo Soldiers. However, in my recent viewing six years after its '01 premiere and when our country is involved in two wars, I can finally see it for what it is—an entertaining and compelling film and not at all the “evil” piece of propaganda that it’s been labeled in the past for as critic James Berardinelli wrote in his review, the film’s “viewership should not be diminished by the unfortunate and inaccurate ‘Anti-American’ label.” In fact, as of this writing, the film has a 70% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

Featuring another great, charismatic and offbeat turn by Joaquin Phoenix (one of the most exciting chameleon actors of his generation), the film chronicles the exploits of Ray Elwood (Phoenix) who is persuaded to enlist in the army after getting into trouble with the law and ends up stationed at the Theodore Roosevelt Army Base outside of Stuttgart in West Berlin, 1989 just before the wall is going to fall. Using his experience as a criminal, Elwood works by day as the battalion secretary for his dim-witted but teddy bear of a commander Colonel Berman (Ed Harris) and sells anything he can get his hands on in the black-market. When he isn’t rerouting government requisitioned Mop ‘N Glo to the locals, Elwood has yet another job as a heroin cook for the intimidating Military Police who dominate the base but he begins to find himself jeopardized by first finding five million dollars worth of stolen arms and secondly, by the arrival of rough, tough Vietnam vet Sgt. Lee (Scott Glenn) who arrives on base to weed out crooks like Elwood. Lee’s methods go from offensive to defensive when Elwood begins dating his free-spirited young daughter Robyn (Anna Paquin) and in order to punish the soldier Lee uses his Mercedes as a target practice for the squad. Being the girl in a military film is never easy but mature Paquin dives right into it headfirst, the same way her character Robyn dazzles Elwood in her dives from the highest board above the army pool on the base. Although it’s hard to empathize with a character who is as scheming and dishonest as Elwood, we’re completely engrossed in the wickedly funny storyline. In fact we're so hooked that we stay tuned even as things get progressively more distressing and harder to believe thanks largely in part by the subtle direction and sharp performances by our leads with an especially impressive counter-balanced dynamic of Elwood’s two opposing male authority figures Harris and Glenn whose radical differences recall the Berenger and Dafoe characters in Platoon.

Despite its cynical approach, the film is one that comes from a long line of these intriguingly different looks at the armed forces and director Jordan (much like the book’s author O’Connor) respects the intelligence of his audience enough to trust that they’ll realize it’s satirical and one of the better M*A*S*H like military comedies of the new generation… that is, if viewers take the time to seek it out with an open mind.

The Grace Lee Project

Director: Grace Lee

When I was in the first grade, I realized to my dismay that the name Jennifer was not the most original when there were five of us in the same class. Jenny P, Jenny R, and the list went on until I was deemed Jenny J, which I ended up shortening to Jen in high school to separate from the pack. While the popularity in the 70’s and 80’s of parents naming their daughters Jennifer wore off—now we’re in a sea of girls named Madison—the camaraderie between us still exists as I just discovered a large amount of Jennifers, even including the professor in my current graduate school course. While the plethora of Jen, Jenny, and Jennifers (with a wide variety of spellings) is a minor annoyance, there’s a diverse enough group of women with the name that spans several cultures, races and backgrounds to keep things interesting.

However, as we learn in this rambling, personal and highly enjoyable documentary, the name Grace Lee had a more overwhelming effect in Asian culture with large numbers of women being given the name. It seemed to filmmaker Grace Lee that if you weren’t named Grace Lee, then you knew of at least one or more and the UCLA trained director set out to learn more about the women (such as herself) called Grace Lee, whom most passersby described when sharing their interaction with Grace Lees as “nice, quiet, and smart.”

“Does any other name scream generic Asian girl more than Grace Lee?” director Lee asks and after a consultation with a private investigator turned up far too many Graces in her home state of California, the director had an epiphany for tracking down savvy women who share the same name and created a website (gracelee.net) that soon was flooded with registrants who not only shared the same name, but after taking part in her survey, began realizing they had several characteristics in common. Filmmaker Lee’s survey resulted in an intriguing composite of the average Grace Lee who is described as roughly twenty-five years old, living in California, and typically the American daughter of Korean immigrants, who stands about five feet and three inches tall, holding an advanced college degree (typically a Master’s) after growing up with an average of three and a half years of piano lessons with 40% of Lees being named for religious or Christian reasons and some others who share their parent’s fondness for movie star turned princess Grace Kelly.

Not wanting these Grace Lees to be interchangeable, director Grace Lee journeyed to various states and countries (including a fascinating trip to Korea where the name reigns supreme for women, businesses, and much more) to encounter a few highly memorable Grace Lees. Not only is Grace Lee the name of Bruce Lee’s mother and one given to a large number of P.K.’s (which the director explains stands for Pastor’s Kids), but it’s also the stage name of a cruise ship singer, and a brainy and beautiful TV newswoman in Hawaii who shares that her name is so common that she felt a need to make an impression in order to stand out since she notes that she won’t be remembered for her name alone. We also meet one of several young Asian girls who feel they’re under enormous pressure to be perfect and excel in their academic pursuits (both due to parental and cultural pressure but also, the filmmaker realizes Asian stereotype) and hear of one in particular doing something atypical of a Grace Lee which is attempting to burn down her San Francisco school purportedly due to the fact that she was embarrassed by her scholastic performance. However, as the director notes with equal parts admiration and annoyance, even when Grace Lee is committing arson she’s still described by others as a nice, smart and quiet Chinese girl.

Although some critics may call the film a vanity project, I found it to be an alternately funny and informative documentary and I was amazed by the inclusion of a few stories that I know will stay with me long after the film ended when we meet two heroic and inspiring Grace Lees including one who became an integral part of the black civil rights movement in Detroit and another who went into hiding with her best friend and their children to escape the friend’s abusive husband. While Grace Lee the name is popular and recurring, Grace Lee the person in each and every case the director included is original and unique—valuable and once it’s over, one realizes (as I did with the name Jennifer) how much of an honor it would be to have been given the name of Grace Lee.

Death Sentence

Director:
James Wan

Now I’ve never been that gifted with statistics or probabilities—anything really relating to mathematics—but I think if I was a professional assessor of risk, I’d know that going after a group of murderous gang members on my own may not be the wisest idea in the long run... not only because it’s against the law but because it carries with it a hell of a risk. However, with his judgment clouded by unspeakable grief after watching his teenage “golden boy” Brendan killed in a gas station by a gang working on an initiation of new members, Nick Hume (Kevin Bacon) disregards the risk and makes what appears to be a split-second decision to seek vengeance on his own after he changes his testimony and lets the trigger (or actually slice-and-dice) man go. Of course, audiences know he hasn’t really forgotten the sight of the man executing his son, but we’re even more shocked by the cool and calculating manner that this risk assessment executive goes from mild to wild in hunting down the first of several responsible with the intention of getting bloody revenge.

If this sounds familiar, it should for many reasons—the first is that 2007 saw two violent stories filmed in a gun metal color palette released just weeks apart, the first would be Saw director James Wan’s Death Sentence and the second was the Neil Jordan film The Brave One. While The Brave One is superior simply for the acting of Jodie Foster and Terrence Howard, I was surprised by just how involved I felt while watching Death Sentence (at least for the first half before it derails the logic train completely) and it’s definitely the more entertaining of the two. Death Sentence may also seem familiar to fans of the Charles Bronson Death Wish films of the 70’s—the film was made once before in the early seventies and it’s based on Brian Garfield’s novel that according to IMDb was a direct sequel novel to the author’s Death Wish.

However, as I touched on before, Death Sentence does evolve from terrifying and intense to gratuitously bloody and nonsensical after the gang members predictably peeved at lone killer Bacon decide to come after him and his entire family and the police detective assigned to the case (a wasted Aisha Tyler) does absolutely nothing by the book and pretty much lets events unfold while scolding Bacon like a schoolmarm and not like the intelligent officer of the law she’s purported to be. There’s a worthwhile twist at the end that was begging to have been explored in even greater detail as Bacon, now having lost more than he could possibly have imagined (though it barely seems to phase him onscreen) goes after the head member of the gang and in his transformation begins to look very similar to the “animals” he is pursuing, showing the thin line he’s crossed between right and wrong in his tunnel vision and quest for vengeance. Note to DVD renters—Death Sentence has been released with dual versions on the same disc featuring first the R rated version shown into theatres and secondly the unrated one with far more graphic violence. As a critic, I stuck with the R rated theatrical one and-- not to sound like the motherly character Tyler played in the film-- before I’d advise viewers to click on whichever version they choose, you might want to check out the first half hour of the film in its rated version to see if you’d even want to watch a more brutal version since in the hands of Saw’s James Wan, little is left to the imagination.

The Weight of Water

Director: Kathryn Bigelow

“Love is never as ferocious as when you think it’s going to leave you,” Sean Penn’s gloomily pompous poet Thomas shares with the three other people occupying a boat in Point Break director Kathryn Bigelow’s filmed version of Anita Shreve’s novel The Weight of Water. Going forwards and backwards in time, rocking back and forth like one of the ocean’s waves, we are privy to the inner turmoil and emotional conflict of couples at a crossroads in their relationships. Photojournalist Jean (Catherine McCormack) accepts an assignment to snap a few pictures that take in the scene of a brutal double murder that occurred on March 6, 1873 in the Isles of Shoals over a hundred years after the crime took place. Oddly choosing the assignment as a type of marital vacation, Jean brings husband Thomas along as they hitch a ride on his brother-in-law Rich’s boat to make the trek to the sea village. As distant and pretentious as the self-involved Thomas is, his brother Rich (Sweet Home Alabama’s Josh Lucas) is as welcoming, golden and friendly and one instantly feels that perhaps Jean married the wrong brother due to the tangible chemistry the two share once she boards the boat. However, she (like the audience) is surprised to find Rich’s bombshell poet groupie girlfriend Adaline (Elizabeth Hurley used mostly as window dressing) aboard. Adaline, fond of nude sunbathing and suggestively using ice cubes as seductive props to cool off, latches on to Thomas whom she’d met at a writer’s event earlier right away and the invasion of space the couples have in close quarters is evidenced within the first few awkward moments.

In addition to the quartet of contemporary professionals, we are introduced to Norwegian immigrant Maren Hontvedt (Sarah Polley) and her husband who come to America seeking a better life only to find danger when Maren is the sole survivor and witness of the slaying of two women at her residence. Based on an actual double murder that occurred on the island, Shreve’s novel plays up the highly debated outcome that involved a man who up until his execution swore he was innocent and as modern Jean begins obsessively researching the case, we begin to have serious doubts that justice was in fact served within the film’s first half hour. The first predictions we make initially seem to be red herrings but as the film goes on, we realize that we will be surprised at very little and the film’s overly long and tedious unfolding of events grows tiresome. Rather than using the murders as a backdrop for the unraveling of a marriage and the exploration of disagreeable Thomas who smugly tells his disagreeing brother that “talent excuses cruelty,” Bigelow (an accomplished painter turned successful action director) should have built up suspense from the get-go. In doing so, she along with her writers Alice Arlen (Silkwood) and Christopher Kyle (Alexander) would have constructed more of a mystery story that would lead us down the complications of the characters and case similar to the way that David Fincher’s Zodiac did in making us feel like we were in on the investigation. As Leonard Maltin wrote “the story’s ultimate revelations don’t bring any understanding of the contemporary characters or their problems,” and indeed the same goes for the uninvolving characters in the film’s extensive flashbacks.

Results of Our Golden Globe Poll

Hello,

As the Golden Globe "announcement" press conference is being aired tonight in lieu of the usual award show, it's only fitting that our Film Intuition poll about the Globes wrapped up the same day.

Side note: Come on Hollywood and give those valuable writers what they deserve already! Without them there wouldn't be any works to nominate for Golden Globes.

Okay, off the soapbox and back to the poll. In case you missed it, here was the question: Of the following films nominated for Golden Globes, which one(s) would be on your Top 10 List for 2007?

The winner was Atonement at a whopping 40% of the vote. In second place we had No Country for Old Men showing strong at 36% with Juno and There Will Be Blood steadily tied at third place with 32% of the vote. Trailing behind those films was a tie between Eastern Promises and Sweeney Todd with 20% followed by Across the Universe with 12%. Coming in close to last was Michael Clayton and Hairspray tied with 8% and American Gangster earning a mere 4% of the vote. However, the least favored titles-- Charlie Wilson's War and The Great Debaters didn't garner a single vote.

Stay tuned for more and be sure to check out this week's poll that's all about the Coen Brothers.

- Jen

There Will Be Blood

Director: Paul Thomas Anderson

Although it’s Citizen Kane that’s frequently cited in most critical reviews of Paul Thomas Anderson’s brilliant masterpiece There Will Be Blood (which was just named the Best Picture of 2007 by the National Society of Film Critics), Anderson has said that the film that inspired him the most was John Huston’s The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. “All of life’s questions and answers are in” the film, according to the director who was so influenced by the Bogart vehicle that the Internet Movie Database reports that he repeatedly put the film on at night before he went to bed just to fall asleep to it while he was working on the screenplay. As a jumping off point, Anderson used the first few chapters of Upton Sinclair’s 1927 novel Oil, which he’d purchased when he was homesick simply because it had a painting of California on its cover (IMDb) and later sent the unfinished script to the man for whom he was writing it, Daniel Day-Lewis. As his producer JoAnne Sellar reported to Entertainment Weekly, There Will Be Blood may not have even been made if the reclusive Academy Award winning actor had declined the part but drawn to the film’s title which takes its name from the Book of Exodus, Daniel Day-Lewis agreed. Despite suffering broken bones on the second day of the film’s shoot, the actor turns in his finest performance in years and commands the film in a way that makes one instantly aware that without Daniel Day-Lewis, the film would fail to have the same level of impact it does from the get-go.

Opening with Paul Thomas Anderson’s trademark of a constantly moving camera (IMDb) with what feels like over ten minutes of action without dialogue, we’re immediately transported to another time and place similar to Terrence Malick’s Days of Heaven, as we watch gold prospecting Daniel Plainview (Day-Lewis) risk limb and life trying to eek out his fortune when suddenly he strikes oil. Exquisitely photographed by frequent Anderson cinematographer Robert Elswit (Michael Clayton, Good Night, and Good Luck) and filled with nearly dance-like long takes cut together by editor Dylan Tichenor (Assassination of Jesse James, Royal Tenenbaums, Brokeback Mountain), the film’s classically stylized introduction which is in stark contrast to the fast-moving, poetically narrated opening of Anderson’s Magnolia is heightened by a nearly Kubrickian 2001 like score by Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood whose haunting dissonance-filled yet unforgettably expressionist musical accompaniment gets viewers completely lost in this conversation free world.

However, now with the benefit of a successful oil business behind him, we along with the characters onscreen are jolted by Day-Lewis’s opening monologue to the “ladies and gentlemen” he’s trying to procure land from. Filled with the unique and commanding yet surprisingly polite cadence that only Day-Lewis can bring to the role, we realize at once that his ambition and greed will bring about his downfall in a film that spans a few decades in the life of the unapologetically misanthropic Daniel Plainview and his young son H.W. (an adorable newcomer Dillon Freasier whose charisma will surely garner him more roles) after they are lured by the promise of an even larger fortune in California. Once in California, Daniel meets the young man who will become his nemesis, Little Miss Sunshine’s Paul Dano who puts forth a career making performance as the deceptively meek young man who runs a Church of the Third Revelation and whose tyrannical hellfire and brimstone sermons and demands for more money for his congregation and the prominent fame and respect by Daniel to bless the first oil well, set about a series of catastrophic events as the two men square off against one another in their evolving relationship.

With a grueling finale that recalls both the reclusive alienation of both Orson Welles’ Charles Foster Kane and twentieth century icon Howard Hughes and produces the wrath and violence foreshadowed by the movie’s title, we realize that despite the Blood’s period trappings that may have made others view it as a film solely about a particular time and place, we’re instead handed a cautionary tale about the dangers of greed and paranoia in regards to the divisive hot topic issues of oil and religion with another one of Anderson’s trademark treatises on father and son dynamics thrown in for good measure. Given the dangers facing the world and our two current wars it’s no wonder that Anderson chose to make such a film for as we see on the nightly news again and again, when you add oil to religion, there will be blood indeed.

Criminal

Director:
Gregory Jacobs

Long time assistant director to Steven Soderbergh, Gregory Jacobs co-wrote what was to become his directorial debut with Soderbergh who used the pseudonym Sam Lowry. Based on Fabian Bielinsky’s brilliant Argentinean film Nine Queens, Criminal plays especially well to audience members who haven’t seen the original and for the rest of us, as a slightly above average remake the manages to fly essentially because of the compelling talent onscreen. John C. Reilly is the ideal choice to play sleazy, smooth conman Richard Gaddis who, after cheating everyone he meets including old partners and even his two siblings, happens upon a young charming upstart named Rodrigo (Y tu Mama Tambien and The Terminal’s Diego Luna) running a short cash con in a casino and propositions him to serve as his partner/trainee for the day until either one gets sick of the other. Of course, it feels distinctly like a set-up as Richard encounters the con of a lifetime in needing Rodrigo’s help to sell a forged note from the U.S. Treasury Department to a foreign businessman whose visa is set to expire the following day but the film operates like a con itself, leading viewers down the first of several twists and turns so that we’re never quite sure which character, if any is on the “up and up.” Smooth and controlling, Reilly easily dominates the sweet and adorable Luna but it’s fun to watch his game brought to another level when he encounters Maggie Gyllenhaal as his determined, long-suffering sister Valerie who’s been victimized by her brother one too many times and now may have the upper hand when the two conmen are forced to make their transaction in the posh hotel where she works. Tense and fast-paced clocking in at under 90 minutes, Criminal is a fun diversion yet in the sea of great films about stings and matchstick men, it’s not as memorable as its previous version Nine Queens.

The Very Thought of You

Director: Nick Hamm
Alternate Title: Martha, Meet Frank, Daniel and Laurence

When I lived in my beloved Minnesota, I dreamed of visiting foreign locales but being practical, unlike Martha (Monica Potter) in Nick Hamm’s The Very Thought of You, I never longed to impulsively escape a ho-hum existence by grabbing the first flight out of Minneapolis for $99 and heading to England with just $35 to my name. Of course, had I, like risk-taking Martha been pursued by not one but three dashing Brits, I may have decided to be a bit more daring. Daniel, the first man Martha meets is the type of guy who makes grand romantic gestures only seen in films like anonymously-- under the guise of it being sheer luck-- buying the beguiling blonde he’s never met (with a Julia Roberts smile to boot) an upgraded airline ticket on his plane when he learns her destination in the hopes of getting to know her, only to realize that despite her free-spirited nature, she’s no fool and quickly sells her new “prize” ticket for the cash. Taking a hit to both the ego and heart, Daniel leaves first class and goes back to sit with Martha in coach for the long flight and while they manage to become acquainted and the sparks only seem to fly on his side, once her feet hit London soil, Martha also manages to meet-cute with Daniel’s two best friends, Frank (The Illusionist’s Rufus Sewell), a bitter out-of-work actor and Laurence (Shakespeare in Love’s Joseph Fiennes), a sensitive soul whom we soon suspect may be Martha’s Mr. Right. While of course, logic is thrown right out the window when we are faced with the proposition that one American tourist would stumble on all three buddies in a city as large and bustling as London, England but like old comedies of the 30’s and 40’s, The Very Thought of You works—despite the unlikelihood of plot and characters—due to the strength of the charms of the young, attractive cast, especially Potter (Along Came a Spider, Patch Adams) and the equally adorable Joseph Fiennes. Although sure to be forgotten on DVD shelves or overlooked on premium cable channels despite some of the high profile stars (including character actor Ray Winstone as Fiennes’ neighbor), the film may be of particular interest to fans of its writer Peter Morgan who’s the only screenwriter in history to have two different scripts for The Queen and The Last King of Scotland respectively garner stars Helen Mirren and Forest Whitaker the Best Actress and Actor Academy Awards in the same year. While a far cry from his historical scripts, The Very Thought of You is amiable romantic fare from Miramax—the studio that in the 90’s brought us a plethora of irresistibly comedic British love stories such as Sliding Doors and Four Weddings and a Funeral.

All the King's Men

Director: Steven Zaillian

We are in the middle of Campaign ’08 fever and it seems as though one can’t turn on the television without seeing the faces of several candidates from both parties all talking about change. I admit to being caught up in the primaries and the latest polls and news but after awhile the sound bites and photo ops all start to blur together, making the candidates seem very similar to one another. This is definitely not the case for the plain-talking, overly theatrical self-proclaimed hick Willie Stark (Sean Penn) whose rousing speeches that seem to recall fiery sermons help get him elected to the office of governor in the state of Louisiana in writer/director Steven Zaillian’s remake of the 1949’s Best Picture Oscar winner All the King’s Men. No discussions of campaign finance reform or technical double-speak for Stark; instead, he leads a cry of “Nail ‘em up,” to inspire the crowd and prove that he will hold the politicians who’ve been getting wealthy off the poor and abused in the depression era south to task. Of course, power changes people as we see the orange soda pop drinking Stark begin to turn to alchohol, infidelity and shady alliances when he surrounds himself with intellectual, sassy, fast-talking Sadie Burke (Patricia Clarkson), the intimidating crook Lieutenant Governor Tiny Duffy (James Gandolfini), and his gun-wielding driver Sugar Boy (Jackie Earle Haley). The one member of his team that doesn’t seem to fit in with the rest is Men’s narrator Jack Burden (Jude Law), a former newspaper columnist who found he was swept away by the promise of Stark when he first met him decrying a tragedy involving children killed in a schoolhouse and Burden, eager to leave his past life of wealth and privilege one assumes he may in fact be embarrassed by behind him, signs on for the ride. However, having the benefit of his past as a newspaperman, Jack begins to see exactly where the controversial Stark is headed when he employs questionable tactics and ropes some of Burden’s friends and/or family including Kate Winslet, Mark Ruffalo, Anthony Hopkins and Kathy Baker into his plans as visions of white house glory fill his head.

Although as IMDb reports, Zaillian stated that he had never seen the original film and adapted the work solely from Robert Penn Warren’s 1946 Pulitzer Prize winning novel, most critics couldn’t help but compare this film to the Oscar winner of the past and point out its considerable flaws and the way it paled in comparison which had Ebert and Roeper so disgusted they named All the King’s Men the Worst Movie of 2006 on their television show. I think that is overstating it quite a bit and even though the first half of the piece plays far better than the second, we forgive the flaws since we’re so dazzled by both Penn (does he ever give a bad performance?) and the superlative writing of Schindler’s List, Falcon and the Snowman, Awakenings, and American Gangster writer Zaillian that we become as swept up by the Huey P. Long inspired Stark as the characters in the piece until his populist, controversial character begins to feel like a one-dimensional cartoon and the heavy-handed conclusion bogs down the quickened pace and performances considerably. The actors, most notably the aforementioned Penn, Law and Clarkson (who, actually a Louisiana native has the most authentic accent) all turn in fine performances but the rest of the cast seems like either window dressing (Winslet and Ruffalo in roles so tiny they could have been phoned in) or Gandolfini, who seems to be playing a period version of his popular Tony Soprano character with a none-too-convincing drawl. Of course, my tolerance for the film as mildly successful (though far too long) was probably helped by the fact like, similar to our writer/director, I had never seen the original and unfortunately had also never had the opportunity to read the novel so had little with which to compare. One thing’s for certain-- it definitely plays better on a smaller screen and proves to be a (mostly) engrossing diversion from the news headlines of politics as usual.

The Proposition

Director: John Hillcoat

In direct opposition to both his handsome and gentlemanly demeanor along with the uniquely near-musical diction that makes one feel that actor Danny Huston would have been perfect in the films made by his father-- the legendary John Huston-- for some reason as Danny told Internet Movie Database, he seems “to play a lot of losers.” Whether cast as the slimy Sandy who embarks on sexual blackmail of Rachel Weisz in The Constant Gardner or playing characters with less than heroic traits, Huston is usually a walking contradiction that plays against his appearance but he saved his most brutal role for 2005 when he portrayed frightening killer Arthur Burns in Australian filmmaker John Hillcoat’s grueling western The Proposition. Written by musician Nick Cave in just three weeks and set in the late nineteenth century, The Proposition begins with a chaotically violent gunfight after which, British import Captain Stanley (Ray Winstone), the sherriff in the hellish rural Australian landscape arrests two brothers from the notorious Burns gang—dimwitted, young Mike Burns (Richard Wilson) and his older brother Charlie (Memento’s Guy Pearce). Threatening Mike with the noose, Captain Stanley gives Charlie nine days until the Christmas holiday to track and kill the family’s proclaimed “monster,” his eldest brother Arthur (Huston) whom the arrested Burns’ had stopped riding with after the slaying at the Hopkins ranch which took the lives of an entire family including the pregnant matriarch. Rumored to be hiding in the mountains, Charlie accepts the Captain’s offer for a pardon and sets off on an exhaustive search through the Australian outback as he encounters bounty hunters such as Jellon Lamb (John Hurt) on his treacherous path to Arthur, despite knowing full well that he may in fact be riding to his own death and that Mike’s life is in jeopardy given the lawlessness of the community that has begun to turn on both British do-gooders-- Captain Stanley and his beautiful younger wife Martha (Emily Watson).

Vicious, increasingly ugly and stomach churning, this authentic yet artistically stylized western has little in common with the white hat verses black hat cowboy pics of the John Wayne or even Clint Eastwood era and while it is a film that is a chore to sit through in one sitting due to the level of intensity and brutality of the picture, it’s a worthy entry into the genre and one you won’t soon forget, if you manage to take it in. The stellar cast featuring a truly memorable turn by Sexy Beast’s Ray Winstone (which earned him an award as Best Supporting Actor from the San Diego Film Critics Society) is served well by the Venice Film Festival award winning script along with French cinematographer Benoit Delhomme’s stark photography and the impressionistic editing from Jon Gregory. Nominated for twelve awards from the Australian Film Institute and winning four, The Proposition made director John Hillcoat someone to watch in the future.

Note: as of this review, Hillcoat is said to be attached to an even higher profile feature making the film adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road with Proposition stars Pearce and Huston in talks. No word on whether or not Danny Huston will be cast as another "loser."

The Heartbreak Kid (2007)

Directors:
Peter & Bobby Farrelly

Ben Stiller reunites with the directors of his smash hit There’s Something About Mary for this remake of Elaine May’s 70’s film starring Charles Grodin as the new groom who marries Bridezilla only to meet Ms. Right on his honeymoon. Based on a Bruce Jay Friedman short story and adapted by Neil Simon for the original darkly comic, uncomfortable cautionary tale of matrimonial mayhem, the Farrelly brothers remake spends so much time trying to inundate audiences with gross one-up-manship between the lead characters and hip back-and-forth that feels inauthentic especially when a brilliantly funny comedian like Jerry Stiller is reduced to dialogue that sounds like clichéd rap lyrics, that it forgot how to endear its wackiness to the audience the way that Mary did more than a decade ago. While admittedly, with the Farrelly stamp one knows they will be served up crass over class, the juvenile behavior and misogynistic proceedings annoy us to no end as Eddie (Stiller), a forty year old sporting goods store owner in San Francisco attends his ex-fiancé’s wedding and realizes that it may be time for him to put away his irrational commitment phobia and settle down. Unfortunately for Eddie (as well as for the audience), he takes up with Lila (Malin Akerman), a deceptively bubbly and beautiful young woman who at first seems much too good to be true after Eddie intervenes during a mugging, only to find himself proposing after just six weeks to prevent the environmental researcher from moving to Rotterdam for two years. Once en route to their honeymoon in Cabo, red flags are raised when the sing-along happy Lila first amuses her new husband with her passion for accompanying every tune that plays on the radio but after hours of singing at the top of her lungs, has begun to wear on his nerves. The couple doesn’t fare much better in the bedroom with Lila’s frightening theatrics that have him worrying about his safety and when disturbing secrets begin tumbling out of Lila’s mouth regarding her true employment status, background, and some questionable health and moral issues, Eddie realizes he’s gotten in way over his head.

Of course, it’s around this time that he meets Miranda (Mission Impossible 3’s Michelle Monaghan), the friendly southerner on vacation with her entire brood for a family reunion and after the two begin bumping into one another, a flirtatious spark ensues and soon Eddie has found himself in the middle of an unlikely honeymoon love triangle. Jerry Stiller, who plays his real-life son Ben’s dad onscreen warns Eddie in one of many sexist speeches early on that “funny is a male gene,” citing that women who are funny are usually mannish but what neither he nor the Farrelly brothers realize is that by making fun of our leading lady Akerman to such a ridiculous extent as they do in the film in order to have us laugh at her rather than with her, not only are they revealing their own misogynistic tendencies but just how unfunny men like Eddie (who we’re hoping isn’t indicative of the Farrellys) can be as well.

The Great Debaters

Director: Denzel Washington

For his directorial follow-up to the inspiring true story Antwone Fisher, two-time Academy Award winning actor Denzel Washington secured the rights to yet another uplifting true saga that sees the helmer returning to Dead Poet’s Society territory for this period film about a group of underdogs who band together in the 1935 Jim Crow South at their Marshall, Texas institution Wiley College to form a debate team under the leadership of Washington’s Professor Melvin B. Tolson. Tolson who would later become a world renowned poet in his own right, earning the title of poet laureate of Liberia in 1947 (according to Roger Ebert) is the type of character that Denzel Washington plays best—earnest, charming, challenging and like the director himself, able to bring about the very best in the young talent with whom he’s surrounded himself. Rounding out the small ensemble is debater Jermaine Williams (Hamilton Burgess), the lovely Jurnee Smollett as the independent minded Samantha Booke who left her college to travel to Texas just for this opportunity and she becomes the object of affection of not only rebellious but naturally intellectual Henry Lowe (Nate Parker) but the sweet, precocious fourteen year old preacher’s son James Farmer, Jr. (Denzel Whitaker). Young Denzel Whitaker who is of no relation to neither Denzel Washington nor Academy Award winning actor Forest Whitaker who plays his slightly intimidating but loving preacher father, steals nearly every scene he’s in as the naïve, good-natured heart of the team who serves as the glue holding the group together when violent racism of the time period along with inner conflict threaten to tear them apart.

Based on Tony Scherman’s article, screenwriter Robert Eisele took a rather questionable (and in my mind upsetting) liberty with the story in its otherwise rousing finale that has our small-town debaters traveling to Harvard to win the national championships against the legendary Crimson. Further research revealed that this never happened and the group had instead beaten USC and although writer Eisele said (as quoted by Ebert) that he wanted to emphasize just how much was at stake for the college and they wanted “the stature of Harvard… to demonstrate the heights they achieved,” I would’ve been just as impressed if they would’ve stayed truer to the facts since once this is revealed, not only was I along with other viewers disappointed but we also began to question the validity of other plot points not to mention the fact that the group didn’t even write 99% of their speeches. Despite its manipulations as some critics likewise pointed out that in the film, the group are always given the “politically correct” side of each debatable topic, New York Times writer Stephen Holden who likened the film to the socially conscious pictures of director Stanley Kramer felt that “social history airbrushed for the screen by Hollywood is preferable to none at all.” While, I hesitate to agree wholeheartedly since I felt the slightly overrated film, which was produced by Oprah Winfrey had so much going for it without the large fabrication (that would never have been tolerated in one of their brilliantly structured debates) is worth seeing just for the message and performances but felt that its inclusion in recent Golden Globe nomination for Best Picture Drama was pushing things a bit too far.

Kettle of Fish

Director:
Claudia Myers

At the start, Kettle of Fish sets itself up to be just another tale of a bachelor coming of age but quickly evolves into a screwball comedy with the arrival of the sunny and sassy Gina Gershon. Playing a British scientist researching amphibian behavior, Gershon instantly calls to mind Cary Grant’s performance that most likely inspired her in Howard Hawks’ Bringing Up Baby when she arrives on the scene to sublet professional bachelor Matthew Modine’s apartment in New York. Foolishly Mel-- jazz saxophone playing Modine-- has prematurely decided to move in with a younger girlfriend and, perhaps as equally predicting it will fail as the audience, makes the condition to Gershon that she only has the place temporarily for a month just in case. Of course, long before the month is up, he comes crawling back and despite their arguments, the two cohabitate for awhile until she finally finds a place of her own. Meanwhile, despite the fireworks ignited by the two, hopelessly romantic and morally clueless Mel meets a woman he believes is Ms. Right (Christy Scott Cashman) en route to her own wedding to yogurt mogul Bruce (Fisher Stevens) and impulsively takes a job as an elevator boy in her apartment building to try and woo her away from her self-involved new husband.

While we tire of Mel pretty quickly despite the charm of Modine (who also served as one of the film’s producers), we find ourselves dazzled by the comedic skills of fast talking Ginger (Gershon) who begins studying the way that Mel’s saxophone enthralls his goldfish Daphne while trying to ignore her budding attraction to the musician which culminates in a senselessly clichéd drunken near make-out with the object of her desire. Yale graduate Claudia Myers crafts an affable yet contrived little romantic sleeper that, now making regular rounds on premium movie channels may garner more interest from channel surfers and despite the predictability, I was entertained throughout and once it was over, began searching through my DVD collection for Bringing Up Baby.

Shoot 'Em Up

Director:
Michael Davis

“You know what I hate?” Clive Owen’s Smith asks repeatedly throughout Shoot ‘Em Up before revealing several pet peeves (including littering and changing lanes without signaling) like a child telling a knock-knock joke, begging for a participant to get to a predictable punch-line. The only difference is while the kid hopes for a laugh, Owen’s Smith just wants to find an excuse—any excuse-- to shoot one of the eighteen guns he fires in British writer/director Michael Davis’ gleefully ridiculous riff on action movies that according to IMDb reportedly leaves one hundred characters dead and fifteen gallons of fake blood in its wake. As a name, Smith seems to stand for "gunsmith" but just as well it may stand for Mr. and Mrs. Smith, the tongue-in-cheek trigger-happy gun-toting smooth operators in Doug Liman’s bloody action comedy starring Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt. However, Shoot ‘Em Up’s laughs feel more forced and sinister and Davis sets up the film’s tone within minutes as Smith eats a carrot like a vicious Bugs Bunny and uses it as his first weapon until a gun is handier when he intervenes in assassins trying to kill off a pregnant woman, who incidentally is going into labor. If one can stand the opening (without shutting it off or walking out) that has Smith firing away at bad guys and delivering a baby on whom he decides to use a gun to sever the umbilical cord to free the newborn from a mother who quickly gets murdered by the villains, then Davis has successfully lured you along for the ride even as it gets more increasingly difficult to stomach and over-the-top as Smith (holding the baby like a football) jumps through plate-glass windows to escape the thugs led by a maniacal Paul Giamatti (Sideways).

However, soon the film that’s trying so hard to be hip quickly grows tiresome with the introduction of a hooker (played by ludicrously awful Monica Belluci) who has less than a heart of gold and more just free time and love of money to go along with Smith and the child while they try to get the baby out of harm’s way. While some critics such as Roger Ebert successfully suspended their disbelief to appreciate the mindless film as sheer entertainment, it’s so aggressively annoying at times that it actually made me—a woman who otherwise is a huge fan of Owen and Giamatti—question just why I liked the actors who would make such a horrible career decision in the first place. Of course, moments later, another scene that must be seen to be believed occurs and it dawned on me that the stars were probably tired of melancholy drama and just wanted to have some fun... and shoot a whole lot of bullets in the process. Despite a brief running time of less than ninety minutes, Shoot ‘Em Up still feels long and may have been much easier to bear minus Belluci (or with a different actress or character) and as an inventive short film. Then perhaps it wouldn’t be so tempting for viewers to want to provide an answer the next time the camera goes for a close-up on Smith who asks, “You know what I hate?”

The Break-Up

Director:
Peyton Reed

While we never run out of analogies and metaphors for relationships and their successful navigation, one thing is for certain and that is the need for balance of one’s own needs with those of their partner. So permit me one more comparison in saying that navigating a relationship can be likened to the delicate walking of a balance beam and as Peyton Reed’s film The Break-Up opens, we realize that in Vince Vaughn we have a rather gifted gymnast… if indeed there were a category for verbal gymnastics. At a baseball game with bartender friend Johnny (Jon Favreau), Gary (Vaughn) notices the lovely Brooke (Jennifer Aniston). The fact that she’s at the game with another man isn’t an obstacle but a way in for Gary with conversation after he first makes her acquaintance by buying several hotdogs and offering her one. After the game, Gary lunges at the opportunity to ridicule the tucked in shirt, visor on head, plaid short wearing man Brooke had been with in an exhaustively funny and seemingly improvised fresh burst of dialogue that leaves Brooke helpless, annoyed yet intrigued. She's hooked and the effect of his words draw her as well as the audience in and we next see a photograph filled credit sequence catching us up with their relationship that speeds by until we meet up with them years later, now living in a condo in Chicago. However, predictably as is sometimes the case, Gary’s selfishly childish sense of entitlement that managed to charm Brooke and us we quickly foreshadow will be precisely the wedge that drives them apart.

Brooke, a modern art-dealer working for the pretentious and egomaniacal Marilyn Dean (Judy Davis)—indeed a woman whose name is almost always said with both the first and last parts together—returns home to clean and prepare an intricate dinner for both her prim family and Gary’s admittedly rowdy brood of brothers who, like Gary, are involved in a Chicago tourism company that now is on land but in the future hopes to take the city by air and sea as well. The bickering Brooke and Gary kick off the evening assigning blame and accusation and then, when the dinner is served have another disagreement that isn’t exactly helped by Brooke’s closeted brother Richard (John Michael Higgins whom audiences will recognize from Christopher Guest films) who choose to launch the guests into a full-fledged sing-a-long ala his male musical group The Tone Rangers. After the music stops and the relatives leave, Brooke and Gary’s disagreements culminate into a huge blow-out where the two break up, he leaves and despite her hope that he’ll return to apologize and change, man’s man Gary eventually comes back home to declare war as lines are drawn and the condo turns into a battlefield with friends such as Jason Bateman, Joey Lauren Adams and Favreau having to choose sides.

An astute film that’s even funnier on repeat viewings as the first time around it cuts a little too deeply and the jokes are too close to comfort as I distinctly remember seeing more than a few women in the theatre crying. This in itself is a testament to the script, which was based partially on the plot idea of Vaughn himself and it’s interesting that one of his ex-girlfriends (Joey Lauren Adams) is involved in the film as well as his soon-to-be-ex Aniston who was coming off the heels of her divorce to Brad Pitt and it was Vaughn who co-starred in the movie that brought Pitt and Jolie together—Mr. and Mrs. Smith. While it may not be the best choice for the early stages of a relationship nor for viewing if one is beginning to feel that their relationship is growing stale, The Break-Up is probably best seen in the company of friends where viewers are most at ease and able to delight in one of Aniston’s better comedic performances opposite the always watchable Vaughn.

New Articles Added (1/5/08)

In the Articles section of Film Intuition, several new articles have been added as follows:


The Cinematic Makeover of Elizabeth Bennet-- Three Versions of Pride and Prejudice-- Comparison of three modern adaptations of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice by directors Joe Wright, Sharon Maguire (Bridget Jones's Diary) and Gurinder Chadha (Bride and Prejudice) with analysis of and references to the novel. *contains spoilers*



Commenting On Our Times: Hal Ashby and the 1970's-- Biographical data and evaluation of the recurring themes and cinematic motifs that ran throughout the filmmaking career of director Hal Ashby. *contains spoilers*



In the Mood for Translation: A Look at Wong Kar-wai's In the Mood for Love & Sofia Coppola's Lost in Translation-- Essay comparing and contrasting the many similarities and differences of the influential In the Mood for Love from director Wong Kar-wai on Sofia Coppola's breakout hit Lost in Translation. *contains spoilers*



Jim Jarmusch: A Profile-- Short biographical look at the independent film director culminating with an introduction to Broken Flowers.



John Cassavetes: A Critical Perspective-- Background information and analysis of critical reactions to the work of John Cassavetes along with particular emphasis on Faces. *contains spoilers*



McCarthyism, Masculinity & The 1950's Western: High Noon, Silver Lode and Rio Bravo-- Investigative look at the political subtext, gender and moral messages woven through Fred Zinnemann's High Noon, Alan Dwan's Silver Lode and Howard Hawks' Rio Bravo with in-depth analysis and inclusion of biographical research and critical reactions to the films as important documents of American history. *contains spoilers*



Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette-- Background information on the production of the film Marie Antoinette featuring a look at the cinematic techniques employed.



The Reflection of Life: Truffaut's Adventures of Antoine Doinel-- In-depth analysis and biographical information surrounding the making and critical reception of Francois Truffaut's Antoine Doinel series that helped launch the French New Wave. *contains spoilers*



Woody Allen's Existential Crimes and Misdemeanors-- Complete summary and analysis of writer/director Woody Allen's Crimes and Misdemeanors that highlights moral questioning, cinematic technique, allegory and subtext along with research on Allen's outlook on the film. *contains spoilers*

Eastern Promises

Director: David Cronenberg

What appeared to be the half-British, half-Russian cousin of David Cronenberg’s previous film A History Of Violence, has been steadily building up momentum this award’s season and now with the recent release of Easter Promises on DVD, this haunting masterpiece will hopefully get the respect it deserves from audiences around the globe. It may be due to Cronenberg’s self-described “existentialist underpinnings,” but the director admits he’s often drawn to “enclosed hermetically sealed subcultures,” such as the one used as the backdrop of this story of the Russian mob in England. It seemed to be a topic without much interest when the production began but after the shocking poisoning of Russian KGB officer became international news, suddenly Cronenberg’s topic became “radioactively hot,” as he proclaimed on the DVD featurette. As the film opens, we’re shown a brutal organized crime slaying in a barber shop that disturbingly appears to be business as usual but then we’re even more saddened by the onscreen death of a young pregnant teenager who collapses on the floor of a drugstore and later perishes in the hospital. The time of the girl’s death coincides with the birth of her baby named Christine by midwife Anna (Naomi Watts) in honor of the Christmas holiday which is just days away. Disturbed by the death of the young mother without any family, Anna decides to investigate the girl’s lineage herself via clues found in the diary she kept which is written in Russian. In addition to the diary, Anna discovers a business card for a Russian restaurant where the deceptively charming yet mysterious owner played by Armin-Mueller Stahl offers to translate the diary. Perhaps as nervous as we are about the man and his offer, Anna makes a copy of the girl’s writings and leaves the original with her Russian uncle, an old-fashioned man whose curmudgeon manner wears on Anna and her mother but it’s quickly revealed that when it comes to his homeland, he knows much more than one would assume and thus advises his niece that she’s getting in over her head when the diary reveals that the girl was part of the Eastern European prostitution trafficking in England. Writer Steve Knight (Dirty Pretty Things) was advised by the BBC to write a script solely on the modern day sexual slavery in London but seeing the narrative potential in making the story more accessible, Knight wisely chose to have British Anna (who has Russian lineage herself) serve as the bridge for the audience when she goes between the civil modern life and the dark underground lurking underneath.

A brilliant catalyst for the situations is found in Nikolai, played by Viggo Mortensen in one of his most impressive performances, who, hired as a chauffeur for the family works directly below Kirill (Vincent Cassel), the fiery and dangerous son of Mueller-Stahl who shares a closer relationship with Nikolai than he does with his father. “I’m just a driver,” Nikolai tells Anna repeatedly when she questions just what it is that he does for the family but Anna, as well as the rest of the audience become quickly aware that Nikolai is much more than just a driver as his character seems to evolve right before our eyes from one scene to the next, displaying repulsive monstrous violence in one scene before stunning us with quiet acts of humanity in the next. For his role, Mortensen went to Russia to immerse himself in research and spent much time in the company of others from the world of Vor V Zakone (“Thieves by the Code”) to accurately portray the morally conflicted character.

Although the perpetual gloom and dark color palette, coupled by some particularly gory bursts of violence (naked Mortensen’s brawl is sadly more well-known by online gossip than the plot of the film itself) may keep some film fans at a distance but Eastern Promises makes a brilliant and sometimes even superior counterpart to A History of Violence in the existential questioning of what humans are capable of and as Mortensen notes, Cronenberg’s investigation of whether lying, violence or illegal activity is ever justified. Sophisticated storytelling and one of the best performances of the year in Mortensen who successfully vanishes in his role helped garner the film three Golden Globe nominations including Best Picture and should also play well to not only fans of the director and stars but also films such as last year’s Oscar winning Best Picture The Departed, which incidentally shares the same composer as Promises with the pulse-pounding score by Howard Shore.

Stardust

Director: Matthew Vaughn

“Are you having a laugh?” In his recently completed television series Extras, Ricky Gervais’s main character Andy repeated this catchphrase to annoying effect much to the delight of audience members in his fictitious series. However, when he says the same line in the middle of Matthew Vaughn’s romantic fantasy Stardust, it not only doesn’t annoy us but actually makes us realize that yes, we are having a laugh at this comedic fantastical tale that takes its cues from both the novel upon which it’s based but also Rob Reiner’s beloved 80’s film The Princess Bride. Based on the book by Neil Gaiman, screenwriters Vaughn and Jane Goldman do a wonderful job concocting a tale that delights kids of all ages and even those of us (such as this reviewer) who never really found themselves keen on most fantasy films. Named as the Overlooked Film of the Year by the local Phoenix Film Critics Society, Stardust, recently released on DVD which makes the CGI and digital effects come to vibrant life on state of the art home theatre set-ups, chronicles the adventures of Tristan Thorn (Charlie Cox). Shortly into the film, Tristan tells the gorgeous but vain Victoria (Sienna Miller) who’s promised to another that he will return in one week’s time with a fallen star for her birthday in order to claim her heart. Once he journeys outside his countryside town of Wall into the magical land outside the wall, he realizes that the star is in the form of a luminous beauty named Yvaine (Claire Danes) and we become quickly aware that he isn’t the only person trying to retrieve the star. Michelle Pfeiffer takes the vindictive diva she portrayed in Hairspray several steps further to play the full on wicked witch Lamia, a manically laughing woman hoping to eat the heart of Yvaine in order for her and her two sisters to achieve eternal beauty and life. Rounding out the search is the remaining sons of the deceased king (Peter O’Toole) who from his deathbed entreats his sons that the rightful heir to his throne will be able to turn the star’s pendant to ruby just by the touch of his hand. While the groups intersect from time to time to action-packed results, the film is filled with humorous misadventures and oddballs as Yvaine and Tristan encounter the closeted homosexual pirate Captain Shakespeare (a campy Robert De Niro, visibly having a blast) and the scheming Ricky Gervais as Ferdy the Fence. Narrated by Ian McKellen, this unfairly (yes) overlooked summer sleeper failed to seduce filmgoers but hopefully now given an impressive transfer to disc will attract a new generation of fans and, much like The Princess Bride, become even more popular and cult-like for years to come.

The Lives of Others

Director:
Florian Henckel
von Donnersmarck

When the prospect of graduation is in students’ line of sight, some of us panic, others coast through their courses doing the bare minimum of required work (back in high school it was called the “senior slide”) and then there are others like German director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck who spend five years working on a feature-length project for his Munich based film program. Holding a degree in philosophy from Oxford University, one may have said that von Donnersmarck had nothing left to prove but then again, he hadn’t received an Oscar yet and after completing his opus indeed the director with the long name walked away with the award for Best Foreign Film during the 2007 Academy Awards for his film that received more than forty additional accolades worldwide. It’s a film that has been on Top 10 lists for both 2006 and 2007 (depending on your definition of release date and rules) and set a record last year in its German homeland for the most nominations ever in the German Film Awards earning the epic, entitled The Lives of Others a total of eleven and making its director, whose previous experience had been in short filmmaking something of a legend. The Lives of Others which required one and a half years of extensive research and interviews and evolved over five drafts into screenplay form which took an additional year and a half begins in Berlin in 1984 and chronicles the efforts of the East German Secret Police and GDR that made a regular habit of spying on citizens they feared may be disloyal or about to flee to the free west.

Cool-headed, severe Stasi secret police agent Hauptmann Gerd Wiesler (Ulrich Mühe) is given the task of heading up the investigation into the lives of playwright Georg Dreyman (Sebastian Koch) and his live-in actress girlfriend Christa Maria Sieland (Martina Gedeck) after their apartment is bugged and he’s stationed nearby listening in to their most intimate moments with his ears attached to government issued headphones. The film which begins with an exploration of, as critic Leonard Maltin stated, “the poisonous nature of a society built on suspicion and doubt,” becomes a fascinating and inspiring tale of humanity and morality as Wiesler experiences not only art for the first time in his eavesdropping but he discovers his own humanity as he begins to care for two people in question. The film which charts the “axis of principle and feeling,” or the line one walks between the two trying to find a balance between the two extremes as the director explained on the DVD was the only production ever allowed to film in the GDR archives. Adding to the validity of the piece is the usage of real locations and absence of digital effects anywhere from the proper period signage that extends into the rest of the production design. The director, who was inspired by the color scheme of the first Indiana Jones picture, conceived the film’s look to keep things interesting and consistent, replacing blue with green and red with browns and oranges to make as he phrased a more stylized version of the GDR since in memories some colors become more dominant and others left out.

All of the elements work together in perfect unison to create of the finest German films since Caroline Link’s Nowhere in Africa and it’s much to the director’s credit that the hefty running time of 137 minutes along with the grim subject matter of communist espionage and the destruction of citizens’ lives can be not only compelling throughout but be presented in such a unique way as to show both sides and emphasize humanity over inhumanity. Leading man Sebastian Koch who was also in the underrated Black Book last year turns in his second brilliant performance in recent memory but the one we can’t take our eyes off of is Ulrich Mühe. Mühe who’s especially good in his role, brings an authentic air to the work as director von Donnersmarck noted in his DVD interview that the actor was one of several involved from East Germany and Mühe had been on Stasi surveillance because of his immense promise as a young actor in high school through the beginnings of his theatrical career. Mühe, like the film itself will stay in the minds of viewers long after The Lives of Others ends and hopefully with more press as the film is featured on prominent critical best lists of 2007 will gain a greater audience following for, as the title connotes, it’s the kind of work that is made with the compassion and integrity global citizens should have for the lives of others.

Lady Chatterley

Director: Pascale Ferran

Winner of five Cesar awards in its native France, this sumptuously photographed work marks the first adaptation of the scandalously sultry D.H. Lawrence classic by a female director. Although transported to the screen five previous times, Lady Chatterley is the first version I’ve seen as a filmgoer, partially because I’m usually disappointed by the filmed versions of the author’s works but after seeing Pascal Ferran’s film listed on numerous top ten lists by impressive critics including writers for The New York Times and Entertainment Weekly, I was inspired to check it out. Exquistely shot by cameraman Julien Hirsch, the film’s 168 minute running time filled with shots the last much longer than the one to two second video-game like cuts of the recent stellar Bourne Ultimatum that’s also appearing on top ten charts lulls one into believing it’s a classically styled period film with contemplative characters and methodic pacing. However, we’re soon as shocked as our young heroine Constance (Barbarian Invasions and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly’s Marina Hands) by the eroticism that follows in one of several unabashedly frank and steamy couplings that follow. For those unfamiliar with the storyline, Lady Chatterley tells the tale of a beautiful wife whose husband Sir Clifford (Jump Tomorrow’s Hippolyte Girardot) returns from World War I wheelchair-bound and paralyzed from the waist down. After Constance falls ill from both the taxing care she provides around the clock and a hereditarily fragile condition, the weakened woman is prescribed rest and relaxation by the family doctor. Once a nurse has been hired to look after her stubborn, understandably frustrated and sometimes bitter husband, Constance seeks solace in nature, going out for walks in the fresh air where she stumbles on the ideal retreat in the form of the estate’s small hut occupied by their gamekeeper Parkin (Jean-Louis Coulloc’h). Finding a connection with Parkin and at last able to sleep and relax comfortably at the hut, she requests a key to come and go as she pleases but soon, the two impulsively yet perhaps inevitably begin an affair that’s jeopardized by not only her duty back home to Clifford but also by their differences in class and circumstance which are complicated even further by traditional gender roles of the time period.

Despite the meticulous plotting of the beginning of the film, Lady Chatterley soon grows into a sparse, naturalistic styled explicit adult drama without much in the way of dialogue between Parkin and Constance other than a few short “meet me later” type of lines for us to respond to their relationship on a deeper level of human connection than just their carnal lust. However, perhaps because it’s the first version helmed by a woman, we feel more of an understanding of Constance who is filmed wearing at least one red costume article in nearly every scene than either male character and are particularly intrigued as we notice the way her character changes throughout both internally and externally and aren’t at all exhausted by the film’s challenging running time that actually felt warranted rather than bloated. Successful work that captures the spirit of Lawrence without the full understanding of the other parties that would’ve made it wholly satisfying, nonetheless worth seeing for literature devotees with the warning that as a film, it’s probably as scandalously sensual as the novel was when it was first written. Recently released on DVD, the film has earned numerous awards for actress Marina Hands’ courageous portrayal along with nominations for Ferran’s work.

The Kingdom

Director: Peter Berg

In the sea of ink spilled regarding the hit-machine of screenplays by the ever-talented and prolific Judd Apatow as one of the top entertainers of the year, other writers were overlooked and not just the ones on the picket lines involved in the WGA strike. No, 2007 was also impressive for first time screenwriter Matthew Michael Carnahan who, despite American audience’s lack of enthusiasm for topical political dramas and their box office preference for humorous stories where boys are “superbad” and girls are “knocked up,” managed to see not just one but two of his scripts produced with Academy Award winners and A-list talent involved. I’ve already reviewed Lions for Lambs, his second work directed by Robert Redford and produced by Tom Cruise but the first script Carnahan penned-- The Kingdom-- which was partially filmed in my home-state of Arizona that I missed on the big screen, was just released on DVD last week and, for my money, was far more entertaining than Lambs. The film, which begins with a terse but involving education on the brief history of the oil conflict in the Middle East over the course of a century, quickly becomes an action-packed mystery after a tragic two pronged attack is orchestrated by extremists in Saudi Arabia where American citizens in a Western housing compound and FBI agents are murdered. Academy Award winner Jamie Foxx leads an all-star cast as FBI Agent Ronald Fleury who, without permission of Attorney General Danny Huston or other authorities in Washington, dispatches an elite, top-secret four person team comprised of himself, Janet Mayes (Jennifer Garner), Grant Sykes (Chris Cooper) and Adam Leavitt (Jason Bateman) to investigate the crime. Of course, protocol prevents the agents from handling any of the evidence or touching any Muslim remains and the Americans quickly learn that they are in jeopardy as they dig further to uncover the mastermind responsible and go on the hunt to bring him to justice. Complicated storyline soon gives way to tense action scenes and stunt-work that tragically resulted in the on-set death of one crew members (sadly two other workers died from causes unrelated to the production) and it’s not without reservation that Arizonans such as myself watched The Kingdom after being inundated with the tragic headlines when it was filmed. Foxx is especially good as is the interplay between the other cast members such as folksy Cooper (the polar opposite of the character he played earlier in the year in his brilliant performance in Breach) and Garner and Bateman before the duo teamed up to adopt Ellen Page’s offspring in Ivan Reitman’s Juno. Friday Night Lights director Peter Berg, who has a small cameo as one of the agents in the post-bombing briefing at the start of the film, proves a capable director of large scale action and The Kingdom, which isn’t quite as preachy nor dialogue heavy as some of the other box office misfires regarding the situation overseas in 2007 is sure to gain more fans with the DVD release.

2007: Film Highlights

After taking inventory of the most impressive films I’ve seen over the past year, I came up with a list but-- taking a cue from The New York Times -- decided not to rank them in numerical order since it’s impossible to compare one completely different work to the next and give them a sort of batting order. In addition, I opted to leave out the categories of best actor, actress and director since I’m in agreement with my colleagues on the richly deserving performers including Daniel Day Lewis and Ellen Page, along with filmmakers such as Joel and Ethan Coen. I tried to invent some categories in the hopes that it will inspire you guys to check out some of the lesser-known works, comment and above all, decide which films of 2007 were your favorites as well.

Note: It should be mentioned that due to my work on the film festival and prepping for grad school, along with living in Arizona and not having LA and NY access, I missed the opportunity to see Into the Wild, I'm Not There, Gone Baby Gone, Lust/Caution, Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead, No End in Sight, and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. The last two are on my must-see list and the first ones I’m still trying to track down. While I'm fortunate to attend numerous advance screenings and free previews on a regular basis, I'm not eligible for "press" status yet and therefore my mailbox isn't flooded with screeners. Needless to say, stay tuned and I’ll definitely edit and comment on the post if things change.

- Jen

The Best and the Rest of 2007

Favorite Films: Atonement, There Will Be Blood, Juno, Once, Zodiac, The Lives of Others, No Country for Old Men, Across the Universe, Eastern Promises, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.

Most Original Film: Across the Universe (Julie Taymor)

Most Overrated Films: The Kite Runner, Michael Clayton*, 300, Knocked Up*, Margot at the Wedding, The Savages, The Great Debaters*. (* Films I enjoyed but don’t feel are worthy of the top ten placement or awards consideration)

Most Underrated Films: Across the Universe, Eastern Promises, 3:10 to Yuma, Rescue Dawn, Waitress, The Hoax, The Hunting Party, The Lookout, Dan in Real Life, Hairspray,

Grindhouse: Death Proof, Sleuth.

Biggest Surprise: The Bourne Ultimatum (best of the series)

Biggest Disappointment: Love in the Time of Cholera

Best Documentary: Sicko

Best Foreign Film: The Lives of Others

Amazing Performances that Flew Under the Radar:

Steve Zahn in Rescue Dawn, Jude Law in Sleuth, Keri Russell in Waitress, Richard Gere in The Hoax, Joseph Gordon Levitt in The Lookout, Philip Seymour Hoffman in Charlie Wilson's War, Sienna Miller in Interview, Chris Cooper in Breach, Josh Brolin in American Gangster, Tom Wilkinson in Michael Clayton, Christian Bale in 3:10 to Yuma, Sigourney Weaver in The TV Set, Viggo Mortensen in Eastern Promises, Casey Affleck in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford.

Best Original Score: Atonement and There Will Be Blood

Best Soundtracks: Across the Universe and Juno

Best Adapted Screenplay: Paul Thomas Anderson’s

There Will Be Blood

Best Original Screenplay: Diablo Cody’s Juno

Cinematography: Roger Deakins for The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford

Best Editing: The Bourne Ultimatum’s breakneck cuts.

Most impressive Production Design: Sleuth

Mad Money

Director:
Callie Khouri

“This feels like a TV movie,” I kept telling myself during a recent advanced screening of director Callie Khouri’s Mad Money and despite the fact that I found myself laughing at the humorous antics of the film’s engaging trio of leading ladies, I was plagued by what felt like an overwhelmingly small screen approach. Sure enough, when I began researching the film further in preparation for writing about it, I discovered that it was a remake of a television movie made a few years earlier entitled Hot Money. I haven’t seen Hot Money so I can’t speak for the similarities or quality between the two but given the considerable talent involved in making the jump to silver screen, needless to say, I was hoping it would’ve left the television roots behind and-- while we’re on the subject-- am I the only one worried about the upcoming Sex and the City movie?

Anyway, we’ll leave Mr. Big out of it… Mad Money stars Diane Keaton playing essentially the Diane Keaton we’ve come to know and love in her post Allen films such as Something’s Gotta Give, Father of the Bride, and The First Wives Club. In Mad Money she plays Bridget Cardigan who’s shocked to discover that her successful husband (Ted Danson) has been laid off from his cushy position in corporate America. Without current computer skills aside from a fondness for Google and a comparative literature degree coupled with her decades as a wife and mother, Bridget is forced to take a position as a janitor at the Federal Reserve Bank. From pretty much the first moment she sets foot on the premises as a trainee, Bridget’s eyes fixate on the cartloads of cash being taken from one floor to another until they’re brought to the basement where they’re shredded. Everything about Bridget screams suspicious—even the simple act of walking from one television screen to another with a can of spray and a dust-rag is underscored with scheming and quickly, she crafts a plan to smuggle hundreds of thousands of soon to be destroyed bills out of the reserve in a plan she justifies as more recycling than stealing. Needing additional help, Bridget enlists the help of the carefree compulsively peppy Jackie (Katie Holmes) who is mostly seen dancing to the music only she can hear in her headphones while she pops her chewing gum and pushes the cartloads down to their third accomplice Nina (Queen Latifah) who spends her days in the shredding room worrying about the quality of life and education her two sons are experiencing as a single parent. Nina is the most down-to-earth and relatable of the film’s cartoon-like characters and Queen Latifah makes a terrific straight-woman to the sometimes off-putting bumbling of Keaton that reminds viewers of the character repeatedly played by her old partner in filmmaking crime, Woody Allen.

Given a spoiler of an opening that introduces viewers to the women when they’re each trying to destroy money (which makes some of their theft and planning feel anticlimactic), the film would’ve benefitted considerably by starting with Keaton and Danson struggling to make ends meet in our troubled economy ala the Carrey and Leoni vehicle Fun With Dick and Jane. However, the charm of the women make the film work and keep us invested even when we’re thinking that the actresses (especially Latifah) deserve better and that the amount of mileage Keaton has with her foolish character is growing a bit old and we wish for some greater work that shows the tremendous range she’d displayed in work like The Godfather trilogy and Reds. A fun film for mothers and daughters and much more effective than Keaton’s awful Because I Said So, Mad Money will probably do even better when it’s put into the premium movie channel rotation on Starz, which incidentally was one of the studio production companies involved.