trendell-1 Reviews

Swordfish (2001)

I gave it a "3", and I was being generous!

[3/10 · 25 November 2002]

It's easy perhaps to understand why films like this get made. Nominally they're lightweight, action thrillers with a catchy theme. In this outing, the theme is "hacking", the ability of some shady genius to get into mainframe computers, anywhere, anytime, and work super-scams that will shift millions of dollars - or in this case almost $10 billion - into the bank account(s) of your choosing. It sounds harmless enough, but it all goes badly wrong in "Swordfish", and what comes out the other end is a nasty, stupidly obscene film. I have difficulty imagining why wealthy big-name stars like John Travolta, Halle Berry, Don Cheadle, and Hugh Jackman allow themselves to be involved in this sort of enterprise. Do they really need the money? If the answer is "yes", then can someone tell me just how much money such people want or need?

This is not to say that the technical production values aren't high. They are. The explosions are impressive, there are cars and bodies, and fragments of bodies, flying through the air. There are fireballs. We have helicopters zooming all over the place. Many people are picturesquely slaughtered. Good technical stuff, indeed. And it was on the basis of the impressive optics that I gave the film a 3, instead of a 1.

The film hits a low point shortly after the opening violent scenes. Ginger (Halle Berry) tracks down Stanley-the-hacker (Hugh Jackman) in his dilapidated trailer in Midland, Texas to make him an offer he can't possibly refuse. A great big pile of money so that he can hire a super law firm to help him get custody of his 10-year old daughter (who is ten going on thirty-seven, but Hollywood kids are always special) from his sluttish wife, who now lives with one of Hollywood's porn kings. (Intense moral drama unfolding here.)

Ginger immediately impresses Stanley (and all of us) with her sparkling wit and incisive intellect:

Stanley: If you'd told me you were coming I would have cleaned the place up.

Ginger: I didn't come here to suck your dick, Stanley.

Brilliant dialogue for the ages. How did "Swordfish" fail to get a nomination for best original screenplay, I wonder? And later, rising to even greater heights of taste and intelligence, the head honcho, Gabriel - no angel, he, as we quickly discover - played by John Travolta, has a gun put to Stanley's head and forces him to hack into a government site in 60 seconds, or his brains will be moved someplace else on the business end of a heavy calibre slug. And to add more wit and tension to the scene - I guess - a blond bimbo busily buries her head in Stanley's lap, and we know for certain that she's not rummaging around for loose change. I guess this must be director Dominic Sena's notion of a climactic scene.

And, so on. The plot is wildly improbable and stupid but it at least unfolds rapidly, thus minimising brain damage to the viewer. Probably the best scenes belong to Jackman, an actor of talent and potential range who only needs to develop a degree of taste and judgement in his roles. (But then he did go on to make "Kate & Leopold", didn't he?) Travolta, who is also talented, if not as much as he thinks, walks through the film doing a kind of reprise of his Chili Palmer role from "Get Shorty" - a vastly superior film - but with an overlay of nastiness here that does him no credit whatever. As for Halle Berry - well, she looks great, just as she did in "Monster's Ball", and as in that film, she mostly acts with breasts and crotch. But, as we used to say in the military - "If you've got ‘em, smoke ‘em!"

At film's end, I guess we're supposed to conclude that Gabriel is a mis-directed super-patriot, a true son of J. Edgar Hoover's resident paranoia, and he wants to rid his country of the threat of terrorism, apparently by being the toughest terrorist on the global block: "If they blow up a church, I'll blow up ten churches! Hell, I can buy a nuclear warhead in Minsk for $40 million; if I buy six I can get a discount." So, yes, the film appears to be telling us, let's make sure this lunatic anti-hero gets his hands on $10 billion so he can buy all kinds of ordnance and bring the bad guys to heel. Why not? It works for Israel, doesn't it? It doesn't? Darn! And at film's end, after wiping out quite a few innocent people, Gabriel does get his $10 billion, and the voice-over tells us that hitherto untouchable terrorists are now dying like flies in a winter chill. The viewer is left with the impression that, chaos and dead innocents aside, Gabriel is just the kind of guy we need - or American super-patriots think they need - to set the world to rights. Gabe even gets Ginger, the dishy, if essentially vacuous, Halle Berry, to assist him and, one supposes, make his bedsheets hum. Slaughter and sex are, after all, staple companions in this kind of sad nonsense.

"Swordfish" was made before September 11, 2001. One wonders, in the persistent pall of 9/11, and the mostly unanswered questions that atrocity has raised, if such a film would be made today. One hopes not. But, Hollywood being what it is, and what it too often is not, one suspects that we have many more films like "Swordfish" in our collective future. And that's a shame. The world's a complicated place, and it might actually help if movie-makers would divert some of those millions of production dollars to making intelligent films about complicated issues, rather than mindless trash like this.

True Confessions (1981)

Where have you gone, Bobby DeNiro? Spoilers!!

[8/10 · 5 November 2002]

It's always interesting to watch a film twenty-some years after it was first released, to see how it weathers the changing standards of cinema. Happily, I can say that "True Confessions" stands up very well. I very much enjoyed the film when it came out in 1981, and I have seen it a half-dozen times since then, most recently in November of this year (2002). And I find it's still an enjoyable and interesting film, even on the inevitably faded VHS video from my local library. (One hopes that the film will soon be available on DVD, if it's not already.)

The film was adapted from the novel of the same title by John Gregory Dunne, which itself was based on the unsolved murder of Elizabeth Short, whose nude and mutilated body was found in a vacant lot in Los Angeles in January of 1947. (The infamous "Black Dahlia" murder.) The film, like the novel, has a complex plot that involves corruption and nastiness in the L.A. business community, and cynical hypocrisy in the affected diocese of the Roman Catholic Church. The victim is a beautiful young woman from small-town America who came to Los Angeles for fortune and fame, but who ended up "acting" in porno films, and sleeping around with a variety of wealthy and unprincipled businessmen, several of whom have close ties to the Church.

The dramatic tension of the story centres on two brothers, Detective Sergeant Tom Spellacy of LAPD Homicide (Robert Duvall), and Monsignor Desmond Spellacy (Robert DeNiro), an ambitious young priest who aspires to rise as far as he can in the Church's hierarchy. In one of the best, and most closely defining scenes, early in the film, Tom Spellacy asks his brother what name he will take when he's made Pope. Desmond, smiling, teasing his brother, replies that he will take the name Thomas: "There's never been a Pope named Thomas."

It never happens, of course, because Des Spellacy, and his Church, have become too close to a particularly corrupt businessman in the diocese, Jack Amsterdam, played to perfection by Charles Durning. It is one of Durning's best, and at the same time most repellent, performances. When Amsterdam is linked to the murder, a scandal ensues and Des Spellacy's career comes to a sad end, although in the process, he recaptures his faith and his vocation, and finds peace in a small parish in the California desert, far removed from the centre of power in Los Angeles.

The two brothers aren't close, and they're often in conflict. Where Des is smooth, careful and upwardly mobile, Tom Spellacy is impetuous, angry and short-tempered, his career short-circuited by his own instability and, also, in a way, by his refusal to take the easy road, goaded by an odd sense of honour that is ultimately destructive of everyone close to him. But the brothers do have a way of making contact with each other. In a touching scene, Tom Spellacy apologises to his brother through the grid of the confessional, unable to manage it in the normal manner, face to face. In turn, Des Spellacy attempts to deal with the hypocrisy and compromises in his own life by confessing to the priest who was once his mentor, Seamus Fargo, played to prickly perfection by Burgess Meredith.

The film is highlighted throughout by first-class performances. Kenneth McMillan excels as Tom Spellacy's moderately corrupt partner, Detective Frank Crotty, yet manages somehow to make us like him, in spite of himself. Cyril Cusack is the efficiently and coldly cynical Cardinal Danaher. Ed Flanders and Rose Gregorio also turn in fine portrayals. The writing is sharp and incisive throughout, with some of the best dialogue you'll hear in any film.

My principal problem with "True Confessions" is that almost every character is in some way morally flawed, and badly, and there's an oppressive, grimy feel to the film and the people in it. The one moral character in the story is Father Seamus Fargo (Meredith), a tough little man who refuses to compromise on his faith, or on what it means to be a man of the cloth. For his stubbornness, Fargo is banished to a desert parish that will later, and ironically, become the final home of the ambitious, but disgraced, Des Spellacy. This isn't a minor cavil, but the film, in my opinion, succeeds anyway. It is a murder story, after all, and a particularly nasty one.

It was especially interesting to watch the performance of Robert DeNiro in this film, and to be reminded of how good an actor he once was, and - sadly - to be reminded of how far he has fallen. DeNiro's performance in "True Confessions" is subtle and carefully layered, the portrayal of an intelligent and essentially decent man who has almost fatally compromised himself in the service of his overweening ambition. His portrayal is a joy to watch. But it's almost heartbreaking to watch DeNiro these days, as he wades through bad film after bad film, relying on tawdry acting gimmicks to carry him through, apparently satisfied to take the money, lots of it, and walk. It's just possible that DeNiro, like his character in "True Confessions", needs a spell in the desert, far away from Los Angeles, to sort things out, and rediscover his vocation.

A Walk in the Sun (1945)

Quietly effective and often moving...

[9/10 · 2 October 2002]

I saw this film recently, for the first time, on a DVD reissue. I thought the film had some of the overtones of "Saving Private Ryan" in that it focuses on the men in the fighting unit, and eschews the mock heroics that typically characterise the "John-Wayne-Hollywood" approach to the war film. The film often comes across as a stage play transferred to film, with insightful and thoughtful dialogue, and also a number of good monologues. It isn't a slam-bang action film, and because it isn't, it appears to capture the nature of infantry warfare, warfare generally perhaps, as long stretches of boredom punctuated by short intervals of sheer terror. Most impressive is the fact that the film is an ensemble piece, as I imagine warfare is, although with leaders and followers both. All of the actors come across as interesting and complex characters, individuals all. Some of the dialogue is quite funny. Dana Andrews, Richard Conte and John Ireland stand out, but they in no way hog the film, and it was particularly satisfying to see Huntz Hall in a straight role for a change.

There are only three drawbacks that I saw in the film. One occurs when the soldiers are crouching behind a wall and an enemy bullet richochets off the stone with the silly "twang" sound that characterises western movies - lead bullets don't make that kind of noise. Another occurs early in the film when the unit is strafed by a German fighter plane - the plane, though, looks very much like a P-51 Mustang, an American aircraft. The final drawback is in the rousing band music at the film's end -to my sensibilities, that music was utterly out of place, and clashed badly with the overall sober and serious tone of the piece.

The Bourne Identity (2002)

A Bourne-again action flick. (Spoilers!)

[7/10 · 20 June 2002]

"The Bourne Identity" is a diverting entertainment piece that moves as quickly through the mind as it does across the screen. It says little, and means less, and that, arguably, is what "action pictures" are all about: good, "clean", violent entertainment with an ostensibly happy ending. "Bourne" is mostly comic-book stuff with a modest bite - more a nibble, really - and it's fine for an early summer's "family" entertainment. The night I saw the film, there was a young girl, maybe age twelve, sitting with her parents a few seats away from me. At film's end, I didn't have a sense that she had seen anything terribly inappropriate, especially by current dismal standards.

For one thing, there wasn't any sex. The one promising clinch in the film between Matt Damon (Jason Bourne) and Franka Potente (Marie Kreutz) quickly faded from view - shades of the 1940's! - once the embrace got really close and it was apparent that tongues, and other body parts, might soon be involved. In the only other scene where sex seemed likely, Damon/Bourne elects to sleep on the floor rather than share Potente/Kreutz's bed. The efficiently homicidal chap is clearly a Boy Scout under that - well - Boy-Scout exterior. And that's important, of course. Children who attend movies like this must be protected from displays of adult sexuality. Never mind that the set is drenched in blood and littered with bodies at film's end: Hollywood has its values.

Although I really enjoyed the film, I do have a few problems with it.

The main problem, as I see it, is with the depiction of the CIA, and even its inclusion in the plot. It might have been better if Bourne's controlling organisation had been referred to, semi-anonymously, as "The Agency", a ruse that has proven useful in other films of this genre. ("Marathon Man" comes to mind.) For better or for worse (my own bias is for better), the CIA and its companion agency, the FBI, are in very bad odour in the wake of their colossal failures leading up to 9-11. The once-happy notion that the CIA is populated with hugely intelligent and hyper-efficient guys and gals who never, or almost never, make mistakes has taken a well-deserved hit, and their reputation is basically in tatters. The tragedy of 9-11 more than suggests the opposite, that these two governmental critters are in fact bloated bureaucracies where internal turf battles and self-interested ladder-climbing are more of a preoccupation than actually protecting the nation (and the larger Western world) from terrorism and other international nastiness.

And that highlights the inherent problem with films like "The Bourne Identity". Thanks to a moderately vigilant press, and the courage of a few formerly anonymous public servants (who, miraculously, appear to believe that they really are servants of the public), most of us have become more than just a little sceptical of the shenanigans of the CIA and its fellows, with their penchant for covert operations that involve the murder of foreign political leaders they don't like. It's especially bothersome, of course, that last year's brave and treasured ally is too often the current year's loathsome villain. In this context, it's useful to remember that both Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden were CIA darlings before they "went bad", and forfeited their dubious attraction for the strange group of souls who set and abet foreign policy in Washington.

It was fitting, then, that Bourne's CIA chief, Ted Conklin (Chris Cooper) is so unlikeable, and so obviously a villain. When he is taken out in one of the final scenes, it was no surprise, and even pleasing, but that didn't succeed in lifting the moral tone of the film: certainly nothing like the sheer joy that reverberated through the theatre when Dustin Hoffman took out the "Agency" bad guy, William Devane, in "Marathon Man".

For all of the above cavilling, though, I have no lingering bad thoughts about "The Bourne Identity". It was entertaining and I enjoyed it. Matt Damon continues to elevate his career, and his obvious talent combined with refreshingly off-beat looks - faint echoes of a youthful Jimmy Cagney - should fuel the ascent, providing he maintains a reasonable amount of discretion in role selection. (Ben Affleck take note.) And if Bourne's amazing epiphany in suddenly rejecting violence and deciding to eschew the career of an ultra-efficient assassin doesn't really convince, that's okay. We always knew Bourne was really a nice guy under the 9 mm Glock, a sort of Jimmy Ryan/Will Hunting in-waiting.

Franka Potente was an interesting choice for the love-interest role. She's a good actress and I look forward to seeing her again. I admit, however, to thinking several times during the film that "Bourne" was a good choice for her major American debut: all that running through the streets in "Run, Lola, Run" (1999) must have gotten her into terrific shape for the frantic racing around Paris and elsewhere.

One final question, though. What happened to the Julia Stiles character? Did she live? Did she die? Why, in fact, was she in the film in the first place? It's something of a comedown, surely, after serious roles in "O" and "The Business of Strangers", to be included in a major film simply as a pretty face.

Insomnia (2002)

Once is not enough

[9/10 · 10 June 2002]

Christopher Nolan's "Insomnia" is so good, so full of intriguing detail, that I found it even more enjoyable on second viewing than on the first. The direction is first-rate, and the acting is generally better than good. The really good news about "Insomnia" is that it's at least as good as, and arguably better than, the original film on which it's based. This isn't always the case when Hollywood re-makes a "foreign-language" film for the big screen and the big names.

There are several good reasons for the artistic success of "Insomnia" (2002). First, is the choice of Christopher Nolan as director. The man really does know how to use his camera and his actors: clearly, his "Memento" of two years ago was no flash-in-the-pan success. Another reason for the film's success is that the screenplay was written by Nikolaj Frobenius and Erik Skjoldbjærg, who also wrote the 1997 Norwegian original. (Skjoldbjærg also directed the original.)

Although the two versions of "Insomnia" are different in many ways, the basic plot outline is the same. A young woman is murdered, her body cleaned of all useful forensic evidence - except that the very cleaning is evidence of a kind - and left on a rubbish heap. A famous police detective is brought in from the south to assist the "locals" in solving the crime: from Los Angeles to Alaska in the current film; from Sweden to northern Norway in the original. In both cases, the locale is in the far north, in the summer, when the sun never sets. The southerner finds the continuous daylight disorientating, with night turned into day, and his sleep patterns are disrupted - hence the film's title.

In the course of the investigation, during a stake-out gone wrong, the famous detective shoots and kills his partner, and then attempts to pin the killing on the young woman's murderer, through manipulation of the physical evidence. In each case, the rest of the film is an exploration of the detective's sense of guilt, his bizarre relationship with the murderer, who has witnessed the shooting, and his increasing instability from lack of sleep.

The back-stories of the two films are very different. Detective Will Dormer (Pacino) arrives in Alaska with a lot more baggage than can be carried by hand. He's fabricated evidence in a gruesome abduction/murder case, and he's under investigation by Internal Affairs. His partner, Hap Eckhart (Martin Donovan) is about to cut a deal with I.A. to protect his own career. This provides the necessary tension between the two men to make the apparently accidental shooting suspect, not only in the viewer's mind, but also in Dormer's. In the original film, detective Jonas Engström (Stellan Skarsgård) also has a blot on his record, but there appears to be no I.A. investigation (or whatever the Swedish equivalent might be), and thus no real tension between the two detectives, beyond the fact that detective Erik Vik (Sverre Anker Ousdal), a much older man, is a bit of a plodder, cut from smoother cloth than Engström.

The principal supporting role, that of the local female detective is also very different in the two films. In the current version, detective Ellie Burr (Swank) almost fawns over Dormer, and that characterisation creaked a little for me. Burr declares she has read all of Dormer's cases (how likely is that, really, since it appears that Dormer has been an L.A. detective for about 30 years?), and made a detailed study of one of his major cases during her stint at "the academy". In the original film, detective Hilde Hagen (Gisken Armand) is a seasoned, tough professional, who suffers no burden of hero-worship. For me that characterisation worked better. Happily, Swank's character grows as the film develops.

I have mixed feelings about Robin Williams's role, possibly because it's a new take for him. (Which is all to the good: some of Williams's sentimental past performances require dangerously high doses of Gravol to sit through.) I thought that his character had rather too much to say for a demented killer, and in some scenes he was, as the English would say, "too clever by half". Overall, I would give his performance one-and-three-quarters thumbs up. I will say, however, that I liked the original - Bjørn Floberg as the killer/writer Jon Holt - better. His characterisation had an edge, and a dangerous quality, that the Williams character lacked.

One cannot say too much about Al Pacino's performance as Will Dormer. One review I read declared that the essence of the film is written on Pacino's rugged and wasted countenance. And that's true enough, but the greatest quality of his performance is in his eyes, in the depths of pain lodged in remembrance, the aspect of a decent man who has seen so much that he has, in his own last words, "lost his way". It's a brilliant turn. Pacino works the part for every nuance that it has, and then some.

Skarsgård's take on detective Jonas Engström lacks the bravura quality of Pacino's Dormer. His character is less dramatic, more mundane, and the script gives the actor fewer opportunities for the "big scene". We never learn enough about him to have much reason to develop sympathy for his situation. The role is a great challenge, therefore, and Skarsgård does very well with it.

Final note. "Insomnia" is beautifully filmed, the scenery rugged and spectacular. Those viewers who waited for the final credits to roll by will have discovered that the film, with the exception of the aerial footage of the ice fields at the start, was shot not in Alaska but in northern British Columbia. As a Canadian, that gave me added pleasure in this very fine film.

Insomnia (2002)

Once is not enough!

[9/10 · 9 June 2002]

Christopher Nolan's "Insomnia" is so good, so full of intriguing detail, that I found it even more enjoyable on second viewing than on the first. The direction is first-rate, and the acting, especially Pacino's, is generally better than good. The really good news about "Insomnia" is that it's at least as good as, and arguably better than, the original film on which it's based. This isn't always the case when Hollywood re-makes a "foreign-language" film for the big screen and the big names.

There are several good reasons for the artistic success of "Insomnia" (2002). First, is the choice of Christopher Nolan as director. The man really does know how to use his camera and his actors: clearly, his "Memento" of two years ago was no flash-in-the-pan success. Another reason for the film's success is that the screenplay was written by Nikolaj Frobenius and Erik Skjoldbjærg, who also wrote the 1997 Norwegian original. (Skjoldbjærg also directed the original.) I can only speculate on their feelings about having the opportunity to re-do their own fine film, to expand on the original concept, take it to a new setting, broaden the characters, and fill in some of the blanks in the story.

Although the two versions of "Insomnia" are different in many ways, the basic plot outline is the same. A young woman is murdered, her body cleaned of all useful forensic evidence - except that the very cleaning is evidence of a kind - and left on a rubbish heap. A famous police detective is brought in from the south to assist the "locals" in solving the crime: from Los Angeles to Alaska in the current film; from Sweden to northern Norway in the original. In both cases, the locale is in the far north, in the summer, when the sun never sets. The southerner finds the continuous daylight disorientating, with night turned into day, and his sleep patterns are disrupted - hence the film's title.

In the course of the investigation, during a stake-out gone wrong, the famous detective shoots and kills his partner, and then attempts to pin the killing on the young woman's murderer, through manipulation of the physical evidence. In each case, the rest of the film is an exploration of the detective's sense of guilt, his bizarre relationship with the murderer, who has witnessed the shooting, and his increasing instability from lack of sleep.

The back-stories of the two films are very different. Detective Will Dormer (Pacino) arrives in Alaska with a lot more baggage than can be carried by hand. He's fabricated evidence in a gruesome abduction/murder case, and he's under investigation by Internal Affairs. His partner, Hap Eckhart (Martin Donovan) is about to cut a deal with I.A. to protect his own career. This provides the necessary tension between the two men to make the apparently accidental shooting suspect, not only in the viewer's mind, but also in Dormer's. In the original film, detective Jonas Engström (Stellan Skarsgård) also has a blot on his record, but there appears to be no I.A. investigation (or whatever the Swedish equivalent might be), and thus no real tension between the two detectives, beyond the fact that detective Erik Vik (Sverre Anker Ousdal), a much older man, is a bit of a plodder, cut from smoother cloth than Engström.

The principal supporting role, that of the local female detective is also very different in the two films. In the current version, detective Ellie Burr (Swank) almost fawns over Dormer, and that characterisation creaked a little for me. Burr declares she has read all of Dormer's cases (how likely is that, really, since it appears that Dormer has been an L.A. detective for about 30 years?), and made a detailed study of one of his major cases during her stint at "the academy". In the original film, detective Hilde Hagen (Gisken Armand) is a seasoned, tough professional, who suffers no burden of hero-worship. For me that characterisation worked better. Happily, Swank's character grows as the film develops.

I have mixed feelings about Robin Williams's role, possibly because it's a new take for him. (Which is all to the good: some of Williams's sentimental past performances require dangerously high doses of Gravol to sit through.) I thought that his character had rather too much to say for a demented killer, and in some scenes he was, as the English would say, "too clever by half". Overall, I would give his performance one-and-three-quarters thumbs up. I will say, however, that I liked the original - Bjørn Floberg as the killer/writer Jon Holt - better. His characterisation had an edge, and a dangerous quality, that the Williams character lacked.

One cannot say too much about Al Pacino's performance as Will Dormer. One review I read declared that the essence of the film is written on Pacino's rugged and wasted countenance. And that's true enough, but the greatest quality of his performance is in his eyes, in the depths of pain lodged in remembrance, the aspect of a decent man who has seen so much that he has, in his own last words, "lost his way". It's a brilliant turn. Pacino works the part for every nuance that it has, and then some.

Skarsgård's take on detective Jonas Engström lacks the bravura quality of Pacino's Dormer. His character is less dramatic, more mundane, and the script gives the actor fewer opportunities for the "big scene". We never learn enough about him to have much reason to develop sympathy for his situation. The role is a great challenge, therefore, and Skarsgård does very well with it.

Final note. "Insomnia" is beautifully filmed, the scenery rugged and spectacular. Those viewers who waited for the final credits to roll by will have discovered that the film, with the exception of the aerial footage of the ice fields at the start, was shot not in Alaska but in northern British Columbia. As a Canadian, that gave me added pleasure in this very fine film.

The Importance of Being Earnest (2002)

The dumbing-down of Oscar Wilde

[5/10 · 29 May 2002]

Years ago I read a satirical piece by Fran Lebowitz in which she formulated the ultimate put-down for a young man whose intelligence, or lack of same, had inspired her displeasure. He was, she said, the sort of person whose lips moved while he watched television. It's a wicked slight, but I confess to thinking that Oliver Parker might have had that very fellow in mind when he butchered Oscar Wilde's brilliant play to make this awful film.

And it's really too bad, because the portents for the production were - on the surface at least - very good. You start with a great play by a great writer, who was also a great humorist. It's probable that only Shakespeare penned more quotable lines than Oscar Wilde did. And even Shakespeare probably did not write so many that were funny. The cast choices also looked good: Colin Firth and Rupert Everett as the male leads, the two false "Ernests"; the formidable Judi Dench as the even more formidable Lady Bracknell; Frances O'Connor as Gwendolen Fairfax; and Reese Witherspoon as Cecily Cardew - Witherspoon doing a creditable "Gwyneth Paltrow" turn with an English accent.

A bankable American star appears to be a standard requirement these days when presenting an essentially British production to viewers on this side of the Pond. Otherwise, so the illogic apparently goes, few people "over here" would turn up to see it. Of course, James Ivory did very well a decade ago with superb films like "Howard's End", and with nary an American star in sight. One supposes that Parker can be forgiven for overlooking that fact: after all, he was preoccupied with revving up the editorial chainsaw to dismember Wilde's text.

The problem with Parker's approach to the play is that Wilde wrote specifically for the theatre. Language was his tool, and few writers have used language half so brilliantly. "The Importance Of Being Earnest" is a drawing-room comedy, one of the best in the repertoire, a very funny, extremely literate play about manners, attitudes and conventions in Victorian England. It's a clever and tightly integrated work, a small masterpiece, where dialogue begets more dialogue, wry observations and witticisms proliferate, all of them ultimately spun into a seamless satirical whole.

That's not to say that Wilde can't be made into a "motion" picture. Three years ago, Parker did a creditable, if slightly sappy job on "An Ideal Husband". Perhaps buoyed by that modest success, he felt he could take Wilde - through "The Importance Of Being Earnest" - to a new level. And he has. Unfortunately, the place he has taken it is so far below theatrical sea-level that oxygen is required for basic survival. In hacking the text to ribbons - it seems that almost half of the dialogue has been discarded - he has so compromised the context of the piece that the end result is almost incomprehensible. Think of it as the ultimate dumbing-down of Oscar Wilde.

A short list of items in the film that are astonishingly un-funny. Gwendolen Fairfax having "Ernest" tattooed on her ass in a disreputable London district. Algernon Moncrieff arriving at Jack Worthing's country estate in a hot-air balloon. Algernon leaping in and out of carriages, and climbing through windows, and scurrying down alleyways to avoid his herds of creditors. Algernon spitting food all over himself when he meets Jack at the country house. Algernon and Jack in a wrestling match over a plate of muffins. Jack having Gwendolen's name tattooed on his ass as the credits roll by at the end of the film.

Urgent memo to Oliver Parker: Oscar Wilde is not about slapstick.

It was suggested in an earlier comment on IMDB that if you've never seen the play, as written, you might find Parker's film amusing; but if you have seen the play, you probably won't. That's good advice. Happily, the original 1952 film is available on VHS, and will soon be available on DVD. It was directed by Anthony Asquith. Wisely, Asquith kept his film solidly within the theatre's embrace, even starting the piece with a curtain rising before an invisible audience. And he had an English cast that was to die for - Michael Redgrave, Michael Denison, Joan Geeenwood, Dorothy Tutin, Margaret Rutherford, Miles Malleson. Asquith produced a brilliant film, a triumph of intelligence, style and taste, everything that Wilde and his admirers could have wished it to be - and everything that Parker's film is not.

A final note. Shortly after the film was released, Colin Firth gave an interview that was published in The Globe & Mail, a major Canadian newspaper out of Toronto. In the interview, Firth lamented that he lived in a society - England - that pretended to be literate, but in fact was not. The irony implicit in his comment is almost too delicious. I'm certain that Oscar Wilde would have loved it.

Arlington Road (1999)

An entertaining thriller

[7/10 · 18 May 2002]

"Arlington Road" is a solid, entertaining thriller, both scary and fun to watch. It's an interesting point, I think, that one can still find this sort of thing entertaining in our "post-September 11th" world - although for a short while we did not, or said we did not - and it might almost be perverse to describe it as "fun". But I'll plead guilty to the rap: "Arlington Road" was fun. And it was fun, I think, because, as with most thrillers, the plot-line is just improbable enough, with a few too many "what-ifs", to make it believable. (On the other hand, a small voice intones, how unrealistic would it have been, pre-September 11th, to take seriously a film that had commercial airliners crashing into the WTC complex and the Pentagon?)

The plot of "Arlington Road" is well-known from many of the other comments on this site, so there's no need to go through it again. It's a good plot, though, with murder, conspiracy, and false identities. Add to that a desperate father's concern for his (apparently) endangered son, and the tension rises accordingly. The plot is well delivered through snappy direction and uniformly fine acting. I have never been a big fan of Jeff Bridges, but I liked him here. His over-the-top cinematic bent is well-matched to the material at hand. Joan Cusack is especially good. Her lines are not all that great, so she has to create her character, a monstrous psychopath, through the lifting of an eyebrow, a forced smile, a trite homily. She's brilliant. But, then, she always is.

Tim Robbins is, I think, an under-appreciated actor, and he quietly steals the movie from Bridges. His portrayal of a man who has gone coldly and "rationally" insane - "It's war, Michael! Children die in wars!" - is near-perfection. Watching him here, I went back time and again to his previous performances, especially in "Bull Durham" and "The Shawshank Redemption", and marvelled at how well he submerged himself in the Oliver Lang/William Fenimore character.

The final twenty minutes of "Arlington Road" are splendid. Slam-bang action and rising tension. If it falls a little flat - and for me it did - it's because the viewer is being asked to shelve a little too much of his/her disbelief. Too many things have to happen "just so" for the not-quite-startling climax to be brought off. On the whole, though, it works pretty well.

My principal caveat on the film, and particularly the ending, is that it's been done before. As James Bushey pointed out earlier on this site, the film draws heavily, though not unfairly - was it Plato who said there are no original plot-lines? - on the 1974 Alan J. Pakula/Warren Beatty film, "The Parallax View". In "Parallax", a superior suspense/thriller, the theme is political assassination, deriving from the rash of high-level assassinations in the United States in the 1960's, and the subsequent high-level investigations that supported the "lone assassin" theory that too large a portion of the public refused to believe. In "Arlington Road", the theme is domestic terrorism, different enough that the obvious parallels between the two films don't overly intrude on our enjoyment.

The two themes exert very different impacts on the viewer. The assassination of a senior political figure followed by a suspected "cover-up" inspires dread and fear, a sense that the government is neither honest nor in control. But the viewer has an "out", if you will, albeit a dubious one. If a senior politico is taken out, we know that another will appear to fill his or her shoes, however reprehensible the system is that appears to accommodate the crime. Most of us, I suggest, are inclined to "bury" that crime and get on with our day-to-day lives. It's almost as though we covertly accept that the highest political ambitions carry with them an inherent threat of violent death. But with terrorism, domestic or foreign, we're all in danger. Terrorists have political goals also, but with a crucial difference: they will strive to achieve those goals with a monstrous lack of discrimination - everyone's an acceptable target, you and me and the next-door neighbour, male or female, young or old. "Arlington Road" taps into this fear and it does it very well. I gave it a 7/10.

And "The Parallax View"? I gave it an 8/10.

Hollywood Ending (2002)

Where, oh where, is the Woody of old?

[7/10 · 15 May 2002]

If you're an admirer of Woody Allen, you'll want to see this film, just as you'll want to see the next one, and the one after that. It really doesn't matter that "Hollywood Ending" isn't very good, not at least in comparison to Woody's great films of yesteryear. (No "Crimes And Misdemeanors", this.) Arguably, "Hollywood Ending" is less a film than a retrospective tribute to a great writer/director/actor/comic who doesn't make the kind of magic he used to make. Think of Muhammad Ali in his later fights: no longer the champion, but showing occasional flashes of brilliance and holding out the faint, but eternal, hope that he would somehow recapture his glory days and take the guy out in the eleventh with dazzling footwork and a snappy combination. It doesn't happen in "Hollywood Ending", but it's still fun to watch and hope.

Woody isn't the Woody of old, and that's partly because he is old, or at least older. It's hard to imagine that Val Waxman (Woody) was ever married to Ellie (Téa Leoni), just as it was hard to imagine him married to, or sleeping with, all those other gorgeous actresses with whom he co-starred in all those other, better, films. At the same time, though, it's comforting and encouraging to think that he could have. It gives faint hope to all the rest of us little guys who don't look anything like Brad Pitt or Ben Affleck.

The story is slight, but interesting. Val, the faltering directing genius has one last shot at filmic fame and glory. His ex-wife Ellie talks her new beau and studio head Hal (Treat Williams) into hiring Val to direct his new film. Val balks but he's talked into the job by his agent Al (Mark Rydell). Surely the names are part of a running joke: when's the last time you saw a film where three of the leads were named Val, Hal and Al? Val takes on the job and soon lapses into psychosomatic blindness, but directs the film anyway. It's a disaster in progress, of course, but "Hollywood Ending" winds up with an in-joke, one of many in the film: American audiences and critics trash the film for the disaster it is, but the French, God bless them, love it and declare Hal to be a true genius. All is saved and Val has a brilliant new career, and financing, awaiting him in Europe. (Shades of Jerry Lewis.) And he even gets his girl back. Of course, he does.

With the possible exception of Téa Leoni, no-one in the film seems seriously to be trying to play a role. Everyone seems just happy to be in a Woody Allen film, speaking their lines competently, but with a kind of wink and nudge towards the audience that no-one should take any of this seriously. But it doesn't really matter. Everyone seems to have fun, and Val's neurotic rants are often very funny. The (small) audience in the theatre where I watched the film had fun too. We all mostly laughed in all the right places, except for one or two in-jokes that no-one understood. One in-joke that brought a roar of approval was the reference to Haley Joel Osment's "Lifetime Achievement Award", an obvious reference to the series of slights visited upon Woody over the years by the mob that awards, and often mis-awards, the annual Oscars.

To conclude, a regional reference. I'm a Canadian, living in Ottawa. "Hollywood Ending" has two short sequences that actually mention Canada, although it's apparent that Woody knows little or nothing about the country. (When a prominent Canadian film critic asked Woody if the name of his character "Val Waxman" was intended as a nod of respect in the direction of the late Al Waxman, one of Canada's best-known actors - Americans might remember him from the "Cagney and Lacey" series - Woody admitted he had never heard of him.) For Woody, apparently, Canada is the land of eternal snows (even in mid-summer), overrun by moose, where most people make their livings harvesting furs from wildlife. It should have been insulting - Canadians have long been tired of this image from south of the border - but somehow it wasn't. Everyone in the theatre laughed at the lines. I guess, if one is a Woody Allen admirer, one can forgive a lot. And just now, until Woody regains his form, one has to.

Nothing But the Best (1964)

Brilliant satire

[10/10 · 14 May 2002]

I saw this film in 1964 when it was first released; and it is still the only film that I have sat through for two consecutive showings. I thought it was brilliant, sharp and very funny. Alan Bates, then a major international star, was at his very best: funny, cynical, cold, vicious, everything the role required. The supporting cast - led by Millicent Martin, Harry Andrews, Denholm Elliott - were also superb.

Jimmy Brewster (Bates) is, to use the derogatory upper-class term, "an ambitious yob", a working-class chap toiling anonymously at his desk in a large real-estate company and wanting better things, when one day he has an accidental encounter in a restaurant with Charlie Prince (Elliott), the disgraced son of Brewster's employer. As Charlie puts it, "One day a black cloud appeared in my office, and shortly after that I departed under it." Charlie is a worthless wastrel, but he has one skill: he can show Jimmy how to dress and talk properly and to be a "gentleman". The trade-off is that Jimmy will give Charlie a place to live and money for expenses. Charlie is a good teacher and Jimmy is a brilliant student, conning everyone in sight, slowly climbing the ladder to success. Then one day, Charlie asks Jimmy to lay a large bet for him - with Jimmy's money - on a horse, and the horse wins, at astronomical odds. Charlie is very much in the money again, and decides he doesn't need Jimmy any longer. But Jimmy turns the tables, does away with Charlie, and keeps the money for himself. And continues his climb up the corporate and social ladders, all the way to the top. Along the way he woos Charlie's sister, Ann (Millicent Martin), and marries her. In a memorable scene, while courting Ann, Jimmy takes her to massive country estate that is conveniently empty, pretending that it belongs to his family. Ann looks at the magnificent place, suitably impressed, smiles at Jimmy and delivers one of the best lines in the film: "Darling, how did you know my size?"

And then Charlie's body is found, and perhaps the ruthless, if charming, Jimmy is about to come a-cropper. Or perhaps not.

It's a brilliant film on all levels. The great tragedy is that it appears to be no longer available, on film or on video/DVD. If I could find the magic lamp, and be granted one filmic wish, "Nothing But The Best" would be in general distribution on DVD next week.

Rare Birds (2001)

William Hurt, and Newfoundland, in starring roles

[7/10 · 13 May 2002]

I'm a Newfoundlander, so of course I enjoyed "Rare Birds"! There aren't that many movies made in, or about, Newfoundland, and when one does appear, I dash off to see it, regardless of the reviews. I can report, though, that I enjoyed this film, frequently laughing out loud. For some of the laughs, though, you have to know the place and the jargon, and some of the humour might be lost on the average Canadian or American.

(In much the same way, one can feel left out in a foreign-language film - including some British films - when those viewers who actually speak the on-screen language are laughing, and one doesn't get the joke.)

The story is slight, but it more or less works. The main plot involves a chef, David (William Hurt), whose haute-cuisine restaurant, The Auk, near Cape Spear (some 8 miles south and east of St. John's, the capital city) is going fish-belly up, to coin a phrase. According to David's friend Alphonse (Phonse in the local shorthand, and played by Andy Jones, a Newfoundland writer/actor/comic) it's because David hasn't done a proper marketing job, because certainly he has the gourmet skills, as well as a fabulous wine cellar. To revive interest in the restaurant, Phonse hatches (almost literally) a scheme to attract bird-watchers to the area by claiming a sighting of a duck long thought to have been extinct - putatively the "rare bird" of the title, although one suspects that the real "rare birds" are Phonse and David themselves.

(Most Newfoundlanders, and a few others, will know that the Great Auk, the bird for which David's restaurant is named, was hunted to extinction on the Newfoundland coast more than a century ago.)

There are several comic sub-plots in the film, the best of which is Phonse's RSV, the "recreational submarine vehicle" that he has constructed in his shed and which he recruits David to assist him in dive-testing. There is another sub-plot about a 26-pound cache of cocaine that Phonse has found on the shore, and yet another about a bizarre lighting invention from a Bulgarian scientist who was once Phonse's partner. The local RCMP also get into the picture, doing a sort of Atlantic-coast Keystone Kops routine. It's a fragile effort and totally silly, but no-one should really mind seeing Canada's finest portrayed as something like the back-ends of their justly famous steeds for the brief time they're on screen.

The love interest in the film, Alice, who is introduced to the married but separated David by Phonse, is played by the talented and lovely Molly Parker ("Sunshine", and the soon to be released "Hoffman"). She and William Hurt generate very good chemistry, and I came away wishing that the film had made much more of them than it did. (Interestingly, Hurt and Parker were both in "Sunshine", a Canadian co-production, although they never appear on-screen together.)

The story-line of "Rare Birds" is slight enough, and the dialogue is a bit wanting. So, to a very large degree, the film is carried by the hugely talented and accomplished Hurt. He does a kind of "loaves and fishes" miracle with the material at hand, making a near-banquet out of a box-lunch. For the other principals, I was left with the sense that, talented though Andy Jones certainly is, film is not really his medium, although he does well enough. In Molly Parker's case, I didn't feel that she had quite enough opportunity to shine, but when she does have the chance, she is, as always, incandescent.

As expected, the Newfoundland topography, a Rock within a sometimes violent sea, takes a starring role. The rugged landscape, the roiling surf hurling itself against the jagged shore-line, is irresistible. Of course, I'm from the place, and almost any glimpse of the island sets my heart thumping. But - PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE!! - will somebody, someday, make a film in Newfoundland that depicts a sunny day. The winters there are long and harsh, spring is not much more than a fond hope, the summers are almost always too short, and the wind blows a great deal of the time. But the sun really does shine, and quite a lot of the time, in all four - alright, three-and-one-half - seasons. Really, it does. You have my word on it. It would be so nice to see a film that actually showed that. Just once.

Go see "Rare Birds". It's worth it, and it's good, clean fun.

Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner (2001)

A well-intentioned but disappointing film.

[5/10 · 30 April 2002]

I am one of probably three Canadians - I think the other two are in hiding - who doesn't believe that "Atanarjuat - The Fast Runner" is a great film. Every Canadian film critic I have read has declared this to be a masterpiece, or close to it. The critic at the Globe and Mail, which modestly calls itself Canada's "National Newspaper", gave "Atanarjuat" four stars. I cannot remember any film, at least not in recent years, receiving that kind of accolade from the Globe.

I went to see "Atanarjuat" at an art theatre in Ottawa, full of eager anticipation. The trailers I had seen had been promising. The image of a naked man running for his life across the Arctic ice was irresistible. And then there was the Arctic itself, vast and magnificent in endless whiteness and desolation. The opening scenes of the film were stark and arresting, and I settled down to enjoy the next three hours. Unhappily, though, thirty minutes later I was squirming in my seat and checking my watch, moaning almost audibly that there were still more than two hours to go.

Frankly, I found "Atanarjuat" to be an amateurish and frequently boring film, however well-intentioned. The boredom is occasioned in large measure by the fact that it's at least an hour too long. There are some good sequences and some indelible images, but these, in my opinion, founder under the awkward weight of the whole. I have described the film to friends as an "Arctic Western", not greatly different in content from the hundreds of melodramatic "oaters" that flowed out of the Hollywood machine in the thirties, forties and fifties.

In "Atanarjuat", we have two "good" brothers battling three "bad" brothers and their wicked, seductive sister. Atanarjuat and the elder bad brother compete for the same woman and Atanarjuat wins. The three bad brothers murder one of the good brothers. Atanarjuat escapes - just - taking his famous naked run across the ice while the bad guys, burdened with what looks to be fifty pounds of seal-skin clothing apiece, stumble along behind him and eventually drop away. At film's end, Atanarjuat returns to the community and in a kind of metaphorical "shoot-out at the OK igloo", he bests the three bad brothers and they, along with their wicked sister, are banished from the community. Atanarjuat and his wife reunite.

It's all too familiar, and even with an overlay of Inuit myth about an evil spirit that afflicts the community, it didn't work for me. The film's dialogue, at least as it is expressed in the subtitles, is mostly banal. Perhaps the actors are saying interesting things in Inuktitut (the Inuit language) but little of that comes through in the mostly one-liners that appear on-screen. It was also very annoying that the director shoe-horned into the film a vaguely "Hollywoodish" sex sequence between Atanarjuat and the wicked sister, complete with the trendy orgasmic bleating that has become all too commonplace in the mostly bad and mediocre films that flood across our screens these days.

Even the celebrated chase sequence across the ice, perhaps the signature moment of the film, fell rather flat for me. Like Atanarjuat's pursuers, I felt it ran out of steam before it was over. Interestingly, it reminded me of the chase sequence in the 1939 John Ford film, "Drums Along The Mohawk", where Henry Fonda is pursued by three Indian warriors - the number "three" has an enduring mythology that transcends many cultures - running for his life across the New York countryside in Revolutionary times. The sequence with Fonda will linger with me for much longer than the one in "Atanarjuat". Well, it has already; I first saw "Drums" decades ago.

The film that comes most readily to mind, though, after seeing "Atanarjuat" is "Himalaya", the 1999 film directed by Eric Valli, who used a cast composed almost entirely of local amateurs. In my opinion, "Himalaya" succeeds where "Atanarjuat" fails, although both were focused on local traditions and conflicts, and both were set in remote non-western locales. "Himalaya", no masterpiece itself but very watchable, is simply a better film.

One of the things that does come through in "Atanarjuat", and very powerfully, is the depiction of a strong and resolute people who live in an environment that places them almost literally on the knife-edge of survival. It is astonishing, on every level, that they do survive and, in a sense, prosper, making full use of the few resources at their disposal. Even here, though, I have a minor quibble: the film appears to be set in prehistoric times, long before the white man entered the picture. Yet, in a number of scenes the Inuit are using implements of iron and steel. One wonders where they could have obtained them.

All of that having been said, I think "Atanarjuat" is an important film. And I don't say this in a condescending way. As many have pointed out on this site, and elsewhere, this is probably the only feature-length Inuit film ever made. Some commentators have suggested that it will likely be the only Inuit film we will ever see. I hope not. Film is important, arguably the most effective way for one culture to communicate with others, and with itself. One hopes that there will be more Inuit feature-length films, building on the few, but genuine, accomplishments of this one.