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Arrival (2016)
'Time' Missionaries
There's a new poster child for banal and pseudo-intellectual, and its name is Arrival.
If I had to guess, I would say someone had a non-scientist's passing thought about the nature of time, and though it is scientifically absurd (violates the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics), someone then concocted a story around it, tossed in a child for the pity point, and added a bit of testosterone rage ameliorated at the last moment by a character who exhibits a single emotion throughout the entire, dreary, ponderous film: angst. Put it all together and one has a film where some people 'get it' (but don't know what it is they get) and others just see it for the jumbled and meaningless mess it is.
Since it's ostensibly sci-fi, special effects folks had to manufacture aliens who would be viewed as shocking in appearance, even though the physical reality of the Universe, matter, space and time would argue against any advanced life form having such a shape. The shape is not practical if beings are to build a civilizations or ships than can traverse the vastness of space. The alien ships are large for the sake of being large, and have 99% wasted space with zero decor, seemingly just so the director could fill time when the humans have to trudge through the ship to make contact. This also gives the score writer a chance to throw in a few more bars of sound that might even embarrass Vangelis or Zamfir and his pan flute.
Much is left to the imagination, or at least isn't squared in any logical manner. Why 12 ships, why put one in Sudan, and why just leave as soon as the main character goes on the merry-go-round that is depicted as 'time' just to get the Chinese to not attack the visitors for overstaying their visas? The aliens came through the vastness of space just to sit inside their ships for a few weeks until they get some linguist to get the Chinese to back off? Oh wait, it's to tell Earthlings that time is circular, so I guess they're kind of time missionaries out to proselytize those who worship the false god of linearity.
One would think if these aliens are unstuck in time, they would have known how tedious the film about them would be and go back to stop it from ever being made.
Apparently it is clever that aliens who live in circular time would write in a system also circular, looking a lot like Burmese script, albeit written with a leaky pen. Equally 'clever' plot point is that once the lead understands their circular language, she suddenly joins their circular time experience. Oh my! Silly.
As for actors' performances, I'm not sure the screenplay allows for much besides cliché. Jeremy Remmer passes through the film waiting for a chance to do or say something meaningful, but before he can meet that modest goal, the credits roll. Amy Adams is half asleep from start to finish, as it she dunked her head in a bucket of quaaludes, and tries hard to project some sort of depth, but it ends up being pedestrian and dull, as deep as the water on the Bonneville Salt Flats.
Rest assured that if the Earth ever is contacted by an advanced civilization, the visit will not mirror this lumbering tale which in the end signifies nothing, albeit without the sound and fury.
A Most Wanted Man (2014)
Reality-based Spy Story
Gunther Bachman heads a small, extra judicial German agency whose purpose is to root out terrorists and terror cells. His group has a relationship, albeit somewhat combative, with the German BND intelligence service, and a hazy, but clearly troubled relationship with the CIA. The views of his group differ from those of the more traditional intel agencies, in that Bachman believes the solution to terror networks is to work up the food chain until one finds the proverbial big fish. The other services are not only more pre-emptive---often trampling on international law---but are of the belief that thwarting terror at any level can disrupt the whole, and is thus worth doing.
Two primary characters are on the screens of each service. One, Faisal Abdullah, is ostensibly a philanthropist, but all suspect him of being a fund conduit for international terror. The other, Issa Karpov, is the result of an illicit relationship between a corrupt Russian military officer and a fifteen year old Chechen girl. Issa lands in Hamburg as an illegal, and because of suspicions he is associated with Islamic terror cells in Chechnya and Dagestan, he comes under everyone's gaze.
Bachman orchestrates, using excellent examples of real tradecraft, an operation to determine not only Issa's intentions, but to set a trap for Faisal Abdullah. The obstacles and challenges he faces not only emanate from the potential terrorist targets, but also from the agencies with which cooperation and a common goal should be par for the course.
Those accustomed to the fictional world of spy craft, where barely a scene passes without some sort of mayhem, and where Surround Sound enhances the experience, might find the pace and rhythm of this film torpid, if not stultifying. Arising as it does from a le Carre novel, A Most Wanted Man is more subtle. The amount of violence, shootings and explosions in the film amount to about as much as a real spy will experience in his or her entire career. The film is a far more accurate representation of real intelligence work, tradecraft, and of those who work in the shadows than the movies or books that have shaped the popular perception of espionage. Le Carre is not Fleming, and he is not Ludlum. This movie takes the best points displayed in Zero Dark Thirty and spreads them out over two hours and two minutes. Again, those in search of action or those carrying false perceptions might be disappointed, but those with patience and an appreciation of actors who live more inside their minds than via their physique, will savor the entire trip.
The Comedians (1967)
This is For Fans of Greene
Readers of Graham Greene will fall for this movie, and in particular the portrayal of Brown by the late Richard Burton, who may well play the perfect Greene anti-hero. Burton brings a subtlety to the role which may well be beyond the skill level of any actor working today. His is a haunting, yet totally convincing performance of a cynic, sinner, and dissolute sort searching for an excuse to remain alive, and initially finding that excuse only in pleasures of the flesh.
The film seems to have been lost in the shuffle, and that is unfair. While not easy to grasp---at least for those unfamiliar with the works of Greene---it is full of outstanding performances by some of the industry's former greats. Amongst Alec Guinness, Peter Ustinov, James Earl Jones, Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, the only one who comes up short---delivering a wooden and uninteresting performance that makes an elicit romance unattractive out of boredom rather than sin--- is Taylor. Everyone else is superb, including the sidebars played for both a touch of humor and moral rectitude by Paul Ford and Lillian Gish.
Action junkies will be unimpressed with the pace of the film and its low key approach to the violence, but anyone who has experienced a land where brutality and oppression rule the day will find the seeming banality of evil, as portrayed in the film, remarkably realistic and properly underplayed.
To Have and Have Not (1944)
Just Sit Back and Enjoy
In 2014, one can rejoice in the fact that movies like this were made and still exist for us to enjoy. This film will only grow more dear with time, since at its most basic it is a tale that mixes two universal, albeit disparate, facets of human existence: standing up against oppression, and nascent love.
Bogart is Bogart, which is to say something to forever cherish. He is exactly what one has come to expect from most any character he played. While other actors might be criticized for playing to type, Bogart is a type that never disappoints and would be a letdown if he had ever appeared in another form. Lauren Becall makes an acceptable debut, with a few slips here and there, but despite that she has enough to carry the screen when she's on it. Don't miss her little jig at the end. Walter Brennan, as a kind of comic relief, is deceptively superb, making his character seem easier to play than it must have been. His is an underrated skill, throughout his career. There are also a few pleasant surprises, too, with Dan Seymour playing a combination of Sidney Greenstreet and Victor Buono as the unctuous and rotund, and okay maybe stereotypical Capt. Renard, Marcel Dalio (of Casablanca fame) as the saloon keeper Frenchy, and the drop dead gorgeous and oddly yet powerfully sexy Dolores Moran as Madame Hellene du Bursac. She'll make you fall in love, so be careful.
Accompanying the cast and story line is the piano and magnificent melodies of the great Hoagy Carmichael, who adds fun pieces (Hong Kong Blues, Am I Blue) and timeless pieces such as How Little We Know. Yes, his voice is not the best, but the delivery and his mien fit perfectly the mood of the film. His role is what helps make the whole greater than the sum of the parts.
Get this on DVD or Netflix, grab a bottle of whatever makes you happy, and just sit back and enjoy. Then enjoy it all again.
The American (2010)
Armani-Clad Cliché
Giorgio Armani will sell a home furnishing for $4000 that he commissioned from a rural Indian village for $90 including the material. Still, he'll sell a lot of them, because it carries his name and some will believe they are paying a fair price (even if all the profit goes to Giorgio). Anyone who visits the home of an owner of the tapestry will find it beautiful, and only the envious will care about the cost. Watching this movie is like that: the value is pumped up artificially, trying to give the impression that there is more there than there really is, but the product itself really is beautiful.
Here's the plot: ruthless hit man begins to develop a conscience, falls in love with a hooker with a heart of gold, but ends up paying for his sins despite his incipient redemption.
Thus, the film borrows from every possible cliché, even adding a father confessor, albeit a flawed one (we're all sinners: cliché), who can draw out bitterness from the protagonist but not regret. Even though the plot is minimal, the filmmaker errs in the very few details it does present, such as having the film's lead produce a "specialized" assassin's weapon that is wrong in every possible way. Like with Giorgio Armani, however, the buyer grossly overpays. There are also errors in logic, such as the weapon specialist being able to ship an obvious gun barrel, chamber subassembly and sniper scope through the mail, but for some reason not being able to ship a silencer/sound suppressor in the same package of ostensible photographic supplies. That error in logic is needed so as to allow the lead to demonstrate his machining skills, but it comes at the cost of believability.
All that being said, the movie is beautiful, perhaps owing to the cinematographer, perhaps owing to the natural beauty of the location. The pacing is languid, but the locale's beauty is enhanced by that purposely slow pace. The hooker is also a natural beauty, and voluptuous to boot, and she misses no opportunity to display what nature so generously handed her. Like the setting itself, she can seduce the viewers into the heart of the movie and force them to suspend their awareness of the general lack of plot and errors in logic or technicalities (one more error
apparently footsteps are easier to hear than a speeding Vespa).
Many who have watched and commented on this film came away disappointed. This writer, while aware of the shortcomings and errors, did not. The beauty somehow made up for the film's shortcomings, and offered a pleasant, albeit temporary, diversion. Seeing it may not justify full purchase price at the theater, but since it is now off the big screen and available at a greatly reduced viewing price, it's a better deal than shopping at Armani Casa.
Jin ling shi san chai (2011)
Redemption
This is an engrossing, beautiful, and at the same time horrific film, a vignette into the infamous 1937 Japanese Rape of Nanking. Taken apart from its historical context, it is a movie about redemption and sacrifice.
The movie opens with a battle scene, Japanese troops randomly and brutally gunning down anyone in their path. Among the innocents caught in the literal crossfire are John Miller, an American mortician in Nanking to handle the burial of a deceased Christian priest, and a group of schoolgirls who happen to be studying at the same school the deceased priest led. All take refuge in the church grounds, ostensibly safe from Japanese aggression.
Miller is a dissolute sort, rather unlikeable at the start, though later on he gives a hint as to why he might have become that way, as well as to why he is able to transform himself into a more heroic figure as the film develops. As the last remaining male adult on the church grounds, Miller becomes the unintentional leader of the flock. He and the girls, who share the grounds with a young male acolyte named George, are soon joined by a group of fleeing Chinese prostitutes, who believe the church might be a safe zone in the carnage of Nanking. That proves to be only partly true.
Before Miller's transformation, he views the church merely as his safe zone, albeit full of the temptations the church no doubt preaches against. When Japanese soldiers do what Japanese soldiers did in Nanking during the 1937 massacre, the inner moral fiber and paternal instincts of Miller begins to surface and as a faux priest he tries to protect the young girls. He is only partially successful.
Like Miller, most of the prostitutes begin their stay in the church by behaving crudely and selfishly. A young wounded victim of the fighting, dropped off at the church by one of the last remaining Chinese soldiers, serves as the canvass on which the women's compassion begins to express itself. Their transformation, too, has begun.
Eventually not even the church walls can keep out the Japanese brutality and evil, and Japanese command---who are unaware the prostitutes are hiding beneath the church---announce they will take the girls away, ostensibly for a celebration of their savagery in Nanking. Miller tries to sugar coat the girls' fate, but his own emotionalism betrays the horrible truth: that the children will be used as sex slaves and then butchered.
The girls decide suicide is preferable to enslavement, and they plan to jump from the church steeple and end their lives. Miller and the women talk them out of it. One of the women offers to trade places with one of the girls, and tries to convince her colleagues to do the same. She argues that a lifetime of shame can be wiped away, and the image of the women changed for all time, if they offer their bodies as a sacrifice on behalf of the girls. Slowly the other women come around and agree to do the same, while Miller's role---as a practicing mortician---is to modify the women's appearance through make-up to make them appear younger than they are and be able to fool the Japanese.
When the group falls one short, George argues that he can be made to appear as a young girl and can replace the last of the schoolchildren.
The drama of the film peaks at this point of supreme sacrifice, and the eventual removal of the reconfigured women, plus the escape of Miller and the children once the Japanese guards are gone, are essentially epilogue.
The film is at once brutal and horrific, but also inspirational and uplifting as it showcases the absolute worst and best humanity can offer. While many might argue it is propaganda, it is undeniable, except perhaps in Japanese textbooks, that such brutality took place. This movie also reminds the viewer that in such circumstances there is also courage of a type few can imagine and sacrifice that should shame the Japanese into finally coming to terms with their horrific past. The film follows Zhang's characteristic style, and some may feel that this may have taken some of the edge off of the violence, lending it a perverse beauty and diminishing the full extent of the horror. Perhaps it was used to soften the blow of the abject savagery that was the reality of Japan's aggression, make the movie slightly more palatable, and not detract from the central message which was about redemption and sacrifice. Even with the effects, however, there is violence that is often shocking.
The acting across the board is superb, with standouts being George (Huang Tianyuan), Shu (Xinyi Zhang) and Miller (Christian Bale). Ni Ni (as Yu Mo) may well have turned in a great performance, but her character is so lovely, physically and emotionally, that I am probably biased. Some argue that Bale performed below his usual norm, but I disagree. He was reserved, rather than over the top as someone like Sean Penn would have been, and he used a lot of subtlety in conveying, via facial expression, his bucking up to meet the challenge and his often failed attempts to rein in his emotions so that neither the girls nor the women would notice. Some also say his delivery was stilted owing to the written dialog, but again I disagree and feel both the dialog and the delivery are consistent with the time. People did speak differently in 1937, and people do speak differently when they are addressing others whose first language is not English, at least those with a good deal of cross cultural experience.
Movies and stories are going to strike everyone differently, but I would guess many who view this one will be moved, and shaken, and inspired as much as they have viewing any film. This one stays with you, in ways both good and bad.
The Great Gatsby (2013)
Comic Book Fitzgerald
If you think Fitzgerald should resemble a combination of Sin City and Transformers, then this movie is for you. If you adore the two second, quick cut style of the typical MTV video and can endure two hours and twenty minutes of it, then this movie is for you. If you value style well above substance, and are the type prone to donning sunglasses at night believing it lends gravitas to your mien, then this move is for you. If you think the Jazz Era mood can be cleverly recreated using Hip Hop and Beyoncé, then this move is for you. If you still play Star Wars with your buddies and savor getting punch-drunk after being hit a thousand times with a flashing green light saber, then this movie is for you. If you are nostalgic about the days when the needle of your phonograph got stuck on a scratch of a 78 rpm vinyl disc, then this movie is for you, Old Sport, Old Sport. If you believe Toby Maguire deserves to be in the top tax bracket and walk, rather than sweep, the Red Carpet come Oscar time, then this movie is for you. If you can believe Daisy, as portrayed by Carey Mulligan, is sufficiently inspiring to drive a man to move Heaven and Earth, and Hell to boot, to become rich beyond measure, then this movie is....no....then you'll never be rich.
Nearly everything about this garish abomination irritated me. I happen to love the 1932 Duesenberg SJ, even in yellow, but I cannot figure how Gatsby got the Beta version in 1922. I can only conclude he was driving with a Poetic License.
If anything can be salvaged from this affront to the Estate of F. Scott, other than the fact that it might violate some obscure provision of the Patriot Act and land Baz Luhrmann a stint at Guantanamo sharing Director's cuts with Khalid Sheik Mohammed, it is that it might serve admirably as a job application to become Justin Bieber's video director.