George Washington

David Gordon Green’s dreamy feature debut renowned for its swath of Terrence Malick affectations feels even more warm and inviting fourteen years later. The consciously lazy narrative of a group of rural Texan kids, black and white, co-habitating happily, and growing up impervious to the pretty bleak squalor around them, is the functional foundation for Green’s lush tonal aesthetic. Essentially the film is made up of small moments of infectious and hypnotising beauty, moments and scenes which don’t always coalesce together fluidly, but collectively whet our palette through its nostalgic filter of childlike naivete.

Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy

Will Ferrell/Adam McKay's touchstone satire of 1970’s broadcast journalism culture still bristles with some of the most absurd mainstream comedy in recent years. Remarkably most of these gags still land successfully and thus will likely continue to do so in years to come, aligning itself with those timeless classics of the Mel Brooks, ZAZ, Blake Edwards, and Monte Python films of the past.

The Devil's Backbone

After the uninspired sophomore effort of Mimic, Guillermo Del Toro’s modest but emotional and affecting wartime ghost story represented an early career creative reboot of sorts. The Devil’s Backbone resounds best not so much for its genre scares or creature effects, but the effective point of view of children displaced by war and Del Toro’s distinctly gothic and disturbing take on the subject matter.

Catch Me If You Can

Despite the mostly unanimous praise and monetary success for this picture, Catch Me If You Can works best as a counterpoint to most of the films on Spielberg’s filmography - a tepid light-as-air crime comedy, mildly charming, mildy funny and mildly suspenseful, a kind of cinematic modesty rarely seen in any of his films.

Catch Me If You Can (2001) dir. Steven Spielberg
Starring: Leonardo Di Caprio, Tom Hanks, Martin Sheen, Amy Adams,

By Alan Bacchus

Spielberg finds his hero in the real-life figure of William Abagnale Jr (Di Caprio), a kid caught in the middle of his parents' divorce. He witnesses the self-destruction of his father (Walken), who is failing as a parent, husband, entrepreneur and in the American dream. Running away from home, Abagnale never desired to become a conman, and almost by accident he discovers ways to cheat the financial system and exploit the welcoming nature of American citizens for his own benefit. Soon Abagnale finds himself forging cheques, faking identifications of airline pilots, lawyers and doctors, and at his worst deceiving his fiancée (Amy Adams).

In writer Jeff Nathanson’s attempt to constrict the actions of William Abagnale Jr. within a two-hour script, the film comes off as a scattered montage of his life, a difficult narrative method to make work. Nathanson only partly succeeds. The depiction of Abagnale’s schemes are fun, executed not so much in the procedural detail of a crime film but with a soft swagger of a '60s sex romp. What doesn’t quite land is the plotting of the chase - that is, the character of Carl Hanratty (Hanks), the FBI agent hot on his tail.

Despite the aggressive pursuit of Abagnale, Spielberg’s tone is so pillowy-soft we feel that if he ever goes to prison it’ll be the Shawshank Redemption kind, full of charming personalities and old-boy flavour. It's part of Spielberg’s desire to retrofit the film into a Wilder-esque '60s farce, completely separated from any kind of real-world danger. The Frank Sinatra crooning show tunes hit this on the head too hard for me, a surprisingly uncreative, played-out device. The naivete and ease with which the fanciful girls succumb to Abagnale’s charms is obviously the main attraction of the film, and certainly Mr. Spielberg turns Di Caprio into a boyish playboy with ease. But it’s this artifice which props up the film.

Abagnale’s core internal struggles, his identity issues and desire to run away from his domestic conflicts, are obvious metaphors to Spielberg’s well-documented childhood and career-long affectations. That said, the casting of Christopher Walken, who acts more like Christopher Walken than an emasculated underachieving absentee father, is a distraction. I understand Mr. Walken’s unique voice cadence and now iconic persona please most viewers, but to me he’s a scene-chewer who distracts us from the important emotional relationship in the film.

Looking back on Leonardo Di Caprio’s career, before Django Unchained this was the last time he’d attempted comedy. His boyish affability is a natural for the character’s innocent charms and unassuming, and thus manipulative, nature. The rest of his career would see him wallow in self-despair and heavy, brooding tortured characters, choices perhaps made in an attempt to distance himself from his roots as a child actor in television comedy and the Titanic burden of being a teen mag sensation.

But now, 10 years later, what’s most important is how this film sits on Steven Spielberg’s filmography, admirably next to his other anachronistic and unambitious pictures such as Always and The Terminal.

***

Catch Me If You Can is available on Blu-ray from Paramount Pictures.

In the Mood For Love

Significant for a number of reasons, 'In the Mood for Love' is not only a great film, routinely voted in polls as one of the best movies of its decade, it also completes Wong Kar-Wai’s decade-long examination of the barriers to human connectivity, a series of now-iconic and influential HK films which includes 'Chungking Express', 'Happy Together', 'Days of Being Wild' and 'Fallen Angels'. It also comes at the end of the millennium, which has the impression of being cinema’s last word on the theme of love and romance in the 20th Century.

In the Mood for Love (2000) dir. Wong Kar-Wai
Starring: Tony Leung, Maggie Cheung

By Alan Bacchus

Part of the allure of the cinema of Wong Kar-Wai is it’s relation to the prevailing action genre in Hong Kong at the time. After the proliferation of John Woo/Jackie Chan-inspired action and kung fu extravaganzas in the '90s, Kar-Wai seemed like the supreme antidote to these overly produced, emotionally excessive exports. In the Mood for Love is like a delicate porcelain doll. With a wisp of a story, the film coasts on the constrained angst of the characters, but always with a supreme cinematic eye, as cool, stylized and memorable as those engrossed action movies.

It’s 1962, and here Kar-Wai’s frequent collaborator Tony Leung plays Chow Mo-wan, a journalist looking for an apartment for him and his wife. Same with Su Chan (Maggie Cheung), his comely neighbour, alluring and gorgeous in her 60s bees nest hairdo and form-fitting pattern dresses. But Su’s also married to a man as busy and unavailable as Chow’s wife. Conscious efforts are made not to see the faces of Chow's or Su’s spouses, a commonality the audience subliminally recognizes, thus connecting the two characters together.

Gradually through a series of impressively edited montage scenes we learn of an affair between the two spouses. The sequence ends in a magnificent restaurant scene, in which Chow and Su question each other about their respective accessories - Chow’s tie, which resembles the same tie Su gave her husband from abroad, and Su’s bag, which resembles a bag Chow gave his wife.

A love affair develops between the two without consummation. Together they vow not to ‘become like their spouses’ and betray their marriages. Kar-Wai turns these screws extra tight as Chow gradually grows fonder of Su, subtly inviting her to consummate their relationship. Thus, Su’s increasing apprehension and teasing love furthers the sadness of their forlorn love. And after a series of time shifts forward into the late '60s where we see a downtrodden Chow return to the same apartment years later looking for Su, Kar-Wai elevates his drama to near-Odyssey-like tragedy.

Before In the Mood for Love, Kar-Wai was celebrated for a unique fluid visual style, his camera seemed free to float in and around the busy HK streets at will. But here Kar-Wai consciously sequesters himself in the tight spaces of the cramped apartment space. Even with these limitations he manages to find evocative compositions in which to frame his characters. We never see Chow’s wife but immediately identify her by the semi-circular window overlooking her office. And the frequent meeting place for Su and Chow in the early days of their courtship is simply the landing of the building’s staircase. Kar-Wai maximizes these repeated and simple slow-motion shots with help from the indelible music cue from Shigeru Umebayashi, and of course Christopher Doyle’s lauded cinematography and lighting.

It took four years for the follow-up, 2046, to come out and three years after that came his English-language film, My Blueberry Nights. These lengthy intervals suggest perhaps, much like the effect Apocalypse Now had on Francis Coppola’s career, In the Mood for Love exasperated Wong Kar-Wai's remarkable creative juices. I hope this isn't true.

****

In the Mood for Love is available on Blu-ray from The Criterion Collection.

Unfaithful

Unfaithful (2002) dir. Adrian Lyne
Starring: Diane Lane, Richard Gere, Olivier Martinez

***½

By Alan Bacchus

After posting '9½ Weeks' last week, here's a reposting of Adrian Lyne's surprisingly good, well-directed 'Unfaithful'.

Few people talk about Adrian Lyne. He reminds me of Peter Weir, a talented and picky director with a slim but memorable output of films. Since the 80’s he’s only made 4 films, and in his later years it’s been at least five years between films: Indecent Proposal (1993), Lolita (1997), Unfaithful (2002).

In this, his latest (yes, he hasn't made a film since 2002), Diane Lane and Richard Gere play Connie and Ed Sumner, seemingly stabile, middle class parents living in the New York suburbs. One day while in Manhattan during a windstorm Connie's knocked off her feet injuring her leg. She is helped by a kindly and impossible handsome Frenchman Paul Martel (Olivier Martinez). Paul’s European charm is intoxicating to Connie and slowly she begins to see more of him until they blossom into a full-fledged affair.

Ed suspects something’s up and starts snooping around. Connie’s conscience starts eating away at her but before she decides to call it off Ed finds her out, which results in a violent confrontation. Lies compound upon other lies the effect of which will test Connie and Ed’s commitment to each other.

Lyne's jumping off point is Claude Charbol’s 1969 thriller, La Femme infidèle. Not having seen that film I can’t compare the two, but interviews with Lyne suggest it serves more as inspiration than a remake.

Lyne definitely makes Unfaithful his own - a deceptively clever spin on his 1986 classic Fatal Attraction (click HERE for that review). Both films are simple in plot, pulling suspense from three-way character dilemmas. In “Fatal Attraction” of course it’s the father character that is seduced and has to reconcile his actions with his family. Connie’s situation is much different though. Her conflict is internal. She desires to stop but is addicted to the Paul’s youth, exoticness and sensuality. Richard Gere as ‘the other man’ is against type and his character is deepened more Anne Archer’s other woman character. The third act twists the point of view sharply to Richard Gere. Ed’s actions and lies add a tense Hitchcockian edge which contrasts the soft and romantic beginnings.

Lyne smothers the film with a familiar 1980's soft look. It was a style common to all those British commercial directors in the 80's - Ridley Scott, Alan Parker, Tony Scott. Long lenses, smoke-filled interiors and lush backlighting create an almost fantasy-like look and feel. It works for Unfaithful, because Lyne closes off most of the outside world to his characters. Only in the end do the police come into the picture, but even then the decisions made by the characters are internal choices not induced by outside forces.

Lyne still hasn’t made a film since Unfaithful and so we just have to wait patiently for him to be inspired and surprise us once again. Enjoy.

“Unfaithful” is available on Blu-Ray from 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment

The Machinist

The Machinist (2004) dir. Brad Anderson
Starring: Christian Bale, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Larry Gillard Jr. Michael Ironside, Aitana Sánchez-Gijón

**

By Alan Bacchus

Back in 2004, having been a huge fan of the underrated and little-seen horror flick, Session 9, I remember greatly anticipating this follow-up picture – a moody thriller about a hypochondriac suffering some kind of mental breakdown. Unfortunately, it never really manages to work entirely. Anderson tries his best to intrigue us with his expert abilities with mood and tone, but there’s just not enough going on to truly entertain us.

Christian Bale plays Trevor Reznick, a grossly underweight machine operator harbouring such internal hidden trauma he’s feared by just about everyone he comes in contact with. He enjoys spending time either with his favourite call girl, Stevie (Jennifer Jason Leigh), or buying coffee from an airport diner waitress, Maria (Aitana Sánchez-Gijón).

Creepy things start happening to him, which fuels a deep-rooted paranoia that eventually comes to light. Reznick starts seeing mysterious post-it notes placed on his fridge, has nightmares of an amusement park ride called Route 666 and sees a creepy stranger wearing mirrored sunglasses, who appears to him at random. It's all randomness until the final act when the puzzle pieces are revealed to be fractured memories of a painful moment from the past, which his mind and body are desperately trying to forget.

One of the main talking points of the film was Christian Bale's dramatic weight loss. To the detriment of the film, his physique has an effect outside the context of the story. Bale is beyond weight loss, as his character is emaciated and malnourished, an effect of his deep psychological trauma. It’s an overpowered device and a distraction from the film.

Like Bale’s body, the story has only a bare bones skeleton of a plot on which to hang. The central problem is that so much of the film occurs in Reznick’s head. The entire thing feels like a dupe to the audience – a single piece of information held back from the audience fuels the entire film.

And so, Anderson has only his genre skills to work with. He creeps us out as best as he can with some wonderful surrealist imagery, which would be used more effectively in a better film. The factory scenes feature long close-ups of the machinery grinding and churning out the molded metal. A number of these scenes build to a moment that we know is bound to happen - one of the workmen getting caught in the machinery. We do get that scene, and it’s a doozy. But to what end? A great scene wasted in a dull movie.

The ending, which neatly ties up all the randomness of Anderson’s imagery, feels like a cop-out, a matter of convenience revealing only an obvious manipulation of a single plot twist into an entire feature film.

The Machinist is available on Blu-ray from Paramount Pictures Home Entertainment.

The Blind Swordsman: Zatoichi

Zatoichi: The Blind Swordsman (2003) dir. Takeshi Kitano
Starring: Takeshi Kitano, Tadanobu Asano, Gadarukanaru Taka, Yûko Daike, igorô Tachibana

***

By Alan Bacchus

Zatoichi is one of Japan’s treasured fictional heroes, a blind wandering masseur/samurai whose unassuming, quiet and lumbering gate fools his opponents into underestimating him. As a champion of justice, Zatoichi travels the lands of 19th century Japan helping those in need of protection against evil.

Between 1962 and 1989, 26 films were made starring the character’s original actor, Shintaro Katsu, as well an American remake, Blind Fury, with Rutger Hauer. And so in 2003, Japanese screen legend Beat Takeski’s version arrived with both excitement as well as a certain amount of caution. Having not been familiar with any of the other depictions of the character, Takeshi’s makes for pure cinematic entertainment - humour, action, music and dance blended seamlessly in a package hyperaware of its audience and its need to entertain. For this reason it gobbled up the prestigious Audience Prize Award at the Toronto International Film Festival and the Silver Lion at Venice as Best Director. Though, for one of my trusted colleagues familiar with Japanese cinema, it’s a pale comparison to Shintaro Katsu's legacy.

Zatoichi (Takeshi Kitano) is no ordinary masseur. He's a blind Ronin samurai wandering the land with his trusty blade hidden in his red cane, always at the ready. In the opening scene, limping, hunchbacked and featuring a strange died blonde hairdo, Zatoichi is approached by a gang of malfeasants looking for an easy score. Before one of the thugs even blinks an eye Zatoichi reveals a sword from his cane, slices it through the thug's body and replaces it back in its sheath. Wow. That’s just one guy, but when the whole group of them attack at once, their defeat is just as fast, grisly and effortless. Zatoichi soon wanders into a poor rural town controlled by this same group of gangsters. Fighting back against the gang are a brother-sister duo masquerading as geishas and looking for revenge against their parents' death. Like the covert politicking in A Fistful of Dollars and For a Few Dollars More the geishas attempt to sabotage and subvert the action of the gang from within. And when they team up with Zatoichi, hell be damned for the gang.

The notion of a blind swordsman is ridiculous, and indeed it makes for fun, irreverent physical humour. Kitano walks around embellishing all the precariousness of an old, poor blind man, with the pay-off being the pinpoint accuracy of his striking. In fact, there’s really nothing he can’t do that a full-sighted man can. So what’s the point of making him blind? Well, it makes for great gags and it changes way the other characters relate to him. But it works as an extreme version of the archetypal lonesome unsuspecting hero.

But Takeshi’s charisma is maximized. His head tilt and twitchy facial ticks embellish the actor’s already enigmatic persona as well as his archetypal characters. We barely even get a full-frame shot of his face, his head always angled away from the camera.

The film’s swordplay scenes are lightning quick. Death comes in one or two quick movements, a conscious decision of Kitano to avoid the monotony of lengthy and repetitive unrealistic sword clanging. The use of digital blood that splatters across the frame with each kill is not invisible to us. Although in the Blu-ray special features Kitano tells us his motivations are for added ‘realism’, its effectiveness is the opposite, a cinematic hyperrealism and that distinct Romero-like carnage of a zombie movie.

The story beats are plotted out with the same western genre familiarity, and then there’s the surprise of the final sequence, which plays like the Ewoks' group song at the end of Return of the Jedi – in a good way. Kitano teases us with the rhythmic sounds of the farmers throughout the picture. And by the end the monotonous plowing and wood chopping syncs up forming a musical beat. This evolves into a large-scale choreographed tap dance sequence played straight to camera - a finale, which, like the Bollywood dance number closing out Slumdog Millionaire, sends the audience out with a bang and a smile. Enjoy.

The Blindswordsman: Zatoichi is available on Blu-ray from Miramax/Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment.

Traffic

Traffic (2000) dir. Steven Soderbergh
Starring: Michael Douglas, Benecio Del Toro, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Don Cheadle, Luis Guzman, Erika Christensen, Topher Grace, Steven Bauer

****

By Alan Bacchus

Looking back on my favourite independent films of the late ‘90s/early 2000s, some survive well and others don’t (like Magnolia - ew). Despite many imitators, Traffic has lost none of its power since 2000. It’s a film about ideas, as fresh, innovative, thrilling and emotionally satisfying now as it was then.

At this time there was a whole lot of high-profile studio dreck making big noise. But it was mostly hot air – lots of tepid Hollywood product from big names like Robert Zemeckis (Cast Away, What Lies Beneath), Ridley Scott (Gladiator), Gus Van Sant (Finding Forrester), Robert Redford (Legend of Baggar Vance), Ron Howard (The Grinch Whole Stole Christmas) and other 'forgettable' studio product.

It was an astonishing year for Steven Soderbergh, who had two critical hits that year, including Erin Brochovich. He was nominated for Best Picture and Best Director for both and won for Traffic.

Based on the British TV mini-series, Traffik (1989), Soderbergh’s opus captures the broad scope of the drug trafficking network in America, specifically the cartels in Mexico selling their wares in the United States. Arguably, much of the heavy lifting on this story was done by Simon Moore, who wrote the British series. Screenwriter Stephen Gaghan’s challenge was to transport it to America, bring it down to two-and-a-half hours and make it cinematic.

It’s a simple starting point to tell this broad story – three separate threads that converge with each other in the third act. There’s Benecio del Toro’s character, Javier Rodriguez, a soft-spoken Mexican cop, who, despite using dirty tactics, has a moral conviction at heart that will emerge throughout the picture. He’s our point of view into the Mexican cartel war, in this case the Obregon/Juarez cocaine kings, whose battle incites the action in the film.

There’s also the point of view of the DEA, including officers Montel Gordon (Cheadle) and Ray Castro (Guzman), affable undercover partners leading the case against the American distributor of the Obregon drugs, Carlos Ayala (Steven Bauer), who, following the arrest of a low-level pawn, uses him as an informant against Ayala.

And lastly there’s the government angle with Robert Wakefield (Douglas) as the Presidential-appointed drug czar, who, while navigating his way through the drug politics of the border, is also dealing with his daughter's own drug addiction.

While one of its more famous imitators, Crash, used the same gimmicky device but with a block head treatment of its sociopolitical issues, looking back Traffic feels as credible, honest and thought-provoking intellectually as it did 12 years ago. This is due to Steven Soderbergh's precise control of his tone. Many of his key turning points could have been embellished, but at all times we can feel the restraint on the reigns whenever the film threatens to spill over into melodrama.

Soderbergh continues his fascinating creative collaboration with composer Cliff Martinez, his go-to man for his serious films. Using quiet ambient tones, both synthesized and organic, a quiet intensity brews, keeping the drama to a whisper.

And despite the truncated screen time we come to love Soderbergh’s heroes, specifically the DEA agents whom we discover are in over their heads against the powerful, unstoppable force and deep pockets of the clandestine drug cartels. It’s the same with the rogue underachiever, Javier Rodriguez, who, after witnessing the horrors of the drug war at ground zero, engineers a remarkable and heroic stance against the hand that fed him.

Of the three storylines Michael Douglas’s feels the most on the nose, specifically the dramatic irony of his daughter’s addiction competing against his responsibility as drug policeman for the country as a whole. That said, it's one of Douglas's best late-career performances. And the only other false note to reference is Dennis Quaid’s obvious turn as the shady lawyer scheming against Ayala’s pregnant wife.

But these are minor blips in an otherwise perfect movie. It’s an 'important' film recognizable as a product of its time – just as All the President’s Men and its distilled conspiratory style was a product of its time.

Traffic is available on Blu-ray from The Criterion Collection. But as a note to readers, Soderbergh’s carefully crafted colour-coded cinematography doesn’t quite hold up on Blu-ray. It takes much fiddling with your contrast/brightness settings so as not to blow out the hot spots in most of the scenes.

Star Wars Episode 2: Attack of the Clones

Star Wars Episode 2 Attack of the Clones (2002) dir. George Lucas
Starring: Ewan McGregor, Hayden Christensen, Natalie Portman, Christopher Lee, Samuel L. Jackson

*½

By Alan Bacchus

I can’t think of a worse piece of dreck foisted upon the pop culture annals with bigger hype and anticipation than Attack of the Clones, George Lucas’s second (or 5th depending on how you number these things) chapter in the Star Wars saga. A teenaged Anakin Skywalker struts his stuff as a Jedi-in-training caught up in a political power struggle in the galaxy far, far away, with strings pulled by some nefarious clandestine omni-being.

To give it credit, the story is plotted out sharply. Lucas’s desire to create a nebulous cloud of evil, pulling the strings on both the galactic Senate and the business-oriented Trade Federation, deepens the big picture world of Star Wars more than the first series ever did. In the first three pictures we knew only a few planets and only a few characters. And the movements of the characters themselves occupied a very short time span and were in contained spaces. Here, characters move and make decisions all around the galaxy involving complex plotting that surprisingly holds itself together.

With that said, Lucas’s tin ear for dialogue was never more off key. Everyone seems to be sleeping through this picture, especially Ewan McGregor, who looks exhausted at playing the increasingly useless character Obi Wan Kenobi. Take the opening dialogue scene introducing an older Anakin Skywalker to the audience. They’re riding an elevator up to Senator Amidala’s quarters bantering about their past battles with 'humorous' lines like, “I haven't felt you this tense since we fell into that nest of gundarks.” Unfortunately, McGregor just can’t fake the ridiculousness of the attempted comic exchange.

It’s also an uneventful debut for Hayden Christensen, who speaks in a whiney cadence from the back of his mouth and with a Marlon Brando mumble. The romantic exchanges offer the most laughable moments in the entire series, specifically Anakin’s lakeside confessions expressing his love for the softness of Padme’s skin. And the groundwork of Anakin’s future conversion to the Dark Side is laid with the grace of a jack hammer.

It was a bold move by Mr. Lucas to shoot the film digitally, one of the first major mainstream films to do so. For the most part it’s indistinguishable from film, offering us some remarkably pristine and robust imagery. That said, Lucas further demonstrated his disdain (or laziness) with physical production by shooting almost everything on a soundstage in front of a green screen. His hubris in thinking that his other baby, ILM, could render special effects, background landscape and everything else in the frame with a computer and pass it off as real is completely off base.

For example, there’s a shot early on during a running chase between Anakin and a mysterious assassin who tried to kill Amidala. We see Hayden Christensen running across the neon streaking cityscape dodging pedestrians in order to keep up with his assailant. Unfortunately, the crop lines around the actor’s body and the awkward and inconsistent motion of the actors within the space tell us this is not a real space, but a puzzle of separately shot elements cropped together on a computer. In the original films Lucas used motion controlled cameras to link elements together, an effect that still looks realistic today because he used real tangible objects shot with his camera.

Without the anchor of real objects in the frame (other than the actors), most of the action in this film is a swash of colours and light, which fails to stimulate us or at least move us emotionally. The final act, featuring the Jedi battle in the arena, is incomprehensible and over-produced. The only two scenes to keep from this entire film are Obi Wan’s fight with Jango Fett in the rain and the final double-Jedi match against Count Dooku. Both scenes are exciting because of the simplicity of the choreography in the Dooku battle and the real-life rain falling on the actors in the Obi Wan/Fett scene. Again, these are physical effects that the audience can innately feel are real.

I don’t think I’m off base to say it’s the tangibility of this new Star Wars world that is the greatest loss of the series.

Elephant

Elephant (2003) dir. Gus Van Sant
Starring: Alex Frost, Eric Deulen, John Robinson, Timothy Bottoms, Elias McConnell

****

By Alan Bacchus

Like Pablo Picasso’s Guernica, in Elephant Gus Van Sant magnificently manages to create great art out of great tragedy. Indeed, both works of art are comparable. From the bombing of the city of Guernica in the Spanish Civil War, Picasso rendered his most recognizable painting. For Gus Van Sant, his inspiration for Elephant, his universally celebrated Palme D’Or-winning film, was a reaction to the Columbine school shooting – a seminal event in recent US history. Years from now when we look back on his career, this might be his crowning achievement.

Van Sant’s determined minimalist style is so very deceptive and wholly cinematic. It’s cinematic in the sense that the languid and quiet pace creates an eerie tension. This serves to establish realism and makes us believe that the high school and students depicted in the film could actually exist – a high school with nameless, faceless kids free of all preconceived notions of a movie ‘high school’. But it also establishes a sense of boredom, which disarms the viewer to the inhumane tragedy about to unfold.

The film is a technical touchstone of cinematic technique. Harris Savides’ steadycam achieves some rather unique accomplishments, moving both inside and outside the school with complete unity in the lighting and depth of field. Whether or not you notice this specifically, the fluidity of the camera that creates a feeling of elegant motion is front and centre. The visual design of placing his characters in the centre of the frame moving through hallways might even connect, whether purposefully or subliminally, with the point of view in which computer games are played by the two killers in the film. Or maybe Van Sant intended to echo the eerily cold feeling of the overlook hotel in Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining.

Look closely to follow the shifting point of view. In mid-shot, Van Sant often moves from a tracking shot following a character to a reaction shot of other characters looking down the barrel of the camera. This occurs specifically when the handsome jock turns the heads of the nattering bulimic girls in the hallway.

If there’s a false note in the film it’s the depiction of Alex and Eric as emotionless stone cold killers. When the film switches to their stories, he’s clear to show their inane and confounding activities prior to the carnage, including their planning process, executed without an ounce of remorse or self-doubt, or an acknowledgement of their fate. There’s also the gay shower scene, which creates even more confusion and questions. Regardless of how the Columbine killers conducted themselves before their rampage, their detachment from reality is frightfully terrifying.

The massacre scene that fills the third act admirably does not sensationalize the murders. The depiction of death and the often confusing actions of some of the kids just before death feel so utterly real. Benny, for instance, skulks around the school like a brainless zombie thinking he’s immune to the killers’ weaponry. And his death, so undramatic and thoughtless, is difficult to comprehend or make sense of, yet it makes sense given the way Van Sant plays out Benny’s movements.

That said, Elephant is not meant to make sense of any aspect of this tragedy, other than, like Guernica, an abstract instinctive visceral reaction from the soul of an artist.

Still Life

Still Life (2006) dir. Jia Zhangke
Starring: Tao Zhao, Zhou Lan, Sanming Han, Lizhen Ma, Hongwei Wang

****

By Alan Bacchus

The Three Gorges Dam is China’s massive hydroelectric dam, a marvel of engineering built in 2006 and the largest power station in the world. As a manmade structure that tamed the great Yangtze River, it became a symbol of the might of the new Chinese economy. But because of the ensuing environmental impact and displacement of millions of rural citizens, it’s also seen as a stake for liberal activism in the country.

Ironically, out of this massive economic change and upheaval begat a number of great international films in the past few years. Yung Chang’s great documentary, Up the Zangtze, showed this change from the point of view of a tourist sailing a boat on the river. Jia Zhangke’s celebrated Venice Golden Lion winner, Still Life, is arguably the crowning artistic statement of this period of change.

It’s a challenging piece that magnificently juxtaposes the journey of two lost souls in search of their loved ones against the background of a centuries-old rural way of life about to be drowned for all eternity by rapid progress.

Han Sanming is a coalminer arriving in the town of Fengjie, which is about to be flooded. He’s searching for his wife who left him 16 years ago with a daughter he’s never seen. Han goes from person to person asking about his wife and where she might be, with each person guiding him to the next, like connect the dots. There’s also Shen Hong, a nurse in Fengjie, who is searching for her husband, Guo Bing, who hasn’t come home in 2 years. Like Han, she wanders through the near wasteland of vacant buildings and impossibly beautiful mountainous landscapes looking for answers.

Through the compartmentalization of Han's and Shen’s scenes (Han is featured in the first third, Shen in the second, then Han again in the final third), Zhangke forms a rudimentary three act structure. But nothing at all feels familiar in Zhangke’s world. While the real-life personalities he finds and uses as actors in his film along the way lend an observational documentary-like feel, there’s a strong tone of mystical realism. At one point from Shen’s daydreaming point of view we see her imagining one of the derelict building skeletons suddenly launching into the sky like a rocket ship. Zhangke elegantly weaves these elements of spiritual fantasy into deeply emotional personal character stories.

Despite the title, Still Life seems to be constantly in motion, albeit slow and methodical at a snail’s pace. But it is motion and we can feel it. In every frame, people are constantly working like worker bee drones in unity for the greater purpose, either swinging sledgehammers to demolish the massive buildings that now look like industrial carcasses of the former Communist era, or operating large and complex machinery while making trinkets for the West.

Or perhaps it's a Maoist metaphor for the ability of the Chinese people to form a whole greater than the sum of its parts. Zhangke’s camera complements these themes, moving at the same pace, creeping into its subjects like a Hitchcockian voyeur, or just elegantly gliding across the often astonishing visuals.

It truly is a visual masterpiece featuring one stunning composition after another, at all times making us reconcile in our minds the achievements of man against the achievement of nature and earth.

Superman Returns

Superman Returns (2006) dir. Bryan Singer
Starring: Brandon Routh, Kevin Spacey, Kate Bosworth, James Marsdon, Parker Posey, Frank Langella

***1/2

By Alan Bacchus

It’s too bad this film missed its mark 6 summers ago. It’s a rather unique and wholly admirable vision for this Superman. Virtually anything could have been done with the character and the franchise, and Jon Peters, the producer, tried many different directors to relaunch the series, including using his old Batman pal Tim Burton with Nicolas Cage as the man of steel. Bryan Singer’s film resonates strongly based on his meticulous precision in plugging it into the style, tone and overall mythology of the Richard Donner films (Superman The Movie and most of Superman II). Perceived success or not, Superman Returns is a terrific film.

What’s to be cherished most from the 1978 Superman The Movie is the treatment of the origin story, both the father-son relationship between Jor-El (as played by Marlon Brando) and Superman (nee Ka-Lel), and Superman's relationship with his adopted father on Earth played by Glenn Ford. What a stroke of genius to bring Brando back from the dead, incorporating outtakes from the original in this new one to provide a unique tie between the two films. In production, the announcement of Brando’s presence signified Singer’s desire to stay in sync with the other films.

Tonally, Singer hits the same marks as Donner. Brandon Routh not only looks strikingly similar to Christopher Reeve, but he possesses some of the same slapstick steps as Reeve playing Clark Kent. Kevin Spacey and Parker Posey admirably step into the shoes of Gene Hackman and Ned Beatty, the sometimes bumbling, sometimes deadly affable opposing duo.

John Ottman’s score admirably reworks John Williams’ recognizable music to find a satisfiable hybrid.

In terms of story, Singer finds a fun medium between continuing the story established by Donner, finding his own journey for Superman and even adapting/recreating a number of the scenes from the original for his own purposes. Lois Lane’s interview of Superman, for example, is choreographed and directed note-for-note with Donner’s memorable scene in the original. After getting the assignment to do a personal piece on Superman, he meets up with Lois on the art deco rooftop flying in from the sky. A fun conversation piece filled by sexual subtext and double-entendres ensues before Superman whisks Lois off into the sky for a nighttime jaunt.

Singer’s new addition, Lois’s child, who may or may not be Superman’s kid, also fits in wonderfully. It connects to his strong feelings for his two paternal figures, Jor-El and Pa Kent. If anything, it’s a shame we couldn’t see Ford, like Brando, somehow return in a flashback. The surprise moment in the third act when the child discovers his powers for the first time offers a pretty darn exciting piece of action, and the denouement, the final admonition of Superman as father to his sleeping son, is deeply affecting.

Where Superman Returns doesn’t land as softly, arguably, are in the overstocked action scenes. Sequences such as the airplane crash and the boat rescue at the end feel perfunctory, exercises in blockbuster excess demanded by its tent pole requirements. The overuse of CGI to replicate Superman during the scenes adds a negative cartoon nature to its generally serious subject matter.

Perhaps this is why the filmed failed – the needs and desires to create an action film conflicted with Bryan Singer’s desire to romance the genre as Richard Donner did so many years ago. Regardless, the work speaks for itself and succeeds as a worthy final chapter in the long yet truncated saga.

Superman Returns is available on Blu-ray in the Superman Anthology 1978-2006 set from Warner Home Entertainment.

The Island

The Island (2006) dir. Michael Bay
Starring: Ewan McGregor, Scarlett Johansson, Steve Buscemi, Sean Bean, Djimon Honsou

**

By Alan Bacchus

I’m one of the forgiving critics who can generally look past ridiculous plotting, overwrought hyperkinetic visual stimuli, the often objectionable depiction of women and the general immaturity of Michael Bay’s films and appreciate the pure spectacle of his filmmaking aesthetics. Michael Bay makes Michael Bay movies, and God bless him for it.

Back in 2005, fresh off the relative disappointments of Pearl Harbor and Bad Boys 2, Bay’s attempt to come back with The Island also failed. His brand of glossy eye candy just didn’t fit into the brainy ‘70s intellectual futurist sci-fi from which the concept of The Island stems.

In this film, we experience the point of view of Lincoln Six Echo (McGregor), one of hundreds of men and women living in a sterile futuristic boarding house of sorts, sequestered from an apparent viral outbreak in the outside world. They spend their days exercising, eating right and wearing identical white jumpsuits. Their one goal in life is to win the lottery, which takes them to ‘the Island’, a seemingly pristine world free of their forced confinement and the contamination of the rest of the world. But when Lincoln starts questioning the absurdity of his sterile lifestyle, it begins his journey of escape and the discovery of the heinous deception at play.

Eventually, Lincoln and his tagalong gal pal Jordan Two Echo (Johansson) escape and get chased by the cool looking police cum SWAT team led by the slick Djimon Honsou. Normally with this type of film, say George Lucas’s THX 1138, escape from containment occurs in the third act. But such timing just doesn’t pass for summer blockbuster entertainment. And so, by the 45 minute mark, Lincoln and Jordan are on the run, fish out of water trying to navigate their way in the real world with Bay attempting to extract humour from their wide-eyed naive reactions to the colloquialisms of our world.

The application of the Bay brand of dialogue, that hyperfast delivery of crude jokes and characters talking over each other in loud, shrill voices, is distinct to the director, but doesn’t fit the genre. Same with the overly lit music video lighting. Everything in the film is a bold colour, whether it’s the yellow sunlight that streams through every window like it’s blazing dusk blinding our eyes, or the overly greenish fluorescent lights showing us the grimy and dirty aspect of the conceptual world.

The most disappointing aspect of the film is the Bay action scenes, and action scenes are the main reason to watch these movies. The central set piece, another highway chase, is a near carbon copy of the Miami freeway chase in Bad Boys 2 (Bay would even try this a third time in Transformers). When the action scenes fail to stimulate us in a Michael Bay picture, the film is doomed.

The third act, which runs way too long, surprises us with the introduction of a doppelganger Ewan McGregor. Bay has some fun with the dual character banter, one a slimy disreputable race car driver and the regular Lincoln a sympathetic innocent to the world.

In the end, The Island is even more forgettable than his most brainless features. Bay should either just stick with the brawn, like in the Transformers franchise, or completely shift gears and exercise his brain for a change. I genuine like the guy and would love to see the latter.

The Island is available on Blu-ray from Paramount Pictures Home Entertainment.

Tigerland

Tigerland (2000) dir. Joel Schumacher
Starring: Colin Farrell, Matthew Davis, Clifton Collins Jr., Shea Wingham, Tom Guiry

***1/2

By Alan Bacchus

How good is Colin Farrell in this movie? Great. Sadly, he would never again even come close to the cinematic charisma and complexities he puts into the role of Pvt. Roland Bozz, the enigmatic shit-disturbing soldier who affects the lives of the scared witless grunts he trains with during the lead-up to their tour in the Vietnam War. His memorable performance seems to inspire every other creative element in the film, from his supporting actors, Joel Schumacher's direction, which has never been better, and the awesome cinematography of Matthew Libatique.

Jim Paxton (Davis) is a humble middle-class WASP private training in the continental US before being shipped out to Vietnam. It’s Advanced Infantry Training at Fort Polk to be exact, nicknamed Tigerland for its ability to create the military’s ruthless fighting machines. Through Paxton’s written diaries and voiceover we get to see the horrific life of a soldier through his innocent and naive eyes. Another newbie is the less identifiable presence of Pvt. Bozz (Farrell), a wildcard crackerjack who marches to his own beat and at all times exudes superiority to the hyperbole of military training.

While his self-imposed right of personal freedom and expression is admired and looked up to by Davis and some others, Bozz is also a frustrating stick in the mud for his officers and fellow soldiers. The main source of conflict comes from a near psychotic bully, Pvt. Wilson (Wingham), who resents Bozz’s libertarian ways. As others, like the cowardly Corporal Miter (Collins Jr.), crack under the strain, Bozz becomes an angel of comfort for those who will likely not survive the stress of battle.

Joel Schumacher has never been better. Ever. He’s made 22 feature films, many of them extremely successful, yet he’s never made a great movie except for Tigerland. Like his discoveries in previous pictures St. Elmo’s Fire and The Lost Boys, his casting is sharp. Not only Farrell, but look at the performance of Clifton Collins Jr., who matches Farrell’s veracity with a less show-offy role, but one he burns into our memories. Same with Shea Wingham, who like Collins is certainly not a star, but an equally respected character actor today. His performance as Wilson, the antagonist to Bozz, is frightening.

If not Colin Farrell, then Matthew Libatique’s muddy and grainy 16 mm photography is at the helm of this ship. This was a time before acceptable quality high-definition, before the Red Camera and before the extensive colour timing capabilities in post that we have now. Libatique employed good old fashioned 16 mm to create an earthy and grainy newsreel feeling. The format also allows for a distinct type of colour saturation not present in regular 35 mm.

Though this aesthetic was likely influenced by the Danish Dogme films that were hot at the time, Libatique and Schumacher create their own rules. Despite the gritty feeling, they don’t always handhold the camera. Many of the shots are on tripod and dollies for a traditional steady and smooth look, which demonstrates that realism needn’t be exclusively achieved using a handheld or ‘shaky’ camera.

In Citizen Kane, Orson Welles famously shared his title credit on the same card as his cinematographer Gregg Toland to honour his immense contribution of the visual design to the picture. If any film deserves a similar co-authorship, it’s Tigerland.

Tigerland is available on Blu-ray from MGM Home Entertainment.

Fat Girl

Fat Girl (2001) dir. Catherine Breillat
Starring: Anaïs Reboux, Roxane Mesquida and Libero De Rienzo

****

By Alan Bacchus

Much controversy surrounded this picture back in the day, as it contains the frank and dispassionate discussions and depictions of sex of an underage teen seen through the eyes of an even younger pre-teen girl. There’s also the title – so direct and sensational, typical of the body of work of its director, the French provocateur Catherine Breillat, who, previous to Fat Girl, cast real-life Italian porn star Rocco Siffredi in her film Romance, another direct and sensational title. That film featured real sex, which was its own cause célèbre in 1999. And if you go back even further to the 1970s, she appeared as an actor in Bernardo Bertolucci’s seminal sex-art film Last Tango in Paris.

It’s a remarkably simple and small-scale story constructed here. Anais is a pre-teen French girl on vacation with her parents and her older sister Elena. Their sibling rivalry is palpable. Elena, who has come into her own physically, recognizes her sexual superiority and uses it to cruelly obliterate Anais’ self-confidence. Together they discuss sex and freely pontificate about what their first experiences should be like. Elena desires sex with a man she loves, but Anais prefers to just get it over with.

Breillat’s benchmarks are two key sex scenes. The first is the central set piece in the film, which encompasses nearly a third of the film. Elena, who has met and become infatuated with a hunky Italian law student, Fernando, succumbs to his relentless and sly sexual advances to the point that they end up in bed together (with Anais sleeping in the same room). She has no intention of giving up her virginity on this night, but Fernando’s tactics are just too much for her.

It’s a magnificent scene, a sexual encounter drawn out in length, a slow and methodical courtship that turns out to be a heinous act of date rape. Fernando’s manipulation of Elena is hypnotic and intense in a way Martin Scorsese used to do. It’s a conversation dripping with earth shattering tension. I can’t help but be reminded of Jake La Motta’s conversation with his brother, questioning him about an affair with his wife in Raging Bull or Max Cady’s seduction of young Danielle Bowden in Scorsese’s version of Cape Fear. Breillat's dialogue is so intoxicating, and this scene is up to this Scorsese standard.

Anais’ perception of virginity is quite remarkable for such a young girl. It’s not difficult to believe she’d feel this way. Breillat’s point of view is the key to this understanding. We’re either watching what Anais sees or we watch Anais watching her surroundings. As such, we understand that she observes the world more than she participates in it. And through the cruelty of Elena, Anais will rise above the pitfalls she will suffer in her youth.

The ending is certainly a shocker and confounding. We expect Anais’ passiveness to usurp. Though there are some shocking acts of violence that come at us suddenly, it pays off in Anais’ journey – however oblique and confusing it may be.

Fat Girl is a deserved masterpiece, worthy of the Criterion label. The provocative effect of the exposed male and female genitalia never overwhelms Breillat’s smooth and calculated character study. And yet the graphicness of the sex is wholly necessary to the mood. Fat Girl is art house primavera – devious and challenging, but so rewarding.

Fat Girl is available on Blu-ray from The Criterion Collection.

A.I. Artificial Intelligence

A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001) dir. Steven Spielberg
Starring: Haley Joel Osment, Jude Law, William Hurt, Frances O’Connor, Sam Robards

**

By Alan Bacchus

After the untimely death of Stanley Kubrick in 1999, Spielberg was given this project as a gift to adapt into his own film as his expression of his 20-year friendship with the master. Unfortunately, the film just doesn’t work. Sure, as the stories recounted by Spielberg and Jan Harlan on the DVD featurettes say, it fit the sensibilities of Steven Spielberg better than Kubrick, but an intriguing concept is bungled by Spielberg’s aging tin ear for subtext.

I admire the all ‘round good intentions, the idea of two completely opposite but equally great cinema masters collaborating on one film. All roads are paved with good intentions, but this road wanders around aimlessly en route to its destination.

There’s a terrific idea at the core. And it’s probably Brian Aldiss’s, the author of the sci-fi story upon which this film is based. The moral question asks what the human responsibility is to a robot that is made to be just like humans. If a robot can love like a human and thus feel the pain of love as a human, are we obliged to treat him or her like one?

Unfortunately, Spielberg articulates this moral question with the subtlety of a sledgehammer to the head in the opening scene. It comes in the form of William Hurt’s speech declaring his intention to create a robot boy who can love, and in the counter-argument from his articulate female associate (April Grace), the ethical conundrum of such a venture. It’s a particularly awful and shameless speech written by Spielberg, depriving us of the ability to infer the theme based on what’s said between the lines. This is called subtext, a fundamental necessity for good cinema. And how Mr. Spielberg forgot this is astonishing.

This is not thinking man’s science fiction. This is children’s storybook entertainment. Even less so, because even when we do tell our kids the moral of our bedtime stories, it’s always done AFTER the story is over, not before.

It’s a shame because discarding this opening scene would make the experience of A.I. completely different. Of course, we would also have to get rid of the blockhead Pinocchio metaphors that continually hammer us with the subtext front and centre. So maybe this film with Spielberg at the helm was doomed from the start.

Along the way, we can appreciate the craft of many of the set pieces. Janusz Kaminski’s superlative lighting, for instance, creates an interesting sci-fi look combining the neon-drenched slop of 80s cyberpunk with the blinding backlit look usually seen in Spielberg’s pictures. And whether or not you find the Flesh Fare scene grossly juvenile, the explosion of light and colour is spellbinding.

Same with most of the performances, particularly Jude Law as the dervish lover robot who talks like he’s Fred Astaire singing and dancing his dialogue in an MGM musical. And Haley Osment's gradual arc from monotone robotic articulations to full fledged human emotions is deft and effectively subtle.The second act road trip and male bonding of boy and gigolo is enjoyable and adequately distracts from how far off the rails this film goes.

Even with the opening scene and the Pinocchio nonsense included, the film could have been salvageable if the third act wasn’t an hour long. This film just keeps going and going, one climax after another and doesn’t want to stop. Ultimately, I think the failure of this film is a product of Spielberg's age. The attempt to bring back that 'Spielberg magic' of his youth fails, as it has disappeared. As such, A.I. feels like a sad knockoff of his earlier work.

A.I. Artificial Intelligence is available on Blu-ray from Paramount Pictures Home Entertainment.

Batman Begins

Batman Begins (2005) dir. Christopher Nolan
Starring: Christian Bale, Liam Neeson, Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman, Cillian Murphy, Tom Wilkinson

****

By Alan Bacchus

It's remarkable the feeling we get from watching this picture and the sequel The Dark Knight. Despite the fact that these films were made only a few years apart, Batman Begins feels like a completely different picture, and IMHO a better one. According to the special featurettes, Nolan's cited influence was Richard Donner’s original comic book film Superman the Movie. Donner's tone of adult-oriented dramatic realism and mythic literary grandeur is plugged directly into Nolan's film.

Nolan magnificently connects the events of Bruce Wayne's entire life into the emotions and motivations of the present using three time periods. Firstly, there is Wayne as a child and the trauma he experienced from seeing his parents killed, specifically his idolized and righteous philanthropic father. There's also his university-age youth where, fearing failure and feeling the pressure of living up to the standard set by his father, Wayne goes on a walkabout of sorts to discover the criminal mind. An attempt to be recruited into the 'League of Shadows' pits Wayne against his first mentor, the charming yet devious Henry Ducard (Neeson) and his leader Ras Al Ghul (Ken Watanabe) - I mean, how awesome are those character names to start! And then comes the main through line, the present day, where Bruce Wayne assumes the form of his greatest fear, the bat, and becomes a symbol of justice that the regular police can't uphold.

Each character rings true with an arguably deeper sane of realism than The Dark Knight. Despite Heath Ledger's fine performance as the Joker in that film, the fact that he was insane and that his motivations weren't explained meant we ceased to identify him as a character. Although highly entertaining, he was simply a robotic antagonist no more complex than say The Terminator. Ducard, on the other hand, is wholly fascinating. Introduced first as a saviour and mentor to Bruce, Nolan and his writer David Goyer elegantly morph him into an antagonist closely tied to Wayne's goals.

To convey this sense of pathos, Nolan employs a complementary cinematic eye. Look at the colour palette for instance. While The Dark Knight utilized colder colours more in line with police procedurals, Batman Begins is distinctly golden brown, like a faded old photograph or newspaper. The look adds a level of aged texture and a resonance of the past.

The opening sequences in Tibet also add to the feeling of spirituality and existential enlightenment. The glaciers of Iceland, which double for the Himalayas, look fantastic. But the mere fact that we're in the middle of devout Buddhism adds a subtext of Zen-intellectualism.

Admittedly, Christopher Nolan still has some learning to do in terms of filming action scenes. His hand-to-hand combat scenes never seem to be cut right. Perhaps it's that darned Batsuit that makes it impossible for an actor or stuntman to be flexible. That said, he shoots a decent car chase and his roller tank sequence is pretty darn awesome and certifiably trumped in The Dark Knight. But the primo sequence that represents the 'epic' tone is Batman's rescue of Rachel Dawes. With Batman at the top of a staircase, his army of bats storm the building and provide the definitive image in the film. The bats that represent true fear, which Wayne has controlled and channelled, become his greatest asset – a physical manifestation of the overall theme of the film.

Batman Begins is available in a lovely SteelBook packaging on Blu-ray from Warner Home Entertainment.

Stuck

Stuck (2007) dir. Stuart Gordon
Starring: Mena Suvari, Stephen Rea, Russell Hornsby

***

By Alan Bacchus

“Stuck” has a delightfully intriguing film concept – a man is hit by a car and gets stuck in the windshield. The female driver fears prosecution and drives him to her home where she leaves him to die in her garage overnight. And ironically the film is inspired by actual events. Veteran horror-film director Stuart “Re-Animator” Gordon and writer John Strysik tackles the story with a unique b-movie spin turning the film into an effective absurdist black comedy.

Stephen Rea plays the humble protagonist Tom. He’s just been evicted from his apartment and forced out onto the street with a handful of clothes as his only possessions. He’s met by a kindly homeless person who graciously gives him a grocery cart to carry his belongings. Tom thinks he’s at the lowest possible point in his life, until he meets Brandi that is.

Brandi (Mena Suvari) is interestingly drawn. She’s a decent care-worker in an old age home. She seems to have her head on both shoulders – career-oriented, responsible and hardworking. But Brandi’s not all red roses. She’s got a gangster-streak in her. Brandi’s hair is braided into atrociously inappropriate cornrows, and her nails are intricately painted like museum artwork. Her boyfriend – Rashid (Russell Hornsby) is a drug dealer who supplies her and her friends with a steady supply of ecstasy and weed. After a night of partying Brandi drives home high and crashes into friendly Tom. The crash is horrific, dramatized in super slo-mo, breaking his shins and sending him hurdling into the windshield. Brandi is so shocked she drives him home into her garage to gather her thoughts.

Fearing criminal charges she doesn’t tell anyone, until the next day when he enlists Rashid into ‘taking care’ of the problem and making Tom disappear. But Tom is a resilient crash victim and so begins a battle for survival against Brandi and Rashid.

The first half struggles with the tone. The opening sequence is a slow-motion parody of rap videos inside the old folks home. And when we first see Brandi’s cornrows, it’s a shock – in fact, I couldn’t not take my eyes off them the whole film. After the crash, with Tom stuck in the windshield, their interaction is off kilter. I couldn’t figure out if the film was horror, comedy, drama or all of the above. As the film moves along and Tom has to find safety the film’s tone made sense. It settles nicely into a b-movie absurdist black comedy territory which could have played along side Tarantino and Rodriguez’s “Grindhouse” doublebill.

The sex scene with Brandi and Rashid is shown in graphic length. It’s exploitive and funny at the same time. The hallucination of Tom coming through the windshield while Rashid is on top of Brandi confirmed the tone. And the battle in the garage is wonderful Grindhouse-like sequence of events.

Mena Suvari, who also serves as one of the producers, is surprisingly good and turns in a darkly comic outrageous performance. She has no problem having fun with the role, braiding her hair and stripping down for some nasty sex.

“Stuck” knows its place in the genre. Like “Snakes on a Plane”, it's a fun experience for a cine-loving audience. “Stuck” bests “Snakes” because it doesn’t coast by on the premise, it brings us some genuine thrills, chills and laughs with a Ripley's Believe it or Not authenticity.

Moulin Rouge

Moulin Rouge (2001) dir. Baz Luhrmann
Starring: Nicole Kidman, Ewen McGregor, Jim Broadbent, John Leguizamo, Richard Roxburgh

*½

By Alan Bacchus

I hated this movie when I first saw it on the big screen and I still hate seeing it for a second time on the brand spanking new Blu-Ray almost 10 years later . What many found and loved as a wild extravagant melodramatic rock opera to these eyes and ears is just an overly dramatized two hour long garish pop video version of Gilbert and Sullivan.

The story finds a young writer Christian (McGregor) in Paris at the turn of the century employed by a really weird group of stage producers, which includes John Leguizamo shrunked down to the five-foot sized Toulouse-Lautrec, looking to write and finance a play around the debaucherous nightclub, 'Moulin Rouge'. Christian ingratiates himself with Moulin Rouge's owner Harold Zidler (Jim Broadbent) as well as the club's luscious courtesan Satine (Kidman). They fall in love, which runs counter to Zidler's plans to use Satine to woo their moneybags investor 'The Duke' (Richard Roxburgh). Meanwhile Satine's days on earth are numbered as she suffers from TB.

The love triangle of Satine, the Duke and Christian continues all the way up to the premiere of their show 'Spectacular Spectacular' where true love triumphs, just in time before Satine falls victim to a melodramatic death.

Remember that scene in Dumb and Dumber, when Jim Carrey's character, says, 'Wanna hear the most annoying sound in the world?" and then proceeds to scream wildly into the ear of Jeff Daniels? This is a similar feeling I get when watching 'Moulin Rouge'. Of course to critique the film for being 'over-the-top' would be useless. It's a rock musical which needs to have a big top razzle dazzle quality. But Luhrmann executes his stylish pop opera like a shrill cat in heat.

Let's start with the editing, there’s some terrific production design in the celebrated stage sequences, but Baz Luhrmann chops everything up so fast and with a non-sensible montage sensabilities we lose the sense of scope. I'd even argue that the production design is too busy for it's own good. Like ill-matching plaids, we can barely even find the actors in the frame out of the mess of colour and velvet drapes in the background.

When the film is not mashing together overplayed pop songs, the plotting of the actual story is put through an extreme screwball comedy machine. Unfortunately it takes funny actors and funny dialogue to get some laughs, not shameless sound stings accompanied by excessive camera whip pans.

No one can really sing in the film that well either. Ewen McGregor's voice is not really that bad, but not great either, and a lead in a cinema musical needs to have a great voice. And this film in particular his deep vocal tones just doesn’t fit the needs of the heightened rock opera. His opening ditty, Elton John’s My Song is downright awful. Nicole Kidman is also only passable, but would be crushed into submission by anyone on Broadway, or even Glee. She also doesn’t seem natural as a seductress, she still comes off as a demure prude which most of her other roles have type cast her as.

And so to lay the point down as bluntly as Luhrmann has done with this film, it's simply unwatchable.

But Moulin Rouge lovers rejoice, the Blu-Ray transfer is actually pretty good, and is now available from 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment.