The Informant!

The Informant! Steven Soderbergh, Director, 2009

 

HOOK: Tired of special effects movies and Jenifer Aniston, bet you’d enjoy a comedy about corporate price fixing. 

"Can you hear me now!"

 LINE:  “I’m Agent 0014 because I’m twice as smart as James Bond.” 

SINKER: The tip-off is the exclamation point at the end of the title.  

JOHN: There’s something appealing about the nervous, awkward, optimistic, delusional, rambling-voice-over kind of guy Damon plays (even about the Decatur, Illinois setting) that makes you not only like him, but fearful for the mess we think he’s getting into. He’s in charge of a lysine-manufacturing operation bleeding money. He tells his bosses that a mole is sabotaging the operation and that a confidential source will reveal all for ten million dollars. They call in the FBI. Soon the Damon character, Whitacre, is wowing them with allegations that ADM is involved with massive price-fixing. Hardly your regular Saturday night plot. Then something strange happens. If you saw the previews, as I have on a couple of occasions, you come prepared to believe Whitacre, but, as it turns out, that’s a mistake. And in making it you will not be alone in. As Whitacre plays the others, Soderbergh plays us. And I have to admit, I bought it hook, line and sinker.  

GO GO GO GO (4 GOs out of four) 

SPANKY: Damon is terrific and the rest of the cast is too. No one looks Hollywood. There’s an expression we have here in Wisconsin that I think might be apt for Whitacre. He’s a “country slicker.” Yet as endearing as he ends up being, there are some interesting points made along the way about price-fixing, the legal morass many investigations must find themselves in and, finally, about what kind of a person making millions would turn whistle-blower. Soderbergh casts comedians in many of the film’s key roles—especially attorneys, both for and against Whitacre; which exerts a reductive effect on the seriousness and substance of Whitacre’s legal battles. Damon’s non-sequitur voice over observations are priceless, and provide semi-conscious clues when looking back on the film that give us those, ”Why didn’t I see that?” moments. Maybe a little too much so. After all this is an indictment of a system—economic, legal and political—that endorses or rewards deception. We can laugh, but shouldn’t we also be worried? Who is being self-delusional now?   

“TWO PAWS Up” (3 BARKs out of four)

Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds – WHAT WENT WRONG?

The Inglourious Basterd

Inglourious Basterds, Quentin Tarantino – Director, 2009

HOOK: What if the Jews were the Nazis and the Nazis were the Jews, then how would we feel?

LINE:  “I want my scalps!” 

SINKER: We caught the friend who drove us there, Bob Wake, in the men’s room after the show trying to burn down the theater.

JOHN: In this over-the-top revenge fantasy Tarantino continues his ability to build scenes through dialogue that at first catch you off guard and then take on issues below the surface that inevitably end in violent bloodshed. This whole movie is made of scenes like that which lead to what? Collosal violent, bloodshed. There is no sense of character development nor any surprising revelation. In a sense he takes the genre (period war film) for face value and plays it for all it’s worth. Perhaps in doing that this bad boy of cinema gives audiences and himself exactly what they want (killing Nazis). I realized a few minutes into the film that any discussion of rewriting history or the question of portraying Jews as avengers, was beside the point. In some ways this is better than his gangster movies (Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs) because it seems like it will play on our preconceived values and gives us a fresh take on the context of our lives. But that only carries us so far — about two-thirds of the movie. But then we want more, not simply more of the same, but more.

GO, GO, GO (3 GOs out of four)

SPANKY: It’s not just self-indulgence (though that’s a downside of director as writer), Tarantino misses a wonderful opportunity. This film is as much about movies as it is about WWII, maybe more. How they reflect reality /or let us escape from it. Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz) is an entertaining, insightful villain, but it’s the Melanie Laurent character, Shoshanna, who is the soul of the movie. She is out for vengeance but beneath her cold resolve beats the heart of a terrified child. As she lies dying and her theater is burning, she should be imagining the ending we see (of dying Nazi leaders), instead of the fictionalizing romp T-Man (as ballsy as he is) presents. Think Fellini, Bergman and Truffaut. It could have been a symbolic comment on the creative process that allows us, not only to survive, but to be great. True, the Brad Pitt finale would have had to be curtailed, but by this time we’re sick of his over-acted character anyway. What could have been profound, is simply noisy, and only to do with us at the movies. We leave the theater, the same people we were when we came in. As Nick Caraway says at the end of the Great Gatsby: “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”  Maybe Bob Wake had the right idea after all.  

“ONE PAW Up” (1 BARK out of four)

 

CHINATOWN – GREATEST FILMS OF ALL TIME

Chinatown  - Roman Polanski, Director, 1974

 

All you can eat buffet

HOOK: John Huston, who’s first film was the iconic Maltese Falcon plays a pivotal role in the last American film of  Roman Polanski (whose wife, Sharon Tate, was murdered in 1969) to create the ultimate film on LA, corruption and the underbelly of the American Dream. Polanski later fled the US after being convicted of statutory rape that stemmed from a party at Nicholson’s house.

LINE: “I like my nose. I like breathing through it.”  “She’s my sister. She’s my daughter. My sister. My daughter. She’s my sister and my daughter.” “Forget it, Jake. It’s Chinatown.”

SINKER: Robert Towne’s script is incredibly rich, more than movie audiences today might be able to handle. He beautifully incorporates Jack Nicholson’s speech patterns and the choices of an alien-like Faye Dunaway and bullying John Huston are inspired. But it was Polanski who gave then ending an immortal spin few movies have ever achieved (one that did might be with Bogart’s last line in Maltese Falcon). 

JOHN: There’s a term in mystery-story writing called “after-shadowing.” It’s the opposite of foreshadowing in that when the piece is over, looking back, all the disparate parts of the puzzle are seen to fit. That well defines this stylish classic. The script is complex, yet coherent. The acting, top of the game. Like the music, this one haunts you. An attempted sequel twenty years later (The Two Jakes) was lame. 

GO, GO, GO, GO (4 GOs out of four) 

SPANKY: Unfortunately this film came out the same year as The Godfather, Part 2, which grabbed most of the Oscars away it (“Forget it, Roman, it’s Hollywood!”). But it does raise some questions. First, why the hell can’t we go to new movies like either of these two today? Second, in a media that is devoted to escapism why do we honor what seems realistic rather than one that directly addresses, while embracing, the escapist genre? It might seem that what we want is the illusion of truth rather than truth (for truth we just need to look out the window, not hole up in a dark theater). So a movie that questions that, Chinatown, no matter how great, will be penalized. Though later, I wonder which remains embedded most firmly within us. And isn’t that the real prize? At one point the actress impersonating Evelyn Mulwray asks Nicholson’s J.J. Gittes on the phone if he’s alone (he isn’t). Jake responds, “Isn’t everyone?” Like that viewer in a darkened theater, Jake is an alienated man searching for some connection in a cruel world. 

“TWO PAWs Up” (4 BARKs out of four) 

INSIDE TRACK: Jack Nicholson was known to his high school friends as “Nick”, and was voted “class clown” by the Class of 1954 at Manasquan High School. In 2004, Nicholson attended his 50 year high school reunion, much to the surprise of his fellow classmates. When he first came to Hollywood, Nicholson worked as a go-fer for animation legends, Hanna-Barbera. Seeing his talent as an artist, they offered Nicholson a starting level position as an animation artist. However, citing his desire to become an actor, he declined.

PS Click here, August 08, to see our first review of Chinatown.

 

THE GODFATHER, PART 2 – GREATEST FILMS OF ALL TIME

The Godfather, Part 2, Francis Ford Coppola – Director, 1974 

 

Where’s Brando? Does anyone care?    

 

HOOK: Trying to understand what happened to America (not just the Mafia). 

LINE: “Michael, we’re bigger than U.S. Steel.” 

SINKER: Not only do we get to see Michael’s consolidation of strength as new, very corporate head of the Mob family moving West to open casinos in Las Vegas and the personal price he pays, we get to see how it all started in flashbacks to a righteous, young Vito’s rise from poverty to power during the early part of the twentieth century. What scope! 

JOHN: Remember Al Pacino. I mean do you really remember him. When the music begins it goes straight to your heart. Like good poetry, a good movie alters your perspective on a subject forever. Like great poetry, this film offers something new each time you watch it. The seamless balance between the past and present creates a drama of opposites with layers of nuance. The rockpile of Scisily becomes a gala in Nevada where hypocrisy continues to play out. It’s dark inside (the film is in color but all night and silhouettes). What do we, the audience, come to Michael (the Godfather) for. We have to see through this darkness but can’t. Let’s face it, we’re not Michael or even Diane Keaton. We are Fredo. 

GO, GO, GO, GO (4 GOs out of four) 

SPANKY: Just when you think an actor couldn’t be any better than Pacino, along comes DeNiro—jumping roof tops of NYC’s Little Italy as the dirge of a religious parade snakes through streets below. He is the avenging angel, and that is who we the audience are too, John. But that’s what makes the ending so incredibly strong. After a cascade of violence we get a close-up of Michael Corleone’s sitting in the near dark of his boat house. There is silence following the gunshot killing his brother. Silence, and then after a moment the theme music kicks in again. We know it’s not the end, even if part three were never added. This is James Agee and Walker Evans made new. This should be required viewing every ten years. This is an American masterpiece. 

“TWO PAWs Up” (4 BARKs out of four) 

GOSSIP: Interestingly, in order for Coppola to make the first “Godfather” film in New York, he had to agree not to use the words “Mafia” or “Cosa Nostra” anywhere in it (the film refers to the Mob as the “family business” and the “syndicate,” instead). Otherwise, the New York Mob might have caused trouble with the production. The gangsters, though, liked what they eventually saw. Also that Coppola initially wanted Sir Laurence Olivier to play Don Vito Corleone, but novelist Mario Puzo wanted Brando, and Brando won out, thanks to his own eager desire to play the role and despite Paramount’s less-than-enthusiastic appraisal of the idea. In fact, the studio showed its displeasure with most of Coppola’s choices for the major roles, including using relative unknown Al Pacino as young Michael which almost pushed things to the point of the studio firing the director. Brando later said he tried to imitate gangster Frank Costello’s voice in the movie, but he had to redub some of his dialogue because it was so hard to understand. Everyone assumed Brando would come back to star in the sequel, but he said he had done the first film as a social comment on American corporate power and had no interest in doing another one. The fact that Paramount still didn’t want much to do with the tempestuous Brando probably added to the actor turning down the role. So, Coppola worked around him, filming a few scenes with the older Don present but out of the room. By the way, if the Corleone estate at Lake Tahoe looks impressive, it should be; it was the property of former industrialist Henry J. Kaiser.

SLUMDOG MILLIONAIER – WHAT WENT WRONG?

Slumdog Millionaire, Danny Boyle – Director, 2008  

Can we change the channel?

HOOK: Looking at a miserable life from the possibility of a new one that comes out of nowhere. 

LINE:  “Can you believe this use to be our slum?” 

SINKER: This movie is: a) a classic  b) overrated  c) better than watching the game show on TV  d) worth discussing with the tech-support guy on your next call to India 

SPANKY: kids and photography are spectacular. The framework: heavy handed, exploitive and audience demeaning. What bothers me most is that we have to see this reality through gimmicks and promises of wealth. The fantasy of Bollywood seems more genuinely intended. This is a “knock ‘em down, pick ‘em up” Capra film, viewers have moved beyond. In the end it is a racist melodrama that uses real misery and human degradation as the backdrop for a fairytale of how everything works out in the end by winning a goddamned Western game show. 

“TWO PAWs Down” (1 BARK out of four) 

JOHN: I agree. This is a love song for the tone deaf told in 90% flashback. Why not assume an audience is smart and give them something that is worth their time (if not their emotions)? Oh, I’m sorry. I forgot it’s a movie for people who watch TV (“The Bachelor,” “America’s Got Talent,” “Deal or No Deal”). And let’s be really PC and give the film an armload full of Oscars. That certainly takes care of any problems of poverty, crime, child molestation and racism. The final musical number is worth the price of admission, but not our souls. Not our souls. 

GO, GO (2 GOs out of four)

JAMES BOND – What Went Wrong?

Quantum of Solace, Marc Forster – Director, 2008  

Ian Fleming's grave at Sevenhampton--where he is now turning over.

 

 

HOOK: Now Bond is killing fans. 

LINE:  “Who do you trust?” 

SINKER: Do we really deserve this!

 SPANKY: This film starts out with some of the most dazzling personal-chase footage ever seen, then quickly follows it with a plot, characters and settings that are so bad they completely negate the entire Bond franchise. For almost fifty years this has been “over the top” entertainment, with fantasy villains, sexy women, stirring music and preposterous payoffs. Now we get one-note Daniel Craig and some mishmash about global warming even Al Gore wouldn’t buy. You take on the Borne movies by dumping every imaginative thing we’ve been lapping up all these years? If we wanted the Borne films we’d go to the Borne films! All the sex, glamour and fantasy of the movies feels kicked in the groin. All this film does is remind us of all we are missing. I’d rather drink out of the toilet bowl. 

“TWO PAWs Down” (0 BARKs out of four) 

JOHN: As a kid sitting in the theater I was OO7 for two hours. Two hours of sex, tuxedos, ironic asides, my own theme and most important…a license to kill. So here’s a film that supposedly takes all those perks away from our hero. Who’s he suppose to be? Me? For that I don’t need buy a ticket and sit in the dark! I say get the old Sean Connery back. Give him his gun and let him shoot Daniel Craig, Remington Steel, Timothy Dalton and even Roger Moore. That would get us out of our seats cheering more than kickboxing, people falling through glass, and settings in Bolivia. What the hell is Hollywood thinking?   

No GOs (out of four)

 

PUBLIC ENEMIES

Public Enemies, Michael Mann, Director, 2009   

Have hat will travel!

HOOK: The film for the new depression.

LINE:  “My name is John Dillinger. I rob banks.” 

SINKER: “Where are you going?” “Anywhere I want.”

SPANKY: I know John grew up in Chicago and as a kid went to movies at the Biograph where Dillinger was shot (and even traced the filled bullet holes in the cement), but this film doesn’t add anything to the genre as far as I’m concerned—in fact it skirts over opportunities to do this that Bonnie and Clyde and the Godfather, Part 2, didn’t. On the positive side, it is very tactile: men’s wool pants, the glint of old cars on city streets in the rain at night, fur collars on women’s cloth coats. And the surreal detail of the HD camerawork with the severe close ups create an intensity we don’t get in real life, much less in history. I didn’t buy Dillinger falling for the girl, nor feel I got any new insight into his character. I loved the opening (prison break) sequence and the final collage seen by a brazen Dillinger on the bulletin board of the Chicago Police’s special John Dillinger squad room, is brilliant. Unfortunately, much of the rest of the film is not.

“ONE PAW Up” (2 BARKs out of four)

JOHN: I think this is a terrific film, though I admit a lot depends upon what you bring to it. If you feel, as I do, somewhat disenfranchised and overwhelmed (by trillion dollar health reform, for example) shooting a Tommy gun off in the woods is appealing. (PS I don’t like guns, and never have, but was raised listening to “Gangbusters” on the radio in bed at night with the lights out.) Psychological depth was never at the heart of gangster movies— that’s a later addition from the sixties and seventies—but that glint in Depp’s eye as he watches Clark Gable in Manhattan Melodrama on the screen is the same one we share watching Depp as Dillinger today. Who gives a fuck, we just want to be in the movies. The politicking of J. Edgar Hoover, the ambivalence of straight-guy Christian Bale are enough of a hint why we’re in such a mess today. When the fetching Marion Cotillard tears over the departed gangster at the end, we do to. Not only for him but for ourselves. No, this movie is perfect as it is. If you don’t like it, you’re not bringing your true self to the experience.  

GO GO GO GO (4 GOs out of four)

CHÉRI

Chéri, Stephen Frears, 2009

 

Pfeiffer feels she is losing sex appeal.

HOOK:  Not since Sunset Boulevard has a film (or actress) explored the meaning of a woman’s getting old.

LINE:  “Is there anything more wonderful than a bed all to yourself?”

SINKER: The other five people in the theater were also over sixty.

JOHN: This sad, intelligent film about looking in the mirror and wondering what happened is based on two novels by the celebrated French writer Colette. Initially Michelle Pfeiffer seems rather contemporary when compared to the daguerreotypes of courtesans shown under the beginning titles. But when she takes on her friend’s (Kathy Bates) young son as a lover, she bravely portrays a woman whose life is passing by. The repercussions of this changing relationship (the sly mother promises the son to a wealthy young girl in matrimony) create a layered story that is literary, heartbreaking and timeless.  

GO GO GO GO (4 GOs out of four)

SPANKY: Well, I found it difficult to grasp the appeal of either the Pfeifer character for the foppish Rupert Friend or his distress at being separated from her. I understand how Pfeiffer (a sexy actress of the eighties) must seem symbolic to the old farts watching the movie and wondering what happened to them, but I’m less sure that is in the film  than something being read into it. As far as being literary, Masterpiece Theater does a better job of making us feel the emotions of the situation (no matter what the time period). Here I knew what was expected of us, but it just was not delivered by the story or the actors themselves. And this movie gets my vote for worst title. How can you even tell someone you’re going to see a movie called “Chéri” and not be considered a fop yourself?

“TWO PAWS Down” (1 BARK out of four)

 

DRAG ME TO HELL

Drag Me to Hell, Sam Raimi, Director, 2009 

HOOK: Sam Rami’s blood sacrifice to invoke the great horror movies of the past.

LINE:  “Soon it will be you who comes begging to me.”

SINKER: Remember when movies were fun?

SPANKY: Allison Lohman (Willy’s illegitimate daughter) and Justin Long have a genuinely touching relationship and there are some fresh scenes—possessed woman meets boyfriend’s parents at dinner, psychic reciting Jung and the depressed heroine filling her face with ice cream scooped from a carton—besides the requisite demonic séance, girl struggling with a corpse in a grave she’s dug up and the vomiting of blood and grubs, but the pacing of this film is like a good novel where we root for the central character and at times against her (even if the middle of the film is a bit slow). The director is shamelessly manipulating an audience and we are there to be shamelessly manipulated. This gets my vote for best title of the year, best ending and most interesting question: not what would you do if you were damned to hell, but who would you chose to send there in your place if you could. John?

“TWO PAWS UP” (3 BARKs out of four)

JOHN: Watching this movie I was fifteen again, reveling in the gothic effects, nervously laughing at the shadows on the window of a suddenly claustrophobic house and drowning in the eyes of a young blonde whose worst fears have suddenly become realized. The best scene in the movie: a fly darting in the window lands on the camera lens and then buzzes to the sleeping Alison’s face where it crawls into her nose. Eeeeeeeek! The titles over an obscure book of illustrated nightmares, the charged, fifties movie-music and the final payoff, are all great. By the way a fat woman next to me got a cell phone call during the movie. I damned her to hell and, unexpectedly, she burst into flames. How’s that for irony.  

GO GO GO GO (4 GOs out of four)

UP – Don’t Miss This!

John, Spanky and Desmond (The Hollywood Version)

UP, Pete Docter, Director, 2009 

HOOK: Can movies re-invent themselves? 

LINE:  “You know, Mr. Fredrickson, the wilderness isn’t what I expected.”

SINKER: Who would ever think we’d be cheering on an hrumphing Ed Asner as a serious hero. 

JOHN: This is one of the great movies. There, I’ve said it. It’s easy to list past animated-film faults: too precious, too (wink, wink) clever, too technically show-offy. Up doesn’t sidestep such pitfalls, it makes them irrelevant. Here are plot development, multi-layered characters and genuine surprises that match the best animated and non-animated movies ever made. Sure the dogs talk (with the help of a special translator collar) but what they say has genuine dog perspective, right Spanky? For example they call the boy, “young mailman.” And just when we think an old man can be cool we meet one who’s cruel. The ending—with the boy’s missing father—could have been sappy, but it isn’t—and the old geezer (who we’ve come to feel for) becomes the young wilderness scout’s real award. Don’t miss this or wait to see it at home. It is a movie to laugh at and cheer for with an audience. Remember when we use to do that? 

GO GO GO GO (4 big GOs out of four) 

SPANKY: The 3-D technology is magic. And this film begins with a black and white, two dimensional, newsreel out of Citizen Kane that expands to a world of color, dimension and surround sound much like that first roller coaster ride in This is Cinerama. You’re right about the dogs, John, but the same applies to the humans. They’re not stereotyped cartoon characters but real people we come to care about (even the wonderfully twisted Christopher Plummer). The opening montage about the old man’s relationship with his deceased wife is spectacular. Whatever prior expectations we may have had melt and the audience of dogs (once menacing) cheering the boy on at the award ceremony show that even a small thing that might have proven mildly disturbing is not forgotten, but rectified. So many times Disney films have used our emotions. This Disney/Pixar prize heightens them in a real and meaningful way. Good movies get us talking about director, actors, plot mechanisms and settings. The great movies (and this is one) get us thinking about our lives and who we are. John described taking his four-year old grandson to this as the kid’s first movie. Desmond wasn’t sure why they needed to buy special glasses for this movie when outside the theater 3-D is free. But, in any case, even if you don’t have a child or grandchild, go to see Up…when you leave you’ll feel you do. 

“TWO PAWS UP” (4 BARKs out of four)