Rabbit-Proof Fence

Grade: A

Rarely – so very, very rarely – does a film overwhelm us with a deep sense of shame over our never-ending inhumanity, while simultaneously inspiring us with the never-ending courage of the indomitable human spirit.

It is to all our shame that, up until 1970 – this is correct, 1970 -- aborigine children were regularly ripped from their parents in Australia and shipped off to internment camps where they were raised to become members of the servant class in white society. This is a true tale of three children’s attempt to use a “rabbit proof fence,” that ran thousands of miles across the country, as a guide to return them safely home. Their journey is simply, quietly and honestly told, and the result is a thoroughly engrossing, suspense-filled, and ultimately devastating filmgoing experience.

The filmmakers have done a stunning job of capturing the vastness of miles traveled, while at the same time forcing us to feel the sights and sounds from a child’s perspective, from the loud screeches of a train taking them from freedom to a hawk flying overhead representing safety and home. The acting here is quietly magnificent, from Everlyn Sampi’s unbelievable firstime screen performance as a 14 year old girl trying to get her sisters home, to Ningali Lawford who emanates the love, pride, and protectiveness only a mother can feel for her children, to Kenneth Branagh, who fills his villain with a deeply complex and soulful belief in the rightness of his cause that makes him a painful representation of the ills of all humanity rather than a caricature we can all boo and hiss at to feel better about ourselves.

If this were a fable, it would still be a great film. The fact that it is real, as we are so powerfully reminded in the film’s final minutes, makes it one of the most important films of this or any year. Not since “Schindler’s List” has a movie fulfilled such promise. Poetry on film.

More Movie Info: http://imdb.com/title/tt0252444/

Die Another Day

Grade: C+

Also known as “PUT A BULLET THROUGH ITS HEAD.” This is one tired and boring old franchise. And I am really getting tired of franchises.

Pierce Brosnan and Halle Berry are both solid, and it is always a pleasure to see Judy Dench anywhere. For the first fifteen minutes or so, Mr. Bond actually seems like a flesh and blood human being rather than the standard action figure. We watch him captured, tortured, tossed aside by those he trusts, and for a while we think this might actually be something different from the same old formula. Wrong. Soon enough we are right back on track, such as it is, with a convoluted and not terribly interesting plotline and villain. After a rather long dry patch the action moves into high gear, but how many more missile loaded car chases do we really need to sit through? It’s all the same action sequences we’ve already seen with a few new bells and whistles added. Some of it’s mildly amusing, some of it’s way too convenient (is there ever a time 007 doesn’t stumble over exactly what he needs exactly when he needs it?), and some of it’s just over-the-top preposterous even for this sort of thing. If one has never seen a Bond flick before, this is a reasonably acceptable summer flick in November. If one has seen a Bond flick or two or three or four, there ‘aint nothin new here.

More Movie Info: http://imdb.com/title/tt0246460/

The Quiet American

Grade: A-

Small boats bob up and down in the water on an idyllic evening in Vietnam. It is 1952, and all is serene and beautiful. The camera pans down, and a dead body floats in the water. Nothing is as it seems.

Told against the backdrop of a love triangle involving a young Vietnamese woman, an older and somewhat complacent British reporter, and a young and idealistic American providing medical aide, none of these characters are as simple as they first appear, and the storyline is interested in far deeper and more complex issues than love and relationships between three disparate people.

Some actors are golden boys whose promise has gone awry in Hollywood. Richard Burton. Some actors are pretty boys turned leading men turned respected character actors. Paul Newman. And some actors simply work. And work. And work. Michael Caine. Sometimes in first rate films, sometimes in truly unbelievable crap, actors like Caine survive because they are simply so bloody good at what they do. This may be the very best performance of an important career. Subtle and understated, Caine plays a deeply complex man in a deeply complex time, slowly but deliberately shifting from a man self-serving in his commitment to objective reporting to a man as subjectively involved in a nation’s future as involved can be. Brendon Fraser, who has already proven his dedication to bringing box office clout to small yet important films, is also quite accomplished as the American catalyst whose naive personal agenda in the end indicts an entire nation’s self-righteous politics and policies.

It is most difficult to discuss this film without giving too much away, as one of the year’s best screenplays beautifully and subtly shifts our perceptions of who is who and what is what. This is not a mystery as such, yet as motivations are slowly revealed much that has come before changes and becomes far richer in a different light. A love triangle that at first appears rushed, pat, and overly simplistic becomes intricate, ambiguous, and utterly fascinating. We are given one of the greatest gifts a screenplay can deliver – the opportunity to evaluate, question, analyze, discuss, imply, and ultimately re-evaluate our characters.

This is country on the dawn of an international war, and our characters are each reflections and allegories of the thoughts, passions, and belief systems that led us down the path of such mass destruction.

More Movie Info: http://imdb.com/title/tt0258068/

Talk to Her (Hable con ella)

Grade: B+

I am not in general the biggest fan of Pedro Almodovar. While I have enjoyed many of his films, I have also found many of his characters so multi-ambiguous, so not of this or any world I can believe in, that they are rather difficult to fully embrace. In this, his best work to date, Almodovar continues to make his characters complex and difficult to pigeonhole, his situations unusual to the point of bizarre, and yet the overall experience compelling, moving, and utterly embraceable.

A film far less about sexuality (one of Almodovar's favorite oddly utilized themes) than obsession as a means to emotional avoidance, two very different men find an abiding friendship while their infatuations lie comatose. One is wounded in ways the film never brings sharply into focus, the other inadvertently taught how to cocoon himself in love unattainable. One seems unable to connect in a fulfilling emotional way, the other buried in unhealthy devotion. Their friendship is odd and not fully defined, yet surprisingly never suspect. They need something unexpressed from another human being, and quietly find it in each other during the never-ending hours of a hospital ward. If Almodovar leaves too many blanks for us to fill in for ourselves, both in terms of back story and character motivation, what we surmise says as much about our own individual lives as it does about his characters.

Almodovar uses film technique beautifully here, giving us bits and pieces of scenes and conversations he fills in later, going backward and forward in time to let us question what's really going on before exposing more to us. Though the film is a bit too slow and deliberate in its pacing, and a scene here and there are obviously false contrivances designed to forward plot (would a woman really ask a man in a bar to drive her home five seconds after meeting him? Would a patient find easy and open access to his psychiatrist's showering daughter ten feet away from his therapy session? I think not), it is also full of surprises, great charm, and very human characters.

More Movie Info: http://imdb.com/title/tt0287467/

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

Grade: B-

Let’s all be honest here. Those of us who adore the Harry Potter books (my partner and I traveled to a Barnes & Nobles at midnight to join the throngs longing to pick up book four – if that aint adoration, I don’t know what is) dearly hoped this movie would at least be an improvement over the rather leaden first installment. We all walked into the theater a year ago longing for an “ET” for the next generation, and walked out of the theater really looking forward to “Lord of the Rings.” The first film wasn’t dreadful as such, it was just so damn faithful to the book that it failed to deliver even the slightest magical spark of it’s own. It’s hard to blame Director Chris Columbus for this alone -- the financiers, unwilling to risk a franchise with a touch of anything remotely resembling real vision, were all too happy to push for a page-by-page recreation of the material, as though actually adapting the work for another medium would have been something just short of sacrilegious. We were given a book on film, not unlike something we pop into our cassette players and have read to us…..and truckloads of money flooded in, Toys R Us had a field day, and the second installment -- surprise surprise – was made to be not all that different from the first. Leaden is as leaden does, I always say.

One should say that this is indeed sometimes fun. There are laughs, and it’s inherently enjoyable to be back with characters we like and care about. But if this film is any better than the first, it is largely because the second book had a more compelling story itself, as character introductions had already been taken care of, leaving more room for plot development. This story is darker and has more shades of coloring than the first, and one initially believes it might actually make all the difference. Even the special effects are generally better here, although we still have moments that feel closer in quality to “Buffy, the Vampire Slayer” than an extravagantly produced feature. The acting is uniformly entertaining as well, although poor Richard Harris must have been dreadfully ill during filming, as this is the only way to explain his frightfully unenergetic performance – it is sad indeed that this is the final work of one of our greatest. It is not the talent that destroys this movie, it is the formula itself -- or should one say the potion? In no time at all we are once again turning pages rather than being transported, which leaves us with one very long 2 hour and 40 minute experience -- it is frightening to think what such a reverential treatment of the 734 page “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire” would look like, as it is more than twice the length of the 341 page “Chamber of Secrets.” The final half hour is a confusing mess of exposition and explanation, which quite frankly I couldn’t come close to really following, and one leaves the theater mildly entertained, somewhat depressed, but never for a moment exhilarated.

One hopes a new director might actually get #3 right, but fears the powers that be simply will not let it happen – those who have produced these films seem to believe there is no place for vision when a franchise is at stake. And when a “Harry Potter” movie is produced by a cynic, you’re in trouble.

But man oh man am I looking forward to “The Two Towers.”

More Movie Info: http://imdb.com/title/tt0295297/

8 Mile

Grade: B-

For weeks now, my partner and I have been driving the world crazy by breaking into choruses of “I’m sorry Mama, I never meant to hurt you-u-u, I never meant to make you cry but tonight I’m cleanin’ out my closet” (pronounced clawset). While this has been sung in every single preview and commercial we’ve seen for this movie during the last four months, we were deeply distraught it was not actually in the movie. Not even the closing credits. Wassup wit that?

Could there be anything sadder than watching a heterosexual white boy cope with the oppression of African American society? Living in a trailer park with his heavy drinking, unemployed, bingo playing mother, while all the while his black nemesis goes to a private school and comes from a set of happily married parents. Oh, the injustice of it all.

Critics seem oh so proud of their ability to get jiggy wit it and throw plaudits at this movie as though it were some sort of groundbreaker, when in fact it is an entertaining, well meaning, well crafted, yet thoroughly paint-by-numbers “Rocky By Rap” sorta’ movie.

Eminem is indeed the reason to see this movie – he is charismatic as all hell on screen, appropriately vulnerable, sexy and smoldering for the part of a, um, well, a character exactly like himself. Whether or not he can go beyond playing a rapper from the wrong side of the racial and economic tracks remains to be seen, but he is surprisingly talented and sympathetic here. He even gets an opportunity to explain away much of his real life political incorrectness, and it actually comes off as well-meaning and sincere in a dopey sort of way. As his mother, Kim Bassinger should never act with a southern (my partner corrects me, apparently it was meant to be midwestern – who knew?) accent again, although she is passable in a stereotypically overwrought role.

Let’s be frank here -- any movie that gets me to enjoy, occasionally understand, and somewhat appreciate this rap thing can’t be all bad. “I’m sorry Mama, I never meant to hurt you-u-u, I never meant to make you cry but tonight I’m cleanin’ out my closet” (pronounced clawset).

More Movie Info: http://imdb.com/title/tt0298203/

Far From Heaven

Grade: A-

From the moment the music crescendos and the title hit’s the screen, you know you’re back in the fifties, even if you were never old enough to have been there in the first place. Not simply a time and a place, but a style and personality of filmmaking specific to the generation it represents. It is that simpler time folklore tells us about, when everyone was happy, people lived up to everyone else’s expectations and fulfilled all obligations. Young men married, went off to work, and became fathers. Even younger women married, became mothers, and planned social events. Everything was black and white, clear and consistent, filmed in living technicolor.

And it was a work of total fiction.

“Far From Heaven” is about a family torn apart by repressed homosexuality and interracial love, complex and often uncomfortable realities we have been told never existed during this perfect age – it is a story filled with heartbreak, forbidden love and desperate longing.

Director Todd Haynes has created a virtuoso accomplishment, telling the stories that were never told to us utilizing the style and perspective that they were never told to us in. The film is uncanny, often uncomfortably so, in its ability to replicate the camerawork, set design, storytelling and music of the period. While Haynes cannot be faulted for intentionally choosing a cinematic style that creates an emotional distance from the audience, one still can not help but find this somewhat detracting from the overall experience. But if the emotions are often muted and only shown in shadows, the style of the genre also leaves one with an overwhelming sense of societal repression that verges on suffocation. Julianne Moore and Dennis Quaid fulfill the almost insurmountable task of performing in a completely different acting style, without the language of modern self-awareness and exploration, while still allowing their own personal humanity to shine through. They are extraordinary performances.

How far we have come or how much we have remained the same as a culture is open to some debate, but what is clear is that families never were perfect, and the simpler and morally unambiguous world politicians love to refer to simply never existed. Judgment and repression remains today, but self-expression has at least begun to blow the lid off our God, Mom, Country and Apple Pie mythology.

More Movie Info: http://imdb.com/title/tt0297884/