for March 2005
De-Lovely (2004, 125 min, PG13) *** - Directed by Irwin Winkler, starring Kevin Kline, Ashley Judd, and Jonathan Pryce, featuring musical performances by Natalie Cole, Elvis Costello, Alanis Morrissette, Sheryl Crowe, and Robbie Williams. The long-suffering wife putting up with her “great man” husband stepping out on her is stuff we’ve seen before, just like we’ve seen actors putting on makeup and gray hair (but never pounds) as the decades roll by. But that’s small criticism for “De-Lovely,” a lavish production that captures not just the wit and tunefulness of Cole Porter’s music, but also draws out the underlying sadness of it. Even if the talking bits can be sometimes be clunky, director Winkler’s musical numbers are fiery and evocative. “Be a Clown” sure sounds sad, and the dance number that goes with it has the warmth of hurt feelings and muted desperation. Like the music, “De-Lovely” is cheeky and light on the surface. Kline’s Cole Porter behaves like he walked out of an Oscar Wilde play, but it’s something of an act; he’s trying to draw attention away from himself by drawing it to his caricature, just like a singer of the time would during a performance. The heart of the film is Porter’s relationship with his wife (Judd): two insecure people, victims of the roaring ‘20s, make a muddle out of love. He wants every kind of love, male or female, because he doesn’t believe anyone can really love him, and she lets him walk all over her, justifying it to herself with blah-blah rhetoric about his talent and being an artist. “De-Lovely’s” production design and costumes (by Giorgio Armani) are pure ‘20s—shimmering, partying, staying up late, spending money, and anything else out of desperation to hide from the void. Because the musical numbers don’t use the singers you’d first think of, they’re that much more interesting. Kline sings more with joy than with accuracy, which is how he should be. Pryce plays the mysterious director walking an old Porter through a theatrical performance of his life, because, when you think about it, art is just a big, narcissistic re-shaping of the world into an artist’s image.
The Heart of the World (6 min, 2000, black & white, NR) **** - Directed & written by Guy Maddin, starring Leslie Bais. Deliriously, delightfully insane parody of silent Soviet propaganda films like “Battleship Potemkin.” How’s that for esoteric? Black-and-white, scratched up film stock and giant title cards tell how Anna, the State Scientist, has discovered that human misery and selfishness has caused the Heart of the World to stop beating. With the end near, Olga’s two suitors, one a histrionic actor playing Jesus, and the other described as “Youth, Mortician,” compete for her heart, the first by high-speed conversions of the masses, the second by conveyor belt embalming. Yet Anna is instead drawn to the fat, cigar-chomping Industrialist, who bangs her on a mountain of gold coins. Maddin (“The Saddest Music in the World”), a Canadian enamored with the look and techniques of really, reeeeally old movies, lovingly parodies the ham-handed, intensely political obviousness of flicks like “Potemkin,” and sets Eisensteinian editing patterns to a wild, very modern orchestral piece that beats like a locomotive. Great, great fun.
Kingpin (1996, 113 min, PG13) ** – Directed & written by Bobby and Peter Farrelly, starring Woody Harrelson, Randy Quaid, Vanessa Angel, and Bill Murray. Often mentioned in the same breath as Joel & Ethan Coen’s “The Big Lebowski,” the comparison is worth noting. While weirdoes in movies by the Coen Brothers create the impression of being self-sustaining and indifferent to whether we find them funny or not, the freaks made by Farrelly Brothers feel faked, as if “funny” characteristics were put into a big hat and pulled out at random. They reach in and end up with “Amish” and “bowler.” Of course both Coens and Farrellys invent everything, it’s just that the Coens can fool us while the Farrellys feel like they’re trying too hard. Still, “Kingpin” has some good laughs involving a one-handed former champ (Harrelson) corrupting a good Amish kid (Quaid) to make his comeback against the arrogant reigning champ (Murray). The bit where Harrelson and Murray go head to head and both start to lose their comb-overs is pretty good.
The Manchurian Candidate (2004, 129 min, R) *** – Directed by Jonathan Demme, starring Denzel Washington, Meryl Streep, and Leiv Schreiber. It’s not as good as the original, but then again only about 150 that have ever been made are as good as John Frankenheimer’s 1962 masterpiece. In the hands of director Demme (“The Silence of the Lambs”) “Candidate” is a playfully macabre laundry list of every post-modern fear of politics, the military industrial complex, multinational corporations, and the mass media. Are we getting brainwashed by the powerful into hating everyone with a certain skin color? Is our country run not by the officials we elect but by massive corporations that would be destroyed by the competition if they ever lifted a finger for any cause other than profit? Is our mother behind it all, even controlling what we thought was a rebellion? A solid criticism can be made against the movie’s refusal to specify which political party we are observing; everyone seems more like Democrats than Republicans, but we can’t be too sure. But even that is part of “Candidate’s” game, to show us that our choices are illusions, and that one face of the corporately-controlled omni-party is as bad as the other. We follow two veterans of the first Gulf War, both with bad dreams and worrying about mind control. One is running for vice-president (Schreiber, in the Lawrence Harvey role), the other (Washington, as Frank Sinatra) is a career officer on a thousand forms of medication. Schreiber is sweaty without sweating, uncomfortable, blank, and broken. It’s chilling how happy he looks when he is relieved of the burden of free will and THEY start controlling his brain. Denzel, fresh from his Oscar for playing a grandstanding dirty cop in “Training Day,” is wide-eyed, bewildered, mostly silent, and contained-to-bursting. And of course there’s Streep, in the role that got Angela Lansbury an Oscar nomination, viperous and manipulative, as the Candidate’s mother and a senator herself. Demme, who’s always sort of been a glorified B-movie director, frames conversations with people talking directly into the camera, just like with “Lambs.” It’s all a lot of fun.
Meet the Fockers (2004, 115 min, PG13) *** - Directed by Jay Roach, starring Robert De Niro, Ben Stiller, Dustin Hoffman, and Barbra Streisand. The election-year sequel to “Meet the Parents” does not cry out for centrism or moderation but for the two sides of America to just cut each other some slack. On the left and right, respectively, we have the two worst kinds of parents: the ones who get everything wrong (Streisand and Hoffman, because Woody Allen would just be too Jewish) and the ones who get everything right (De Niro and Blythe Danner); the first finds weakness the spice of life while the second is incensed that it is tolerated anywhere. Bringing them together is the forever put-upon son-in-law, played by Stiller, in the role he was born for, perpetually trying to live just long enough to gloss over awkward moments, and always failing. Like “Parents,” “Meet the Fockers” is so knowing and insightful about how extended families work, in its broad way, that we almost wish it didn’t exaggerate things by making De Niro ex-CIA and Streisand a seniors sex therapist. This is the Hollywood system at its finest, fitting stars into archetypal roles and using straightforward direction as shorthand, and replacing the dumbed-down approach with a light touch. Keep an eye out for the polite little smile Hoffman uses when he realizes that he’s reached a conversational impasse with De Niro.
Reviews in a Hurry for 2004 (X,Y,Z)
Index of All Reviews