Review: Atonement

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Genre: Drama (Historical) / Romance

Atonement, if you remember correctly, reader, was the last film on my list of Most Eagerly Anticipated Films of 2007. I called it almost a sure thing, to be recognized by the major awards associations as one of the year's best films, not only because of its sweeping historical romance or its talented cast and crew, but also because it seemed to be built on a genuinely good premise. It is needless to say, my dear reader, that these are thing which I no longer believe.
Atonement was the second time Mr. Wright, the director, has sought to revitalize and restore a much gone over and much regurgitated storyline. His primary effort, the brilliant Pride & Prejudice (2005), accomplished the task completely and, apart from four Academy Award nominations, including two for collaborators who returned to work with the director in his sophomore try, the film garnered a clean A- from this blogger, who still thinks very highly of the work. The sophomore attempt meanwhile barely cleared the hurdle of decency and should consider itself very lucky if it garner any similar critical praise at all (with at most two exceptions). Weak where it should have been strong, chapped where it should have been fluid, and tranquil where it should have been passionate, the film was a clattering of high-gloss, silver-polished banalities and stale, brittle by rote recitations. Clearly the whole thing could have been marginally re-edited and out would have popped The English Patient or another such high-brow, 'seriously dramatic' drudgery, where the combination of stifled ambiances with cloistered musings, pitched against a backdrop of war, apparently indicate a sort of badge of merit. Where was the burning love that was supposed? Prove it me. Where was the coruscating passion made winnowingly the elegiac sense of loss? Play it me. Where was the thetical binding of all the various parts of the film by common cause and argument (more than just "Let us take responsibility as best we can for our actions")? Persuade it me. At the absolute least let me feel something, for I so badly wanted to find that singular redemptive feature of the work for which I could say, indeed, it was not a great work but at least there was this ___; but there was no such thing.
Mr. Marionelli's score was gimmicky at best. Sounding like no more of an effort than a grafting on or substituting in of the mechanical sounds of a typewriter where percussion used to be, the theme was a huge step down from the glowing tones of his Pride & Prejudice score. Ms. Knightley's performance had too that reissued feeling, not of her own previous work but the work of another actress in a similar past role, except her performance was certainly a lot duller. She barely spoke or appeared in other than a state of subdued consternation and her torrid romance with the groundskeeper boy that figured so much in the storyline felt hardly as sincere and credible as it was meant to be. The costumes and art direction were spiffy at best, and the cinematography slathered the whole thing other in either the tones and lighting of a Clinique commercial or the overly painterly hues of a person who's trying to hard. And God help the screenplay, whose feeble foundation is likely the cause of most of this horrible distress. Fluffy, erratic, and too coy for its own good, the play moved along as though it were in the process of trying to deliver a whopping punchline that would set all its initial potential misgivings right and astound the general public and film-making industry alike but, instead, could only muster a vague sort of toddle towards the truth (which to everyone was glaringly self-evident from the very start and title). I mean, it wraps up with Ms. Redgrave's Briony Tallis' speech as smugly as though it had just nailed the final answer on Jeopardy's Tournament of Champions and elucidated the shocking reality of what had happened to its characters for the apparently confused and still puzzling audience. I gathered that we, the audience, were supposed to feel first gratified that the record of the tumultuous and impetuous first night would be set straight by the young Nurse Briony, then suddenly betrayedly upset by the news that the aforementioned restoration never occurred and because of death C and Robbie's love never had had the chance to survive, and finally recomforted by the small, exceedingly passive reprieve Briony has granted them in her last novel. Well, what a presumptuous iteration of crap that is. The awkward shiftings and the extremely distant atmosphere sapped any and all emotion from that restorative scene; the blatantly obvious descent into physical and mental unfocus swiftly undercut any inkling that Robbie might have survived the war; and the meager and not-to-mention fictional deliverance of C and Robbie into a place of happiness (which cannot for the consistently realistic, almost legally so, nature of the film be construed as their afterlives) is nowhere near the gracious and gravitous atonement one would expect of a Briony who has committed her whole life toward correcting her (entirely understandable) youthful mistake.
Still Ms. Redgrave strives to make the most out of it, and her chronological counterparts do their individual bests as well to wrap themselves around the bizarrely square character they share. For the flightiness of her innocence as a youth, Ms. Ronan has the least arduous task and makes the most of it. Her performance is noteworthy, as is Mr. MacAvoy's, who by his talents as an actor manages to effect cohesion and depth out of his almost exiguous Robbie. Hybridizing his flat and cold public personality of politeness, practicality, and honor and his fanciful and jejune private one of playfulness, day-dreaming, and young-male sexual urgency, MacAvoy invents a three-dimensionality in Robbie that is wholly credible for the character's identity; and he reacts consistently in such a way that maintains this hybridized interlacing of his character. He is postured but to a point and he is furious in reaction toward young Briony's manifested rescue scenario. He is playful but not beyond decorum and he brings home the two lost young boys with one on his shoulders. He is sexual but still respectable and he only slowly steps away to right himself, back turned to camera, when discovered in coitus with Ms. Knightley's C. It is a smart, real understanding of a person, a living current beneath the placid surface; and his lines are the only ones that felt emotionally actual and unrehearsed. His work and Ms. Ronan's are probably the only truly redeeming features in the film.
Ugh, by now I just feel exhausted by the whole affair, as if I'd just been trying to issue a considered opinion on onion preserves. (The implications of the stagnant, bland, and disappointingly predictable content of that simile were not unintentional.) Now I'm just anxious to see whether any established film authority will see it in the same way I have, or will the 'serious grandeur' of it all overdouse them into praise?

Grade: C+

Review: Juno

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Genre: Drama

In another part of the film year, Juno would be hopelessly lost among the flotsam and jetsam of the studios, therefrom hopelessly unable of being elicited as anything more than just another like its sloppy company. In all its previews it hardly stands out - even to a filmically intelligent eye - as anything more than the average adolescent sex drama, in which unfortunate befallings proceeding from sex (i. e., pregnancy) force the children that the film introduces at its beginning to adolesce, to become the (at least partial) adults that the film sends off at its close. In practical terms, on the surface, it's the cinematic equivalent of the after-school special. And, even though such a concise plot description feels as dull as those typical briefs listed in a TV guide, in truth nothing further is really needed to inform the general audience member of the film's direction.
Why then, I ask, has Juno been released now, during the holiday season, when - with the minor exceptions that are the stifled holiday drivel - the films in release are nearly all the so called "Oscar hopefuls?" Why is this film worthy of such notice, of such high-brow positioning, and - most importantly - of such acclaim as that which it has received from critics high and low, touting all its virtues in "year's best" declarations? In this review, I shall attempt to answer these my questions and to, simultaneously, grapple with my answers, to determine whether or not Juno should be considered, as so many have, exceptional.
Primarily, it seems to me, Juno can be considered exceptional, because it is not a film that, like so many others in its cliche sub-genre, can be easily boiled down to its bare bones and then still retain the values and purposes that it, as a complete work, embodies. It cannot be simply "the teenage sex flick about the girl who gets pregnant by mistake and thereafter has to deal with it." Why not? There are several reasons:

1. Though the structure of the play remains essentially the same - that is, the order of events of Juno remains fairly consistent with the way the 'stock' drama is supposed to play out - the finer details of that structure are often upturned in a way that provides for some new dynamism and as yet unexplored territory to creep about, revealing itself. Instead of the singularly minded characters and bland by rote occurrences of idle drama, the players of Juno have depth, vigor, that certain polymorphic human validity that encourages distinct, unpunctured credibility in the spontaneity, or unprescribed nature, of their actions. The impetuous sex, for example, is not motivated by the perennial uncontrollable male urge to fuck, as stock would have it; Mr. Cera's very George-Michael-ean Paulie Bleeker is hardly the kind of adolescent male to be afflicted by the age-old, stereotypical satyriasis. Instead, it is Juno herself who proposes and acts upon her sexual curiosities. Though the exact reasons for her doing so are never explicated, the fact stands, and the contribution to the argument that is her Diana-like personality - sharp-hewn, determined, forged but nevertheless chained by her childish fancies - is evidence in plenty: sex roles are not prescribed. And, though the play sort of recedes upon itself on this point by falling back upon the tried, Freudian-proffered (though subtly) explanation for this, her character, by absenting her biological mother, it still wards against the hackneyed-conventional by its
   
2. [F]orcefully original dialogue. Juno and her friends and relations are admirably nearly endless spools of wickedly tight and allusive quips, quivers, and quotations, that the screenwriters seem to have invested in them with feverish delight, much as (though certainly to a greatly lesser extent than) Mr. Burgess, writer of A Clockwork Orange, or (perhaps more commensurately) Ms. Heckerling, writer of Clueless. The effect is a charming, flighty facility of dialect that both sets the characters high and away from their counterparts in the sub-genre and binds them as a group together, as a tight working wrestling pool of vitality and - tantamountly to the screenplay's success - self-awareness. When Juno automatically responds to her father's inquiry into her previous whereabouts by saying that she was out "dealing with things way beyond [her] maturity level," she both compounds and compresses her existential adolescent crisis in a wonderful double-headed turn of phrase, whose impact is greatly enhanced by the skill of
3. [C]ompetent young actors. So often in the past have these teenage films been addressed to the audience by the mouths and tongues of actors and actresses unable to give much of their own, to add to the black-and-white material. Juno fortunately is not squandered in a similar case; the young people who play in it have truly found and increased the palpability of their characters, by either holding back or giving it all. Mr. Cera outfits himself in a character withdrawn into himself, voiced only when he need be, and somehow simultaneously both self-conscious and unconcerned with the criticisms of others, whoever they be. He seeks vigilantly the lighted path of honesty and valor and is not afraid to (at least internally) question the supposedly decided matters of hand. He is struggling, as much as Juno but in his own way, to manage the situation as well as possible. And, by merely looking askance, shuffling his feet in place, and speaking in a careful cadence (as if he were more trying to communicate than actually communicating), the actor brings his character out from where he otherwise could have been (i. e., in the periphery of the film as no one more than the somewhat gawky, mostly feckless, haphazard sperm-donor), to be where he ought be (i. e., in focus, in question, in responsibility, in study). Ms. Page does the same for her Juno, whose quirky forthrightness as outlined on the page is only by her work elucidated by innocence, uncertainty, and youth(!), where other actresses might have tried (undiluted) recalcitrance, intransigence, and misanthropy. Of course, there is no mistake that Juno is at heart the "uniquely rebellious [teenage] girl" that Not Another Teen Movie so deftly lampoons, but what is great about only her is that her character doesn't stop there, where it begins. Instead, like Mr. Cera's Bleeker, it spools out and spirals, gleaning complexities and ambiguities and a smartly applied, contrasting fealty to her age that does not have her, like so many other girls, waxing twenty-something and (trying to be) o so confident and mature, but does rather have her waning, flailing, and fighting to achieve those qualities which the others took for granted. She is a girl, and Ms. Page's facial expressions that pillow and support the lines that they form are the delights of the film.

These points break Juno from the brittle molds of concise and trite describability and inarguably float it above the awkwardly murky waters of the "teenage sex drama." To reduce it to such a stereotype is to injure, to unjustly dismiss all the good and important facts of its process.
Secondarily, what recommends Juno of acclaim is the stylistically aligned and consistent presentation of its cinematography. Though some may cavel and decry my opinion of the skill of this part of the film on the basis that it was not photographically 'correct' or otherwise artisitically meritorious, I stand fast and urge them to consider the criteria by which they judge such 'correctness' and artisitic merit. Do fine lines and tight colors, accurate points of focus and smart croppings, exist as absolute requirements for cinematographical achievement? Or may these points in seriousness be overlooked, as a master his formal training, in the sincere trying to let out something new? Obviously, reader, I am partial to the latter assessment, for Juno's cinematography seems to accomplish - to me - both what it was meant to accomplish (i. e., an optically engaging, visual recountment of the story) and what it was hoped to (i. e., an emotionally ripe, deeply personal exploration of the story's players). The intimate shots of the sex incident are the best examples of this achievement. Low camera positions, capturing the grounded but slightly wobbling feet of Juno in the dim yellow light of unbroken innocence as she undresses in front of Bleeker, whose patient and waiting legs rest in the near distance and whose naked body, attached to them, quietly suggests both mood and character dynamics as it is out of focus. Such is tenderness and brilliance, such is the film. However unpolished be it, be.
Finally, what compels Juno is its handy acting. I have already discussed the achievements of Mr. Cera and Ms. Page, and so here I have only to commend the beautifully distraught performance by Ms. Garner, whose earnest yet unembarrassed fragility as a woman so desirous of motherhood but piteously unable to conceive on her own was for me the unexpected (and immensely good) bonus of the film. With it her part of the story was able to speak well and deeply about the questions of being and purpose and continuity that are at the film's core.
I have only one complaint, or cause for feeling quizzical, of the film: the sketchy, drawn-out animation that introduced it and most of its credits. What was that about? Sure, it was fun for a little while, but then it just dragged on, intent on running the entire length of that introductory song, whose importance I assumed by its prominence but did not otherwise detect in its lyrics. And, other than the similarly designed titles beginning each seasonal chapter of the film, there was no relation to it in the entire rest of the film. It was exiguous, to say the least, and would have played much better in an abridged format, if it must play at all.
But, despite this bizarre inclusion, Juno still remains a fruitful and worthwhile film, one which I do recommend as, indeed, endearingly unusual for its sub-genre, exceptional, and one of the "year's best."

Grade: A-/B+

Review: The Savages

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Genre: Comedy (Black)

I was finally able tonight, after much anticipation, to see one of the latest films that has achieved a level of critical dignification that only could enhance the excitement I had already had for its release to a near-boiling point. I was expecting sure-fire stirrings and other urgent and solid metaphysical probings to emerge from the lights of the screen, a sirene from Ms. Linney, a precision from the writers, and a genius hold from the director; and for the first moments of The Savages I thought, well, at last I shall not be disappointed. Now, if you, my reader, be any sort of intelligent being, you probably will have already guessed that the thoughts which are to follow will show my initial expectations to be smartly rebuffed by the truth of the film - and it is to your credit that the direction that I am about to take is that which you've anticipated: negatory in fact - but in defense of myself and of the film itself I must say that, despite my complaints, The Savages is not an unpolished, or unskilled, effort. Rather, it was merely less of one than I had expected it to be.
First and foremost, the writing, which is the undiluted ground of a movie such as this one, was accomplished; it set out to recount a specific tale to its audience and in that quest it did not in any measure fail to succeed. However, its accomplishment is not quite the "being accomplished" that one would ordinarily expect. Although epithets may be well said, the fact of their eloquence does not do much, nay anything on its own, to encourage their theses; indeed there may be many a well-written paper that says little, if anything at all. And the screenplay of The Savages may be counted among them - granted counted in their better ranks but counted nonetheless. Though both Ms. Linney's and Mr. Hoffman's characters achieve that subordinated end of the rainbow that is the fullness of the character arc in typical classical writing style, those achievements feel somewhat contrived, forced, a little too perfect. Though they were subordinated, subtle, they wore still too crisp of an air to be believed thoroughly as such; they were perhaps very similar in manner to paper that has been artificially aged to look as parchment but that, one can still tell, is just new paper all the same underneath. Though not quite the same as false notes, the denouements of their travails stand as the significant examples of the writers' lack of acuity and consistence in presenting a story that echoes both as real and as cinematic.
The direction, I feel, compounded this writing issue by too frequently blocking the sibling characters as two idle strangers encountering the rest of the world together. Perhaps this isolation caused them to feel too strayed, too separate from others, to truly come to the closes that they were supposed to have had. I mean, they were hardly ever evenly situated across from another character, however minor, when in conversation; always sidelong glances feigning intimacy or at least awkward distances, emphasized by the cinematography, partitioned their own privately kept and inhabited little world from the swim of the rest of it. Ms. Linney's Wendy, even when in serious, cinematically 'turning-point' or 'recognition' discussion with a hospital nurse, is placed next to her partner and barely looks at him as they speak. It felt sterile, unnatural, and despite the type of person she was presented as being, even considered her introversion and social awkwardnesses.
That said, the cinematography was not bad, not bad at all. Although it was primarily used as a vehicle to drive home the point of the characters' isolation (even from the audience) almost at times ad negatum, it was remarkably smart enough not to do the opposite, as so many films today do and suffer therefrom, (i. e., crush them by being too close). The distance helped the film-viewers remain aware of context and continuum, presences other than and perhaps relevantly greater than the characters, and bear witness to the anesthetized and internally demoralizing reality that is the space between - whether it be temporal, physical, or emotional. Furthermore, its handling of the lighting, the way in which it maintained a regular, natural, and consistent tension between the glow of daylight and the artificial fluorescence of light sources like those of the Valley View, the "rehabilitation clinic" to where the siblings' father is importunately sent, was nearly brilliant. Mr. Hupfel should definitely feel pleased by the results of his work.
As for the work of Ms. Linney and Mr. Hoffman themselves, I have only one thing to say: would that they were so strongly grounded in firmer soil, they should have been high-exceptional.

Grade: B+

Review: Enchanted

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Genre: Comedy (Romantic) / Fairy Tale

The much gabbed-about Enchanted is the latest installment in the ontologically post-classic, experimental era of the seemingly magically arthritic Walt Disney Studios. Rather stymied up until this point by their draining reservoir of 'imagineering' and their protested inability to thrive, even subsist, in animation's computer-generated-baby-boomer period (despite wonderful products by other traditionalistic animative studios [e. g., Japan's Studio Ghibli, of which coincidentally Disney owns the American-distribution rights]), the Disney studios have thrown themselves at the mercy of their truly greatest rivals: themselves (of the past, that is). Their new premise for this ambitious project was quite self-reflective, and rather brave for that quality, as they in probably almost bereft reverence pored over their intimidatingly impressive achievements of yesteryear and, in certain eureka, proposed to challenge themselves and that skilled adversary, their histories, and to attempt to succeed once more by effect of a mirror. Turning the creative lens upon them so, the studio boiled hard at work to generate a storyline that, not only scrutinized and questioned the seemingly ridiculous serendipity upon which nearly all their great stories perch, but also could bear such scrutiny and questioning itself. In short, their project, whether they quite consciously established it as such or not, was for them to deeply explore and seek to answer in such exploration the who, the what, and - most importantly - the wherefore of their renowned genre forte.
And for a while, I was very happy to consider, they were en route to a successful accomplishment of that aim. The animated short that opened the action of the film spoke volumes about how their stories may be conceived, or represented, academically, clinically: a contrived series of events (and trials) that structurally fix two predetermined character types on a well-trodden path that inevitably leads to a foregone conclusion (i. e., the 'happily-ever-after' ending) with perhaps some few small instances of slap-stickery tossed in for that added touch of whimsy. And then, of course here, breaks the twist, the subterranean subversion that turns the hard-bodied 'fairy tale by Disney' onto its famous back and thereby exposes its potentially juicy underbelly, ripe for the squeezing: the confounding iteration of thesis, that "This is not that kind of story." The instigating act of villainy comes in the traditional prologue and things are all just generally ajumble from there on. The fair maiden or princess archetype to whom enchanted little children aspire is no longer belle of the safe and warm contexts that her archetype imbibes like a magical potion or otherwise charmed elixir; instead, she is ripped from those satisfying milieux and inserted deftly and abruptly into, as the film so proudly states itself, the modernity (and the cynicism) of reality, the 'real world,' concisely realized as the rough and cold concrete surfaces of contemporary Manhattan. And what to happen there? The discovery of the fact that her own unique and a-realistic brand of living does not quite align to the various natures of the world, the comical and musical instances that such exotic chemistry inspires, and ultimately - most importantly- the nicely developed existential questioning of her predetermined characteristics, practices, and attitudes brought on by the metaphysically significant combustions resultant of such inspired chemistry? Well, as perhaps the objective assessor of a traditional villain's accounts may offer to his employ post-schemes, "two out of three ain't bad, I guess." Indeed, while Enchanted does stand poised to delve, hands high, into the mystiqued primordial soup from which all its predecessors arise, it fails to deliver on its most fore quest(ion). Instead, it regresses back to the contrived and formulaic pattern of the 'fairy tale by Disney' that it had so bravely started out to improve, as if the intoxicating fumes of the safe and happy ending were lure enough to drown it in its own poison, and, in so doing, it simultaneously - and even worse for the Disney studios' reputation - abruptly switches fairy-tale structures mid-stream (for the film would have certainly, as I brought up earlier, born scrutiny itself as a fairy tale of adventure and self-discovery if it had stayed true on its initial path [and not switched to a fairy tale of romance and true destiny]). After the scene, in which it is clear that she has fallen in love with Mr. Dempsey's character, all the
compelling magic of the storyline just fades away. And for me personally that moment is all the more bitter because it comes directly after a bit of dialogue in which it seems clear that such a relinquishing move would not be made (i. e., when Ms. Adam's Giselle discovers that her very self has been fracturing, as she for the first time emotes anger).
Ah, well, I suppose, it is still a better effort that Disney's previous attempts. The film, on the positive side, does boast a tremendous performance by Ms. Adams, whose darling princess Giselle is as full and nuanced as the slightly closed open palm and the daintily postured arms she collects so fluidly, and the score and the original songs by long-time Disney collaborator and musical-great Alan Menken were chosenly spot-on delights to hear. Furthermore, the closing animation of the credits was an absolutely beautiful achievement, which much reminded me in both style and texture of the similarly well-done closing animated sequence of 2005's Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events (which also featured Timothy Spall in a supporting role).
However, there, I believe, the praise-worthy aspects of the work stop and, though that is not to say that the rest of the aspects of the film that have heretofore gone unmentioned are anything worse than unremarkable, all that, I feel, is left for me to say about Enchanted is that I wish that they had given Susan Sarandon a song - o, that, and that that stodgy bid at the modernizing agent of feminism that was that brief sex-role-reversal near the end neither does, nor can, in any way this preposed fairy-tale revolution sustain - I mean, you did make Mulan, Disney; right?

Grade: B- / C+, a noble impetus, a foibled effort.

Review: No Country for Old Men

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Genre: Drama / Thriller

Many critics have taken to gushing lately over the Coen brothers' newest piece, the dry and placid thriller-Western lodged somewhat sardonically between the lenses of the camera and the lenses of our eyes, and, indeed, much of the appraisal has been merited, especially in the case of of Mr. Bardem's performance. However, there were, to my mind, too many odd clippings and too many solely mise-en-scene threads, for the film to construct as clean or as tight a story or argument as that which all the glowing reviews describe. No Country for Men may be certainly a great gesture in the world of filmmaking for the Coens, but it is not a miraculous heraldry for the world at large.
Primarily, I take issue with the unwaveringly fawning compliments given for Mr. Deakins' cinematography. Now, it is true that Mr. Deakins is an extremely experienced and acclaimed (not undeservedly so) director of photography and it is true that he in this latest effort accomplished some marvellous scenes and sequences, adding depth and feeling and strength to the story and to the action on screen; but it is not the case that his execution of the whole of this his latest effort was solidly impeccable. More than once did he awkwardly cut off already incomplete objects or parts of his actors' bodies, namely their feet, and his extreme distance at other instances pushed the audience too far away from the action and points of focus, to make clear interpretations of them, despite even the largest of theatrical formats. In addition, his muddled stance on perspective tended to dilute the thetical point of the film, quavering from its intended position as a reasoning, objective observer into the untenable realms of intersubjectivity and human probability. While powerful sequences such as that of the primary coin toss with the gas station owner and that of the car-collision finale resonated strongly for their almost painfully indifferent points of view as third-person observers, other sequences like that of the tense awaiting of Mr. Bardem's character in the hotel resonated strongly for their adaptation of the completely opposite standpoint, as an often first-person actor. Yet, I suppose, while such contrasting modes of work in the same film did lead to conflicture in overall argument, it is nevertheless meritorious that they, however contrasting, did still both resonate strongly emotionally or psychologically. Powerful imagery does make a powerful impression - I only wished it had also been a coherent one.
Secondarily, I take issue with the film's screenplay, which has also basked in its fair share of fawned glory. Though it too, like the cinematography, did eke out some premier moments, it was unfortunately less forthcoming on the general splendor or power, for No Country for Old Men did not seem to me to make any sort of palpable or consistent point or argument more than the tired reconstitution of "Greed can wear a man, breeding itself into his children, and, while good men can stand against it, none can truly overcome it but only bear its recognition in one's heart and try to kindle the same in others." OK, so worded in that way the topic may not seem to be endlessly popular, but just consider the long history of screenplays that have ridden the same one-trick pony: from It's a Wonderful Life and A Christmas Carol all the way to Wall Street, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and even Blank Check. And the history of stories in this vein in general stretches centuries farther: Chaucer anyone? So, why why why should we be immensely captivated by and praising of yet another play to address it, especially as the play in question seeks to explore nothing new about its effects and instead somewhat feebly pushes out meditations about chance, fate, and happenstance? OK, it was succinct and inexiguous, thrifty and efficient, but a journey swiftly made to a middle-of-the-road location is still only a middle-of-the-road excursion. Why should we praise middle-of-the-road? I have no idea. And, furthermore, why should we even consider praising an unfocused, undecided style? The screenplay vacillates continuously in tradition, between full-fledged morality play and straightforward thriller. Its characteristic storylines only half introduced and scenarios abruptly begun and ended strongly align to the morality play's construction, in which background details and other practical issues of the plot are secondary to the execution of the overarching moral. But, its instances of first-person, limited-knowledge narration and its tendencies to closely follow the travails of Mr. Brolin's character strongly suggest a thriller's construction, in which the audience's identification with the protagonist is crucial and the major vehicle for achieving the conclusive point. Because the film must be a cohesive whole and directorial decisions can inform the work (even in retrospect), the emotional ties and aspirations of the film must ultimately side with its being a thriller, but the ambiguities still linger, as a further weakness of the play.
Finally, I just have to take minor issue with hair and make-up. While I, unlike many critics out there, have the greatest respect for the decision to style Mr. Bardem's hair as it was, for that cut to me seemed strangely right - perhaps as incongruous and abstracted as his character himself - I have to ask, why also the monster sideburns? I have no real higher reason for my question nor problem with them being on his character that I can clearly describe; they just felt odd to me.
Anyway, all things considered, No Country for Old Men was a very well done film, and Mr. Bardem's ghostly, almost unpresent performance the capstone of the entire piece; but, to be frank, the film's greatness was pre-capped by the shortcomings of its screenplay.

Grade: B

Review: The Darjeeling Limited

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Genre: Drama

I feel the urgent, 2:30am kind of pressing to post finally about this film, Mr. Anderson's latest work and probably his best. Why do I feel this urgency, you ask? I feel it, my dear friend, because there are many supposed "critics" out there who have completely missed the mark, the very finite, very clear mark set by Mr. Anderson by this film; a film that does not for lack of their animadversions lack in itself complexity, intelligence, or resonance of screenplay, a film that is not just a "visual stunner" without substance, and a film that does not slough but does chug along merrily, as though it were the exotic best friend of a certain other little engine who had also realized a possibility. Indeed, Mr. Anderson's The Darjeeling Limited presents a simple thesis, indeed that thesis' progression so condign, but it also presents that thesis in a finely hewn eloquence that builds upon itself in a rolling, advancing but never bulking fashion that never ceases to lose its balancing humor.
Truly the wit of Mr. Anderson, the kind of trademark that one is never ashamed to call one's own, or should not be, bubbles out the probably otherwise slagging roller-y of the plotline into an effervescent solution one is forever extremely pleased to quaff. And this wit extends, not only from the pentip - or the keyboard - but also from the lens as well; for just one glance at the dangling and limp hand of Mr. Brody, whose character sleeps on the top half of a bunk bed, or at the persistently unshod Mr. Schwartzman is enough to set any perspicacious and comprehensive film-goer a-chuckle. Smart beauty, yes, smart beauty is most likely the best description one could come up with of the intentions behind the camera. Imbuing in shot after shot flat parallel lines, smooth edges that do not dissever life from limb , and sapphire and deep gemstone colors that flow tidally in the tradition (of the beliefs) of Kandinsky, the cinematography of Darjeeling is exceptionally well handled, both reflective and supportive of the direction, action, and play.
The screenplay also sparkles in a way that hearkens to real artistry in the incredible amount of care spent crafting the details that sculpt out the world of the brothers from the meagre consensus. The brothers are, not only outfitted with accessories and set dressings that elaborate the natures of their relationships and their pasts and personalities, but are also written with a level of intimacy and real, working complexity rarely seen in films that must by convention stretch whole supposed people and their dramatic archs into the average span of ~1hr45min. It is a definite credit to the scripting abilities of all three of the writers that such deep characters can be so smoothly rendered in combination and other complication with one another.
Furthermore, I must mention that the actors were all incredibly fine and endearing in their portrayals of the three nuanced travelling brothers and their en-route ensemble. Mr. Wilson constructs what I think is likely his best performance to date, and Mr. Brody was in film general particularly fine.
My one complaint against this film is that it lacks the incisive quality I would so have loved to see in an introspective drama. A. O. Scott at the Times said it best, when he wrote that some scenes, which in any other film would have merited the highest ambition toward delivering the most compelling emotions, (e. g., the funeral scene) in Mr. Anderson's world tend toward delivering the most compelling aesthetics rather than dramatics. This comment, for me at least, is not to say that the dramatics are entirely absent or oft forgotten in these aesthetic explorations, but rather just that the dramatics are sublimated and subordinated by the aim the provide the consistency of a visual text, which is not a shameful aim in the least. Visual consistency, a promise so lacking in the world of film today, is to this film-goer a welcome surprise regardless of the stringencies it engenders in delivering a unhampered, still solid film.
Congratulations, Mr. Anderson and Co. Ignore the bleary-eyed professions of the masses and keep doing what you do so well.

Grade: A-/B+

My Most Excitedly Anticipated of 2007

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So, as I mentioned in my review of Across the Universe, I do have a list of films that I like to call my most excitedly anticipated of the year. Now, it's not a real list, one written down and enumerated, ordered and carefully thought out; it's more of a collection of the titles of films whose previews for one reason or another stood out to me as presaging either a film that I think I'd really personally enjoy or a film that I think I'd find very well done - a collection that I just happen to be writing down and enumerating now...yea...:

1) Across the Universe
Before: All previews point to a beautifully crafted, if spontaneous, piece by the talented filmmaker/artist Julie Taymor, whose previous film Frida was a wonderful example of what film can be. Evan Rachel Wood is a plus.

After: All reviews point to disappointment. Ms. Wood was just OK, but it wasn't her fault.

Grade: C-

2) Control
Before: All previews point to an interesting, beautifully shot inspection into the life of Ian Curtis, enigmatic lead singer of the early 80s post-punk band Joy Division (a personal musical favorite). Samantha Morton is a plus.

Release Date: October 10

3) Dan in Real Life
Before: All previews point to a fun, quaint (in the best sense) comedy-drama by Peter Hedges, a director whose forte and inclination are such films. Juliette Binoche, John Mahoney, and a score by Norwegian singer/songwriter/rock star Sondre Lerche are all plusses.

Release Date: October 26

4) The Darjeeling Limited
Before: All previews point to a "smart," "edgy," and fun(ny) exploration of family so well done by acclaimed writer/director Wes Anderson in the past. Plusses for pairing Adrien Brody with Owen Wilson and Jason Schwartzman, for the consistent cinematography, and for Anjelica Huston, Bill Murray, and Wes-Anderson newbie Natalie Portman.

Release Date: September 29 (but I haven't yet been able to go into Manhattan to see it. Hopefully I will this weekend.)

5) Elizabeth: The Golden Age
Before: All previews point to a gorgeously decorated, well acted, if a bit unbalanced, epic that should do justice to the otherwise somewhat hackneyed institution "the sequel." Plusses for all returning cast members, the additions of Samantha Morton and Clive Owen, and the exquisite looking costumes (and art direction).

Release Date: October 12

6) Lust, Caution
Before: All previews point to another meditative, questioning triumph for brilliant director Ang Lee, who has this time wisely paired himself with the extremely adept Tony Leung and wisely chosen Alexandre Desplat to compose the score. Plusses for Mr. Lee's refusal to kowtow to the MPAA's silly and prudish regulations and for the backing by Focus Features.

Release Date: September 29

7) Margot at the Wedding
Before: All previews point to a ripe, heady little piece by Wes-Anderson protege Noah Baumbach, whose The Squid and the Whale simply wowed me. Plus for Nicole Kidman in the lead.

Release Date: November 16

8) My Blueberry Nights
Before: All previews point to an intriguingly mysterious new piece by acclaimed director Wong Kar Wai, whose In the Mood for Love is exquisite. Major plusses for the incredible cast with the quirky inclusion of Norah Jones and for both the contemporary setting and the English language, both new territories for the director that I prefer to see as willful challenges he has set up for himself.

Release Date: TBD 2007

9) The Savages
Before: All previews point to a well shot, strongly and tightly written film that hopefully will have avoided the silly pitfalls of Mr. Payne and Mr. Taylor's Sideways script. Plusses for Philip Seymour Hoffman and Laura Linney as siblings, for Fox Searchlight, and for a trailer that made me laugh more than twice.

Release Date: November 30

10) Atonement
Before: All previews point to that sweeping-historical-romance--drama-with-a-twist-that-is-sure-to-be-an-Oscar-favorite kind of film. Plusses for the talented and upcoming James MacAvoy, the beautiful and brilliant Keira Knightley, the inimitable Vanessa Redgrave and Brenda Blethyn, the smooth cinematography, the period costumes, and the reunion of Joe Wright and Dario Marionelli.

Release Date: December 7

Discover and Review: Tell Me You Love Me

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Genre: Drama

In today's "error" of fast-food entertainment, the good TV show is a rarity, the great show a needle in the hay, and the excellent a veritable phoenix, seeming the shimmer for only a mythical instant and tending thereafter to vanish with but the merest thought of its possible impermanence. Well, here's to hoping that this phoenix never so outburns and vanishes. Tell Me You Love Me is a work of consummate genius, a project that extends the heights and depths to which HBO reaches and has ever reached, and an exquisite work of art that compels the TV genre as a whole. Truly, can I say, I have never before seen a TV program with such consistent diligence, attention to detail, and realism in all aspects as this show in the dramatic genre. After watching only its first episode, I was so impressed by it, that I was ready and willing to give it a grade of A-, almost perfection, so highly did I regard its ambitions and follow-through and so confidently its promise - with the minus coming from my sole significant complaint: its cinematography, which I found uncertain and uneven in that first hour. However, I remanded and stuck to my policy of determination and grading only after the first four episodes and, so, having now just watched the fourth episode - thank you, On Demand! - I am more than pleased to report my official grade for the young series so far. Resoundingly, after a serious study, which found the show's quality, not only consistent, but even improved - for its boldness, its attention, its goals, its progress, its incredibly well-written scripts, its exceptional acting (especially in the character Katie), and its cinematographer's inspired moves both to back up and (relatedly) to use the power dynamic regarding distance - I am thrilled to present Tell Me with:

Grade: A+/A (i. e., the highest grade that I've ever given to a television show and a grade that, I think, no more than two other shows, if any, in the entire canon of television deserve). Congratulations! I can't wait for more!

Review: Across the Universe

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Genre: Musical

O, Julie. Julie.

OK, it's time now for me to elaborate on that previous lament, because for a filmmaker in whom I believed as much as I in her and for a film which I had before seeing it ascribed to my list "My Most Excitedly Anticipated of 2007" such a brief commentary is surely insufficient.
To begin, what troubled me most about Ms. Taymor's latest work is exactly what about her penultimate (cinematic) piece (i. e., Frida) pleased me most: her control of the palette and the frame. Whereas in Frida she appeared to me to have determinedly worked with her cinematographer, to create a rich textile of colors and hued lightings that built and refracted and expanded the power of her story, in Across the Universe she appeared to me to have but lazily slapped on a similarly broad, yet obscurely focused palette that at best could have been described as a hackneyed stereotype of what the 60s and Vietnam mean visually. Needless to say - though I do it anyway - I was terribly distraught. From the same spectrum from which she had previously culled an intimately detailed beam she only managed to split a flickering splurge of misfascination.
Adding to this injurious motion, she and her cinematographer also seem to have chosen rather obtuse angles from which to come at their subject(s). Far more than one shot or frame left me puzzling, "What was that?" Characters were oddly occluded, off-centered, and combative with one another in scenes and the whole thing lacked the cohesive fluidity such a large-scope film should unquestionably have.
Which brings me to a third complaint: The film was just too ambitious; she seemed just completely unable to control or limit herself and her selection of episodes and songs from which she had to choose. Instead of presenting a tighter, better wraught revue of a choice few Beatles' songs, she greedily reached to include nearly their entire canon. Now, while their work is certainly worthy enough to make a director, essentially attempting to create a contextual homage to them, want to include it all, it is clearly (to me) counterproductive to hew and hedge the work so, just to ensure that each piece gets to be touched on the screen. Is it not? The time that was required to process and manage the constantly changing music was enormously costly of other parts that could have used the extra room to breathe and even to create a solid foundation for the story. For, the forced fit, like that by a frustrated and impatient puzzle-figuring child, was clumsy and rough. The heart of the story, whatever it was supposed to be, was thrown off by the lack of focus that the limitation to a few key songs would have erstwhile bolstered. It was a rocky road trying to pick out that heart from the heaping runs-over that were. And there was barely any time to breathe between competing songs, for both the characters and the audience, barely any time to contemplate the significance of the previous melodies and lyrics, to sort them out in dialogue or imagery. It was mish-mosh and entirely contrary against the point of a play being a musical in the first place (i. e., greater exposition and focus via the emotionally expansive vehicle of music). Had I the reigns, I would have earnestly tried to really use the music, really focus the songs and use them as vehicles, and construct the visuals to correspond and corroborate with them. *If any film in recent times, it is this film that, I believe, could have truly made fantastic use of the return to the square.*
However, despite these very disagreeable qualities, there was one singular sequence that shone out to me in connection with what I had hoped and expected for this film to be: the "I Want You (She's So Heavy)" scene, in which spectacular animation comes together wonderfully with the other visuals and with the music to deliver a powerful and sharply focused message and step in the course of the story. It is of this sole redemptive scene that the picture I posted above is.
So, I do hope still, Ms. Taymor, that this most recent work of yours is but aberration, a project gone awry, a rollercoaster event that somehow got away from you; I sincerely and in the best complimentary way do hope so.

Grade: C

Review: Eastern Promises

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Genre: Drama

About to discuss Mr. Cronenberg's latest piece while considering the nearly adamantine fealty and respect Mr. Mortensen shows for him, I suddenly feel as though the appropriate verb were less "discuss" than "tackle." And, indeed, it is a rather heavy, barnacled, and formidable piece to be done so. An attempted exploration of the inherent intentions of man that works to strip away all vital contentions that may otherwise cloud the matter, the film is both acid and barren, cold and fierce, bare and serious. They are these qualities that give the film its appreciable quality, its strength and ability to probe and question as art, as film does and ought do. However, I must signal the shortcomings of the film as such an exploration, for that, while its intentions may be clear and sharp, its delivery staggers behind.
The most significant indication of this lagging is the unembellished, bone-white structure of the screenplay. To me, it was an extremely polished and hewed piece but one that in being so pared and processed found itself only a safe imposing sterility that fails to permeate, or try serious punches at, the point of its creation (i. e., its primary question). Indeed, it had virtues in its duplicate pairings, correspondingly matched, (e. g., birth and death, decisions of youth, the metaphysical tension of being a policeman or a doctor, the old school and the new), but the couplings so finely adjoined, so cleanly juxtaposed, in my opinion cannot be nearly as incisive or dynamic in effect as they might have been in a more crumpled, provocative (but I'm wary of that term "provocative") cooperation. I wanted to feel the flushed heartbeat of the birth scene or the undercutting pain of the bathhouse fight, and I did not. I wanted to know the rawness and the expositive power of the contradictions, a feat I found Mr. Cronenberg handled better in his penultimate A History of Violence (despite the film's opposite difficulties with balance). It was simply too neat, too straightforward, too metronomic.
A large contributing reason for the lagging I found to be the extremely sparse utilization of Mr. Howard's score, which, though unextraordinary, is still music, "to the condition of [which] all art aspires" (Pater). During the fight scene especially, I found myself appreciating the foregoing of theatrics, but missing the responsive, attending, transcendent cues of an active score. The entire scene for me was just not resonant, and my fellow theatergoers, though probably unconsciously, felt the hole too, as they at the fight's grim conclusion issued nervous laughter for their unguided emotions.
Finally, I must comment on the cinematography, which I found to be spotty. The palette was nice, but the framing was often awkward for me. Splicing off legs and arms, wobbling between activity and passivity, and precariously trying to manage the power dynamics of it all detracted from my experience of the film.
Other than those three areas where I felt there could have been improvement, I thought the film was good. Mr. Mortensen and Ms. Watts were completely satisfactory in their roles, for whose impermeability I cannot decry their efforts; and the editing was, in keeping with the screenplay, trim and inexiguous.
It was not great work, but it worked still and I look forward to Mr. Cronenberg's next piece.

Grade: B