I’ll see anything Don Cheadle does. The man has just never let me down. There’s something about his voice, his eyes, his command of the screen without showboating that just makes me trust him. He’s the voice of reason in every thing I’ve seen him in. So when I heard that he was playing a counselor for a group of angry and/or depressed teenagers in a new film called MANIC, I said, “Sign me up!” Unfortunately devoted Cheadle fans might be the only people to derive any satisfaction from this been-there, done-that work.

The most disappointing thing about MANIC is that some very good performances are wasted in a paint-by-the-number story. Joseph Gordon-Levitt from “Third Rock from the Sun” is Lyle, a kid who likes to fight a lot and whose parents don’t know what to do with him. They leave him at this center for disturbed kids where he’s surrounded by a gaggle of misunderstood youths, including Zooey Deschanel’s Tracy. All of the young actors are given a chance to show us how whacked-out they can act and how destructive their characters can be, either to chairs and beds or to their own bodies. We have the goth chick, the lanky spaz, the quiet girl who cuts herself, the kid who was molested, the white bully who adopts every possible black stereotype behavior he can think of. They all hate their parents, hate, life, and love to do all the things adults hate. I don’t mean to sound cold-hearted because I know there are kids out there like this who really need help, but these actors don’t convince me that they know anything about their characters. They brood, mope, dress in baggy dark clothes, and swear as often as possible. I hate to say it, but GIRL, INTERRUPTED did this routine better.

Thank God for Don Cheadle as Dr. David Monroe, the one saving grace and wholly convincing part of this film. He attempts to challenge these kids, to think about their lives and find some sense of meaning and purpose. But most of these young people are beyond his reach and it frustrates him. There’s a great scene near the end of the film where Cheadle gives us a rare flipping out performance. It’s great, a must for us Cheadle-heads (I’m copyrighting “Cheadles” as the name for the followers of Don Cheadle; don’t steal it!), but you have to endure a lot of bullshit to get to the good stuff. There’s another good scene with Don and an orderly getting drunk in his office and commiserating about how they don’t feel like their doing any good for anyone. That kind of focus on the doctor side of the equation (excluding Hannibal Lecter) is rare, and I thought it made for a nice distinguishing feature in a film that desperately needed a few more. Gordon-Levitt and Deschanel are both strong in their underwritten roles, and I wouldn’t blame them for the film’s shortcomings. And I haven’t even gotten to the ultra-shaky camera work. It’s like the friggin’ cinematographer had palsy and was learning to rollerskate at the same time. It gets old real fast, and there’s absolutely no aesthetic value to it. First-time director Jordan Melamed clearly has the ability to draw out strong performances from weak material. Just imagine the possibilities will a less derivative script. Except for die-hard Cheadle-bugs (I’m copyrighting that too) like myself, I can’t recommend MANIC. If you still feel compelled to see this film, it has opened in some major cities already and opens wide (including in Chicago at the Landmark Century Centre Theatre) on May 23.

SPELLBOUND

On the heels of the very popular WINGED MIGRATION, another recent Oscar-nominated documentary has finally opened in some of the major markets this week (at least in Chicago it did, at the Landmark Century Centre Theatre). Don’t confuse this SPELLBOUND with the Hitchcock classic, although the tension levels are similar. This SPELLBOUND--from first-time director Jeffrey Blitz--centers on eight of 250-some kids (ranging in age from about 11 to 14) who made it to the National Spelling Bee Finals in Washington, D.C., back in 1999. In many ways, this film is a tribute to the kind of kids who are rarely revered on film: the smart kid. Sure, every once in a while a techno-ween character will tap into some super-classified government system and steal some top-secret piece of information, but that’s not the kind of kid we see in SPELLBOUND. For the most part, these kids are quiet, intense studiers, who for various reasons that the film explores, want to win this title.

In the first two-thirds of the movie, we visit with each child and explore their home life and their study habits. Sometimes the parents are pushy to the point of bullying, sometimes the parents just step back and let their gifted child do whatever they need to do to cram as many words, definitions, word origins, and roots into their young minds as possible. It boggles the mind at times how much knowledge these kids have. I went to a screening of this film with a unusually large group of friends, and each of us had a different kid we wanted to win. Blitz doesn’t play favorites and never tips us as to which of these children wins the big prize, but he also doesn’t miss an opportunity to make us laugh occasionally at some of the extremes the kids and parent go to to get an edge. He finds quirks in these people that aren’t too difficult to spot, but he does so without cinematically teasing the subjects and adding to the stigma of being an unusually bright person.

The final third of the film is all about the competition, a two-day event that seems like a lifetime. The looks on the faces of these children when their word is announced is priceless. The agony that some of them go through to remember or figure out a word’s spelling is unbearable at times to watch. The reactions to getting the spelling of a word right or wrong is infectious. The whole final sequence leaves you tensed up to a level I haven’t experienced in quite a while, especially in a documentary. After you see this film, you will forevermore grow to fear and dread the sound of a bell. You grow to love these kids. They are sweet and charming whether they come across as outgoing or shy during the course of the film. You can’t help but watch them during the competition and think, “No child should be put through that kind of pressure at such a young age.” But none of these kids looks like they’re being forced; they’re there because they want to be. They have something to prove to themselves. SPELLBOUND is a rewarding and richly informative experience that I couldn’t recommend more highly. The meek shall inherit...

TOGETHER

After his glorious misstep in making the unwatchable KILLING ME SOFTLY, Chen Kaige steps nicely back into form with TOGETHER, a delicate and quiet film that still manages to pack all of the punch that his previous masterpieces (FAREWELL MY CONCUBINE, TEMPTRESS MOON, THE EMPEROR AND THE ASSASSIN) did. TOGETHER is the story of Xiaochun (newcomer Yun Tang), a 13-year-old violin prodigy from a small, provincial town in China where he will more than likely never get noticed as the genius that he is. His peasant father Cheng (Peiqi Liu from SHADOW MAGIC and THE STORY OF QUI JU) decides to more them to Beijing and attempt at finding the boy a proper violin instructor who will help him make contact and eventually become rich and famous.

Eventually the two find a run-down place to live in the big city and find a worn-out, but still somewhat respected professor named Jiang (EMPEROR AND THE ASSASSIN’s Zhiwen Wang). After a stormy warming-up period, Jiang does get the boy on the path toward being a master player. During this time, Xiaochun forms a friendship with a young and beautiful neighbor woman named Lili (Hong Chen, who I haven’t seen in a movie since 1994’s BLUSH). I couldn’t quite figure out if Lili was a hooker or just a party girl who only dated rich guys. Either way, she likes the kid because he’s not trying to bed her.

Xiaochun’s father eventually decides that the boy needs to upgrade professions to make the final jump to superstardom, and he arranges a meeting with the esteemed Prof. Yu Shifeng (played by the director himself), who insists that Xiaochun move in with his family to get the kind of round-the-clock education needed for this level of success. TOGETHER works on every level. As a family drama, the father and son clearly have a deep affection for each other that we know with weather the many arguments they have over the boy’s future. As a coming of age film, the relationship between Xiaochun and Lili is sweet and never inappropriate or sleazy. Lili is the film’s comic relief and her dealings with the men that she dates are welcome relief from the sometimes heavy nature of the rest of the movie. As the story of a boy genius, TOGETHER works best. It’s obvious the boy loves pleasing his father by getting better at the violin, but if moving in with his professor means leaving his father, he’s not sure if he’s interested. As in SPELLBOUND, the pressure (inner and outer) on children to succeed in immeasurable. In the professor’s home also lives another young student, a girl named Lin Yu (Qing Zhang), who resents Xiaochun being there because she was clearly the favorite to reach the top. We don’t see her as the bad guy in the film because Chen wisely positions her as more a victim of the professor’s whim than as a bitchy little girl.

TOGETHER is a film that is small in scale yet expansive in its emotional content. It goes without saying that Chen Kaige is one of China’s finest filmmakers, but here is the finest example of why since FAREWELL MY CONCUBINE. It is beautifully photographed, masterfully acted, and spiritually satisfying. I believe it opens in most major cities (including Chicago) on or about June 6.

Capone

Send me mail and I'll send you Beer!