Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with our main man in Chicago, Capone. He's got a buncha flicks he wants to tell you about, so open yer ears and set a spell.
Well, the 40th Chicago International Film Festival wraps up tonight with THE POLAR EXPRESS with Tom Hanks and director Robert Zemeckis in attendance, but I'll review that separately if I feel it's warranted. In the meanwhile, here's the best of the festival's Week 2. At last, I can sleep the sleep of the dead. Hopefully, I can catch a few Zzzz's before BNAT6.
SIDEWAYS
I thank the film gods every single day that Paul Giamatti is alive and acting. With every movie I've seen him in since 1997, when he hit me with his remarkable double shot in Howard Stern's PRIVATE PARTS and DONNIE BRASCO. Since then, he has shined in a succession of roles both big and small in films like SAVING PRIVATE RYAN, THE NEGOTIATOR, THE TRUMAN SHOW, MAN ON THE MOON, STORYTELLING, PLANET OF THE APES, and of course his essential performance as Harvey Pekar in AMERICAN SPLENDOR. And while many would rather interview much higher-paid actors with more clout and better looks than Giamatti, he's the guy I'd love to sit down and chat with. In fact, he's at the top of my list. SIDEWAYS is, in every way, the best film that Paul Giamatti has ever been in. It's also director and co-writer (along with longtime collaborator Jim Taylor) Alexander Payne's most mature, funniest, and most entertaining film. Period. And my list for best films of the year is suddenly getting a little crowded.
Giamatti plays Miles Raymond, a middle school teacher and failed writer, whose latest manuscript is sitting in a publishing house awaiting its final judgement. Miles is cash poor, but still plans a trip with his best friend Jack (the remarkable Thomas Haden Church), an over-the-hill former soap star, who does little more than voice work now but still knows how to turn on the charm to attract the ladies. The trip through the finest vineyards in California is meant as one last guys week out before Jack's approaching wedding. The first sign that SIDEWAYS is going to treat us like adults and not spoon feed us the movie's important points occurs early on during a sidetrip to Miles' mothers home, which is on the way to their destination. Miles says they're stopping because its mom's birthday, which is true, but before long in an entirely wordless deed, we find out why Miles needed to make this stop. Over the course of the film, we learn little bits and pieces about the lives of both men, and these nuggets eventually add up to richly drawn and fully realized characters. Miles is a wine expert, despite not having much of a collection himself. His instructions to the less than savvy Jack are hypnotizing. I could watch Giamatti talk about wine all day. His passion for the process of growing grapes and making wine is infectious. Many films have been made about the overwhelming effect food can have on emotions, but Miles' passion of vino convinced me that it is the drink of the gods. Perhaps it is the moment he screams "I'm not drinking any fucking Merlot!" that I feel in love with Miles.
Jack, on the other hand, is all about getting one last piece of ass before his wedding, which he does in the form of Sandra Oh as Stephanie, who runs tastings at one of the vineyards the men visit. It just so happens that Stephanie is friends with Maya (Virginia Madsen), a waitress that Miles has had a crush on for months. The four double date, but Miles in uncomfortable, having never really gotten over his divorce two years earlier. And when Miles get uneasy, he drinks too much to compensate. After dinner, the pair retreat to Stephanie house, where Miles and Maya have a conversation about wine that might be one of the greatest dialogues between two characters on the verge of falling for each other. Each takes turns explaining why they love wine so much, and it feels like foreplay that is clearly going to lead to sex. Giamatti and Madsen are so gripping in this exchange, that you feel you need a cigarette when the conversation ends. Every word out of their mouths is about wine on the surface, and about themselves in the subtext. It's a stellar piece of writing from Payne and Taylor. I've seen Virginia Madsen in a lot of films in the last 20 years or so, but with SIDEWAYS I felt I was seeing her for the first time. She's always been a beauty, but with many of the films she's been in it's been tough to judge her as a viable actress. This is no longer true. Maya is a character worthy of love and just entering the dating world again after a troubling busted marriage. She's the perfect counterpart for Miles, which of course means Miles will screw it up somehow. We get the sense that she's willing to take a chance on this loveable loser, but will not hesitate to drop him is something looks fishy or unstable. Over the next couple of days, Jack starts to really fall for Stephanie, who has no idea about his coming marriage. SIDEWAYS is unflinching in putting all of its characters under the ugly microscope and rooting out all of their fears, faults, and ugly truths.
In the film's final act, there is a wallet-retrieval sequence that made me laugh harder than anything I saw in TEAM AMERICA, and I loved TEAM AMERICA. The scene feels a little tacked on, as if to thank the audience to enduring the painful and sometimes tough-to-watch lives of these damaged folks, but so what? The scene is a scream, and the film is made better by it. In many ways, SIDEWAYS is what many people have be screaming for for years. A movie about adults that doesn't have them acting like children, but still manages to have fun with them as we laugh and suffer right along side these characters, who are all eventually worthy of our great affection. Just give Giamatti his damn Oscar for all our sakes.
P.S.
The thing that impressed me about director Dylan Kidd's first film ROGER DODGER was the what starts out as a cynical comedy about a man who turned womanizing into an art form is that as the film progressed we started to see the cracks in the lead characters facade. His treatment of women was revealed to be the result of some deeply painful truths about himself that would probably never be resolved in his lifetime. Kidd's latest work, P.S., is more easy to swallow, but it still retains the dark corners in the lives of its late-30s, early-40s characters, who use the introduction of an 18-year-old into their circle as a means to confront age-old insecurities and secrets. The masterful Laura Linney (who is destined to get an Oscar nomination for either this film or KINSEY or both) stars as Louise, an admissions director at Columbia University, who is still good friends with her professor ex-husband, played by Gabriel Byrne. In fact, he may be her only real friend. One day in the office, Louise receives an entrance grad-school application from a man with the almost the exact same name as a long-dead high school boyfriend. To further the coincidence, both men were artists, and, as Louise discovers when she brings in the boy for his interview, the two look very similar. She knows there no way this guy could be the same person, but the similarities stir up so many buried emotions within her that she immediately jumps into bed with the guy, Scott, played by Topher Grace. He's at a loss for words at these series of events, but rolls with it and ends up having quite deep feelings for Louise as well. Clearly, this relationship is confusing to Louise as well, but she's having too much fun to stop.
The great thing about P.S. is that it doesn't go down an familiar roads. This isn't a film about an admissions officer who gets into trouble for sleeping with and eventually recommending an applicant; and it doesn't take on any of the familiar younger-man/older-woman cliche-driven themes. Their age difference is almost never addressed, and why should it be? Any 20-something would be lucky to sleep with Laura Linney, who is as beautiful here as I've ever seen her. The film acknowledges early on that although Scott does look like the Scott of old, this is not supposed to be a reincarnation scenario. The coincidence is only the minds of people that knew the old Scott, including Louise's best female friend (Marcia Gay Harden), who essentially stole away from Louise the Scott from 20 years ago and has her eye one Scott No. 2. Throw Paul Rudd in the mix as Louise's recovering drug addict brother, and it's clear that the caliber of the acting here is as good as it gets. The real surprise for me is Grace, who didn't exactly bowl me over with his acting skills in WIN A DATE WITH TAD HAMILTON. He offers a nice balance of sincerity, sensitivity, and young hipster persona. Gabriel Byrne is also quite good here as the ex-husband who has a very big secret to dump in Louise's lap at a moment in her life where everything is in upheaval. If you can wake up the day after seeing a film and remember a great line, how can you no recommend a film. For me, the line from P.S. is "The universe will never take pity on you" (or something like that). I spend most the the night thinking about how many people I know who think eventually the universe will see their plight and cut them some slack, but of course that's never going to happen. That line is a call to take up your own cause and do something about a bad (or in the case of Louise, stagnant) situation. Hell, I'll just say it. P.S. is downright inspirational at times.
IMAGINARY HEROES
Taking a page from the script of ORDINARY PEOPLE, writer-director Dan Harris (best know for his scripts for X-2 and the upcoming SUPERMAN RETURNS and LOGAN'S RUN remake) has crafted a bitter and challenging story about a family trying to stay in one piece after the suicide of the oldest son, a high school swimming sensation and hero to many. Sigourney Weaver and Jeff Daniels are the boy's parents, who seemed to have trouble with each other even before this incident. Emile Hirsch (THE DANGEROUS LIVES OF ALTER BOYS; THE GIRL NEXT DOOR) is Tim, the slightly younger brother who has lived most of his life in the suffocating shadow of his brother (seen mostly in flashbacks by Kip Pardue). The film is filled with angst to spare. Weaver is quite good as a woman who sees the importance of bonding with Tim, even about thinks like sex and drugs. Daniel's character is probably the least developed, and his dismissive treatment of Tim and his problems is clearly setting up a revelation near the end of the film that I saw coming from miles away. I like Hirsch in these kind of roles: tormented youth suits him, and he plays them as convincingly as the young Leonardo DiCaprio used to. I also liked Michelle Williams as the college-age daughter, who pops in and out of the household all too infrequently. The performances pick up the slack where the writing and story suffer, but I have no reservations about recommending IMAGINARY HEROES for those in the mood for a quality drama about a family whose redemption seems all but impossible.
NATHALIE...
You can't go wrong with a film that features Emmanuelle Beart playing a high-priced prostitute who talks dirty to us. That essentially sums up NATHALIE..., a film whose screenings were cancelled at this year's festival (because the print never showed up, or so I'm told), but I saw as a screener. Beart plays a hooker hired by a suspicious wife (Fanny Ardant, still quite sexy) to seduce her husband (Gerard Depardieu) and then report back to her on how far things went. According to Nathalie, things go about as far as they can go and then some. Large sections of the film feature these two stunning actresses sitting with each other as Nathalie gives us the gory details of her encounters with the husband. Her language is graphic and her seductive voice is a total turn on. We never see these encounters, but hearing her describe them is like some of the best phone sex you'll never have with someone this hot. Of course, NATHALIE... is more than just dirty talk as we dig deeper into the fears and paranoia of Ardant's character and the trickery that Nathalie is capable of. I love watching Depardieu chew up the scenery, but here he's surprisingly tame, even when he is confronted by his wife for this and other affairs. His icy demeanor is a nice change of pace for him. Still, the film (and my heart) belongs to Beart, who never ceases to amaze me with her range. I saw her recently in the World War II-era STRAYED, as a widowed school teacher who would have hid her head in shame at some of the things Nathalie says. She's a remarkable actress whom I hope Hollywood never corrupts (they tried with MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE). Her body of work, including the recent masterpiece 8 WOMEN and dozens of other great movies, is something to behold. In a lot of ways, her combination of looks and talent reminds me of Michelle Pfeiffer, but Beart takes far more risks than Pfeiffer ever would and NATHALIE... is chief among them.
DEAR FRANKIE
Director Shona Auerbach has crafted a simple and sweet story about a young boy who misses his father terribly and has one last chance to meet him. DEAR FRANKIE hits all the right sentimental buttons while managing not to step in any sappy landmines. Rising star Emily Mortimer plays Lizzie, a single mother who has lived most of her adult life on the run from an abusive husband. She, her mother (Sharon Small), and deaf son Frankie (Jack McElhone) move from town to town whenever it seems her ex-husband is close to locating them. She has lied to Frankie about his father, telling him that he works on a freighter and travels the world's seas for years at a time. Frankie writes to his father, Lizzie intercepts the letter, and writes back fake letters from Dad that brighten Frankie's day whenever he gets one. When the ship that Lizzie has said her ex- is working on is scheduled to pull into the very seaside town where they live, Frankie's hopes are lifted that he'll finally get to meet his much-loved father. To continue the illusion, Lizzie hires a total stranger (Gerard Butler) to pretend he's Frankie's dad, and he does his job so well that even Lizzie starts to find him quite the catch. But trouble is brewing when Frankie's real father finds Lizzie, claiming to be a changed man, and desperate to see his son. DEAR FRANKIE is a quietly sad slice of life that utilizes a gimmick that doesn't feel gimmicky. Although Frankie doesn't speak, McElhone does an exceptional job conveying his emotions with the smallest expression or gesture.
Mortimer is one of the best young actresses working today. Anyone whose seen her shine is films like LOVELY & AMAZING, YOUNG ADAM, and BRIGHT YOUNG THINGS knows what I'm talking about. (She's also set to star in the remake of THE PINK PANTHER with Steve Martin and in Woody Allen's Summer 2005 project.) And as for the fiercely handsome Butler, his filmography may surprise you. He's played the likes of Dracula and Attila the Hun in recent films and been in such high-profile projects as REIGN OF FIRE, the second LARA CROFT film, and TIMELINE. But I'm guessing his upcoming role as title character in THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA will make many remember his name. In DEAR FRANKIE, he so underplays his character that you're constantly tempted to physically push him deeper into the scene. His strength is in how much he holds back, and its perfect for this character. The ladies will love him for both his looks and his sensitivity. Suckers! DEAR FRANKIE what we like to call a gem; it's small but worth quite a lot in our book.
Capone
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