Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with more Toronto coverage from Batphantom who has been kicking some serious ass and seeing some friggin' awesome sounding movies. I'm dying to see HISTORY OF VIOLENCE and TIDELAND especially, but that Winterbottom flick sounds fun as hell. Enjoy the reviews!
A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE
David Cronenberg is one of the best filmmakers working today, and this film only helps lock in that sentiment. Where other directors will dwell on the act, Cronenberg just shows it for what it really is, no slow motion, no clever cutaways, just an unflinching vision of the act and the consequences that follow. Even something as simple as a fight in school feels just as visceral as Viggo Mortensen’s lethal defense of his diner and its employees, an act which sets off a series of events that opens up some old wounds, and puts his family in danger. The pacing matches the setting, good old fashioned Rural Town, USA. I haven’t read the graphic novel it’s based on, but the story moves along briskly, keeping a tone of imminent danger throughout. Mortensen is perfect as Tom Stall, family man and diner owner, who keeps his family and the audience guessing about his identity. After gaining national media attention as a local hero, three hoods, fronted by a chilling Ed Harris, come by the diner, claiming that Tom is really a mob killer from Philly. Mistaken identity or troubled past? Telling that would ruin the fantastic story. Maria Bello is great as usual as Tom’s loyal but terrified wife, and newcomer Ashton Holmes gives a solid performance as his son.
I should mention that the woman sitting next to me was reacting like she’d never seen a movie before, let alone a Cronenberg film. She freaked out every time someone got shot, and enjoyed commenting on her own theories about the film. It was just like watching a movie with my mom. Hi mom!
TIDELAND
Whoa mama, is THIS one gonna piss a lot of people off. After suffering through the difficult shoot of “The Brothers Grimm”, Terry Gilliam chose this project as a palate cleanser. I imagine he wanted to make a small film to recharge his creative batteries. Well, it sure as hell isn’t a commercial film. Based on Mitch Cullins’ novel of the same name, it tells the story of 11 year old Jeliza-Rose, daughter of washed-up rock star Jeff Bridges and Jennifer Tilly. Imagine Kris Kristofferson married Courtney Love. There you go. Well, Rose happily tends to dad’s smack habit, cooking up the needle for him, and lovingly making sure he doesn’t set himself on fire with his cigarettes. Meanwhile, Mom, trying to kick the habit herself, alternates between cursing her daughter’s existence and begging to be loved. When mom kicks off in the middle of the night, dad decides it’s time for a road trip to visit grandma in the plains. After a nasty bus ride, they arrive in the middle of nowhere, where a derelict house awaits. As dad goes on “vacation” via Brown Sugar Airlines, Rose enjoys her new surroundings with her only friends, four severed doll heads.
From here on in, it gets seriously fucked up.
I’m going to avoid spoilers, but to the initiated, the things Rose goes through are unspeakable, and some will call it child abuse just to make a kid act them out. How the actress, Jodelle Ferland, will be affected in the long term will be interesting to see. She’s been acting for several years, but man, I think I’VE been scarred just watching it. This is a difficult film on many levels, but Gilliam dives into the material without regard to anyone’s opinion. The brilliance of it is that he never wavers from Rose’s perspective. Any other director would have tried showing things from the adult’s point of view, but Gilliam sticks to it, keeping an innocence despite the fact that there’s some nasty shit going down. Rose is a girl who’s never had a life outside her parents, and her fantasy world keeps her happy. Ignorance is bliss, but being far less than innocent, the audience watches in horror while she playfully runs through the events. Cinematographer Nicola Pecorini, who also shot “Fear And Loathing” has some incredible camera work here. Bridges is definitely channeling Kris Kristofferson here, and it’s entertaining as hell watching him go. It’s kind of like The Dude’s long-lost cousin. Tilly is great chewing it up in her short role as mom, I’m totally in love with her and this is the first time I haven’t found her attractive. At all. Janet McTeer is freaky as hell as the mysterious Dell.
This is not an easy movie to watch. Gilliam’s treatment seems cavalier at first, but once you accept that it’s all from Rose’s perspective, you can appreciate his intentions. Don’t expect a lot of fantasy sequences, the only bits happen while Rose dreams, and they’re pretty basic. Its closest cousin in the Gilliam oeuvre is “The Fisher King”, but its place in the pantheon will be controversial. Some will hail it as brilliant, others, as the woman next to me so succinctly put it, will call it an “abomination”. I’m leaning towards the former.
REVOLVER
“Swept Away”? No, sorry, doesn’t ring a bell. Guy Ritchie aims to return to form with this one, but its overly dark tone and incredibly confusing plot make it a disappointment. Jason Statham is back in the lead, and this time, he’s got hair! Fresh out of prison, he’s looking for some payback for the seven years he spent in solitary for casino owner and mob boss Andy Garcia. He falls in with two loan sharks played by Andre “Four Brothers” Benjamin and Big Pussy himself Vincent Pastore. What follows is punctuated by several cool sequences, but ultimately becomes far too convoluted than necessary. The style is frenetic, but seems like a doctorate in hyper-advanced editing, which will make things impossible to figure out for pretty much everyone in the theater. Now, I don’t like to be spoon fed, but I like things to be nice and clear by the end of the film. The fun is trying to figure it out before the big reveal, but here it’s muddled, and the ending is incredibly abrupt. It tries to play out like a combination of “The Usual Suspects” and “Fight Club”, but never really decides which way to go. The lack of a real sense of black humor kills the mood too, that was what made “Lock Stock” and “Snatch” so much fun. Statham tries his best to play along, but his character is just as confused as the viewer, so it’s hard to really get a hold of who he really is. Benjamin and Pastore are okay as the loan sharks, but Liotta’s performance stands out. It’s a tricky one to review, since the editing tries to show what’s happening in his head and what’s really happening simultaneously, adding to the audience’s confusion, but Liotta is game for everything Ritchie throws at him.
The story keeps referring to “the game” and how to play it, but in the end, it’s the audience being played with, and unfortunately, it’s not a fun one, and nobody wins in the end. Fans will still get plenty of style and some great sequences, but on the whole it’s a real disappointment. Hopefully, like Tideland, subsequent viewings will clear things up.
THE NOTORIOUS BETTIE PAGE
Mary Harron, director of “American Psycho” brings us the tale of the Pinup Queen Of The Universe, Miss Bettie Page, but rather than the raunchy smutfest you’d expect, it’s a rather dull tale in the end, reflecting the true nature of the lady in question. The film follows her from her teen days in the south, alternately spent at church and being abused, then moves on to her move to New York to become an actress. The biggest fault of the story is that Bettie is really, really boring, and her real motives are never uncovered. She just seems to fall into everything she became famous for, just because she’s hot. People want to take her picture, some want her to take her clothes off for said pics, and she happily obliges. There’s a side story about the government trying to get a photographer’s business shut down, and basically end all smut, but it’s a small part of the big picture. Censorship is bad, being prudish is bad, the human body is good, and Jesus is good. Religion plays a rather large part of the tale, Bettie was raised Baptist, and she’s convinced that posing naked is a celebration of the human body. She tries to ignore the question about whether or not Jesus would be a fan of her work until late in the game. Most of the film is shot in black and white, except when she heads to Miami Beach, where Harron uses full Technicolor.
It seems to betray its HBO status at times, since the story never really seems worthy of big-screen treatment. Despite the interesting style, it just never really grabbed me. Page is just plain boring. Gretchen Mol looks the part, but the southern accent comes and goes. It’s hard to tell if she’s just doing a really good job of playing a boring person, or if she’s just not up for the part. Regardless, she looks gooooooooood. Lily Taylor has a small part as a photographer, and David Strathairn gets a running start at playing Edward R. Murrow in his role as the Senator leading the charge against the Evils Of Smut. Wait for it on HBO.
TRISTRAM SHANDY: A COCK AND BULL STORY
My love affair for British films continues unabated with this one, directed by Michael Winterbottom (“24 Hour Party People”). Steve Coogan “24HPP”, “Around The World In 80 Days”) plays himself playing Tristram Shandy in a big screen adaptation of a novel thought to be unfilmable. The film jumps between the film and the making of the film, finding a parallel between Tristram’s father dealing with the birth of his son, and Coogan dealing with his own newborn and his own infidelity. It’s a cross between “Spinal Tap” and “Barry Lyndon”. They spend most of the film in the “real world” showing Coogan’s relationship with the actors and crew, but jump seamlessly into the film when the two paths collide. They have a great time making fun of adaptations of classic novels, there’s a battle scene with no budget, and a love story that wasn’t in the novel, and several digs are taken at the hollywoodization of great literature. Luckily, the film never crosses into absurd territory, keeping well within reality, which makes the events even funnier to me, since they’ve probably happened in real life.
Coogan is note perfect in this one, playing up his “Uptight British Asshole” persona, not unlike the way he played himself in “Coffee And Cigarettes” opposite Alfred Molina. He follows a nice arc in the film, and carries the proceedings beautifully. Comic Rob Brydon is great as his comic foil, he does some wicked impressions including one of Coogan, and a showstopper as Al Pacino. The rest of the ensemble is definitely up to the task, including a bit part for Gillian Anderson as a late addition to the cast, much to the delight and horror of Brydon. Stephen Fry has a great double cameo as well. Yet another great comedy from the Brits.
WHERE THE TRUTH LIES
Atom Egoyan (“The Sweet Hereafter”, “Felicia’s Journey”) spins the tale of a fictional 50’s comedy Duo Morris and Collins, played by Kevin Bacon and Colin Firth (“Sense And Sensibility”). A young writer (Alison Lohman, “Matchstick Men”) is penning a biography on Collins, while Morris is writing his own bio. The duo broke up after the death of a young girl fifteen years before the events of the main story, and neither one is willing to talk about it, but Lohman is determined to get to the truth. The story jumps between the fifties and the mid seventies, with both eras portrayed vividly. Egoyan is in full-on noir mode in this one, and he delivers a compelling story based on the novel by Rupert Holmes. What drove them apart? Did the girl die of an overdose of sleeping pills, or was it something sinister? Egoyan loves to dwell on moral foibles, and there’s plenty to go around here.
Firth and Bacon are completely believable as a comedy duo, with Firth as the straight man and Bacon as the fast and loose crazy man. It’s like Ealing-era Alec Guiness paired with Jerry Lewis. Both deliver powerful, haunted performances, each with their own demons, and a few shared ones. The problem is Lohman. She’s horribly miscast here, but dammit, those big brown eyes just destroy all reason. She doesn’t have the depth or the cutthroat style needed for the character, and she looks far too young for the role, even though she’s 26. Egoyan should have found someone less innocent looking, and it makes it hard to accept her character. Still, Egoyan’s quiet and simple directing style, with a warm look, makes the film inviting, and the story keeps you interested through the slower bits.
As for the much-vaunted three-way that got the film an NC17 rating, it’s not nearly as bad as some of the other stuff I’ve seen this year, but the MPAA just can’t accept sex in movies. You don’t even see Bacon’s cock, and he’s shown it in lesser films. Perhaps this will be the final straw that lets theater owners allow adult oriented entertainment into the major multiplexes. Hell, here in Canada, an R rating means NO ONE under 17 gets in. Not even with an adult. It’s a foolish rule, designed to placate the vocal minority. Let the adults see entertainment designed for an adult audience without the stigma of porn.
