Hey folks, Harry here... I've been busy as hell recently with everything from personal issues to professional issues and have missed screenings for all three of these. However, I will be finishing up several articles from the DVD piece to reviews of things like ARTHOUSE CONFIDENTIAL, THE NOTORIOUS BETTIE PAGE and HARD CANDY. All 3 or which happen to be friggin amazing. In the meanwhile, with this weekend's films... we have Capone with the lowdown on them all. Here ya go...
Hey, everyone. Capone in Chicago here with a trio of vastly different films
opening this week. Enjoy...
Bubble
I barely know where to begin when discussing Steven Soderbergh’s
hyper-minimalist new film Bubble. It may be his finest and most effective
work, despite the fact that the cast is made up of unknown first-time
actors, his camera barely moves within a given scene, and the plot’s biggest
“action” moment actually happens off-camera. The quiet yet powerful,
74-minute Bubble offers up a side to Soderbergh heretofore untapped. His
understanding of the characters’ lives and ability to capture the
authenticity of their subdued existences is extraordinary. As in life,
people’s motivations go unexplained, yet we know exactly what they are
thinking and feeling. If Soderbergh had released this film in 2005, it would
have easily landed in my top 10 of the year, and I hope I remember this film
at the end of 2006.
Bubble is being discussed by many in the industry for reasons other than how
good it is, and that’s a shame. Its release strategy is an experiment.
Today, it comes out in theatres (opening at the Landmark Century Center
Cinema in Chicago) and premieres on HDNet Movies cable channel. On Tuesday,
January 31, the DVD of Bubble hits stores, and I’m okay with that despite
being an enthusiastic supporter of watching movies on the big screen,
(despite all the drawbacks such venues present these days: high prices,
chatter, commercials, cell phones, screaming babies, etc.). The bottom line
is, Bubble is worth seeing in any format.
Bubble is about people in isolation, not because they are hiding or scared
of people but because it’s the way they’ve lived their entire life. Change
of any sort scares them, especially when the balance of their small universe
of existence is thrown off. The people in question include Martha (Debbie
Doebereiner), a middle-aged, unmarried, childless woman who looks after her
ailing father and works in a small-town Ohio factory that makes toy baby
dolls. Her best friend at work (and probably in life) is 20-something,
sleepy-eyed Kyle (Decker James Ashley). The two don’t seem to have much to
talk about, but Martha seems more than willing to drive Kyle wherever he
needs to go after work just for his company. Although their age difference
would indicate she might think of him as a son, clearly she has more
romantic feelings for him—feelings that in all likelihood she will never
express.
Into the doll factory comes the young, pretty Rose (Misty Dawn Wilkins), a
single mother whose outgoing personality and dreams of getting out of this
fallen town appeal to Kyle, and it isn’t long before the two go out on their
first date. It would be criminal to reveal too much about the limited plot
of Bubble, but I will say that a crime is committed in the town and a police
investigator (real-life detective Decker Moody) attempts to solve it,
bringing many of the same prejudices into his investigation as we do (we
don’t actually see the crime until the very end of the film).
The only question Soderbergh forces us to contemplate is whether or not
these lives were tragic even before the crime was committed. He doesn’t
judge these folks, but I’m pretty sure audience members will. These are the
people we see on a long road trip, sitting at another table while we have
lunch at a greasy spoon. Their conversations don’t mean anything in the
grand scheme of things, and we tend to look down on them. Soderbergh does
not. He treats their lives with as much significance and dignity as he would
if George Clooney or Julia Roberts played the characters. Thank heaven they
are not. And just because these are non-actors doesn’t mean they can’t act;
the performances here are wonderfully authentic. It’s refreshing to see
actors who don’t know which side is their good side (or even if they possess
a good side), who don’t know exactly what lighting makes them look better,
or how much makeup to pile on to look younger or less flawed. Bubble is a
film that embraces flaws while managing to be completely flawless. I
recommend seeing Bubble in a darkened theatre (as I do all films), but you
have options this time. The choice, however, is not whether to see it or not
(you must see it); the choice is only what format you choose to view this
exceptional work.
Nanny McPhee
The last time Emma Thompson adapted a book for the big screen (with 1995’s
Sense and Sensibility), she won an Oscar. Six years later, she adapted the
play “Wit” for an HBO movie and earned herself an Emmy nomination. And if
the rumors are true, she even did an uncredited script polish on the current
version of Pride and Prejudice. My point in this preamble is to make it
clear that, in addition to being a tremendous actress, Emma Thompson is a
great adapter of other mediums. Further proof of this is her stellar
reworking of Christianna Brand’s famous Nurse Matilda books, which Thompson
is now calling Nanny McPhee.
I loved this movie to death and beyond. I enjoyed it more than The Lion, the
Witch and the Wardrobe, more than Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate
Events, more than Finding Neverland, more than Charlie and the Chocolate
Factory, more than just about any family film aimed at a slightly older
child audience. Nanny McPhee doesn’t rely on special effects or truckloads
of special makeup (although the film has bits of both). No, this delightful
work gets its power from some strong acting and an even stronger script. It
doesn’t attempt to insert modern humor into what I’m estimating is its early
20th-century English setting. Nanny McPhee gets everything right because it
isn’t trying ridiculously hard to impress and wow us. Did I mention that I
just realized I have an intense crush on Emma Thompson? You will too after
seeing this movie.
Most of the film takes place in the run-down Brown residence, headed by
funeral home owner (yes, corpses play a part in this film, hee hee) and
recent widower Cedric Brown (Colin Firth). He has seven children who have no
more important mission in life than to torment and chase away every nanny
that Cedric hires to look after them. The children seem to get along better
with the pretty young housekeeper Evangeline (Gosford Park’s Kelly
Macdonald) and cook Mrs. Blatherwick (Vera Drake’s Imedla Staunton; I’d hate
to find out what’s in her soups), but they have something against mommy
substitutes. Along comes the mysterious, hideous, and apparently magical
Nanny McPhee (Thompson, complete with facial warts, unibrow, bad skin, and
engorged nose). She makes it clear to Mr. Brown that she will teach the
children five (unnamed) lessons, and then she will leave. He doubts she’ll
fare any better than the 30-some other nannies before her, but somehow she
manages to get the children to bed on time and hope is born.
Although the Brown family is shamefully poor, they are able to stick
together thanks to a benefactress in the form of Cedric’s Great Aunt
Adelaide (the priceless Angela Lansbury), who threatens to cut off the
family’s income if Cedric does not remarry within the month. So while Nanny
McPhee is busy tapping her magic cane as a means to teach the children to
behave, Cedric is scoping for marriage prospects.
The character of Nanny McPhee never raises her voice or her hand to the
children (other than to tap her cane to the ground). She has a series of
grunts she evokes depending on how troubling a situation appears to be. And
while she never uses her magic to make the children do something (she needs
them to actually learn their lessons), she does use it to manipulate things
like time and the weather and gravity to assist in her teachings. And if I’m
not mistaken, as the children start to learn their lessons, Nanny McPhee’s
unsightly facial deformities start to disappear.
Director Kirk Jones (Waking Ned Devine) has done something remarkable. He’s
made a film filled with children that children can watch, but avoided all of
the painful trappings associated with so many kids’ movies. Aside from the
aforementioned dead bodies, there is a (clean) joke about incest; bosom
references abound, especially concerning those belonging to Mr. Brown’s
potential marriage prospect Selma Quickly (Celia Imrie); and the
relationship between Brown funeral parlor employees (played with determined
glee by Derek Jacobi and Patrick Barlow) might not be out of place on
Brokeback Mountain if you sniff my drift. All of these elements made me love
the film even more.
Although the Brown children—led by Simon (Thomas Sangster, who played Liam
Neeson’s son in Love Actually)—aren’t holy terrors, there’s something a
little more sinister about their behavior, as compared to the wimpy siblings
of films like Yours, Mine & Ours. Granted, the presence of a food fight at
the end of the film doesn’t exactly scream sophistication, but there is so
much in Nanny McPhee to enjoy and appreciate that the occasional tossed
cream puff is forgivable. Even the color scheme here (of both the sets and
costumes) seems particularly inspired. Never have pink and green looked so
hideous side by side. I could go on and on. Maybe I was just in the right
mood, but I think it’s more than that. Nanny McPhee (the person and the
movie) is not a pretty sight; it isn’t supposed to be. But much like the
nanny, the film gets better and better as it goes along, and it’s impossible
for me to imagine anyone not falling head over heels for this one.
Annapolis
After wowing us so completely with his mesmerizing performance in the recent
Tristan and Isolde, James Franco (a top graduate of the How’s-My-Hair-Look?
School of Acting) once again stuns and amazes us with his pouty talents in
the military drama Annapolis. Upon the recommendation of a fellow critic, I
rewatched the trailer for Annapolis the day before a screening of it, and
sure enough, all the fighter planes and explosions featured in the
advertisements are nowhere to be found in the actual movie. Even the poster
for the film has a flying formation of fighter jets that are never seen. But
more importantly, every clip and ad I’ve seen for Annapolis has excluded
what the movie actually is: a boxing flick. Sure, there are sequences of
Franco’s Jake Huard going through rigorous training at the U.S. Navel
Academy at Annapolis, a place that Jake grew up across the Chesapeake Bay
from. He eventually gets a job building Navy battleships with his father,
but Jake has always longed to get into the academy, if only because no one
thought he could.
Annapolis features not one but two scenes in which Jake quits or nearly
quits the academy only to have someone make an emotional plea for him to
stay the course. And, not once but twice, Jake attacks a commanding officer
(the same one in both instances, a nasty on-loan officer from the Marines
played by Tyrese Gibson) and suffers no consequences. The logic and sense of
Annapolis is non-existent. Then there’s Donnie Wahlberg, as Lt. Cmdr.
Burton, who mentors Jake and trains him for a boxing tournament that
ultimately pits Jake against (you guessed it) Tyrese Gibson. Jordana
Brewster is also on hand as one of Jake’s instructors and eventual love
interest. The film would have been far better served (and mercifully
shorter) without her involvement.
But I don’t entirely blame the actors for the failure of Annapolis to
generate any emotional response from me. I blame director Justin Lin, the
promising young Taiwanese-American director who made the remarkable,
stereotype-shattering 2002 film Better Luck Tomorrow. I’ve noticed that Lin
is already filming the third Fast and the Furious movie (which will, in all
likelihood, suck) and is signed to direct the American remake of one of the
best film of the decade so far, South Korea’s Oldboy. It appears that Lin
has sold his soul to Hollywood, and Annapolis proves that Hollywood has
sucked Lin’s unique vision right out of him. The fact that one of the major
characters (Roger Fan as Loo) in the movie is Asian-American doesn’t make up
for the fact that Annapolis is creatively and spiritually bankrupt. There
isn’t a single character I really cared about, or a single conflict or
dramatic moment I bought for one second. I think the lesson learned here is
that, with the exception of the Spider-Man movies, all of James Franco’s
films deserve to come out in January. He is my new target, my new bitch, my
new Freddie Prinze Jr.
Capone
If you want nudes of Nanny McPhee - Click Here!
