The Good, The Great, and the Ugly

Okay, I was out for the weekend workin' on mastering down the new SouthBound album, but I got three new reviews for ya'll today................

Zodiac

2007
Directed by David Fincher

David Fincher is one of a handful of current directors who consistently prove the theory that in the right hands, a less-than-great actor can become great for a couple of hours. We've seen it a million times (think Travolta in Pulp Fiction, and then anything he's ever done besides Pulp Fiction). In this case, I think it's safe to say this was one of the best roles of Mark Ruffalo's career. It definitely shocked the hell out of me, for one.

Robert Downey Jr., on the other hand, didn't shock anything out of me. He's just a cool soda.

Zodiac is Fincher's sprawling procedural about the real-life crimes of one of the most notorious serial killers in American history. Nobody was ever charged with the actual murders, but there were plenty of suspects. It's in this uncertainty of the killer's identity that Fincher is able to inject a very realistic sense of paranoia among the different men attempting to solve the case in their own ways, from the detectives on the hunt to the journalists riding the tail of a sensational story. You can read it on their faces everytime they cross paths with a new suspect, "Am I sitting right next to a serial killer, or does he just seem more like a monster because I already think he might be one?"

This isn't Se7en. There is no moment of clarity during the last shocking 10 minutes that leave the killer's motivations exposed, or even the killer himself for that matter. Instead, the real theme of this movie is less about the crimes, and more about obsession and how all the people around the case slowly fall into it. Most notably the main detective leading the investigation, David Toschi (Ruffalo) and Robert Graysmith, the young San Francisco Chronicle journalist (Gyllenhaal) who attaches himself to the Zodiac mystery the way Amy Winehouse attaches herself to a hot spoonful of black tar heroin. We already know that the case was never solved, so we follow the frustration in these characters as they build up solid evidence only to watch it fall to pieces again and again.

Robert Downey Jr, playing Colonel

Sanders in his early years as a gay English professor

In my opinion, this was the great underrated movie of 2007. Beautifully shot and acted, with a tone of anxiousness that really gets under your skin. When it came out early this year, it wasn't a big success at the box office at all. You could probably blame that on opening the same weekend as 300, but you could also make the case that simply put, it just didn't have a hook to bring people in the theater. Whatever the excuse, for a fairly big budget film ($60-70 million), the studio barely made their money back on it. And on top of that, it got mixed reviews to say the least. Some critics loved it, others thought it was too long, which as I mentioned in my review for American Gangster, is not a worthwhile critism as long as you enjoy everything you see on screen during that time.

Interestingly enough, looking at the details for both movies I just noticed that they share exactly the same running time at 2 hours 40 minutes. If anything, we might take this is a sign of the major movie studios becoming more flexible with their talented directors, allowing them to put out the film they want instead of forcing them to leave half of it on the cutting room floor. I hope so.

The Limey

1999

Directed by Steven Soderbergh

"There's one thing I don't understand...............and that's every motherfuckin' word you just said."

Out of Sight was a mainstream crime flick that managed to be surprisingly intelligent. Traffic was a mainstream epic mosaic of the drug war that took over the Oscars in 2000. You might have missed it, but in between those two great films, Steven Soderbergh made another movie, a very un-mainstream and psychologically grounded neo-noir thriller.

At it's core, The Limey is the story of a father with regret. Terrence Stamp is Wilson, a British ex-thief fresh out of prison after a nine year robbery bid. While he was serving time, his daughter moved to Hollywood to pursue an acting dream. She is dead as the film opens with Stamp whispering the words, "Tell me about Jenny". At that point we don't know quite how she died, but it's clear that Wilson doesn't believe it was an accident. For the next hour and a half we follow Wilson as he delves deeper and deeper into the mystery surrounding his daughter's death. He meets up with Eduardo, one of Jenny's friends from acting school (played by the extremely underrated-due-to-ugly Luis Guzman) and with Eduardo's help he soon discovers that his daughter was living with a wealthy record producer named Terry Valentine (Peter Fonda), a man with a shady past of his own.

The quote at the beginning of my review is in regard to the fact that through the whole movie, Stamp is laying on the Cockney slang/accent thick. Some people like that little quirky touch, but personally I felt that it being played for comic relief just took away from the authenticity of the film, and frankly, made for some very bad pieces of dialogue in an otherwise well-written script. We're supposed to believe that not one character in the movie can understand what he's saying, while we the audience understand him just fine. But you know, one small gripe.

Back to a positive note, one of the great surprises of this film is it's use of flashbacks. We've all seen flashbacks in movies where the actors dye their hair and put on some cheesy 60's attire, and it never feels like anything more than a forced plot device. Well, call Soderbergh whatever you want but you can't call him uncommitted, because in order to acheive the authenticity he wanted from the flashback scenes with Terrence Stamp and his daughter, Soderbergh actually bought the rights to one of Stamps early films (Poor Cow, 1967, coincidentally directed by the same Ken Loach that made The Wind That Shakes the Barley) and cannibalized scenes from it for The Limey. It works incredibly well.

Even as you read this review, it still might sound as if The Limey is the same run-of-the-mill revenge thriller that we've seen a million times. But what separates this movie from so many others is Soderbergh's stylishly contemplative hand on the source material. The music, the dialogue, the way he shows us a character's face while they speak from another part of the conversation. It all gives the story more surreality than it would ever have by itself. And even though we only see Jenny in flashbacks, the unresolved relationship between the father and daughter is fully developed, leaving the final revelation of the truth about the girl's death just as poignant as it is satisfying to the plot.

Find it and rent it.




And now for one i didn't like......................

Tape

2001
Directed by Richard Linklater

Okay, here we have a 2001 film by Richard Linklater, a man who I owe a huge thanks to for establishing the Austin Film Society. The film collections that are put together by that organization at local theaters here in Austin have given me way too many hours of enjoyment, watching everything from lost French classics to African cinema to Hitchcock on the big screen. So I'm almost tempted to not say anything bad about the guy, especially since I love most of his other films. Don't you?? "It'd be a lot cooler if you did."

Sadly, I do have to say something bad. Very bad. This movie is just painful to watch, although admittedly less so if you don't spend the whole 90 minutes punching yourself in the neck like I did. I just wanted to feel SOMETHING, since I damn sure wasn't getting any help from the screen. But regardless, it's an equally hard film to get through with or without the throat abuse.

Essentially, this movie is a stage play. Three characters, one location, lots of talking. While I'm not opposed to this set-up in general, Tape becomes the ultimate example of how disastrous such a set-up can be in the wrong hands. In order for this kind of experiment in setting to succeed, it has to rely on a real sense of tension and intelligent writing, neither of which can be found here.

The three characters in question are Vince (Ethan Hawke) and John (Robert Sean Leonard), best friends from high school, and Amy (Uma Thurman), the girl who they both dated back then. John is in Lansing, Michigan showing his debut film as an up and coming indie director, and Vince came along to support his friend.....or at least that's what he claims. It soon becomes clear that he has other reasons for the reunion, something he has to get off his chest. It just so happens that Amy now lives in Lansing as an Assistant District Attorney, and what John doesn't know is that Vince has invited her to the reunion as well. What secret does Vince know about the other two? What horrible event happened 10 years ago??

"Ain't you that dude from House?"

I won't give away any of these thrilling developments that make up the meat of the plot, but I will say that the basic conflict that is revealed actually did have the potential to be extremely interesting, and well worth a film treatment. But not this one. Every action by every character is irrational and unrealistic. Every plot twist is weakly transitioned. And most importantly, every single piece of dialogue is horribly written and just plain irritating.


"Well, fuck you then, I'm gonna leave!"

"Fine, leave!"

"Tell me this, why do you want me to leave this hotel room?"

"I don't. You're the one that wants to leave because you can't take the truth!"

"What if I stay?"

"How?"

"By not leaving."

"Why?"

"Because I want to ask you one more thing before I go!"


It's seriously that bad. I do good impressions.

And just as icing on the (urinal) cake, Linklater's direction is amateurish at best. You get the feeling at times that he's doing it on purpose, perhaps to add some realism (which would be forgivable), but at others it just seems like failed attempts at "cool" camera experimentation (unforgivable). Either way, the result is something near student film-ish. This is one of my least favorite movies ever.