Furious on Film 04.12.07: Issue 84
Posted by Arnold Furious on 04.12.2007
Atrocity and terror are not political weapons. And to those who would use them, your day is over. We will never negotiate. We will no longer tolerate and we will no longer be afraid. It's your turn to be afraid.
Fuck the intro. You know what I'm about by now. Except I'm now using my teaser line to throw out a classic quote from a film of the past in an attempt to tie it into what I'm talking about in the column. Sort of. Last week was "Things have taken a turn for the surreal." Said by Tom Hanks in Saving Private Ryan. It was due to the surreal nature of my lead film last week; Federico Fellini's 8 ½.
Warning could well contain minor spoilers throughout. Films are rated on a ***** scale. This week we have
World Trade Center, Constant Gardener, Capote, Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room
World Trade Center (2006)
EXPECTATIONS I've always liked Oliver Stone. More often than not I like his films better than other people do. This includes Platoon, Born on the Fourth of July, JFK, the Doors, Natural Born Killers and especially Any Given Sunday. With the latter I like that he didn't let politics ruin a good thing. In general I think his political leanings hurt his films but he generally comes good in the end anyway and has a fine catalogue of films. That said I've not seen Alexander, which could well be terrible. Nevertheless I think he's under rated by critics. World Trade Center took a different approach to the assorted unknowns of United 93 by casting top line talent like Nic Cage, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Maria Bello and Stephen Dorff. It also uses the focus of the Twin Towers rather than having an overview of the entire day.
TRAILER
PLOT Set during the events of September 11th 2001 World Trade Center follows two Port Authority cops on a mission to help evacuate Tower One of the World Trade Center in New York. When the tower collapses they become pinned under the concourse and bond with each other while awaiting rescue.
OPINION United 93 worked because of two things. 1. A sense of inescapable terror. The plane was a coffin with wings. Everyone was going to die. The valiant efforts of everyone involved made for gripping cinema. 2. The real time nature of the film kept the tension at the right level. Plus it allowed for almost total coverage of the important events of 9/11. It was actually amazing they managed to fit so much into such a short space of time but they did so because they followed real time and it really was that chaotic. World Trade Center has neither of these. I tell a lie, it has part of the first one. When they're going down to the towers and the time they spend preparing to go up and the whole scene in the concourse is great set up. But after that the movie just fizzles away and becomes incredibly bland. I didn't get a strong emotional attachment to World Trade Center like I did with United 93. I watched large chunks of the film with commentary from Will Jimeno (one of the two cops) and it was really incisive stuff. But that doesn't alter the really slow nature of World Trade Center. While it's very accurate I can't help but escape the feeling that United 93 was SO superior to it that Oliver Stone should a shot a movie closer to United 93 in terms of scope and time scale. I quite happily fell asleep after watching World Trade Center. There's no visual in the film that compares to all of the things that made United 93 such an experience to watch. Oh and the last thing I wanted to see in a movie about 9/11 was a soldier ranting about how someone is going to pay for it. While this is accurate, because it happened, it really doesn't feel right. The sense of vengeance didn't really kick in across America until some time afterwards. The sense of shock overwhelmed it on the day it happened. I thought the storyline that Stone choose to pursue was rather inappropriate. Again, it's easy to say that after having seen something so complete in United 93. The actual cast isn't an issue like I thought it might be. Nic Cage, Michael Pena, Mario Bello and Maggie Gyllenhaal are all really very good. Dorff I didn't even recognise until his final appearance in the film because he spends the rest of it covered in dirt and dust. Cage always delivers, for me anyway, and this was another fine example of how good he can be. His preparation for being buried under a building was to spend some time in a sensory depravation tank. His reactions as a result are superb. Although for me the best performance in the film is Maria Bello as his wife. It was strong without resorting to the kind of quirky madness of Maggie Gyllenhaal's character. But these performances are ultimately there to play second fiddle to sentimentality. There were very few times I felt any kind of connection with the two cops. I felt far more from listening to Will Jimeno talking about his experiences than I did from seeing a re-enactment. Stone makes a crucial error in judgement by making a film about an event that spans 24 hours and then having to express the passage of time. World Trade Center really drags to its 129 minute run time. As soon as the cops are buried by the buildings coming down there's this horrible sense of knowing that now we, the audience, is stuck under that building too. Instead of terror and fear it's more a sense of impending boredom that washed over me. United 93 was essentially the same deal as we already know the outcome and yet the tension that United 93 generated was tremendous BECAUSE we knew the outcome. Knowing that these two cops survive to tell the story just sucks all the tension out of the film. Yeah, it's heartfelt and there are solid performances but the film is a misfire. It rarely pushes the kind of buttons that United 93 managed to so consistently. When you see the second plane in United 93 it's a creepy feeling of terror that runs up the spine. When you see the shadow of the plane in World Trade Center there's some of that same feeling but it's nowhere near as powerful. United 93 left me so emotionally drained that I stayed up over an hour later than I intended watching documentaries off the DVD to try and get a sense of closure. World Trade Center just didn't affect me in the same way. While it's a decent enough film it could have been so much better.
RATING - ***. United 93 is a far more complete and satisfying film. World Trade Center comes up short in terms of re-telling the 9/11 story and providing a sense of tension from an incredibly tense situation. Because United 93 is so superior it leaves World Trade Center to feel like an insipid film. There's so much more about ground zero that was skipped over to make a specific human interest story. If you're looking for human interest it should have been done with multiple individuals because the story was so huge. Kevin Cosgrove for example. I think that's the hardest to watch footage of all of 9/11.
Top Ten Films by decade Year
2000.
It was around 2000 that I started reviewing films. What Lies Beneath, Cast Away, The Beach etc. You can find these reviews in the media reviews section of FuriousRage.com. Over the years since I've seen some very interesting films from the year 2000 making this list more complete. The notable additions to my original list would be Amores Perros and Nine Queens. Amores Perros director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu has gone on to fame and fortune with 21 Grams and Babel. For the latter he was Oscar nominated and with his habit of making only excellent films there's a good chance he'll bag that Oscar sooner rather than later. Amores Perros was a phenomenal debut. Sadly Nine Queens director Fabian Bielinsky hasn't had the same success since his film was released. He went on to make The Aura in 2005 before dying of a heart attack last year. Truly a great loss to cinema. What with Inarritu, Fernando Meirelles and others having big success coming into America from elsewhere it could have been a fine opportunity for Bielinsky to get his big break.
1. Memento
2. Amores Perros
3. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
4. Snatch
5. Requiem for a Dream
6. Nine Queens
7. Gladiator
8. High Fidelity
9. Bamboozled
10. Best in Show
The Constant Gardener (2005)
EXPECTATIONS I really wasn't too interested in the concept behind the Constant Gardener until I heard who was directing; Fernando Meirelles. The same Fernando Meirelles who, whilst in his native Brazil, made Cicade de Deus (City of God). This is probably the best film made in the past 10 years. Certainly my favourite film of the 00's so far. He went on to produce a TV show based on City of God called City of Men, which he produced and directed four episodes of. It was only after the success of City of God had died down somewhat that Meirelles had the chance to make another film and the Constant Gardener happened to become available at the time. Mike Newell had been attached to direct but dropped out to take on the latest Harry Potter chapter, the Goblet of Fire.
TRAILER
WHATS IN A NAME? Central character Justin (Ralph Fiennes) spends his spare time gardening. This is his distraction and he uses it to keep the world out of his personal life. If there's one constant in his life, it's gardening, whether he's in England's green and pleasant land or Kenya.
PLOT When Justin Quayle's wife Tessa (Rachel Wiesz) is killed he takes it upon himself to come out of his meek shell and investigate her death. He's a diplomat serving in Kenya while his wife was always investigating corruption especially linked to a drug called Dypraxa. As Justin seeks to get to the bottom of Dypraxa and seek out a mysterious doctor called Lorbeer (Pete Postlethwaite) he faces death threats and corruption at every turn.
OPINION Based on the novel by John LaCarre the Constant Gardener is an intriguing mixture of two different worlds. The straight laced English side is represented by writer LaCarre and star Ralph Fiennes but the third world of Kenya is represented by director Fernando Meirelles, who is from a very poor part of Brazil. The two gel extremely well. It's a marriage that only came together because of Mike Newell dropping out to make a Harry Potter film. I think everything worked out for the best. I've never been a big fan of Newell and probably wouldn't have watched the film with him at the helm. Meirelles is able to provide a different perspective without cramping the actors. In fact if this is the kind of level he's going to get out of Hollywood stars he'll be like a breath of fresh air. Rachel Weisz was like a different person in the Constant Gardener. Think about how bad she's been in her trips to Hollywood; Chain Reaction, The Mummy and especially Constantine. It did feel like she was on her last chance and with her back to the wall she delivers the best performance of her career. I actually thought for a short while that I was watching Kate Winslet because the acting was on a higher standard that I was used to with Rachel Weisz. The Constant Gardener works out really well from a viewing perspective because although we see snippets of Tessa and her partner in conspiracy Dr Arnold Bluhm (Hubert Kounde) generally the film is made from Justin's POV. So we only find out important information about anyone else when he does. It makes for an interesting perspective on the thriller and makes it that much more exciting when we're following him on his mission for the truth. Because Weisz delivered such a great performance opposite him in the flashbacks we, the audience, are more inclined to support his cause. His bumbling Englishman approach is like a blast from the past for me. I remember teachers being like that in my youth before the UK got so americanised. But Fiennes is so much more charming with it than Hugh Grant. It's more believable and realistic although I feel that Fiennes does occasionally play the same character in several films. While the film doesn't have the same scope as City of God, and therefore isn't quite the same achievement, it's another strong entry for Meirelles in the campaign for best new director'. I think Inarritu has the edge right now but only because he's thrown himself out there and made several films in America. Meirelles' next project is Blindness starring Daniel Craig, which is another adaptation but also another opportunity for him to add his characteristics to a fine piece of existing material. Meanwhile he's producing another director's big break with the film version of City of Men. Paulo Morelli is directing and it's due for release this year.
BEST BIT Lorbeer realises in the midst of a conversation who Justin really is.
RATING - ****. Not as good as Inarritu's follow up to his big break out success but Meirelles has shown a great deal of skill as a director in a very different setting to his big breakthrough film City of God. While the Constant Gardener isn't anywhere near that level of genius it's a good film and you'll probably never see Rachel Weisz in anything this good again. Great support from Danny Huston and Bill Nighy in equally scuzzy roles that work as a great counterpoint to Ralph Fiennes clean cut gentleman.
Capote (2005)
EXPECTATIONS The director here is relative unknown Bennett Miller whose only previous work was feature length documentary "The Cruise" based on New York City tour guide Tim Levitch. While that doesn't sound like great preparation for the Capote biography when you think about it, it makes perfect sense. It was a film about a quirky character adding his perspective into a bigger world. Much the same thing could be said of Capote. It had been seven years since Miller's previous work so it seems odd he'd find his way into the big time so suddenly. The connection is to scribe Dan Futterman who adapted Capote from Gerald Clarke's book. Futterman & Miller were classmates in high school. Futterman is usually an actor in an assortment of gay interest TV shows and films (including the Birdcage and Will & Grace). It's the star that took the focus away when Capote was released however as Philip Seymour Hoffman bagged an Oscar for his portrayal of the journalist. Probably best known prior to that for another depiction of a journalist; that of Lester Bangs in Almost Famous. Or perhaps for his man-crush on Mark Wahlberg's enormous cock in Boogie Knights.
TRAILER -
PLOT Truman Capote (Hoffman) was a writer for the New Yorker magazine. He also produced novels, plays, short stories, poems and an assortment of other books over the course of his career. One of his biggest successes was penning Breakfast at Tiffany's. Capote is set after that and explores the four years it took him to research and write his biggest selling book In Cold Blood. It was a non-fiction novel based on the brutal killing of a family in Kansas. Capote follows his search for the story behind the killings mostly focusing on convicted killer Perry Smith (Clifton Collins Jr).
OPINION Hoffman's portrayal of Capote is up there with Jamie Foxx's Ray Charles. It's a dead on impersonation but much more than that. Hoffman injects life into Capote's caricature existence. Like say, Dusty Rhodes, Capote has one of those voices and a lot of mannerisms that are easily impersonated. Hoffman goes deeper. He really makes sure we understand Capote and what a horrible drain In Cold Blood was on him, even though it was his biggest success. The course of the film sees Capote get gradually lower in terms of his morality and strength. To begin with he's very interested in the story because he knows it'll make a great book thanks to Perry Smith's incredible personality that he relates to. As time progresses he grows more and more anxious for Smith to get the death sentence so his ending can be written. The shame of wishing death on a man he's grown very attached to leaves him in a very dark place. Hoffman does a fantastic job of conveying that to the audience. It goes to show how far a truly great writer can go to achieve a true work of art. Something with so much emotional attachment that it transcends normal literary values. Capote was so affected by the events that transpired during the writing of In Cold Blood that a) he never wrote another book and b) his life spiralled into decline to the point where alcohol took over and that's how he died. Trying to capture this downward spiral without showing the final product is really tough. During the film we only really touch on a few years of Capote's life but it's his greatest success and the beginning of the end. Hoffman really does a stand up job of getting all that across. The really weird thing about Capote's life is that he was close friends with Harper Lee (Catherine Keener). For those who aren't familiar she basically wrote one thing in her entire life and it's gone on to become one of the most beloved books and films of all time. Harper Lee wrote To Kill a Mockingbird. That also takes place in these four years and Capote barely notices it. Considering how close she is to him it's amazing he can't even give her a little credit for this. "I don't see what the fuss is about" he drunkenly slurs at a bartender during the premiere party. Certainly Capote is a very self obsessed person. The massive personality comes across several times in early scenes where he talks candidly about Humphrey Bogart and Marilyn Monroe, as if they were just other people on his level. To begin with it's kind of cute but slightly irritating. As the film draws on it's clear that people understand he's like this and just put up with it. But his behaviour doesn't wash down in Kansas and he quickly has to change tack and be less of a jerk. This allows him to play off another great actor in Chris Cooper who plays Alvin Dewey, the sheriff who has to find the killers. He doesn't react well to Capote's arrival and treats him with disdain but Capote is such a great talker that eventually they become close enough to talk about the case, again with great candour. Capote, the film, does somewhat suffer from the lack of a truly great script to go with its lead performances and an experienced director to make some more important decisions about the direction of the film. I really don't agree with the Academy Award nomination for Futterman for his rookie script. It struggles to keep the pace it should be setting and doesn't really provide a good build up to the film's conclusion. It just drags here and there holding back on big scenes to work in unnecessary characterisation. Hey, I love character work but with Capote he's such a strong character already going into the last reel that there's no real need for the extended moping scenes. We realise this is tearing up inside. We've seen that. We don't need it shoved down our throats. That isn't the first time the film has issues with the pacing. The first 15 minutes are really uneven. Having read nothing about it beforehand I had no idea where it was going. The odd thing pays off later on but the focus is so all over the place that it's a tough film to start enjoying right from the off. Then it starts dragging with the writing of the book. I know it's a long and arduous process but I'm sure a nice montage could have gotten us from A to B quicker. And I'm usually very patient with film. I felt the need to find out what happened, as I didn't know how it all finished, so keep hanging on for that. And because I was generally enjoying Hoffman's performance. But for the average film watching Joe there's not a lot to enjoy.
BEST BIT *SPOILERS* The hanging.*SPOILERS*
RATING - ***1/2. Worth seeing for Hoffman's grand standing performance that won him an Oscar. His quirky and riveting performance drives the film when an average script and inexperienced director are unable to.
Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room (2005)
EXPECTATIONS I didn't really follow the whole Enron fiasco when it went down. I was aware that Enron was a very big, very powerful company that went bankrupt and pissed a lot of people of. That was about it. The politics of Enron didn't really make big news in the UK. It got mentioned, it got talked about but unless you went out of your way to read up on it then it passed you by. I can guarantee you the average man on the street in the UK doesn't know a great deal about Enron at all. This film comes from documentary film maker Alex Gibney. To date it's his only major contribution to the world of cinema. It originally was intended to be a TV show on PBS. I believe it even aired back in January 2005 but was so good that it was given a cinematic release in April of that year. It's not often something is shown for free on TV and then gets a cinematic release. That should tell you how good the film is. I believe it makes a timely return to PBS on April 24th so this review comes at exactly the right time for someone wanting to see it without paying. Check your listings.
TRAILER
WHATS IN A NAME? "The Smartest Guys in the Room" refers to Jeff Skilling and his associates at Enron. They were believed to be the best and the brightest of their generation. It was Skilling who ran Enron and made sure everyone that worked for him took huge risks and were rewarded with enormous bonuses.
PLOT The documentary follows the downfall of Enron, once valued at $111 billion. One of America's leading energy corporations was brought down by insider trading and corporate fraud. Their shares fell in value over the course of a few months from $90 to 30 cents per share. The documentary explains how this could happen with interviews with key witnesses and televised highlights of the sworn testimonies of indicted former CEO Jeff Skilling and founder Ken Lay.
OPINION Documentary film making can frequently be some of the most intense and interesting stuff that gets produced during the course of any given year. Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth made big waves. The March of the Penguins made a tonne of money. Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 took a lot of money. Documentaries have become viable money makers for distributors providing the subject matter is available. With the fall of Enron there's a huge story waiting to be told. One of greed and stupidity on a wide scale. It's a film that will make you question everything and it does so by telling a simple straightforward story. It could paint Jeff Skilling to be Satan if it wanted to. The ammo is there to make him even more hated than he already is. Certainly the trailer makes him look pretty bad. During the course of the film it's divulged just how much lying and theft was going on at Enron. The California power situation where Enron would shut down power plants to create a shortage deliberately and then bump the price of electricity up based on the panic was shocking. And they had actual tapes of traders at Enron on the telephone making these things happen. I'm sure Gibney had far more ammo than he actually used. The testimony of Jeff Skilling alone contained so much bullshit and contradiction it could have filled a two hour film by itself. I took great enjoyment out of Skilling's treatment after the film was complete. He was sent to prison for 24 years on charges of 35 counts of corporate crime. Founder Ken Lay suffered worse convictions only to die before sentencing. Fall guy Andy Fastow ended up getting 10 years in exchange for co-operating with the operation to bring down Skilling & Lay. Fastow tellingly pleaded the 5th amendment during his questioning. It's probably for the best seeing how severely Skilling was roasted on the stand. Skilling's inability to remember how much stock he off-loaded right before Enron flushed itself down the toilet is worrying. He got rich off of other peoples misery. He still insists he did nothing wrong but the courts seem to think otherwise. His encourage of others taking huge gambles AND inciting them to break the law is horrifying stuff. After all they got away with it for so long. Creatively turning losses into profits and got named Most Innovative Company in America by Fortune magazine for six years in a row. That was until they started investigating Enron's book keeping. Enron had a rather creative way of making money. They signed off on a plan that basically said that they were allowed to spend money that they would make from a project as soon as it was underway. So they build a power plant in India that no one in that country could afford to pay for and then paid off massive bonuses on money they'd never generate and took the rest of the money and gambled it on another venture. Despite the fact that no money actually existed Enron's creative approach to book keeping allowed it to happen. It's like me walking outside and setting up a garage sale then claiming to the government that I'll be making two hundred thousand on it and then spending that money on stocks before even wheeling anything out of the garage. It doesn't make rational sense. The documentary made me so angry that they'd be allowed to do this and get away with it for so long. Then watching Skilling sit there and say that he'd done nothing wrong made me want to smash his face in. There's also a trader in the documentary, he appears in the trailer talking about stepping on people's throats, and every time I saw him I wanted to punch the screen. The guy is a total asshole. I'm absolutely certain he enjoyed doing his job and breaking every law in the book then blamed it on his superiors and happily talked about all the stuff he did. Haven't you got a conscience about losing all that money? Or fucking over those people in California? People got hurt in those power cuts. Trapped in elevators. Injured in car crashes. It's making me mad just thinking about it. These people have no moral fibre at all. But on the upside they went down in flames.
BEST BIT Enron creatively naming a highly paid Israeli consultant M. Yass in order to dump funds into an account that went nowhere so they could rape it later for spending money. M. Yass of course is merely "my ass" with the space moved along one. Or when Skilling cracks and calls someone an "asshole" in a conference call. Or when Lay loses it and reads out a letter from one of his employees asking if he's on crack. Great stuff.
RATING - ****1/2. A real eye opening documentary that covers a lot of Enron history in a short time. It's up there with Bus 174 as one of my favourite documentaries of recent years. Watch it on April 24th. You'll be amazed and really pissed off!
Jason Chamberlain takes a look at the Princess Bride in his latest Casting Call. Gabe will be happy.
Jeffrey Harris looks at the Hot Fuzztival that went down in Austin. The more I think about that the more I figure I probably should have rung my brother and told him to check that out. My brothers, both of them, live in Austin. Well, just outside. Love that city btw. One of my favourite places in the world.
Will Helm has another Misunderstood Masterpiece. This week it's Little Nicky. I really hate that film. I actually have it on DVD somewhere, which goes to prove that Adam Sandler had some serious control over my decisions at one point in my life. That point ended with the release of Little Nicky.
Ron Martin has Fool's Utopia. Man, we have a lot of columnists around here all of a sudden!
NEXT Bank Holiday weekend has screwed with my distribution centre at Lovefilm.com (SLACKERS!) but they have managed to send out Superman Returns, which will the focus for next week. Odd that George Sirois just tackled it in Scene Anatomy after we did Superman II: The Donner Cut the same week. Also on show is K-19 the Widowmaker plus more!
