Craiger’s Cinema Corner

***1/2 out of ****

There something subtle about JET LI’S FEARLESS that makes it an above average chop sockey auctioneer.  The film has a heartbeat and something legitimate to say.  Now, there is nothing inherently wrong with a brainless and whimsical martial art flick (I will go on record to say that I have enjoyed more than my fair share; DISTRICT B-13, anyone?), but the wonderful thing about FEARLESS is that it infuses a soul in the midst of all of its bone crunching mayhem.  That’s a welcome trait.

The film is the complete anti-thesis of a recent orgy of death defying kung fu theatrics, THE PROTECTOR, where its pervasively colorless and remorseless “hero” ploughs through an endless barrage of faceless henchmen, inflicting pain in manners that I did not think were humanly possible.  That film had a nihilism and almost sadomasochistic fascination with its violence.  In FEARLESS there are more prevalent issues under the surface, like duty, honor, and patriotism.  Oh, and FEARLESS definitely benefits from not having the astronomically charmless Tony Jaa.  If anything, the everlastingly stoic Jet Li is freakin’ Oliver compared to that Thai warrior.

Now, to be absolutely fair, I have also not been an overwhelming supporter of Jet Li either.  I have found him, in the past, to be a performer of limitless physical prowess, but of limited emotive range.  I have always been fond of Jackie Chan, who always managed to make us care for his wacky and likeable personas, even in some of his dumbest films.  Li simply did not possess those virtues.  His dexterous skills are extraordinary, but his thespian skills have always left me feeling an emotional distance with his characters.  He has astounded me with his graceful and catlike martial arts skills, but his usual one-note performances stunted his overall effectiveness.  Consider  2004’s HERO, an admirable disappointment where his vocally sparse performance undermined its sense of power and scope.  Or, look at last year’s dreadful UNLEASHED, where he came closer to playing a role of complexity, if by complexity I mean that he played a viscous dog that would inflict pain on others with the Pavlovian snap of a finger.

Yes, Jet Li has genuinely failed to inspire me.  HERO was visual sumptuous, but narratively weak.  Li’s other films, mostly North American based, have been decided groaners, like THE ONE,  CRADLE TO THE GRAVE, and the criminally unnecessary LETHAL WEAPON 4.  Those films never highlighted him as a performer of charm and poise, but he sure looked amazing kicking tail.  Regardless of my lack of sincere kudos for Li, I think that FEARLESS is a distinct step in the correct direction.  It’s all kind of a shame that this is his self-professed “last” martial art film.  Too bad, because he’s finally doing something right here.

There is something to be said, on the other hand, about leaving while you’re on a high note, and FEARLESS is indicative of this notion.  If anything, this is a gratifying film going experience in terms of its scope, visual opulence, kinetic and ingeniously choreographed action set pieces, and – most surprisingly – on the thematic department.  The stunning action scenes border on breathtaking (as they should for a film of this genre and magnitude), but the real essence of the film is in its story and main character.  The epicentre of the film is its tale of disgrace and redemption, not to mention its strong sense of nationalistic pride.  FEARLESS may superficially come across as a one-note action film, but its morality comes from its tale of salvation.  There is an amazing amount of grace and poignancy to this historical film, where underneath all of the incredible martial art moments comes a deep penetrating philosophy of what it means to fight.  Few unintelligible kung fu films have had time to ponder why one wages battle.  This is what FEARLESS tries and – for the most part – succeeds in doing.

The film is heavy on action, but it also works a well-crafted biopic.  Li, ever since he was a martial arts champion in his teens, has longed to bring a film adaptation of his idol to successful fruition.  Huo Yuanjia is a virtual legend to martial arts; an integral historical figure to the sport that truly put it on the map in the early 20th Century.  He founded what was known as the Jingwu Sports Federation that promoted “wushu” (a Chinese word for martial arts that means avert fighting or stop war).  He did all of this at a time when China was seeing an ever-perseverant foreign influence that had been decimating the country’s sense of pride and identity.  Yuanjia’s story is one of a man who tried to reclaim his country’s sense of solidarity through his matchless skills in the ring, but make no mistake about it, FEARLESS is not some simpleminded and simplistic take on his life.  Yuanjia is not put on a pedestal for geeky hero worship.  Rather, FEARLESS does an exemplary job of portraying the humanistic arc of his story, warts and all.  It’s surprisingly multi-layered in this respect, and spares little expense at showing this man for who he was at various times in his life. 

Yuanjia was a proud figure and a hero to his countrymen, but he never started as such.  As a child he tried to absorb all of his father’s martial arts lessens, often at the expense of disregarding his other scholastic endeavors.  His early aims are to take, as one Jedi master would say, the “quick and easy path” to supremacy.  Yuanjia wanted to simply be the best and wanted to take a road to success that had no time for ethical lessens on sportsmanship or the real meaning of violence against mankind.  As he trains his body, he forgets to nurture his soul.  When he grows to adulthood Yuanjia (Li) becomes the worst kind of punk – he is unmatchable in his abilities and he arrogantly knows it.  He’s like on of those obnoxious pretty boys in the high school class that all the girls want and goes out of his way to tell everyone around him that women find him irresistible.  This is a recipe for disaster.  There is something noble to be said about a sickly young lad who trains himself in secret to become his society’s most cunning warrior, but his main Achilles’ heel is his vanity and lack of humbleness. 

Rather than follow the path of most martial artists - who ostensibly look for inner peace and harmony with themselves and the outside world - Yuanjia is a gluttonous troglodyte that likes boozing and partying, not to mention joyously picking fights with whomever he wants with hopes of utterly embarrassing them.  He likes attention and admiration, and if everyday is not a rose-pedaled parade in his honor, then there is no honor to be had.  All of this, of course, culminates in a rather large fall from grace for the young warrior.  He starts to make some rather troubling decisions that costs the lives of three people, one being an enemy that has “offended” his honor, and the other two being those he holds dearest in life.  His reckless behaviour and its consequences prove to be a burden that he simply is not emotionally prepared to deal with.  He leaves his homeland in disgrace and exiles himself.

In exile he learns something highly valuable – what real wushu means to one’s body and soul in the proper context.  This section of the film feels a bit to contrived and convenient, but in the overall scheme of things it’s crucial to fulfilling his character’s arc.  While living with agricultural villagers, he learns the value of the simpler things in life, and he is able to more properly grasp the soulful concepts of contentment and harmony.  Most crucially, Yuanjia learns modesty and gratefulness for what he has, something that his cocky and egotistical past never allowed him to attain. 

When he finally decides that he is ready to return to his home, it is a place that has alarmingly changed for the worse.  If anything, he returns to his native land stronger (and wiser) than ever and begins to see that perhaps wushu and its teachings are the only way to bring his country away from the grasps of foreign cultural domination.  In order to restore his nation’s sense of identity, he establishes the Jigwu Sports Federation, whose presence is still felt to this day.  The film’s final act represents a preordained showdown between him and four international opponents that want to humiliate him and his country (my favourite being a gigantic Yankee that looks like he puts steroids in his morning coffee instead of sugar cubes).  Seeing as his countrymen are slowing becoming second-class citizens in their own lands, Yuanjia sees that the time is ripe to reclaim his nation and restore the better will and resolve of its people.  In a way, he is like a drop kicking, gravity defying, turn-of-the-century Rocky Balboa.

The sum of a few of FEARLESS’ negligible qualities are outweighed by its noteworthy ones.  A good chunk of the supporting performances are stilted and the overall story breathes with some familiarity.  Also, in the third act, the foreigners are mostly presented as one-dimensional cardboard villains.  Yet, the core of the film’s integrity breathes with vitality throughout its running time.  I found myself really engaged in the larger story of Yuanjia and how he rose from obscurity, became a vain and thoughtless warrior bent on carnage and revenge, and finally into a blissful and content man that becomes sensitive and grows a deeply rooted sense of integrity and nationalistic pride.  That’s really what makes FEARLESS so involving: it tells a story of important historical figure that goes through a remarkable personality shift in his lifetime, for the better.

Of course, a role of this weight requires an actor equal to the challenge, and Li does an astonishingly good job at presenting this multi-faceted character.  You truly gain a sense that his soul is really in the film and its persona (this is a story that he has waited decades to tell), and his performances shows an unexpected amount of range and fluidity.  Li is able to effortlessly bring out the young Yuanjia’s anger, hostility and instability in the film’s first act and is able to  channel that into a pensive and questioning figure in the film’s second act.  By the film’s third and final act we see Yuanjia finalize his transformation from selfish beast to solemn and proud countryman.  Yes, the martial arts scenes are unmistakably awe-inspiring (this is the eighth time that Li and fight choreographer Yeon Wo Ping have collaborated, and the results are as riveting as ever), but it is a testament to the film’s strength where it is able to foster our interest in its story, characters, and stunt pieces as well

Jet Li’s FEARLESS does many things absolutely right.  It’s a luscious and gorgeously mounted historical film, a stirring and layered portrait of one man’s fall and redemption, and – last but not least – it’s an impressive and riveting martial arts epic that generates real thrills and excitement.  I was surprised at FEARLESS’ overall package.  I found the film eminently refreshing in the sense that it had a something larger to show audiences other than scene after scene of indiscriminate kung fu theatrics that involves bones being crushed and a viscous protagonist being placed on an altar of sadistic hero worship.  With wonderfully choreographed and sustained action scenes, a performance of remarkable breadth and poise by the retiring Jet Li (yeah, I’ll believe his retirement when I see it), and a noble-minded and philosophical lessen on re-evaluating one’s life, FEARLESS effectively preaches on many things that far too many violent and gratuitous action films don’t have time for, most notably the concepts of inner peacefulness and the frivolity and uselessness of violence to solve problems.  There are things to be learned from this film.  I just hope that Tony Jaa was paying attention.

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*1/2 out of ****

ALL THE KING’S MEN could have been more aptly called MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING.  Alas, that title was already taken.  The cinematic sins that this film perpetrates are among the most detested.  It does nothing to invest me in its underlying story and themes and seems to drown in its own wicked excesses of self-importance and grandiose posturing.  This is a film that wants to have the moniker of sure-fire “Oscar contender” written all over it.  Instead, it seems more poised for honorable mention at next spring’s Razzies. 

Perhaps even more startling is that this excessive and wasteful mess involves people of enormous and limitless talent, not to mention that it contains a performance by Sean Penn – one of our truly great actors – that can’t decide if it wants to invite our legitimate awe or our laughable contempt.  ALL THE KING’S MEN is another breed of bad film altogether – it sets its aesthetically sights so high and instead sees itself plummet into a bottomless abyss.  

This film is the ultimate cure for insomniacs.  I rarely – if ever –  want to invite slumber at the cinemas, but ALL THE KING’S MEN is such a lumbering, ponderous, lethargically paced biopic that I must have set a personal record for checking my watch during the screening.  The film is a fairly judicious and palpable two hours.  It felt like four.  It has no forward momentum, just a lot of false starts and unsatisfying conclusions.  It has shoddy and ill-timed narrative flash-forwards and flash backs, all which seem so cobbled and hastily thrown together that one almost needs some sort of descriptive video service to make some semblance of the overall story.  Characters are introduced, then abruptly forgotten, then reintroduced when the screenplay feels it conveniently appropriate.  And – to make matters ever worse – the film has no apparent desire to infuse any drama in its proceedings, emotional resonation with the viewers, or any political savvy into the film.  The main character preaches with a fire and brimstone vitality, but the film is all bark and no bite.  For a political thriller, ALL THE KING’S MEN has its fires put out within its first few minutes.

I dunno.  Am I being too harsh on the film?  Perhaps, but then again, maybe not when you take in consideration the players involved and the subject matter.  Perhaps one of the first warning signs was the film’s troubling production and its failure to secure a wide release (it was to be released during Christmas of 2005 and then saw its release put off several times until it saw the light of day this fall).  Perhaps more unsettling is the fact that the film is the second telling of a story that had already been told to great effect in the Oscar winning 1949 film of the same name, which was based on Pulitzer Prize winning book by Robert Penn Warren.  However, the real nail in the coffin for the film is that the final product has been given to us by the usually gifted and dependable Steven Zaillian.

Zaillian is a pedigree of filmmaker and writing talent that has deservedly seen his fair share of praise.  He was, after all, the Oscar winning screenwriter for SCHINDLER’S LIST, not to mention the co-writer of one of the best films of 2002 in Martin Scorsese’s GANGS OF NEW YORK.  He also wrote and directed one of the more entertaining of all of John Grisham’s big screen appropriations in 1998’s  A CIVIL ACTION.  I guess that when they say that the taller they are, the harder they fall, no more is this true than with Zaillian and his work here with adapting ALL THE KING’S MEN for its second silver screen treatment. 

This is an atypically awful turn for the writer/director as the film takes too many wrong turns and never finds an adequate way of finding its way back.  ALL THE KING’S MEN is like one of those sickly animals that you want to put to sleep to end their suffering.  As I was watching the film all I was thinking about was the fact that it’s screenplay needed to be tossed in order to get something more manageable and agreeable.  Instead, we get something barely approximating a first draft that is a disagreeable bore.  On some levels, the story ALL THE KING’S MEN wants to tell seems good on paper, but does it really have anything noteworthy or valuable to say?  Oh, it does, and that’s the notion that politicians are greedy, manipulative, and self-congratulatory.  Gee, thanks. 

What could have made the film powerful and authoritative are not so much what it had to say (which is nothing new), but the manner with which it could have said it.  That’s one of the many real problems that plague the film.  It simply does not really have a voice and has nothing inherently interesting to say.  Even worse, it generates no urgency or interest in its characters.  A cast of this calibre should have been enough to ensure the film’s ability to involve an audience.  Yet, when one has the likes of Sean Penn, Jude Law, Kate Winslet, Anthony Hopkins, and Mark Ruffalo, the fact that it makes ALL THE KING’S MEN a yawn filled bore all the more stupefying.

The film follows “the governor of the people” Willie Stark (inspired by real-life Louisiana Gov. Huey P. Long; played by Penn), who wins the governorship of Louisiana in the early 50’s with a landslide victory.  His party platform easily secured the “hick/redneck” vote – anti-big business and pro-education and health.  On some levels, he is presented as an idealist who understands the needs of the common, beleaguered folk.  As the film introduces us to Stark he is a simple man with limited powers that is trying to keep a schoolhouse construction contract in good hands.  When that battle is lost he rolls up his sleeves and goes on the political offensive.  He becomes the people’s candidate for fighting the system.  He hits some roadblocks early on in the form of Tiny Duffy (the underused James Gandolfini) who battles Stark on the political front.  Within no time, he starts addressing small, unassuming crowds and his take-no-prisoners mentality and evangelical posturing starts to attract attention.

Before the point in the film where Stark starts sermonizing the crowds, Penn is in mostly subdued form.  However, when he starts his quest for the governorship, he rallies up a performance that becomes so wickedly over-the-top, flamboyant, and histrionic that you’d swear that his daily prep was to binge of a dozen espressos chased with a six pack of beer after smoking two packs of cigarettes.  His words and speeches are so hard-nosed, thunderous, and rage filled that it would not be silly to assume that lightning would come down from the sky and decimate anyone that does not share his views. 

Penn has a lot of speeches like this in the film that become increasingly so megalomaniacal and overwrought in their pretentiousness that you start to think that the only cure for his eccentric performance excesses would be Ritalin.  It’s one thing to tackle a larger-than-life figure with bravado, but you sure don’t have to super size your performance to near teeth grating levels.  Watching Penn is both a marvel of seeing an actor transform into a character and then seeing his eccentricities get the better of him.  Penn is one of our most dependable performers, but he’s just not on solid ground here.  If anything, Penn’s wildly all-over-the-map performance makes the film somewhat tolerable on a campy entertainment level.

Along for the political ride are Stark’s right hand man, Jack Burden (Jude Law) a former reporter who comes from a wealthy upbringing and becomes so close to the governor that he begins to become jaded when he sees him getting progressively more corrupt.  Stark’s most notorious political enemy is Judge Irwin (Hopkins), who also is Jack’s godfather and does everything he can to not cave in to Stark’s threats.  There are other players that fit into the story, albeit in a highly awkward and convoluted fashion, and they are Jack’s old girlfriend, Anne (Kate Winslet) and her brother, Adam (Mark Ruffalo, who looks utterly confused by this whole film, judging by his performance), who all formed a friendship trio in the past and now see their mutual love become tarnished by Stark’s unsavoury corruption.  All of this laboriously culminates in a final scene that – by the time the credits rolled by – felt like more of a relief than anything else.

So much of ALL THE KING’S MEN is so mishandled.  Firstly, the arc of the Stark role is so misshaped and rudimentary.  Zaillian presents this man as a wide-eyed opportunist turned oppressive and malevolent politician too bloody fast to be believed, not to mention that the work of Penn makes the persona more of a grotesque and silly caricature than a real slimy presence that reeks of menace.  The script of the film could have also used more polish.  The narrative flow is an ungodly disaster from start to finish.  Zaillian makes the wretched choice of utilizing a lot of needless subplots that punctuate that main narrative at the wrong times.  Often, the film goes forward in time and then back in time and then forward again, often without much forethought, to the point where it becomes difficult to invest in any one character or their individual stories.  The roles of Adam and Anne are so clumsy in their execution and implementation that you can almost sense the puzzlement on Winslet’s and Rufallo’s faces as they perform in their respective scenes.  Not only that, but Jude Law is so bland and lifeless as his intrepid journalist that it kind of makes you wonder if any other southern actors were available for the part.  And Anthony Hopkins gives a a phoned in performance that feels like a British actor not even attempting a southern accent.

At least Zaillian’s film looks good.  He generates enough legitimate intrigue in the darker period details of the film’s settings.  The cinematography and production design are consummate and slick.  Yet, why couldn’t the story and performances gel as well as a cohesive whole?  The story is confusing, it takes way too many unnecessary and ill-time detours, and the lackluster performances don’t do much in the away of ambiance.  It’s hard to even label ALL THE KING’S MEN as a honorable failure.  The film is a dramatic dead zone without any intrigue.  Sure, seeing Penn flail his arms like he was an orchestral conductor while lashing out with an acidic, rabble-rousing pontiff is fun for a little while, but it just grows more tedious with time.  The film grows meandering to the point of exhaustion where its own tediousness and overstuffed melodrama are its ultimate undoing.  Sigh.

Considering the talent of Steven Zaillian at the director’s chair and at the writer’s desk, along with a who’s who of Oscar nominated and winning actors, this second adaptation of ALL THE KING’S MEN unfortunately is one of the most ungainly and bloated political thrillers of the year.  As a high minded and cautionary tale of political corruption during delicate times, the film is too saturated in its own sense of self-importance to take a legitimate stance on anything, nor is it even a serviceably entertaining and watchable potboiler of one politician’s modest rise from obscurity to corrupt governor.  With miscast roles, a performance by Sean Penn in the lead part that reeks of an addiction to amphetamines, and a narrative whose structure lacks coherence and cohesiveness, ALL THE KING’S MEN’S is disastrously hollow.  Simply put, this film is one dreary and tiresome dud.  Considering the people involved, it makes of its flaws all the more inexcusable.

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***1/2 out of ****

THE LAST KISS understands the sheer limitations of the male ego better than just about any other recent film I’ve seen.  It wisely points out that most men have blinders on to what is really valued in their lives and that their own wrong-headed self-righteousness often gets in the way of this realization.  More than anything, the film has one crucial lessen that all men should learn but apparently have not throughout the ages: It is next-to-impossible to lie about being unfaithful to your better half.  They always have a way of reading right through you.  

Men -  whether women want to accept this fact or not - are creatures that can get sacred and feel vulnerable.  That is not to say that the actions they take as a result of their vulnerability are right, but I say that to illustrate one of the many truths that THE LAST KISS illustrates.  The male personas of the film are having mid-life crises…and they are only in their late twenties.  As a matter of fact, they are so overwhelmed with the prospects of getting older and growing more lethargic that one character has to remind another that he is – in fact – 29, not 28.  When he hears that he matter-of-factly states, “My God, you’re right.”

Being a man that has just crept into his thirties, I found myself relating to THE LAST KISS on so many endless levels.  In a subtle way, the film is sobering and wise is showing that, to some, 30 is the new 50.  When Michael - the film’s main 29 year-old character - states kind of pitifully, “There are no more surprises,” you can sense the melancholy and discrete desperation in his voice.  Here’s a man that seemingly has it all, but is a bit too blindsided by his own general malaise about complacency to notice. 

He has an incredibly gorgeous wife (who is ready to bare his first child) who adores him, a great career, a nice home…but this is oddly what puts him into an emotional tailspin.  As he edges ever-so-closely to the big 3-0, he is starting to feel like life is suffocating him.  He feels trapped by a future life that offers him nothing spontaneous and lusts for the carefree past of his late adolescence and early twenties where the world seemed endless and the possibilities were equally unfaltering.  It’s hard to be daring with your future plans when commitment and monogamy are banging at your door.  That, in short, is what Michael fears is impeding his sense of identity.

The news of his girlfriend’s pregnancy acts as a catalyst for his growing sense of apathy and inner desolation.  He knows, deep down, that he has it all, and it’s frustrating as hell to see him make damaging choices in order for him to discover who he is during his time of crisis.  On certain levels, Michael and his buddies are unsympathetic yuppies that you want to pound some sense into.  Many of us would love and aspire to have loving relationships, a possibility of a family, and a great job.  Yet, it is here where the brilliance of THE LAST KISS emerges; it has an unflinching and pessimistic honesty with its story and characters that makes it resonant with believability. 

Paul Haggis wrote the screenplay, based on a 2001 Italian film called L’ultmo bacio (not seen by me), and his fingertips are all over it.  Much like what he has done with his Oscar winning work on last years CRASH, he spins interlocking stories of several characters with effortless ease to provide for a broader statement on universal, human themes and struggles.  All of THE LAST KISS’ characters and the smaller subplots that they are involved in don’t have the density and forcefulness as the ones in CRASH, or the hard hitting emotional impact of Haggis’ other Oscar winning script for MILLION DOLLAR BABY, but THE LAST KISS continues to display Haggis as the eminent screenwriter of human relationships.  His script has an immaculate understanding of the male/female relationship and how small and innocuous conversations can explode into territory that the parties wish they never dared exploring.  More than anything, his intelligent and perceptive dialogue reveals how people both express and suppress their feelings, often to both positive and negative effect.

The arc of the film is subtle in its brilliance – follow five couples in crisis and allow all of their individual stories to interweave into a mosaic that reflects the films overall themes of dedication, loyalty, and dealing with one’s place in the world.  The emotional spectrum is remarkably broad in the film.  By telling all of these various stories Haggis is able to marvelously shed light on the way some people loose sight of what’s great in their life and instead make stupid moral choices that they try to justify to their loved ones even after they know they have failed miserably.  Various stories deal with certain levels of infidelity and how some foolishly try to escape from the consequences of such actions by inner denial and avoidance.  What most of the characters learn throughout the course of the film is that acceptance and forgiveness – most of the time – is only  achieved when mutual compromise is reached.  What is also a crucial element in this is the self-actualization of the sins you have perpetrated and your loved one’s willingness to accept the wrongs that have been done.  Buried underneath, however, is a sort of foolish optimism on the couple’s part that a lifelong relationship will be utterly friction free.  I guess this means that when couples hit rock bottom, they go past the bottom as a result.

As the film opens Michael (played by Zach Braff, with the same level of soft-spoken charm and wit he displayed in his 2004 film GARDEN STATE) makes an announcement with his wife to her family.  After living together for three years, his girlfriend Jenna (in a career making performance by Jacinda Barrett) reveals that they are having a baby.  The two, however, still have not reached an agreement on marriage.  Michael is a good man who loves Jenna with a passion (“If you want to have a kid, raise a family, and spend the rest of your life with a woman, than this is the woman,” his voice-over explains), but impending thoughts of fatherhood are like an emotional noose for him.  He feels his life crashing down with predictably, as if he has no more say in what he does.  He’s like a wounded animal in a cage that does not know how to get out.

The key to his existentialist cage door comes in the form of Kim (the gorgeous Rachel Bilson), a 20-year-old college student that he meets at a  friend’s wedding reception.  She is, in essence, the perfect woman for any free man that desires her.  She’s unattainably luminous, happy-go-lucky, and spirited.  Most importantly, she slowly begins to develop a huge torch for the unavailable Michael.  She asks for his phone number at the wedding.  He does not have a pen, but she quickly tells him where he can find her on campus.  He makes a mental note of that fact, but why?  He’s already spoken for and has a girlfriend with a bun in the oven.  Maybe because Kim represents a last stab at excitement and impulsiveness.  Does this make Michael selfish?  Yes, but he’s a man whose lethargy and indifference clouds his good common sense.  He knows, deep down, that Kim represents temptation that he needs to avoid at all cost.  Unfortunately, Kim is played by Rachel Bilson, and it would take a Herculean effort to say “no” to her, right?

At the same time, there are other couples that are experiencing troubling times.  Jenna’s own parents, ironically, are going down a path to separation.  Her mother, Anna (in a great performance by Blythe Danner) is growing increasingly ambivalent about the lack of attention that her husband, Stephen (played equally well by Tom Wilkenson) is giving her (at one point when she asks him what he’ll be doing when she dies, he dryly responds, “Ironing my black suit”).  She eventually confesses a past affair of her own and abruptly moves out.  At the same time this is occurring two of Michael’s friends, Chris (in an effective and endearing performance by Casey Affleck), and Kenny (Eric Christian Olsen) are having relationship woes of their own.  Especially problematic is Chris’ predicament.  His wife and child are “drowning” him as well, but instead of looking towards an affair to spice up his restlessness, he pains to find the right way to tell his wife that they desperately need time apart.

On certain levels, THE LAST KISS feels predictable.  Michael gives into Kim’s temptations and Jenna finds out, with an easily foreseeable response.  We grow to see the characters’ struggles and eventually see how they are able to find atonement for their differences and infidelities.  Michael’s arc is fairly predestined.  He occupies the film’s need to paint him as a shallow and egotistical young man whose desires get the better of him, nearly ruin his relationship, and then allow for him to realize what a fool he’s been and discover what he has in life.  On the levels of being a film about discovery and forgiveness, THE LAST KISS does not break a lot of new, fertile thematic ground.

Yet, what makes one forgive its obviousness is the strength and convictions of its characters and the deeply honest and frank ways they are presented.  Haggis allows his people to be open and candid, often to the point where we wince at what comes out of their mouths.  The conversations and verbal battles have a heartbreaking realism to them, which allows for the characters to penetrate to deeper levels that the otherwise obviousness of the script shows us.  There is an earnestness, sadness, and unmistakable anger that penetrates the characters and their words.  Ultimately, when it comes time to deal with how all of the characters are blind to what’s valued most in life, THE LAST KISS is incredibly spot on with its accuracy.

The assemble cast all give great performances of heart and weight.  Both Blythe Danner and Tom Wilkenson give a tortured humanity to their troubled married couple, both of whom are forced to deal with and accept each other’s shortcomings.  Casey Affleck gives a remarkably sincere performance as a man that needs to relay to his wife exactly how he feels, even if she does not like what she will hear.  Zach Braff, astoundingly, is able to foster our acceptance and understanding of his otherwise arrogant and selfish character.  His easygoing charm and everyman charisma makes us understand him even while he is making stupid, stupid decisions.  Rachel Bilson is also effective as the young bombshell that also has emotional issues with the checkered actions of Michael.  If any performance is a stand out then it’s Jacinda Barret’s, who has the most thankless role in the film as the grieving girlfriend who puts out all of her hostile and angry feelings on the table and forces Michael to wake up and realize what she desires in him.  Her work is raw and real and watching her character disintegrate from happy girlfriend to anguished and heartbroken women is painful.  After watching THE LAST KISS there is little doubt that Barret is a major talent in the making.

Paul Haggis is on a definitive role.  After two knockout screenplay punches with last year’s CRASH and 2004’s MILLION DOLLAR BABY, his script for THE LAST KISS rounds off a solid TKO.  Like his other works, the film is brilliant in its observations of how twenty-year-olds grow to think that they are trapped by their lives and - through a serious of tumultuous and emotionally trying circumstances - they eventually mature and realize that they are not trapped at all.  Like ANNIE HALL, THE LAST KISS is a movie about relationships that effectively balances humor with truthful pathos, not to mention that it is a keen and introspective investigation into how male/female relationships tick.  With outstanding performances and yet another masterfully written screenplay by Haggis that is filled with dialogue that sparkles with wit, whimsicality, and debilitating truths, THE LAST KISS is an intelligent and moving portrait of late Generation X-er angst and the perils and sacrifices one needs to make in order to finally become an adult.  And isn’t it refreshing to see a date flick that treats its characters (and the audiences) intelligently and never panders down to them?

CrAiGeR has hundreds of other reviews of contemporary and classic films at his site:

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** out of ****

THE BLACK DAHLIA is an ironic film.  It appropriates the real life story of an aspiring film actress and uses her tragic demise as the springboard for its own twisted and sorted tale.  In some small ways, Elizabeth Short is getting her dreams realized.  She always wanted to be in pictures, and since she is a prominent figure in THE BLACK DAHLIA, it could be said that she has finally achieved notoriety on the silver screen.

Some may be unfamiliar with the horrendous murder of Short, but it has become something of an infamous Hollywood legend to this very day.  She was last seen alive on January 9, 1947 at a local L.A. hotel.  A few days later her remains were found.  Her death must have been excruciating.   She was discovered in a vacant lot of the 3800 block of South Norton Avenue in the City of Angels.  She was cut in half at the waist and – in what later autopsy reports would label as “surgeon like” – was mutilated and disemboweled. 

Considering the time frame of the events, Short’s dastardly murder stunned the LAPD, not to mention the city’s citizens as a whole.  What would emerge is the single largest murder investigation in L.A. history, one that would involve hundreds of officers and many other law enforcement agencies.  Because of the sheer complexity of the case, seemingly everyone that the victim knew were considered suspects.  Despite all of their collective efforts, no single person was brought to justice in the murder of Short.  In essence, the case still remains – to this day – one of Hollywood’s longest running murder mysteries.

It’s of no surprise that James Ellroy would later go on to use the elements of this case to pen his own take on the time period in his 1987 book, THE BLACK DAHLIA.  More lay, contemporary film audiences may be vaguely familiar with his other literary work, like LA CONFIDENTIAL, which also was another neo-noir set in the Hollywood of the Golden Age, but its sensibilities were far less than sterling.  Ellroy’s books painted a portrait of corruption and urban decay.  LA CONFIDENTIAL was made into one of 1997’s best films of the same name, but it was not Ellroy’s first foray into focusing on the tinseltown of yesteryear.  It is one in a quartet of fictional novels set in the town.  THE BLACK DAHLIA was the first, which would later be followed by THE BIG NOWHERE, LA CONFIDENTIAL, and WHITE JAZZ.

Certainly, if any director could have a field day with this type of underlining material, then it would certainly be Brian DePalma.  He has focused his heavily stylistic auteur eye for the flamboyant, sensationalistic, and avant garde in films as far ranging from BLOW OUT, SCARFACE, RAISING CAIN, and more recently FEMME FETAL.  If anything, the eclectic filmmaker – it could be said – is one that has a certain unyielding fascination with the crime noir genre as a whole.  Given his predilection for making gritty, violent, and wickedly esoteric works that use crime and its seedy underbelly as subject matter, my hopes were incredibly high for his treatment of Ellroy’s source material. 

Perhaps the most startling thing to first notice about the film is DePalma’s impeccable eye for period details and cinematography.  Having done other crime/period thrillers before (like THE UNTOUCHABLES), DePalma knows how to paint his panoramic canvas with broad and ingenious strokes.  The overall tone and mood of Ellroy is visible in every frame of the film.  The decadence of the period is terrifically handled and DePalma bathes the vistas of Hollywood of the mid-40’s with dark and murky photography that inspires the right amount of dread and pathos.  All of the other details are just right, from the fashions, to the cars, to even the dialogue, which seems yanked right out of any typical Sam Spade detective yarn.  DePalma, in essence, has made a great looking Brian DePalma film, one with wondrous visual inventiveness and a keen and astute eye for the period it’s presenting to us.  Make no mistake about, THE BLACK DAHLIA is never dull or tedious from on an artistic standpoint; it’s a real visual nirvana that should garner some serious Oscar consideration for its noteworthy technical merits.

Unfortunately, it is where the kudos abruptly stops for the film.  The overall narrative of the film is an unmitigated mess.  The film has a hideous, almost sadistic, fascination with the Black Dahlia case itself, but it curiously remains a vague and almost superfluous entity throughout the film.  Clearly, Elroy’s original book was a work of pure fiction that used the Dahlia murder case as a closeline for his larger story, but something surely must have been missing in the translation to the big screen.  The script itself is such a convoluted, murky, confusing, rambling, and meandering work that it bares little resemblance to something that would even approximate a workable first draft.  Sure, there is nothing wrong with complexity and density in a good crime yarn (LA CONFIDENTIAL knew that), but THE BLACK DAHLIA is just too overstuffed for its own good.  There are too many subplots, too many characters, too many false starts, too many big plot reveals, too many unsatisfying payoffs….I could go on.  In short, the film is just too cavalier in its scope for its own good.  It’s like a cocktail that has too many ingredients to be drank and savored as a truly resonating work.  It’s sad to see a promising work implode so easily.

The film stars Josh Hartnett as LAPD detective Bucky Bleichert (the actor probably utilized elements of his effectively deadpanned delivery in last year’s masterful SIN CITY to help him here).  He, along with fellow PI Lee Blanchard (the always good Aaron Eckhart), is a huge celeb within his department.  They both have a great amount of collective skill with bringing criminals to justice.  The fact that the two become allies and partners is ironic, considering that they pounded on each other in the past during a somewhat viscous amateur boxing match.  Both were fairly evenly matched.  Lee even managed to knock out two of Bucky’s front teeth.  It is a friendship that only a crime noir could come up with.

While tracking a terrible child rapist, the two detectives stumble onto the later media coined “Black Dahlia” murder, where the terribly dismembered body of an aspiring actress, Elizabeth Short (the effective Mia Kirschner), is discovered.  The discovery of the body is handled in one of those insanely (and, yes, ingeniously) mounted camera set pieces where DePalma shows why he can get away with being more than a bit showy.  His visual eye in this sequence is almost voyeuristic, but it sure is a sight to behold, as his camera swoops in, pans, and follows the action from a bird’s eye view.

Needless to say, the two officers get entangled in the murder case.  Lee quickly (for reasons the screenplay does not have the time of day to explain) becomes obsessed with the case, and manages to get both himself and Bucky on the taskforce to investigate the murder.  Their investigation leads to some dark avenues, and more femme fetales than you can shake a stick at.  Not only does Bucky get involved with the cold, but beautiful, Madeline Linscott (Hilary Swank, trying a bit too hard here), he also begins to grow very attached to Lee’s girlfriend, Kay (Scarlett Johansson, trying way, way too hard). 

Will he end up with the slinky and seductive Madeline, or with the buxom and sultry Kay?  Or, will Bucky be able to see through all of the angles and piece together a framework of possible suspects in the murder case?  Do the women have anything to do with Short’s murder?  Or, was it perhaps some of her lesbian lovers?  Or, maybe it was Madeline’s incredibly kooky and slightly ghoulish family that had a hand in the Black Dahlia murder? Let’s just say that – by the time the title card flashed “The End”, I felt like I could have benefited from one of those quick Cliff Notes character trees to see who was who and how they all fit together. 

That’s the real problem with this film – it lacks coherence and forward momentum, not to mention plausible and developed motivations for its characters.  Lee, for example, becomes so damned obsessed with the Short case that – at one point in the film – it looks like he has just quit heroin cold turkey and is having serous withdraw symptoms.  Honestly, why is he driven so nuts about solving this case?  I dunno.  The screenplay seems to write him as if her were from a different film altogether.  Also, the overall grandeur of the film proves to be so fatalistic in terms of our overall understanding of the plot.  So much is thrown at the screen to create a rich tapestry of a dense crime noir, but nothing satisfactorily sticks.  There is just too much that distracts from the underling story, which is the murder of Short herself.  Instead, we get too much exposition, too many side characters, too much innuendo, and too much uncertainty. During key moments the audience was most certainly as confused as the detectives in the film about how all of the pieces fit.  When we are finally given a detailed explanation of key events (and the reveal of the real Dahlia murderer), it’s just too underwhelming by this point. 

The performances are good, if not a bit too inconsistent.  I like Hartnett’s squinty-eyed, monotoned, and laconic delivery he gives to his dialogue (he feels right at home in the noir milieu), as does Eckhart, who does what he can with a largely enigmatic and muddled character.  The female leads are less well off.  Hilary Swank, one of our finest young actresses, seems sort of lost playing Madeline.  She’s too stiff and mannered and her overall performance seems too self-aware.  Scarlett Johansson, another decent talent, certainly has the looks for a 40’s style femme fetal, but lacks overall conviction.  Other performances, like one key one by Fiona Shaw playing Madeline’s crazy and warped mother, are played so broadly that they approach hilarious camp value.  Only Mia Kirschner gives the only grounded female performance in the film, as she gives a subtle complexity and soft-spoken sadness to her part as the doomed actress that will do anything for a break.

After a series of colossal misfires over the last few years, like the dreadful SNAKE EYES and the silly MISSION TO MARS, I am sure that many fans of Brain DePalma were hoping that his big screen adaptation of James Ellroy’s THE BLACK DAHLIA would be a fitting return to form.  DePalma’s film, no doubt, is a sumptuous feast for the eyes and his maverick aesthetic eye is apparent throughout it.  There is no doubt that the filmmaker was in a state of pure bliss recreating the Hollywood of the past and a dark murder mystery that permeated it.  Yet, for all of its incredible visual flair, THE BLACK DAHLIA is a completely negligible murder mystery in the sense that it disappoints with its exhaustive and ponderous narrative, where too much is left up to our perplexed imaginations.  The film is so ultimately incomprehensible and univolving that it becomes easy to clue out.  THE BLACK DAHLIA is an ambitious, but cluttered fiasco that is a lifeless, inert, and hollow entry in the genre of crime noir.  Worst of all, it definitely does not do justice to Ellroy’s work, nor to DePalma’s talent and potential.

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*** out of ****

“For now we see through a glass, darkly.”

- 1 Corinthians: 13

Phillip Kindred Dick wrote 44 books as an American author until his death in 1982.  At least seven of his science fiction works have been adapted to the big screen, often producing such landmark visions like Ridley Scott’s future noir BLADE RUNNER in 1982.  He was a writer that – despite being hailed by his peers during his career – only received widespread and mainstream accolades after his death.  More than any other mainstream contemporary fiction-based writer, Dick foreshadowed the cyberpunk sub-genre of science fiction with remarkable precision.  In many of his works, he focused squarely on a post-Atomic world of Los Angeles of the future to explore many sociological, technological, and political themes.

His 1977 landmark work, A SCANNER DARKLY, is highly indicative of these sensibilities.  Leaning a bit away from technology and more towards drug culture and theology, Dick appropriated some of his own real life experiences with drugs to spin a detective yarn that was mixed with a bleak, dour, and semi-totalitarian future.  Having read the work many years ago, I find Dick’s amazing amalgamation of so many divergent elements fresh and strong, even today.  A SCANNER DARKLY was part police procedural, part social commentary on the nature of surveillance, part commentary on the escalating use and abuse of dangerous drugs, and part investigation into the rather drab and unfortunate realities of national rehab clinics that may or may not be contributing to the problem.  As a fictional work that strongly echoed modern American society by dealing with pertinent issues in a somewhat ethereal setting, A SCANNER DARKLY was pure Dick through and through.

The choice of Richard Linklater to helm a big screen adaptation of the material seems like a simultaneous inspired and odd choice.  He focused on youth culture and drug use (the later element albeit marginally) in his terrific 1993 seventies comedy DAZED AND CONFUSED.  His other works were thoughtful and penetrating, like BEFORE SUNSET and its sequel AFTER SUNSET.  Even more significant to DARKLY is his previous work, the amazingly overrated WAKING LIFE, which can now be seen as a bit of a testing ground for the aesthetic trappings that A SCANNER DARKLY employs.

Much like WAKING LIFE, A SCANNER DARKLY is not a live action film, per se.  On the other hand, I refuse to acknowledge these works as animated films, as that would be largely a misnomer.  Linklater’s technique, though, is kind of fascinating in itself; perhaps the by-product of many artists’ thoughts after being in a drug induced haze themselves.  Linklater shot the entire film with live actors, real settings and exteriors.  After principal photography was completed, he employed a team of artists to essentially trace over each individual live action frame (a process called “rotoscoping”).  It has been said that it took approximately 500 hours to faithfully and thoroughly complete one minute’s worth of useable rotoscoping action in the film.  As a result, the real unsung heroes of the film are its team of lead animators.

Initially at least, the effect is incredibly distracting, but the more you watch the film the more you immerse yourself in its haunting and hallucinogenic imagery.  Instead of presenting the world of the future in a realistic manner, what we get in A SCANNER DARKLY is something altogether semi-real.  A live action film version of Dick’s novel would have given it an aura of normalcy.  With the morphing shapes and seemingly psychedelic colors of many images, the rotoscoping technique proves to be ultimately a necessity for this type of material.   Considering the underlining themes of the work – that of a world of horrendous drug abuse and the nature of consciousness and reality – Linklater’s choice to create a rotoscope-noir is crucial to the overall success of the film.  It reveals itself to be that much more creepy.  In a way, it allows it to truly revel in its paranoid, futuristic sensibilities.

Considering the other cinematic efforts that have adapted Dick’s works, most notable BLADE RUNNER, TOTAL RECALL, and most recently MINORITY REPORT, Linklater’s A SCANNER DARKLY is wonderfully and surprisingly faithful to the source material.  Granted, the other films mentioned were all significant watershed works of silver screen sci-fi, but Linklater’s choice here to not sanitize the overwhelming material for more mainstream digestibility is another of the film’s ultimate assets.  The film is not a nicely concocted, tightly written, and easily packaged bit of story telling.  There is a haunting ambiguity to the story that Linklater effortlessly captures.  The twisted reality of the main protagonist embellishes the tone of the piece, where one has to begin to question his own reality.

In the film Keanu Reeves gives one of his more memorable performances (rotoscoped and all) as Bob Arctor, a futuristic undercover cop that works as a narc in a futuristic Orange County of 2012.  The world he occupies is familiar to us (this is not an obsessively technologically advanced society; too much of that in the film would have distracted from the story), but the main difference is in terms of the police state that watches over its citizens like Big Brother.  Arctor has a tough job.  He not only has to keep tabs on an underground hippie household of perpetual drug users, he has to go undercover in the home to further spy on him.  The basic requirement of the narcotics officer in the future is to be anonymous at all times and to avoid being corrupted. 

Being anonymous is relatively easy for Arctor on the job.  In an ingenious move, all narcs must wear “scramble suits” on the job to keep their anonymity.  The suit essentially is high tech and amorphous.  When a person sees another with a suit on they will only see thousands upon thousands of morphing male and female visages fade in and out.  I only hope that the narc officers take mass amounts of Ibuprophen, because how any of them could carry on an eye-to eye conversation without inducing instant migraines is beyond me.

The main addictive drug of the future is Substance D, a psychoactive pill so powerful that it allows for each side of the brain to function independently of one another.  The main problem with Arctor is that he secretly has become addicted to the drug, and when you are forced to be both a law officer and be an undercover hippie, it becomes dangerously hard for him to distinguish properly between his two positions.  Made even more complicated is his love for a fellow addict, Donna (the appropriately dippy Wynona Ryder), and it is his feelings for her that are also conflicting with his moral imperative of using her to find the source of the drugs.  Growing mentally unstable, Arctor decides that the only may to make sense of his reality is to start spying on himself.  Using a scanner – a holographic video camera/projector – Arctor is able to view clips of himself working undercover.  However, he soon grows incredible unstable and when his superiors discover the truth behind his addiction, things spiral out of control for him and even darker secrets are revealed as a result.

On a thematic level, Linklater’s A SCANNER DARKLY is in the great tradition of introspective sci-fi, where ideas and moral issues are brought to the forefront first and special effects and explosions take a far distant second.  As a basic detective story, the film is also engaging, if not a bit too rambling and incoherent at times.  The plot is – I guess – purposely confusing and convoluted, which only heightens the main character’s pathos.  At times, however, I felt like there where too many scenes of characters rambling incessantly about nothingness, much like they did in the laboriously boring WAKING LIFE.  Now, A SCANNER DARKLY is more concerned with story than it is with dialogue, but they’re a few instances where the endless diatribes of some of the characters impedes the overall flow of the narrative.  Consider one philosophical musing by Arctor himself: “What does a scanner see? Into the head? Into the heart? Does it see into me? Clearly? Or darkly?”  Huh?

The casting of the film, fortunately, is excellent.  Keanu Reeves is sort of perfectly stoic as the perpetually drug-hazed police officer who is desperately trying piece his life back together while the drugs are eroding his sense of the real.  Wynona Ryder gives a sort of droopy humanity and desperation to her fellow drug addict.  The film is also benefited from some very necessary comic relief in the form of both Robert Downey Jr. and Woody Harrelson, both inspired – and ironic – choices if one considers their own bouts with drugs off-camera.  Harrelson is wonderfully daffy and trippy as Luckman, one of Arctor’s housemates who may have taken too many drugs.  Some of his spontaneous ramblings are hilariously crazy, like during one point where he fears narcs are going to arrest him (“What if they come in through the back door or the bathroom window like that infamous Beatles song?).  Even more inspiring is Downey’s turn as the rambunctiously loony housemate, Barris.  Barris is in such a Substance D trance most of the time that his lighting fast and somewhat incoherent rants garner some of the film’s most suspiring laughs, like in one insance where he jumps up and screams, “We have the thwart those albino shape-shifting lizard bitches!”

As a fitting and efficiently faithful appropriation of Phillip K. Dick’s 1977 novel of the same name, Richard Linklater’s A SCANNER DARKLY emerges – despite some flaws - as one of 2006’s more inquisitive and invigorating sci-fi morality plays.  It effortlessly draws the viewer into its dreary and depressing story of a futuristic police state and drug obsessed counterculture with its mind-warping and magnetic rotoscoped animation.  The film is one of risks, both aesthetically speaking and on a narrative level, not to mention for Linklater himself, who decided to take the refreshing approach of making a desolate future noir and not one with a neatly wrapped up beginning, middle, and  end.  After huge misfires of logic, like the utterly unnecessary remake of THE BAD NEWS BEARS and the nauseatingly saccharine Jack Black vanity project, SCHOOL OF ROCK, A SCANNER DARKLY is Linklater’s proud return to cinema of substance and intrigue.  As a beautifully stylized and superbly acted work that manages to remain devoted to the source material, this is a film that amplifies the best of Dick by being thought-provoking and disturbing at the same time.

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***1/2 out of ****

George Reeves began his acting career in 1939 with a fairly inauspicious turn as Vivian Leigh’s suitor in GONE WITH THE WIND.  Even decades later very few would remember his participation in that classic.  He would gain some modest critical acclaim for his role in SO PROUDLY WE HAIL in 1942.  Just when his career was poised to go up, up, and away, the young Reeves enlisted in the armed forces and fought for his country in World War II.  Reeves even went on to star in many army recruitment films, but when he returned to post-War Hollywood, his career hit such a tailspin that he was forced to get a job – at one point – digging septic systems.

Those odd jobs would end when he took on a role that would shape his career and destiny for the better…and worse.  In 1951 Reeves was offered the role of Superman, a part that he was highly reluctant to take considering how the new medium of television was seen as intellectually and artistically bankrupt waters by most Hollywood elite.  However, realizing that he needed a steady paycheck before pride, he begrudgingly took the iconic role and when his SUPERMAN AND THE MOLE MEN hit the silver screen in 1951, Reeves was dealt a surprising blow – he was slowly becoming a huge celebrity.

The incredible success of the low budget film prompted a TV series – THE ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN – that ran from 1952 to 1958 with over 100 episodes.  Despite not getting the type of respect he yearned for by his peers, Reeves was nevertheless a big time celeb in the hearts and minds of tykes all across North America.  He would become so engrained with his heroic character that he was often forced to make personal appearances as the Man of Steel.  Reeves took this job as a decent role model to children seriously, even if it meant personal embarrassment. 

When THE ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN was taken off the air, it marked a gigantic sigh of relief for Reeves, who wanted to go on a make serious movies with meatier parts.  He even managed to take on a small role in FROM HERE TO ETERNITY, but success largely eluded him, mostly because anyone making films could not erase the stamp that Superman had left on the actor.  With no real roles that he craved in sight, and with his alcoholism and depression getting the better of him, Reeves took his own life and stunned the nation.  In the early morning hours of June 16, 1959 (three days before his wedding to Lenore Lemmon), Reeves went to bed after entertaining some guests and shot himself fatally in the head.  Police on the scene and a subsequent inquiry quickly ruled the actor’s death a suicide.

Or was it?  Did he really kill himself for a failed career?  Was it out of depression and a genuine lack of self-esteem?  Or, was their foul play?  There is some direct evidence that does point to the possibility of murder.  Several bullet holes were found in the room, which is inconsistent with suicide.  Also, the police were not called for 30-45 minutes after his death, which immediately invites suspicion.  Furthermore, those closest to Reeves (especially his cast mates on the Superman TV series) highly doubted that a man of his positive moral fibre could indeed kill himself.  He was slowly given up booze, was about to be married, and just signed a somewhat lucrative three-picture deal with Paramount.  In hindsight, how logical does suicide sound?

HOLLYWOODLAND, an intoxicating and engrossing new period film, is an investigation into Reeves’ life and murder, which still remains one of Hollywood’s greatest unsolved mysteries.  What is really invigorating about the film is its perseverance to not take any sides of the debate.  Instead, much like RASHOMON, HOLLYWOODLAND gives the viewer three distinct scenarios as to what might have happened and instead allows us to decide.  The strength of the film is that it is able to allow all of the individual scenarios to feel plausible and acceptable, but it never takes the easy road by making up our minds for us.  As an effective and somewhat fictitious who-dunnit, the film is wonderfully involving and its mishmash of fact, innuendo, and the real life investigation into Reeves’ murder gives the film a layered and cohesive feel. 

The film also does an exemplary job effortlessly shuffling between stories of the past and present, as we are given parallel narratives about the rise and fall of a Hollywood icon and the investigation into his death.  Superficially, the film is about Reeve’s and his demise, but it uses that story to tell another of a PI that is able to find his own level of redemption by hunting down the truth about this grisly case.  Many critics have compared HOLLYWOODLAND to other crime noirs, like the very underrated L.A. CONFIDENTIAL.  Both are police procedurals that use 1950’s L.A. as a backdrop.  Although this film does not have the same level of sumptuous production values as Curtis Hanson’s 1997 Oscar nominated film, HOLLYWOODLAND does a highly commendable job of immersing us in its period.  The fact that it also tells two separate stories that are both related and divergent so efficiently is to its ultimate credit.  The juxtaposition between the detective story and Reeve’s personal struggles are refreshingly seamless.

The first of the two sub-stories revolves around Reeves himself.  It begins in the early 1940’s as we are introduced to the young, handsome, and debonair Reeves, played wonderfully by the terrifically restrained Ben Affleck in a supporting performance with Oscar written all over it.  We see him cavorting around parties and drinking and flirting with many women.  We begin to see his story unfold as to how he landed his Superman gig, not to mention his long-term affair with Toni Mannix (well played by the very dependable Diane Lane), who happens to be married to one of the biggest moguls in town, Eddie Mannix (the great Bob Hopkins).  We bare witness to Reeves’ career taking off and then crashing down.  He was loved by children everywhere, but he was inwardly resentful of his TV alter ego.  Superman pushed him into a corner of desperation in terms of horrendous typecasting, not to mention that it paid him next to nothing.  By that fateful day in June on 1959, it seemed that depression got the best of him.

The secondary story revolves around the present day 1959 where, one day after Reeves’ death, a tough, cunning, and guileless PI named Louis Simo (played with a underplayed determination by Adrien Brody) convinces Reeves’ mother to hire him to discover the truth about her son’s death.  Everyone sees to think it was murder, but Simo has his suspicions, especially when he visits the death scene and Reeves’ body at the autopsy lab.  He thinks it’s murder, but by whom and why, he can’t precisely determine.  Initially, he thinks that a scandalous investigation will get him much needed press exposure, but the more he digs the more he believes that Reeves did not kill himself.  Maybe he was killed by the jealous mob-linked Eddie Mannix, who despised his wife being Reeves mistress?  Or, maybe it was Reeves’ fiancé Lenore Lemmon (Robin Tunney) who wanted Reeves gone so she could inherent what little wealth he had.  Things get foul real fast for Simo, who is also battling personal family demons while trying to get to the bottom of Reeve’s death once and for all.

Again, it should be clarified that HOLLYWOODLAND has no idea of what really happened to Reeves.  In essence, the strength of the film is how easily it makes each possibility a compelling option.  The way that the film is so uniformly democratic is commendable.  It paints an intricate web where we see crucial sections of Reeves’ life unfold before our eyes and asks us as neutral bystanders to make up out own minds.  The movie is also remarkable compassionate with the Reeves persona.  He was by no means a saint.  He over drank, was flirtatious, and enjoyed his sexual proclivities, but he was also a sympathetic man who took being an icon to children very seriously, even if it personally pained him to do so.  You feel for Reeves, especially when he hits rock bottom.  It most certainly was tough for a mortal man to live under the shadow of an immortal creation.

HOLLYWOODLAND is the first feature film by Allen Coulter and his assured and confident eye behind the camera here is a sign of good things to come.  His command for crafting a good mystery story with that of a sleazy PI that discovers meaning in his life is textured and nuanced.  The film is about the pathos of how Hollywood eats up and spits up souls, whether they be celebs or not.  Reeves was a definite casualty of L.A., but interestingly enough so is the Simo character.  The city also breeds his indifference.  He is separated from his wife, his child hates him, and he is sleeping with a far younger associate in dilapidated motels.  But it is his journey towards the truth about what transpired on June 16, 1959 that acts as a spiritual catalyst for him to put his own life up for scrutiny.

The look of the film gets all of the details right, but it is the strong performances by all of the principles that are HOLLYWOODLAND’S true strong points.  Adrien Brody is so commanding as Simo and crafts his PI as a hard-edged, but deeply vulnerable, gumshoe.  Diane Lane goes against the grain and fleshes out her role as Reeve’s mistress to be more than just a grieving adulterer.  Bob Hopkins is an effectively ominous and imposing presence as the jealous producer.  Yet, HOLLYWOODLAND ‘s emotional core belongs to the Reeves character, and Ben Affleck turns in one of his truly best performances as the beleaguered star.  Affleck is a star whose good looks and problematic off-screen past have allowed shortsighted critics to easily forget what a good actor he is.  HOLLYWOODLAND reaffirms that sometimes the best performances are ones that underplay efficiently to get to the heart of the part.  He gives such a outwardly confident and joyous turn as Reeves (pre-Superman) and does an even better job showcasing the actor as a man whose becomes inwardly drawn and confused about himself and the business he works in.  It’s one of 2006’s most quietly powerful performances that should put Affleck back on the path to deserving critical respectability.

HOLLYWOODLAND emerges as one of the fall’s more ambitious and fascinating docudramas, one that tells dual morality tales of the real life story of George Reeves and the investigation behind his questionable death.  Filled with persistently strong performances, a great cast, a nice eye of recreating 1950’s Los Angeles, and a healthy combination of glitter and grit, HOLLYWOODLAND succeeds as an impressively mounted expose of how dreams of stardom can come crashing down, not to mention a reasonably egalitarian investigation into one of Hollywood’s great celebrity deaths.  This is not a definitive big screen biography of George Reeves’ life, but HOLLYWOODLAND does something more interesting and subtle with telling portions of his history.  It takes potentially sensationalistic aspects of his life and instead churns out a memorable 1950’s murder mystery noir with genuine intrigue.  As a film about the death of Old Hollywood and the loss of a TV icon, HOLLYWOODLAND is equal parts intelligent, thoughtful, and moving.

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** out of ****

BEERFEST begins by flashing a title card that tells the audience to not digest as much alcohol as the characters in the film.  The reason is simple: you will die.  Funny?  Yes, but there is a small kernel of truth here.  If any able bodied person gorged on the limitless amounts of beer that the oddballs in the film do, then an emergency room visit would surely be in their future. 

I surely developed alcohol poisoning just watching one scene where two characters tried to chug what looks like several litres of beer out of a glass, knee-high boot.  Yet, this film is smart about its alcohol intake.  As a matter of fact, a scientist is hired in order to discover whether applying the rules of physics may assist one in drinking beer out of a boot.  It’s all in the air pocket that forms at the tip of it.  Gee, I never would have thought that a film called BEERFEST could have some modest educational content.

Don’t worry, folks; the learning stops there.  Why?  Well, maybe because this is the third major film from the comedic troupe known as BROKEN LIZARD, who exploded on the silver screen a few years ago with the ridiculously wacky, crude, and…yes…funny SUPER TROOPERS.  As a lampooning work that focused on highway state patrol officers, Broken Lizard hit many of the right comic notes.  Many scenes from the film were unmitigated slapstick classics.  I especially liked one moment in the film where on highway patrolman wagers with another as to how many times the other can say “meow” to a speeder they pull over without him noticing.  Also memorable was a scene where all of the officers engage in a maple syrup chugging contest, where the veteran officer gives the rookie some much needed advice.  “If ya want to succeed at this,” he says, “you gotta relax your throat more.”  Oh, and one word alone still inspires endless giggles.  Ramrod.

After their sure-fire success in SUPER TROOPERS in 2001 I had very little doubts that the troupe were poised for comedic superstardom.  After all, at the time there were few comedies that made me laugh as hard as SUPER TROOPERS did.  I guess it was with great reluctance and sheer disappointment that I put their next effort, CLUD DRED, high on my list for 2004’s worst stinkers.  That film was a comic mess that sought to inspire a lot of satiric jabs at teen slasher flicks, like I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER.  Yes, the film had a few moments here and there that garnered small chuckles, but CLUB DRED was a real missed opportunity for the promising troupe. More than anything, it made me yearn for Broken Lizard to return to the heights they achieved with TROOPERS.  At the time, I wanted them to make a consistent sidesplitting film right meow, not later.

BEERFEST is sort of a mixed blessing, in pure hindsight.  It is twice the film that CLUB DRED was and definitely has a laugh quotient that obliterates it.   However funny BEERFEST is in small portions, I still felt – by the time the credits rolled by – that I was only getting a comedic appetizer and not a hilarious full course meal.  The real problem with BEERFEST is not that’s its unfunny, or too silly, or too sugarcoated and sanitized with its humor.  More than ever, the film demonstrates Broken Lizard’s keen and astute eye for doing anything possible (and vulgar and rough) to get a laugh.  BEERFEST, for its entire 110 minute running time, is refreshingly and unapologetically a hard-R rated comedy with enough beer drinking, bare breasts exposed and giggling, gratuitous sex, and frog masturbation (trust me) to deservedly receive it’s adult rating by the MPAA.  Also, the tone is pure farce and is played broadly to the point of entertaining overkill, so labeling the film as sophomoric and inane misses the point.  Silly films can be funny, people.

No, the main problem with this effort on Lizard’s part is that it’s just too mournfully uneven for its own good.  SUPER TROOPERS had its negligible moments, but the sum of its many uproarious moments made up for a few of its languishing ones.  BEERFEST works kind of in the opposite manner.  The film has some truly inspire scenes of outrageous shenanigans that deserves worthy comparisons with the best work of Monty Python, but it’s the journey towards those bawdy and irreverent moments that drowns the film. 

BEERFEST’S most egregious error is that it simply does not have enough genuine laughs to spread out over the course of its unusually long running time.  More than ever, the film just felt more like a series of unrelenting and intermittently cheeky sketch comedy skits than it did a feature film.  Broken Lizard are funny, but - as they demonstrate in this film - they only work in humble dosages.  When Lizard is on top of their game, just about no one else is funnier.  Yet, too many of their scenes just fall lethargically, like a pitiful moment when Oscar winner Cloris Leachman fondles a long sausage.  Hardy-har-har.

The basic plot of the film is simple (and has a very strong resemblance to a similar comedy, DODGEBALL).  Two American brothers Todd and Jan (Broken Lizard member 1 and 2, (Erik Stolhanske and Paul Soter) are sent to Germany to spread the ashes of the grandfather at Oktoberfest.  Alas, they soon discover a centuries-old secret.  Alongside the regular festival is a clandestine festival of sorts that has been going on since…well…beer has been brewed to guzzle.  It is an underground drinking Olympics known as “Beerfest.”  Obviously, the two young Americans – who love a good beer as much as an other red blooded Yankee – entire the scene with a wide-eyed enthusiasm. 

Things go south real fast for the men when they met their German cousins, the Wolfhausens, who all seem to have been carved off of the stereotypical German caricature tree.  To make them even more of a threat, the film paints them as the ultimate bad guys, especially when they speak poorly of the Todd and Jan’s beloved dead grandfather and make some accusations about their grandmother (Leachmen) that most men would never want to hear about in reference to their grandmother.  To make matters ever direr, the German clan mops the floor with them at a short drink off, and the two men come back to America with their tails between their legs.

However, the two pick themselves up and, with a Balboaian fit of determination and desire, they make it their mission to train over the course of the next year to battle their despicable German cousins at next year’s Beerfest.  They aspire to reclaim their honor as the world’s finest beer drinkers, not to mention to clear their grandmother’s reputation.  It’s one thing when Germans beat you at beer drinking, it’s another thing when they call your sweet, grey haired old granny a whore.

In order to secure ultimate comeuppance and moral victory, the two decide to search out for all of their past friends who could give them the winning edge.  First, they hook back up with Fink (Broken Lizard member number 2, Steve Lemme), who has the scientific knowledge that could assist them with finding advanced ways of chugging faster and harder.  Then, they snag up a real beer guzzler in Landfill (Lizard number 4, the very funny Kevin Heffernan) and finally are able to secure the services of the very troubled Barry Badrinath (arguably the funniest of the troupe, Jay Chandrasekhar, also the director of the film).  Barry is – for the most part – the least likely person to help win a beer-drinking contest.  When he is found he’s working as a street hustler that will perform all things phallic for a matter of a couple of bucks.  Oh, he just may be the best coin tosser in the world.

The middle section of the film is arguably the funniest, where the boys all try to gather up all of their collective intestinal fortitude to train over the course of the next 12 months.  Some of their methods are unorthodox, to say the least, like drinking the urine of animals (let’s face it, if you can drink that in heavy dosages, then you can drink as much beer as possible).  However, the team is fraught with problems all along the way, such as the nagging dilemma of how to secure a victory at the contest’s final match, “Das Boot”, which involves drinking out of a lady’s glass boot.  To hammer home the satire even further down our throats, Lizard was able to secure German actor Jurgen Prochnow as the evil Baron Wolfgang von Wolfhausen.  You may remember him when he was in masterpieces like Wolfgang Peterson’s DAS BOOT long before he sold his soul to the devil to appear in films like JUDGE DRED, WING COMMANDER, and the abortive TV docudrama SEE ARNOLD RUN, where he gave an embarrassing turn as Arnold Schwarzenegger running for the Governorship of Kah-e-fornia.  Prochnow’s horrendously unfunny performance in BEERFEST is like a nail in his dramatic coffin. 

If Prochnow was bad, then baring witness to Cloris Leachman’s horrific German accent for nearly two hours made me want to lapse into an inebriated coma.  In between all of the lame accents, lousy stereotypes, ethnic jokes and slanderous material that picks apart just about everyone, and a hell of a lot of beer drinking, the only thing left to recommend the film of is…I guess…Broken Lizard themselves.  As shameless and carefree purveyors of sleaze and overall debauchery, Lizard somewhat delivers to their hardcore fan base.  In an age when comedies are reduced down to more audience friendly (and terribly saccharine) PG-13 vehicles, the work of Lizard is refreshing in its appalling lack of good taste and its penchant for lowbrow comedy that often reaches well below the brow.  All of the guys are likeable, even amidst all of the pratfalls and each of them have their own individual moments to shine.  Yet, despite all of their best efforts, the troupe is not able to sustain a consistently funny, laugh-out-loud work that their abilities would lead one to believe that they were capable of.  As a clever and whimsical foray into bad taste, BEERFEST works, just not enough of the time.

If binge drinking, wretchedly overwrought German stereotypes, lots of busty topless women, and all other things lewd and bawdy are all that you look for in a comedy, then Broken Lizard’s BEERFEST is the comic kegger for you.  As for the rest of the film going masses, about four or five real beers may be a first step in terms of fully appreciating yet another missed opportunity by the once promising comic troupe.  BEERFEST definitely is able to generate some serious laughs in its overall material, and its willingness to go for broke as a loud, vulgar, and dumb as humanly possible comedy are oddly commendable traits.  Yet, there’s simply too much dead air in this would-be hilarious farce about a secret, Fight Club inspired drinking contest. The movie is too long, too irregular and infrequent with its laughs, and too lacking in hearty exuberance.  Some small moments of the film definitely taste great, but most of the rest of it tastes less than filling.

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