For December 2006
All the King’s Men (1949) – Ask the Dust – The Black Dahlia – Cars (2006) –
The Day of the Jackal (1973) – Donnie Darko (Director’s Cut) – The Devil Wears Prada – Farewell My Concubine
All the King’s Men (1949, 109 min, NR) *** – Directed & written for the screen by Robert Rossen, from the novel by Robert Penn Warren, starring Broderick Crawford, John Ireland, Mercedes McCambridge, and Joanne Dru. Solid old Hollywood literary adaptation that starts slow but finds its stride about the time you start to know what to expect. There’s too much talking and some of the set-ups have that cramped 4:3 framing associated with mid-century American films, but it’s got energy. Fans of the book will enjoy its Cliff Notes hitting of all the high points and admire what characters have been combined and how many subplots had to be tossed aside to reach feature length. Most great novels can’t be made into great movies and most great movies couldn’t be great novels (“Andrei Roublev” as a novel?). Writer-director Rossen had much better luck with adapting a lower-brow novel like “The Hustler” and making a classic out of it, giving it breathing room and space. Warren’s book is a great 20th-century novel, full of sprawl, subplots, tangents, and general rambling, in which an ordinary man (Ireland) learns a lesson from watching the rise-and-fall of a larger-than-life figure (Crawford), not unlike the balance between Gatsby and Nick Carraway. In its broad way the movie captures the balance of the two men. I also like that the opening credits list the book as a “Pulitzer Prize-winner,” as if the film can’t stop hustling you even after you’ve bought your ticket and sat down.
Ask the Dust (2006, 117 min, R) **1/2 – Directed & written for the screen by Robert “China” Towne, starring Colin Farrell, Salma Hayek, and Donald Sutherland. All over the place, but never boring. Farrell plays an Italian-American hack writer who goes to 1930s LA, determined to make it big and score with a blonde WASP; instead, he falls in love with a Mexican waitress (criminally-curvy Hayek) and gets involved with an unbalanced Jewish woman. He treats them like garbage because he wants to move up the social ladder, not down – the movie is kind of a parable about how each ethnic group about to be assimilated has to treat the unassimilated like trash. “Ask the Dust’s” chief allure is in watching Farrell behave terribly — he’s a walking social disaster and you laugh in horrified disgust as he sticks his foot deeper into his mouth or pours coffee over the tip he leaves the waitress. Their courtship roughly goes like this: “You cheap spic whore!” “You no-good son-of-a-dago wop!” Then they stare at each other with smoldering carnality. The first chance they get to consummate their lust, as she slinks across his bed, he says “I’m busy.” Director-writer Towne gives the movie an odd tone somewhere between a straight-up drama and a deadpan comedy, in which Farrell’s narration combines noir pulp tough talk with things only a true hack could write. A great title, too, although it calls to mind what you might say to a guy before kicking his ass.
The Black Dahlia (2006, 121 min, R) ***1/2 – Directed by Brian De Palma, starring Josh Hartnett, Scarlet Johansson, Aaron Eckhart, Mia Kirschner, and Hilary Swank. It’s De Ranged, it’s De Lovely, it’s De Palma. Overwrought, overheated, over-stylized, often incomprehensible, violent, sweaty, sex-on-the-table, classic De Palma – in other words, I had a grand time. No, you won’t learn much about the Black Dahlia murder or much of anything, but the whole affair is such a breathless, senseless delirium that I had a blast. It all culminates in a crazy dinner which the detective (Josh Hartnett, the only person who doesn’t appear to be high) has with his bisexual girlfriend’s insane family. Dad belts out how great the war was and Mommy, well, Mommy is just a nutter. I would be lying if I said I wouldn’t like to see a normal narrative picture made about the same subject matter, with the same actors and director. In fact I might like that better. But I’m grateful for what I get.
Cars (2006, 116 min, PG) ** - Directed by John Lassetter, featuring the voices of Owen Wilson, Paul Newman, and Bonnie Hunt. More soulless Pixar technology in service of anthropomorphic, pop-culture quoting triteness, this time talking cars instead of talking fish, talking toys, talking monsters, or talking ants. There are some lovely images, though, like a video game I’d like to play. When I watched it (three days ago) it was the second-highest grossing film of 2006 (ahead of “Da Vinci” but behind “Pirates”)—and why not? “Cars” is harmless, utterly bland, safe for parents to take small kids to see and safe for grown children to take their parents to see. And 85 minutes later it’s done. It’s basically a kung-fu movie, in which an arrogant upstart (Wilson) fails early on, learns from a mentor (Newman), and corrects the error of his ways in a showdown. There’s a girl and a montage and, 85 minutes later, it’s over. I already said that, didn’t I? I think what ultimately bothers me about Pixar movies is how insincere they are; they don’t believe their lame-ass stories anymore than we do. If the people at Pixar made a movie about something they really cared about it could be a masterpiece. One scene in “Cars” glimmers with this hope: the anthropomorphic cars wax nostalgic about the good old days of Route 66 (“before the Interstate”). The ensuing flashback is more heartfelt than anything else in the film, as the movie reminisces about something that it actually seemed to care about: the transience of technology and the crushing wheels of progress. Keep your ears open for Click and Clack, the Tap-It Brothers, of NPR “Car Talk” fame.
The Devil Wears Prada (2006, 109 min, PG) ** – Directed by David Frankel, starring Meryl Streep, Anne Hathaway, Stanley Tucci, and Emily Blunt. A smart, serious, style-challenged-by-choice journalism graduate (Hathaway) grudgingly settles for a job as assistant to the editor of a major fashion magazine (Streep). Do you think she might view the business of fashion with condescension? Do you think she might learn that there’s more to how people dress than meets the eye? Do you think she might undergo a make-over? Do you think she might begin to care about her job, becoming increasingly competitive and self-absorbed, until her personal relationships suffer, prompting the always unimaginative “you’ve changed” scene? Do you think she might learn a lesson? Did you get all this from the trailer? Then you don’t need to see the movie. (The F&SN Critic’s Beautiful & Talented Wife wrote this review; the F&SN Critic took her advice and didn’t see the movie.)
Donnie Darko (Director’s Cut) (2001, R) ***1/2 – Directed & written by Richard Kelly, starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Holmes Osborne, Mary McDonnell, and Jena Malone. A cult favorite. Movies that try to capture adolescence in a realistic manner almost always come across as a fake or, worse, as advertisements for clothing and music. But movies that exaggerate youth or heighten it through the fantastic or the far-off – think “The New World” and “Marie Antoinette” – quite often ring true. So when young Donnie Darko’s life of pill-popping and private school alienation dovetails into demonic / comic visions of a giant rabbit, psychic visions, and threatening grown-ups who know more than they’re saying, it seems quite natural. Having never seen the theatrical release, I can only guess what scenes have been added for the Director’s Cut. I think I can tell; they fatten the story a bit, but I wouldn’t lose them. “Donnie Darko” is about a whole suburb and not just Donnie. Great small bits for Patrick Swayze as a motivational speaker and Katherine Ross (Elaine from “The Graduate!”) as a shrink. Donnie’s dad is his generation’s Murray Hamilton and Drew Barrymore, amazingly, is quite good as one of his teachers. Director Kelly makes the movie imminently unnerving; my stomach twisted in the endless expectation that something would jump out. To its great credit, no single explanation seems to fit what happens, no matter how much talk of time travel and what-not.
Farewell My Concubine (Ba wang bie ji) (1993, 171 min, R) ***1/2 – Directed by Kaige Chen, starring Leslie Cheung, Fengyi Zhang, and Gong Li. It might just be my imagination, but there’s something that keeps me from calling “Concubine” great. Maybe it’s that ‘90s foreign-film eagerness to please, that “Dances With Wolves” way of “shocking!” moments being made comfortable because we know we’re supposed to be shocked and act accordingly. Maybe I just need to see it again. Still, it’s a magnificent, colorful picture, like “Gone With the Wind” except with the Communist takeover of China in place of the Civil War, the Cultural Revolution in place of Reconstruction, and two members of the Beijing Opera instead of Scarlett and Rhett. We spend decades with them, meeting them as boys and watching the country fall apart and rebuild itself around them in spite of their personal problems. Gorgeously photographed and with an eye of the minutiae of life in the Opera.
More Reviews in a Hurry for December 2006.