for January 2007
The Color Purple (1985, 154 min, PG13) **1/2 – Directed by Steven Spielberg, starring Whoopi Goldberg, Danny Glover, and Oprah Winfrey. The first black generation in the South after the Civil War, seen through the eyes of a hardscrabble girl (Goldberg). Well-made, well-meaning, and well-acted film, smothered by its own conscience and epic pretensions. “The Color Purple” is perhaps the first big budget about black America that isn’t seen through the eyes of a white character – there’s no Kevin Costner or Gregory Peck or Spencer Tracy. But director Spielberg, making his first “serious” film, does that duty for us, with postcard images that (as Pauline Kael used to say) “reek of quality.” It’s as if the subject matter is so unconventional that he couldn’t make the slightest departure from standard mid-century Hollywood epic form. Still, there’s a lot to like in the movie, especially Whoopi Goldberg’s wondrous performance; is this the only Spielberg movie with strong female characterizations?
Curse of the Golden Flower (2006, 114 min, R) *** - Directed & co-written by Zhang Yimou, starring Gong Li, Chow-Yun Fat, and Jay Chou. A lesser work from the director of “Hero” and “House of Flying Daggers,” “Curse of the Golden Flower” lacks the fable-contraption perfection of those films. In it, the Emperor circa 900 (Chow-Yun) is slowly poisoning the Empress (Gong Li, heartstopping in a push-up bra). She drips with sweat and plays for the balcony and, wow, she’s great. The first half drags – “Hero” and “Flying Daggers” never drag – but that’s to set up the intrigue, who’s sleeping with whom, which prince is trustworthy, which corpse is still alive, so on and so forth. Watching men and women in museum costumes do passive-aggressive laps up and down their Technicolor castle is hypnotic. And then ninjas come out of the ceiling. Oh yeah. The final battle is as fatalistic as anything else put to film; I guess Zhang wants to prove that we can’t expect good people to defeat the evil by evil means. The palace is a wonder of production design – the drafty stones and shadows of the “Lord of the Rings” movies has given way to an almost Broadway rainbow of golds, pinks, and jades.
The Good Shepherd (2006, 167 min, R) *** – Directed by Robert De Niro, starring Matt Damon, Angelina Jolie, Alec Baldwin, Billy Crudup, Michael Gambon, John Turturro, and Joe Pesci. Follows one of the first players (Matt Damon) in the CIA from his college days in Skull-and-Bones beyond the Bay of Pigs. The subtitle in the advertisements is “The Untold Story of the Birth of the CIA” but that’s not anywhere in the real movie. That makes sense – “The Good Shepherd” is more personal than political. Its first act is a delirium haze of suspicion and betrayal, full of close-ups and out-of-focus shots, criss-crossing in time; we don’t quite know what’s going on, but we know Matt Damon can’t trust anyone. Like all serious spy movies, the all-male espionage world has the aura of the love-that-dare-not-speak-its-name, especially with the Talented Mr. Ripley in the lead. Damon is intense, contained, on the verge of bubbling over, and by the end of the movie he couldn’t be more bent over. Among his gifts is the ability to always look up-to-something that he’s not going to tell you about. “The Good Shepherd” portrays a CIA man as the ultimate pent-up 1950s absentee father-husband, permanently trapped between what he genuinely wants and a bent sense of duty. The movie is flawed, to be certain, with a score having to do too much to tie it all together, but an enormous and talented cast has lined up to work with director De Niro – they do not disappoint. Written by Eric Roth of “The Insider” and “Munich.”
Monster House (2006, 91 min, PG) *** - Directed by Gil Kenan, featuring the voices of Steve Buscemi, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Kathleen Turner, Jon Heder, Kevin James, Nick Cannon, Catherine O’Hara, Fred Willard, and Jason Lee. A cute trifle about three kids and the carnivorous haunted house across the street, without all the stupid pop-cultures references that ruin most animated kids movies. At its best, “Monster House” hearkens back to the days of raunchy obscenity-obsessed pre-adolescence of “The Goonies” (Spielberg produced both), although its weak third act gets carried away with explosions and noise – it doesn’t come near the whimsical perfection of Wallace & Gromit. The movie uses some of the same motion-capture technology as “The Polar Express,” but allows the characters to be more caricatured and, therefore, not unintentionally creepy. Swarms of beloved supporting actors show up, not to make “hip” parodies of themselves, but to just be supporting voices. Jason Lee’s stoner, waxing over his long lost “awesome kite,” is the best, and indie-nerd god Steve Buscemi can always drink from my canteen – if you’re like me, you can actually hear Buscemi’s voice in your head when you read his IMDb quotes page. The three leads are voiced by newcomers, including a girl named Spencer Locke, whose IMDb pictures might terrify you when you realize she’s only 15.
Poseidon (2006, 99 min, PG13) *1/2 – Directed by Wolfgang Petersen, starring Josh Lucas, Kurt Russell, Richard Dreyfuss, and Emmy Rossum. Uninspired destruction-porn remake of an overrated original – although I would be lying if I said that some of the claustrophobic drowning bits didn’t get me just the way they were supposed to. Aside from that, “Poseidon” feels mostly like a chore, as wet survivors of an inverted ocean liner trudge to safety and solve their personal problems along the way. Rising star Josh Lucas of “Undertow” joins Kurt Russell as two tough men leading the group, and they do about as well as can be done, but the rest is pretty forgettable. The effects are solid but unremarkable and the continuity errors aren’t even that amusing.
Volver (2006, 121 min, R) **1/2 – Directed & written by Pedro Almodovar, starring Penelope Cruz. My first Almodovar film, and this is hardly my final word on it – if I saw it again I bet I’d like it more. There are some ingenious turns in the course of this supernatural soap opera, as one generation echoes anohter, but for some reason I couldn’t quite find a way in. Two sisters in small-town Spain look after a troubled daughter, a dead husband, a cancer-sick friend, and their mom’s ghost, all while secrets creep from the past. The only thing I can really hold against it is how it beat me over the head with its “women sticking together” thing – yes, they help each other during times of poverty, with burying murder victims, even coming back from the dead, WE GET IT! But that hardly sinks the movie. Penelope Cruz, who was gaunt and angular when she first appeared in America, has plumped up a bit and pops a button or two – that’s more like it.