Author: Chris

Anyone seen this? I came across a reference to it in a review of “coming home from war” movies, I think in The New Yorker. I had never heard of it, and now, having watched it, I’m not too surprised. It’s a pity, though, because this movie could have been so much better. The Gardens of Stone are military cemeteries, specifically Arlington National Cemetery in 1968-69 at the height of the Vietnam War. An elite army detail known as the Old Guard has the responsibility of managing the burials and ceremonials surrounding them, and is of course marked by the mounting US military losses. James Caan is the older officer who is having doubts about the war. Most of the men (and they are all men) are happy to be out of harm’s way, but one young soldier (D.B. Sweeney) desperately wants to get to Vietnam. He does. Since the movie opens with his funeral and his voice over before flashing back, the consequences are no surprise. Continue reading Gardens of Stone

It seems like forever since I watched a movie. I had Lust, Caution out from Netflix for six weeks, and even then it took me three nights to watch it. So it had to be just the right movie to ease back into the practice of watching in preparation for the summer blockbuster season. Nothing that forces me to re-live the trauma of an aging relative, or worse, sit across the aisle from some dickhead in a plastic Iron Man costume. Thank goodness for Keanu Reeves. If you can get past the utter stupidity of the plot, Street Kings delivers solid B-movie entertainment. Keanu is a gung-ho cop with the LAPD who cuts corners to catch his suspects, and is as happy blowing them away as taking them in for questioning. Forest Whitaker has lots of fun playing his superior who runs this elite, corrupt Vice unit. We even get Hugh Laurie as the witty internal affairs guy with the phony American accent he has honed on House. The corruption and betrayal become more and more intricate, but it’s best to ignore it all and concentrate on the gun fights. Lots of them. Keanu is even referred to as “the gunslinger” on a couple of occasions. But here he is in his element, the best since Speed when Dennis Hopper wisely advised him not to think too much. Occasionally Keanu begins to look pensive, as when trying to figure out the web of intrigue, but these brief moments of painful acting are soon relieved with a spray of bullets. Fun.

Into The Wild, directed by Sean Penn and based on the book by Jon Krakauer, tells the true story (though elements are fictionalized) of Christopher McCandless. Escaping a dire home situation after graduation from college, McCandless, who goes by the name of Alexander Supertramp, embarks on more than two years of wandering across the United States, seeking more and more remote wilderness, until he ends up in Alaska where he, essentially, starves to death.

The closest analogue is probably Grizzly Man, and I have to admit that I watched this prepared to dislike it intensely. As with Grizzly Man, the lead distains human companionship (McCandless was befriended and helped by a number of apparently fine people who cared deeply for him), and believes that only in the wildest, most rugged parts of nature can he find himself. His death is, in a sense, inevitable. But the movie is actually very touching (with the occasional mis-step from Penn) and ultimately powerful. You can read it as a critique of McCandless’ if you like, in that his human companions — played almost uniformly superbly by Catherine Keener, Vince Vaughn, Hal Holbrook and others — demonstrate the importance of social relationships.

But the film works ultimately because it, and the country and scenery, are simply gorgeous. The Colorado river, Salton Sea and mountains of Alaska are the stars, and just occasionally you can see why McCandless gave his life to get closer to them.

Revolver: utterly worthless, incomprehensible, and pretentious to boot. Someone has probably described this as ‘Tarantino-esque.” It ain’t. Is it a horrible pastiche of movies, sampling Usual Suspects, the anime scene in Kill Bill volume 1, and every other crappy movie Guy Ritchie has made. At the end, over the credits, you have video of real psychologists (plus Deepak Chopra) discussing the role of the ego and the super ego. What was Ritchie thinking?

I have not seen the documentary, Little Dieter Needs to Fly, that Werner Herzog re-made as this fictional account of Dieter Dengler’s captivity in Laos and then escape during the Vietnam War. I am not even sure why Herzog chose to tell Dengler’s story twice, once in documentary form and once in fictional form, with Christian Bale in the role of Dengler. Perhaps someone on this blog has seen them both and can offer an opinion?

The film itself has an oddly uplifting and wildly optimistic ending that is hard to square with the rest of the film. The only real justification for this ending is that it somehow mirrors the relentless optimism that Dengler manages to display throughout his captivity, in marked contrast to the five other prisoners (including a disappointing Steve Zahn). But the great majority of the film is enjoyable (that’s probably the wrong word) and beautifully made. It captures in a matter-of-fact (documentary?) style the torture, degradation, and long period on the run in the jungle that Dengler experienced. Bale is, as usual, expressive and manages to portray strength and vulnerability throughout. Recommended.

In light of the criticism of There Will Be Blood on political grounds, I recommend watching this documentary about the lives, trial and deaths of anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti. The events take place contemporaneously with those depicted in TWBB (from just before World War I until 1927), and Upton Sinclair wrote another book, Boston, that is a fictionalized account of the trial. Here the focus is much more clearly workers, collective action and revolutionary movements – and the state repression that they engender – as emblematic of the “golden age” of American capitalism. Continue reading Sacco & Vanzetti (2007)

I watched 300 yesterday and Shoot ‘Em Up today, neither with great expectations, but at least with the hope of some visceral pleasure. 300 was, to my mind, easily the worst 2007 movie that I watched. It’s pretensions to seriousness, its vicious message about masculinity and child-rearing, its frankly racist representation of “Persians” and its complete lack of irony and self-reflection mostly made me angry. Even the presence of McNulty as a Spartan traitor was not enough to relieve the stupidity of the movie.

Shoot ‘Em Up, on the other hand, despite a lack of any socially redeeming value, and some occasional lapses into misogyny (in particular, a scene with Giamatti, Bellucci and a gun), was a blast. It is exactly what it promises: a series of utterly implausible gun battles, leavened with some double entendres and deadpan humor. I have no idea what could have persuaded Giamatti, Bellucci and Clive Owens to have agreed to appear in the movie, and they appear to have made up the plot as they went along, but Owens makes a damn fine gunfighter with no name. The bottom line, I suppose, is that 300 is moronic, but takes itself seriously, while Shoot ‘Em Up is a little less stupid, a lot more fun, and does not take itself seriously at all.

Here is The Guardian‘s annual film quiz

I can’t decide if this was enjoyable crap or utter crap. A bit of both, I suppose. Mostly the latter. Bigger budget than the first, and even more preposterous plot. Helen Mirren is humiliated by the awful dialogue. Nicholas Cage plays the role seriously, and there is an intensely annoying subplot of the dysfunctional relationships between Cage and Kruger, and Voight and Mirren. That said, the sidekick, Riley (Justin Bartha), is a lot of fun, and some of the set piece action sequences are good. On reflection, this is utter crap. Even the kids thought it sucked.

This movie was always going to be something of a disappointment to those (like me) who enjoyed and admired Philip Pullman’s book, and indeed the entire ‘His Dark Materials’ trilogy. Nonetheless, from the perspective of a children’s adventure movie, it is a creditable effort.

The religious elements of the book disappear from the movie, though only in name. We never hear the words ‘religion’ or ‘church’ but the connections between the ‘Magisterium’ (itself an explicitly religious term) of the movie and organized religion is obvious enough, from the garb worn by its priests to the iconography on the walls and ceilings. The genesis story is mildly disguised in its telling, but again, anyone over the age of 13 will be able to connect the dots. And it is a terrifying story, as good a critique of modern Christianity as one could hope for: the attempt by the church to sever the connection between children and their souls in order to render them obedient and safe from sin. Continue reading The Golden Compass