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Monster

January 24, 2012

With her performance in “Monster,” Charlize Theron charges down the gates that have confined her to typecasting limbo and sets a new standard by which to measure her future work. In Patty Jenkins’ writing-directing debut, Theron plays Aileen Wuornos, the Florida prostitute who killed six men in the ’80s before she was caught and, in 2002, executed.

“Monster,” at heart, is not a slasher movie but a tortured love story between Wuornos and her teenage girlfriend, Selby Wall (Christina Ricci). Their relationship is a refuge from the despair in their separate lives: Wuornos’ lifelong degradation at the hands of men draws her to the affections of a female partner; Shelby, a lesbian, clings to Wuornos because she allows her the financial and sexual escape from the conservative stranglehold of her family.

The manipulative and desperate nature of their relationship is what kicks “Monster’s” narrative into gear. To ensure their cash flow, Selby cajoles the reluctant Wuornos into continuing to ply her trade. One night, in a fit of rage, Wuornos shoots the man who has just tortured and raped her. The trauma of this event takes her already dubious attitude to men into the realm of full-blown murderous hate.

Jenkins’ direction is assured throughout, but her opening scenes are the most powerful, depicting that sad, provincial America of trailer parks and roller rinks—that trashy, seedy outpost of frizzy hair and Journey ballads by which we are just as fascinated as depressed. As it goes, “Monster” gets increasingly bogged down in its more literal-minded melodrama, as Wuornos kills and steals, and the couple tries frantically to dodge the law. Jenkins’ ethereal early scenes are trampled over by hardworking but labored episodes of escalating tensions.

Between the two leads, Theron handily dominates. With the help of some weight gain and Tony G.’s masterful make-up effects, Theron’s transformation, down to her cocky strut and countrified twang, is startling. More than that is how confidently and naturally Theron humanizes a woman long-branded in the media as a monster. For her part, Ricci cannot reconcile Selby, the dreamy-eyed adolescent with Selby, the manipulative black widow, into a cohesive characterization. As a result, she stumbles along to Theron’s beat. Adding his salty, flint-eyed presence to the mix is Bruce Dern who graces the movie briefly as Thomas, Wuornos’ trusty father-figure.

“Monster” is a workhorse of a character study. Its plodding, sporadically effective script may not entice much, but it finds a haunting eloquence thanks to Theron’s lacerating, career-defining performance.

Grade: B

Written/Directed by: Patty Jenkins
Cast: Charlize Theron, Christina Ricci, Bruce Dern, Lee Tergesen, Annie Corley

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Intermission

January 24, 2012

Dizzily paced and structured, the Irish import “Intermission” charms with its “never-let-‘em-see-you-sweat” exuberance. Theater denizens, Mark O’Rowe and John Crowley, the movie’s writer and director respectively, juggle elements of romantic comedy and farcical crime caper with hardly a misstep or stumble. After a somewhat annoyingly “virtuosic” opening that comes staggering at us with a chopped-up, documentary-style jitteriness, “Intermission” finds a sure and brisk footing. Before long, you’re swept away in its pell-mell of interweaving narratives by a couple of crack storytellers who seem audaciously at ease in their newfound medium.

Dewy-eyed and pouty-lipped John (Cillian Murphy) calls it off with his girlfriend, Dierdre (Kelly Macdonald), and almost immediately regrets it. He finds that it’s too late to make amends, however, because Dierdre is already bedding down with Sam, a middle-aged and married bank manager in the thick of a raging mid-life crisis. Eager to mend her tattered self-esteem, Sam’s jilted wife, Noeleen (Dierdre O’Kane) sets her sights on Oscar (David Wilmot), John’s rangy, sex-starved pal. Noeleen’s unleashed libido, not to mention her pent-up rage at her delinquent husband, loosens Oscar’s goose but it also, comically and mid-coitally, beats the poor schlub to a pulp.

John and Noeleen aren’t the only ones stung by rejection. Ever since her last boyfriend shit on her, literally, Dierdre’s sister, Sally (Shirley Henderson), has let herself go and has the moustache to prove it. Sally’s bitterness has her hissing and snarling, but she’s got a tender soul which her widowed mother (Ger Ryan) tries patiently to nurse back to health.

Following the old rule that if you can’t get them back, then get back at them, John throws in with Lehiff, a petty, thuggish punk (played with gusto by Colin Farrell) in a scheme to kidnap Dierdre and hold her ransom to Sam. It so happens that Lehiff is in the cross-hairs of the brutish Jerry Lynch (the indomitable Colm Meaney), Dublin’s answer to Popeye Doyle by way of the self-serious vanity of Inspector Clouseau. Lynch is on a one-man crusade to scour Dublin’s streets of scum and achieve local stardom, while he’s at it, if a reality-TV producer has his way. Meaney mines the great tradition of comic blowhards; he clads Lynch in the armor of male bravado, but one that can’t hide his pathetic inner gloom nor his idiosyncrasies (in this case, an obsession with Celtic mysticism).

Through all its whirl and bluster, “Intermission” comes through a remarkably winning and tender character study—a patchwork of contemporary Dublin’s lovers, hoods and regular Joe’s. O’Rowe and Crowley impressively dovetail their various stories through well-timed turns, parallels and intersections. Add to its ambitious script and direction an ensemble of on-target performances, and you have a rare seasonal treat: a rowdy comedy unafraid of honesty and with a direct appeal to the heart.

Grade: A-

Directed by: John Crowley
Written by: Mark O’Rowe
Cast: Colin Farrell, Cillian Murphy, Kelly Macdonald, Brian F. O’Bryne, Colm Meaney

Posted in All Reviews Archive, Comedy, Crime, Drama, Genres, Romance | Leave a Comment »

Happy Hour

January 24, 2012

A few scenes into “Happy Hour,” I found myself frozen with fear. I dared not move lest, by doing so, the pain of watching it might become worse. It was a similar reaction to being gripped with intestinal cramps. The scenes in writer-director Mike Bencivenga and co-writer Richard Levine’s comic drama play like cogs in a mechanically driven story, one that bogs itself in sophomoric dialogue and in clichés that together recall the subgenre of the Suffering Alcoholic Writer—think “The Lost Weekend,” “Leaving Las Vegas,” etc. Unlike those predecessors, however, “Happy Hour” is strictly college-level compost, content with its mediocrity, if not wholly unaware of it. Bencivenga’s scenes all bear a simple setup-punchline structure—strewn with smarmy one-liners, thin character development and glib observation—not surprising considering his background in sketch comedy. Finally, it’s a shock that his and Levine’s script garnered enough attention to attract first-rate actors like Anthony LaPaglia.

LaPaglia plays Tulley, an over-the-hill Manhattan writer slumming as an advertising copy editor while cobbling together a novel—presumably his magnum opus. Tulley lives bitterly in the shadow of his condescending father—a famous author—and nocturnally drowns his miseries in booze alongside Levine (Eric Stoltz), a rooster-plumed dandy whom the hardboiled Tulley has inexplicably befriended and Natalie (Carolyn Feeney), a sassy schoolteacher who he hops into bed with the night they meet. The three strike up a barfly camaraderie and all’s well until Tulley finds out he’s dying—news that forces him to confront his creative and paternal demons. The movie hereupon assays a gamut of difficult themes, from love and mortality to alcoholism and friendship, but the results are decidedly inept: Tulley and Natalie’s romance feels about as sexy as a Bud Light commercial; LaPaglia is trapped into doing the boozy writer schtick by way of Philip Marlowe; Stoltz’s Levine is but an airy, asexual fop with no sense of purpose other than what the movie requires of him; and Feeney, with her misty-eyed earnestness, as Natalie, seems she’s in a whole other movie, something more akin to “Beaches” or a made-for-TV programmer. This confusion only underscores chronic and inherent problems in the material itself.

Never does “Happy Hour” give the feeling that it had to be made, that this story needed to be told. Steeped in a flat, visually stagy approach and clichés right down to its superfluous, Chandler-esque first-person narration and loungey soundtrack, “Happy Hour,” is at a loss for anything fresh, vital and authentic It aims ultimately for soul-stirring upliftment. But, its good intentions aside, Bencivenga’s movie ends up a bit like that maudlin, wisecracking drunk who crashes your favorite bar before he’s hauled away. Just hope he never comes back.

Grade: D

Directed by: Mike Bencivenga
Written by: Mike Bencivenga, Richard Levine
Cast: Anthony LaPaglia, Eric Stoltz, Caroleen Feeney, Robert Vaughn, Sandrine Holt, Mario Cantone

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Girl With a Pearl Earring

January 24, 2012

A Vermeer is truly dazzling. On the surface, we marvel at the artist’s gift for capturing natural light and real-world resplendence, the minutiae of physical detail that point to and deepen our understanding of the paintings’ subjects. His subjects are mostly women, usually alone—a maidservant or a noblewoman—engrossed in a private, ordinary moment, reading a love letter or performing a household chore. It is of these candid moments, of what they reveal of class, lifestyle, and, most subtly, of the personal drama unfolding in his protagonists’ lives, lying just beneath his glorious surfaces, that Vermeer is the peerless master.

“Girl With a Pearl Earring,” directed by Peter Webber and adapted by Olivia Hetreed from Tracy Chevalier’s novel, is named after one of Vermeer’s paintings. “Girl” speculates on the identity of the painting’s subject—a somber but alluring young woman who stares back at us forlornly—and the events surrounding her posing for Vermeer. “Girl” wants to emulate the painter’s subtle aesthetic as it fashions a story of domestic and erotic intrigue. Webber gets his surfaces brilliantly right, but, whereas the merest gestures and looks in a Vermeer are so carefully chosen that they can reveal oceans of insight, “Girl” leaves us to splash about in a murky puddle of underdeveloped scenes. I am not trying to hold Webber to Vermeer’s standard, just suggesting that the director falteringly aspires to a style and dramaturgy that few artists of any discipline can pull off.

By virtue of her pale, saturnine face, Scarlet Johansson looks born to play Griet, the peasant girl-turned-maidservant who becomes Vermeer’s muse. Johansson is “Girl’s” trump card; any single shot of her looks miraculously like one of Vermeer’s own women has stepped off the canvas and onto a movie screen. Eduardo Serra’s masterful cinematography and Ben van Os’ production design richly and uncannily evoke the color palette and mood of Vermeer’s world.

When Griet, a pauper’s daughter, takes a job in Vermeer’s household, she sets off a chain of jealousy, greed and lust that rattles everybody around her and inspires one of the artist’s most well-known works. This is potentially riveting material, but Webber’s movie never quite overcomes the well-trodden trope and cliché, leaving two wonderful actors, Colin Firth and Tom Wilkinson, in desperately shallow waters. As Vermeer, for instance, Firth is just another taciturn, brooding artist and, as his saucy patron, Wilkinson founders as your standard dirty-old-man with an eye for young housemaids. Johansson, with her sensual, expressive face, surpasses the material best—as a girl on the brink of sexual awakening, she delicately conveys vulnerability and sensuality at once.

To be fair, the details of Vermeer’s life are sketchy. But, rather than flesh out the lack of historical fact with tantalizing fabulation (this is fiction, after all), Webber sticks fussily to his story’s bare skeleton. “Girl” gives us a vividly painted world but only patchily drawn characters — in that sense, it gets Vermeer only half right.

Grade: C+

Directed by: Peter Webber
Written by: Tracy Chevalier
Cast: Colin Firth, Scarlett Johansson, Tom Wilkinson, Cillian Murphy, Alakina Mann

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Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

January 24, 2012

“Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” is the second collaboration between screenwriter Charlie Kaufman and music video maestro Michel Gondry (their first was 2001’s “Human Nature”). It certainly bears the hallmarks of Kaufman’s self-reflexive fantasias, but, in its merging of narrative form and experimental technique, this is pure Gondry, and a dazzling showcase of his conceptual imagination.

Throughout his career, Gondry has mined the trove of his own dreams and childhood memories. Nothing quite makes sense in Gondry’s world but, in that secret language of dream-logic, in which sound and image mingle like the synaptic phantasmagoria of deep sleep, his cinema can be downright revelatory as you’re experiencing it.

Dream-logic lies at the heart of “Eternal Sunshine,” a romantic comedy that questions what it would be like if we could eliminate our worst, most troubling memories. Joel and Clementine’s relationship was littered with them. So, it’s no surprise that, when they break-up, Clementine (Kate Winslet), a hippy-trippy party girl, decides to erase her memories of shy loner Joel (Jim Carrey), using a memory-erasure process invented by a charlatan-neuroscientist, Dr. Mierzwiak (Tom Wilkinson). When Joel finds out, he decides to follow suit, if only to spite the impetuous Clementine. Assisted by a pair of feckless technicians, Stan and Patrick (Mark Ruffalo and Elijah Wood), Mierzwiak places what looks like a souped-up colander on Joel’s head and, with his subject in deep sleep, sets out to slash-and-burn all traces of his Clementine memories.

But, about halfway through his “erasure,” Joel realizes just how much he loves his memories and decides to go AWOL. What follows is a most unusual chase picture as Joel, with Clementine in hand, flees across the far-flung regions of his mindscape, as Mierzwiak tries desperately to track him down, mercenary-like. As Joel and Clementine encounter figments of his darkest memories, she helps him to make peace with them, and, as they re-live the rosiest days of their courtship, they brace against the inevitable destruction at the hands of the memory-erasers soon to come.

Kaufman’s script also interweaves Mierzwiak’s own woes with Mary (Kirsten Dunst), his lovestruck office assistant. She’d rather be musing over Alexander Pope quotations with the good doctor than getting naked and stoned with her boyfriend, Stan. What’s more, Patrick, privy to Clementine’s past, finds himself smitten with her and, cribbing from Joel’s notes, he clumsily woos her with his schoolboy wiles.

If anything, Gondry could have pared Kaufman’s script to its essence—Joel’s odyssey—and used its taut frame to develop his abundance of visual ideas. Gondry’s kinetic style, along with Kaufman’s crammed script, overwhelms its otherwise pitch-perfect cast. Carrey and Winslet are terrific, but their wonderfully moody scenes together seem needled by the material’s frantic demands, as if Gondry is constantly jabbing at them with his restless, anxious camera. Still, “Eternal Sunshine” is undeniably ambitious filmmaking and a feather in this year’s cap of indie movies. Its message that, try as we might, we’re forever stuck with the very people who drive us crazy can be read as Kaufman-esque in its cynicism, but I’m too won over by Gondry’s sunshine to be anything but delighted by it.

Grade: A-

Directed by: Michel Gondry
Written by: Charlie Kaufman
Cast: Jim Carrey, Kate Winslet, Elijah Wood, Mark Ruffalo, Jane Adams, David Cross, Kirsten Dunst, Tom Wilkinson

Posted in Action & Adventure, All Reviews Archive, Experimental, Fantasy, Genres, Romance | Leave a Comment »

Code 46

January 22, 2012

A futuristic film noir-love story with an Oedipal twist. That sounds like a devilish cocktail and it might’ve made for just such a movie. But “Code 46” by director Michael Winterbottom and writer Frank Cottrell Boyce is a muddy, strangely unintoxicating mix. A noir with no moral desperation, no clear-cut point-of-view and a love story whose eroticism feels about as urgent as yardwork.

This is not to say that “Code 46” lacks merit. Mark Tildesley’s production design and Alwin Kuchler and Marcel Zyskind’s photography ingeniously render a future-world that has ingredients of “Blade Runner” and “Mad Max” among other futuristic noir antecedents. Its soaring neon-lit towers and its smog- and dust-enshrouded landscapes are striking, but equally so is how the movie’s design—out of a need for economy and narrative expediency—is kept within the bounds of a recognizable reality. Those gleaming and ominous settings are modern-day Shanghai, Dubai and Hong Kong tricked out merely with lighting, filters and minimal art design.

Winterbottom and Cottrell Boyce postulate an endpoint to our age of rapid urbanizing and globalizing. Theirs is a George Orwell-meets- Phillip K. Dick dystopia where people’s mobility and behavior are heavily regulated and where overpopulated cities are separated by vast stretches of wasteland. “Code 46” itself refers to a reproductive law in which partners who share common genes are prohibited from mating—a way to keep genetically identical humans and clones from getting it on.

There’s the rub for William (Tim Robbins), a detective who arrives in Shanghai to track down who’s been manufacturing and selling counterfeit “papelles”— special permits needed to transit from one city to another. The culprit, he discovers, is Maria (Samantha Morton), a waifish, dreamy-eyed loner. He promptly falls in love and into bed with her. Soon after returning to his married life, William is alerted to a murder that leads him back to Maria. But her memory of William, their shared sexual history, has since been wiped clean by doctors, owing to a Code 46 violation. William learns that Maria was cloned from his own mother’s genes. Logically, I wondered why, if sex with such a clone were possible, aren’t there measures—identity cards, retinal scans, whatever—to preempt such an act. Why? Because logic would’ve overstepped “Code 46’s” entire second half when William, too smitten with Maria to care about their genetic relatedness, flies off with her for another illicit jaunt in the desert. Their cavorting, of course, comes to the lovelorn end we expect from this genre, but which registers none of its emotional payoff.

Tim Robbins and Samantha Morton, two intelligent actors, are fatally unconvincing as lovers. As William proceeds to woo Maria, we continually wonder what he sees in her and vice versa. Sporting her close-cropped “In America” haircut, Morton pitches her performance somewhere between the crime-predicting humanoid of “Minority Report” and the mute wallflower of “Sweet and Lowdown”—not exactly a combination to get a man’s pulse racing. The foundation for all noirs is how it reveals a wounded world through the dark but ever-hopeful gaze of its detective-protagonists. “Code 46,” which poises itself as noir, fails utterly to lock us into William’s world-view; Winterbottom, instead, lingers on Maria’s pseudo-poetic interior monologues, conjuring dreamy moments that narratively amount to nothing. Below William’s cocksure surface, Robbins’ characterization is a milky mess, absent of any motive for his infidelity, let alone a personal desire to solve this or any crime.

“Code 46” is an ambitious but miscalculated affair, owing entirely to Cottrell Boyce’s unengaging script. It prompts more questions of logic and motivation than it bargained for, losing its actors and audience along the way. Winterbottom is a competent filmmaker known also for his prolific output. Were it not for his flair for mood and texture, “Code 46” might sink entirely. Nevertheless, he might better serve his stories—especially those as conceptually complex as this one—by slowing down and taking the time to tell them clearly and well.

Grade: C

Directed by: Michael Winterbottom
Written by: Frank Cottrell Boyce
Cast: Tim Robbins, Samantha Morton, Om Puri

Posted in All Reviews Archive, Genres, Noir, Romance, Science Fiction, Thriller | Leave a Comment »

Bend It Like Beckham

January 22, 2012

At one point in the lavish, joyful spectacle of her Indian wedding, the bride, Pinky, perplexedly asks her younger sister, Jess (Parminder Nagra), why she wouldn’t want to get married too. With aching honesty, Jess answers, “I want more.” That yearning for something more, something free from the fetters of tradition, is what lies at the heart of Gurindar Chadha’s cross-culture, soccer-crazed comedy, “Bend It Like Beckham.”

The self-possessed daughter of Indian immigrants living in London, Jess spends hours swooning over posters of David Beckham—the English heartthrob soccer star—and sneaks out to play pick-up games in the park. After she meets Jules (Keira Knightley), a soccer-playing tomboy-spitfire, a chance for Jess to play for a real team comes along.

Tensions brew when the two girls both fall for Joe (Jonathan Rhys-Meyers), their soccer coach, and come to a heady boil when Jess’s tradition-minded parents, eager to make a marriageable Indian woman of their daughter, find out about Jess’s scandalous passion for sport.

Chadha’s coming-of-age East-West curry throws in various tantalizing issues concerning an Indian woman’s right to make her own choices and love the man she wants. And while “Beckham’s” gently satiric digs at Anglo-Indian family life is its most appealing trait, this is not an Indians-only offering. It’s a potluck of a movie, mindful to flesh out Joe and Jules’ struggles with their own families and their own search for personal happiness. Chadha, in that way, has concocted flavors to appeal to all audiences everywhere.

Nagra is pitch-perfect as Jess, vulnerable, tough, lovely and totally winning. Knightley and Rhys-Meyers match up well with her; both are gorgeous and up to task of upbeat, open-hearted fun. The rest of the ensemble, especially Anupem Kher and Shaheen Khan, as Jess’s parents, offer sharp, funny support.

Chadha and Paul Mayeda Berges’ script, while brimming with well-observed, entertaining scenes, also contrives a symmetry between Jess’ and Jules’ families that feels awfully false, resulting, for example, in the naively farcical portrayal of Jules’ mom that would be more at home in a sitcom. It also settles for a tediously drawn-out fairy tale finale that clashes with the refreshing and uncompromising honesty that came before it. But its irresistible charms and performances are what linger and make “Beckham” a popcorn, er, samosa flick worth savoring.

Grade: B-

Directed by: Gurinder Chadha
Written by: Gurinder Chadha, Guljit Bindra, Paul Mayeda Borges
Cast: Parminder Nagra, Keira Knightley, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Anupam Kher, Archie Panjabi

Posted in All Reviews Archive, Comedy, Genres, Romance | Leave a Comment »

The Names of Love (Le nom de gens)

June 23, 2011

In “The Names of Love,” writer-director Michel Leclerc employs a deft, whimsical touch in bringing together such weighty themes as family guilt, generational regret and finding true love in a world mined with racial and cultural politics. It’s a delicate tightrope that co-writers and Leclerc and Baya Kasmi walk but, in presenting issues of their own personal experiences as ethnic minorities in their native France, their screenplay is refreshingly honest and inventive. And considering that “The Names of Love” really has very little plot driving it, Leclrec and Kasmi create an engaging romantic comedy simply by virtue of their offbeat humor and appealing characters.

Family history is central to understanding this movie about mismatched lovers. Arthur (Jacques Gamblin), an epidemiologist who specializes in bird autopsies, is the son of Jewish mother, Annette (Michèle Moretti), a Holocaust survivor still haunted by the long-ago disappearance of her parents. Meanwhile, sexual spitfire Bahia (Sara Forestier) – who sleeps with right-wing men in order to convert them to her left-wing causes – springs from the union between an Algerian immigrant-father, Mohamed (Zinedine Soualem), and a liberally minded French hippie-mom Cécile (Carole Franck).

Both Arthur and Bahia have struggled with personal identity issues their whole lives – Arthur with the ripple effects of his mother’s guilt and Bahia with wanting to honor the struggles and social discrimination suffered by her hardworking father, a brilliant but self-effacing painter. It’s what made Arthur and Bahia who they are: While Bahia is a politically righteous, sexually charged dynamo, Arthur’s childhood pains have turned him into a stuffed-shirt who takes comfort in his job’s scientific predictabilities – though, in a refreshing twist, Arthur isn’t one of Bahia’s right-wing conquests; he’s a liberal socialist, the rational yin to Bahia’s volatile yang.

The description so far of “The Names of Love” may have the ring of a heavy Bergman-esque drama, but Leclerc’s movie is anything but. Kasmi and Leclrec’s plot goes through a wild array of witty conversations and slapstick set-ups, weaving these into a fabric of memories through with Bahia and Arthur each try to make sense of their past, how they became who they are, and, ultimately, why the two of them are so drawn to each other.

Gamblin and Forestier are both excellent in their disparate roles. Utterly natural as the buttoned-down yet easily flappable Arthur, Gamblin provides the perfect chemistry for Forestier’s spontaneous Bahia, given to political indignation and lots of nude shenanigans (including a scene in which she absent-mindedly leaves her apartment and hops on the subway, wearing nothing but her glasses). The supporting players, particularly Soualem and Moretti, are solid, providing Leclerc’s comedy with grace notes of soulfulness and pathos.

It’s a credit to the talents of his cast as well as to Leclerc’s ability to juggle comedy and drama that “The Names of Love” manages to be so winning a concoction. Moreover, what its script lacks in forward momentum, the movie makes up for with its sincere interest in human nature, its sense of fun and cinematic style as it jumps back and forth between the past and present to create a heartfelt homage to how love can truly bridge all our differences.

Grade: B

Directed by: Michel Leclerc
Written by: Michel Leclerc, Baya Kasmi
Starring: Jacques Gamblin, Sara Forestier, Zinedine Soualem, Carole Franck, Jacques Boudet, Michèle Moretti, Zakariya Gouram, Julia Vaidis-Bogard

Posted in All Reviews Archive, Comedy, Drama, Romance | Leave a Comment »

The Double Hour

April 14, 2011

When a movie goes by the tagline, “Nothing Is What It Seems,” you know you’re in for a long guessing game. For much of director Giuseppe Capotondi’s 96-minute “The Double Hour,” the viewer is wondering whether what’s unfolding up on the screen should be believed or not. What’s more, reviewing the film is an inherently dodgy exercise since one can’t really discuss or critique the movie without giving away its central conceit. Suffice it to say that Capotondi tries for a romantic mystery/thriller in the vein of Christopher Nolan’s structurally snarled “Memento” and “Inception.”

The fundamental difference between “The Double Hour” and the Nolan movies, however, is that, in “Memento” and “Inception,” the puzzle-box plots have real bearing on the larger story; they reward the viewer’s investment in them with third-act payoffs. That crucial lesson is lost on Capotondi and his screenwriters Alessandro Fabbri, Ludovica Rampoldi and Stefano Sardo. Because most of “The Double Hour” doesn’t really need to exist in order for the viewer to process the impact of the finale, when – after following its heroine for ninety minutes – the movie momentarily breaks its point of view to follow its male protagonist. And it’s through the male’s point of view, arguably, that we cash in on the entire pseudo-tragic nature of “The Double Hour’s” story and theme.

The story: A lonely, pretty Slovenian woman, Sonia (Rappoport) living in Turin, Italy meets a roguishly handsome ex-cop, Guido (Timi), now working as a security guard at a lavish estate. The two begin a tender, tentative courtship that comes to sudden, shattering halt when they fall victim to a violent robbery. During the robbery, a gunshot seriously injures Sonia. Guido’s fate is bleaker – supposedly.

Thereafter, the grieving Sonia can’t focus on her duties as a hotel housekeeper. She’s increasingly distraught and panicky, especially after Dante, a nosy detective (Michele Di Mauro), starts snooping on her. Dante suspects that Sonia was in cahoots with Riccardo (Gaetano Bruno), the mastermind behind the robbery – a charge she firmly denies.

There are teasing ambiguities as the movie accommodates two parallel storylines: There’s the actual version of events that reveals itself in due time competing with Sonia’s own version, in which characters from the former re-appear in different roles in the latter. Capotondi and the screenwriters do a neat and precise job of assiduously playing Sonia’s story without showing their hand – that is, neither confirming nor negating the parallel story. But all the movie’s psychological spookiness and breathless attempts at suspense amount to little since two-thirds of what’s on-screen is not the plot, but a plot within the plot, and, hence, of little real consequence.

For their part, Rappoport and Timi execute their roles effectively (both won acting prizes at the 66th Venice Film Festival). Timi is suitably mysterious and lovelorn, while Rappoport gamely sustains the question of whether it’s grief or guilt that motivates Sonia. Rappoport’s skillful sleight of hand hardly matters, though, since “The Double Hour’s” bogus parlor-trick of a screenplay set matters straight on its own. So straight, in fact, that you could’ve left the theater at the 15-minute mark, played arcade games in the lobby for an hour, and come back for the third act only to miss…nothing.

Grade: C

Directed by: Giuseppe Capotondi
Written by: Alessandro Fabbri, Ludovica Rampoldi, Stefano Sardo
Starring: Ksenia Rappoport, Filippo Timi, Antonia Truppo, Gaetano Bruno, Fausto Russo Alesi, Michele Di Mauro

Posted in All Reviews Archive, Crime, Drama, Foreign, Romance, Thriller | Leave a Comment »

Walk the Line

September 7, 2010

James Mangold’s Johnny Cash biopic runs along fairly conventional lines, but it’s made with admirable conviction and clarity of purpose. Walk the Line’s script provides its actors a solid backbone, running from Cash’s rural roots during which he became forever scarred with guilt and grief over his older brother’s death, to his stardom in the 50s and 60s as a maverick country music/rock ‘n’ roll singer/songwriter melding streetwise and inspirational lyricism.

As for the leads Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon, their immersion into their roles is mesmerizing. Witherspoon as June Carter is a marvel to watch; she doesn’t miss a beat, so to speak, in every moment of her performance. Her scenes performing on stage with Phoenix’s Johnny Cash are all brilliant. I found the chemistry between the two electric throughout — this is critical to our experience of what is, at heart, a love story.

Mangold uses shorthand pop psychology to anchor his characterization of Cash — a man constantly haunted by feelings of inferiority, inflicted upon him by his father (Patrick) in the wake of his brother’s tragic death. As pat as this seems, it’s still effective in anchoring the Cash we see here — a brilliant talent constantly sabotaging his own success with destructive behavior involving drugs and boozing. June Carter, then, becomes his muse, his redemption, the angel who saves him from a miserable first marriage, his devastated self-esteem vis-à-vis his father, and restores his faith in himself. More than a tribute to Cash himself, Walk the Line is a wonderful affirmation of love, of finding your soul mate, and of Cash’s spiritual strength which guided him through some bleak existential terrain.

Terrific performances and a writer-director working completely in the service of sincere material make what could’ve been a by-the-numbers biopic into a consistently engaging journey. Impressive work.

Grade: A-

Directed by: James Mangold
Written by: Gill Dennis, James Mangold
Cast: Joaquin Phoenix, Reese Witherspoon, Ginnifer Goodwin, Robert Patrick, Dallas Roberts, Dan John Miller, Tyler Hilton

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