Directed by John Schlesinger (Midnight Cowboy)

Starring Dustin Hoffman, Lawrence Olivier, Roy Scheider, and William “Secretary of State from 24” Devane

Synopsis: “A graduate history student, Dustin Hoffman, is unwittingly caught in the middle of an international conspiracy involving his CIA agent brother (Scheider), and an exiled Nazi war criminal(Olivier).”

This movie is great. It’s a smart thriller with some really tense sequences, and complex interesting characters. The plot is quick moving and has plenty of surprises as the narrative twists and turns, but what really makes this movie compelling are the deeper running themes of guilt, blame, memory, and how these all play into dealing with trauma. While the Dr. Mengele-based character played by Olivier is the most over of these examples, the screenplay broadens that theme to relate more directly to American culture. For example, Hoffman’s grad student, Babe, is writing a paper on “Tyranny in American Politics” citing everything from the McCarthy Hearings (of which his father was a victim) to the establishment of Japanese internment camps during WWII. The fact that these broader themes are directly connected to the characters and American culture at large, really enriches what may otherwise have been just another cheap thriller. As a reference of a more recent movie to do this successfully, see Spike Lee’s Inside Man.

I don’t think I need to even mention it, but the cast is amazing. I mean just look at it. I guess if i have to elaborate, Olivier is effectively creepy, and Dustin Hoffman does an awesome job gradually bringing Babe from every-man to action-man in a believable way.

Standout sequences: Olivier’s Ex-Nazi walking through the very “Jewish” Diamond District in Manhattan and one excruciatingly tense scene that probably developed a generation of anti-dentites.

Awesome 70s movie. Watch it at some point.

Directed by Michael Cimino (Deer Hunter, Heaven’s Gate)

Written by Cimino and Oliver Stone (lots of good stuff)

Starring Mickey Rourke, John Lone (Ricky Tan from Rush Hour 2), Raymond J. Barry (from one of my first reviews)

Synopsis: “Joey Tai becomes the head of the Chinese mafia in New York using unprecedented degrees of violence. Stanley White, the most decorated cop in New York (and racist Vietnam Vet), is put in charge of cleaning up Chinatown.”

I am automatically interested in any movie Michael Cimino makes, despite any stigma he may have in some circles (see my earlier Heaven’s Gate review). Also as anyone who knows me is well aware, I love Oliver Stone. So this was an easy sell for me. Because of both of these things, I’ve always been curious about this movie. It also seemed to complement yesterday’s film, The Yakuza, this one looking at the Chinese mafia, or Triads, in New York City, and that one the Japanese mafia in Japan.

Year of the Dragon is a good movie. It’s not a masterpiece. It’s not even great. But it’s good. Unlike Cimino’s other films that I’ve seen this one doesn’t meander much. It starts with a bang and moves with a rapid pace pretty steadily after that. Its hyper-violent and loud for the most part… well as much as you would expect a gangster film to be. many elements, including Mickey Rourke’s performance, is pretty over the top, but I quite enjoyed it.

In comparison to The Yakuza, Dragon’s Triads (Joey Tai’s young punks) are not represented as noble soldiers with a code, but rather as reckless, impulsive and dangerous. The difference may be the cultural touchstones that the “white” protagonists are viewing these people through. Yakuza’s Kilmer was looking back to WWII and his time in Japan during the occupation. A Japan that we defeated, and who fought in this more traditional war. Stanley White sees all asians as one corrupt group colored vividly by his service in Vietnam. The fact that these are Chinese people, not Vietnamese makes no difference to him, mostly because this movie isn’t really about them. Whereas Yakuza was about The Yakuza, Year of the Dragon is about White (Subtle name choice by the way… Thanks Michael and Oliver).

Anyways… its an interesting movie, and I think definitely worth a watch.

Directed by Sydney Pollock (The Firm, Tootsie, Out of Africa, Sabrina-1995)

Written by Robert Towne (Chinatown, Mission: Impossible, The Last Detail) and Paul Schrader (Taxi Driver, Raging Bull)

Starring Robert Mitchum, James Shigeta (Joseph Takagi from Die Hard)

Synopsis: “Harry Kilmer returns to Japan after several years in order to rescue his friend George’s kidnapped daughter - and ends up on the wrong side of the Yakuza, the notorious Japanese mafia…”

I found myself slightly bored for the first half of this movie, but I think my expectations were slightly askew. I had never heard of this movie or spoken to anyone who has seen it, but from the synopsis I was expecting more of a taut, violent thriller, when in reality the first hour is more of a crime drama, emphasis on the drama. Also, personally I found Robert Mitchum’s performance a bit wooden, or at least half-hearted, which did little to sell the drama for me. Eventually though I was pulled in, and the slower, more deliberately paced start actually made the brief, sudden bursts of violence more effective. These intense moments of action eventually gain momentum and lead to two really awesome set pieces in the final third of the movie.

The kidnapping plot is really just a window into the world of Yakuza culture, which is the real focus of this movie. The juxtaposition of a western perspective with these foreign notions of “honor” and “duty,” as well as the post-WWII Japan setting actually provide the story with a weight and thematic resonance that sets this film apart. It’s not just an average crime movie.

I thought Sydney Pollock’s direction was great too. There is something very deliberate and precise about every camera move and angle. Its cinematic. Like all the different elements (framing, movement, editing, music, etc.) add up to more than just the sum of their parts. I don’t know how to describe it. But I really like that.

Overall…

RENT IT, or stream it instantly on netflix.

Directed by David Cronenberg (The Fly, Videodrome, A History of Violence, Eastern Promises, etc.)

Starring Christopher Walken, Tom Skerrit, and Martin Sheen

Synopsis: “Teacher Johnny Smith gets in a horrible accident which forces him into a coma for five years. Once Johnny wakes up, he discovers he has the ability to read a person’s life just by making physical contact with them. When the local police find out about Johnny’s “powers”, they bring him in on a murder case. Soon Johnny’s abilities gets him into more trouble then he may be able to handle.

Based on a Stephen King short story and shot in and around Niagara-on-lake by Canadian filmmaker David Cronenberg, this movie is a pretty enjoyable supernatural thriller. Very Twilight Zone-y, in a good way. One thing I really liked is how unselfconsciously the psychic premonition sequences are presented. Once I allowed myself to buy into the story, these sequences rarely seemed silly or over-the-top, which I found really impressive (since that sort of thing is so cliched usually).

Christopher Walken is great. He was still in the “actual acting” phase of his career, and is awesome here. Martin Sheen does an amazing job as well as a smooth talking Politician too.

Also there is this old SNL sketch where Christopher Walken spoofs this movie, which is hilarious.

Rent It.

Directed by Robert Altman

Starring Elliot Gould, Sterling Hayden

Synopsis: “Detective Philip Marlowe tries to help a friend who is accused of murdering his wife. Adapted from the Raymond Chandler book.”

-70s Elliot Gould Round 2-

Great movie. Elliot Gould plays the same character that had been immortalized by Humphrey Bogart decades earlier, and he does an amazing job. Thats two for two for Gould in my book. Everything about the movie just puts a really interesting spin on this classic Hollywood genre. I’m actually not exactly sure what kind of analysis to bring to the movie so all that I will say is that I really enjoyed watching it. Well that and that it was particularly interesting to see Altman bring his visual and formal sensibilities to a classic genre like the film-noir detective story.

Rent It

*Above is the original poster to release the film, but the studio soon realized that it was somewhat misleading as to the actual tone of the film. So they commissioned an artist from Mad Magazine to make this poster:

Directed by Robert Altman

Starring Elliot Gould and George Segal

Synopsis: “Bill Denny (George Segal) and Charlie Walters (Elliot Gould) are two compulsive gamblers with nothing in common except incredibly bad luck. But after a chance meeting in a Los Angeles card parlor, they find that they make an unbeatable team.”

I had never heard of this movie before, but when I saw it available on my instant download, I was curious. Primarily because I’ll see anything by Robert Altman (though I’ve seen few of his movies, the ones I have seen are consistently interesting and insightful, and usually funny). Secondly, I’ve always been curious of the time period when Elliot Gould was a leading man. Nowadays we only see him turn up in the Ocean’s movies and Friends reruns, but I’ve always been aware that at one point he was a “big name” in movies, though I’d never seen evidence of it (including having never seen Altman’s other classics with Gould in them, The Long Goodbye and MASH).

I liked it. It definitely has that raw, experimental, ’70s feel in the dialogue, perfomance style and overall look of the film. It’s not a traditionally structured narrative. It’s never quite clear where the characters are going, or why they’re doing what they’re doing, and this can be frustrating, but, overall, this makes the story even more interesting. Watching these characters, listening to them speak, and seeing how they interact with each other; the way its portrayed really paints these characters as real, complex people. Often they prove to be deeply-flawed people, but interesting people, nonetheless. And I think its the actor’s that really make this work. The chemistry between the leads is strong, and it made me want to see what was coming next.

In another bit of trivia, a young Steven Spielberg had a big hand in developing the script, and he was planning to direct it himself with Steve McQueen in the lead, but eventually moved on to direct Sugarland Express instead. The finished film is so different from the rest of his work, it’s almost hard to imagine what his version would’ve looked like.

Anyways, back to Elliot Gould. He’s great. I’m still not sure why he’s not around more these days, but I’d like to see more of him. I’ve moved The Long Goodbye to the top of my queue so hopefully I’ll get back with a review of that soon.

Rent it Especially if you’re an Altman fan.

Wait a second… Steve has a blog?

Written and Directed by Tony Gilroy (wrote Bourne movies, Devil’s Advocate, wrote and directed Michael Clayton, and most importantly, his first writing credit is actually the hockey/figure skating crossover, The Cutting Edge)

Starring Clive Owen and Julia Roberts

Plot Synopsis: ” A pair of corporate spies who share a steamy past hook up to pull off the ultimate con job on their respective bosses.”

I think Clive Owen is pretty awesome, and Julia Roberts is pretty obnoxious, so I guess I had a 50-50 shot at liking this movie. I guess its fitting that I feel pretty ambiguously about the film in general. What I can say is that it is ambitious in a lot of ways. What Gilroy is attempting to do here is make an lightly comedic, romantic, spy thriller with a classical Hollywood, adult-oriented tone. Though I wouldn’t deem it an unqualified success, there are some things that make the movie worth watching:

-Some of the supporting performances are good, especially Paul Giamatti and Tom McCarthy (better known as the weasely reporter from the last season of The Wire). -A few very well paced scenes of suspense -Often gives a pretty interesting view into corporate espionage (though this is something that I suspect Steven Soderberg’s The Informant will do in a much more interesting way)

Overall, for a movie that was trying to be this quirky, smart, and appealing, Duplicity is pretty dull. I guess for me, the movie’s main problem is that the romance aspect of the movie does not work (and not just because of Julia Roberts). In my opinion, the movie spends so much time attempting to throw the audience’s expectations off that they are never really given anything to hang onto in terms of emotional investment. And I’m not saying the film is sloppily put together or anything. I can see what he’s trying to do, and I can understand that by withholding the motivations of the two main characters, Gilroy is trying to demonstrate the potential “trust” issues that two spies in a romantic relationship would have, but I’m pretty sure this is what prevents the film from being completely emotionally satisfying as well.

Then again, I can understand that he’s making this film for the savvy filmgoer. Nowadays, since everything has been done, it’s not enough for a genre film to be a well told story. Now everything has to be super-complicated or people get upset for some reason. Unfortunately this film may have veered too far into complicated category. Not too complicated to understand, but just not the most entertaining viewing experience. I like Tony Gilroy usually, and I think that this is a smart film in a lot of ways, but overall it just doesn’t work for me.

Meh.

Directed by Sam Mendes (American Beauty, Road to Perdition, Jarhead)

Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet and Kathy Bates (Titanic reunion!)

IMDB Plot: “A young couple living in a Connecticut suburb during the mid-1950s struggle to come to terms with their personal problems while trying to raise their two children.”

Before its release this movie had a ton of awards buzz, but as soon as it came out it disappeared without much funfare. I remember reading a few reviews that dismissed the movie as overly depressing, and asserted that the story simply harped on old tropes  that have already been in explored in movie after movie without really adding any new insight. I disagree with these criticisms.

Whether the film is covering familiar ground or not, I really enjoyed it. I’ll admit that the characters are mostly just miserable people who feel trapped in this dull, soul-sucking representation of suburbia, but it’s the experience of watching how these characters interact, why they feel trapped, and what, if anything, they are trying to do to get out is what makes the film interesting. For me, the most brilliant part, and the character that makes the entire film work is John Givings, played brilliantly by Michael Shannon (who was the only member of the cast to recieve an oscar nomination for his work in the film).

Shannon plays a character who exists outside of the world that Leo and Kate are trying to escape from, or at least he is not bound by the same rules. Givings, the son of Kathy Bates’ character, is a man who was once a respected member of the community, but recently has spent time in and out of mental institutions where he has been subjected to the destructive practice of shock therapy. Essentially, he no longer feels the need to be “polite.” He’s not afraid to question why, when every one else in the story is. Givings shows up every once in a while throughout the narrative, and whenever he does he plays devil’s advocate to Leo and Kate’s troubled husband and wife by asking the questions and pointing out the contradictions that others are too polite, too afraid, or too blinded to point out.  He calls the characters out, and really cuts through the nonsense, forcing them to get to the heart of the matter. He is the catalyst that really keeps the film moving.

As dark as the subject material and plot points may be, if you approach the film intellectually, I think it is really very rewarding. Though its certainly not the most entertaining or uplifting film of the year.

Rent It if you feel like actually “thinking” about the movie you’re watching. I’ll also say, this is much better than The Reader.

Directed by Ed Zwick (Glory, The Siege, The Last Samurai, Blood Diamond)

Starring Daniel Craig, Liev Schreiber, Jamie “Billy Elliot” Bell

Synopsis: “Jewish brothers in Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe escape into the Belarussian forests, where they join Russian resistance fighters and endeavor to build a village in order to protect themselves and about 1,000 Jewish non-combatants.”

Very entertaining and enjoyable viewing experience. Not the usual description of a film that takes place during the holocaust. I guess I would say that most holocaust films end up being unbearably depressing because any sense of hope or optimism is crushed under the weight of the philisophical and emotional quandaries brought on by the unfathomable evil at the heart of such a concept. Defiance did not follow this trend. This film, instead, focuses on the story of these three brothers and what they did to help the people that they could, while avoiding, though not ignoring, the wider attrocities of the time. Looking at the holocaust from hindsight is something that we have trouble with because we are attempting to “understand” what led to it and why, while this film shows that people at the time could not be bogged down by such notions, whether they knew the full extent of Nazi intentions or not, because their main concern was survival.

The thing that I like most about the film is that the brothers are not “canonized” in their portrayal. Sure, you are rooting for them all along, and they are certainly heros, but they aren’t absolutely benevolent and marked with ridiculous conviction of their moral duty. Instead they are shown as confused, vulnerable, and deeply flawed people who are simply doing everything within their means to survive (though they do sometimes sacrifice great opportunities to take the moral higher ground, which I think is not a stretch).

My only complaint is that the beginning of the story seems truncated. The film begins en media res (I think thats the term), and as a result we are never given a sense of what their lives were like before the war. While you do not need this information to understand the story (since we all know that Nazis are bad. Duh.), I would have enjoyed a few scenes to explore the dynamic between “collaborators,” who helped the Nazi’s, with the local Jews in the community before the Nazis came and sparked everything off. I just feel that including those scenes would have completed the viewer’s emotional experience in which we could follow the trajectory of the characters from the beginning of their story, rather than being thrown into the middle of things.

Overall, great.

Definitely Rent It. maybe even buy it.

Directed by Brian De Palma (Mission: Impossible, The Untouchables, Carrie, Scarface, Mission to Mars)

Starring John Lithgow

I know I haven’t reviewed in awhile, and I realized that I would have to either quit my job or watch fewer movies to review them all, so to compromise I decided to stay at my job and simply not review all of the movies that I watch.

This movie was really entertaining. I was told about it several months ago by a stranger at a bar who overheard that I had just gone to see All Of My Sons on Broadway, which at the time was starring John Lithgow (JJ and I obviously went to see it since we are such big Third Rock fans, and we fittingly refer to it as Third Rock From All My Sons most of the time). Anyways so this Wayne guy told me that if I was a John Lithgow fan then I had to see this movie, and I now know what he meant. Lithgow, who plays a person suffering from multiple personality disorder, as up to four distinct characters to play throughout the film. Often characters in conversation with eachother. I have to say he did a great job here.

I don’t want to give too much more of the story away because, other than Lithgow’s performance, the best part of the movie is the twists and turns of the plot and the Hitchcockian suspense that De Palma builds.*Note: I reject any claims of pretensiousness aimed at my use of the term “Hitchcockian”, because several sequences of the film are lifted directly from Psycho.

The one other part of the movie that impressed me is the way that DePalma directs dreams, hallucinations, and reality without any stylistic choices distinguishing between the three, often using devices that traditionally denote a sequence as fantasy to manipulate the viewers expectations and leave them questioning what is real and what is not. Of course, as Scorsese says (and I’m paraphrasing), “Fantasy is often more real than reality.” Essentially he is saying why shoot reality and fantasy differently when the characters experiencing these things cannot tell the difference themselves. (I also discussed this in my King of Comedy entry)

Rent It. This is definitely one of the “good” De Palma movies, not one of the Mission To Mars/Black Dhalia De Palmas.