The Stop Button

A Good Lawyer’s Wife is beautifully directed. Im shot it Super 35 (full frame, then cropping it down to 2.35:1) and he uses a lot of steadicam, creating these fragile, exquisite compositions. Usually when I kick off with a description of the excellent technical filmmaking, it isn’t a particularly good sign. This one is no different. For all the beauty of Im’s direction, his excellent cinematographer and composer, his script is something of a fiasco. It’s supposed to be either a family drama or an unhappy wife drama and at least fails at the former, without really qualifying for the latter. Moon So-ri is an discontent married young woman, who loves her son (there’s a whole time waster about him being adopted, which isn’t important except as another time waster from Im, who loves them), has an unfaithful husband, an unfaithful mother-in-law (look, another time waster) and an ailing (and great) father-in-law. Eventually, she starts a inappropriate friendship with the teenage boy next door (who’s been spying on her). Playing the teenage boy, Bong Tae-gyu is playing a character six years younger than he is and, really, when they fix Moon up, they look about the same age. The discrepancy cuts into the shock value quite a bit.

Im uses all the infidelity to fill time, further trying to mask the melodrama’s weak plot with explicitness. He tries to inflate a big show and, until the whole thing falls apart in the third act, his technical ability does keep it aloft. As the husband, Hwang Jeong-min is great… but he doesn’t have a character. Im gives him some character in the middle of the second act (and a wonderful excuse, he’s a jerk because his mother’s a shrill, awful woman–though Im then goes on to try to redeem her a little), but since he’s the only interesting character in the film, it’s way too little, way too late. When Im breaks the movie, hitting the tree with the melodrama stick until an ending drops from the branch, he makes his open invalid. A Good Lawyer’s Wife has no backstory, the viewer gets almost nothing of the ground situation. For instance, why Hwang is unfaithful is never explained, nor is it even hinted at. Why he and Moon married in the first place, since she doesn’t like him. The list goes on and on, not really mattering because Im’s storytelling is rather lyrical. Kind of boring, quite cheap, but nice to look at, and well-acted. Until he flips the movie over (in a wonderfully unexpected turn of events, not going off the melodramatic orange sunset wash of the inciting scene). Then the end doesn’t work without a real beginning (because nothing’s happened in between).

Im tacks a dumb, but slightly saving, epilogue on the movie, then proceeds to screw it up even more, letting the music get out of hand. Lots of A Good Lawyer’s Wife plays like a comedy (the beauty of Korean cinema is its general freedom from genre) and Im goes back for it at the end, but it’s exceptionally inappropriate… and maybe even makes the husband more sympathetic than the wife. But it looks wonderful.

CREDITS

Written and directed by Im Sang-soo; director of photography, Kim Woo-hyung; edited by Lee Eun Soo; music by Kim Hong-jib; produced by Shin Bo-kyeong, Shin Chul and Sim Jae Myeong; released by Chungeorahm Film.

Starring Moon So-ri (Ho-jeong), Hwang Jeong-min (Young-jak), Bong Tae-gyu (Ji-woon), Yun Yeo-jong (Byeong-han), Baek Jeong-rim (Yeon), Jang Jun-young (Sooin) and Kim In-mun (Chang-geun).

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The Big Fix is a fundamentally different detective movie. While there are some elements updating it to time period, a lot of it is still a detective investigating in LA, meeting all sorts of people all around town and so on. It’s still Raymond Chandler to some degree–with Dreyfuss playing his (marginally) goofy, but caring standard and the setting changing from film noir to plastique (the exploration of America post-1960s) but the film makes an even severer change. Richard Dreyfuss’s detective is not defined by being a detective, the genre norm. Instead, Dreyfuss is a guy who happens to be a detective and finds himself in this whole mess, but the character’s truest moments are when he’s with his kids, when he’s trying not to fight with his ex-wife, when he’s getting excited about a date. These are not detective movie norms.

The big mystery is sufficiently convoluted enough for the genre. It’s a little simpler then Chandler–and the anti-establishment air of Chandler is present here, sort of finally finding the perfect fit of tone and setting–but it’s a good mystery. The ending, even if some of the details are perceivable, is a surprise. But the ending–the mystery’s ending, the supposed a-plot’s ending–is lackluster. It’s quiet and subdued, something Dreyfuss rarely is during the film. Then the close comes and the close is where The Big Fix becomes something else entirely. There were the moments throughout where it broke from the genre, but it always got back on track with a car chase or a gun cleaning. The close erupts from genre constraints and then, once it’s genre-less, takes it a little higher. Kagan–who I’ve never heard of before this film–closes off the mystery and the film on an appropriately humorous plane… but then he does something else, something I never would have seen coming. It’s kind of forward, but only in its simplicity. For a detective movie, with the comedy, with the socially relevant updating, it’s stunning. Kagan just lets the viewer see the characters for a bit, totally free of story or character establishing. It’s beautiful.

The acting in the film is generally excellent. Dreyfuss is bombastic when he needs to be and touching when he needs to be, it’s one of his most sure-footed performances and he’s great. He plays it with a fortified vulnerability. Susan Anspach and John Lithgow are both okay, effective at times, not so much at others. Bonnie Bedelia is great as Dreyfuss’s ex-wife. The second tier supporting cast, Ron Rifkin as Bedelia’s boyfriend and F. Murray Abraham, are fantastic. Abraham’s performance is unexpected; it’s so long before he nosedived, he still has enthusiasm and, given his character’s one of the plot’s enigmas, he surpasses expectation. Rita Karin is also particularly wonderful as Dreyfuss’s senior center revolutionary.

The Big Fix is important for a couple reasons. First (and easier), it’s about the aftereffects of the 1960s, an important period consigned to–and not even anymore–big network miniseries. It occurred to me, watching the film, even with all the film footage from the period, all the books, it’s going to be forgotten… even though the protestors’ billboards say a lot of the same things as, well, the banners on liberal blogs today and the politicians are still talking about identity cards. The second and more important thing is, obviously, that genre-bust at the end. The Big Fix isn’t out on DVD anywhere. It never even came out widescreen on laserdisc. It’s forgotten and it shouldn’t be.

CREDITS

Directed by Jeremy Kagan; screenplay by Roger L. Simon, based on his novel; director of photography, Frank Stanley; edited by Patrick Kennedy; music by Bill Conti; production designer, Robert F. Boyle; produced by Carl Borack and Richard Dreyfuss; released by Universal Pictures.

Starring Richard Dreyfuss (Moses Wine), Susan Anspach (Lila Shay), Bonnie Bedelia (Suzanne), John Lithgow (Sam Sebastian), Ofelia Medina (Alora), Nicolas Coster (Spitzer), F. Murray Abraham (Eppis), Fritz Weaver (Oscar Procari Sr.), Jorge Cervera Jr. (Jorge), Michael Hershewe (Jacob), Rita Karin (Aunt Sonya) and Ron Rifkin (Randy).

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The Uninvited is a technically a horror movie, I suppose. There are ghosts and all. With the exception of the protagonist finding a kindred spirit–and her seeing ghosts too–the whole thing could work as a drama about trauma. In fact, as a drama, it would work well. During the movie, when the inevitable dumb horror movie ending is far, far away, it’s quite good. It’s a quiet drama about wounded people who don’t necessarily get better from finding other wounded people or finding out what wounded them in the first place. It’s a boring, cheerless drama. And it does run long–over two hours–which explains why there’s time to introduce the second main character, the psychic, played by Jun Ji-hyun, after a lot of establishing of the protagonist.

There’s a lot of good acting in the movie–Yu Seon as the confused fiancée (that Uninvited cheats her of being a real character is one of the biggest red flags) is particularly good. The problem with the leads are the constant backstory surprises. Park Shin-yang, playing the main character, experiences a traumatic event during the main titles and suffers from aftereffects. Through contrivance, Jun comes into his life and, because her backstory is so much more interesting, the movie loses all interest in Park’s trauma. It even gives him a deeper, more historical trauma, just so it can involve Jun. At this point, Yu sort of disappears, popping back in every once in a while to remind the viewer Park was, at one point, an important character in the movie. The big traumas at the end, which lead to the “surprise” horror movie ending (surprise is in quotations because it’s really just a standard, stupid horror movie ending), don’t make much sense and aren’t insurmountably traumatic.

One of the interesting things about The Uninvited–the direction is okay, but there’s rarely anything spectacular or compelling–is the place of Christianity in the characters’ lives. Yu’s got a great monologue about praying and a fantastic observation about people leaving church. And the movie certainly suggests religion is going to play a part in the resolution… but it does not. Not at all. The movie even misplaces a baby, it gets so wrapped up in itself.

Park’s got a few good scenes, particularly at the beginning when he’s the focus. Then there’s the twenty minutes the film plays like a mystery and he’s investigating. Those scenes work too. But at the end, when he’s a wreck, Park’s lost… the character’s actions make no sense and Park’s not a good enough actor to make them palatable. Jun’s character’s even worse, a grieving mother abandoned by the script. Lee’s more interested in giving the viewer a surprise than a considered look at grief, which is too bad. Jun, as an actress, is suited for the latter and doesn’t do at all well with the former (as evidenced by the long-shots towards the end).

For so much of the two plus hours, The Uninvited is a good, genre-busting drama. Only at the end does it become a bad horror film. There’s five or six minutes, in the third act, when the movie’s racing downhill I had a chance to get upset about… but the ending’s so dumb, I’m not even upset writer-director Lee ruined the good parts.

CREDITS

Written and directed by Lee Soon-youn; director of photography, Jo Yeong-guy; edited by Kyeong Min-ho; music by Jang Yeong-gyu; produced by Oh Jang-wang and Jung Hoon-tak; released by CJ Entertainment.

Starring Park Shin-yang (Jeong-won), Jun Ji-hyun (Yeon), Yu Seon (Hee-eun), Jeong Ok , Lee Ju-shil and Kim Yeo-jin.

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Al Pacino has reached the point William Forsythe has supporting roles in his movies. That facet just about sums up 88 Minutes, which would have been a great late 1990s Dimension movie, maybe even with Pacino, and all those young actors Miramax had on call (I’m thinking it would have been most effective with Neve Campbell in the Alicia Witt role, throw a young Josh Hartnett in Benjamin McKenzie’s role, hey, there’s even room for Skeet Ulrich). As a late 2000s movie, however, it’s real silly. It’s Pacino in a real time thriller–shot in Vancouver, which does a fine Seattle impression; it’s depressing. As a thriller, it’s okay… it never gives the viewer enough information to spoil the conclusion, so it’s somewhat surprising.

It’s also very cheap. Not just because it shot in Canada, but because lots of the scenes are set-based and dialogue heavy. It’s not exactly real time, it cheats a little, so tightening up the dialogue wouldn’t have been a bad idea. Gary Scott Thompson is a bad writer and the dialogue and plot resemble a TV episode from the 1980s. It’s not terrible though, because Pacino runs with what he can. His character is problematic–he doesn’t really have a story or a subtext, the womanizer bit plays more on Pacino’s image than anything else–and the movie avoids becoming a real movie about psychiatrists who sell their testimony. Pacino’s sort of a maverick cop psychiatrist also–he can handle a gun, he lectures state’s attorneys–watching it, one imagines Avnet told him to “do the Heat thing,” but quieter. There’s nothing to the character or any of his relationships. It’s a narrative only because it’s Pacino. He fools the viewer into caring when the script is actually failing.

The supporting cast is so-so. Amy Brenneman is pretty good as Pacino’s assistant, as is Deborah Kara Unger as his boss. Leelee Sobieski (Rose McGowan in the Miramax version?) is bad, kind of goofy really. As the bad guy, Neal McDonough is lousy. Alicia Witt holds her own during some of it, not during other parts. Forsythe is Forsythe playing an FBI agent.

88 Minutes could have been–I realized as Pacino runs across a deserted campus (deserted campuses are cheaper to shoot on, I imagine, even in Canada)–a decent academic thriller, juxtaposing Pacino’s role as an educator with his testifying for cash. There’s no sensitivity to the movie, which I guess was heading straight to video until recently (it wrapped in late 2005). It’s a fine enough serial killer programmer (good ones are extraordinary exceptions), but it’s Al Pacino. He shouldn’t have to do movies like this one.

CREDITS

Directed by Jon Avnet; written by Gary Scott Thompson; director of photography, Denis Lenoir; edited by Larry Webster; music by Ed Shearmur; production designer, Tracey Gallacher; produced by Avnet, Thompson, Randell Emmett, Michael P. Flannigan, George Furl and Avi Lerner; released by Tri-Star Pictures.

Starring Al Pacino (Dr. Jack Gramm), Alicia Witt (Kim Cummings), Leelee Sobieski (Lauren Douglas), Amy Brenneman (Shelly Barnes), William Forsythe (Special Agent Frank Parks), Deborah Kara Unger (Carol Johnson), Benjamin McKenzie (Mike Stempt), Neal McDonough (Jon Forster), Leah Cairns (Sara Pollard) and Stephen Moyer (Guy LaForge).

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I wonder who came up with the title Street Kings, as it has nothing to do with the film’s actual content. I didn’t realize Fox Searchlight had a dimwit exec in charge of re-titling movies. Silly me. The original title, The Night Watchman, actually makes sense (especially since the movie appears to be shot with the title in mind, with Keanu Reeves watching the sunset a few times throughout, waiting to get to work).

Before I get to the good, I need to get through the bad. David Ayer, apparently pissed off he didn’t get to work on the script (or at least, a credited amount), sort of directs against the script. The first act of the script has very blunt, very hackneyed dialogue. Ayer could have directed around it but doesn’t. He plays it straight and it doesn’t work. I mean, Ayer has the greatest gift–Keanu Reeves playing a dumb guy who can get away saying these lines and still, he messes it up. Ayer’s not a good director, but I didn’t expect him to sabotage his own first act (he gets a lot better the rest of the movie). He’s got an irritating swooping camera move he does once every couple minutes. It’s bad. The other bad stuff–because there’s a lot of mediocre work here and it’s fine–seems to be when he’s aping Michael Mann. There are a couple techniques from Miami Vice and about a hundred from Heat here.

The rest of the bad is mostly Amaury Nolasco in one of the supporting roles. He’s atrocious.

Street Kings greatest success is two-fold in regards to James Ellroy. First, he managed to modernize his standard of the dumb cop who wises up. Here, it’s Keanu Reeves and he never wises up too much (he’s always a blunt instrument) and it works wonders. Second, he’s managed to get in an utterly depressing ending. Street Kings is, at its core, a depressing story about a dumb guy who wises up and learns ignorance might be bliss–kind of a story better titled The Night Watchman.

Most of the acting is excellent. Forest Whitaker doesn’t do anything fantastic, but he’s very sturdy and quite good. Hugh Laurie’s okay, but his character has a handful of quirts straight from “House.” Chris Evans is, no shock, excellent. Once he and Reeves partner up, the movie starts toward its higher plane. For the most part, Jay Mohr, John Corbett, Terry Crews and Naomie Harris are wasted. Harris is so underutilized, I didn’t even realize it was her until I read the credits.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen Reeves carry a movie this well before–there’s a great scene when the dirty cops are bragging how easy it was to get it all over on him–and, title and director aside, Street Kings works fairly well.

CREDITS

Directed by David Ayer; written by James Ellroy, Kurt Wimmer and Jamie Moss, based on a story by Ellroy; director of photography, Gabriel Beristain; edited by Jeffrey Ford; music by Graeme Revell; production designer, Alec Hammond; produced by Lucas Foster, Alexandra Milchan and Erwin Stoff; released by Fox Searchlight Pictures.

Starring Keanu Reeves (Detective Tom Ludlow), Forest Whitaker (Capt. Jack Wander), Hugh Laurie (Capt. James Biggs), Chris Evans (Detective Paul Diskant), Martha Higareda (Grace Garcia), Naomie Harris (Linda Washington), Jay Mohr (Sgt. Mike Clady), John Corbett (Detective Dante Demille), Amaury Nolasco (Detective Cosmo Santos), Terry Crews (Detective Terrence Washington), Cedric the Entertainer (Scribble), Common (Coates) and the Game (Grill).

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It’s hard to intelligently describe Smart People because the best way to describe it is quite simple. It’s a bunch of movie trailers for quirky family dramatic comedies strung together. Not five minutes goes by without two montages to songs (I’m shocked the soundtrack CD wasn’t available in the lobby) and one instrumental. There are no scenes in the whole movie, just snippets. Half scenes, missing their beginning and ending.

I thought, at the beginning, director Murro was just doing a–by now, very familiar–indie introduction to his characters with the montages. He wasn’t. He was just making the movie. Murro is a bad director, but in interesting ways at least. He doesn’t do establishing shots, he doesn’t understand headroom, nor does he account for interior dimensions. If it weren’t for one interesting shot (Dennis Quaid turning and pointing left while on the right side of a Panavision frame), I’d call him all together atrocious.

As for the writer, I really can’t tell. It’s possible Mark Poirier wrote a decent movie and it got cut to shreds in post-production. Or maybe he did write this one, which Murro ruined. Same script, all instrumental–well-scored–sometimes drowning out dialogue and fifteen or twenty minutes shorter, Smart People would have really been a quirky movie, instead of a packaged attempt at an indie crossover success.

And it’s pretty obvious the filmmakers aren’t very smart themselves. It’s in their handling of the material and, after some amusing scenes, it gets mildly offensive. But then–and here’s where I’ll shock myself typing it–Sarah Jessica Parker shows up. She gives the best performance in the film. Had the movie been about her–like it was for ten or fifteen minutes of montages (so figure around forty-five montages)–and the weird family she encounters, it would have been a screwy “Addams Family” knockoff. But it isn’t. Her performance, however, is excellent.

Second best is Thomas Haden Church, because he’s a supporting character and the fact the script doesn’t give him a character doesn’t matter so much. It really hurts Dennis Quaid, who–at times–can be seen to be acting, but to no real purpose. He and Parker have some chemistry though.

Ellen Page is one-note. Look, she’s an acerbic bitch. Ha. Funny. Not at all impressive by her.

Unfortunately, the movie manages to get worse as it closes, since it dismisses three of its four plot threads. It doesn’t forget them, it just makes them all better so the movie can end. Wait, no. Four of five, I forgot the last scene.

CREDITS

Directed by Noam Murro; written by Mark Poirier; director of photography, Toby Irwin; edited by Robert Frazen and Yana Gorskaya; music by Nuno Bettencourt; production designer, Patti Podesta; produced by Bridget Johnson, Michael Costigan, Michael London and Bruna Papandrea; released by Miramax Films.

Starring Dennis Quaid (Lawrence), Sarah Jessica Parker (Janet), Thomas Haden Church (Chuck), Ellen Page (Vanessa), Ashton Holmes (James), Christine Lahti (Nancy), David Denman (William) and Camille Mana (Missy).

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Two major things about Soderbergh’s approach to a memoir adaptation. They’re somewhat connected, so I might not manage to separate them out. King of the Hill has no frame, it has no narration. It has no context. It does not feel, at all, like a “true” story because there’s no attempt to classify itself as a true story. It drops the viewer right in, gives he or she a subtitle notating the setting and time and nothing else. Soderbergh creates, at times, a stylistic euphoria–starts right at the beginning doing it even, maybe the third or fourth scene–and the approach makes King of the Hill different. Even though it’s based on a memoir, by never involving “reality,” Soderbergh makes the plot’s conclusion unsure. Anything could happen.

As innocuous as the story might sometimes get–since Jesse Bradford’s protagonist is so self-sufficient it’s hard to remember he’s thirteen–Soderbergh infuses the film with a constant danger. Sometimes the danger is age-appropriate, sometimes it’s a lot bigger. Around the midway point, I had to remind myself Soderbergh was not telling a story about his youth. I had to remind myself Soderbergh wasn’t alive during the film’s time period, it wasn’t based on his childhood–the film envelops the viewer. Soderbergh immediately establishes his characters and then everything else is experienced at Bradford’s pace. Characters enter and leave the story, with the entire story through Bradford’s perspective. The viewer occasionally gets other things, very brief glimpses from other character’s perspectives, but the whole show is Bradford, which might be why he’s never been able to follow it up.

The other performances are excellent too, with Adrien Brody in the film’s flashiest role. Soderbergh’s cinematic storytelling here is accomplished, there’s no other word. He incites the viewer to figure things out by a character’s presence, not to be cute, but because a successful King of the Hill viewer is a participatory viewer. It might by with the film did so terribly. Also good are Cameron Boyd as Bradford’s brother; Amber Benson as his friend–I find I’m not enumerating the adults as much, which is because of the way the film portrays them. It’s difficult to put them, having just watched the film, in an easy to discuss context. Spalding Gray is quite good in his small part as is Kristin Griffith in her two scenes.

The film’s character relationships are complicated and hard to unravel. Soderbergh manages moments of severe gravity with silence from the characters and Cliff Martinez’s delicate score. Martinez and Soderbergh seem to take some of the tone–and the music’s effect on the tone–from Badlands, which is an odd influence for a movie about a kid–King of the Hill is not a kid’s movie at all. It isn’t a feel good movie. It’s a sometimes unsettling film about survival and self-sufficience. Without ever using the word “depression,” Soderbergh has made one of the best films about the Great Depression.

It’s kind of like Maugham with kids (and in America and during the Great Depression).

CREDITS

Directed and edited by Steven Soderbergh; screenplay by Soderbergh, based on a memoir by A.E. Hotchner; director of photography, Elliot Davis; music by Cliff Martinez; production designer, Gary Frutkoff; produced by Albert Berger, Barbara Maltby and Ron Yerxa; released by Gramercy Pictures.

Starring Jesse Bradford (Aaron), Jeroen Krabbé (Mr. Kurlander), Lisa Eichhorn (Mrs. Kurlander), Karen Allen (Miss Mathey), Spalding Gray (Mr. Mungo), Elizabeth McGovern (Lydia), Cameron Boyd (Sullivan Kurlander), Adrien Brody (Lester Silverstone), Joe Chrest (Ben), John McConnell (’Big Butt’ Burns), Amber Benson (Ella McShane), Kristin Griffith (Mrs. McShane), Chris Samples (Billy Thompson), Peggy Freisen (Mrs. Thompson), Katherine Heigl (Christina Sebastian), John Durbin (Mr. Sandoz).

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