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I Am a Sex Addict
Directed by Caveh Zahedi
36 out of 100
Starting out as a seemingly tongue-in-cheeky essay-film cum mockumentary, Caveh Zahedi's ego-trip cutesiness begins to wear rather thin by the film's midpoint, and by the time we reach the preachy sugar-snap ending, all is far from well - although Caveh himself could not be happier.
Similar to Jonathan Caouette's Tarnation in implication as well as its preoccupation with some sort of ugly "I am a loser and you want to hear all about it" self-realization - if not actual tone (Zahedi does manage laughs at several points - especially his blow-jobbed facial scream that makes one think of an unmuted pornographic Harpo Marx) - I Am a Sex Addict rolls merrily along, slowly slipping from mildly entertaining think-piece to a twelve-stepped salvation on high kind of diatribe.
Zahedi, who has a handful of experimental shorts to his name (some clips of which can be braggadociosly spied variously throughout the film), wavers back and forth way too much for any coherent auteurism to shine its way through. In the end - which incidentally is filled to the rim with a redemptive nod and a catchpenny wink to the audience - all we are left with is a sour taste in our mouth, as if we were in the post-prostitute doldrums that Zahedi speaks of over and over in his film. A sad residuum of watching his film - which sucks you in at first with its amateur bravura - all the way through. [05/18/06]
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The Illusionist
Directed by Neil Burger
45 out of 100
Plausibly implausible, The Illusionist - which is being inexplicably praised by critics - never manages to get past page one of the by-the-book this-is-how-the-formula-works playbook. Even Ed Norton, who is always good no matter how poor the film may be (can everyone say "Death to Smoochy"?) gets stuck in the inevitable smooge that is this period piece-cum-love story.
Sure, Norton is a great actor and sure, Paul Giamatti is a great actor (we should probably just leave Miss Biel out of the equation for she is only good for about one thing on screen, and it sure ain't her thespianic skills), but even their performances (and Giamatti actually manages to steal most scenes from the where's-my-paycheck Norton) can not dig any deeper than the plodding obvious ham-handed film allows for. If you do not see this "twist" ending, with all its Keyser Soze round-up of pertinent yet obvious information, coming from about a proverbial mile away, then perhaps you should stop going to movies altogether.
In all, it is the aforementioned acting of Norton and Giamatti (everyone else merely seems out-to-lunch or so blatantly over-the-top to be laughable) that keeps this film afloat and saves it from becoming the disaster it would otherwise have become - much like another recent film from Brian De Palma. [09/21/06]
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Inside Man
Directed by Spike Lee (A Spike Lee Joint)
76 out of 100
After the uncharacteristic banality of Lee's last film, the seemingly gun-for-hire She Hate Me, Lee seems back in form with this tense - albeit somewhat obvious - bank heist thriller-cum-auteur show-offy soap box film - and I mean all that with the utmost respect and complimentary notions. Inside Man, with all its Hitchcockian macguffins and fast pans (a device Lee has used to great success in most of his films), pays serious homage to the master while simultaneously setting new ground throughout.
Led by a bruvara hoo-hah performance from Denzel Washington - perhaps not his greatest role, but surely the one he seems to be having the most fun with - Inside Man manages to stay electrified throughout its 130 minutes or so - even when we see the future coming well in advance. Brilliantly concieved (again, like Hitchcock, not a moment is wasted with unnecessary detail), Lee pulls off the film with his usual flair and then some. [08/14/06]
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The Last King of Scotland
Directed by Kevin Macdonald
44 out of 100
Adequate, if not rather ridiculous thriller. Highlighted by the bravura performance of the chameleonic Forest Whitaker as Ugandan despot Ida Amin. Of course, though adequate is a satisfactory enough adjective as any (and that may be too much praise indeed), the term thriller may be a bit misleading. Surely anyone with even the most rudimentary knowledge of Amin and the atrocities performed in his name for nine years as madman ruler of the newly de-colonized Uganda, to know what lurks around each mood swing and each darkened sweep of mood music.
Shown through the eyes of newly-oathed Scottish doctor Nicholas Garrigan, played with a smirky cocksureness by James MacAvoy, an amalgam of several different real-life white advisors to Amin, the whole film takes on a Western eye-view look at a distinctly African dilemma. We see the horror through a rich white man's perspective as over a million black bodies pile up. Perhaps not the most acute way of looking at things but it surely is the Hollywood (or at least mainstream) way of looking at things. Preposterous at times (Garrigan's inexplicable trist with Amin's wife) and ludicrous at many more (the ending may very well have been taken directly and unadulteratedly from the How-To-End-Your-Film-In-The-Most-Absurd-Way-Possible handbook), Macdonald's film plays too much at a faux grittiness and an even fauxer cheekiness and too little at delving into the guts of this tyranical leader.
Still a powerful perfomance by Whitaker as "The Last King of Scotland" (Amin was so enamored with Scotland that he would march his soldiers around in tartaned kilts and give his multitudes of children names such as Campbell and Mackenzie) is what nearly - nearly - saves this film from falling wayward into
the awkwardly derivative state of numerous prior white-man-meets-dark-imperialist political films. Adequate enough I suppose - at least adequate enough for what it wants to be - yet too full of itself to inspire any awe outside of Whitaker's manifestable Oscar-bait showing.
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Lemming
Directed by Dominik Moll
74 out of 100
"Oh honey, I'm home, and I'm bringing my boss and his deranged suicidal monster of a wife for dinner...oh yeah, and there's a mostly dead lemming clogging up the kitchen sink." This may not be the opening line of Dominik Moll's new film, but it does sum up how everything gets rolling. The "young model couple" invites the "old fart" couple over for dinner and, as the opening narration states, that is when everything goes sour.
Starring a pair of English-born actresses (both of whom are just as fluently at home in a French-speaking film such as Lemming) who share not only a first name but a hybridized chameleon-like prowess at any role (French or English) as we are lucky enough to see them in - both at the top of their game. The beautifully scurrilous Charlotte Rampling (next to be seen in Laurent Cantet's Heading South) plays the aforementioned boss's wife, the vituperative Alice Pollock, and the adorably Picasso-esque Charlotte Gainsbourg (next to be seen in the French/English/Spanish hybrid from Michel Gondry, The Science of Sleep) plays the "young model wife", Bénédicte Getty. These two women (as alluded to by the Persona-reminiscent poster) become interlocked in a psychological - even otherworldly, perhaps - struggle for dominance.
The twists and turns - perhaps rather ridiculous at times - are the very crux of this film, and further ado may spoil all that for the viewer, so I will leave it at that somewhat inductoray cliffhanger. I suppose I could delve into the obvious Hitchcockian aspects of the film - full of all its very own Macguffins - but instead, I will say just one final thing. See this film, if for nothing else, then for the performances of these two amazing actresses. [06/11/06]
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Lonesome Jim
Directed by Steve Buscemi
51 out of 100
There is a recurring theme in many independant films of the last few years (from Garden State to Jersey Girl to Elizabethtown to Buscemi's Lonesome Jim) whererin our hero - a usually dashing yet prone to failure type - finally decides he cannot hack it at his life and comes home, a beaten - yet still adorably pugnacious - slacker. Then of course one must toss in the obligatory cute girl to liven up his dreary life up (a role taken on by Liv Tyler twice in her last two films - both times playing the muse that must save the drowning heart of an Affleck brother) and voilà, you've got yourself a respectable - if not lackluster indie hit. Okay, Elizabethtown wasn't exactly indie, and Jersey Girl was about as far from a hit as one film can possibly get, but Garden State was cute - if not annoyingly so at times - and Lonesome Jim is at about that same level of quality - although instead of annoyingly cutsey, it plays as insufferably self-centered.
Okay, perhaps that is a being a bit harsh, after all Casey Affleck does his best with what he's got to work with (which happens to be a sub par scenario'd script acting as ad hoc autobiography for its author) and Mary Kay Place and Mark Boone Junior - although trapped inside a pair of cliches - make the film a better place to be around, and there are a few moments, such as Affleck, apathetically attempting to coach a girl's basketball team, that shine above the rest, but lacking in any real emotion - and having the smarmiest ending this side of, well, this side of Elizabethtown, Lonesome Jim ends up as just a bunch of parts without a sum to equal. [04/30/06]
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Lower City
Directed by Sérgio Machado
71 out of 100
I have several Brazilian acquaintances and I must say that none of them seem to sweat to the near ridiculous profusion that all Brazilians seem to sweat in what some are calling the Brazilian New Wave. Judging from Lower City though, or just about any recent Brazilian film including City of God, which incidentally also stars the alluringly prespiration-drenched Alice Braga, we Americans are left to believe that not a drop of sweat, not a bead of it, goes wasted in that big country to the far south. Glistening and glowing, every character seems to be at a constant state of post-coital deluge, as if they have just finished a hot and heavy sexual encounter. Of course, as far as Lower City goes, chances are, no matter when one comes upon the film, some character has just finished a hot and heavy sexual encounter.
A somewhat heavy-handed take on the ménage à trois sensibility of Y tu mamá también - but without any of the artistic abstraction that made that film so great - Alice Braga, as Karinna, a rather "easy" ally cat of a hitchhiker-turned-hooker, is the focal point of lust and the breakdown of a long-lasting friendship when she unintentially becomes pulled into an affair with best friend grifters. Well played by all, with quick moments of seeming brilliance hidden deep inside there, Lower City is perhaps not up to its aforementioned Mexican mother figure, Y tu mamá, but still comes off with a certain lusty sang-froid of sweatiness. I am definately going to have to ask my Brazilian friends how they manage to not constantly be covered in sweat. [07/01/06]
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Mountain Patrol: Kekexili
Directed by Chuan Lu
61 out of 100
With moments of purity, not unlike, though to a lesser extent, those found in Tian Zhuangzhuang's 1986 masterpiece The Horse Thief, and with a similar measure of Zen absurdity, this film - about antelope poachers in the Himalayas and the self-appointed (and unpaid) troopers who police the high mountains - is nothing short of a Buddhist centrifuge. Unfortunately lacking in the emotional - and aesthetic - depths of the former Tian film, Mountain Patrol nonetheless packs quite a wallop about three or four times throughout its running time. Perhaps not enough to be considered in the same breath as The Horse Thief, yet strong enough to be mentioned alongside it. [01/30/07]
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Mutual Appreciation
Directed by Andrew Bujalski
81 out of 100
With comparisons to Cassevetes inevitably in tow, and like Cassevetes (even moreso probably) Bujalski's dialogue rags on about as true as one can rag on about, Mutual Appreciation's slacker Gen-Xers treads the same roads with which Cassevetes' Beat Generation New Yorkers fought, fraught and fucked about in his über-indie debut feature Shadows.
Filmed in grainily sharpened black and white stock, and sporting a mostly untrained cast (including Bujalski himself in the secondary male lead role), the film relies on truth in ordinariness to get its point - if there even is one - across. Banal in the most beautiful way, Bujalski hands us an independent feature with not even the slightest once of hipster indie-speak one gets from Tarantino, Linklater or Kevin Smith. Whether this is a good thing or bad may yet to be determined, but it sure is fun to watch us figure it all out. [01/30/07]
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