Mud Songs

Cleaners is a low-grade, predictable thriller starring Samuel L. Jackson about a guy who cleans up the blood and guts left over at crime scenes and then one day gets tricked into cleaning up a murder scene before the police are called in. Stylistic touches such as inserting close-ups of inanimate objects, doorbells being pushed and coffee being poured are distracting to the narrative. What narrative does exist is conventional and ultimately melodramatic and stupid. It’s not a good movie.

The French Connection is one of a handful of classic crime thrillers that does nothing for me because the acting is dull or the story is either non-existent or just plain dumb. (I don’t like Chinatown either. You gotta problem with that?) The French Connection is supposed to have one of the best and most influential chase scenes ever. I heard the same thing about Bullitt. They both influenced me to go to sleep.

Cassandra’s Dream is Woody Allen trying to get back in form as a writer-director, but not quite making it. It’s the story of two brothers, Ewan McGregor and a mis-cast Colin Farrell (he sunk Terrence Malick’s The New World for me) who get tangled up in a criminal situation where people end up getting hurt. One brother struggles with his conscience; the other brother doesn’t. Certain scenes are well directed and affective, but there are too many elements of the movie that don’t work. Still, I admire Woody Allen for the attempt to present a story with both style and substance. I might like this one more if I get around to watching it again, but I’d rather just watch Crimes and Misdemeanors, which is pretty damn close to a masterpiece; same deal with Match Point. All three films deal with a similar subject manner, only the last two do it brilliantly.

Burn After Reading is the kind of movie I pick up at the video store when I can’t decide on anything else. It’s full of quirky, crazy characters who are fun to watch, and the last scene is hilarious. So it’s not a complete waste of time. But the story of a CIA agent who loses some classified files — and that’s a condensed version of the absurdly convoluted storyline — is simply a vehicle for a cast of A-list actors to have fun and go nuts. It’s deliberately inconsequential. You’d have to be a fan of the Coen Brothers’ O Brother, Where Art Thou to appreciate this one.

I saw Traitor and liked it, though I have a feeling I’ll have forgotten all about it by Xmas. From James Berardinelli: “As a thriller for adults who don’t require manic chases, frenetic shoot-outs, and ten cuts per second, Traitor is smart, effective, and at times suspenseful. It’s one of a very few terrorist-themed movies that presents its situation without resorting to exploitation or oversimplification.” Don Cheadle has become an actor whose movies I’ll see even when I know the movie isn’t the greatest.

Wanted could have been a fun action movie, but it’s just boring and bad. Angelina Jolie is technically in the movie. However, she’s only one of several minor characters in an ensemble cast. She spends most of her time posing under lights that make her look attractive as possible. That’s about it. Morgan Freeman shows up for his multi-million dollar pay cheque too. Sometime stupid action movies can be fun, but Wanted is just a rip-off.

Scarface is a silly, over-rated 1980s gangster movie that is so melodramatic and dated, it’s a joke. Cubans who hear Al Pacino’s Cuban accent must laugh the way Newfoundlanders laugh at the accents in The Shipping News. It may be fun to watch as a cheesy, over-the-top, violent, blood and guts B-movie, but an animé cartoon with the same two-dimensional characters would have been just as dramatic.

Directed by Sydney Lumet. If you think you have problems or that your family is messed up or that your life hasn’t turned out the way you hoped it would, watch Before The Devil Knows You’re Dead and you’ll be grateful for everything you’ve got. It’s difficult to talk about the plot without giving away the story, but it involves two brothers who plan a heist that goes all wrong. And that’s just the beginning of their troubles. It’s the kind of story that only exists in movies, but the people feel so real, their reactions to the extreme circumstances so genuine, that it works. It’s completely engaging. The entire cast — Philip Seymour Hoffman, Albert Finney and even Ethan Hawke — couldn’t have given better performances. When you see acting on this level, you quickly realise how mediocre most actors are and what a challenging profession it really is. (Marisa Tomei has a major role, but they don’t give her much to do except take off her shirt.) It’s not a happy movie (though I had to laugh at the absurdity of it all from time to time), but it’s so over the top and compelling, it’s difficult to look away.

David Cronenberg gets off on showing close-up shots of gruesome things like people getting their faces blown off with a shot-gun (re: A History of Violence). In a world where beheadings make the news at least every other month (and can be viewed online if you know where to look — which I have no intention of ever doing — and photos of which are sometimes published in national newspapers), showing two separate scenes of people getting their throats slit is unnecessary. That’s one aspect of Cronenberg’s style I could do without. If you don’t like that kind of thing, just close your eyes for the few seconds when it happens, because the rest of the movie is excellent and well-worth watching. Eastern Promises tells the story of a doctor, Naomi Watts, who delivers a baby from a woman who works in a brothel. The mother dies and the doctor tries to track down the baby’s family and subsequently gets tangled up with the Russian Mafia — and those guys don’t fool around. Viggo Mortensen, as one of the Russian henchmen, has sympathy for her and tells her to go home and forget about it. But she doesn’t. And from there on in it’s, Oh, jesus, what the hell’s going to happen now? I was surprised at the emotional and moral complexity of the film. I guess you could say it’s a thriller with a conscience, and the best I’ve seen from Cronenberg.

Here’s the set-up to Small Time Crooks: Some small time crooks devise a plan to open a bakery next door to a bank and tunnel underground into the bank’s vault. But the bakery does such good business that they make more money from the bakery then they would have from robbing the bank. That’s the first 30 minutes of the movie and it’s funny as hell. These guys are completely incompetent criminals. The scene where they first try to dig the tunnel with a jack hammer in the basement of the bakery had me howling. After that the story drags and becomes too serious. Individual scenes work on their own, and Tracy Ullman gives an excellent performance as the baker (and Woody Allen’s wife), but the comedy loses its momentum long before the final credits.

In The Bank Job, Jason Statham plays exactly the same character he plays in all his movies, but he has enough charisma to keep things interesting. (I could have sworn I originally wrote more than this. At any rate, it’s a passable heist movie.)

Crimes and Misdemeanors is one of several Woody Allen films that’s pretty damn close to a masterpiece. From Roger Ebert’s original review: Crimes and Misdemeanors “is a thriller about the dark nights of the soul. It shockingly answers the question most of us have asked ourselves from time to time: Could I live with the knowledge that I had murdered someone? Could I still get through the day and be close to my family and warm to my friends, knowing that because of my own cruel selfishness, someone who had loved me was lying dead in the grave? This is one of the central questions of human existence, and society is based on the fact that most of us are not willing to see ourselves as murderers. But in the world of this film, conventional piety is overturned and we see into the soul of a human monster… Actually, he seems like a pretty nice guy.”

From Ebert’s review: “The modern heist movie was invented in Paris in 1954 by Jules Dassin, with ‘Rififi,’ and Jean-Pierre Melville, with ‘Bob le Flambeur.’ Dassin built his film around a 28-minute safe-cracking sequence that is the father of all later movies in which thieves carry out complicated robberies… Francois Truffaut [called 'Rififi'] the best film noir he’d ever seen.”

Some directors are so cool or innovative or just so damn good that even when they make a not-so-stellar motion picture, it’s still better or more watchable than 99% of the junk you’ll see at a multiplex any day of the week. Jim Jarmusch is one of those directors and Ghost Dog is one of the films. I watched it today while re-organizing my DVD collection (which probably isn’t a bad way to re-watch it), and thoroughly enjoyed it. It “seeks to superimpose the ways of the ancient samurai with the present day in the tale of a loner [Forrest Whitaker] who works as a hitman for the local mafia family.” It’s fun and funny and cool.

I finished watching Hard Candy just minutes ago. There’s a scene (a long, drawn-out, torturous scene) in the middle that would have many viewers walking out of the theatre or ejecting the DVD saying, “I’ve had enough. I don’t need to see this.” It’s extremely difficult to watch, and for that one scene alone, I’ll probably never watch the movie again. It’s a well-made psychological head-trip movie, but it is WHACKED. (Read the review I’ve link to if you want to know more.)

No Country for Old Men is the best movie I’ve seen from the Coen Brothers. Naturally, it’s about a psychotic killer with a high-pressure air gun looking for stolen money, and another guy who stole the money running from the guy with the air gun. I normally don’t care much for the way the Coen Brothers use lethal violence in their movies, but in this case it’s fascinating and compelling because it’s so cinematic. It’s a pleasure to watch the craftsmanship that goes into it. And it’s not all for show. The images and the subtle details work together to create a story and a weird reality that takes you for a ride and leaves you thinking, “What the hell was that?” It’s a crime drama, a thriller, a comedy and a morality tale, and it’s entertaining. (A detailed analysis and discussion of the film on Jim Emerson’s Blog.)

The Third Man is a classic film noir with more Dutch angles than you can throw a dead cat at. Deep dark crazy shadows all over the place, Orson Welles never looked better, cloak-and-dagger intrigue and a cool chase scene near the end to cap it all off.

Gone Baby Gone is Ben Affleck’s directorial debut and it’s pretty damn good. It’s the story of a private investigator looking for a little girl who has gone missing in his neighbourhood, and brother does he get messed up in some serious shit. And just when you think you know what’s going on, you don’t, and it’s at that point the film shifts into high gear and doesn’t let up until the very last shot. It’s not just a thriller; it’s an intellectually engaging and morally challenging film, one that will give you something to talk about while the credits are rolling. That’s an accomplishment for any film. (Not recommended for parents with small kids, though.)

Striking cinematography and good acting cannot make up for the fact that the story is so %$#@! up and depressing, it leaves you feeling dirty, like it’s time for a really long shower now. The Dead Girl is a well-made film but definitely not for everyone.

Death Proof (Extended and Unrated) is Quentin Tarantino’s tribute to Grindhouse films and is better than the theatrical cut, though it’s difficult to qualify “better” in a movie that doesn’t strive too hard to be good in the first place (there are some unpleasant though quick gore shots). Tarantino doesn’t bring anything new to the table (the dialogue and direction are derivative of himself) — except for the car chase scene at the end which is fun and funny.