 |
| Trying
to save the world: McKellen and Hill in The Lord of the
Rings: The Two Towers. |
Wizards
of War
By
Ann Morrow
Lord
of the Rings: The Two Towers
Directed
by Peter Jackson
The
Two Towers, the battle-filled middle installment of Peter
Jackson’s adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the
Rings, is grimmer and gorier than The Fellowship
of the Ring, and yet nearly as enchanting. In it, the
forces of evil are gaining momentum, forging secret alliances
and filling the wondrously varied “free peoples” of Middle-earth
with despair. Frodo (Elijah Wood), a hobbit who bears the
ring of power, is losing strength against its malign influence.
If he fails in the quest to destroy the ring at Mount Doom,
its dread creator will be able to enslave the will of all
who oppose him. Jackson’s quest is to streamline the torrent
of Tolkien’s narrative (14 years in the making) and punch
up its major themes, at which he’s succeeding: Part two vaults
the trilogy to dizzying heights of action and consequence,
overcoming obstacles such as production fatigue (one symptom
being expressionless reaction shots) with unflagging imagination.
That the film is designed to segue into next year’s concluding
installment is barely noticeable amid the excitement.
The
Two Towers picks up where part one left off, opening with
Frodo’s nightmare about Gandalf (Ian McKellen) falling to
his fiery demise—a clever way of setting up the wizard’s resurrection
later on. Frodo and his loyal companion Sam (Sean Astin) are
lost in the wilderness, and out of necessity, they rely on
the treacherous but pitiable Gollum (Andy Serkis) as their
guide. A crucial element in the books but (until recently)
an impossible character to re-create onscreen, this CGI creature
is startlingly convincing, a breakthrough result of digital
imagery overlaid on the actor’s own writhing, slinking and
muttering. Although the amount of attention given to Gollum’s
tortured mind, which has been split in two by his long possession
of the ring, distracts from the film’s rapturously mythic
tone, Serkis deserves to be the first actor to win an award
for a film he never appears in.
Meanwhile, the younger hobbits, Pippin (Billy Boyd) and Merry
(Dominic Monaghan), remain in the clutches of the abominable
goblin men called Urak-hai. But during the forced march to
Isengard, stronghold of the traitor Saruman (Christopher Lee,
as delectably fiendish as ever), the Uraks get into a brawl
with their hungry Orc recruits, giving Jackson an opening
for his ghoulish sense of humor (the director’s first success
was the ghastly-funny Dead-Alive). After lopping off
a few heads, the Urak captain tells the troops: “Looks like
meat is back on the menu, boys.” Perhaps as an in-joke on
Tolkien’s unabashed Anglophilia, the nastiest Orc has a Cockney
accent.
The story cuts back and forth between the scattered fellowship
with a mounting sense of urgency. Joining forces with the
horse lords of Rohan, Aragorn (Viggo Mortensen) comes into
his own as a leader and warrior, a change that is reflected
by Mortensen with moving ardor, as well as heartbeat of brooding
hesitancy. The king of Rohan (Bernard Hill, the captain of
Titanic), whose mind has been poisoned by his minister
(an eloquently slimy Brad Dourif), is reluctant to risk open
war, despite the vast armies amassing on his borders. He is
rallied by Aragorn, who adheres to the chivalric ideal that
it is better to die with honor in battle than to go to the
slaughter like sheep. Of course, there’s always the alternative
of using valor to overcome overwhelming odds, or in Jackson’s
case, using computerized mayhem to enable the defenders to
mow down whole legions of howling Uraks, Orcs and Wild Men.
At one point, the fortress warfare takes on the artificial
carnage of a video game, with the heavy armor of the invaders
appearing to offer all the protection of tinfoil.
Mostly though, the Battle of Helm’s Deep is a thrillingly
detailed update on sword-and-sorcery heroics, filled with
poetic images such as the synchronized thrusts of the Elf
battalion and the scuttling carapace of shields protecting
the Urak’s battering ram. Further south, a more fantastical
conflict takes place, one that climaxes with the stirring
battle cry of “Release the river!” This command is given by
Treebeard, a 14-foot-tall tree man, or Ent. Tree shepherds
of the wild forests, Ents are the walking, talking embodiment
of the trilogy’s deeply felt environmentalism, and their onscreen
presence is a wonder of ingenuity and artistry. In what may
be the most original battle sequence ever filmed, gentle old
Treebeard and his fellow Ents attack the industrialized hellhole
of Isengard with their rooty feet and viney fingers. But will
there be a forest for them to go back to?
Drawing closer to the forbidding battlements of Mordor (whose
sulphurous vista supplies the chilling closing image), Sam
wonders, presciently enough, “How can the world go back to
the way it was after so much bad has happened?” The fact that
pundits are reading their own agenda into the film (much as
the trilogy was misinterpreted upon its publication in the
1950s) can be taken as a tribute to how vividly Jackson has
translated the author’s vision, an epic inspired by thousand-year-old
sagas but shaped by two world wars. Regardless of its prophetic
aura, the film is best enjoyed for what it is, a make-believe
tale of daring and grave peril, brought to the screen with
a passionate craftsmanship that is as marvelous as the tale
itself.
The
Chase Is On
Catch
Me if You Can
Directed
by Steven Spielberg
Steven Spielberg catches our attention from the moment the
cleverly animated introductory credits hit the screen running
with John Williams’ playful score, reminding us of numerous
caper films of the ’60s, specifically Blake Edwards’ Pink
Panther series. It’s a potent setup that leaves one smiling
and anxiously hoping that the film can retain the wit and
whimsy of the credits. It does. And what follows is reminiscent
of the best work of directors like Edwards and Stanley Donan
(in his Charade and Arabesque mode).
After his recent darker-themed science-fiction forays, the
overblown Minority Report and the flawed masterwork
A.I., and the heaviness of his serious social- consciousness
films, Amistad and Schindler’s List, Spielberg
has opted for lighter fare. Catch Me if You Can could
almost be the director’s challenge in this fleet-footed chase
film about a charming young con man who successfully impersonates
an airline pilot, the chief resident pediatrician at a Georgia
hospital and the assistant attorney general for the state
of Louisiana while making millions of dollars in forged checks.
It may be lighter material, ironically so given recent grand-scale
thefts like Enron, but in its effortless depiction of personal
events in the historical/cultural context of the mid-’60s,
it perhaps has a greater resonance and more honest sense of
humanity than Spielberg’s more labored works.
The story is about a flim-flam artist, Frank Abagnale, who
led the FBI on a merry chase between 1964 and 1967. It is
even more fascinating because it is based on the true events
of Abagnale’s youth when, between the ages of the 16 and 18,
he did all of the above-mentioned misdeeds (and more), carrying
them out with the amoral glee of Dino, Frank and Sammy in
their lighthearted caper films. That Spielberg evokes the
fizzy spirit of the Rat Pack where others have failed (the
recent Ocean’s 11, for example), with only the slightest
hinting, is more masterful than any of the special effects
in Minority Report and more honest than much of his
celebrated black-and-white concentration camp footage.
This may sound facetious given the director’s award-winning
films, but this new work is a return to the greatness of pure
filmmaking he first demonstrated in The Sugarland Express
and perfected in Jaws. It is also a realization of
the potential shown by Leonardo DiCaprio in his early films.
From his first impersonation of a substitute teacher while
he actually was still a high school student, to his more daring
roles, DiCaprio applies the essential maxim that acting is
believing. And while his Abagnale slips in and out of various
costumes showing, according to Abagnale’s father, that clothes
can make the man, there is in his eyes a sureness and belief
in what he is doing. Acting is the ultimate con game (meaning
confidence and concentration), and DiCaprio is an accomplished
artist making us go along for the ride, however outlandish
it may seem.
He is evenly matched by Tom Hanks, who deftly disappears into
his role of Carl Hanratty, the dogged FBI agent with whom
Abagnale develops a touching relationship poised between father-son
and pursuer-pursued. It is as if, given the irresponsibility
of his own father, Abagnale is being chased by the responsibility
of adulthood.
Indeed, every role in the film has been cast meticulously,
from the radiant cameos of Elizabeth Banks as a bank teller
and Jennifer Garner as a high-priced call girl to the seasoned
supporting performances of an utterly endearing Martin Sheen
as a potential father-in-law and a poignant Christopher Walken
(working with wonderful understatement) as Abagnale’s real
father.
As much a character as any in the film is the period of the
’60s. The assassinations of JFK, Martin Luther King and RFK
may have heralded a new era of paranoia and distrust, but
that wasn’t fully felt until Vietnam when the country truly
lost its innocence and started offering up its youth to war.
Catch Me if You Can is a celebration of youth and innocence
and, albeit in a skewed and unexpected version, of the inspiration
bequeathed by JFK and his Camelot years.
I only wish that Spielberg had not edited out some of the
scenes that he filmed. I have perused Jeff Nathanson’s well-crafted
script and don’t think the film would have seemed too long
with the inclusion of such gems as Abagnale’s stint as a college
professor. Let’s hope the DVD offers the uncut version. I’m
waiting to put it alongside my copy of that other bit of fantastic-but-true
chicanery, the 1961 Tony Curtis film The Great Imposter.
—Ralph
Hammann
Mire
in the Streets
Gangs
of New York
Directed
by Martin Scorsese
Without doubt, viewing Martin Scorsese’s Gangs of New York
was far more painful to me than my recent 12-hour labor. Perhaps
that’s not a fair comparison; after all, following my labor,
I had a beautiful son, whereas after seeing Gangs,
I simply felt as if I had flushed two hours and 45 minutes
down the toilet.
Set against the backdrop of mid-19th-century New York City,
a place teeming with poor immigrants and angry nativists,
abolitionists and Tammany Hall pols, Gangs attempts
to show us “a template for what’s going on today.” Or at least
that’s what Scorsese has said. The director has invested millions
into ensuring the authenticity of Chinese opera houses and
19th-century butcher practices and in reproducing the notorious
Five Points, and has populated his movie with thousands of
extra characters, including famous names like Horace Greeley,
P.T. Barnum and Boss Tweed (Jim Broadbent), and yet he seems
to have spent little money or time on the core story of the
rivalry between young Amsterdam Vallon (Leonardo DiCaprio)
and nativist Bill Cutting (Daniel Day-Lewis).
The movie begins in 1846 during the infamous battle of Five
Points, in which nativist gangs lead by Cutting fell those
of Irish activist Priest Vallon (Liam Neeson). Young Amsterdam
is taken to Hellgate Orphanage for 16 years, and when released,
he returns to Five Points to avenge his father’s death. Of
course, nobody—not even Priest’s old cronies Monk McGinn (Brendan
Gleeson) and Happy Jack (John C. Reilly), or even Cutting
himself, recognizes Amsterdam, which is good because Amsterdam,
as part of his master plan, will ingratiate himself to Cutting.
The fact that Cutting reveres his fallen nemesis Priest is
a little unsettling to Amsterdam, nearly as much as the fact
that he sort of likes his father’s killer, and we’re forced
to watch too many scenes of the two men bonding, even when
it appears they like the same woman, Jenny (Cameron Diaz).
This last observation is merely a guess, since neither the
Diaz-Day-Lewis nor the Diaz-DiCaprio pairing conveys any hint
of chemistry.
Just when I thought Amsterdam would carry out his revenge,
I glanced at the time and groaned—the movie still had more
than an hour to go, during which I had to watch DiCaprio’s
painful attempts at playing a political activist and Scorsese’s
unbearably clumsy attempts at making the revenge and the gang
warfare somehow symbolic of the American Civil War and, again,
of the story of the birth of the nation.
Here is one example of Gangs’ unbelievably sloppy writing
(amazingly, the screenplay is by Jay Cocks, Kenneth Lonergan
and Steven Zaillian): When Amsterdam returns to Five Points,
he is accosted by a gang, among them a black, apparently nameless
man. This guy serves no purpose other than to A) prove what
a broad-minded guy Amsterdam is and B) be victimized by nativists
during the 1863 draft riots and thus be used as yet another
inane plot device. What makes “B” particularly infuriating
is that in all probability, the black man would have been
accosted not by the nativists but by the immigrant and poor
rioters who were protesting the draft and, as history shows,
who set fire to negro orphanages and lynched and beat numerous
blacks. That, however, would have painted Amsterdam’s forces
in a bad light and therefore wouldn’t have suited the story.
Further compounding the sloppy bait-and-switch tactics of
the script is that the black man was ready to stand with the
“good” gangs against Cutting’s gangs (because of course the
big rumble takes place the same day as the first day of the
riots), and yet we see him attacked in one of the ritzier
neighborhoods where rioters were looting the mansions of the
rich (and undrafted). Why has he been transplanted here from
the Five Points area in which he appears to reside?
DiCaprio is embarrassingly miscast as the standard-bearer
of immigrant pride and righteous anger. Even beefed up, he
looks, in fights, as if the best he can do is pout that he’s
going to tell his mommy on you. Diaz, who serves merely as
the plot device that triggers jealousy between Cutting and
Amsterdam, tries hard to be Nicole Kidman and, in scenes with
guns, the young Faye Dunaway, but she’s obviously much more
at home as one of Charlie’s Angels. Gleeson, Reilly
and Broadbent hit their marks perfectly, and unlike the rest
of the casting and production, which has a cheesy, costumey
quality, they look their parts and seem believable as gentlemen
of that era. Despite the film’s ramshackle messiness and lack
of cohesion and heart, Day-Lewis compels our attention; imagine
what this mesmerizing performance could have been in something
good. Using a flat New York accent and trading in his usual
savoir faire for the lionine moves of a coldhearted yet code-bound
killer, Day-Lewis conveys volumes just in the way his character
leans against a pole, whereas DiCaprio, for all his scowling
and seething, can’t muster up anything to make a worthy competitor
to either Day-Lewis the actor or Bill Cutting the character.
With Gangs, which is based on a fascinating and lusty
1928 book by Herbert Asbury, Scorsese has abandoned any pretext
of subtlety, let alone storytelling. From gory visuals that
make sayings like “the streets ran with blood” seem understated,
to an ending in which Cutting’s and Priest Vallon’s graves
deteriorate in the foreground of a New York that morphs (to
the strains of U2) into modern times—yes, complete with the
Twin Towers shining in the background—the director has let
his obsession with making a grand statement interfere with
the task of making a good movie.
—Laura
Leon
 |
| Everybody
knows this is nowhere: Mulroney, Davis and Nicholson in
About Schmidt. |
Ordinary
Alienated People
About
Schmidt
Directed by Alexander Payne
Warren Schmidt (Jack Nicholson) is an aging Nebraskan who
has spent most of his time on Earth blissfully devoid of an
inner life. Recently retired from “the insurance game,” as
he puts it, the now-aimless Schmidt is left to face his failures,
literally without a clue. His marriage has become lifeless,
he is estranged from his only daughter, and no one is interested
in his opinions or experiences. When a channel-surfing Schmidt
signs up with a Save the Children-type charity, it seems less
that he’s overcome by the images of starving kids than in
need of someone to correspond with.
In short order, Schmidt’s wife dies, leaving him with an empty
house and absurdly long Winnebago. Using his daughter’s impending
wedding as an excuse, Schmidt sets off from Omaha, bound for
Denver in a vehicle large enough to hold a wagon- train-load
of pioneers. Obviously, it’s a journey of self-discovery.
The joke is that poor Schmidt is unaware of this.
Director Alexander Payne, who gave us the blistering satires
Citizen Ruth and Election, is after something
deeper and more affecting here—the dark heart of American,
specifically Midwestern, anomie. While the film is full of
people doing painful or grotesque things, the folks themselves
are never truly grotesque. It’s a satire with one layer of
irony peeled back, as characters are allowed, if not dignity,
then humanity; if not sympathy, then a measure of respect.
This doesn’t cloud the film’s often black comedy with sentiment—it’s
often hilarious—but does prevent the audience from enjoying
any smug distance from the characters. Those weirdos are us.
Payne’s stroke of genius was in casting Nicholson as the reserved,
class-conscious Schmidt. No matter what the situation, Schmidt
is always the stuffiest guy the room. This relieves Nicholson
of the burden of being his iconic screen persona—an indelible
figure from Five Easy Pieces to As Good As It Gets—the
dangerous live wire who acts out at the least provocation.
Schmidt is always flummoxed, whether by the cocky numbers-cruncher
who succeeds him in his job, the wife who never lets him finish
a sentence, or the lower-class bohemian family his daughter
marries into. Nicholson is forced to focus his still- considerable
energy on the subtlest expressions of surprise, horror and
distaste, and it’s bracing for both actor and audience.
If Nicholson is forced to be without vanity and be more emotionally
accessible than usual, it’s part of a cohesive plan. Payne’s
idea is to turn his Hollywood actors into faceless Midwesterners.
Dermot Mulroney, who has played studly heartthrobs opposite
Julia Roberts and Cameron Diaz, wears a haircut—the balding
mullet—that is one of the ugliest ever seen on screen, as
Schmidt’s daughter’s fianceé. Hope Davis, her delicate beauty
faded with working-class weariness, plays Schmidt’s daughter.
Only Kathy Bates, as Schmidt’s soon-to-be-in-law, keeps her
movie-star magnetism intact—she’s clearly delighted to be
doing her hot-tub nude scene, and makes the most of it.
As Schmidt never lets his guard down, the only way we can
be sure of how he really feels is in the letters he writes
to Ndugu, his 6-year-old Tanzanian foster child. These richly
comic voiceovers reveal both Schmidt’s ignorance and his talent
for dissembling. So it is ironic, and satisfactory, that the
film allows young Ndugu the last word.
—Shawn
Stone
It
Belongs to Them
Rabbit-Proof Fence
Directed
by Phillip Noyce
Directed by Australian native Phillip Noyce, the heartrending
social exposé Rabbit-Proof Fence is filmed as a gripping,
almost mythic reclamation of identity. In 1931, at the Jigalong
depot in the Australian outback, 14-year-old Molly (Everlyn
Sampi), her younger sister Daisy (Tianna Sansbury), and their
cousin Gracie (Laura Monaghan) were abducted from their maternal
family and taken away to a distant “dormitory.” Within a day,
they escaped and began the 1,500-mile walk back home. The
girls were among the first of the Aborigine victims later
known as the Stolen Generations.
At the Moore River assimilation camp, the girls (all three
are played by nonactors) are told by a nun that they are not
allowed to speak the “jabber” of their native language. Their
hair is shorn off, and they are given gruel to eat. While
entertaining a group of charitable Australian matrons, the
director of the department for “Aborigine protection,” A.O.
Neville (Kenneth Branagh) explains the program’s goal of removing
“half castes” from their Aborigine families and absorbing
them into the white population, eventually “breeding out”
the natives. What the frighteningly reasonable director doesn’t
say is that the biracial population will provide cheap labor
for white Australia. In the camp, where girls are trained
for domestic servitude, it’s clear that breaking their spirit
is part of the curriculum.
While the rest of the internees are at church, Molly, Daisy
and Gracie simply walk away. Runaways are whipped, and so
far, none has eluded the camp’s Aborigine tracker, Moodoo
(David Gulpilil). The girls make it to the woods, but Molly
has no idea which way to go from there. All she knows is that
Jigalong lies on the rabbit fence, which runs across the entire
western territory. If Molly gets lost in the desert, they
might not survive.
Adapted with lyrical force from the book by Doris Pilkington—Molly’s
daughter—the film uses the vast sky, forbidding, beautiful
terrain, and moody, indigenous-based music (by Peter Gabriel)
to express how the journey is not only a bid for freedom but
an affirmation of the girls’ culture. Adding to the evocation
is the strong, silent presence of Gulpilil, who played the
young warrior in Nicholas Roeg’s 1971 Australian film Walkabout,
which Rabbit-Proof resembles in its stark narrative
style. At one point, Molly and her mother, who are hundreds
of miles apart, put their hands on the fence at the same time,
indicating the intensity of their connection. Sampi is fiercely
natural, and the otherworldly cinematography (by Christopher
Doyle) concentrates her expressive face.
Noyce, who made the taut and atmospheric Dead Calm
before going Hollywood (his most recent film was The Bone
Collector), integrates the heartbreak of the girls’ plight
(the final sequence is deeply moving) with the suspense of
a political thriller. Which the film is, in a way: The shocking
conclusion comes from a printed coda above the credits, stating
that Australia’s Aborigine assimilation program remained in
effect until 1970.
—A.M.
Screw
This
Two
Weeks Notice
Directed
by Marc Lawrence
I admit it—I’m a screwball- comedy nazi. I relish superb writing
(think Philip Barry or Billy Wilder), rapid-fire delivery,
deliriously madcap plotlines and, of course, chemistry between
two stars (think Claudette Colbert and Joel McCrae, or Katharine
Hepburn and Cary Grant) that makes the viewer weak in the
knees. So perhaps I’m not the right person to be reviewing
modern movies that are hyped as a return to classic screwball
comedy—think You’ve Got Mail, and now Two Weeks
Notice.
On paper, it would seem that the pairing of Brit bad boy Hugh
Grant, he of the goofy charm and baby blues, and Sandra Bullock,
she of the wholesome, tomboyish strain of American cute, would
be magic. In Two Weeks Notice, however, once Grant’s
George Wade, a millionaire real-estate developer, meets cute
with Bullock’s Lucy Kelson, a lefty lawyer fond of lost causes,
the steam dissipates, leaving a damp mustiness on the rest
of the movie. We know that George will succumb to Lucy’s brand
of social consciousness, and that he’ll still be able to endow
her with money, connections, and the ability to live well
while working at the Legal Aid Society. (This is yet another
movie that pretends poor people are better than rich ones,
all the while visually worshipping the trappings of wealth
and letting the girl get to mouth populist slogans
while tottering on her Jimmy Choos.) And we know that George
will somehow get workaholic Lucy to loosen up—who knows, he
may even be able to get her to embrace her inner Cinderella.
Knowing these things wouldn’t automatically have sunk this
movie. If only writer-director Marc Lawrence had imbued his
insipid script with some of the zest and wit of his earlier
pairing with Bullock, Miss Congeniality. We never really
get to see George and Lucy working together on something,
which might have given us humorous and illuminating glimpses
of how they feed off each other, both professionally and personally.
Instead, we get little scenes titled “two months later” and
“six weeks after that,” which invariably show Lucy helping
George with his wardrobe. Characters are constantly referring
to Lucy as “the best,” but the best what? With one exception
(George’s divorce), we never see her act as Wade’s general
counsel, but more as his executive assistant. There is one
scene in which the couple, having lunch, nonchalantly pick
off each other’s plates, but with nothing previous to underpin
it, this coziness seems out of nowhere. Lawrence is so desperate
for the big laugh that he sacrifices character development
in favor of having Bullock get beaned with a tennis ball and,
worse, having her develop a case of diarrhea while stuck in
a traffic jam with George. This isn’t screwball—it’s screwed
up.
—L.L.
 |
| An
African adventure: The Wild Thornberrys. |
Talk
to the Animals
The
Wild Thornberrys
Directed
by Jeff McGrath and Cathy Malkasian
With The Wild ThornberrYs, Nickelodeon continues to
turn its television staples into big-screen adventures, albeit
with none of the breakthrough technology or even creativity
of, say, Pixar or Disney. However, as a much bigger and slightly
longer version of a regular WT episode, this movie,
directed by Jeff McGrath and Cathy Malkasian, is pleasing
holiday family fare.
The movie successfully combines a brand-new adventure with
just enough background information—young Eliza Thornberry
(Lacey Chabert) has the secret gift of being able to speak
to animals—to enlighten newbies. This time around, Eliza has
been transplanted to a stuffy English boarding school, which
she manages to escape in order to return to her beloved Africa
and save some critters from poachers Rupert Everett and Marisa
Tomei. There are lots of humorous moments, especially involving
Eliza’s older, mall-obsessed sister Debbie (Danielle Harris),
who is forced to set aside her major ick factor of all things
veldtian and go in search of her missing sister. Eliza’s trusty
simian sidekick Darwin (Tom Kane) also gets some funny moments,
especially when it turns out that he rather likes the pomp
and circumstance of the boarding school.
In the end, The Wild Thornberrys delivers a solid story,
and what’s particularly nice is that while it packs a strong
sense of family, it does so without being preachy or heavy-handed.
This is in large part to bright writing by Kate Boutilier
and exquisite characterizations by Chabert, Harris, Tim Curry
as her dotty father Nigel, and Flea, as the Thornberrys’ adopted
jungle-boy brother Donnie, who delivers some nonsensical form
of jungle chatter. And with beautiful music by Paul Simon
and others, this movie is not a bad way to spend an hour and
a half during the dark days of January.
—L.L.
|
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