The Messenger

The Messenger - Dir. Oren Moverman (2009)


There has been a spate of socially conscious films focusing on the war in the Middle East and the current socio-political climate. Rendition, Stop Loss, Redacted, Lions For Lambs, and Home of the Brave, to name a few. The majority of these films have flopped financially from audiences already inundated with these issues on the news. They’ve flopped critically due to filmmakers shoving their own agendas down the throats of whoever was unfortunate enough to sit through the picture. 2009 saw a pair of relevant films that won critics over and were certainly deserving of wider release. I’m speaking of The Hurt Locker, which has made its way onto dozens of “Best Of” lists and a sure contender for Best Picture at the Academy Awards, and The Messenger.

Ben Foster stars as Staff Sgt. Will Montgomery who is sent home after being injured in Iraq. He returns not to a hero’s welcome, but to a sparsely decorated apartment, finding some catharsis listening to loud heavy metal music. His girlfriend, Kelly (Jena Malone), has moved on with her life and plans to wed another man.

With his tour of duty almost up, the Army assigns him to the Casualty Notification Team. Alongside Capt. Tony Stone (Woody Harrelson), a recovering alcoholic who narrowly missed seeing action in Desert Storm, SSgt. Montgomery has the unenviable task of informing family members that their loved one was killed in action. The Notification Team treats their duties the only way they can…with military precision. They are to get in and get out. They refer to the family only as NOKs (Next of Kin) and are not allowed to make physical contact at all. They follow a script that is specific in the language used. Soft terms like “passed away” or “no longer with us” are not to be spoken.

It is an emotionally draining job for SSgt. Montgomery still struggling with the traumatic experience that took him off the battlefield. The team’s heartbreaking news is met with inconsolable sadness or even blind rage. Montgomery and Stone are taken aback when the widowed Olivia Pitterson (Samantha Morton) reacts with surprising stoicism. She manages to hold it together and even shakes their hands, knowing the difficult position they are put in. SSgt. Montgomery disobeys orders and begins spending time with Olivia and her son.

Writer/director Oren Moverman previously co-wrote Todd Haynes’ Bob Dylan-inspired I’m Not There and once served in the Israeli army. The Messenger is his directorial debut and is an assured first effort that heralds the arrival of a filmmaker with plenty of potential. For the notification scenes, Moverman abstained from the rehearsal process and didn’t inform his leads who they would meet or how they would react. He allows the camera to observe unobtrusively. If there is camera movement during these sequences, it’s slight and almost documentary-like.

The acting is strong all around with Ben Foster bringing his usual intensity and Woody Harrelson deftly blending his flair for the comedic and the dramatic. Samantha Morton shines in her role as the newly widowed Olivia. It’s a subtle, low-key performance. She hits all the right notes without resorting to the melodramatic histrionics of the usual Oscar bait performance. Morton has proven to be one of the best actresses of the past decade her roles in Minority Report, In America, Control and even her cartoony portrayal of Mary, Queen of Scots in the bombastic Elizabeth: The Golden Age.

The Messenger isn’t concerned with pushing a pedantic, political agenda for the left or the right. The film is all about the human element which is why it succeeds.

Rating: ***

Precious: Based on the Novel “Push” by Sapphire

Precious - Dir. Lee Daniels (2009)


Precious is an emotionally involving film, a potent mixture of tragedy and hope. It’s hard to believe the picture came from Lee Daniels whose directorial debut was the critically reviled Shadowboxer. That film starred Helen Mirren and Cuba Gooding Jr. as a stepmother-stepson team of assassins who are also lovers. If you can’t wrap your head around that, try this on for size. One of Shadowboxer’s most memorable scenes found Gooding killing Mirren while she has an orgasm during sex. Daniels gets it right with Precious adapted from the novel by screenwriter Geoffrey Fletcher who has been struggling to get his big break for a decade.

The title character, Claireece Precious Jones, is an overweight, illiterate 16 year-old living in Harlem. She is emotionally and physically abused by her twisted mother Mary (Mo’Nique) and sexually abused by her wayward, drug addict father. Raped by her father, Precious is now pregnant with her second child. Mary has not only stood by and done nothing; she views this incestuous relationship as Precious stealing her man. It only increases the vile and venom spewed forth from her mouth. Mary sits on her ass all day in front of the TV. She calls Precious stupid and lazy while demanding she cook dinner and pick up welfare checks.

A glimmer of light manages to shine through into her dark life when Precious is sent to an alternative school run by the kindly Ms. Rain (Paula Patton). Precious joins a handful of other troubled teenaged girls and slowly begins to gain the tools necessary to build a stable life for herself and her kids.

With Shadowboxer on everyone’s minds, it’s easy to forget Daniels jump started his production company by producing Monster’s Ball which netted a glammed-down Halle Berry an Academy Award. As director, he does overplay his hand when it comes to the fantasy sequences which Precious uses to escape from her harsh reality. She imagines herself dressed to the nines, walking red carpets with a handsome boyfriend as flashbulbs envelope her. Honestly, these sections aren’t nearly as effective as one of the film’s more subtle moments that finds Precious looking into a mirror, envisioning herself as a thin, blonde white girl. Daniels wisely allows his actors to do all the heavy lifting.

His penchant for off-the-wall casting and muting the beauty of glamorous starlets is on full display with Precious. Comedienne Mo’Nique has received rave reviews for her performance as one of the worst movie moms since Faye Dunaway in Mommie Dearest. She’s grotesque, but she manages to bring you just onto the verge of pity. Mo’Nique already has a Golden Globe and a SAG Award and an Oscar seems likely in the near future. An almost unrecognizable Mariah Carey appears in a supporting role as social worker assigned to Precious’s case. And damned if she isn’t good enough to make us all forgive her for Glitter. Rounding out the main cast are fellow musician Lenny Kravitz in his first acting gig as a male nurse who attends to Precious and View co-host Sherri Shepherd as the alternative school’s receptionist.

As good as the supporting cast is, the entire film rests firmly on the shoulders of newcomer Gabourey Sidibe who beat out over 400 other girls for the role. She gives an assured performance with little use for histrionics. It feels genuine and Sidibe is the one who grounds the film when it could have easily gone into melodramatic overdrive. She is one of the main reasons why Precious is easily one of the best film’s of 2009.

Rating: *** ½

Leap Year

Leap Year - Dir. Anand Tucker (2010)


If only films like Leap Year would come once every four years. Tell me if any of this sounds familiar. Amy Adams is Anna, a Type-A personality who “stages” apartments and homes on the market. She decorates them to optimize sale potential. She plans and schedules everything down to a tee. She’s been dating her bland, cardiologist boyfriend, Jeremy (Adam Scott), for the past four years, but he has yet to propose. She was hoping Jeremy would do so before a big medical conference in Dublin, but alas. During a quick visit with her dad (John Lithgow), she is reminded of an old Irish tradition where women propose to their men on Feb. 29. Oh, and in case you forgot all that, they helpfully remind you of it with a voice-over five minutes later.

Anna heads off to Ireland, but is waylaid by bad weather and finds herself in the tiny town of Dingle. Luckily for her, the town bartender, Declan (Matthew Goode), is also the local taxi driver and hotelier. Declan is a scruffy, crude, blue-collar Joe. Their road trip together takes them across the picturesque Irish countryside where Amy steps in cow poop, flops around in the mud, and gets into a bar fight. They hate each other from the get-go. Anna is disgusted by Declan’s course demeanor while he laughs at the idea of marriage. Could they possibly ever wind up together? Well, yeah, they’re in the damn poster together.

Leap Year wishes it could do the mismatched couple on a wacky road trip as good as the classic It Happened One Night. Instead, Leap Year is more than content to play up every rancid element that festers the romantic comedy today. The female leads are shrill, superficial, or uptight and they are always in need of a roughneck man to knock them down a peg. Thankfully, Leap Year isn’t as rampantly misogynistic as The Ugly Truth, but it’s mind-bogging how women still flock to these movies.

So who can we blame for this mess? Not the actors. Amy Adams is perky and likeable and does her best to work with such a lousy role. Matthew Goode is decent enough even if the Brit’s Irish accent feels inauthentic. Not John Lithgow or It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia’s Kaitlin Olson who pop in and out so quickly that you wonder why they even bothered to show up. You could blame director Anand Tucker who helmed the superior Shopgirl. Tucker doesn’t do anything wrong per se, but he doesn’t do anything particularly memorable. He and cinematographer Newton Thomas Sigel do manage to capture the beautiful landscape of Ireland. However, if you want to see all that, buy a couple postcards. No, all the blame lies firmly at the feet of the writers, Harry Elfont and Deborah Kaplan, who also brought us The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas, Surviving Christmas, and the equally stinky rom-com Made of Honor. The story is inane and predictable. The dialogue is flat and they desperately scrounge for comedy through lazy, unimaginative slapstick.

Made for a budget of $5 million, Duncan Jones’ Moon was a thoughtful sci-fi film and a healthy alternative to the expensive, special effects blow outs like Avatar and 2012. The same could be said of The Hurt Locker as an alternative to G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra. If you want an alternative to the drivel of Leap Year, then rent (500) Days of Summer.

Rating: *

Daybreakers

Daybreakers - Peter & Michael Spierig (2010)


The Spierig Brothers made their feature film debut with the low-budget zombie flick, Undead. Now, the twin siblings tackle vampires, turning them back into the bloodsucking fiends they were meant to be. Set nine years from now, Daybreakers revolves around a world almost entirely populated with vampires. A plague originated from bats turned many while others were willingly bitten out of a fear of death. Humans are rounded up by the military, kept like cattle, and slowly drained of their blood. But now, the human race is close to extinction and the blood supply is dwindling away. Without blood, the vampires will de-evolve into feral bat-like monstrosities nicknamed “subsiders.”

Ethan Hawke plays a hematologist named Edward Dalton. Unlike that other Edward, he’s no sparkly pretty boy, but he does mope a lot. Dalton is the equivalent of a vampire vegan. He refuses to drink human blood and feels pity for the humans. Dalton is in the employ of Bromley Marks, a pharmaceutical conglomerate run by Charles Bromley (Sam Neill). Dalton has been working on a suitable blood substitute to no avail.

Following a chance encounter, Dalton becomes a part of the human underground led by the crossbow wielding beauty Audrey Bennett (Claudia Karvan) and former vampire Lionel “Elvis” Cormac (Willem Dafoe with a silly Southern accent). Elvis hasn’t a clue how he was changed back, but Dalton sees this as the chance to cure the previously thought incurable. Other characters include Edward’s brother Frank (Michael Dorman), a soldier in the human hunting army; and Alison (Isabel Lucas), Bromley’s daughter who ran away when her father turned.

Daybreakers has put some thought into what the world would be like if it went vampire. There are ads for teeth whitener and we see a homeless man holds a cardboard sign reading, ”Will work for blood.” Dafoe’s character did custom car work and was the first to develop day-time driving add-ons, like shields and roof-top cameras. Aside from those cute ideas, the Spierig Bros. never go into very intricate details about the socio-political structure of the world. Is religion a thing of the past? With blood evaporating, you’d think war between nations would be inevitable.

Speaking of which, Daybreakers is full of obvious allusions to the environmental concerns of today. Despite the high-falutin’ themes, it never attempts to be anything but a lowbrow actioner. It has some nasty moments that will jolt you out of your seat such as when a body explodes out of nowhere. As the climax kicks in, the film descends into a massive orgy of torn limbs, decapitated heads, and splattered blood. Some of the action is pretty decent, but the filmmakers waste too much time in trying to make us care about characters that are paper thin. Dafoe seems to be the only actor who understands how goofy the movie is and acts accordingly. They should have just made the film with him as the central character and turned it into a wall-to-wall action flick.

Rating: * ½

Everybody's Fine

Everybody's Fine - Dir. Kirk Jones (2009)


Daniel Day-Lewis took on the Marcello Mastroianni role in Nine, a musical based on Fellini’s 8 ½, which I recently reviewed. Here, it is Robert DeNiro’s turn to take on Mastroianni’s part in Everybody’s Fine, a remake of a 1990 Italian film directed by Giuseppe Tornatore (Cinema Paradiso). DeNiro plays Frank Goode, a retired laborer, who manufactured the coating that wrapped around the telephone wires strung across the state of New York. Goode suffers from health problems due to exposure to the toxic ingredients, but he has no regrets. He did it all to provide his children with the best life possible. Frank, a widower, eagerly anticipates the arrival of his kids, who he hasn’t seen since the funeral, for Thanksgiving dinner. However, the children cancel at the last minute.

Frank figures if they won’t come to him, he’ll come to them. Against his doctor’s advice, Frank travels by train and bus to visit his offspring spread across the country. His first stop is to New York City where his son David, an artist, isn’t at home in his apartment close to an art gallery where his work is displayed. Frank heads to Chicago to see his eldest daughter Amy (Kate Beckinsale), an ad executive living in a modern home with her husband and son. In Denver, Frank visits Robert (Sam Rockwell), a supposed symphony conductor who turns out to only be a percussionist. In Las Vegas, Frank sees Rosie (Drew Barrymore), a dancer living in an affluent apartment looking over the strip.

With each subsequent visit, Frank senses that the Goode clan is keeping secrets from him, especially about David’s whereabouts. Mom was the one they could open up to while dad was always the stern taskmaster. Even into adulthood, they are still the little kids afraid of disappointing their father.

It’s refreshing to see DeNiro in a role where he’s not an intense mobster or a hard-nosed cop. DeNiro is allowed to simply be DeNiro here. The same goes for Drew Barrymore who is her usual bright, perky self. Sam Rockwell provides one of the film’s best performances and Kate Beckinsale does just fine. However, I never once bought them as a family because they didn’t look like they were related one bit. They looked like a bunch of movie stars we’re supposed to believe are related. This isn’t the only inauthentic element of Everybody’s Fine. I don’t mean the badly Photoshopped poster. The story is just so trite and schmaltzy while Kirk Jones directs it like a Lifetime movie of the week. The worst offense comes in the climax when Frank (after suffering a heart attack) has a dream where he has a backyard BBQ with David, Robert, Amy, and Rosie as kids. All his revealed then the clouds turn gray and rain pours down in melodramatic fashion.

Everybody’s Fine is a shallow film masquerading as one with deeper meaning.

Rating: **

A Single Man

A Single Man - Dir. Tom Ford (2009)


If A Single Man were to win any awards this year, it would definitely get one for Artsy Fartsy Trailer of the Year. Fashion designer Tom Ford makes his directorial debut with A Single Man, based on the acclaimed 1964 novel by Christopher Isherwood. Ford, along with co-writer David Scearce, adapted the source material into a poetic portrait of loss while offering a glimmer of hope and a touch of humor at all the right moments.

Colin Firth (usually cast as the stiff love interest in almost every romantic comedy) plays the titular single man, George Falconer, an English professor who has not gotten over the death of his long-time lover, Jim (Matthew Goode). They had been together for sixteen years and he was killed in a car accident eight months ago. It is now November 30, 1962, a month into the Cuban Missile Crisis. As most of the country worries about nuclear annihilation, George simply stares into the mirror and wills himself to ”…get through the g-damned day.” He means to commit suicide once it’s over.

George goes to the university where a class on Aldous Huxley leads to a lecture about fear and thinly-veiled allusions to homophobia. It falls mostly on deaf and perplexed ears save for a handsome, young student Kenny (Nicholas Hoult) who can sense the deep seeded loneliness in his teacher. George stops at a liquor store and converses with a Spanish hustler (Jon Kortajarena) in front of a billboard for Hitchcock’s Psycho, the wide eyes of Janet Leigh upon them. The evening is spent dining and dancing with his best friend and former lover, Charley (Julianne Moore), a lush of a divorcee who yearns for the carefree days of the past in swinging London.

Ford directs the film with mechanical precision. He is immaculate in composing his shots and meticulous in the way he moves his actors through each frame. Ford certainly seems to have been inspired in his style by Wong Kar-Wai even bringing on Shigeru Umebayashi (who worked on In the Mood for Love and its pseudo-sequel 2046) to compose several tracks for the score. Ford has created an overly ordered world mirroring the structured, well-mannered lifestyle George lives within the rigid confines of 60’s suburbia. However, behind the stoic face he shows the world, he is heartbroken. George lives in a home that looks to have been designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. It is flawlessly made, a shelter ironically lined with large windows. A ”glass house,” as George jokes to Jim in a flashback.

The repressed despair is symbolized in the cold color palette Ford has chosen for the majority of the film. The gray tones warm from time to time reflecting George’s change in mood. Littered throughout the movie are extreme close-ups of lips and eyes, a slow motion pan up on a little girl in pig tails and blue dress. In the face of mortality, George finds new beauty in the tiniest of things.

The results are a striking picture though slightly artificial, sometimes bordering into the territory of a bad 80’s perfume commercial. A Single Man’s most memorable images occur at the beginning of the film as George floats naked in the water, a symbol of death and rebirth. It cuts to him walking across a snowy road towards an upturned vehicle with Jim’s body lying beside it, a dead fox terrier lying next to him. George calmly lies next to Jim, gently planting a kiss on his lips before waking in a start. And this is how his day starts.

Firth offers a sublime restraint in his performance as George. He is the centerpiece and it truly makes the film. He’s already received nominations for the SAG Awards, Independent Spirit Awards, and Golden Globes. He will surely receive a nomination at the Oscars. Julianne Moore provides strong support and television fans should watch out for Big Love’s Ginnifer Goodwin as George’s next-door neighbor, Pushing Daisies’ Lee Pace as a fellow professor, and the uncredited voice of Mad Men’s Jon Hamm.

Rating: *** ½

Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call - New Orleans

Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call - New Orleans - Dir. Werner Herzog (2009)


”It’s my lucky crack pipe. You don’t have a lucky crack pipe?”

Abel Ferrera’s original Bad Lieutenant was a gritty, unflinching portrayal of a corrupt cop with themes of Catholic guilt and uneasy redemption. Harvey Keitel played the unnamed titular character with an uncompromising bravery in depicting the Lieutenant’s disturbing demons. Werner Herzog claims to have not been aware of the original film and his version is neither a remake nor a reboot. The script was written by William M. Finkelstein whose credits include a number of television shows such as L.A. Law, NYPD Blue, Law & Order, and…Cop Rock. Under the unwieldy title of Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call – New Orleans, Herzog crafts a film that isn’t so much disturbing as it is an oddball black comedy hinged around the human medical experiment known as Nicolas Cage.

Cage’s eccentric, idiosyncratic performances have been both lauded and blasted by critics. At his insistence, he ate a live cockroach in Vampire’s Kiss (it was supposed to be a raw egg) and his ”Not the bees!” act in the Wicker Man remake has become popular YouTube fodder. Here, Herzog manages to harness the innate weirdo in Cage into a calculated craziness that is utterly compelling.

”What are these fucking iguanas doing on my coffee table?”

Cage is Terence McDonagh, a police detective in New Orleans shortly after the city was savaged by Hurricane Katrina. During the storms, he rescued (though after much debate) a prisoner trapped in his cell as the water rose dangerously high. McDonagh suffers a back injury that leaves him addicted to painkillers and other drugs. It’s highly doubtful, however, that he was that nice of a guy before the injury. Awarded a medal and promoted to lieutenant, McDonagh is put in charge of a homicide case where a Senegalese family was murdered by local drug dealer Big Fate (rapper Xzibit). When he’s not investigating, McDonagh is stealing narcotics from the evidence room and suffers from addled hallucinations of iguanas. He’s deep in gambling debts and inadvertently pisses off a vengeful mobster. When McDonagh is investigating the case, he strong arms a wheelchair-bound, old lady by cutting off her respirator and waving a .44 Magnum in her face. One night, he rousts a pair of club kids and finds a miniscule amount of drugs on their person. He forces the boyfriend to watch as he smokes crack and bangs his girlfriend on the hood of his unmarked police car.

McDonagh has a high-class prostitute girlfriend, Frankie (Eva Mendes), who he eventually hides out with his father. Dad (Tom Bower) is a recovering alcoholic who lives with his ever-soused wife (Jennifer Coolidge) in a mansion in the woods. On the outside, the home is like something out of a Tennessee Williams play, but inside it has all the dark, gloomy charm of a double-wide trailer.

”Shoot him again. His soul is still dancing.”

Cage is at his bug-eyed best in Bad Lieutenant. He lumbers about in a stooped stride like he’s the love child of Dirty Harry and Quasimodo. His voice sometimes drifts into a high-pitched tone similar to the Pokey-inspired voice Cage put on in Peggy Sue Got Married. McDonagh is an ugly human being perfectly at home in the underbelly of a city still struggling to rebuild following a devastating natural disaster. While Cage goes as over-the-top as he possibly can, he’s balanced out by the understated performances of Eva Mendes, Val Kilmer as a fellow detective, and classic character actor Brad Dourif as McDonagh’s pony-tailed bookie.

Herzog adds a surreal touch to the picture with a reptilian fetish that includes a strange, yet haunting, scene at a traffic accident with a gator lying in the middle of the road with its intestines on the asphalt and a single leg twitching. There’s also an interlude of extreme close-ups of iguanas set to Johnny Adams’ “Release Me.”

Port of Call is at its weakest during the third act. The film’s resolution comes out of left field with its happily-ever-after denouement. Everything seems to end for the better and you keep waiting for the other shoe to drop. Is this a happy ending or another one of McDonagh’s crack-induced fever dreams? Honestly, the story is secondary to watching Nic Cage at his Nic Cage-iest.

Rating: ** ½