Recent Screenings

Transsiberian (2008) - Roy and Jessie (Woody Harrelson and Emily Mortimer) are Americans who've gone to China with Roy's church to work with underprivileged children. A train buff, Roy books them passage on the Transsiberian Express from Beijing to Moscow, before flying back to the States. On the journey, they meet Carlos (Eduardo Noriega), a sexy, well-travelled Spaniard who seems to knows a lot about Customs, and Abby (Kate Mara), a young woman who has run away from Seattle.

Meanwhile, Grinko, a Russian narcotics detective (Ben Kinglsey) is tracking down whoever killed a drug dealer in Vladivostok and vanished with both the drugs and the money.

Jessie, who had a fairly wild past before marrying Roy and trying to settle down, feels sympathetic towards the seemingly lost Abby. And she feels something more unsettling for Carlos, who gives off an aura of raw sexuality and physical danger. When the train stops at a snowy village somewhere in Siberia, Roy goes looking at old coal locomotives with Carlos. When the train starts up again, Roy is no longer aboard.

Hoping that Roy has simply missed the train, Jessie gets off at the next village to make inquiries. Carlos and Abby decide they will stay with her until she finds her husband. They're concerned about her safety. In this isolated, wintry and foreign environment, the sexual tension between Carlos and Jessie begins to heat up, culminating in an abandoned Orthodox church off in the woods near the village.

The pacing of Transsiberian reflects that of the train itself. It starts off slowly -- introducing these people, telling their back stories and actually developing characters and relationships -- and then picks up more and more speed as the film chugs along. The subtle tension in one scene links to another, which links to another, until the total becomes almost unbearable. It's Hitchcock, not Quantum Solace or other contemporary "thrillers" that substitute action and quick edits for genuine suspense.

Director and co-writer Brad Anderson (The Machinist) offers some good twists and turns on the trip, which keeps the film moving along in surprising ways. The story of Jessie and Carlos doesn't end in the Orthodox church in Siberia, it only marks the beginning of a new stage in the journey.

Despite excellent acting all around, the film really belongs to Emily Mortimer. Transsiberian is Jessie's story in the end, and Mortimer does a great job of portraying the internal struggle between her restless nature, with its wild past, and her desire to live a positive life and love Roy, who saved her both physically and emotionally after she slammed head-on into his car while she was drunk. Jessie makes some really poor decisions on this journey. But Mortimer gives her the dignity of a human being really wrestling with good and bad aspects of herself, and the fact that they may be more intertwined than we normally care to admit. As she says to her husband at one point, quoting Tennessee Williams, "Kill off all my demons, Roy, and my angels might die, too."(So that's where Tom Waits got the line.)

But this isn't just a metaphorical journey. It is a physical one as well, through contemporary Russia, and Anderson does a great job capturing the ambience of traveling through a strange land, both in the small details and in the starkly beautiful shots of the train passing through the Siberian wilderness. While the landscape and people can seem exotic to the Americans, there's also a sense of the chaos, hardship and danger in the post-Soviet Union era. This becomes more evident as the film progresses. As one character says, "In Russia, we have expression. 'With lies, you may go ahead in the world, but you may never go back.' Do you understand this, Jessie?"

Where is that line? At what point can you no longer turn back? Brad Anderson has fashioned a fine suspense film that touches on these darker questions as it speeds on its way to a dramatic climax, with action sequences that seem to organically rise out of the need of the moment rather than being a constructed set-piece to show off CGI. The writing and directing are excellent. The acting is consistently great, with special kudos to Woody Harrelson, who has the thankless task of playing a fairly simple guy who's positive by nature, but who imbues Roy with real humanity. The cinematography by Xavi Giménez is top notch. There's a lot going on in this film. It lingers well and leaves you slightly unsettled. And it's easily the best movie that takes place on a train in a long, long time.

STRONGLY RECOMMENDED, unless you must have hyper-kinetic action with lots of explosions.


Duplicity (2009) - Clive Owen and Julia Roberts in a corporate espionage screwball comedy. Tony Gilroy, who did such a great job with Michael Clayton, offers up a much lighter take on capitalist morality this time. Owen is ex-MI6, Roberts ex-CIA, and now they both work in corporate espionage, for competing cosmetic companies. They love each other and are scheming together to make their big pay day and get away from it all.

Or are they? She may be playing him. He may be trying to get revenge for the first time they met, when she seduced him, knocked him out and stole Egyptian military secrets from him. That never set well. They're at competing companies, but she's a mole for the company he works for, and now he's her handler. Or is she a mole for the other company, using him to get information?

Gilroy piles on the layers of doubt, especially in the relationship between Owen and Roberts, which is both passionate and wary. They know they're both liars and schemers. Will they stay together, because they understand each other so well? Or will they be unable to resist the temptation of getting the best of the other? It's classic screwball comedy material taken to another level. Despite a deep vein of cynicism, it wouldn't be hard to imagine Cary Grant and Claudette Colbert in the same roles.

The best part: The film feels like it was written for adults. There may not be a lot here, but at least it's smart and savvy and knowing. If you like Clive and Julia, they have some good chemistry and the film is a lot of fun. And we finally know now: Clive Owen can do comedy. He actually has the funniest scenes in the film, getting excited over developments in the secret battles between two frozen pizza giants. This from a man who once stole Egyptian military secrets. (And that is the sly, darker underside to the film. Gilroy, who explored corporate espionage in Michael Clayton, doesn't go in depth much on the subject, but you realize afterwards how weird this whole new era is in some ways.)

The best sequence in the movie, however, may the opening credits, as Paul Giamatti and Tom Wilkinson - heads of the competing cosmetic corporations who hate each other - get into a delicious slow-motion fistfight on the tarmac between their two executive jets.

RECOMMENDED, especially if you're in the mood for some smart fluff. Not recommended for Julia-haters.


Quantum of Solace (2008) - Casino Royale was such a pleasant surprise in the Bond franchise: Action, class and a dash of tough humanity, thanks to Daniel Craig, the best 007 since Sean Connery. Unfortunately, Q of S exchanges any of the human touches in Casino Royale for even bigger and sillier action sequences. The plot of the film is so unimportant that you don't even know what's going on at times. It's like watching a scene unfold as you pass by in a fast-moving car: "What was that? Who was that?"

On the positive side, we get more Judi Dench. M stands for Mother now, with 007 as her favorite son who gets into trouble all the time. (He's gonna break her heart.) How she keeps winding up in obscure international settings so quickly was weird though.

Strangely, I've never seen a Bond film so intricately tied to the previous one. Someone should've warned me that I had to re-watch Casino Royale immediately before starting this one. I'm supposed to remember all of these people and story lines from the last movie? The director and screenwriters obviously don't care about their characters or plot, though, so why should I?

Too bad. There are some interesting elements at play here, but everything get lost in the blur.

OTHER RECOMMENDATIONS:

Anatomy of a Murder (1959) - I should write extensively about this one, because it's truly a classic, and a landmark in trial films. If it seems unusually dark and cynical for late 1950s Hollywood, that's because it's directed by Otto Preminger. Jimmy Stewart is great, and well chosen for the role of a small-town lawyer who gets involved in a rape and murder case. Lee Remick was way sexy in 1959 - and later, too. The score is famous in and of itself, coming from Duke Ellington, who has a small role in the film. Highly recommended.

Burn After Reading (2008) - No, it's not up to the level of No Country for Old Men, but it's much better than some reviewers said when it first came out. Funny, dark, weird. It's classic Coen Brothers. Brad Pitt excels. And the scenes between two confused CIA superiors are worth everything. "Report back to me . . uh . . . when it makes sense."

2 Days in Paris (2007) - Julie Delphy wrote, directed, starred in, and even did the music for this film about a New York couple - Jack and Marion - who stop at Marion's parents' house in Paris for two days before returning to the States after a long trip. Things haven't gone well between the couple, with tensions brewing, restlessness showing its head, and possible incompatibility issues. While showing indebtedness to both Annie Hall and Richard Linklater's pair of Sunrise/Sunset films that starred Delphy, 2 Days in Paris creates its own personal identity, thanks mostly to Delphy's intelligent script. Some very funny scenes, a lot of excellent dialog, and delightful performances by the director's real-life parents. Delphy, who recently completed a film-making degree at NYU, has made an impressive directorial debut.

Recent Screenings

The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) Directed by William Wyler. Starring Frederic March, Myrna Loy, Dana Andrews, Teresa Wright, Harold Russell and Hoagy Carmichael.

I've seen The Best Years of Our Lives several times now, and each time I watch it, I come away feeling like it should be ranked among the greatest films of all time. It's about as close as you'll get to a perfect motion picture, excelling in almost every aspect of filmmaking. And, in fact, it won seven Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor (Frederic March), Best Supporting Actor (Harold Russell), Best Screenplay, Best Editing, and Best Music. Harold Russell, a genuine World War II veteran who lost both hands in the war, received a second Honorary Oscar "For bringing hope and courage to his fellow veterans through his appearance" in the movie, making him the only person to ever win two Oscars for the same performance.

The story concerns three veterans - Frederic March, Dana Andrews and Harold Russell - returning home after the war and the adjustments that each of them must face. If that sounds too dramatic right off the bat, one of the wonders of the film is that Wyler never lets the film feel too heavy, using well-timed humor, great cinematography, and excellent editing to keep everything moving along at a good pace. There are some particularly funny moments early on, when March takes his wife, played by the wonderful Myrna Loy, and grown-up daughter, played by Teresa Wright, out on the town. March and Loy make a great married couple trying to find their way with each other after several years of absence. The scene where March first returns home is handled so well from a filmmaking point of view that director David Lean spoke of it years later in an interview. It's so simply done, yet very powerful. Wyler and his cinematographer Greg Toland, who shot Citizen Kane and was considered one of the most innovative directors of photography ever, do a masterful job throughout the film of using wonderfully crafted shots to give emotional resonance to the story. Watch carefully the scenes early in the film, when the three men are waking up in the gunner's compartment of a bomber at sunrise. It's beautiful, effective and seemingly effortless cinema.

Dana Andrews plays a heroic "flyboy" who did great in the war but comes back to poverty and a wife who doesn't love him. Russell plays a navy vet who was going to marry the girl next door but now feels like a freak because of the hooks he has instead of hands. It's hard watching what he goes through without thinking of the young men and women returning from Iraq who may be faced with similar life-changing wounds. In a small role, the great songwriter ("Stardust," "Georgia on My Mind") Hoagy Carmichael plays Butch, Russell's uncle who runs the neighborhood watering hole. We even get to hear Hoagy playing and singing a bit.

Somehow, Wyler grabs your interest from the start and never lets it go as he follows the three main characters and their intersecting stories. In the end, he delivers one of the most gratifying films that Hollywood ever produced, a genuinely funny, touching, and deeply human film. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.


Sur mes lèvres [Read My Lips] (2001) Directed by Jacques Audiard. Starring Vincent Cassel and Emmanuelle Devos.

After enjoying Audiard's The Beat That My Heart Skipped so much [see previous Recent Screenings], I decided to try this earlier film. Also written by Audiard and Tonino Benacquista, it stars Emmanuelle Devos as a woman with hearing deficiencies who works at a property development company. Her co-workers treat her poorly, she's lonely and somewhat frumpy, but she does have an ability to read lips, which can work to her advantage at times. Vincent Cassel plays an ex-convict who winds up working as Devos' assistant. She is both attracted and repelled by him; he doesn't care much for her or the job; but he becomes intrigued by her ability to read lips, while she discovers that his abilities as a thief can help her deal with a difficult colleague. Soon, the two strike up an uneasy working relationship that draws them deeper and deeper into a scheme to steal a large sum of money from a local gangster. As the suspense becomes more and more intense, the sexual tension between them also increases. Audiard once again takes what could be a typical low-level mob movie and turns it into something much more fascinating. While Read My Lips and The Beat That My Heart Skipped operate on the surface as crime thrillers, Audiard ultimately seems to be interested in exploring individual character and relationships between people. His work reminds me at times of Claude Sautet, albeit with more violence. Read My Lips races along at an increasingly intense pace, and La Reina and I were a little exhausted and relieved when it was over. But it was an exciting and intriguing ride, with several well-placed twists and turns. Devos won a Caesar Award for Best Actress for this role, and Cassel and the other actors also do fine jobs. The script by Audiard and Benacquista is tight and well-developed. I forward to more films from this director. RECOMMENDED.



Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003) Directed by Peter Weir. Starring Russell Crowe, Paul Bettany and the Galapagos Islands.

For some reason, I wasn't particularly interested in this film when it came out. I don't really care for Russell Crowe, for one thing, and the storyline just didn't intrigue me at the time. Too bad. It would have been great to see this on a big screen instead of our sometimes cranky television. In the end, La Reina and I really enjoyed it. I'm still not sold on Crowe as an actor, and the one complaint I have about the movie is that he didn't seem to inhabit his role of Captain Jack Aubrey as much as he recited lines and tried to look "bold" or "heroic." Acting-wise, the real discovery was Paul Bettany, who played Dr. Maturin. It wasn't until the end of the film, watching the credits that it dawned on me that the good doctor was also the albino killer monk in the Da Vinci Code. What a transformation! Bettany may have more to work with in his character than Crowe does with Captain Aubrey. Dr. Maturin is a navy surgeon who's also a naturalist. He prefers scientific discovery over war, and his inner torment as he deals with his conflicted situation, and how that works out in his relationship with Captain Aubrey, forms the emotional foundation of the film. It's the complexity of both characters that distinguishes the film from other typical contemporary adventure films. This is a throwback to classic Hollywood, mixing action, intrigue, exotic locations and good character development to bring about a cohesive and pleasant whole. The cinematography is stunning, especially the scenes shot on the Galapagos Islands. RECOMMENDED.


Where the Sidewalk Ends (1950) Directed by Otto Preminger. Starring Dana Andrews, Gene Tierney and Karl Malden.

Preminger, Andrews and Tierney had already collaborated on one of the greatest film noirs of all time, the haunting and mysterious Laura (1944). Where the Sidewalk Ends is a much leaner, harder noir, and while it will never reaches the cinematic heights of Laura, it's a fine film in its own right. Dana Andrews plays a cop whose father was a crook and who carries a chip on his shoulder because everyone reminds him of that. He hates crooks and often gets in trouble for beating them up to get information. He's kind of an early Dirty Harry, with father issues. Already in trouble with the new captain, played by Karl Malden, he's connected to the accidental death of a former war-hero who had turned into a bullying alcoholic involved with gangsters. At the same time, Andrews falls in love with the guy's girl, played by the lovely Gene Tierney, and this creates more complications. (Doesn't it always.) The efficient and interesting screenplay is by Ben Hecht, one of Hollywood's greatest writers, who was nominated for six Oscars in his career (winning two) and whose numerous credits include Notorious, Spellbound, Wuthering Heights, Scarface, and His Girl Friday. In different hands, the film could have devolved into a typical, maudlin story of a misunderstood cop redeemed by love, but Preminger and Hecht keep you guessing and slightly off-guard. The wonderful noirish cinematography helps evoke the psychological moodiness that underlies the film's hard surface. RECOMMENDED - but only if you've seen Laura first!


Angel (1937) Directed by Ernst Lubitsch. Starring Marlene Dietrich, Herbert Marshall, Melvyn Douglas and Edward Everett Horton.

For much of Hollywood's history, Ernst Lubitsch was probably the most revered and respected director of all time. Other great directors such as Billy Wilder and William Wyler all acknowledged their tremendous debt to him. (Walking together after Lubitsch's funeral, Wilder said sadly, "No more Lubitsch." Wyler reportedly responded, "Worse than that. No more Lubitsch films.") These days, I imagine the average movie fan doesn't even know who he is, one more testimony to the ruthlessness of history and the fleeting nature of fame. In the last year or two, I started watching his films, because you can't read anything about cinema history without bumping into him at every turn. I've enjoyed several of them, especially Trouble in Paradise, Bluebeard's Eighth Wife, The Shop Around the Corner, Ninotchka and To Be or Not to Be . I can't say Angel was one of my favorites, probably because I love Lubitsch's romantic comedies (he basically invented the genre) and Angel leans more in the direction of romantic drama, albeit with Lubitsch's sly and intelligent humor at work here and there.

Marlene Dietrich plays the bored and neglected wife of a successful British diplomat (Herbert Marshall). While her husband's away on yet another trip, she goes to Paris, where she meets an American (Melvyn Douglas) who instantly falls for her. They only spend one night together, and she refuses to tell him her name, so he calls her "Angel." She realizes that she might be falling for him, too, which was not her plan, and she runs away. The scene where she disappears gives you an excellent idea of what a great director Lubitsch was, and what he contributed to cinema. Douglas gets up from a park bench to buy Dietrich a flower from an old, Gypsy-looking woman. He turns back to the bench, but Lubitsch keeps the camera on the old woman's face. In the background, you hear Douglas calling out, "Angel, where are you?" He keeps calling for her, his voice becoming more and more distant. Lubitsch never cuts away from the old woman, whose face tells you everything you need to know about what's happening. She eventually hobbles over to the park bench, leans down and picks up the flower Douglas had bought and dropped. Who up to that point in the history of film thought you could convey so much emotion by turning the camera away at a pivotal scene? Lubitsch seems to be exploring this effect, as he uses the technique on two other occasions in the film. And they all work. Partly because they're related to one of the themes of the film: what we don't know or can't see about those we love - what we can only imagine - can sometimes hurt tremendously. Marshall returns from his trip. Dietrich is increasingly restless. Douglas turns up in a most surprising way. The tension between the three builds up throughout the second half of the film.

Unfortunately, there are some moments early on in Angel that slide into pure melodrama, and Lubitsch lets the ending get away from him a bit. Also, I'm not a big fan of Melvyn Douglas. Herbert Marshall, on the hand, I discovered through earlier Lubitsch films and have come to respect quite a bit. He was highly popular in the 1930s, and his screen presence is wonderful, a charming, debonair personality with real warmth. And Marlene Dietrich? If you want to know why she is one of the all-time Hollywood luminaries, you don't have to go any farther than this film. She is glamour personified. During the film, La Reina kept commenting on her beauty, her incredible dresses, the amazing close-ups of her luminous face. What I love about Lubitsch is that he made films about adults for adults. When you compare the intelligence, grace and sophistication of his films with most current Hollywood offerings, you begin to wonder how we lost so much along the way. I'm not sure I would recommend Angel (which shouldn't be confused with Marlene's most famous film, The Blue Angel), but I definitely recommend seeing something by Lubitsch. Trouble in Paradise may the best place to start.


V for Vendetta (2005) Directed by James McTeigue. Written by the Wachowski Brothers. Starring Natalie Portman, Hugo Weaving, Stephen Rea, Stephen Fry and John Hurt.

What a disappointment. The Matrix is one of my 100 favorite films, and I was looking forward to this Wachowski Brothers project based on Allan Moore's graphic novel from the 1980s. Written during the Thatcher era, the story concerns the masked "V," and his revolutionary (or terrorist, depending on your point of view) activities against a totalitarian regime that's taken over England. While I can see why someone would want to resurrect this project for our own George W. Bush era, the Wachowski Brothers have dispensed with any subtlety that may have been contained in the original and delivered a preachy, heavy-handed film that doesn't even seem to know (or care?) what it's really talking about. The plot could have been interesting, involving secret government research projects gone wrong, the mysterious V, and a young woman named Evy who gets caught up in his activities. She's pursued by the secret police on one hand and uncertain if V is mad or not on the other. As V, Hugo Weaving does as well as anyone could being hidden the entire film behind a Guy Fawkes mask and struggling with such a one-note character. Portman does okay as Evy, but seems defeated in the end by the terrible script. Fry, Rea and Hurt are all excellent actors terribly wasted. Like Pan's Labyrinth, I suppose this is another "adult fairy-tale," a comic book/fantasy film that tries to take on a serious subject. But I'm beginning to think that comic book movies trying to be serious are sort of like rock bands trying to be serious. Too often you wind up with something like Yes. One of the reasons The Matrix worked so well was that it had a good sense of humor about itself. (At least the first film did. The two sequels lacked this essential component.) In the end, V for Vendetta also takes itself too seriously. Like many people, the Wachowski Brothers harbor fantasies of striking back at the Bush-like bad guys; they just happen to have $54 million to make their fantasy come alive on screen. Too bad it had to be so plodding, confused and adolescent.