Clay Pigeons is one of the odder films floating around out there, but it’s a damn good time at the movies. It fits into a subgenre that I have lovingly dub as ‘desert noir’, other prime examples being Oliver Stone’s U Turn and John Dahl’s Red Rock West. Intrigue and murder abound under a sun soaked, parchment dry landscape in these types of films, always with a healthy helping of dark humour and unsettling, psychopathic characters running around, perpetually up to no good. Joaquin Phoenix (adding to the U Turn vibe) plays Clay, a good guy who seems to have a real problem with bad luck. He finds out his friend has killed himself, which seems to be the first swirl in a spooky spiral of trouble that veers towards him like a dust devil. Soon nosy FBI agent Dale Shelby (reliably perky Janeane Garofalo) comes to town, turning her attention towards him. Dan Mooney (ever great Scott Wilson stealing scenes with perched stealth) is Clay’s friend and the town Sheriff, also on the lookout for clues. These two are the least of his worries though, as the worst is yet to come with the arrival of charming serial killer Lester Long (Vince Vaughn). This is my favourite Vince Vaughn performance because he shows his versatility with the brittle, lightning quick turns of personality injected into Lester. One minute he’s your best buddy and a lovable loudmouth, the next a coiled viper with untold violence beneath the jovial exterior. They always say serial killers are charmers, and Vince Vaughn takes that sentiment, dances around you in circles with it and then proceeds to strangle you with it when you least expect it. So yeah. The bodies pile up and no one seems to be able to tie them to anyone. Lester treats everyone like his best friend until they’re too comfortable to see the blind side coming, and poor Phoenix wanders around looking disshvelled and stressed out. It’s good fun all the way through, doing a nice see-saw rhythm between quaint, cartoonish antics and a grim, scary turn of events. Underrated and more than worth your time.
The assassination of American President John F. Kennedy is a watershed event in American history and one that has provoked people to question their own beliefs and those of their government. Yet, for such a highly publicized affair there are still many uncertainties that surround the actual incident. Countless works of fiction and non-fiction have been created concerning the subject, but have done little in aiding our understanding of the assassination and the events surrounding it. Oliver Stone’s film, JFK (1991) depicts the events leading up to and after the assassination like a densely constructed puzzle complete with jump cuts and multiple perspectives. Stone’s film presents the assassination as a powerful event constructed by its conspirators to create confusion with its contradictory evidence, to then bury this evidence in the Warren Commission Report, which in turn manifests multiple interpretations of key figures like Lee Harvey Oswald. JFK offers a more structured examination of the conspiracy from one person’s point of view where everything fits together to reveal a larger, more frightening picture implicating the most powerful people in the United States government.
JFK presents the assassination of Kennedy as a powerful event constructed by its conspirators to create confusion with its contradictory evidence and then theorizes that the evidence was buried deep in the Warren Commission Report. Stone’s film filters a structured examination of two conspiracies, one to kill the President and one to cover it up, from one person’s point of view — Jim Garrison (Kevin Costner) — who then assembles all of the evidence at his disposal to reveal a larger, more frightening picture that implicates the most powerful people in the United States government. Stone saw his movie consisting of several separate films: Garrison in New Orleans against Clay Shaw (Tommy Lee Jones), Oswald’s (Gary Oldman) backstory, the recreation of Dealey Plaza, and the deep background in Washington, D.C.
While attending the Latin American Film Festival in Havana, Cuba, Stone met Sheridan Square Press publisher Ellen Ray on an elevator. She had published Jim Garrison’s book On the Trail of the Assassins. Ray had gone to New Orleans and worked with Garrison in 1967. She gave Stone a copy of Garrison’s book and told him to read it. He did and quickly bought the film rights with his own money. The Kennedy assassination had always had a profound effect on his life and eventually met Garrison, grilling him with a variety of questions for three hours. The man stood up to Stone’s questioning and then got up and left. His hubris impressed the director.
Stone was not interested in making a film about Garrison’s life but rather the story behind the conspiracy to kill Kennedy. To this end, he also bought the film rights to Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy by Jim Marrs. When Stone set out to write the screenplay, he asked Sklar to co-write it with him and distill the Garrison book, the Marrs book and all the research he and others conducted into a script that would resemble what he called “a great detective movie.” Stone told Sklar his vision of the movie: “I see the models as Z (1969) and Rashomon (1950), I see the event in Dealey Plaza taking place in the first reel, and again in the eighth reel, and again later, and each time we’re going to see it differently and with more illumination.”
Sklar worked on the Garrison side of the story while Stone added the Oswald story, the events at Dealey Plaza and the “Mr. X” character. To tell as much of the story as they could, Stone and Sklar used composite characters, a technique that would be criticized in the press, most notably the “Mr. X” character played by Donald Sutherland and who was a mix of several witnesses and retired Air Force colonel L. Fletcher Prouty, an adviser for the film.
Stone ambitiously wanted to recreate the Kennedy assassination in Dealey Plaza and his producers had to pay the Dallas City Council a substantial amount of money to hire police to reroute traffic and close streets for three weeks. He only had ten days to shoot all of the footage. Getting permission to shoot in the Texas School Book Depository was more difficult. They had to pay $50,000 to put someone in the window that Lee Harvey Oswald was supposed to have shot Kennedy from. They were allowed to film in that location only between certain hours with only five people on the floor at one time: the camera crew, an actor, and Stone. Co-producer Clayton Townsend has said that the hardest part was getting the permission to restore the building to the way it looked back in 1963. It took five months of negotiation.
Filming was going smoothly until several attacks on the film and Stone began to surface in the mainstream media including the Chicago Tribune, published while the film was only in its first weeks of shooting. Five days later, the Washington Post ran a scathing article by national security correspondent George Lardner entitled, “On the Set: Dallas in Wonderland” that used the first draft of the JFK screenplay to blast it for “the absurdities and palpable untruths in Garrison’s book and Stone’s rendition of it.” The article pointed out that Garrison lost his case against Clay Shaw and claimed that he inflated his case by trying to use Shaw’s homosexual relationships to prove guilt by association. Other attacks in the media soon followed. However, the Lardner Post piece stung the most because he had stolen a copy of the script. Stone recalls, “He had the first draft, and I went through probably six or seven drafts.”
The film depicts the events leading up to and after the assassination as a densely constructed story complete with jump cuts, multiple perspectives, a variety of film stocks and the blending of actual archival footage with staged scenes dramatized by a stellar cast of actors. This blurring of reality and fiction by mixing real footage with staged footage makes it difficult to discern what really happened and what is merely speculation. Stone does this in order to create what he calls “a countermyth to the myth of the Warren Commission because a lot of the original facts were lost in a very shoddy investigation” and simulate the confusing quagmire of events as they are depicted in The Warren Commission Report. Stone creates different points of views or “layers” through the extensive use of flashbacks within flashbacks. Stone has said that he “wanted to the film on two or three levels — sound and picture would take us back, and we’d go from one flashback to another, and then that flashback would go inside another flashback . . . I wanted multiple layers because reading the Warren Commission Report is like drowning.” This technique conveys the notion of confusion and conflict within evidence.
Kevin Costner acts as the perfect mouthpiece for Stone’s theories. The auteur’s infamously forceful directorial approach to his actors pays off here as he reins in the actor’s usual tics and mannerisms. Stone was no dummy — he knew that by populating his film with many famous faces, he could make the potentially bitter pill that was his film, that much more palatable to the mainstream movie-going public. The rest of the cast is phenomenal. Gary Oldman’s delivers an eerily authentic portrayal of the enigmatic Lee Harvey Oswald. Tommy Lee Jones is note-perfect as the refined, self-confident businessman, Clay Shaw. Even minor roles are filled by such name actors as Vincent D’Onofrio, Kevin Bacon, Jack Lemmon, and Walter Matthau.
The film throws many characters at us and it is easier to keep track of them by identifying them with the famous person that portrays them. Stone was evidently inspired by the casting model of a documentary epic he had admired as a child: “Darryl Zanuck’s The Longest Day (1962) was one of my favorite films as a kid. It was realistic, but it had a lot of stars…the supporting cast provides a map of the American psyche: familiar, comfortable faces that walk you through a winding path in the dark woods.” Future biopics with sprawling casts, like The Insider (1999), and Good Night, and Good Luck (2005), and The Good Shepherd (2006) would use this same approach.
Seeing JFK now, one is reminded that first and foremost, it is a top notch thriller. There are so many fantastic scenes of sheer exposition that would normally come across as dry and boring but are transformed into riveting scenes in the hands of this talented cast. For example, the famous scene between Garrison and X (Sutherland) where the mysterious man lays out all the reasons why Kennedy was killed and how is not only a marvel of writing but also of acting as the veteran actor gets to deliver what is surely one of the best monologues ever committed to film.
JFK is an important film in the sense that it accurately portrays the assassination of Kennedy as a complex public event surrounded by chaos and confusion. It presents a main protagonist who exposes the conspiracy to be an intricately constructed coup d’état. Stone paints his canvas with broad brushstrokes and powerful images. JFK takes a larger, confrontational stance by boldly implicating the government in the conspiracy and the mainstream media in conspiring to cover it up. Stone is using the persuasive power of film to reach the largest number of people he can in order to wake them up and to reveal how they have been deceived by higher powers. There is no mistaking the importance of the assassination of Kennedy in American culture. Based on the excitement that surrounded Stone’s film, the American public is still greatly interested in the event with more and more people believing in a plot to kill Kennedy.
I absolutely can’t believe how heartbreaking it must’ve been for writer/director Mark Christopher to see his disco party opus 54 get completely dismantled and released as a hodgepodge of his original vision back in 1998. Now, almost 20 years later, people are able to see the film as the filmmaker intended, as the Director’s Cut of this undeniably entertaining film has finally hit digital platforms, with a rumored Blu-ray release possibly in the cards in the near future. When this film first hit screens in late August of ’98, it was promptly attacked by critics who seemed all too eager to rip it to shreds. And after the bad buzz settled in, the film never stood a chance at the box office; it would gross less than $20 million before heading off to a second, slightly more robust life on VHS/DVD/cable. I can remember seeing (and enjoying) the film on opening weekend, and with no understanding of the trouble-filled production, there was no baggage for me to bring into the viewing experience.
But now, having seen the newly restored version in all of its glitz and glamorous glory, it’s absolutely ridiculous to compare the two films, as they are so totally different that it’ll make your head spin. And it sadly reinforces the notion that young filmmakers can become easy targets by the money people. This was a project that Miramax paid to develop based off of Christopher’s treatment and short films, with the studio then approving the material, and letting him shoot the film he wanted to shoot. But after disastrous test screenings that were held in all the wrong places suggested that audiences would hate the film en masse, producers the Weinsteins and honchos at Miramax asked for wholesale narrative edits, alterations in tone and character motivation, and the scrubbing of anything remotely salacious or homoerotic. And this, coming exactly a year after Boogie Nights busted down the normally puritanical doors of American cinema – it’s all so crazy that it almost can’t be believed.
The plot is your traditional rags to riches/fish out of water narrative, concerning a young, sexy guy named Shane O’Shea (Ryan Phillippe at his most breezy and engaging) living in New Jersey with his dad and two sisters, who lucks his way into a coveted bartending job at the titular night club. In a very memorable bit, he’s admitted into the club by 54’s owner Steve Rubell, the fantastic Mike Myers, but only after taking his shirt off to expose his chiseled physique. Before you can say sex, drugs, and rock and roll, Shane gets in way over his head with his fellow employees (Breckin Meyer and Salma Hayek as a debauched couple), his boss (Myers absolutely steals every single scene), and himself.
The film takes on the scope of a personal journey quest, centering on a guy who is still trying to figure himself out as a person, let alone attempting to navigate the extreme partying and emotional thrills of the era. An absolutely amazing supporting cast was along for the ride, including Sela Ward at her absolute hottest, Michael York, Neve Campbell, Heather Matarazzaro, Lauren Hutton, Sherry Stringfield, and Mark Ruffalo in a blink or you’ll miss him bit part, with various real life celebrities making walk-ons and cameos. Again, the differences between the two cuts of 54 are huge, with the director’s cut taking on a totally different edge and tone, while the theatrical release plays it much more straight, in all sense of the phrase. Phillippe’s character in particular is much more interesting in the director’s cut, with morally ambiguous decisions being made, with more of a sexual edge on display.
Skillfully edited by David Kittredge from the original version and 44 minutes of previously unreleased footage, this new cut of 54 moves more gracefully, with scenes feeling more organic, and relationships more fleshed out and multilayered. The big kiss between Phillippe and Meyer has been reinstated, along with a refocusing of Meyer’s character in general, with the romantic triangle of Hayek and the two guys producing even more dramatic heat. The film certainly takes a cue from Boogie Nights in that the narrative revolves around a slightly dim, wide-eyed pretty boy who enters into a world that he could never anticipate or predict, and while the film never hits the peaks that Paul Thomas Anderson’s picture did, it certainly displays its own sense of confidence and flamboyant style. Cinematographer Alexander Gruszynski shot the film with lots of close ups and neon, going full-tilt inside of the night club, with his swerving, observant camera picking up the various bits of sex and fun all happening inside the pleasure palace. The soundtrack, of course, pops with period authentic tunes that set the mood immediately, with the entire film feeling like a dreamy descent into bacchanalian excess that finally feels fully unleashed.
It’s amazing to think that this film ruffled so many feathers with its gay content 20 years ago, because when looking at it in retrospect, it feels quaint to a certain degree when compared with what’s recently been shown on screen. People weren’t ready to accept the themes that 54 explores, and didn’t want to see their latest heartthrob (Phillippe had just had the smash hit I Know What You Did Last Summer) making out with guys. If Christopher made this film today, it gets released 100% as is, and to a certain extent, he probably would have been able to take things further. But what’s exciting is that this filmmaker has been able to see his project fully realized, and as a result of the dedication of his technical and restoration team, has been able to silence those initial naysayers with a movie that proudly announces itself as a secret gem waiting to be rediscovered by an entirely new generation of movie lovers.
Gattaca is one of my favorite genre-benders, a unique effort that combines film noir and believable science fiction in a tight and sleek package that greatly benefits from writer/director Andrew Niccol’s supreme sense of style and his usual brand of topical, thought provoking storytelling. Niccol, who also wrote The Truman Show for Peter Weir and wrote/directed Lord of War, Simone, In Time, and last year’s underappreciated Good Kill, is a big ideas guy, prone to heady narrati…ves with juicy hooks, and with Gattaca, he crafted a film that can now be seen as very much ahead of its time. Released to great critical acclaim but a box office debacle back in 1997, and featuring one of the coolest print ad campaigns of all time, the film foreshadowed the genetic testing onslaught of the 2000’s, with a story that involves a future society that’s become all but determined by work done in labs. Embryos are genetically engineered with imperfections all but eradicated, while the antiseptic environment stresses environmental reconstruction and stunning advances made in the field of science.
The story pivots on a man who is born genetic flaws, and who can’t progress as far as he wants in society, so he tricks the system, in order to achieve his goals. The trio of Ethan Hawke, Jude Law, and Uma Thurman all did stellar work, the cinematography by ace shooter Sławomir Idziak (Black Hawk Down) is extraordinary, and Michael Nyman’s elegant and mournful score set an appropriately chilly and evocative tone, suggesting loss with a smidge of a hope. Gattaca is also a production designer’s dream come true, with each location and set perfectly chosen and art directed to the max, but never in a flashy or gaudy manner; Jan Roelfs deserved an Oscar nomination for his mesmerizing work. Niccol also smartly populated the cast with a bevy of excellent character actors, including Loren Dean, Elias Koteas, Xander Berkeley, Tony Shaloub, Blair Underwood, Dean Norris, Alan Arkin, Gore Vidal(!), and Ernest Borgnine(!) This is a film that gets stronger and stronger with each viewing, and I love how it can be seen as a detective story with sci-fi elements, or a science-fiction love story set against the backdrop of a mystery.
SIDEWAYS, Sandra Oh, Thomas Haden Church, Paul Giamatti, Virginia Madsen, 2004, (c) Fox Searchlight
Alexander Payne is part of an exciting wave of filmmakers who grew up during the 1970s and were subsequently influenced by the films from that era. His contemporaries include the likes of Wes Anderson, Paul Thomas Anderson, and David O. Russell to name but a few. And like his fellow filmmakers, Payne eschews the Hollywood trend of placing an emphasis on special effects and trendy actors in favor of character-driven, comedy-drama hybrids populated with character actors like Laura Dern, Matthew Broderick and Kathy Bates.
Payne’s About Schmidt (2002) continued his fascination with American cinema in the ‘70s by featuring one its biggest (and most prolific) stars, Jack Nicholson. His next film, Sideways (2004), continued the road movie motif from Schmidt and combined it with the buddy film. Jack Cole (Thomas Haden Church) is a failed actor about to be married. He decides to go on one last week of uninhibited fun with his best friend, Miles Raymond (Paul Giamatti), a grade school teacher and struggling author. They go on a wine-tasting tour through California’s Central Coast and squeeze in a bit of golfing as well.
Miles is an avid (nay-elitist) wine aficionado while Jack is completely ignorant of wine beyond what tastes good to him and what doesn’t. Miles is trying to get his book published with little success and he’s grown cynical and defeated as a result. Initially, he comes off as an unlikable loser not above stealing money from his mother. Jack counters Miles’ repressed nature by coming off as something of an instinctive kind of person who indulges in his raging id. He was on a hit television show… 11 years ago and is now relegated to doing voiceovers for commercials. Along the way, Jack and Miles meet Maya (Virginia Madsen), a beautiful waitress who Miles knows from way back when, and Stephanie (Sandra Oh), who works at a winery and catches Jack’s eye.
Jack and Miles are complete messes as human beings. They lack direction and are hypocrites. Miles says he’s an author but his book is going nowhere, while Jack is getting married but hits on anything in a dress. They are hardly a sympathetic pair. And yet Payne is able to get a lot of comedic mileage from them. Miles is a wine snob who rambles on about the taste, color, and so on, only to have Jack sum up his opinion simply, “I like it,” which comically deflates Miles’ pontificating. They have an intriguing dynamic. While they lie to others – Miles to Jack’s friends about the status of his novel and Jack being nice to Miles’ mother when he clearly wants to get back on the road – they are no pretenses between each other. These guys are getting to the stage in their lives where they’re looking back as opposed to looking ahead. Jack sees marriage as an institution that will stifle his freedom while Miles has a very negative outlook on life, finding any excuse not to ask Maya out despite obviously liking her because he assumes that it will go nowhere.
An interesting thing happens during the course of the film. At first, Miles starts off as an unsympathetic character while we warm up to Jack’s funny repartee as the charming rogue. Halfway through the film they flip roles and it’s Jack who is exposed as a pathetic womanizer and Miles becomes more sympathetic thanks to Maya’s influence. She humanizes him and is easily his intellectual equal. She knows her wine and this clearly impresses Miles. She’s smart and beautiful so why is she even wasting her time with a sad sack like Miles? She gets to know him beyond his looks and liquefies the pretension of his character. Maya pierces his wine-speak armor that he throws up all the time with her easy-going nature and Miles realizes that he doesn’t need to constantly impress her. There is a nice scene where they get to know each other and it is great to see two skilled actors getting a chance to act and really delve into their characters. In this scene, we finally see someone thaw out Miles and get him to open up, stop worrying and thinking so negatively. They use their mutual love for wine as a way to share their passions and aspirations with each other. It’s a beautifully realized scene because you are seeing two people starting to fall in love with each other. Like a fine wine, Maya allows Miles to breathe and he gets better as time goes on. She’s a romantic who is able to cut through his cynicism and soften his hard edges.
Fresh off the success of American Splendor (2003), Paul Giamatti is one of those actors who make it look effortless as he inhabits the characters he plays so completely. Miles is a neurotic mess; a depressed cynic who is definitely a half glass empty kind of guy. Giamatti is able to tap into his character’s deep reservoir of pain and anger. In a couple of shots early in the film, Payne hints at Miles’ past when he looks at old photographs in his mom’s room. They evoke happier times with his father (now out of the picture) and wife (now divorced). Giamatti’s sad expression in this moment conveys more than any words could. During the course of the film, we find out more about why Miles is so miserable and a lot of it has to do with self-loathing, which explains why he tries to sabotage things with Maya. In some ways, Miles is a variation of Giamatti’s take on the equally acerbic Harvey Pekar in Splendor.
Ever since the short-lived television sitcom Ned and Stacy, Thomas Haden Church has been an untapped resource and with Sideways he was given the role of his career. As Miles’ crass, philandering best friend, he plays Jack as a middle-aged frat boy who still calls women, “chicks.” Haden Church has never been afraid to play abrasive, bordering on unlikeable, characters and he expertly does the same here as a guy who presents a jovial façade but underneath lurks a lot of pain and an insensitive mean streak. Haden Church’s dead-panned delivery of smart-ass lines works well against Giamatti’s uptight straight man. Together, they make an excellent team. After years of playing supporting character roles, it’s great to see Haden Church and Giamatti starring in a film. They play so well off each other that you’d swear they’d acted together before. Haden Church and Giamatti are very believable as long-time friends from the way they interact with each other.
For years, Virginia Madsen has been biding her time in direct-to-video hell and so it is great to see her in a high profile role like this one. From The Hot Spot (1990) to Candyman (1992), she’s always been an interesting actress to watch and with Sideways, Madsen is given strong material to sink her teeth into and she delivers a nuanced performance. Sandra Oh has been quietly building a nice body of work over the years and was unfairly overlooked in the numerous awards that have been lavished on this film. Granted, of the four main cast members, she has the least amount of screen time but she makes every moment she has count.
Producer Michael London was a former Los Angeles Times journalist and studio executive who had become frustrated by the studio development process of shepherding a film from script to screen. He bought the rights to the unpublished semi-autobiographical novel Sideways by Rex Pickett with his own money and gave it to Alexander Payne to read in 1999 while the filmmaker was promoting Election. Payne found himself drawn to “the humanity of the characters” and how it tapped into his desire to make films about “people with flaws,” and “unfulfilled desires.” He was not a wine expert but always liked it and thought that the subculture would be fun to explore and act as a backdrop to the relationship between Jack and Miles. However, he was committed to making About Schmidt next and so he and London kept optioning the book over the years. Then, he and his long-time writing partner, Jim Taylor, wrote the screenplay for free. Payne and London drew up a budget and financed pre-production themselves thereby allowing themselves the kind of creative control they wanted. They only began approaching movie studios once they had the script, budget and a preferred cast in place. Four studios were interested with Fox Searchlight winning out.
Based on the reputation of his previous films, several big name actors campaigned for roles in Payne’s film. Both Brad Pitt and George Clooney were eager to play the role of Jack and met with the filmmaker but it ultimately came down to Thomas Haden Church and Matt Dillon. Edward Norton expressed an interest in playing Miles and Payne seriously considered him for the role. With the exception of Sandra Oh, his wife at the time, all the actors auditioned for Payne and London. Haden Church had auditioned for both Election and About Schmidt (narrowly losing out to Dermot Mulroney on the latter) and even though Payne did not cast him in those films, he had been impressed with the actor. When it came to Sideways, Payne felt that Haden Church “kind of is that character,” and cast him as Jack. At the time, he had moved away from acting and when he read the script in May 2003, thought to himself, “I have no shot at this whatsoever, but I have to answer the call of duty. If I get a chance, then I gotta take it.” When Paul Giamatti auditioned for the film, he had not read the whole script, just an excerpt – the scene where Miles talks about his love of Pinot Noir wine to Maya. The actor found Miles’ obsession with the wine to be “an interesting theme for this guy” who was constantly “striving for transcendence through the wine and the wine milieu, and it just keeps collapsing in on the guy because he’s such a wreck.” After casting Giamatti and Haden Church, Payne insisted that they spend some time together before filming, hanging out and practicing their dialogue so that characters’ friendship would be believable.
The setting of the story was very important to Payne as he brought a documentary sensibility to capturing the people that inhabit the area. Before shooting, he spent four months living in the wine country of California, taking notes so that it would be accurately depicted in his film. The actors spent two weeks of rehearsals with Payne, “shooting the shit and indulging in good food and wine,” according to Giamatti. With a budget in the range of $16-17 million, Sideways was shot over 54 days in the Santa Barbara area. For the look of the film, he drew inspiration from the photographic style of Hal Ashby’s The Landlord (1970), screening it for his director of photography, Phedon Papamichael (Moonlight Mile), in order to study the softness of colors and the lack of sharp, vivid lighting that he wanted in his own film.
Payne’s film harkens to Bob Rafelson’s classic character-driven films from the ‘70s, like Five Easy Pieces (1970) and The King of Marvin Gardens (1972), featuring prickly protagonists. Payne rejects traditional mainstream tastes in favor of presenting unsympathetic characters and a conclusion that refuses to wrap things up neatly. He even employs multiple split-screen montages and snap zooms, which were very much en vogue during the ‘70s. Miles is the voice of reason while Jack is the voice of fun in Sideways. However, Miles understands who he is and is honest with himself and his lot in life unlike Jack who continues to live a lie, or rather play a role. Jack lives in a bubble and they always break. Miles doesn’t have to worry about that because he bursts his bubble on a daily basis. These men are idiots and it is the women who are smart and truthful. The men lie, cheat and are forced to face the repercussions of their actions. This provides them with a chance at redemption as embodied in Miles who learns to loosen up and finally let someone new into his heart.
Rating in Stars: *** (out of ****) Cast: Hugh Jackman, Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen, Famke Janssen, James Marsden Director: Bryan Singer MPAA Rating: PG-13 (for sci-fi action violence) Running Time: 1:44 Release Date: 07/14/00
X-Men satisfies threefold: As an introduction to a team of superheroes, it is comprehensive, immediately defining the character’s personality traits and supernatural abilities simultaneously in a way that connects us to their struggle in a world that rejects them. As a spectacle, it is engaging, with action sequences that have pizzazz and pop, even in spite of visual effects that might seem a little less refined (but are still effective) 16 years later. As an allegory with genetic mutation as the stand-in for differing racial heritage or sexual orientation, it may be a bit obvious, but at least screenwriter David Hayter is willing to go there. The film is, in many ways, a precursor to something like The Avengers, and it holds up now as something just as good.
The heroes are members, not of some elite squad (although later installments in the series would place them into one), but of a school belonging to Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart), aka Professor X, who has advanced telepathic powers. His primary teachers are alumni who include Scott Summers (James Marsden), aka Cyclops, who can shoot a fiery beam from his eyes or the visor that protects them, Ororo Munroe (Halle Berry), aka Storm, who can control the weather (Ok, not all powers are equally sensible, I guess), and Dr. Jean Gray (Famke Janssen), who shares telepathic powers with Professor X and has telekenesis, to boot. The students have an array of powers, from the ability to create and control ice to, well, the ability to produce and control fire (Another can walk through walls).
Our central protagonists here, though, are Logan (Hugh Jackman), aka Wolverine, who can heal rapidly and out of whose knuckles protrude knives of hardened steel, and Marie (Anna Paquin), aka Rogue, whose touch invites some sort of allergic reaction. Rogue happens upon Wolverine in a rundown bar in the middle of nowhere and latches onto him just in time to be attacked by a pair of fellow mutants, the wolfish Sabretooth (Tyler Mane) and the amphibian Toad (Ray Park), before being saved by Cyclops and Storm and brought to the “X-Mansion.” The attackers were merely pawns of Magneto (a commanding Ian McKellen), who can control metal and whose minions are rounded out by Mystique (Rebecca Romijn-Stamos), a blue-skinned beauty skilled in martial arts and the ability to transform into others.
The real conflict stems from within a system rigged against these mutants in such a way that they are forced into hiding from the outside world. The allegory isn’t exactly subtle, especially when a heavily conservative Senator (Bruce Davison) claims, “We must know who they are, and we must know what they can do” (a statement that seems even more relevant today than it did in the film’s pre-9/11 era). Professor X believes that there is some sort of peaceful resolution to be had, but Magneto, an old colleague who helped him to build a large room that tracks mutation, disagrees and fashions a machine that can manipulate DNA to cause rapid mutation.
Hayter expertly weaves between this major plot strand (which is thankfully unburdened by any others, with the exceptions of a lingering attraction between Jean, who is Cyclops’s fiancée, and Wolverine, as well as Rogue’s increasing feelings of inadequacy and fear of her own powers) and action sequences (such as a nifty one that pits Storm against Sabretooth and Cyclops against Toad and the charged climax atop the Statue of Liberty), and director Bryan Singer keeps the film streamlined at well below two hours. X-Men is a solid entertainment machine and a promising start to a franchise.
Films like Married Life don’t come around very often. Ira Sachs’ sly genre bender was given a limited release in 2007 but I doubt many people are familiar with it, which is weird given its starry cast: Chris Cooper, Pierce Brosnan, Patricia Clarkson, and Rachel McAdams. A highly stylized cross of Todd Haynes’ superior Far From Heaven and the various work of Alfred Hitchcock, Married Life is a low-key entertainment with a script that bounces back and forth between noir-tinged thrills and cutting social satire. Set in 1949 in a suburb outside of Seattle, the film centers on Harry Allen (a tamped down Cooper), unhappily married to his wife Pat (Clarkson, solid as always), who decides to murder her in order to spare her of the humiliation of divorce. Harry has met the alluring vixen Kay (McAdams, scheming and dangerous) who he wants to run away with. The problem is that Harry’s debonair friend Richard (Brosnan, oozing sex-appeal) also has eyes on Kay. The script by Sachs and Oren Moverman (co-writer of Love & Mercy and I’m Not There, writer/director of Rampart, The Messenger, and last year’s brilliant homeless drama Time Out of Mind) is tight at 90 minutes with deft character work and an atmosphere that’s generally hard to pin down.
We get some satirical jabs about domestic life in the early 50’s and there’s a thriller element introduced about half-way through the narrative that definitely throws some surprises into the mix. I really have to give some credit to Sachs, as this was an independent film which probably had a limited budget but you’d never know it from the look of it. Beautifully shot by Peter Deming (I Heart Huckabees) with gorgeous period detail in the production design by Hugo Luczyc-Wyhowski (Dirty Pretty Things, Snatch), Married Life has a cinematic time capsule quality much in the same way that Mad Men brought to television. Evocative of wealthy suburban life from 60 years ago, the film is always visually impressive and all of the performances are top-notch, especially Cooper and Brosnan. Cooper has made a career out of playing the dour, put-upon schnook, and in Married Life, he was able to take his character in a few interesting psychological directions. And Brosnan, who will always have that James Bond twinkle in the corner of his eyes, was smooth as brandy and very likable even when playing a devious character. This is a very unique film and one that’s likely to surprise many people.
“It’s high noon at the far end of the universe”, the dvd poster of Oblivion states. Years before the underrated Cowboys & Aliens came out, Oblivion came along, and it’s definitely gives the concept a better, and quirkier run for its money. Granted it’s essentially a B movie, and it’s meagre budget shows to the point where it looks like a grade school play. But therein lies it’s charm. It’s got a cast of supremely wacky old west stereotypes played by some surprising, familiar genre faces who you’d never thought to be seen rough housing together in the same flick. It also has some lovingly crafted, creaky stop motion animation that calls Harryhausen to mind and brings to life some super weird alien hybrid thingies that look almost Henson-esque as well. When a lone spaceship lands on the outskirts of an intergalactic desert town, it’s occupant brings trouble along with him. He’s a nasty, one eyed reptilian alien gunslinger named RedEye, played by the inimitable Andrew Divoff. He growling, bad tempered son of a bitch, and his first order of business is to ruthlessly slay the town’s sheriff, and claim it for himself. What he doesn’t count on is the Sheriff’s son (Richard Joseph Paul), a prospector who soon returns to Oblivion looking for answers, along with his Native friend Buteo (the late great Jimmie F. Skaggs). All kinds of townsfolk end up in the crossfire, including drunken Doc Valentine (a priceless George Takei), slinky brothel owner Miss Kitty (Julie Newmar), a cyborg police deputy (Meg Foster), a pawnbroker (Isaac Hayes) and the town’s elegant undertaker, played by Carol Struckyen who some may remember as the giant from Twin Peaks. RedEye has a smoking hot henchwoman and girlfriend named Lash, played by B movie scream queen Musetta Vander, who gets the vibe they’re going for here and sinks her teeth into the material with admirable abandon. The film sticks to its guns despite being obviously silly and somewhat falling apart in a climax that oddly is too darkly shot to make out properly. What it lacks in resources it makes up for in imagination, which it has in spades. Alien scorpions, cyborg deputies, leather clad babes are but a few of the genre mashing treats to be found here. Great stuff. Oh and check out the sequel as well, called Oblivion 2: Backlash, it’s a nice companion piece.
Denis Villeneuve’s Enemy is one of the most unsettling film experiences you will ever sit through, and the damn thing is only 90 minutes. It’s disconcerting, ambiguous and seems to exist simply to spin the viewer’s anxiety reflex into a storm and make our stomach turn loops. It’s a trim entry into the psychological upset sub genre, and puts a frazzled looking Jake Gyllenhaal through a wringer as he pursues a mysterious doppelgänger through the streets of Toronto, a bustling city that feels oddly desolate as glanced upon by Villeneuve’s camera, adding to the themes of paranoia and mental unrest. Gyllenhaal plays a twitchy college professor who is stuck in a closed loop routine: he gives lectures at the local university, drives home to his emotionally inaccessible girlfriend (Melanie Laurant), rinse and repeat. A chink appears in the chain when he becomes aware of another man in the city who appears to be his identical twin. The other man is a small time actor with a pregnant wife (Sarah Gadon) and a decidedly more nasty approach to the situation than the professor. The two of the, circle each other in a disturbing game of not so much cat and mouse, but Jake and Jake, both of them having not a clue as to what is going on, the edges of madness inching closer to both of their perception. Are they twins? Are there even two? Is it just one of them, losing their mind? There’s very freaky dream sequences with the constant imagery of spiders, both large and small, and what do they mean? Who’s to tell? Denis has stated in interviews that there is both rhyme and reason to his creation here, but whether he will ever divulge them remains to be seen. Perhaps it’s better left illusory, a formula for entrancing audiences that has already proved to work well for David Lynch. The moment that the man behind the curtain reveals the conscious meaning of his very subconscious efforts, the spell is no doubt broken. In any case, it’s a very hard film to process or focus on, our nerves jittering constantly and sabotaging any modicum of rational though that we might employ in deciphering the piece. This may be called style and atmosphere over substance by some, but even in not comprehending what’s going on, we feel deeply that there is some sort of cryptic cohesion if we are able to feel between the lines, maybe coming up empty handed ultimately, but knowing within us that we’ve attained wealth to our soul simply by bearing witness. I can’t say it’s a film that I love, or that I would watch again, but it’s certainly one that won’t leave my memories any time soon, and that is an achievement no matter how you look at it. It’s also got one of the scariest and most unexpected endings to any film I’ve ever seen, taking you so off guard that you feel like you’re going to have a coronary. It’s filmed in sickening piss yellow saturation which adds to the overall disconcerting nature, and quite the striking colour choice as well. I can see why this one was released with little fanfare or marketing, despite the presence of heavyweights Villeneuve and Gylenhaal. It’s difficult stuff, a movie that frustratingly soars above your head, onward towards its intensely personal and psychological destination. It’s up to us to jump, grasp and attempt to reach as high as the piece in order to get what we will out of it. Good luck.
Victor Nunoz’s Coastlines is a nice small town drama with some top players all giving fine work, causing me to wonder why more people haven’t heard of it, and how come it didn’t get a wider release. In any case, it’s low key and really captures the quaint rural vibe of less densely populated areas in the states. The cast is absolutely to die for, consisting mainly of very distinct, frequently garish actors who all play it dead straight and relaxed, which is a huge switch up for most of them. Timothy Olyphant plays Sonny Mann, an ex convict recently released from prison, quietly arriving back to his Florida hometown, and the dregs of the life he left behind. His Pa (the ever awesome Scott Wilson) is conflicted by long simmering resentment, and the love for his son buried just beneath. Sonny reconnects with his best friend Dave Lockhart (Josh Brolin), who has become the town’s sheriff in the years gone by. Sparks fly between Dave’s wife (Sarah Wynter) and Sonny, creating a rift between the two and illustrating Sonny’s unavoidable knack for creating trouble for himself, and those around him. Further tension comes along when the town’s local crime lord Fred Vance (William Forsythe at his most genial and sedated) tries to strong-arm Sonny into assisting with nefarious deeds, using his younger brother Eddie (Josh Lucas) to convince him. Even when tragedy strikes and these characters go head to head, it’s in the most relaxed, laconic way that permeates southern life. Robert Wisdom has a nice bit, Angela Bettis shows up as a girl with a thing for bad boys, and watch for the late great Daniel Von Bargen as the local Sheriff. This one fits nicely into a niche that leans heavily on small town drama, dips its toes ever so slightly into thriller territory, and is a charming little piece that’s worth a look to see these actors on an acting sabbatical.
Podcasting Them Softly 