I’m not sure the zeitgeist is (or ever was) waiting in the fetal position, sobbing for yet another KISS record to hit America’s hungry shelves, but as the DVD sales of Family Jewels have not met industry projections, here we are again, eleven years running since Psycho Circus inexplicably conquered the charts with its own special brand of mediocrity. The CD is Sonic Boom, and if the title alone weren’t enough to part you from your hard-earned money, remember that this is one more in a long line of Wal-Mart exclusives, forcing you to add the guilt of patronizing the devil’s workshop to the fact that you are, at whatever age, still listening to KISS. And are willing to pay for the privilege. Well count me in, as if I had nothing better to do than help line the criminally deep pockets of the one Jew on planet earth who would not have been above buying stock in Zyklon B as a way to hedge his bets. Yes, Gene Simmons, still inserting his 60-year-old Hebrew National into whatever orifice will release the most coin, remains the ageless wonder of rock; a strutting, scamming, holy roller of indestructible marketing timber who shuns alcohol and drugs not out of any moral sense, but because he wants to be the one sober man at the bargaining table. His comrade-in-arms, 57-year-old Paul Stanley, is once again on board, though I imagine he might actually need the money, what with the royalties for Love Gun not paying off like they used to. Two other musicians have signed up for the inevitable gravy train, but as they’ll be replaced like spare parts for an oil-burning Impala whenever Gene tires of paying union wages, it’s best not to get too familiar.

Gene and Paul, not to be confused with John and Paul, are once again peddling their wares as the rock world’s worst lyricists, but I’ll be damned if that isn’t part of the charm. After all, few grandfathers would attempt to get away with the line “I know the way you made the others break, but lovin’ me would be your first mistake.” Maybe Philip Roth. But in the disc’s opening round, “Modern Day Delilah,” Paul is doing exactly that, asking us not to wince as he describes his lustful affair with some woman he first saw “across the room.” As played, it’s a nasty, adrenaline-charged cut that breaks KISS tradition by forcing all female pegs into whorish holes. It’s hard to believe that our crew haven’t learned their lesson, what with a good 10,000 conquests under their belts, but God love ‘em for still trying. “Russian Roulette” humps the same note on the rock piano, as Gene dares trot out the oft-used “Out of the frying pan, into the fire” line to convey his irresistible senior appeal. “One pull of the trigger is all you’re gonna get,” he groans, as if any woman, high or low, would complain about not enough trips to the Simmons well. Most men his age who sport the same haircut or propensity for spitting up blood are swiftly hospitalized, not rewarded with a fifth house in Beverly Hills.

“Never Enough” sets the record back on track, showing that women, in addition to submitting, deferring, and acquiescing in every manner possible, are likely to “light the fire below” even though the man “won’t slow down.” Sex aside, this is also one in a 35-year series of KISS anthems to equate breaking all the rules with true liberation. “I won’t stop till I make it to the top,” Paul roars, wondering how high the pile of money must get before he rests. “Yes I Know (Nobody’s Perfect)”, as much as I’d like it to be Gene’s atypical flirtation with humility, sours the instant it reveals that the source of regret is not that he fucked so often, but that he didn’t fuck enough. His failure to reach the ideal is because, contrary to all logic, there a few holdouts to his nutsack. And, if he will admit to any flaws, it’s that not every chick has agreed to take off her clothes. He isn’t providing any answers, but we can only assume they didn’t care for the disco record. “Stand”, one of the few to avoid fucking altogether, is the closest the disc comes to an arena crowd-pleaser, as it furthers the notion that loyalty is mankind’s greatest attribute. “Stand by while I make a shitload of money” might have been more accurate, but overall, Gene and Paul have never been this overtly generous. They even admit they’ll do anything they’re asked to do, without a trace of an invoice to be found.

“Hot and Cold” is all Gene, which from the beginning has our hero interrogating a chick just long enough to see her naked. “I will seduce you my treasure” is perhaps the band’s most confident lyric, though it’s quickly followed up by, “I know you’ll ask me for more and more” as a strong runner-up. And when the hypothetical woman is pushed to “Feel my tower of power,” the song flirts with a mild sexism quickly erased by a chorus of accusatory insults. Once you hop into bed, don’t you dare bring your conscience. Few things grate like a cold woman. Though in “All for the Glory,” KISS admit to “playing to win”, even if no one likes it. Who, exactly, is complaining? Gene and Paul might as well have been sealed in a tomb for a quarter-century for all the current events they so blithely ignore, and if rebellion is your game, who is the audience? KISS isn’t about to win new fans, for fuck’s sake, so is it really appropriate to lecture your aging audience about the need  to let loose with retirement just around the corner? Yeah, they could buck the system and not pay their bills, but millions are doing that already, even without the band’s help. “Danger Us” helps rub salt in the wound, as it points out the impossible-to-swallow reality that a man having even less talent than you for just about every artistic endeavor under the sun makes more money on the shitter than you do in several decades of humiliating labor. All that (and ugly to boot), and still swimming in pussy after all these years.

I don’t really need to tell you that “I’m An Animal” is about a woman damn near dying after being fucked by Gene, what with him being “made of fire, made of heat” and all. “I am free”, he says, furthering the disgust you felt at the disc’s halfway point. Still, and it cannot be minimized, this is a wild, fast-paced album, pushing its pounding rhythms miles away from even the hint of a power ballad. “When Lightning Strikes” ups the ante further, equating Gene’s penis to TNT, electricity, high voltage, and cataclysmic earthquakes in turn, though I could have done without the song’s final allusion, which may or may not reveal Gene as mankind’s true savior. All of this, however, has been leading up to “Say Yeah”, the KISS army’s call for revolution, so long as you believe chanting “Yeah, yeah, yeah” in the streets will get you anything but arrested. The world can be such a bore, Paul squeals, so why not join the crowd and pierce the air with your defiance? It’s impossible to imagine when this band was  perceived as a threat; when loving these “Knights in Satan’s Service” was the surest way to be grounded or cast aside as a wild child. Did these cultural watchdogs ever bother listening to the songs they so feared? Sure, having sex is worse than murder for some, but amidst the crazy boots, armor, fire, and gallons of face paint, stood a band more Ayn Rand than Abbie Hoffman. Fuck, fuck off, and fuck some more, but keep your eye on the real prize. It’s Gene’s way, and apparently we’re still buying into it.

George Stevens’ Gunga Din is the sort of unapologetically ethnocentric adventure picture they don’t dare make anymore; a rousing, two-fisted flag-waver for all those who found Birth of a Nation a bit light in the laughs department, or who never tired of watching the Union Jack raised again and again over its proud colonial empire. It’s a film impossible to imagine in a post-Gandhi universe, yet one so swashbuckling in its naïve arrogance that it all but commands an ear-to-ear smile. And so it does, what with Cary Grant, Victor McLaglen, and Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. aboard as indestructible friends first, dedicated soldiers second, and faint, longing lovers only when the guns fall silent. Fairbanks, as Ballantine, is about to leave the service for marriage to Emmy (Joan Fontaine), but the few scenes with his wife-to-be are so strained and uncomfortable that it’s always clear he’ll dump her for greater glory with the fellas (who mock this heterosexual involvement from the shadows). It doesn’t help that he kisses her like she’s a slab of balsa wood. Worst of all, she wants to domesticate poor Ballantine, which means she’s even more of an enemy than the hated Thuggee band, a death-obsessed cult that numbers only in the hundreds, but is meant to stand in for all of India, as befitting the Hollywood racism of the time. They worship Kali, a cruel mother who demands that her followers strangle, shoot, and stab every last Englishman before, presumably, taking on the world. No attempt is made to understand these people; it’s enough that they are brown, bug-eyed, and devoid of humanity. The rest is just trivia.

As the story begins, the savage Indians are butchering the benevolent Brits as they seek only peace and quiet by which to loot and subdue the entire country. Our three heroes are joyously throwing a few bearded heathens out a window, which quickly establishes them as loveable lugs who can’t help but get into trouble. Their mischief even extends to attempted murder of an officer, as they so poison Ballantine’s replacement that he’s sent to the hospital. But it’s all in good fun, which is reflected in Grant’s spirited portrayal of a lad with contempt for every rule save the code of honor involving his brethren. He wants to fight for king and country, sure, but he’s also after assorted Indian treasure, whether it’s a buried cache of emeralds, or a lost city of gold, which is just where our dashing trio will make their final stand. Grant (as Cutter) is swiftly jailed for his pranks, but escapes with the help of an elephant and the ever-faithful Gunga Din, a water boy who lives to serve, so long as he’s serving the very men who have cruelly enslaved his homeland. Without hesitation, Din smashes the prison walls, frees Cutter, and leads him to the gold, which just happens to double as the mountain headquarters of the Thuggee faithful. Needless to say, Cutter is captured, though Din escapes to inform the other men. And so begins the real adventure of cheeky imperialism.

But what of our sweet Gunga Din? Played by Sam Jaffe (a Russian Jew!) as if he were the founder and CEO of Hollywood’s top supplier of bronzer, he’s like Marty Feldman in a diaper; always wide-eyed, shuffling, and in utter rapture at the prospect of shooting his own people for the British empire. He is devoid of any real trait save his lust for service, and even when no one is looking, he’s practicing the salute and marching technique of the overlord. That said, and despite his status as the Uncle Tom of the Orient, he is unfailing in his charm; more loyal pet than person, yes, but so damned cute we can’t help but root for his assimilation into a world not remotely his own. By the rules and logic of the day, he won’t survive the movie, but deep down, we can imagine a last-minute airlift off the mountain, a frantic wave goodbye, and a cut to his later years at a top prep academy, somehow more British inside and out. It’s likely the only reason this movie was even made, and it all but justifies a continued presence in the region from then until eternity. Left to their own devices, the Indians resort to sheer brutality, unprovoked attacks, and mindless devotion to an effete megalomaniac named Guru (Eduardo Ciannelli) — the cruel sadist who warmly channels Brando’s Kurtz, keeps a pit of snakes to reinforce even deeper stereotypes, and manages to steal off with whatever self-tanner Jaffe left in the trailer. There’s not much room for discussion when the Other is either murderously mad or childishly ignorant, but I have never let cultural elitism stand in the way of manly entertainment. Dehumanization has never been this much fun.

Once all the pieces are in place — Din’s destiny as the unexpected savior, the women dispatched to the sidelines, a few final snarls by the nasty Guru — we await the final assault on the Indian fortress. It’s meant to be a trap so that the British army is butchered with no means of escape, but Din, already dying from a bayonet wound that would have felled lesser men, scales the temple to blow his prized bugle, thereby alerting the approaching troops. The sound of the horn lets loose a tidal wave of murder, as the screen is quickly enveloped by dust, debris, and dying Indians. No sane man would attempt a corpse count at this late stage, but it surely ranks with any film of its type, then and now. Horses fall, bodies tumble from their perches, and in one orgiastic burst of bloodlust, the only good Indian becomes the proverbial dead Indian. Cutter pierces the air with one last jab at “Oriental cruelty”, only to watch his beloved friend (mascot) die for England’s sins. And for his sacrifice, Din will be posthumously inducted into the British army, given a suitable rank, and carried away on a stretcher, remembered forever in a poem by Rudyard Kipling, who is conveniently on hand for both the final battle and Gunga’s martyrdom. “You’re a better man than I am, Gunga Din,” Kipling’s ode concludes, which might be touching if we had any idea who the little man actually was. For once, a good time trumps a lesson learned.

First Posted: 07/07/03

There are several reasons why Roman Polanski’s Oscar win for The Pianist is so thrilling, not the least of which is the fact that finally, one of the “great directors” at last secured the top prize after other giants — Kubrick, Hitchcock, Altman, and Scorsese, to name a few — were unjustly defeated by young upstarts and downright embarrassing newcomers (must I repeat that Kevin Costner won over Scorsese’s Goodfellas, one of the confirmed masterpieces of recent years?) To hear the name of one of cinema history’s best and most innovative voices read aloud was easily the most welcome upset of the night and for once, the award was given for a genuinely worthy film rather than being a career-capping sentimental prize. Hey, Chinatown and Rosemary’s Baby were better films, but I can live with The Pianist; it is a worthy choice. But, more than that, Polanski’s win signifies a new era in Hollywood and, perhaps, America as a whole. We now live in a time where a rapist — a child rapist, no less — can win the approval of an entire community, even if he is not “allowed” to pick up his trophy in person. And let me be the first to say that, well, it’s about time.

While the self-righteous and the prudishly moral couldn’t get enough of the story (I believe religious fanatic and film “critic” Michael Medved condemned the award as “sanctioning immorality,” or some such phrase that most of these ass holes pull out for such occasions), I was applauding the decision. The award, yes, but also America having finally, mercifully, forgiven a man for an alleged “sin” that should be put to bed at long last. While thousands were asking only that Polanski confess his crime and beg for our forgiveness, I did not hear one person ask for similar groveling regarding the far more serious crime of inflicting Pirates on an unsuspecting public. In my world, and on my sliding moral scale, bad, unforgivable movies will always trump sticking one’s sausage in a teenager’s cornhole. Call me mad if you wish, but I would have gladly endured a full tilt session of golden showers and cocksucking with Guy Ritchie and dozens of pre-pubescent twits if Swept Away could have been halted in pre-production.

Let us remember, dear readers, that this 13-year-old had visited with Polanski before, submitted willingly to nude photography, and even shared a hot teb session with the Polish director. And unless this young teen was selling Girl Scout cookies or subscriptions to Tiger Beat, she had to know what a visit to a famous Hollywood director’s house would entail. It would be like visiting Bob Evans and not expecting to see his cock at some point in the evening. It may not be acceptable in a post-feminist world to blame the victim as it were, but Roman was only doing what anyone with even a partial ability to achieve erection would do when faced with hot young flesh of the teenage variety. Hell, I’d condemn the man had he instead brought her milk and cookies and tucked her in for the night. This is Roman Polanski, remember, a man who lost his parents in the Holocaust and later his wife and child to the Manson family. The man is entitled to cop a feel now and again, even if our archaic laws forbid the practice. When your wife is stabbed three dozen times and you watch as your unborn child is scraped off the wall, let me know if you react “normally.” Judge not, sanctimonious pricks.

When I was a sixth-grader, I lived and died by the Seattle Seahawks. The Kingdome was my church, and though my pew just happened to be over 1,000 miles away in some lonely Colorado Springs bedroom, my fanatical devotion was no less real for the distance. Sure, I had come to my religion the way most stupid kids stumble upon their newfound obsessions — chance, fate, or, in this case, pulling a name out of a hat to show those blasted Buffalo Bills that I wasn’t about to tolerate yet another season with Joe Ferguson behind center — but my scars were battle-tested, and each game meant yet another dance with humiliation or exhilaration. Often both. That fateful season, which just happened to coincide with the re-election of the Gipper himself (an act I wholeheartedly endorsed, what with my brain being fully soaked in the sin of youthful ignorance), Seattle fought and scratched to their best record yet, despite losing star running back Curt Warner to a horrifying knee injury mere minutes after I had signed on as a member of the Seahawk army. It was a wild ride from start to finish and, despite a mid-season head-scratcher that attempted to use a wheelchair-bound Franco Harris as a solution to the team’s ground woes, it all came down to the final game in the friendly confines; winner-takes-all trench warfare with the hated Denver Broncos. Triumph, and the division title belonged to them, and to me. Lose, and the embarrassment of a wild card slot awaited like so much crow to be devoured on Monday morning.

Needless to say, because I had wept, bled, clawed, and roared my way through the season, it would all end badly. My team had suffered a disastrous defeat, and my life was in ruins. I stared longingly out the window, wishing that the evening’s snowfall would so intensify that the world entire might disappear forever. My heart ached. The pain in my gut ran the gamut from intense to crippling. And, as if locked in a fevered death wish, I shuffled semi-conscious out the front door, the tattered short sleeves of my Seahawks t-shirt surrendering to the bitter wind as the team’s porous defense had just hours before, and I walked. No destination, no goal, not even the promise of a return. I was cold, despondent, and crushed as if by the jagged blade of young love. My foolishness knew no bounds at such a tender age, so I looked skyward and asked to be whisked from this cruel earth. I prayed for the only release due such a tortured boy, even if the damn team still had a game the next week. My colors had indeed run, my pennant limped coldly as if shot down by enemy fire, and those hated Broncos — the team loved by just about everyone else in my class — would taste from victory’s sweet cup. Had I the courage, I would have taken a solo drive to the great beyond that very day. Anything, I thought, to avoid having to face the smirking mob.

It is with this, a tale so common as to be universal, that I begin discussing Big Fan, a wonderfully pathetic new movie about an identity that goes no further than a single, driving purpose. For Paul (Patton Oswalt), this means the very lifeblood of the New York Giants. From what we see, he cares for little else; even food and sleep are mere inconveniences in what is otherwise uninterrupted passion. Only here, unlike my tale of football’s past, the fanatic in question is a grown man. An adult in biological terms alone, he lives with his mother, dares to dream under a well-worn NFL blanket from childhood, and has no greater ambition than to work as a cashier in a parking garage. His development is so beyond arrested, in fact, that it’s quite possible he’s unable to converse in any language that doesn’t begin and end with football. His primary release, given that he has but one friend (a desperately awkward comrade-in-arms named Sal) and no hint of a sex life that isn’t masturbation, is to wait with bated breath until the clock strikes 11:30pm so he can call the local sports talk show and spew shit about the Philadelphia Eagles. Only it’s the verbal explosion of a scripted warrior, as he writes his rant in a childish scrawl, if only to remember every last insult and pro-Giant slogan. Each night, his calls are interrupted by his screeching, half-asleep mother, who can’t understand who he’d be talking to at so late an hour. But this is his moment. For that brief interlude, his words matter. It is a mission — and his very life — affirmed by the disembodied god of radio.

Paul and Sal treat Sunday like an appropriately holy event, only they choose to spend game day at Giants Stadium, believing their presence alone is enough to assure victory. They don’t actually attend the game, mind you, but stay firmly planted in the parking lot watching it all unfold on a crude television hookup powered by car battery. Sure, they tailgate with the best of ‘em, hooting and hollering in the faux community setting they so desperately crave, but who needs to be inside? High-fives and chest-thumps mean just as much from the shadows. And as we consider Paul’s “other” life, the one of house and home, work and family, it is no accident that he is only really alive when the team — his team — is on the field. He doesn’t want a better job, and he sure as hell doesn’t need to date. Can’t it be, as he sputters to his mother, that this is the way he wants it? Why must he have arrived at this point simply because he lacked the social skills to seduce, conquer, and secure a better paycheck? Sure, the “losers” of life are always blamed for their plight, and it’s rare indeed for their circumstances to be seen as anything other than the inability to become what everyone else deems successful, but what of the man who envisioned this so-called dead end from the very beginning? For my money, Paul is that man. He didn’t fall to this position from a mighty perch; it was always the goal he had in mind. It’s only a failure because it isn’t the way most of us choose to live.

The moment that it holds a ring of truth, however, Paul goes and fucks it all up by stalking his favorite player, Quantrell Bishop. Paul and Sal happen to see him getting gas at a Staten Island hangout, and decide to see how their hero is going to spend his evening. The journey takes them from a drug buy to a strip club, which can only end with Paul getting the shit beat out of him by a paranoid Bishop. The beating is justified by the creepy nature of the “meeting”, one supposes, but as expected, Bishop’s actions are the inevitable result of too much liquor, ego, and sense of entitlement. He nearly kills the defenseless Paul because, well, that’s a man of his position is supposed to do. What could have been a deflating plot twist, however, fails to further involve Bishop at all, as Paul refuses to press charges, help investigators, or even file a lawsuit. Paul’s goombah brother (one of those lawyers who can only afford to advertise at 3am during bad talk shows) tries to force his hand, but Paul is having none of it. In his own sick way, though he never says so, he likely believes the assault was deserved. After all, he dared intrude on a hero’s night out, and he is but a humble man on the sidelines, waiting his turn to catch a glimpse of true royalty.

Paul even uses his radio time to admit his role in what is by then a media sensation, and predictably, he absolves Bishop of all wrongdoing. There’s no greed in this man, and to ask him to cooperate is to invite heresy. Does one betray an idol? He may refuse to play by the rules of the road when it comes to life choices, but he’s not about to jeopardize his team’s season. While Bishop remains suspended by the league pending investigation, the Giants fumble away their division lead, a turn that nearly sends Paul to an institution. What to do? How to salvage a season that so suddenly slipped away, largely to actions he could have prevented? Revenge, perhaps. There’s that prick Philadelphia Phil, that guy who always trashes his Giants every night on the same radio show. Maybe he’s to blame. What’s called for, then, is a trial by fire. A visit to enemy territory. A drive to Philly, to that one bar, and yes, face-to-face with the source of his city’s pain. His pain. The cancer in his stomach that eats away his very soul. And so to trade his Bishop jersey for Mr. McNabb. Add some green and white face paint. The ultimate disguise. He’s going in, and there’s no turning back.

What Paul does and why will come to you as it must, and thankfully, it plays as it should. Paul is a true believer, but he’s no killer. His actions are consistent with his character, and though odd, surprisingly affecting as a means to feel whole again. With this conclusion, the film offers no justification for the sum of Paul’s life, but it centers him in a reality we all share. A good case — a very good case — could be made for Paul’s madness, his detachment from real meaning, and even his deep-seated self-hatred, but before passing judgment, consider what it is that moves you to tears, or stirs up the pot of disproportionate rage, or happens to make that bad day just a little brighter after all. As always, there’s a fine line between a hobby and mental illness, but no objective truth, only personal preferences and the prejudices of our upbringing, can truly “prove” that football is any less sacred than, say, devotion to one’s children. You have your music, or your cars, while Paul has his Giants, and his closet filled with jerseys is no more a shrine to absurdity than your shelf filled with DVDs. We’ll always mock the interests of those we don’t know, or like, or bother to understand, but we all serve a god of some sort, and from the outside looking in, all men appear ridiculous to someone else. Paul’s a loon, but who among us hasn’t flown similar skies? I imagine we’re flying there still.

There’s a certain satisfaction that comes from being the first audience on the entire planet to see a movie, but it inevitably means far less when we’re talking about a Jason Reitman production. After all, this is the same man who set Juno loose upon an unsuspecting world, though my negative review appears to be one of only a handful to be found. Telluride’s faithful are especially enamored with it, and if any one statement dominated the endless queues of the weekend’s events, it was, “I liked it, but it was no Juno.” You are correct, madam or sir, and that’s about the best bit of news concerning this decidedly commercial enterprise. Up in the Air is, at bottom, a creature of mainstream moviemaking, and while limiting in terms of payoff, I’m here to say that it’s not all bad. In fact, I pretty much enjoyed the thing, much to my surprise. Of course, as I expected to loathe its very existence, modest entertainment was more than I had any right to expect. George Clooney tones down the smugness for once, and is all the better for it, and the story, while too redemptive by half, manages to traffic in adult situations and topical relevance with precious little by way of, well, preciousness. Reitman would do right to stay away from Diablo Cody from here on out.

Clooney portrays Ryan Bingham, a corporate hatchet man of more recent vintage; the anti-headhunter who visits downsizing companies across the country to lay off the unsuspecting with what he believes is tact and sympathy. Essentially, he stands in for gutless managers and CEOs who can’t do their own dirty work. The visits are scripted down to the letter, and are so sterile (they involve handbooks on coping with the post-layoff depression, for god’s sake) that they practically run themselves. But Clooney is proud of his work, as he provides a human face to a very inhuman moment in the lives of so many. Along with that central thrust are two side stories: Clooney’s relentless pursuit of his ten-millionth frequent flier mile, and the introduction of a corporate upstart who threatens to take the business into a new age of “video conferencing,” which pretty much entails eliminating all the travel to fire people via the internet. With that, the story is off and running, though it won’t be inviting comparisons with Bergman anytime soon.

We also know that Clooney’s “go it alone” philosophy will be challenged by a fellow traveler who becomes more than a port in the storm, and that her “real life” will present new obstacles, etc. Also, no prizes for guessing that his motivational speeches, used primarily to supplement his income (as well as provide an excuse to keep him on the road even more), will be thrown into disarray by this unexpected attachment, and if you were to assume that a third-act seminar will be interrupted by the standard “moment of clarity” (which by necessity must include leaving the podium and making a mad dash to the airport), you would not be going out too far on the proverbial limb. Again, all pretty much by the book. But it’s well-made, engaging, and for once, despite some definite compromises, the lead character stays nestled in his self-imposed cocoon during the closing credits. Sure, he craves connection, but he’s not really cut out for the daily grind of holding down the homefront. A small victory, perhaps, but enough to warrant a recommendation.

Leave it to the irredeemably insane Werner Herzog to submit the most curiously delightful head-scratcher of the festival; a film so appallingly ridiculous on its face that it should come as no surprise that it survives its journey from madness to sublime entertainment fully intact. A crime drama with precious little of either, this in-name-only remake dispenses with the Catholic guilt of its predecessor and instead, embraces the reliably unhinged Nicolas Cage (proving that true genius lies in casting) as a figure of guiltless criminality. As Mr. Cage stated in the film’s post-screening Q&A, Herzog approached this glorious wreck not as a study in sin and redemption, but rather the “glory of evil,” where a man can — and perhaps, should — use his position of authority to satisfy the darker urges we all share. Cage also informed the crowd that, during a mid-shoot wrap party, Herzog insisted that he would never again make another movie unless “his iguanas” could remain on screen for a full five minutes, rather than the cutting room floor. Iguanas, you ask? Though best discovered on your own terms and in your own way, rest assured that said creatures not only get their very own lyrical interlude, but are closely photographed by Herzog himself, who can now lay claim to being the first filmmaker on record to score a POV shot from a lizard. There’s also an alligator, as if there were any doubt.

If it matters, and I can assure you that it does not, the plot (like a bad episode of Kojak with a bit of German engineering) involves brutal drug killings in the Crescent City, as well as a beleaguered police force that appears all-too-willing to take matters into its own hands. Xzibit is the kingpin in question, and he’s just the man you’d want to gun down an entire household in defense of his turf. He kills, but always with a smile. Cage, channeling Richard III by way of Richard Nixon, mumbles, limps, garbles, and twitches his way through a performance that is technically a character, though its claws simply reattach to a body of work that has yet to inhabit a universe with a molecule of subtlety or shading. Eyebrows fully arched and sweat dripping in epileptic frenzy, Cage’s bad cop interrogates, accuses, probes, bribes, and threatens, all in the ragged pursuit of the next high which, thankfully, is never more than fifteen seconds away. Cage smokes crack, snorts coke, dabbles in heroin, and pops any number of pills, though he’s so damned inviting that it’s less a cautionary tale than a masterpiece of comic invention. He even commands a top football recruit to shave a few points for a crucial bet. Not surprisingly, Cage’s mad stomp through this dirty, crime-ridden shithole leads him to a retirement home where, in the pursuit of a justice that long ago left the bayou, he deprives an uncooperative geezer of her oxygen in order to secure information. Needless to say, he’s also pointing a loaded gun at her caretaker’s head. Though both survive, he leaves the pair with hateful words so damned agreeable, they just might become a national motto.

Cage’s growling, and the nearly unbroken fit of hilarity that ensues, is matched scene-for-scene by Eva Mendes as a whore/girlfriend, Brad Dourif as a sleazy bookmaker, Val Kilmer as a puffy, amoral cop, and Jennifer Coolidge playing, well, the umpteenth ditzy scumbag in a career where sobriety and sanity long ago ceased being viable options. And make sure you stay tuned for a final act of such preposterous good fortune that it becomes impossible not to conclude that Herzog wants evil itself to triumph, or at least have bad behavior avoid the lash of moral judgment. Simply put, for all of his evidence tampering, theft, denial of civil rights, cruelty, and unlovable depravity, Cage’s bad lieutenant is a man of action; a force of the very nature Herzog worships with muscular abandon. All the better to be promoted for it. And when he stands tall, a captain in full measure, we remember that last, fatal bust where it all came together. “Shoot him again,” Cage instructs the drug lord regarding a slimy rival. “His soul is still dancing.” And just like that, as the bloody corpse receives yet another bullet, the departed one’s spirit rises forth, kicks into gear, and yes, dances before us. Breakdances, to be exact. And yet we never question the logic. Crap has rarely been so operatic.

Tagline:

“They thought he was dead. They were dead wrong.”

Entire Story in Fewer Words than are in this Sentence:

Russians drink. Russians cackle. Russians scheme. Russians die.

Homoeroticism:

Dolph Lundgren is just shy of 52-years-old, and I’ll be damned if he isn’t shirtless within the first five minutes. He’s ripped, he’s cut, and despite a minor sag or two, he still looks like his torso is slathered in saran-wrap. He’s an undeniable slab of eye candy, even if he’s now more Gordon Ramsey than Ivan Drago. He’s a man’s man, but at this late date, he’s still bored by strip clubs, and seems only mildly amused whenever he’s surrounded by topless tarts. Even after kidnapping a hot oil heiress, it remains about the money – $200,000 to be exact. Right away, he stuffs her in the trunk of his car to avoid looking at her. And hell, doesn’t anyone sodomize kidnapping victims anymore? The gay vibe is blasted away when the pair, now on the run, fuck in some farm house, but I’ll swear on my grave that he was raped. She’s the one who pushed him to the ground, after all. And during their brief make-out session, she’s all squeals and chirps, while he’s indistinguishable from balsa wood. His is the hard-on of the cash nexus, not perky tits and pouting lips. Dolph is also kicked squarely in the nuts to absolutely no effect. I’m not sure how that’s gay per se, but it’s a little odd.

Corpse Count:

A respectable 48 are sent to their graves, most of whom are faceless, nameless, soulless Russians. Thankfully, the filmmaker decided that because he only had about 15 minutes of story, he’d be forced to put each and every death in slo-mo to ensure categorization as a feature film. As densely packed as the violence is, the number should have been twice that, as the Russian army has apparently decided to hire the least proficient snipers on the globe. Even worse, Lundgren and his female companion are chased down a narrow tunnel by a fucking tank, for chrissakes, and nothing – not bullet, not land mine, not grenade, nor heat-seeking missile – so much as singes a patch of forearm hair.

How Bad is it Really?

Let’s begin with the tagline. At no point does anyone think Dolph is dead. Not the Russians, not the CIA, and not even the guy trying to kill him. Even the bad guy funding the whole operation says that Dolph has more guts than the entire army being sent to kill him. Next up, the Russian mobsters and generals are inexplicably dubbed half the time for no apparent reason. Dubbing usually clears up forked tongues and the like, but here, the added voices are impossible to understand in any language. The musical score is also an abomination, providing the usual heavy-handed cues for who is good and evil, and during an opening fight scene, it’s pace is in direct opposition to excitement. It’s moody and slow, as if Dolph were reading Tolstoy by a fire rather than sticking forks in eyeballs, or kicking more groins in a single minute than any action hero in history.

The plot is remarkably thin, even for a straight-to-video action piece, but it’s made worse by Gina May, heretofore the worst actress ever to stand opposite someone I had assumed to be the worst actor. Her stilted delivery, furrowed brow, and dopey grin about forced my hand, but she eventually won my heart by killing a few Russians herself by the final scene. See, she stands to inherit a fortune from her late father’s oil company, only some evil dude channeling Robert Wagner wants it for himself. He has Lundgren kidnap her from a slimy Russian in order to secure her signature on a transfer of ownership certificate he just happens to carry around with him. There are betrayals, hidden motives, and double-crosses, but all occur right before our eyes, leaving no chance for the third act talking killer.

Additionally, Dolph invades and destroys an entire military base all on his own, though it’s not hard when the dippy Russians conveniently leave dozens of barrels helpfully labeled “Explosives” right outside key strategic positions. There’s also a lengthy chase scene through the streets of some city in Belarus, I think, that might be the first to involve a motorcycle and a tank. Oddly, as they blast away what remains of the city, no one in the streets seems fazed by the destruction, continuing to read papers and order lunch as runaway jeeps fly through windows and atomic-level blasts cut away entire blocks. And did Dolph have to walk away unscathed from a gas station explosion that just happened to ignite mere yards from his beaming face? And when did he start talking like Kris Kristofferson?

Post-Mortem One-Liners:

None of any note, though bad dialogue thankfully won out in the end. The bad guy (not him, the other guy), says to his operative, “What if this guy goes AOL and tried to cross the border with her?” I listened to it three times, and yes, AOL it remains. Lundgren, alas, is reduced to spitting, “Look out!” and “Get down!” half the time, though he was given a chance to mutter “Keep quiet!” near the end. Fortunately, he’s given the film’s final line: “God Bless America.” Indeed, Mr. Lundgren. The best line, however, is a subtitle, screamed by a Russian general as he’s executing civilians for no reason. “Search for the Americanskis,” he cries, which is twice as funny in the original Russian, I assure you. Then, near the end, as Dolph and the chick are racing towards the American embassy in a flaming tank, an American soldier roars, “Terrorist attack! Take your positions!” All should hope such brave boys are guarding our liberty as we speak.

Stupid Political Content:

Pretty spare for a film about, by, and for Russians. Still, Russians remain evil incarnate, and not a one of them shaves, bathes, or stops drinking. And so the Cold War marches on. There was some loose talk about not negotiating with terrorists, but we can clearly see that the CIA does exactly that, so I guess that’s a slap at some administration that shall remain nameless. For a movie that has oil politics at its core, it’s surprisingly apolitical, even a bit left-wing in its sympathies. Still, liberalism being what it is, few on that side of the aisle openly endorse laying waste to an entire country to rescue some rich girl who rides away in a gas guzzling limo to end the movie.

Novelty Deaths:

The guy who spit in Dolph’s chow during the opening received a fork in the eye, but there’s no proof he died. The waiter at the outdoor café in Volka, however, most certainly breathed his last, even though his reaction to being shot in the heart was to shrug and slightly grimace, as if he spilled gravy on his shirt. And then there’s the loony gypsy on the train, who is shot down like a dog while executing a particularly difficult leg kick, all while the band plays on. The best death, however, was when the Robert Wagner dude (played with no ability whatsoever by Michael Pare) is thrown out the window by Dolph after having a grenade stuffed down his shirt. The resulting explosion is a feast of blood and body parts, eclipsed in carnage only by the finale of Jaws.

What You Learned:

This is the only movie in history where an actor named Vladimir Vladimirov plays a character named Vlado.

Time and again, the cinema validates the old adage that no greater bore roams the earth than a poet scorned. Such a man inevitably spends the better part of each aching day stalking through high grass, brooding in trees, and wishing he were any number of ephemeral insects, most often the dizzyingly beautiful, though largely misunderstood butterfly. He is a man of modest means, living with generous relatives and patient friends alike, inhabiting whatever couch will receive him, provided it not ask for suitable reimbursement. If he’s worth his salt, he is proud, largely unknown, and most appreciated by a singular voice in the wilderness; a woman, herself striking a note against the raging current of the time, who pines with equal solemnity and well-earned tears. If you are John Keats, at least the Keats imagined by Jane Campion, you are the proverbial doomed romantic; the sort of man who falls in love not simply with his heart, but through every pore, corpuscle, and follicle at his disposal. And, as if on cue, he will sulk about the soggy streets of London sans coat, develop the only real illness required of him (in that it involves copious coughing fits and assorted blood-stained garments), and die off-screen as the fairer sex wails with righteous self-pity. It’s exactly the sort of bilge the awards season was calling for.

There will be the usual high praise for the cinematography, costumes, and orchestral lushness, which, of course, is the surest sign that the story itself isn’t worth a damn. When the volume of defense deafens upon discussion of furniture or topcoats, yet fades to near silence when matters of plot and character rear their heads, you can rest assured that the film in question would have been better conceived as a museum piece. Audiences do in fact exist for movies that remind women of how their husbands do not similarly speak at any point during the day, but it continually astonishes that this number is sufficient to secure the necessary investment. But here we are, yet again, bearing witness to moon-eyed lovers who seem to have found that one precious acre of life that asks not a moment of hardship, sacrifice, or actual work save falling to the floor at one of two eventualities: the arrival of a heart-rending letter, or the next unendurable day without one. Miss Fanny Brawne (Abby Cornish), is just the woman for the task at hand, and she tumbles to her knees on no less than a dozen separate occasions, once insisting that there must be an afterlife because no God would ask us to suffer so greatly in this one. Mighty words indeed, made slightly less than palatable by the sort of heroine who takes a nap to relax from needlework.

Fanny is a fickle, hopelessly irritating young woman, which makes her the ideal companion for the world’s most self-involved wordsmith. He’s a genius by implication, which means others sing his praises at every turn without actually having to prove it. Far be it from me to deride the sainted Keats, but surely more evidence exists than his propensity for pensive stares into sunlit landscapes. From what we do hear, he is a man singularly obsessed by his own mortality, which — based on the performance by Ben Whishaw — avoids the universality of the experience in favor of typical navel-gazing. And let’s face it: the love imagined by these masters of the quill has never existed at any point in our history, proving yet again that poetry endures because it fosters our basest delusions. The human experience is about the becoming, not the present, and few seem willing to put the daily incivilities of life between two perfume-scented covers. Keats and Brawne practically inhale each other’s narcissistic aroma like pigs feeding at the trough; disabled not by the other, but rather the idea that passion is the only worthwhile endeavor. To hell with common interests, wit, or any semblance of lasting connection. Apparently, one can dine on merely speaking about affairs of the heart, rather than putting it under the microscope of actual doing.

Again, this is nothing more than a two-hour death watch; a numbing, dramatically inert exercise in how to slow time to a crawl in order to show that the world kills its creative class with malice and great cunning. Tossed about are the usual rages of a girl in love — that she alone has felt this deeply, and that their different stations should not block their marriage. They can’t really tie the knot, of course, because what poet could ever settle down, and this Keats fella, why, he has the bearing and heedless hairstyle of the true rebel. He’s even unshaven in that way that takes weeks to perfect, and is not above insisting on a lock of hair for his doomed journey to Italy, the very place that will receive his willing corpse. He dies young and obscenely good-looking, helping to avoid an old age that would have revealed any number of weaknesses and annoying habits. As conceived, his entire being is simply pouting lips, soft hands, and words to reduce to the womenfolk to weak-kneed compliance. My god, he even has the power to envelop burly poets of a heterosexual stripe, in this case one Mr. Brown (Paul Schneider). Brown is more alive sitting down than Keats in the whole of his appearances, yet no one thought it wiser to send the story his way, I’m guessing because his anonymity renders him unfit to carry the load of a feature film. At the very least, Brown is more nuanced and alive; a complex figure of regret, insecurity, and contradiction, while Keats remains a single-minded creature of lovable martyrdom.

Such pious nonsense sends me into a melancholic rage, and one can only leave Bright Star with the hope that the motion picture business will soon tire of using the artistic temperament as a model for the richness of experience. Here, the romance is all on the page, and if Fanny was in fact a muse, she was so only by the power of her unencumbered breasts. Mr. Brown had her pegged — her interest in literature and poetry was a ruse to secure affection — though this insight was but a cover for his own quiet longing, which is yet another tired cliché deserving of swift burial. Visual beauty, in life as in a darkened theater, excuses even the most heinous of crimes, and sheer nonsense, by virtue of a painter’s touch, is imbued with wisdom, fire, and the rush of great splendor. It’s the expected con, as empty and shallow as the very message it sees fit to feed to a hungry audience. Live for love, and die trying. It’s the poet’s way.

The Telluride Film Festival is a cruel mistress, never more so than in a year that promised the usual also-rans and refuse from Venice and Toronto. Telluride prides itself on the world premieres that later achieve respectability and industry buzz (Juno and Slumdog Millionaire being most prominent), but more than ever, it’s just as content to slide through the uneventful and pretend you’re lucky to be paying for the privilege. I was not in a good mood as I drove into the always breathtaking little mountain town (this is my eighth festival, and the scenery never gets old), largely because the general state of cinema has pushed me to stay away from the theater more than ever. 2009 has been legitimately lethargic and mediocre, but I’ve become so jaded that my usual excitement about the exclusivity of an elite weekend turned to rage before I saddled up for my first queue.

Once again, limited funds ensured that, as an Acme pass holder, I would have to remain joined at the hip with the Chuck Jones Theater in Mountain Village (the best seats in town, but so detached from the action that it may as well be located in Denver), a reality that further limits my scheduling. As expected, the shows I wanted to see were either at ungodly hours (The White Ribbon, all 144 minutes of it, starts at 10:30pm?), or conflicted with other venues. And the TBA’s, usually a quirky element of the festival that allows for unpredictability and excitement, pissed me off to no end, as I couldn’t pull the trigger on Sunday without knowing what would play on Monday. And so on and so forth.

I know: Shut the fuck up, you bastard. You’re in Telluride, inhaling free beef jerky, breathing clean mountain air, and watching some of the best sunsets on the planet. But hey, I’m the kind of guy who still rails against nature for the brevity of the male orgasm, so there’s no pleasing me. Nevertheless, I offer no apologies for (along with my wife) being the most negative person in any given line. While everyone else gushed, swooned, and beamed, I harshed a hundred buzzes without pause. Telluride continually brings out my dark, unpleasant, inner contrarian, and it has become almost instinctual to piss on the festival parade. Still, how often can one endure unblinking love for the average and the merely decent? Telluride has a knack for bringing out the kind of filmgoers who put the last movie they saw at the top of their list of all-time favorites, and like flies to shit, we always seem to find the aging couple who hate “disturbing” and “depressing” as much as they love formulaic and phony.

More than ever, 2009’s edition has proven that my sedentary lifestyle is not all conducive to the frenetic pace of a festival. Unless the film plays at high fucking noon, I seem to stagger from screenings exhausted and bereft, uncertain whether I genuinely dislike the movie or simply remember little else but an initial frown. For now, I’ll assume my fatigue is indifference and a failure to meet my blue-ribbon standards, but there’s a cliché-in-waiting that just might apply: I’m too old for this shit. Then again, no fewer than three films featured central characters betrayed by lovers who harbored secret families (it’s the new pedophilia), and there are always those confounding short films to deal with. But for every Nic Cage railing at a Labor Day picnic about his “overacting,” there is a coveted sneak preview slot being taken by some Herzog rubbish that bored me to tears with a mere three sentence description. And how, in the same weekend, could I miss a gimme Oscar trivia question and miss running into Helen Mirren by mere seconds? Now she’ll never know how I really feel about her. And now, the films — some good, some bad, most down that damnable middle of the road.

Bad Lieutenant, Port of Call: New Orleans

Leave it to the irredeemably insane Werner Herzog to submit the most curiously delightful head-scratcher of the festival; a film so appallingly ridiculous on its face that it should come as no surprise that it survives its journey from madness to sublime entertainment fully intact. A crime drama with precious little of either, this in-name-only remake dispenses with the Catholic guilt of its predecessor and instead, embraces the reliably unhinged Nicolas Cage (proving that true genius lies in casting) as a figure of guiltless criminality. As Mr. Cage stated in the film’s post-screening Q&A, Herzog approached this glorious wreck not as a study in sin and redemption, but rather the “glory of evil,” where a man can — and perhaps, should — use his position of authority to satisfy the darker urges we all share. Cage also informed the crowd that, during a mid-shoot wrap party, Herzog insisted that he would never again make another movie unless “his iguanas” could remain on screen for a full five minutes, rather than the cutting room floor. Iguanas, you ask? Though best discovered on your own terms and in your own way, rest assured that said creatures not only get their very own lyrical interlude, but are closely photographed by Herzog himself, who can now lay claim to being the first filmmaker on record to score a POV shot from a lizard. There’s also an alligator, as if there were any doubt.

If it matters, and I can assure you that it does not, the plot (like a bad episode of Kojak with a bit of German engineering) involves brutal drug killings in the Crescent City, as well as a beleaguered police force that appears all-too-willing to take matters into its own hands. Xzibit is the kingpin in question, and he’s just the man you’d want to gun down an entire household in defense of his turf. He kills, but always with a smile. Cage, channeling Richard III by way of Richard Nixon, mumbles, limps, garbles, and twitches his way through a performance that is technically a character, though its claws simply reattach to a body of work that has yet to inhabit a universe with a molecule of subtlety or shading. Eyebrows fully arched and sweat dripping in epileptic frenzy, Cage’s bad cop interrogates, accuses, probes, bribes, and threatens, all in the ragged pursuit of the next high which, thankfully, is never more than fifteen seconds away. Cage smokes crack, snorts coke, dabbles in heroin, and pops any number of pills, though he’s so damned inviting that it’s less a cautionary tale than a masterpiece of comic invention. He even commands a top football recruit to shave a few points for a crucial bet. Not surprisingly, Cage’s mad stomp through this dirty, crime-ridden shithole leads him to a retirement home where, in the pursuit of a justice that long ago left the bayou, he deprives an uncooperative geezer of her oxygen in order to secure information. Needless to say, he’s also pointing a loaded gun at her caretaker’s head. Though both survive, he leaves the pair with hateful words so damned agreeable, they just might become a national motto.

Cage’s growling, and the nearly unbroken fit of hilarity that ensues, is matched scene-for-scene by Eva Mendes as a whore/girlfriend, Brad Dourif as a sleazy bookmaker, Val Kilmer as a puffy, amoral cop, and Jennifer Coolidge playing, well, the umpteenth ditzy scumbag in a career where sobriety and sanity long ago ceased being viable options. And make sure you stay tuned for a final act of such preposterous good fortune that it becomes impossible not to conclude that Herzog wants evil itself to triumph, or at least have bad behavior avoid the lash of moral judgment. Simply put, for all of his evidence tampering, theft, denial of civil rights, cruelty, and unlovable depravity, Cage’s bad lieutenant is a man of action; a force of the very nature Herzog worships with muscular abandon. All the better to be promoted for it. And when he stands tall, a captain in full measure, we remember that last, fatal bust where it all came together. “Shoot him again,” Cage instructs the drug lord regarding a slimy rival. “His soul is still dancing.” And just like that, as the bloody corpse receives yet another bullet, the departed one’s spirit rises forth, kicks into gear, and yes, dances before us. Breakdances, to be exact. And yet we never question the logic. Crap has rarely been so operatic.

Fish Tank

Andrea Arnold is a director at the top of her game. After the magnificent short film Wasp, which was soon followed by the gritty, uncompromising Red Road, she can now be compared to the best of Mike Leigh without apology or risk of overstatement. She’s the go-to filmmaker for the hopelessness of Britain’s still defiantly rigid class system; where a life in the projects guarantees little save the pain and misfortune similarly visited upon mom, dad, grandma, and every generation within earshot. Without sentimentality, false hope, or condescension, Arnold conveys a sense of doom without ever overplaying her hand. These are human beings, yes, and victims to a small degree, but whenever a moment of sympathy creeps in, a profound lack of common sense or poor life choice swings the pendulum back to disgust. Acutely observational in tone, the small community we witness is loud, nasty, and overcrowded, made worse by the vulgarity of the abbreviated educations on display.

Though largely plot-free, Fish Tank is, above all, the coming-of-age tale of 15-year-old Mia, though unlike nearly every effort in this overstuffed genre, no life lessons are learned, and what hope we find comes in the form of a failed audition for a strip club. Mia dreams of dancing her way out of her dreary existence, and though she has drive and desire, she lacks any visible talent. Much screen time is devoted to her routines, the painfully earnest exercises of youthful abandon, yet they are utterly dreadful from top to toe. Throughout this movie, I quietly cheered this brave directorial decision, as we’re usually expected to believe that our ghettos exist solely to hide reservoirs of untapped potential; unkempt saints denied their just due by the brutal indignities of short-sighted, bigoted gatekeepers. Mia, no plucky heroine, is a feisty, surly, foul-mouthed little bitch, and she’ll end up just like her bleached tramp of a mother, whatever her efforts.

Sure, there is young love, lust, and pained jealousy, but all evolve from the wellspring of authenticity, not detached idealism. Mia and her sister, for example, are about as close to real siblings we’re likely to see on film, and there isn’t a false note to be found in their caustic co-dependency. A new school beckons, but the film tempers its temporary optimism with a closing scene of quiet, depressing power. As the mother sadly gyrates to a driving beat while settling in for yet another booze-soaked, work-free day, both daughters join in her dance. What appears to be an atypical escape from failure and hardship is instead the ultimate representation of how generational pathology is passed along like a virus. I’ve always believed that the boy of ten is the man of forty, and here is no more striking example. These are fiercely unreflective people, “working” class in name only, who will die largely unchanged. And yet they keep trying; carving out small moments of fleeting pleasure that dissipate the precise moment they are acknowledged. It’s life as lived, without the Hollywood gloss.

Life During Wartime

Sadly, Todd Solondz has reached the end of the line. He’s out of gas, out of ideas, and so beyond even the minimal effort to surprise us that he’s revisiting old characters for no discernable reason save pure laziness. Using familiar names from both Welcome to the Dollhouse and Happiness, Solondz forgot to bring along the originality and sense of daring that so defined those previous efforts. Now, older and not at all wiser, he is a man cursing the darkness of his own creative bankruptcy. All told, Life During Wartime is a dull, pointless exercise in unmotivated action; where characters walk and talk not according to anything resembling reality, but rather the tired drive to shock the senses in a world that has moved beyond such puerile predictabilities. Far from a gifted voice of the cinema, Solondz now appears to be content as a fringe carnival barker; an irrelevant “auteur” masturbating to the sound of his own anonymity. His swift decline, via this atrocious spray of mist, was surely one of the most depressing realizations of an already dreary festival.

The pedophile dad from Happiness returns as a different actor (they’re all played by new faces, actually), only this time he hasn’t a thing to occupy his time. Even a hotel bar seduction with Charlotte Rampling, surely a scenario that oozes with dark comic possibility, is horribly wasted and awkwardly staged. The scene almost plays like lost footage from another movie. His ex-wife, Trish (Alison Janney), is trying to move on, but Solondz has found the least interesting manner possible of doing so. And Joy, the sad sack sister, is back and as pathetic as before, but now she’s resorting to imaginary conversations with a dead boyfriend, endless scenes that are overlong even when measured in mere seconds. Jokes are strained, story turns fall flat, and all that’s left is the arrogant assumption that we should care because we’ve heard these names before under far better circumstances. Though topical satire withers on the vine with cruel rapidity, such pointed commentary still would have been better than this toothless chamber of horrors that all but ignores the genuine madness happening right outside its cloistered walls.

A Prophet

After all these years, it’s good to see that penitentiaries remain dank laboratories of rape-fueled showers, random throat-slashings, and cigarette-heavy bribery for small favors. Pity, though, that the lesbian guards have the gone the way of the daring, midnight escapes via the laundry carts. All of these sigh-filled familiarities clog the arteries of A Prophet, a film that damn near stole away this past year’s Palme d’Or, despite often playing like a bad marriage between Midnight Express, American Me, The Shawshank Redemption, and any number of movies featuring Paul Muni. Though well-crafted and superbly acted, the film’s criminal over-length (150 minutes that passed like hours), combined with the moth-eaten story of a young innocent who learns the jailhouse ropes from a ruthless mentor, sentences the enterprise to the cure-for-insomnia bin. Stupidly, I endured this ass-numbing exercise first thing in the morning, which means my boredom was exceeded only by the drool that rolled in thick waves from my gaping maw. I’m not saying that the world didn’t need another reminder that prison is quite possibly the most dangerous place on planet earth, but surely the silver screen could have pounded home the same trite message in a quick flurry of images over a coffee break, rather than a large chunk of my very busy day. I had no idea the program’s description of “Kafkaesque” also applied to the audience.

Inside this particular French prison, there are the Corsicans, an aging, though still-powerful gang that clings to old traditions, such as tapping new recruits to gut stool pigeons like they’re being prepped for Thursday’s meatloaf. Malik, the wide-eyed innocent in question (so innocent that he’s received a lengthy prison sentence for, I’m assuming, failing to bring in his overdue library books), complies with this violent request, though only after much soul-searching. Unfortunately, it’s also a murder that saddles the poor boy with the victim’s yammering ghost for the better part of the picture. Competing with the Corsicans for control are the Arab gangs, equally ruthless upstarts who appear to have forgotten the chain of command that exists in such subcultures. It is here, with the inclusion of the Muslim population, where the film generates some much-needed heat, as Malik’s meteoric rise appears to mirror France’s own struggle with non-assimilating immigrants. Malik’s eventual triumph (and release) may in fact signal the director’s shrugging sense of resignation, but it could just as easily be a warning for a fractured nation on the edge of disaster. Regardless of the larger implications, there’s little here I haven’t seen before.

An Education

Audrey Hepburn’s Holly Golightly ruined the world in any number of ways, the most obvious being her malodorous life lessons for budding young women everywhere; primarily, that one can sip champagne, visit Paris, and navel gaze as a matter of course, rather than as temporary breaks in the tedium of living. There’s nothing that a good hat or fashionable pair of sunglasses can’t cure, and for Jenny (Carey Mulligan), they are both worth the trade for a top education at Oxford. Jenny is almost obscenely bright and clever for her age (I doubt America has ever had such girls about), and though it is 1961, she’ll be damned if antiquated ways are going to hold her back from a rich, fulfilling, independent life. She’s a top student, loves the written word, and has enough pluck for a dozen heroines; she’s more Portrait of the Idealist as a Young Woman than your average teenager. The world is for the taking, and ideas, purity, romance, and love are, expectedly, all that matter. Needless to say, she’s also an obnoxious little sot, and once she meets a much older, more sophisticated man, she’s more than willing to get married and become what she presumably hates.

Of course, the man (Peter Sarsgaard) is nothing like her father, which means he earns his bread through theft and chicanery instead of hard work, which can be more than justified by being in direct contrast to bourgeois boredom. As a couple, they travel, eat like kings, and exchange witty banter in hip jazz clubs, though it’s only a matter of time before the other shoe drops and Jenny is made the fool. She deserves the comeuppance, of course, and I cheered her cruel dismissal as she attempted to crawl back into the good graces of those she so casually cast aside during her wild ride of good fortune. Unfortunately, the movie (based on one of those ubiquitous memoirs that may or may not contain an ounce of truth) rewards her in the end for her foul deeds, when we all know that such women usually live out the nightmare of their own creation, regretting their naiveté until the grave beckons. In the end, I never believed Jenny’s affectations were anything other than a means by which to set herself apart from her parents; mere pretensions to garner the attention she so desperately craved. Like so many smart girls, she’s all-too-willing to put away her books for the first gent to take her dancing.

Make Way for Tomorrow

It seems fitting that the best film playing in Telluride over the Labor Day weekend would be from 1937, rather than the gray, depressing present. Even better, it’s currently unavailable on home video in any format, making the screening an exclusive, must-see event. Adding to the charm is the fact that the film is from Alexander Payne’s private stash; a surprisingly undamaged print he acquired from eBay for the princely sum of six dollars. That aside, the movie just happens to be an unsung classic, the sort of film that can hold court with the best of Ozu in terms of emotional heft and depth of humanity. Appropriately, this film inspired nothing less than Tokyo Story, and it does not suffer for the comparison. Orson Welles once said of Make Way for Tomorrow that “it would make a stone cry,” and the results demonstrate his lack of exaggeration. It’s about acceptance and loss, aging and death, but at its core, it begs for living life beyond one’s role as a parent. Though likely unintended, this is the best argument yet for staying the hell away from cribs and diapers and taking a vacation instead. At the very least, don’t wait fifty years to revisit old memories.

Leo McCarey’s direction is as surefooted as ever, and the performances — especially those of the unwanted, burdensome parents (played flawlessly by Victor Moore and Beulah Bondi) — are surprisingly nuanced for the time, and the authenticity is secured right down to the final scene, which avoids the expected turn for the better. In fact, the final images at the train station are shattering, if only because they so violate the norms of American cinema, then and now. Movies are usually about hope and opportunity, or the next best thing around the corner, so imagine the shock at finding one over 70 years old that provides no comfort, and offers no quarter. Yes, the children are nasty and selfish, but what they decide is far from unreasonable. Life should go on, and each generation must surely pass the torch. And of course, the parents are irritating and frustrating, but do they not deserve honesty and respect, or at least a quiet, dignified end for lives well-lived? Thankfully, the film never offers answers or asks for clear lines between heroes and villains, nor does it wallow in cheap sentiment. There is humor and charm to spare, and a warmth not from decency winning out over evil, but that of a job well done.

London River

No film about terrorism in the modern age has any right to succeed, if only because the political undertones are bound to be oversimplified and shouted at the top of their lungs. Thankfully, we have London River, a quiet, understated film that avoids politics altogether and instead focuses on loss at the personal level. If I were to tell you that the two characters at the center of the movie were a vaguely bigoted widow from Guernsey (Brenda Blethyn), and a solemn, rail-thin African Muslim from Paris (Sotigui Kouyate), you could practically submit your own appalled objection. Do they break down racial and ethnic barriers and share a hug for all mankind? Do they screech and pontificate and see the error of their ways? Not really is the best I can offer, but rest assured that sentiment remains far in the distance this time around, and though these two parents, both of whom are searching for their missing children in the wake of the July 2005 London bombings, do approach a tentative, uncertain bond, they are more opportunists in need of temporary crutches for their grief.

More than a story of tragedy and desperation, however, is the fact that in their own way, both the mother and the father in turn have never really known their children. The realization that each will never see their kids again is painful in any context, but more so because no opportunities will ever again exist for bridging the divide. Sure, it seems cutesy and convenient that the two kids were involved with each other, killed on the same bus because they were taking a trip to France, but from scattered clues, it seems quite possible that the privileged white girl was having that obligatory affair with a minority group to, in whatever manner left to her, strike back at her mother. Even the girl’s flirtation with Arabic lessons and the like demonstrates that irritating youthful indulgence with the Other that is bound to fade with adult responsibility and the crush of the real world. Mom may one day come to see that herself, once the shock of loss yields to numbing routine. Still, any film that tackles something so topical without speechifying must receive something slightly more than a muted endorsement.

Vincere

Here, at last, is the story of Ida Dalser, a young Italian woman who claimed to have had Mussolini’s son before his ignoble rise to power, only to be declared insane, sent to a mental hospital, and thrown in a pauper’s grave upon expiration. I say “at last” in jest, of course, because there’s no way in hell this is coming to a theater near you, though such news is, as you would expect, not even remotely tragic. Even if true, I’m not sure we can blame Il Duce for denying the marriage and birth, largely because running a chaotic empire in the midst of depression and war seems a tad more important than the self-involved ravings of a woman scorned. Think about it: a man like Mussolini obviously has the drive and ambition of a hundred men, and with that comes an unquenchable passion. I hate to tell you, lady, but Benito likely has dozens of children cluttering up Italy, and I’m not sure it’s in the nation’s interest to have them all move into the presidential palace. You were once a great love, but he’s, like, dictator now, so admit your lies and put the brutal nuns of institutional life behind you.

Despite some truly gorgeous cinematography and gripping sequences, the whole adds up to very little, as Mussolini disappears completely after an hour, so that the woman’s tale can receive full focus. We see Il Duce through newsreels and the like, which is unfortunate, as it’s his story that holds all the interest. His rise to power, as expected, is oversimplified to the point of high comedy, as one day he’s standing naked on a hotel balcony as the dark streets fill with noise, while the next he’s in the charge of the whole damn enterprise. Bizarre on-screen words and an overbearing musical score don’t help, and the story seems to turn on granting this woman a sympathy she may not have earned. Were mental institutions a means by which to control outspoken, independent women? Most assuredly, but they also housed the genuinely insane, and Ida just might have been yet another starstruck groupie who attached herself to a rising star because her own was fading in the mist. In any case, a long and routine effort that may occupy an evening, but won’t register beyond its one and only viewing.

The White Ribbon

Michael Haneke’s film was the most anticipated of the festival, which only goes to show that outsized expectations are the greatest curse to befall a moviegoer. While a good film overall, and one that features a host of spectacular scenes, it fell short of the anticipated masterpiece, so the tears I cry are for the failure of initial impression. I fully expect to revisit the movie, if only to flesh out a more considered opinion, but at first blush, the lush black and white cinematography and somber tone, while creepily effective, supported a meandering pace that often frustrated, rather than yielding to rapture. Haneke respects the audience enough to avoid capital letters and bold underlines, but the crippling over length and shifting perspectives helped maintain an unfortunate level of detachment. Dry and muted are usually preferred, but they can become dull if one isn’t careful. That said, it’s always appreciated to have a movie about Germany before the Nazis, and even in advance of World War I, if only to remind viewers that savagery was not always expressed, and once needed a suitable environment in which to grow.

Perhaps Haneke’s conceit — that the Germany of 1913 can be mined for “signs” of impending doom — is best enjoyed at the theoretical level, and that as discussed in story form, the results could only hope to be mixed. After all, a weak screenplay would be far too obvious with the horrors to come, forcing slow-witted viewers to point out the heavy-handed imagery. So, thankfully, there are no Hitler stand-ins, nor are there metaphorical gas chambers, and the lurking anti-Semitism is even pushed aside for more subtle investigations of rural German culture. The farming village in question is quiet and seemingly gentle, but bizarre acts of violence suddenly break out without explanation, forcing villagers to confront their own natures. Only they do little self-examination, and the crimes go wonderfully unsolved. Are these acts of cruelty from without? Within? Perhaps supernatural? Though the children — the generation that would sweep the Nazi regime to power with little objection — are the likely culprit, it’s best that we learn very little regarding victims and perpetrators.

The “white ribbon” of the title refers to a reminder a moderately cruel father (and pastor) ties to the arms of his children concerning their responsibilities as “the innocent.” Behavior, then, follows not as an instinctive drive for goodness, but rather an arbitrary symbol of the punishment to follow if certain rules and regulations are violated. Haneke is surely not suggesting that the German children who were treated poorly readily embraced global war and the Holocaust as natural responses to punishment, so I must conclude that he is instead suggesting that in the absence of genuine, unprompted morality, murder and totalitarianism will follow. But as this is hardly unique to the soil of pre-war Germany, it seems a rather dubious conclusion. Perhaps it’s best to approach The White Ribbon as a cautionary tale; not necessarily that there are handy road maps for evil, but rather that the more bucolic the setting, the more seemingly tranquil the populace, the more receptive such minds are for the ever-feeding forces of self-destruction.

Up in the Air

There’s a certain satisfaction that comes from being the first audience on the entire planet to see a movie, but it inevitably means far less when we’re talking about a Jason Reitman production. After all, this is the same man who set Juno loose upon an unsuspecting world, though my negative review appears to be one of only a handful to be found. Telluride’s faithful are especially enamored with it, and if any one statement dominated the endless queues of the weekend’s events, it was, “I liked it, but it was no Juno.” You are correct, madam or sir, and that’s about the best bit of news concerning this decidedly commercial enterprise. Up in the Air is, at bottom, a creature of mainstream moviemaking, and while limiting in terms of payoff, I’m here to say that it’s not all bad. In fact, I pretty much enjoyed the thing, much to my surprise. Of course, as I expected to loathe its very existence, modest entertainment was more than I had any right to expect. George Clooney tones down the smugness for once, and is all the better for it, and the story, while too redemptive by half, manages to traffic in adult situations and topical relevance with precious little by way of, well, preciousness. Reitman would do right to stay away from Diablo Cody from here on out.

Clooney portrays Ryan Bingham, a corporate hatchet man of more recent vintage; the anti-headhunter who visits downsizing companies across the country to lay off the unsuspecting with what he believes is tact and sympathy. Essentially, he stands in for gutless managers and CEOs who can’t do their own dirty work. The visits are scripted down to the letter, and are so sterile (they involve handbooks on coping with the post-layoff depression, for god’s sake) that they practically run themselves. But Clooney is proud of his work, as he provides a human face to a very inhuman moment in the lives of so many. Along with that central thrust are two side stories: Clooney’s relentless pursuit of his ten-millionth frequent flier mile, and the introduction of a corporate upstart who threatens to take the business into a new age of “video conferencing,” which pretty much entails eliminating all the travel to fire people via the internet. With that, the story is off and running, though it won’t be inviting comparisons with Bergman anytime soon.

We also know that Clooney’s “go it alone” philosophy will be challenged by a fellow traveler who becomes more than a port in the storm, and that her “real life” will present new obstacles, etc. Also, no prizes for guessing that his motivational speeches, used primarily to supplement his income (as well as provide an excuse to keep him on the road even more), will be thrown into disarray by this unexpected attachment, and if you were to assume that a third-act seminar will be interrupted by the standard “moment of clarity” (which by necessity must include leaving the podium and making a mad dash to the airport), you would not be going out too far on the proverbial limb. Again, all pretty much by the book. But it’s well-made, engaging, and for once, despite some definite compromises, the lead character stays nestled in his self-imposed cocoon during the closing credits. Sure, he craves connection, but he’s not really cut out for the daily grind of holding down the homefront. A small victory, perhaps, but enough to warrant a recommendation.

Tagline:

“Muggers who prey on this victim end up praying for their lives!”

Entire Story in Fewer Words than are in this Sentence:

Paul Kersey returns to New York; thousands are butchered.

Homoeroticism:

Paul (Charles Bronson) sends away for a gun he calls “Wilde” (as in Brandon de, not Oscar) which is long, black, and has the power to coat giggly Hispanics in their own blood. There is also a close-up of Paul doing push-ups, which serves no other purpose than to demonstrate that Bronson looks pretty damn good in a sweatshirt. True, Paul makes love to an owlish female public defender, but homoeroticism has a last laugh as she is murdered within fifteen minutes of coitus. Paul also goes on a ten-minute murder rampage with the police chief who first arrested him after he arrived in town. As the two massacre assorted thugs, punks, and black men (one is a dead ringer for H.R., the lead singer of Bad Brains), they give each other knowing glances and come-hither looks. Moreover, each saves the other’s life, which demonstrates that so long as men bond, there will be peace in the land. Every time Paul tries to land pussy, people die.

Corpse Count:

I lost track, but at least 578 people die during the course of this film, the majority in the final twenty minutes. We get to see all types of death — stabbings, gunshots to every possible body part, being burned alive, falling from rooftops, etc. No expense was spared and it is my belief that there is no bloodier movie in motion picture history, and I’m including every other film discussed on this website.

How bad is it really?

Not bad at all [Ed Note: See Matt's full review]. In fact, it is downright hilarious. I have to believe that the director intended his tongue to be firmly in cheek, although there are enough scenes that approach social commentary (one has an obviously liberal cop taking away a defenseless Jew’s firearm while the neighborhood is literally burning down) to allow for a serious approach. I have yet to read a defense of this film that isn’t based on guilt or sarcasm, so who knows. Still, because the film is lacking any real structure (only serving to satisfy bloodthirsty viewers who enjoy watching people die), it isn’t art by any means. Still, how bad can it be when the cast includes an honest-to-goodness Oscar Winner (Martin Balsam) and future Star Trek: The Next Generation star Marina Sirtis? And did I mention Bill & Ted alum Alex Winter?

Post-Mortem One Liner:

Interestingly enough, Bronson doesn’t utter one word after committing hundreds of murders. He is the most efficient, heartless killing machine I have ever seen. The best line in the film, however, comes from the top bad guy (played by Chuck Cunningham from the early Happy Days episodes) as he leaves jail after kicking Bronson’s ass: “Tell you what, I’m gonna kill a little old lady just for you. Catch it on the six o’clock news.”

Stupid Political Content:

As with all films produced by the team of Golan-Globus, there are assorted right-wing themes running throughout — inept police departments, harmful gun control laws, impotent government agencies, silly liberal idealism (typified by loony lawyers who demand protection for civil liberties and the rights of criminals). Murderers and rapists are let out of jail by feminized judges, which requires hyper-masculine action by Ayn Rand types who believe the individual, preferably with muscles and/or a big-ass gun, to pick up where the candy-assed pinko-state left off.

Novelty Death:

A man (or is it a woman?) who looks strangely like Margaret Thatcher, runs screaming from a home immediately after Molotov cocktails have been thrown through the window. Needless to say, she/he is on fire and the whole thing is terribly, terribly funny. A close second is a man pushed out of a window by a screaming woman armed only with a broom.

What you learned:

Only when blood flows in the streets will the violence stop.