Dogs Bark

Neither Milan Nor Minsk - - Romance (1999) - - 27 Mar 2008

Not recommended.  I have to be honest. I have no idea what this movie is saying and I could have missed the point. Something about childbirth doing a girl better than masturbation? Regardless, because Romance depicts sex acts in graphic and detailed form, including rape and bondage, I can’t really “recommend” it unless some artistic value clung to those images. Actually, the sex is rather maidenly if you’ve spent any lonely evenings on the Internet but the industrial-strength dispassion used by director Catherine Breillat might be more disturbing. Given all that it’s also tough to evaluate Caroline Ducey as the lead actress. Since her role offered no charm or insight, how’s she supposed to hold the movie for ninety minutes? Show us her tits? Anyway, this ain’t Rochelle, Rochelle - - not that there’s anything wrong with that - - and it bored the spunk right out of me.

 

No Movie for Old Men - - In The Valley Of Elah (2007) - - 22 Mar 2008

Not recommended. Tommy Lee Jones is like lamb curry. Have it a few times a year and your life is rich. Eat it everyday and you’ll go blind. If you set Tommy Lee on the table, use him wisely. Paul Haggis’s grim yet trivial pic, In The Valley Of Elah, is sausage meat. Despite all that, Jones does a good job - - more fortunate than Charlize Theron forced to play Hilary Swank playing Ashley Judd. And BTW, every Hispanic in the movie is a drug user. That’s racism, Pauly.  The plot isn’t compelling or unique, the disjoint narration providing a very tame puzzle.  The solution makes us feel good about our opposition to the Iraqi War, in a very mean-spirited way. It exploits the troops as cynically as a small-minded Texas politician. I found the final scene both ridiculous and offensive. Don’t let this inferior movie waste you, too.

Clifford Worley - - True Romance (1993)

Hopper’s appearance in this movie is traditionally defined by the pairing with Christopher Walkin as his Mafioso executioner, Vincente Coccotti. ‘The Sicilian Scene,’ as it is called on the Web, has been analyzed so thoroughly both on the special edition DVD and everywhere else that little needs to be said about director Tony Scott’s powerful use of interior lighting or of the fundamental basis of the scene to the Tarentino oeuvre (his first script). Scott’s re-use from The Hunger of The Flower Duet from the opera, Lakmé, announcing the appearance of the Moorish gene, is nicely done. This might be Walken’s finest ten minutes in movies.

But it is Hopper performance that takes this piece from pantomime to romance. In fact, the scene is without any real power (sorry, YouTube) if you have not watched the preceding scenes with Christian Slater, playing his son Clarence.  The abundant religious iconography in the lit-from-above face of Hopper, Walken’s priestly scarf, and so on would be pretentious at best if we did not know how Clifford Worley feels about his son and about his life.

This information is transmitted in the preceding scenes, sketching the failings of the Worley clan, père et fils (and possibly Clarence’s mother, too) and a true but painful love exists between both men. This sequence, intercut with a scene in LA, begins with Clifford leaving his shift as a security guard and Burl Ives singing Little Bitty Tear on the car radio and we immediately take stock of a man who’s probably not far from the natural arrival of Coccotti/Mr. Death in his dingy, railyard trailer. After greeting, his son, it is revealed that Hopper is divorced, an ex-cop, and a recovered alcoholic, two out of three things Hopper himself can claim. Yet with his son, Clifford Worley still evinces both a fatherly concern and affection, extending even to his new daughter-in-law, Alabama (Patricia Arquette).

The pain flows out of Hopper’s battered face, wincing as he acknowledges both Clarence’s hard appraisal of his parenting and his love. After fulfilling a request for inside information from the police, Hopper waves good-bye as Clarence and Alabama drive off for California. In the final shot of the scene and after a bodacious good-bye kiss from Alabama, father and son are further united by his confirmation that she does indeed, "taste like a peach."

The power of the next scene comes from a man, an old man, dealing with the world of cruel truth, Coccotti (Walkin), the self-proclaimed 'Anti-Christ.' The monologue of Hopper about the origin of Sicilians is obviously an attempt to insult Coccotti, thereby forcing the mobster to kill him, before Clarence’s whereabouts is tortured out of him. Clifford has made peace with his son, with his wreck of a life, and can now depart the movie and planet with a grand gesture that in this context clearly deserves the spiritual undercurrent. This is not just a dutiful father; this is a chronic fuck-up . . .  redeemed.

No overtopping craziness for Hopper this time out, just pure and simple Method, creating a memorable small part in a movie rich with them.  James Gandolfini, Gary Oldman, and Saul Rubinek take us on wonderful little side trips. In this case, Hopper's romance is also a small one, a road-weathered one - - a truly romantic vision of paternal coolness, opening up the main journey of this totally charming movie.

Till Time and Times Are Done - - Sunshine - - 15 Mar 2008

Recommended. When I was a kid, my father used to put me to bed with stories about what would happen when the Sun burnt out. It constructed a perception that all religions shrivel in the presence of this one great mystery, the Sun, a thing so unimaginable, yet so fundamental to all life. I wonder if this awe drove Alex Garland’s scripting and Danny Boyle’s direction in Sunshine. Sure, the crew of the Icarus II is too young and impulsive but really . . . do you think Robert Duvall or Bruce Willis is going to save humanity? Actors Cillian Murphy and Rose Byrne, two Boyle regulars, did a suburb job. And Cliff Curtis, the Maori actor of Once Were Warriors  is great. OK, there’s some implausibility and questionable plot turns, but the wonderful John Murphy (great name!) score keeps the action pumping to the end. Suspend your judgment.  Look into the furnace.

Lyle from Dallas - - Red Rock West (1992)

“You don’t wanna drink with me? I ain’t good enough to buy you a beer?” asks Lyle from Dallas early in Red Rock West, the outstanding neo-noir from the pen and helm of John Dahl. Nic Cage, playing a weary drifter, has just met Lyle and Cage has before that made two ethical decisions that will haunt the remainder of the intricate plot. The question challenges him; Cage’s bashfulness has nothing to do with Hopper’s seedy affect. But the challenge blows a whiff of kerosene into what had been a friendly moment. Lyle and Michael (Cage) have just shared a “Semper Fi,” including the respectful recognition that Michael was injured in the 1983 truck bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut. We now have to wonder if Lyle may not be good enough. Signifying the noir grammar of the film, we just don’t know for sure.

In fact, the line is echoed later in the story, Lyle asking Michael again if “you think you’re better’n me.” The interesting thing about all this is that Michael initially gets in a fix because he impulsively assumes Lyle’s identity, the assassin hired long distance by Wayne (J.T. Walsh) to kill Walsh’s wife, Sharon, (Laura Flynn Boyle), neither of whom is actually who they claim to be either. It is a testimony to Dahl’s filmmaking that all of this is easy to sort out when you actually see the movie. No one is anyone and everyone thinks they’re better than Lyle.

However, it is the confusion of Cage and Hopper that results in a refreshing picture and also a thread to the vast dramatic web of mistaken identity and hurt feelings. Is Lyle seeing a better and less demented version of himself? Lyle is, of course, a generation removed from Michael and did his warrior thing in Vietnam. “Last unit to leave,” he says without comment. The implied comment is on the ethical distinction between the two actions.  Both were, arguably, mistakes and Hopper tells him so. “You know, that never should have happened . . . over there in Lebanon.” Michael’s response is, “You get in there. You just gotta give it your best shot.”  Lyle offers no indication of the motivation for his various tours of duty, in southeast Asia or Texas.

In the climactic struggle between the two, Lyle is ironically bayoneted on a sculpture of a soldier. In their final bit of dialogue, Michael tells Lyle, “You know what? I am better than you.” And we've come round to start. Lyle has been revealed as a monster and requires a stake to be driven through his black heart. He’s the bad-ass, tough guy we imagine ourselves to be, tossing back a shot of Jim Beam in a Victorville titty bar . . . even as we actually pull into a Starbucks. However, when faced with the real deal, disgust ensues. As it does with Michael, now free to do the right thing and he does indeed in the final five minutes of the film. Red Rock West was a splendid role for Hopper and he was universally praised. For not the first time, he steps into a dank corner of the collective male psyche and pulls back the curtain. It’s hard to imagine anyone else nailing it as he does.

Coyote Waits - - Amores Perros [Love’s A Bitch] (2000) - - 8 Mar 2008

Strongly Recommended. I‘ve dutifully given you the studio translation of the title of Alejandro González Iñárritu’s wonderful breakthrough film knowing that it’s not the best meaning of the Mexican idiom and doesn’t really describe the movie. Specifically, ‘amores perros’ is a love that causes pain as much as pleasure . . . not kinky pain, but real injury. And the double entendre on the perros (all of whom are male) is: that’s the kind of love experienced by the main characters for the incidental but essential dogs of the picture. Even the fight manager has a twisted, painful affection for his meal ticket. Of course, love between people, the real focus of the film, fetches the same kind of suffering. Finally, in the end segment, Emilio Echevarría (with a solid performance) gets the last word - - silently quoting Casablanca as he leaves México with his new best friend.

Weapon Of Mass Deception - - The Fog Of War (2003) - - 6 Mar 2008

Strongly recommended. In The Fog of War, Robert McNamara, Kennedy and Johnson-era Secretary of Defense introduces the title phrase to describe the impossible complexity of war and to excuse his part in two campaigns of horrific saturation bombing against enemy civilians. However, the correct meaning, from Clausewitz, is the lack of information that "fogs" decisions during battle. There is a difference, the duplicity linking McNamara with his ethical heir, Donald Rumsfeld. The facts of Asian culture that McNamara attributes to his ignorance were published by scholars and warriors of the day, the exact group, in some cases, who scoffed at the Iraqi nuclear capability. Both men arrogantly decided to ignore intelligence that would have changed history and saved lives. The Fog of War, movie or concept, excuses nobody. Filmmaker Errol Morris well deserves his Best Documentary Oscar . . . but don't let McNamara disarm you. He chose to be evil.

Leopold's Ghost - - In Bruges (2008) - - 1 Mar 2008

Recommended. In Bruges is an interesting take on the hit man on the lam movie, certainly not Tarentino or Guy Ritchie’s frantic style. The photography (Eigil Bryld) and Carter Burwell’s score are good. The idea of Bruges being a Flemish purgatory, expiating the sins of the two killers, is funny. But I did not find this pic especially funny or interesting. I may have been put off by Colin Farrell, he’s such a whinging, soot-faced rodent, but that all is put to good use here.  Brenden Gleeson, Ralph Fiennes and Clémence Poésy each give us a unique day’s work.  But calling director/writer Martin McDonagh, the ‘next David Mamet,’ as has been done, is idiotic and not evinced in this unpretentious film. I found the dialogue only effective, not quotable. I give this a lukewarm thumb’s up but if you just can’t stomach 107 minutes of little Colin, no argument here.