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DVD review – >Stranger Than Fiction  - March 10, 2007


     Stranger Than Fiction may be the only film in recent memory where the premise
of the movie is the premise of the movie.  Will Farrell, who audiences are
accustomed to seeing either with a silly, silly hat or running down the street in
his underpants, starred in this unique and touching character study.  He is
Harold Crick, a tragically bored IRS employee who operates his entire life by the
ticks of his wristwatch.  One morning, he hears the narrative voice of Kay Eiffel
(Emma Thompson) narrate every irritable nuance in his mundane existence.  She
not only knows how often he brushed each tooth in the morning, she knows his
philosophy behind his choice of tie color.
     The film takes a few escapist turns.  Crick has to identify the purpose of the
voice, which soon predicts a tragic end to his own life story.  But it is the minute
details of his life, including his unfulfilled dreams including the soft touch of a
young auditee, Ana (Maggie Gyllenhaal).
     Fiction’s pace is tentative.  Director Marc Forster was careful to stay out of the
way and let the actors add dabs of color to Crick’s sterile, whitewashed life.  It is a
subtle, but an effective take a familiar theme.  Are you wasting your life?  Are you
trying to make your life the one you’ve always dreamed of?  Harold always
wanted to play guitar, and that girl he has to audit, with the string of tattoos on
her arm, is just too irresistible.
     The move also succeeds when it probes the author’s angle.  Eiffel is the creator
of Harold’s novel, (Or is that reversed?  We’re never exactly sure.) and she is
desperate for an ending. Her endings traditionally climax with the death of the
hero, and they rarely, in a moral context, deserve their fates.  The second half of
the movie is purely about happy endings.  Crick’s contact with a literature
professor (Dustin Hoffman) sways belief of the overall tone of the novel/Harold’s
life.  Is the book a comedy or a tragedy, and if it is the latter, can Harold
successfully reject his fate or is he better off becoming another one of Eiffel’s tragic
heroes.
     One of my favorite aspects of movies occurs when actors and directors can
massage the audience into accepting the possibility of a happy ending.  Some
people resist and believe that life is tragic in its very essence.  Any ending that
offers hopes without sacrifice is tripe.  Heroes getting the girl and saving the day
are reserved for summer superhero blockbuster.  Stranger Than Fiction asks, perhaps
a little too quietly, why do we expect the hero to perish in a ‘realistic’ story?  
There is only one single day in your life that ends in death, so why do our most
revered figures have to die to let the story continue as legend or literature?
     As a complete sucker for happy endings, Stranger Than Fiction speaks up for
those of us who believe death only serves the vermin than feast on the skin after
life leaves the body.  It’s a continuing life, one without chase scenes or well-told
narratives or plot points or established characters can sometimes be the most
inspiring.  Watch this film, and that tiny part of you that cringes during the
foreign film festivals will thank you.

DVD review – Children Of Men - April 2007

You could hate post-apocalyptic short stories all you want, you could detest bleak visions of the future and desperate tales of woe, and you would still like Children of Men.
It is a long standing belief of mine that the most competent and imaginative director can not only make sweet, sweet art out of a well-crafted script, but spin gold out of sludge like Police Academy 4 or any number of thrillers that gave away the end before the opening credits finished rolling. This time the director was Alfonso Cuaron, one of the new celebrated directors making noise from south of the border. To be honest, I never saw his breakthrough film Y Tu Mama Tambien, and now I feel a little stupid. My first glimpse of his work was the third Harry Potter film, The Prisoner of Azkaban.
With Cuaron it is the intangibles that only goofy film nerds and wannabe screenwriters notice that make the difference. For any normal viewer who wants to experience the story, these details are seamless. Azkaban broke the established mold set forth by the first two franchise films. Cuaron brought the kids outside and put them in regular street clothes. He used natural light or none at all, and the transitions between scenes were literally organic. I love the way he used the tiniest plants to convey the change in seasons. Unique, respectful and memorable.
Children of Men is a darker, more violent film, but the ongoing war between governments out of control and the citizens of Britain who have no hope are once again relayed though the background elements. Movies set in the future tend to clunk us over the head with their nifty gadgets. Either it’s too many flying cars in your face all at once or they go just one step too far and make the premise preposterous, immediately taking us out of the story. Cuaron waves his wand wonderfully. The spray paint on the wall declaring revolution stays in the background. The cars are updated, but not too much so. The buildings look familiar and the technology is all so very plausible. His mix of the natural and the industrial is so well conceived. This is a world of infertility, and the knowledge of the first birth in eighteen years counters the gunfire and news reports. (And there are dogs! So many dogs in the film. Why did I mention that? Because somehow it worked!)
There are several scenes where the use of a handheld camera is absolutely perfect. I’m not sure how it’s accomplished, but a scene unfolded in a car and we were able to see everything that happened in real time, in a single shot. There’s a bunch of that sweet stuff in there. In the middle of a machine gun battle and through continuous chase scenes, our presence in that moment, without edits or trickery, heightens the tension unlike any soundtrack or CGI could. Unless, of course they used CGI for that effect. In which case, bravo.
There are actors in the film, too. Clive Owen, one of my new personal favorites, carries the film with charm and boy scout-like devotion to the remaining shreds of goodness in the world. I thought of a British Bruce Willis here, with a handful more of Bond-like charm. In fact, during most of the action sequences, he is without a pair of shoes. Maybe that’s where I got that from.
But the champion here is Cuaron. Like Christopher Nolan, it is as if they good turn even the driest script into a something worth celebrating. I wonder what he could have done with a Star Wars movie…

Film review – Hot Fuzz - April 2007

I’ve been a patriotic soul as long as I can remember. I preferred American cuisine as a youth, American literature and American inspired music. I majored in American History. As a young wise-ass studying comedy and what makes people laugh, I came to an early conclusion that Americans were funnier than the rest of the world, with only a few Pythonesque exceptions.
Well, that’s all over. I hereby proclaim that right now, America can’t make a funny movie to save its lazy overfed asses. It appears we have to look elsewhere, and my first stop is Britain. If Ricky Gervais isn’t busy, and Sacha Baron Cohen is getting sued for skirting the edge please find Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg, both writers of Hot Fuzz (and Shaun of the Dead), and its director and star respectively.
Its not just that this movie is actually funny, which is defined (by me) as a film which makes you laugh out loud more than five times, and continues to make you laugh after you’ve left the theater. Its how this film is funny. It is a well-directed and edited satire of every action film cliché imaginable, slammed into two hours of non-pretentious and non-pandering comedy. See, that is where the “Frat Pack”, the reigning champions of American comedy films fail miserably every time out. Stiller, Wilson, Vaughn, Farrell and their crew couldn’t make Hot Fuzz work in one hundred tries, because the very essence of an effective comedy is in the script and the attention to detail. Did you feel that in Starsky and Hutch, or that dumb crap about dodgeball?
Hot Fuzz is silly but the characters are genuine and familiar, even if they are skewed. Two dozen speaking roles have their own small voice and bits to play, and none are too cartoony and ridiculous. There are no diarrhea gags or dogs on toilets; however there is an elusive, kick-ass swan. (Maybe an animal is required in all modern comedies.) There are more jokes, gags, references, one-liners and silliness in the first half of this movie than I’ve seen collectively in the last ten American comedies.
The first rule of satire and parody is the existence of a plot. In this case, the story can be preposterous (and the film even admits this) but it all must be based in reality. Sgt. Angel (aptly named, as is every character, for the viewer who is into that sort of thing) is the efficient cop obsessed with order who is shipped away from London because he is too efficient and orderly. The tiny village he is forced to protect lives at a fraction of the speed he is accustomed to. That’s about it. How this is accomplished through direction and production makes it memorable. Quick flashy edits, recycled action theme music are used to drive the pace and the fun. Wright and Pegg included special effects to make even the clicks of a pen to file reports and the turn of every knob into a shotgun blast of its own. There is no wasted space, and the film’s kooky little plot unfolds slowly and is wrapped up tightly with all the obligatory accoutrements of the genre, including the shootout, the car chase, the one-on-one duel with the villain, the faux ending and the assumed death. The correct amount of screen time given to each.
So I feel a little bummed, even though I got my money’s worth. I wish it wasn’t so, but I just can’t rely on my home country for hilarious movies right now. It pains me to admit that. As I sit quietly waiting the next American Renaissance of quality funny films, I’ll keep one eye on whatever Wright and Pegg are up to.

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