Millennium Mambo

Hsiao-hsien Hou, Taiwan, 2001 (7.7*)
If you're a fan of the films of Hou or Hong Kong filmmaker Wong Kar-Wai, (best of which are Chungking Express and In the Mood for Love) or like me, you just like watching Taiwanese beauty Shu Qi (Hsu Chi, photo below) just walk around, you'll enjoy this film of Hou's.

Hou gives us a snapshot of the life of aimless Vicky, who does little more than hang around night clubs. She reflects back in the beginning of this on her relationship ten years earlier with Hau-Hau, a jealous house rock dj, who generally mistreats or ignores her and wants her to account for her time away from him or phone calls to others. Whenever they break up, he starts following her around again. We also see Vicky later in Japan, with a different man.

This is a not like a typical western film romance: boy meets girl, they have a relationship, then they (a) get married, or (b) part ways, end of film.. This is a segment of Vicky's life that covers roughly a decade, and we see scenes from each portion to give us a picture of her overall lifestyle. Much of the film is linked or propelled by electronic trance music, and it all fits together to create a very modern style, to me, reminiscent of Wong Kar-Wai.

Director Hou said in an interview that he wanted to show Taiwan night life and incorporate the trance music of Lim Giong (who co-wrote the music), so he used all Taiwanese actors. On the dvd, I like the longer, deleted "In Japan" segment that gives Shu some leeway as an actress to show more emotion than in the rest of the film, where she seems mostly just angered by life circumstances. She is certainly worth watching, as are all the films of Hou. He's definitely an artist, usually bringing visual poetry to the simplest of stories.

Winner of 6 awards, including a technical prize at Cannes

Read more...

Black Hawk Down

Ridley Scott, 2001 (9.0*)
Super intense war film has a very simple premise: a U.S. helicopter has been shot down in the city during the occupation of Somalia. It's now the mission of ground forces to rescue the crew while they are under attack from all sides in this war against warlords. It seems that every civilian has an AK-47 in this city [see Nicholas Cage in Lord of War for how they got armed] and each individual army has a common enemy: americans.

The focus is constantly shifting from the soldiers in the crashed helicopters to those on the ground trying to fight their way to the crash site through the enemy in the streets. This is riveting, thanks to super editing, cinematography, and sound. It's hard to believe we're seeing special effects and not the real thing. Some of the more recognizable cast in include Eric Bana, Ewan McGregor, Josh Hartnett. Tom Sizemore, and Sam Shepherd.

Based on a true story, Scott (Alien, Gladiator) has made one of the best war films of the post Vietnam era.

Read more...

A Beautiful Mind

Ron Howard, 2001 (8.4*)
Best Picture (AA, GG)
This look at the life of brilliant mathmatician John Nash becomes also a study of schizophrenia. As a student, Nash shows signs of brilliance, coupled with an obsession with irrelevant minutae, such as the feeding patterns of pidgeons. Later, he is asked to work on top secret cryptography for the government, and descends into his own imaginative mind. Russell Crowe turned in his most versatile performance to date, understated enough to be his most credible role.

Not an easy biopic to watch, but nevertheless one of the finest cinematic snapshots of madness, along with The Three Faces of Eve and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Beautiful co-star Jennifer Connelly, who plays Nash's wife, won 9 supporting actress awards, likely many for her snub for the incredible performance in 2000's Requiem for a Dream, in which she played a drug addict willing to perform girl-on-girl shows to get drug money.

Director Ron Howard's most successful film, was a winner of Oscars® for best picture, director, supporting actress, and screenplay, and 31 awards overall, including four for picture. Awards page at IMDB

Read more...

Donnie Darko

Richard Kelly, 2001 (8.4*)
This version is the longer director's cut
Welcome to a "Harvey" from hell. Disturbed teenager Donnie Darko (Jake Gyllenhaal) doesn't get along too well with anyone in his hellish life. His one friend is Gretchen, who, for some reason, agrees to date him. His psychiatrist discovers hypnosis can help unlock his secrets.

Donnie survives a bizarre accident, perhaps due to supernatural events, which of course will change anyone's life. His ally seems to be an imaginary rabbit named "Frank", which in this case is not quite so harmless and comical as Jimmy Stewart's friend. It sometimes causes him to do not quite the right thing.

This fantasy, bordering on science fiction, is also a mystery, a combination which has made it a cult favorite. Penned by director Kelly, it is a unique vision in recent cinema.

Currently #132 on the IMDB top 250 films, rated 8.3 (not sure I'd rank it this high, but it does have a cult following by now; the highest ranked film at IMDB has a rating of 9.2, because these are the averages of tens or hundreds of thousands of viewers, with 10 the top rank that can be given)

Winner of 11 awards out of 21 nominations, from film critics and festivals.

Read more...

Baran

Majid Majidi, Iran, 2001 (8.4*)
aka Hamsay-e Khoda
A locan Iranian teen, Latif (Hossein Abedini) loses his position at a construction site to an illegal Afghan refugee named Bahrat (Zahra Bahrami, who does all her acting with just her eyes, never speaking a word), hired because an accident injured his father with a broken leg. He seeks revenge through a series of pranks, only to discover that Rahmat is actually a girl. Local officials are constantly raiding the site, searching for illegal Afghan workers, who work for less and take jobs away from Iranian citizens (gee, sound familiar?)

Latif begins to feel for the girl, forced to lift heavy bags of cement and to do other demanding labor, and begins to seek out her family in a nearby village of refugees. He discovers more about himself as he finds out about the plight of Raman's family.

This is a small unpretentious film, perhaps a bit light on story development, that says a lot about the universal human condition, and especially about war refugees forced out of their native lands and to seek survival any way they can. It manages to be touching without sentimentality, and loving without romance or personal concerns.

Majidi's films (Children of Heaven) concern the poor and working classes and their struggle for survival, and hopefully can help westerners dispel their prejudices against this part of the world and other religions.

Read more...

Chaos

Coline Serreau, 2001, France (9.1*)Serreau, brilliantly weaves a complex tale of crime, friendship, romance, and revenge using one of the most engaging scripts (which she wrote) in recent memory. To say this is also an archetypal women's lib film is an understatement. A middle-class married couple on their way to a dinner witness the beating of a prostitute on the streets and don't help her. The wife, perfectly played by Catherine Frot, investigates out of guilt and begins to unravel the story of the young woman from her beginning in a male-dominant culture to her present life in Paris.

Serreau never lets the viewer tire as the film flawlessly shifts gears in a complex spiral until we not only get the complete background story but are propelled forward into a totally unexpected future involving all the main characters she introduces. This is one of the few films I've wanted to stand up and applaud when done, or at least give Serreau an imaginary high five for superb craftmanship throughout.

Winner of four international awards, two by stunning newcomer Rachida Brakni as the prostitute. Along with Diva and La Femme Nikita, the best of modern French crime cinema.

Note: on the dvd cover it says "think Run, Lola, Run meets Thelma and Louise", which basically means action-packed, but this story and screenplay are much better than those, even though nothing moves as fast as Run Lola (which is appropriate, as she's running more than not)

Read more...

War Photographer

Christian Frei, Switzerland, 2001 (9.4*)

[Partially in English, partially sub-titled]

As a photographer and visual artist myself, I've always admired those willing to risk their lives just to give the world photographs of war and other human tragedies as they occur, all on display here such as extreme poverty and starvation (Africa), hazardous working conditions (Indonesian sulphur mines), and war itself (Palestine). This story is a biography of photojournalist James Nachtwey, often called the 'greatest war photographer of all time'. As one who survived to see gray hair, he's had a longetivity that few others achieve, as most don't live to see 50.

This is a great story of a great artist and humanitarian, a film which will have difficult images to bear, but one which we owe ourselves as fellow human beings to bear witness to and never forget the injustices which our fellow humans can inflict on the innocent. This is the goal of war correspondents and other journalists, and is certainly the 'raison d'etre' of James Nachtwey. Hats off for the documentary filmmakers who followed Nachtwey on his assignments, often into the heat of battle itself. This is one of the most important political and humanitarian statements ever captured on film.

Read more...

Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures

Jan Harlan, 2001 (9.1*)
This documentary on master director Stanley Kubrick was appropriately released in 2001, by his brother-in-law Jan Harlan. Using home movies, interviews with his exwife, other relatives, film stars, other directors, collaborators, writers, composers, and clips from his movies, we get a look at one of the few directors that could equally be labeled genius and artist. For me, this was a real treat, as I’ve always thought Kubrick was among the absolute best of directors, at least his best five films anyway, all legitimate all-time top 100 contenders:

• 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), ranked #2 on the all-time top ranked 1000 list; about the next step in evolution from a material to a spiritual being, illustrated by one astronaut but in Arthur C. Clarke’s novel Childhood’s End, it happens to an entire generation at once


• Dr. Strangelove (1964) bw (#17), perhaps the best comedy ever; brilliant satire, perfect acting from Peter Sellers, George C. Scott, Sterling Hayden, Slim Pickens


• A Clockwork Orange (1971) (#63), a spellbinding trip into a violent future; Malcolm McDowell was never again to approach such greatness; from Anthony Burgess' brilliant autobiographical novel (he was the author, victim of the home invasion)


• Paths of Glory (#83), a powerful anti-war film shot in black and white, Kirk Douglas’ best role, as a heroic officer fighting for the underdogs


• Spartacus (#177), an underrated epic and homage to freedom, Kirk Douglas again

Other Kubrick films also make the all-time polls:

• Barry Lyndon (#101), shot in natural candlelight on old cameras fitted with Leica lenses made for the low light of space by NASA; perhaps a better choice than American Ryan O'Neal would have made this British novel more authentic


• The Shining (#109), a lengthy excursion into the madness of the Stephen King horror novel and the over-acting of Jack Nicholson and Shelley Duvall


• The Killing (#324), his first serious feature, his only film noir/pulp fiction film


• Lolita (#652), an early bw filming of the controversial Nabakov novel, with James Mason


• Full Metal Jacket (#206), a war film in two parts, one half covers boot camp, the other the same infantry squad now fighting in Vietnam, with some great war action in a city


• Eyes Wide Shut (#806 on the critics poll only, 1058th on ours), his final film which took years to film. This last film was a slow and disappointing excursion into infidelity to most, but Kubrick thought it his finest film. Its star Tom Cruise narrates this documentary, and Nicole Kidman is also interviewed. Some say the lengthy filming broke apart their marriage.

My favorite interviews, besides my favorite author Arthur C. Clarke, (2001 novel and screenplay, about 50 other books), are the other directors, who include Steven Spielberg and Woody Allen. This is a very rewarding look at a director who made far too few films, but had such standards of perfection that he often made totally original classics. The look of science fiction films were changed forever thanks to 2001, they now have to look realistic at a minimum, and all fans of this genre owe Kubrick a big thank you. Has anyone else since Stanley made us laugh at nuclear annihilation?

Stanley Kubrick at IMDB

Read more...

Ocean's Eleven

[Both versions]
Lewis Milestone, 1960 (6.4*)
In the original, we had the somewhat appealing, though often obnoxious original Rat Pack starring, of course led by Frank Sinatra as the mastermind (what else) behind robbing three casinos in Las Vegas at once. Danny Ocean, fresh out of prison, and eleven of his cronies. I think part of the appeal of that idea is that the whole group already robbed Vegas with huge salaries for being mildly entertaining on stage together, and adding Hollywood legitimacy to a criminal enterprise, based on bilking tourists at every turn.

The script had some light humor attached to an intricate robbery heist, which had a couple of plot twists along the way. Nothing terrific, just some entertaining fluff allowing Sinatra to play the gangster, and also the brains of the outfit. You had to be able to stomach Dean Martin, Peter Lawford, Sammy Davis Jr, and Joey Bishop in order to enjoy this heavily plotted film, but it's ok late night tv fare.

Stephen Soderbergh, 2001 (5.8*)
The curiousity here is why the remake? Other than, of course, that Hollywood never met a remake it didn't like (Vanishing Point, Bad News Bears did not need remakes, maybe Seabiscuit did). First of all, no modern rat pack. The cast assembled is George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, Casey Affleck, Eliot Gould, Carl Reiner, Julia Roberts, and some unknowns, while Andy Garcia is being robbed. An affable but hardly daunting criminal group, and a waste of some Oscar-winners with little to do here - and certainly not an organized 'gang' like the rat pack.

Second, the original was hardly a classic, had no pace and plodded along until the major setup all happens at once. For the remake, the usually reliable Stephen Soderbergh updated the time, the casino names, made it the Bellagio, and two others who share that vault that they are robbing. They changed the plot, so if you're a fan of the original, it's not the same story, but you'd guess that ahead of time, else no surprises in the movie at all. There was also never a sequel to the first, thankfully, now they've already made a sequel to the mediocre remake, Ocean's Twelve - more of the same tedium, too boring to remember. This could get old very slowly, like the pace of the remake - if anything they found a way to slow down the original.

These films show what happens when they aim for the 'mass appeal audience'. The original is worth one viewing at least. As Sinatra would later say when playing solo, "I miss the boys."

Read more...

The Tunnel

Roland Suso Richter, 2001, Germany (8.3*)
Based on a true story from the 50’s of East German swimmer Harry Melchior who defected to West Germany then enlisted the aid of an odd assortment of diggers to see if they could dig a 145-meter tunnel to the east to help their relatives also escape to the west. This is a riveting film, if lengthy (nearly 3 hrs), that manages to maintain its tension throughout, and is a better escape film than the obviously Hollywooden Great Escape, and without any big stars as well. Mixing dark color with some grainy black & white sections, director Ricther manages to maintain a near documentary feel in a story that should have been told decades ago. Reminiscent of the Leon Uris novel Mila 18, about trapped Jews tunneling out of the Warsaw ghetto.

Read more...

No Man’s Land

Danis Tanovic, 2001, Bosnia (8.7*)
Best Foreign Film (AA,GG)
This is a riveting story about the futility of war and how politics can sometimes reach unbelievable absurdities, using a really simple story on the surface. A couple of soldiers in the Bosnian-Herzegovinian conflict wander into the no man’s land between the two artificially and diplomatically drawn lines. Pretty soon one from the other side becomes trapped with them in an odd sort of stalemate involving a bomb placed under one while he was unconscious.

By the time they done little or nothing the whole event has been sniffed out by the media and becomes a major news event, threatening to have international consequences. More cerebral than action, director Danis Tanovic’s film deservedly won an Oscar® and a Golden Globe for Foreign Language Film, and numerous other small festival awards.

Awards page at IMDB: No Man's Land Awards

Read more...

Monsoon Wedding

Mira Nair, 2001, India (7.4*)
This is, as director Mira Nair said, “organized chaos”, like life in India. Unfortunately I couldn’t tell this was a drama and not a big, enjoyable party film until about 90 minutes in. Nair weaves together several stories of people of different classes and circumstance as a family comes together for the hastily arranged marriage of the daughter of Lalit Verma (Naseerudding Shah).

There’s lots of dancing, aided by a strong pop soundtrack, attempted mating, family arguments and secrets (one dark one that turns the film's mood), but there’s no very cohesive story here, just a slice of Indian life in a large family reunion and wedding. There’s probably too much shaking, hand-held camera work throughout, it fits the dancing and street scenes but in a romantic interlude on the balcony, and almost every other scene as well, it becomes distracting. Still, a joyous, unbridled look at Indian culture that is all too scarce in western films. Half is in English, half sub-titles.

One character says, "Speaking in English makes one sound more important!"

[Note: I loved the reference to “that Booker prize girl became a millionaire overnight”, who is Ruth Jvabvala, who won that prize for Heat and Dust, then adapted her own novel for the excellent film by James Ivory, starring Julie Christie as the modern equivalent of her aunt in India, played by Gretta Scacci, my favorite film of 1983.]

Read more...

Band of Brothers

2001, 10 Hours (10*)
Dirs: Tom Hanks, Philip Alden Robinson, Mikael Salomon, David Nutter, David Leyland, David Frankel, Tony To

Best Miniseries (Emmy, GG)

Based on the book by historian Stephen Ambrose, who worked with Ken Burns on The Civil War for PBS and who also co-produced, this immense achievement follows Easy Company from training in England, to their parachute drop the night before D-Day until the end of the war, and is interspersed with interviews of surviving participants.

Reportedly this cost producers Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg over 100 million, followed their collaboration on Saving Pvt Ryan, and is now perhaps the best docudrama of all-time. The D-Day parachute drop sequence alone is probably the best war footage yet produced - it combines the best CGI special effects with historical accuracy and exciting editing to create a nightmarish vision of war never seen before. This is no battle in space with imaginary deaths of aliens, this is the real thing and exactly what happened to thousands of allied soldiers.

Worthy of its length, each part is a different film with a different director, hence the overall consistency may appear uneven to the most discerning, but that's a triviality. I also think having an unknown cast was a stroke of genius, because it makes it seem like we're watching real soldiers, not some star pretending he is a real wartime participant.

This is an all-time top 10! 6 Emmys for 19 nominations

Read more...

Murder Rooms

The Dark Beginnings of Sherlock Holmes

Dir: Paul Marcus, others, 2001, TV (8.2*)

The Sherlock legend continues in a series of films that portray author Arthur Conan Doyle’s beginnings as a doctor (Charles Andrews) who becomes interested in the new science of forensic crime investigation, at the tutelage of his college professor, Ian Richardson as Dr. Joseph Bell, the surgeon who taught Doyle both medicine and forensic investigation. Since these are really about Doyle himself, the stories are more realistic, yet we also see much of Sherlock’s character in Doyle himself: he experiments with new medicines on himself "rather than make my patients the guinea pigs", as do his colleagues, who also give free exams but use medicine prescribed for profit. These are very intelligently written and filmed, and will please all fans of the PBS series featuring Jeremy Brett as Holmes. The 90 minute episodes (on two discs) include: The Patient’s Eye, The Photographer’s Chair, The Kingdom of Bones, The White Knight Stratagem.

Read more...

Winged Migration

Dir: Jacques Perrin, Jacques Cluzaud, Michel Debats, 2001, France (10*)
This awe-inspiring documentary was shot over several years, and at over 200 worldwide locations, and is presented without much narration so that we feel like we’re part of the flying birds ourselves. The effect is to show how incredible migrating bird populations are, and how we need to preserve them for the future of the planet.

Breath-taking, one of the best nature films or documentaries ever shot. Another rarity, it's G-rated.. This should be on everyone's top 100 list.

Read more...

In the Mood for Love

Wong Kar-Wai, 2001, China (8.5*)

This is a beautifully filmed and finely crafted romance, set in early 60's Hong Kong. The story is a simple one, as two cordial neighbors discover that their often absent spouses may be seeing each other, so they become friends.

Tony Leung won a Cannes award for Best Actor, Maggie Cheung should have. Ironically, the two would later play lovers and assassins in Zhang Yimou's Hero, in quite different parts. This is a slow moving but visually sumptuous feast, as each shot is saturated with deep, rich colors reminiscent of Vittorio Storaro's work for Bertolucci and Coppola. The Criterion dvd comes with over a half hour of deleted scenes, also well worth watching. Wong later filmed a sequel, 2046, which was the number on a hotel room in this film.

Read more...