Frost/Nixon

Ron Howard, 2008 (7.6*)
Reliable director Ron Howard tackles the anti-climax to this pivotal point in American history, as Richard Nixon was the first U.S. president to resign, forced to by impending impeachment by Congress for his part in the authorization and cover-up of crimes that flowed like a river after the Watergate break-in, not just that incident but a whole litany of other civil rights abuses as well. After his pardon by President-apointee Gerald Ford, the entire nation felt robbed of a criminal trial or an admission of guilt and an apology from Nixon.

Australian entertainer and talk-show host David Frost seized an opportunity to outbid other networks with Nixon’s agent for the rigtht to inverview him "live, on tape". Nixon was a Hollywood-style individual with a penchant for the big-time for the big fee, so a lot of the movie is about the financial wranglings made in order to set up the interviews, then we see a re-enactment of the actual interviews, conducted in a mundane, middle-class Republican businessman’s house.

Perhaps it’s the locale, or the staleness of this as a news event as many of us saw this when it happened in reality, but this film lacks the punch and intensity of other Howard docudramas like Apollo 13, Cinderella Man, and A Beautiful Mind. Frank Langella is brilliant as Nixon, deserved the Oscar for capturing his demeanor and style without actually imitating him. Michael Sheen (The Queen) is barely adequate as Frost, giving the character no personality whatsoever, which may have been accurate but hardly dramatic. Down a star for the overall lack of intensity as Nixon is treated more like a kindly, aging grandad, though a vital part of history that should be witnessed as a serving President circumvented the U.S. Constitution at every opportunity. Screenplay author Peter Jordan (an Oscar®-winner for The Queen), but for Howard, a competent but not outstanding volume in his overall filmography.

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The Visitor

Tom McCarthy, 2008 (9.1*)
This is an excellent little indie film, with some powerful performances by the entire cast. Richard Jenkins, an overlooked character actor (he played the dead father’s ghost on Six Feet Under), received a well-deserved Oscar® nomination for best actor for his best career role. Director Tom McCarthy (Central Station) has written an intelligent and emotionally gripping screenplay about the plight of immigrants here, especially Muslims, affected severely by the backlash created by the 9/11 disaster. The story also shows how people can still mange to communicate and understand each other in spite of different backgrounds, in this case with music as the common link.

Jenkins plays a Connecticut professor, Walter, in New York to give a paper, and when he arrives at his seldom-used apartment, a young couple is living there: a man, Tarek (Haaz Sleiman in his first role), a djembe (hand-made west African goatskin drum) drummer from Syria, and his girlfriend, a street vending jewelry-maker from Senegal. Walter befriends the couple, begins drumming with Tarek’s tutelage, and later tries to help Tarek with his immigration status. The actress Hiam Abbass (Munich) is especially touching as Tarek’s mother, who shows up from Michigan to help her son, and grudgingly becomes friends with Walter. This is well-done all around, not sentimental or mundane in the least, and uses drumming as a metaphor for the universality of the heartbeat and a method of non-verbal communication between different cultures.

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Control Room

Jehane Nouhaim, 2004 (8.9*)
This is an excellent documentary, obviously shot by director Jehane Houhaim with a modest budget and crew, but one given a wide degree of access to all concerned. The film attempts to show the coverage of the Iraqi war from both sides of the issue, and expose the bias inherent in all newsmedia. We see more of the Al Jazeera coverage, who broadcasts to 40 million in the Arab world, but we also see the US Army's head media (ie, propaganda) liaison officer and hear the standard US pitch on events (liberate the people, make em safe, etc). We also go into the front lines of the war for at least one harrowing incident.

The filmmakers don't make a judgment but show some indicents that didn't get full coverage here in the US, such as the suspicious targeting of three different journalists outposts with missile attacks, killing three from Middle Eastern news sources. So much for freedom of the press, as the US said they shouldn't have been in war zone to begin with, preferring to brief the media themselves daily with the US version of events.

This is an important work for both sides to see, no matter what your own political stance, this is simply good documentary filmmaking and concerning an important era in history. As a BBC journalist states, "all media coverage is biased, they slant the news the way their audience wants to hear it. You listen to Fox for the right-wing, U.S. patriotic view, you watch Al Jazeera to get the opposite view for the Arab world."

As the director of 7-yr old Al Jazeera states, "this war will be a footnote in a few years, no one will still be talking about it, such is the attention span of modern man." Let's hope that films and other media keep it as alive in public consciousness as they have WW2.
[In English, with some subtitles]

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Drugstore Cowboy

Gus Van Sant, 1989 (9.8*)
[Our 400th review - I was saving a great one]

This is just about the perfect anti-drug film. Matt Dillon, really in his element here as a disaffected youth without any goal in life other than getting high, leads a small group of junkie friends, including girlfriend Kelly Lynch in her best role, in robbing pharmacies in order to get the drugs. They use a number of ruses to pull some robberies, and they’ll take anything within reach, then later swap the stuff they don’t want with other drug users in their network.

This is a sordid and grisly story, but is somehow made hypnotic (the perfect cast helped a lot) by director Gus Van Sant (My Own Private Idaho, Good Will Hunting), in his masterpiece, adapted from an unpublished manuscript that he bought from a convict in prison which recounts his life on the outside as a habitual drug user. This also has some funny dialogue revolving around the everyday delusions and phobias of the characters, such as Dillon’s paranoia about a hat on the bed, his ultimate harbinger of bad tidings. This has the look of a small indie film, yet sends a more powerful jolt than big budget projects. Along with Darren Aronofsky's Requiem for a Dream (2000), the best films about drug abuse ever made.

Quote: Didn’t I always tell ya, never put a hat on the bed?

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Some Like It Hot

Billy Wilder, 1959, bw (8.4*)
A ludicrious premise like this in the hands of anyone short of a master director like Wilder and this classic comedy could have been another forgettable farce, or even a tv show like Bosom Buddies, which obviously borrowed from this. Two musicians, played by Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis, witness a gangland slaying and flee to avoid being the next victims. Naturally, the best place to hide out? An all-female big band, with none other than Marilyn Monroe around to tempt the guys to shed their female impersonations and reveal their macho studliness. They occasionally forget and speak in deep male voices.

In a funny twist, to top off the insanity, the wealthy Joe E. Brown falls for Jack Lemmon as a woman, so we get some great gender-bending jokes about the aggressive male tactics in romance, as well as the film’s hilarious closing line. This is another Wilder gem, and they’re still trying to make a similar film today, as Tootsie and Big Mama and Mrs. Doubtfire all proved. How ironic that gay heartthrob Tony Curtis was both in drag and played the debonair playboy courting Marilyn on the side. This pokes great fun at the superficiality and materialistically driven American romantic ritual.

Wilder is one of the great directors, here's a small list of his best films:
The Front Page, Double Indemnity, Sunset Boulevard, Lost Weekend, The Spirit of St. Louis, One Two Three, Ace in the Hole, Sabrina, The Apartment, Witness For the Prosecution, The Fortune Cookie.

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Viridiana

Luis Bunuel, 1961, Spain, bw (7.9*)
For those who would like a more normal, non-surrealist intro to the surrealist friend of Dali, Spanish director Luis Bunuel (Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie), this is a good early film with a nearly straightforward story. A nun named Virigiana, played by Silvia Pinal, gets word that her uncle, played by Bunuel favorite Fernando Rey, is ill and aging, which isn't entirely true. She doesn’t really want to leave the convent just before her consecration but the Mother Superior orders her to go.

There at her uncle’s estate, she realizes the wealth he has and that she can do some good with it after all. She visits the town and invites several of the local homeless beggars to come live at the estate as long as they respect everyone and don’t fight and follow simple rules. The ensuing events test her faith as well as faith in mankind. Rather than an apparently wandering film like Discreet Charm, this story has a cohesive progression to an end, which should delight those who haven’t found Bunuel understandable to this point. He admits in interviews that he rarely has a story in mind, and just largely improvises when the cameras roll. In this film, he apparently had more of a script and perhaps it shows as this is his most critically acclaimed film.

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The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

David Fincher, 2008 (7.8*)
I'm usually a fan of David Fincher's films, each one has an element of fantasy, yet is made to seem real. Fight Club had Ed Norton battling his insanity, with friends; The Game found Michael Douglas running from unseen enemies as a birthday present from brother Sean Penn. Only Zodiac attempted to be factual, and that was based on the theory of a journalist. Here Fincher films an F. Scott Fitzgerald fantasy story, thanks to an excellent screenplay by Eric Roth, an Oscar®-winner for the Forrest Gump screenplay. This script is not as sharp or crackling with lines, but does treat its subject with a certain reverent gentility.

Benjamin Button is born on the day World War I ended, and his mother died in childbirth. His dad, taking a look at the infant, who was born old, leaves him on the steps of a nearby house for the elderly, and mama for Benjamin becomes an African-American who works in the house, played by Oscar®-nominee Taraji P. Henson. While growing but remaining old he meets a little girl that becomes his lifetime friend, later played by Cate Blanchett. Even as a short, old-looking child, the role is played by Brad Pitt in an amazing Oscar®-winning makeup job.

We eventually discover along with Benjamin that he's not growing older but younger and he adapts to feeling better daily by taking his first job on a tugboat. Fincher makes both the river journeys of the tugboat and later some shots of Lake Ponchetrain look like the old hand-tinted postcards, so the early parts of the film are steeped in Americana. The later parts chronologically, and how the film actually begins for the viewer, use a plot device of having Julia Ormand read Benjamin's diary to an invalid in a hospital who knew him, so we get Benjamin's story in retrospect and from his own words.

This is a gentle, if lengthy fable, running about 2 hrs, 48 minutes. The length kills the pace a little, but fans of film fables such as Field of Dreams and Big Fish should enjoy this, as well as fans of David Fincher. The cast is excellent and also includes Tilda Swinton. The film received 13 Oscar® nominations, the most for 2008, but lost to Slumdog Millionaire in nearly every major category, a film with admittedly more energy and better pace. Three Oscars® for art direction, visual effects, and makeup.

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Sunrise

F.W. Murnau, 1927, silent/bw (9.0*)
This film is #12 on the critics consensus top 1000.

Normally I'm not a fan of silent movies. In complete silence, there seems to be something lacking, throw in a honky tonk piano and I'd just as soon turn the sound down, or even strangle myself (like Dr. Strangelove). That leaves the dvd's that have a music soundtrack added, which makes them a little more palatable. F.W. Murnau's masterpiece Sunrise is such a beautiful movie visually I'm making an exception. In fact, the cinematography of Kari Struss and Charles Rosher won a well-deserved Oscar®. This movie looks like an 18th century painting in motion, and often uses special effect done so well you can't tell they're effects.

The story is almost a distraction, a typical lover's triangle. George O'Brian is a philandering husband to Oscar®-winner Janet Gaynor (lots of arching eyebrows and sorrowful looks in silent films), and his cosmopolitan girlfriend from the city (Margaret Livingston), who is vacationing in the married couples' country resort village. Together they plan the wife's murder so the lovers can be together.

F.W. Murnau's first film in Hollywood brings his European background and influence into full focus. There are some eerie expressionist scenes outdoors, and some near surreal cityscapes as well, as Murnau proves equal to the legendary master Fritz Lang. The story takes a back seat to the cinematic art of Sunrise, and this is a treat for all students of film history. Three Oscars®, the most given the first year, including one only given this one time (for 1927) for Unique and Artistic Film.

Recipient of one of our first World Film Awards, as we started with 15 silent films.

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The Cider House Rules

Lasse Hallstrom, 1999 (8.5*)
This is my favorite John Irving novel transformation to films, and earned Irving an Oscar® for adapted screenplay. The title refers to a set of rules in a workhouse at an orchard where Tobey McGuire (in an effective dramatic part) goes to work after growing up in a nearby orphanage. Delroy Lindo has a terrific supporting part as one of his co-workers with a past.

Michael Caine, in one of his best roles, won a supporting acting Oscar® as the kind doctor who runs the orphanage. Tobey is in love with a glamorous young Charlize Theron, who brings back memories of a young Grace Kelly, sparkling, refreshing beauty. Swedish Director Lasse Hallstrom usually brings a warm-hearted touch to stories that also have some depth and psychological complexity, and this ranks with his best, which I consider the comedy My Life As a Dog. Two Oscars®

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Election

Alexander Payne, 1999 (9.0*)
This was the surprise comedic hit for me in 1999. Reese Witherspoon hit her stride as an agressive high schooler who will do just about anything to get elected class president. She's ambitious and knows how to use her femininity to get what she wants. Matthew Broderick is well-cast as a jealous young teacher who puts up a dim-witted opponent but a popular athlete (Chris Klein) against her. Rather than just another sophmoric high school film however, director Alexander Payne (Sideways) gives this film enough bite to make a dark statement about American politics at the same time that he also makes incisive points about the state of relationships and sexuality. One of the best and most overlooked films of that year.

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