Throne of Blood

aka Spider's Web Castle
Akira Kurosawa, 1957, Japan, bw (7.9*)
In spite of the lurid title, this is another of the great Japanese director's early masterworks, it's not really a horror film. Based on Shakespeare's Macbeth, Kurosawa made it entirely Japanese, building his castle on Mt. Fuji, and mixing elements of Japanese theater into the film. Kurosawa even trucked in the black volcanic soil of Fuji into the studio lot to film the castle interiors.

The story involves the castle of the title, surrounded by a maze-like forest that adds to its protection. One day while lost in this forest, two military leaders who are lifetime friends receive a prophecy from a ghost that leads them into their own web of power seeking and mistrust, as they are each to become castle lords themselves. No medieval Japanese film can avoid war, and this has some beautifully filmed battle sequences, once again using stark black-and-white cinematography to show the power of horses and soldiers in battle, much like his earlier classic The Seven Samurai.

His new favorite actor Toshiro Mifune is featured in this one as well, though this film is not quite as artistic as Seven Samurai, it adheres to the Shakespearean story, so it's a bit more melodramatic and staged looking in comparison, though that's an honest cinematic interpretation of the play. With some haunting and huge-scale images, it's still a great example of the early Kurosawa style, and a worthy entry into the pantheon of Shakespeare transformed to film.

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Sleeping Dogs Lie

Aka Stay
Bobcat Goldthwait, 2006 (7.7*)
Sometimes we do something we immediately regret, like Melinda Page Hamilton in this film, while alone at college with her dog. Later the question comes up, how honest and revealing do we need to be with those we love? This is such an outrageous premise, with some appropriately funny dialogue that when the final credits roll and you see written and directed by Bobcat Goldthwait, then it all makes perfect sense.

A Sundance grand jury prize award nominee (for drama), this film works first as a comedy, then as a romance-drama, mostly due to the engaging and believable performance of Hamilton, and Geoff Piersen as her father. A surprisingly original comedy in the days of the normal Hollywood tedium when dealing with romance, and also poignant in the right places. It was also a San Sebastian Film Festival nominee, and Hamilton was nominated for a Gotham award for breakthrough performance.

Original title was Stay, for all the festivals, now it’s Sleeping Dogs Lie on cable and dvd, but there are other films with that title. Stay, the link at Imdb

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The Kingdom

Peter Berg, 2007 (7.6*)
This is a surprisingly good action-adventure from actor turned director Peter Berg, who also made the excellent sports docudrama Friday Night Lights. There are several gripping action sequences that will stand out from standard car chase fare. The film begins with a horrifying terrorist attack on U.S. residents at a kids softball game in Saudi Arabia. After all the carnage, an on the scene FBI investigator (stationed in Saudi Arabia) is among the dead. The FBI in Washington wants to send its own team in to investigate, but it’s against US policy, inflaming an already tense situation.

Well, of course the team gets there or we’d have no story. Jamie Foxx is the leader, Chris Cooper the bomb expert (there's two Oscar® winners), Jennifer Garner the eye candy, as a friend of the dead agent, and Jason Bateman, the comic actor from Arrested Development, here misappropriately used for a serious and violent role. Richard Jenkins is his usual pro self in a small role as their FBI superior, Jeremy Piven is miscast as the US ambassador to Saudi Arabia – I kept expecting an agent style rant about growing balls from Ari on Entourage.

There’s an exciting freeway sequence, and an urban shootout that are both riveting and involving. The crew also had access to shoot in the royal palace of Dubai (or was it U.A.E.?), so all locations look very authentic. Of course the plot is a predictable, down a star for that, but the Arab acting of Ashraf Barhom, best in the film [Supporting Actor nomination maybe!], more than makes up for the John Wayne style of the Americans.

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Valkyrie

Bryan Singer, 2008 (8.7*)
Even if you know this story from history or reading William Shirer's Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, director Singer and screenplay authors Christopher McQuarrie and Nathan Alexander have made an excellent suspense film with a tightly woven story of an attempt to assassinate Hitler just after the D-Day invasion, July of 1944. You find yourself actually wondering what the outcome will be, as if suddenly plunged into an alternate history story.

The film begins with chief plotter Col. Claus von Stauffenberg (Tom Cruise) in North Africa, receiving battle injuries that would relegate him to a bureaucratic role for the remainder of the war. Along with many other Germans who could see Hitler destroying both Germany and all of Europe, they felt they owed it to humanity to forge a truce with the Allies immediately, especially before they reached Berlin. These included men within the German army and the government, who began to covertly plot together, and it was no small conspiracy. Von Stauffenberg is brought into the group by superiors.

The cast is excellent overall, especially Bill Nighy as General Friedrich Olbricht; other recognizable talents include Kenneth Branagh and Tom Wilkinson. Cruise is good enough, though a German actor may have been a better choice, he's just a little too American, better suited for Born on the Fourth of July, still his best role to date, receiving a best actor nomination.

Overall, an excellent suspense film, well-made, very authentic looking with just enough mix of plot development and action, while remaining pretty accurate to history. Singer is better at this type of film, like his The Usual Suspects, than the action films he's recently tackled; he's in his element again here.

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Peeping Tom

Michael Powell, 1960 (6.8*)
I'm recommending this for fans of both Psycho and the Powell/Pressburger films, such as A Matter of Life and Death (aka Stairway to Heaven), The Red Shoes, and Life and Death of Colonel Blimp. However, it's far more similar to Psycho than the other films of Powell's. This is an eerie story about a psychopathic film cameraman, who carries a handheld film camera around to photograph everyday events, almost as an obsession.

We find early in the film that his father was a scientist, who specialized in fear, especially in children. It apparently left Mark, played icily by Carl Boehm, with a decidedly Peter Lorre voice (it's uncanny!), a bit scarred emotionally and also voyeristic. He also enjoys watching people's emotional reactions, and especially on film. Of course, we also know early on he's a bit homicidal as a result, so the suspense comes in seeing if he will kill the women he's close to or if he's too close to bear hurting them.

For Powell, it's a bit overt compared to his more artistic films. As inspired by Psycho, it's actually quite good, as for me that film degenerated into a near laughable conclusion, while Peeping Tom never does that at least. Well filmed like all of Powell's, just not one of his best efforts to me.

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The Fountain

Darren Aronofsky, 2006 (8.8*)
This is yet another mind-bending film from the talented vision of young director Darren Aronofsky, in just his 3rd feature film, following Pi (1998), Requiem for a Dream (2000), and preceding The Wrestler (2008). His films are intensely involved in each subject, usually involving a personal obsession, and The Fountain is no different. This ambitious story takes place in three distinctly different time periods: a 16th century knight’s quest for immortality for his queen, a modern day doctor searching for a cure for brain tumors (or cancer?) to save his wife, and a futuristic space traveler taking the Tree of Life to a dying star, in a mythical quest that is rarely seen in any genre.

In each case, the man on a mission is played by Hugh Jackman, while the lady he lives for is Rachel Weisz. As his present-time wife, Izzi writes the story called The Fountain, which relates the story of the renaissance knight searching for a legendary tree of Mayan mythology, the tree of life that gives immortality to one who drinks its sap. These two stars make the film believable with their acting, but it’s Aronofky’s unrelenting vision that makes the movie both a science fiction-fantasy and a spiritual journey, perhaps the best such combination since 2001: A Space Odyssey in 1968.

This unique and artistic film won’t be for all tastes, as no Aronofsky film to date has been, as he never compromises his personal vision for commerciality. I think this will make him one of the few current young directors that will rise above the crowd over time.

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In the Valley of Elah

Paul Haggis, 2007 (8.3*)
I was pleasantly surprised by this small film that got absolutely no PR at all. It quietly slipped past most people. Tommy Lee Jones turns in perhaps his finest performance as a dad hunting for his AWOL son who's returned from Iraq and disappeared, garnering a well-deserved Oscar nomination for best actor. Charlize Theron is also excellent, in little makeup, brown hair pulled back in a bun, as a no nonsense police detective - also one of her best performances. Susan Sarandon doesn't have a lot to do in this, as the mother of the missing, Tommy Lee's wife, but still, an excellent cast of three Oscar winners!

This is a story that slowly unfolds, and is a real mystery, the kind you don't often see anymore, as we normally know who the killer is, and when there's no mystery it becomes a crime/suspense story, such as The Silence of the Lambs. This one is not only very well made, but is based on a true story as well.

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Close-Up

aka Nema-ye Nazdik
Abbas Kiarostami, 1990, Iran (7.5*)
This is a small, sub low-budget pseudo-documentary that has much of the story re-enacted by the original participants. It involves the true story of an unemployed Iranian family man, Ali Sabzian, who impersonates Mohsen Makhmalbaf, a director he idolizes and later meets, director of "The Cyclist", the film he admires. Meeting another fan on a bus, he gains entrance to a middle-class family's home as they all like Mohsen's films. Eventually asking for money, he arouses suspicion, so the family patriarch arranges to have him arrested when he returns to their house.

We join the story there in the film's beginning, following a journalist to the arrest. Later we're with the director of this film, Abbas Kiarostami, as they interview the accused, then Iranian court officials, who decide to let them film the trial. (or was it re-enacted?) Iran, opening up its primitive legal system to journalists with cameras - what's wrong with this story?

It would be a touching story otherwise, but I can't separate myself from the locale and the Iranian regime. This is not an earth-moving case either, mere hero worship and impersonation, perhaps for financial gain, as the man has a family to feed. Just about anyone would perpetrate a minor scam if it could feed their kids at the expense of those apparently well-off, and who would blame him. You feel for the criminal in this (his real crime is just poverty), who appears remorseful, as they all do when caught. I don't buy his self-proclaimed innocence in court myself, but then I'm from the nation with the most laws, most prisoners, most lawyers, most time spent in court in the world!

I wasn't as moved as most critics: the film quality is very poor, the sound perfectly awful, the worst I've ever heard. At times it vibrates into unrecognition, in one scene with director Makhmalbaf, it cuts on and off from his remote microphone, some dialogue being lost entirely. (see El Mariachi for a great example of low-budget excellence, so it can be done, and all in single takes)

I'm convinced this movie was Iranian propaganda. They let Kiarostami film in court because this case meant nothing - were any journalists allowed in Roxanne Saberi's so-called trial? I don't buy the veracity of this film, so it loses it's power without the viewer buying the premise. It's an interesting window into a closed regime, even if a cloudy, poorly made one, so in that regard it's worth seeing, just don't expect any decent production values, but the positive is some openly displayed emotions in a raw and human docudrama.

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Ugetsu

aka Ugetsu Monogatari
Kenji Mizoguchi, 1953, Japan, bw (9.1*)
This is one of the greatest Japanese cinema classics. Moody, atmospheric, bewitching, you'll be mesmerized by the beautiful visuals and the camera of director Kenji Mizoguchi which seems to always be in motion. The story is about some village peasants in war-torn 16th century Japan. A farmer who also is a potter (Machiko Kyo) for extra income must flee an army with his wares to sell them in a nearby city, accompanied by another couple from the village. This begins an excursion into ambition, desire, and delusion with unforeseen consequences.

The story's plot, which has some unexpected twists, is hard to describe without spoilers, so suffice to say that this is perhaps the best Japanese film after Kurosawa's The Seven Samurai. Many consider Mizoguchi's Sansho the Bailiff his masterpiece, but I much prefer this one. It reminds me of the German expressionists, like Murnau and Lang, with perhaps less surrealism and a more modern camera technique, which appears to be often on a moving crane. Fans of classic cinema should love this one, which is a masterwork of modern fables. Winner of the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival.

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John Adams

Tom Hooper, 2008, 7 hrs (8.4*)

Emmy for Best Miniseries
This was my Memorial weekend film selection due to the historical tie-in, and I expected a boring seven-hour history lesson about our first VP and second president. I was pleasantly surprised by some action in the early episodes, and an absolutely incredible performance by Emmy-winner Paul Giamatti in the title role, his best performance by far. It begins with a literal bang with the Boston Massacre, when lawyer Adams defends the British, and also includes a well-done naval battle in part 2. This was produced by Tom Hanks, and won five major Emmys and a record 13 overall, so it's not a low-budget PBS series - it's a high budget HBO series!

Laura Linney, also an Emmy-winner, is good as wife Abigail, but she speaks as if giving speeches or elocution lessons, so I'm not sure about her Emmy. Veteran character actor Tom Wilkinson (Emmy-winner for supporting), always impeccable, was a standout as Benjamin Franklin at the royal palace in France; some of the locations in Europe are stunning. The series starts strong and gets a little slow in the Presidential years with some family dinners, and a cotton-chewing David Morse didn't do much as George Washington. However, to cover decades in a founding fathers life still must be done with only important episodes in that life, so that keeps the series moving. A must for history buffs, maybe too slow for the action-adventure, shoot em up crowd.

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