The Fall

Tarsem Singh, India-US, 2006 (7.8*)
This visually striking film from Singh (The Cell) really requires two ratings, as others have done, as there are two distinctly different stories here. The main story is that of an injured, semi-paralyzed stuntman (Lee Pace) recovering in an L.A. hospital in 1920. He befriends a curious little girl of six named Alexandria, wonderfully played by Romanian Catinca Untaru, who is there for a severely fractured arm. Much of her dialogue was ad-libbed, as director Singh said 'she won't buy any words written by screenwriters anyway'.

Roy has lost his career, his fiance, and as a result has become suicidal. He tells the girl a fantasy story in fragments each time he sees her, tailoring the story to suit her expectations and to keep her interested. His fantastic tale involves five mythological heroes, starting with Alexander the Great, since his audience is named after him, who is lost in a desert land without water for his army.

This tale eventually expands to include a freed slave, a masked bandit (who is Roy in disguise), a mystic born from a tree, and naturalist Charles Darwin and his pet monkey, who gives him many ideas which Darwin can apparently understand, even though spoken in 'monkey'.

Various scenes of this tale are shot in Italy, India, Chile, South Africa, Spain, and other worldly locations, making this a visual treat to devour - a veritable smorgasboard of cinematography. People are often dwarfed by immense landscapes or opulent palaces. Detracting from the fantasy is the story set in the reality of the hospital and Roy's depression.

At times feeling like a fantasy from Fellini or Antonioni, or a painting from Magritte or Dali set in motion, the visual feast offsets the hospital story and the two are interspersed enough to keep the viewer engrossed. The acting from child newcomer Untaru, with a wonderful Romanian accent when speaking in English, is simply amazing - you can't help but fall in love with her. However, the acting from Lee Pace, better known as the pie chef on tv's wonderful fantasy Pushing Daisies, leaves a lot to be desired. I kept thinking this would have been a perfect part for versatile actor Tim Roth, but it's above the dramatic talents of Pace, who's better suited to comedy.

As soon as I saw the visual landscape, I thought, 'this is simliar to The Cell', and as it turned out, it's from the same director. Where that film was dark and foreboding, the fantasy portions of this one are light and airy, like a balloon trip over wonderland. Not many films are this visual - it brings to mind Adventures of Baron Munchausen, The Cell, Antonioni's Red Desert, but it's much lighter than all of those; just don't expect a very satisfying story from the reality side.

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The Time Traveler's Wife

Robert Schwentke, 2009 (8.2*)
This science fiction romance poses an interesting dilemna, how does a woman maintain a solid relationship with a man who pops into her life at various times, beginning in childhood, while he himself is various ages?

Rachel McAdams is the woman in adult age, who has to cope with husband Eric Bana (Munich) at times being near, at times being out time traveling beyond his control. He at least seems to pop in and out of his own timeline rather than zip all around the universe or world. One advantage to this phenomenon is that she knows ahead of time that this will the love of her life.

This is both an engrossing science fiction tale and a tender romance. Based on the Audrey Niffenegger novel, I have a feeling that like most novels set to film that her book is likely deeper and more involved than this film, but it's still good entertainment, and far more interesting than the average romance, when the major problem seems to be how to work in 'business time' between all the self-centered interruptions of kids and relatives. This scenario thankfully avoids anything normal.

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Zhou Yu's Train

Zhou Sun, 2004, China (8.1*)
This multi-layered romance will confuse some western audiences, boring many, and stimulate thinking and discussion about film style in others. A lot of what viewers will get from this will be based on what they take into it as experienced filmgoers.

On the surface, this is a simple romance about a porcelain painter, wonderfully played by Gong Li, one of the greatest Chinese actresses, who takes a long train journey twice a week to visit her lover, a poet (Tony Leung Ka Fai) who wins her heart with his tenderness and simple romantic poems to her he publishes in the local newspaper. She wants him to publish them in a book, feeling that he deserves a wide audience. She is also hounded on the trips by a brash but realistic vet, Honglei Sun, who begs her to quit traveling to a man not interested in commitment and stay closer to home, like with him. So she is pulled in two directions, one from the heart, one more from the body.

What makes this story more complex is that Gong Li plays a more modern woman with short hair, who also takes the train, and who is told this story from a third-person point of view, so we begin to wonder if this actually happened or is a fabrication of the poet as an author of a romance, perhaps based on the inspiration for his poems.

If you want a linear and clear story moving from A to C to get to conclusion D, this will frustrate you. If you enjoy Chinese films that are more about feelings, visual poetry, and life constantly in motion and change, then you will likely be haunted by this film for days to follow. I could make a case for either argument. Fans of the visual non-linear films of Wong Kar-Wai should enjoy this one from director Zhou Sun. Think French New Wave, a la modern China, with the rolling landscape and train also being major characters, as life is as much about the journey as the destination.

Note: Gong Li is so amazing that, as some said, I could watch her read the phone book. Her best film is Zhang Yimou's To Live (1994), winner of the Palm D'or at Cannes.

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Vantage Point

Pete Travis, 2008 (8.2*)

Getting it's inspiration from Kurosawa's Rashomon, this action thriller involves the President, William Hurt, being shot in the beginning of the film while appearing in public to address the crowd at an international summit in Spain. We are then shown the same event in small flashbacks from the points of view of various characters each with a different perspective and role in the crime.

We see the events unfold live at first from a CNN-type media command center, led by Sigourney Weaver as the director of the live tv newsfeed. Dennis Quaid plays the lead secret service agent on the site (Matthew Fox his assistant agent), and we begin with his viewpiont of the crime from eyewitness level. Before we are done, this gripping story is unfolded from the points of view of 8 characters, including the perpetrators and ground-level crowd eyewitness Forest Whittaker. We are eventually brought up to the present again, and the action continues forward from there.

Don't expect anything cerebral here, this film is about action, violence, stunts, and politics - as a book it would be called a 'classic page-turner'. The fact that it modernizes and politicizes Rashomon makes it worth seeing for classic film buffs, and it should also please the action-adventure crowd that enjoyed such films as The Kingdom, The Parallax View, and The Manchurian Candidate.

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The Children of Huang Shi

Roger Spottiswoode, Australia, 2008 (8.8*)
Mostly in English, with some Mandarin and Japanese.
Due to high production value and exotic locations in China, director Spottiswoode has put together a modern war epic that recalls some of the biggest of the past. This is the story of British journalist George Hogg in China in 1937, who sneaks into the war zone by posing as a Red Cross worker delivering supplies. Caught by the Japanese shooting photos of their atrocities in Nanking, he is saved from beheading by a local Communist guerrila leader, an engineer educated in the U.S. named Jack Chen, played by Chow Yun-Fat. He has the film's best quote: "I'm now using my skills to blow things up; I find it somewhat more rewarding."

He is taken to a boys' orphanage for safety, where he becomes a teacher, helping a volunteer and war hardened Australian nurse, Rahda Mitchell (Finding Neverland, Miranda and Miranda) take care of the sixty boys. Michelle Yeoh is perfect as a local trader and drug dealer who also helps Hogg, providing seed for food and morphine ("You know what they say about opium - you still feel the pain but it no longer hurts"). Caught in the middle of the invasion, and with Jack's advice and help, they decide to move the boys overland to a location out of harm's way, on the edge of the Gobi desert.

This film encompasses a wide scope and scale, turning the war into a major adventure story. While I found lead actor Jonathan Rhys-Myers (The Tudors) a bit less than subtle, I was inspired enough by the story of Hogg to find this film to be among the best war biographies, ranking somewhat below Lawrence of Arabia, but above The English Patient.

This is similar to the story recounted in Inn of the Sixth Happiness (1958), which was the story of nurse Gladys Aylward, who also moved some orphans due to the war. Viewers who enjoyed those films should find this one to be just as well made but not as long. Look for a visual reference to The Last Emperor as well. Filmed in China and Australia.

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A Good Year

Ridley Scott, 2006 (8.0*)
Who could have imagined Oscar® winners Russell Crowe and sensational French actress Marion Cotillard in a romantic comedy? Apparently action director Ridley Scott did, who is best known for Alien, best picture winner Gladiator, and Blackhawk Down. Even though this is just plain fluff, it's enjoyable and heartwarming enough for most fans to get over any initial trepidation. I believe it is based on Peter Mayle's novel "A Year in Provence", though no one credits that book, which was previously filmed as a British mini-series.

The film begins with Crowe's character Max as a young boy, played by Freddie Highmore (who was much better in a more demanding role in Finding Neverland in 2004), an orphan who is living with his uncle Henry, played with a gusto for wine and women by Albert Finney, at the latter's French chateau in Provence, complete with a vineyard. Henry doesn't balk at educating young Max on what it takes to enjoy life, and produce a fine wine, as well as how to taste one.

We immediately jump to a grownup Max, who is now a callous, cutthroat bond trader in London, with no time for Henry, vacations, or a relationship. When he gets the news of Henry's death, he grudgingly goes to the chateau to see what state it's in so he can quickly sell it and come back to work. However, he unexpectedly meets and falls for local restauranteur Marion Cotillard, who unabashedly bares her bottom in public [photo rt] to show him a bruise caused when he unknowingly ran her off the road on her bicycle as he fumbled with his GPS while hunting for the chateau.

What follows is an affable (and more classic film style) story with a great supporting cast, especially Didier Bourdon as Francis, his vigneron, his irascible elderly father, his terminally cheerful wife, and his hilarious Jack Russell terrier, Tati, who takes an immediate dislike to Max, first biting his leg, then peeing on it. An unknown, illegitimate cousin also shows up, surprising everyone, the cute and sexy Abbie Cornish, who also has "quite a nice bum", as all note; of course, the skeptical Max suspects a goldigger who heard of Henry's demise. Of all the characters in the story, only Max wants to sell the chateau.

Don't expect much here but entertainment, beautiful scenery, and fine wine and French food; unfortunately you can't sample the latter two unless you bring your own. Scott and Crowe surprised me with their subtle handling of comedy, which is gentle and never over the top, except perhaps an early scene when Max is trapped in the bottom of an empty swimming pool. All in all, "very easy on the eyes", and the brain.

Perhaps I'm a sucker for Marion Cotillard; I could watch her cook or just sit still and be perfectly happy. I think she is the best actress since Meryl Streep, and can certainly sing and dance a lot better, as she proved in La Vie En Rose (winning an Oscar® for actress and 18 other awards) and Nine. She also won a French César for supporting actress in A Very Long Engagement. I just did a post on her life at World's Best Films, calling her "the actress of the century". For my money, there is no finer combination of beauty, talent, and sex appeal alive today.

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Blood of My Blood

aka Sangre de Mi Sangre
(originally titled Padre Nuestro)
Christopher Zalla, Mexico, 2007 (8.2*)
Grand Jury Prize, Sundance

This is a gripping suspense story of a illegal teenaged immigrant to the U.S., Pedro (Jorge Adrián Espíndola), who heads to New York in a semi-trailer with other illegals to find his father (Jesús Ochoa), armed with a letter sent to his mother and a locket with their picture as proof that he is his father's son. Unfortunately, he befriends a criminal in the trailer, Juan (Armando Hernández) who steals these at the end of the trip, and who begins to pose as the son himself, finding the father through the address on the letter.

The illiterate Pedro ends up lost on the streets, and enlists the help of a drug addicted prostitute, Magda (Paola Mendoza), who helps him, but of course for money, which Pedro doesn't have, as that was stolen also. The film follows the stories of all four, which are eventually interconnected through the father.

This gritty streetwise story, perhaps a bit overlong, has an excellent screenplay, realistic cinematography, a unique music score, and the acting is right on target - one feels that the actors are pulled from real life and not film auditions. This is unlike most U.S. films, since small realistic endeavors like this won't make enough money to get filmed here, yet it's similar in style to early Scorsese, notably Mean Streets and Taxi Driver.

A nominee of several awards at film festivals, and winner of the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance Film Festival.

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Quinceañera

Richard Glatzer, Wash Westmoreland, 2006 (8.0*)

Grand Jury Prize, Sundance

This small indie film (in Spanish w subtitles), shot in the Hispanic district around Echo Park, Los Angeles, revolves around the Mexican title ceremony for a young girl turning 15, when she "becomes a woman". The film begins with one such ceremony, for a member of the middle class, who can afford the expensive dresses and limousines to the dance. I suppose this is similar to the debutante balls usually given for upper class white girls to present them publicly as marriageable young ladies to a group of eligible bachelors.

However, in Magdalena's case, played by Emily Rios, she has discovered she is pregnant at 14, thus dishonoring her father and family (and before her own quinceañera), who is a rather strict part-time preacher who runs a local grocery store. She goes to live nearby with her great-uncle Thomas, wonderfully played by Chalo González, who emigrated to the U.S. decades earlier. Also there is her troubled gay cousin Carlos (Jesse Garcia, whom you've likely seen before), both of whom find acceptance without judgment by the elder family patriarch, while being disowned by their own parents.

The film was shot by directors Glatzer and Westmoreland in the same neighborhood where they live, and locals loaned them their houses and acted in the film, which lends much veracity to this simple yet heartfelt story. Those unfamiliar with the Hispanic sub-culture in L.A. will learn a lot from this film, which won several awards at film festivals, including the Audience Award and Grand Jury Prize at Sundance Film Festival. Both Rios and Garcia were nominated for acting awards, but for me the film's best is Gonzalez as uncle Thomas.

Awards page at IMDB.

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A Very Long Engagement

aka Un long dimanche de fiancialles
Jean-Pierre Jeunet, France, 2004 (9.2*)
One of the best French films in recent years stars Audrey Tautou as Mathilde, whose fiance, Gaspard Ulliel, a Cèsar award winner, is serving at the front in WW1. This film of the novel by Sebastian Japrisot is one of the best yet made about this war, along with All Quiet on the Western Front and Kubrick's Paths of Glory; some even prefer it over Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan as a modern war film. I would have to admit that this film is more surprising, more innovative, and interesting, to me at least.

Jeunet deftly blends a romance, a mystery, and a war story by constantly shifting from one character to another as Mathilde searches for her fiance. At times the screen is split, and we see Mathilde's fantasies, along with events happening at other locales, to other characters.

This is such a major film that Oscar® winners Jodie Foster and Marion Cotillard each play supporting characters, with Foster speaking French. Cotillard is very effective as a vindictive lover out for revenge on all who wronged her man. One unforgettable scene has her using mechanical ingenuity as a weapon.

Well-deserved Oscar® nominations for art direction and cinematography (it won the American Society of Cinematographers award) makes me wonder why it received no nomination for foreign language film; the BAFTA awards did not make this same mistake. This has the feel of all great war epics, without being overlong at just 133 minutes. One would be hard pressed to find a more powerful WW1 film.

It won 16 awards overall, five Cèsars in France, losing best picture there to Games of Love and Chance. Awards page at IMDB

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The Secret in Their Eyes

(El secreto de sus ojos)
Juan José Campanella, Argentina, 2009 (9.5*)
Best Foreign Film (AA)
A retired couselor, played by Ricardo Darín, who worked for the court system in Argentina, is writing a novel about a homicide case that haunted his career. He goes to visit a former female colleague, Soledad Villamil, to discuss the case and get some input for shaping the story for his novel - he wants credibility, he's not just writing a memoir. The original homicide case, as well as the couple's work history, is then shown in flashbacks, from the time the politically connected Irene is newly hired into the office of a court judge where Benjamin is a dedicated and determined mid-level bureaucrat.

What follows is a complex and sophisticated crime story, which takes the viewers on a serpentine path that wanders from past to present. At times this is a mentally engrossing puzzle, but at others can be a brutal, conscience churning exercise in trying to understand the will and methods of governments, especially one controlled by police state fascists.

Mixed with the homicide investigation is an undercurrent of romantic intrigue, as the older bachelor, mired in a anonymous obscurity, has an obvious attraction for the younger, attractive, but engaged Irene. This is understated but to some may seem an unnecessary sub-plot that detracts from the crime story; it's for this reason that I didn't rate this a 10. Still, the screenplay, from a novel by Eduardo Sacheri, is terrific, as are the cinematography, editing, and Campanella's superb directing. This is one of the best crime films of the first decade of the new millenium, some are saying 'of all time'.

Including the Oscar® for Foreign Language Film, Secret won 34 international awards, and had another 19 nominations (awards page at IMDB). It's currently ranked #170 on the IMDB top 250, as rated by regular reviewers. It won 13 Argentinian academy awards with another 4 nominations.

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