I can appreciate a well-done screwball comedy as much as the next guy, but generally speaking Date Night is not the type of movie I'd go out of my way to see. But after last night's traumatic film-watching experience (read my review of Dear Zachary if you don't know what I'm talking about), a goofy Tina Fey/Steve Carell romcom seemed like exactly what I needed.
Date Night strolls down the well-trodden path worn by such classics as North By Northwest and Adventures in Babysitting: a couple "normal" folks (here a New Jersey couple played by Fey and Carell) stumble into an overplotted mess of intrigue and flying bullets. The suspense (such as there is) and the comedy comes from their utter bewilderment at finding themselves in such a direct-to-video predicament. They're in over their heads, and blah blah blah blah blah...
The overplotted mess itself doesn't really matter. What matters is whether or not our leads are A) funny, B) likeable, and C) at least quasi-relatable. While certainly no classic, Date Night mostly succeeds on all three counts.
Fey and Carell are Claire and Phil Foster, a bored -- and boring -- married couple living in the burbs outside of New York. They're the type of people who forgo sex if it means having to remove one's mouth-guard. In a vain attempt to keep the coals burning in their relationship, they schedule weekly date nights at a local chain restaurant...but even there they have a hard time talking about anything other than the birthday presents they have to get for their kids' friends. In other words, they're hopeless.
What could be (and should be, based on the rote script and uninspired direction) an insufferably smug and patronizing look at the deadened zombies supposedly shambling through the suburbs is rescued by Fey and Carell, who manage to keep their performances a hair's breadth above complete caricature. Sure, we get glimpses of Liz Lemon and Michael Scott here and there, but these are smart performers, and they wisely opt to err on the side of keeping Phil and Claire grounded (at least until the shit hits the fan). When they crack each other up imagining the conversations being had by their fellow restaurant goers, we see the hint of the shared sense of humor that brought these two together in the first place. We get an impression of two people who are bored by their circumstances, but still basically love each other and -- perhaps more importantly -- like each others' company.
After learning of the impending divorce of two of their friends, however, the freak out a little bit and decide to put a little more effort into their next date night. Spontaneously driving into Manhattan to try to get into a chic seafood restaurant that demands customers reserve their tables a month in advance, they end up impersonating another couple -- the Tripplehorns -- on the reservation list. The sudden thrill of mostly benign "oooh, we might get caught" danger provides a bit of spark, and we see a glimpse of the probably mischievous college students they once were before life (and kids) wore them down.
Then a pair of hitmen show up, thinking they are the Tripplehorns, and hijinks predictably ensue.
Like I said, what happens next only matters inasmuch as it gives Fey and Carell more opportunities to comedically bounce off of each other. There's something about a stolen flash drive, a corrupt DA (played by an always great William Fichtner), a brooding mobster (played by a phoning-it-in Ray Liotta), a pair of corrupt cops (Jimmi Simpson and Common), two decent cops (Taraji P. Henson and some other guy), a lowlife couple (James Franco and Mila Kunis) whose relationship amusingly mirrors that of Claire and Phil, one of the most stupid/funny car chases I've seen in awhile, and -- funniest of all -- a perpetually shirtless Marky Mark (Mark Wahlburg, to those younger than me) as a special ops guy whose pecs make Claire get all tingly and Phil "want to kill myself". There's a ridiculous climax that involves a hilarious Fey/Carell pole-dance in one of those seedy strip clubs that I suspect only exist in the heads of Hollywood production designers.
But all that extra business is just that: business. It's window dressing. In the end it all comes down to Fey and Carell. And -- while neither of them reach the heights they've proven themselves capable of on The Office and 30 Rock -- they deliver.
Date Night is a two-star movie elevated by at least half-a-star -- maybe more -- by its lead performances. I wouldn't say to rush out and see this right away. But if you happen to be stuck in a soul-deadening suburban marriage and you're looking for something to kill a couple hours, you could do way worse.
You may or may not have noticed, but I haven't posted any reviews of anything for over three months.
This isn't because I've forgotten, or because I decided to give it all up and go farm Alpacas up in Colorado or something. The reason is simple: I just really haven't seen a movie worth writing about. I started an Avatar review, then realized I had nothing to say and gave up. I considered an Edge of Darkness and Book of Eli review, then decided not to bother. I even thought of writing something short and sweet about The Crazies, and then was immediately distracted by something shiny and forgot all about it.
But here it is, 4:40 in the morning. My stomach hurts. My eyes are red and swollen. My throat is filled with a lump the size of a golf ball. I've been lying here in the darkness of my bedroom for the last hour and a half trying to make myself think of something -- anything -- other than the film I just saw. And I can't do it. This thing has burrowed into my gray matter like a rat, and it's just sitting there chewing away at the wiring.
Some movies get under your skin. Others bite. This one puts a fishhook into your testicles and gives a good hard yank.
This movie will crush you. Oh my God, will it crush you...
Back in 2001 Dr. Andrew Bagby was 28 years old. He had just abandoned a miserable surgical internship in Syracuse in favor of a general practice internship in Pennsylvania. Life was finally looking up for the guy. He had broken up with his fiancé a few years previous -- had gotten his heart thoroughly broken, in fact -- and wasn't feeling too good about himself, so while attending medical school in Newfoundland he had started an ill-advised relationship with Dr. Shirley Turner, a two-time divorcee and absentee mother thirteen years his senior.
But now that he was in Pennsylvania, he was ready to move on with his life. He and his fiancé had managed to maintain a friendship, and he was slipping into his new internship like a glove. The only thing left to do was somehow break it off with Turner, who everyone around him thought was crazy but who he still had some affection for. He tried to let her down easy -- Andrew Bagby was a good guy, and the last thing he wanted to do was hurt her. So he broke it off as gently as he could and put her on a plane back to Iowa, where she was living at the time. When she landed she immediately turned around and drove 1,600 miles back to Pennsylvania and demanded he talk to her. Being the good guy that he was, he agreed. They met in a nearby park. God knows what was said between them. She shot him five times and then drove back to Iowa. Then, coldly and calculatedly, she left a message on his answering machine telling him that she just wanted to say hi and that she loved him.
It just so happens that Bagby's best friend from the age of seven was an aspiring filmmaker named Kurt Kuenne. Not knowing exactly what to do with his grief, Kuenne picked up a camera and started interviewing everyone he could -- Bagby's parents, his extended family in both Missouri and the UK, his friends, his acquaintances, his colleagues. He wanted to learn everything he could about the friend he had lost. In a way the project was a form of denial. As he says in the film, he was on a mission to bring Andrew Bagby back to life.
Meanwhile, Turner managed to flee back to Newfoundland before the American justice system could get its hands on her, and she very quickly revealed that she was pregnant with Bagby's baby. David and Kate Bagby -- Andrew Bagby's grieving parents (he was their only child) -- immediately decided to sue for custody, sold everything they owned and moved to Canada. The baby was born, and Turner named him Zachary. Kuenne redirected the focus of his film as a sort of open letter to Zachary in hopes that it would help him get to know the father that was stolen from him.
The Canadian justice system decided that it was okay to let a suspected murderer out on bail and allow her to raise her child while it drug its feet on extradition. David and Kate gritted their teeth and negotiated with Turner for rights to visit their grandson while the custody battle moved with excruciating slowness through the courts. Turner used it as a means to further torment the parents of the man who committed the mortal sin of breaking up with her, extorting them for diapers and baby food money and essentially strong-arming them into going on playdates with her and her son so they could spend time with him. If you ever wanted to get a hint what it might be like to talk daily on the phone about birthday parties and babysitters with the woman who murdered your only son, this movie gives you a pretty good idea.
Kuenne trudged along with his personal project, obsessively interviewing seemingly anyone and everyone who knew Andrew. He combed through countless hours of home videos, countless piles of photographs. What emerges is a portrait of a man who any one of us would have been proud to call a friend. In death, as we know, just about everyone becomes a saint in the eyes of those who remember him. Certainly there must be a degree of that happening here. But at the very least, it becomes clear that Andrew Bagby was nothing short of an honest-to-God, bonafide Good Dude. We all have a friend like him, the guy (or girl) we grew up with who just thinking about makes us smile, even ten or twenty years later. The person you can go a year without speaking to and then pick up the phone and talk to like it was yesterday. No less than six men say they were planning to have Andrew be the best man at their wedding. That tells you something.
As we get to know Andrew, we also get to know David and Kate. If Andrew Bagby comes off as a saint, they are nothing short of heroic. The Job-like level of their suffering is nearly impossible to comprehend. They continue to play nice with their son's murderer, stoically putting their dwindling trust in the Canadian justice system and always dreaming of the day that Turner will finally be locked up for good and Zachary will be theirs. Kuenne walks us through the the tortured Canadian courts, where one bad decision leads to an absurdist, Kafka-esque comedy of errors that is about as funny as a nail gun shot to the forehead. When Turner is released on bail a second time because a sympathetic judge doesn't believe that her crime (First Degree Murder, we silly Yanks like to call it) indicates any sort of threat to society, you'll want to put your fist through a wall. When little Zachary is once again returned to Turner's poisonous bosom, you'll want to tear your hair out and scream.
And when the inevitable happens, you will.
The letter-to-Zachary construct is a manipulative filmmaker's trick. I won't argue with that. But it works. Kuenne uses it to bypass the tropes of your average true-crime documentary and to re-center the film's focus where it belongs: on the life that was lost and on the human wreckage that that loss has left in its wake. You come to love Andrew -- or at the very least understand why he was so loved by everyone who knew him -- and you come to look upon David Bagby and Kate with nearly Divine awe.
Kuenne manages to create a convincing polemic in favor of victim's rights, as well as a vision of human evil that will curdle like rotten milk in your stomach. But mostly, he has penned a crushingly heartfelt love letter to a dead friend, and to the shattered family his friend has left behind.
Watch this movie. Watch it and then pick up the phone and call your buddy from high school. When you're done catching up, call your parents and tell them you love them.
Watch this movie. But don't watch it before you go to bed, or you'll find yourself awake -- hoarse, sniffly, and red-eyed -- at five in the morning just like me.
Since taste is so subjective -- and because I'm fully aware of the fact that there are plenty of movies out there from the last decade that I haven't seen -- I'm loathe to call this a "Best Of" list. Rather, let's just say that these are my personal favorites, the ones that compelled me to go back for a repeat viewing.
So here goes.
1. Let the Right One In and The Signal (both 2008)
Directed by Tomas Alfredson (Right One) and David Bruckner, Dan Bush, and Jacob Gentry (Signal)
2008 reignited my passion for horror movies after a slow, nearly decade-long falling out with the genre, and it was these two films -- wildly different but each brilliant in its own way -- that did it.
I saw The Signal first, and I walked away convinced I wouldn't see a better horror film for at least another decade. Conceived by a collective of independent Atlanta filmmakers working with prosumer equipment, the movie is told in three elegantly interlocking parts, each written and directed by a different person but all forming a cohesive -- if utterly demented -- whole. The story is deceptively simple: a strange electronic signal delivered through TVS, radios and cell phones turns all of the denizens of a fictional American city into homicidal maniacs. I don't want to say anything more about it for fear of spoiling the experience. Just trust me when I say this is the most original and thought-provoking American horror film in years. And it was all done for a budget of about $200,000.
So when I saw Let the Right One In some months later, I was stunned to discover that it was even better. Austere, chilly and deliberate where Signal is heated and frenetic, Right One manages to do what Twilight, True Blood, Thirst, Underworld, and all the other "vampire chic" movies and TV shows in recent years have so far failed to do ... make vampires scary again. The swimming pool scene toward the end is worth the rental price alone.
2. The Business of Fancydancing (2002) and Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner (2001)
Directed by Sherman Alexie (Fancydancing) and Zacharias Kunuk (Atanarjuat)
NOT SAFE FOR WORK!!!
I don't really like the term "indigenous film" because it smacks to me of white liberal condescension, but I think it's worth noting that two of the best independent films from the early part of the decade came from Native American (or Canadian) filmmakers using the then new medium of digital video.
Fancydancing was written and directed by novelist/poet/screenwriter Sherman Alexie, and it follows Seymour Polotkin (Evan Adams), a gay Native American poet living in Seattle, as he returns home to the reservation he grew up on to attend a childhood friend's funeral. The film comes off as one part documentary, one part traditional narrative, and one part visual poem. It will creep under your skin without you even knowing it, and the quiet but crushing ending can reduce even the most macho dude to tears (trust me, I've seen it happen).
Atanarjuat is a very different film. Written and acted entirely in Inuktitut, it is the cinematic realization of a centuries old Inuit myth about the title character. Director Zacharias Kunuk provides almost no narrative context for non-Inuit audiences, choosing instead to toss us head-first into the story, and he uses the DV format to lend the film a sense of both immediacy and reality. The result is a movie that feels in some ways like a Maysles brothers documentary. Yet Kunuk still manages to create a stunning visual landscape, wringing images out of his video camera that a studio cinematographer would envy. It's a long movie, and slow going, but well worth it.
3. Michael Clayton (2007)
Written and directed by Tony Gilroy
The directorial debut from screenwriter Tony Gilroy (Dolores Claiborne, The Devil's Advocate, the Bourne trilogy, among others), Michael Clayton was sort of lost in the shuffle during a powerhouse year that offered up such lauded (and I would argue overrated) films as No Country For Old Men and There Will Be Blood. Critics had nice things to say about it, but audiences didn't really notice and all the available Oscar buzz got sucked up by the Country/Blood showdown.
Granted, a legal thriller about a cynical lawyer (George Clooney) confronting the depths of corporate greed is familiar terrain oft-traversed by the likes of John Grisham and Scott Turrow. But that's selling this movie short. Michael Clayton is oh-so-much better than its legal-thriller genre origins would suggest. Click on that clip I posted above, close your eyes and listen to Tom Wilkinson's opening monologue, and try to tell me that this isn't the work of an A-list screenwriter operating at the absolute top of his game. Michael Clayton is the type of straightforward movie that Hollywood does best, when it can get its shit together.
4. Shaun of the Dead (2004)
Directed by Edgar Wright
This is the movie that singlehandedly destroyed my beloved zombie subgenre and forever dashed my aspirations of making a truly scary, super-serious zombie movie like the ones I grew up on. After receiving the Edgar Wright/Simon Pegg treatment, I just don't think zombies can ever be taken seriously again.
But that's okay, because this movie is so friggin' awesome I can't be mad at it. Smart, silly, and -- yes -- even scary at times, Shaun of the Dead injected a much-needed shot of comedic tough love into an admittedly (begrudgingly, on my part) tired formula. The film transcended parody and proudly entered the pantheon of great horror comedies, unceremoniously batting Return of the Living Dead aside like a rag doll and knocking An American Werewolf in London off its long-occupied throne. And we all must now bow before it.
5. Memento (2000)
Written and directed by Christopher Nolan
The backwards-unfolding structure of this movie could have been a hopelessly irritating gimmick, but writer/director Christopher Nolan used it to craft a brilliant exploration of the very nature of memory and identity. And he managed to make a pretty awesome neo-noir thriller as well. Memento is now considered an undisputed classic, and it's as stunning to me these days as it was when I first saw it almost ten years ago in the theater. If you haven't seen it in awhile, go back and give it another watch. I promise you'll see things you missed the first time around.
Plus, it has Joey Pants. You can never have enough Joey Pants in your life.
6. Little Children (2006) and House of Sand and Fog (2003)
Directed by Todd Field (Children) and Vadim Perelman (House)
I grouped these two films together because of the presence of the generally amazing Jennifer Connelly, but it says something when you stop and realize that hers isn't the strongest performance in either film.
Little Children, directed by Todd Field (In The Bedroom) and adapted from a novel by Tom Perrotta (Election), was criminally unappreciated upon its release. A seemingly familiar tale of suburban infidelity, it's both funny and tragic, deleriously sexy, and is wonderfully acted from start to finish. It reintroduced us all to Jackie Earle Haley, whose turn as pedophile Ronnie James McGorvey is so alternately creepy and heartbreaking that it will leave you breathless, near tears and desperately wanting a shower. And Kate Winslet's pretty good, too.
House of Sand and Fog is probably the better film (although I'm partial to Children). Connelly and Ben Kingsley soar as two broken people battling each other and their personal demons in a tug-of-war over a repossessed house. There's nothing funny about this one, and the conclusion left me shaking in my seat. This is a movie that cuts to the bone.
7. Zodiac (2007)
Directed by David Fincher
David Fincher fans expecting another violent bruiser like Se7en or Fight Club were largely disappointed by the slow-paced, talky, and necessarily open-ended Zodiac. What they failed to realize was that this is a mature film for grownups, and it's less a serial killer movie than an old-fashioned, 1970s-style newspaper movie. Granted, I was predisposed to like it because of my already established fascination with the Zodiac Killer (which came from reading the book by Robert Graysmith, who's portrayed in the movie by Jake Gyllenhaal), but I still fly in the face of movie-geek wisdom by maintaining that it's Fincher's best. And, besides, it comes with my favorite movie soundtrack since Natural Born Killers.
8. Brokeback Mountain (2005)
Directed by Ang Lee
I almost didn't post this trailer, since it -- along with the theme song and the "I wish I knew how to quit you" line -- have been reduced to an unfortunate parodic shorthand in the years since. But watching it just now reminded me how much I love this movie, which for my money is one of the most starkly effective works of cinema I've seen. Masterfully directed by Ang Lee (robbed at the Oscars by that hack Paul Haggis) and adapted from an Annie Proulx short story by veteran writer Larry McMurtry (along with writing partner Diana Ossana and frequent Lee collaborator James Schamus), this is the movie that reminded all of us that Heath Ledger could act. He may now be forever remembered as the Joker, but this is the performance that stole my heart (and I'll thank you to stop your snickering).
9. Grizzly Man (2005) and The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (2009)
Both directed by Werner Herzog
Werner Herzog has proven to be one of the most fascinating documenters of human folly and psychosis that cinema has to offer (this probably comes from all that time he spent hanging out with Klaus Kinski back in the 70s). In his documentary Grizzly Man, he focuses on a real-life crazy person: Timothy Treadwell, a failed actor who got it into his head to go to Alaska and hang out with a bunch of hungry grizzly bears all summer without any means to defend himself. He did this for years, proclaiming over and over again that he would die for his beloved bears. And then one of his beloved bears decided to eat him, along with (sadly) his girlfriend, who Treadwell drug along with him on his delusional adventure almost against her will. Herzog mixes Treadwell's footage with interviews and his own acerbic commentary, and he presents a vision of this story that is both funny and tragic, occasionally sympathetic and at times downright cruel. In true Herzogian fashion, we can't help but think the celebrated German filmmaker is reveling a bit in the tawdry details of the story. And who can blame him?
If you doubt that, then look no further than his latest...er...opus, The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans. Ostensibly a remake of Abel Ferrera's...um...classic indie from the early 90s, Bad Lieutenant is nothing BUT tawdry details. I'm not sure I can really defend this choice as one of the best films of the decade, but I will say that I had more fun with it than almost anything else I've seen in the last ten years and it's so gloriously, stupendously demented that I couldn't not mention it here. Nicolas Cage is far from my favorite actor, but what he does in this movie is simply mind-blowing. It really has to be seen to be believed.
10. A History of Violence (2005)
Directed by David Cronenberg
I really tried not to overfill this list with dude-oriented movies about sex and violence, but what can I say? I like what I like. That said, as movies about sex and violence go, David Cronenberg's adaptation of the graphic novel by John Wagner and Vince Locke is curiously flat in the depiction of both. That's because Cronenberg has spent a career working his way through weirdo, existential horror movies on an endless quest to explore the frayed edges reality and examine the ways humans find to create their own reality. Violence isn't really about violence at all, but rather about how a man can -- through sheer force of will -- become someone else entirely. Cronenberg and Violence star Viggo Mortensen explored similar thematic territory with their somewhat less effective followup, Eastern Promises. That was a good enough movie, but I think Cronenberg really said all he needed to say on the subject with this one.
11. Infernal Affairs (2002) and The Departed (2006)
Directed by Andrew Lau and Alan Mak (Affairs) and Martin Scorsese (Departed)
I can't get away from this list without mentioning Andrew Lau and Alan Mak's Hong Kong crime thriller Infernal Affairs and its American, Scorsese-helmed remake The Departed.
It's unfashionable to say one prefers The Departed to Infernal Affairs, and it's true that Departed is sprawling and messy next to the cold elegance of Lau and Mak's original. It's also true that Departed is seriously marred by a "what-the-fuck?" performance by an eternally phoning-it-in Jack Nicholson. But, after living in Boston for a couple years and having subsequently become obsessed with the real-life tale of Boston gangster Whitey Bulger, around which Scorsese and screenwriter William Monahan refashioned their story, I have to say I prefer The Departed. The film captures the language, feel, and texture of Boston in a way that no other film I've seen has before it (take THAT, Mystic River), and -- Nicholson aside -- the performances are nearly pitch perfect across the board. Even Vera Farmiga shines in a role that by rights should never have been written.
Is it crazy to think of The Departed as the final part of a trilogy, preceeded by Goodfellas (1990) and Casino (1995)? I think not.
12. In Bruges (2008)
Written and directed by Martin McDonagh
NOT SAFE FOR WORK!!!
I'm not going to say a whole lot about this one. If you watched the clip above you get the idea. In truth, Martin McDonagh is a brilliant playwrite -- nasty, profane, and funny, sure, but with a surprising capacity for spiritual depth and a truly genius touch with character -- and In Bruges is a startlingly solid first step into feature filmmaking (his Oscar-winning short, Six Shooter, is even better). Watch out for him in the future.
13. This Is England (2006)
Written and directed by Shane Meadows
I've mentioned this movie and talked about Meadows before, so I'll try not to dwell. Meadows is one of the most exciting filmmakers working in England today, and his semi-autobiographical film about the rise of the at-first benign skinhead movement and its corruption by the racist National Front is as eye-opening as it is entertaining. Thomas Turgoose is a firecracker as the young lead, Shaun, and Stephen Graham is absolutely chilling as Combo, Shaun's vicious mentor in the ways of English nationalism. This Is England is like a rich, raw wound needing to be bled.
*****
There are a lot more movies I'd like to talk about, but this post is already ridiculously long so I'll just give a quick shoutout, in no particular order, to: The Last King of Scotland American Psycho Dancer in the Dark Ginger Snaps High Fidelity Requiem for a Dream Traffic Ghost World Waking Life Adaptation City of God Spider Amores Perros Battle Royale 21 Grams Cabin Fever Dogville Elephant Kill Bill Vol. 1 and 2 Love Actually The Station Agent Willard Swimming Pool Wonderland Session 9 Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy The Royal Tenenbaums Sideways Monster The 40-Year-Old Virgin Brick Caché The Constant Gardener Dog Soldiers Inside Deep Throat Jarhead Kiss Kiss Bang Bang Land of the Dead Match Point The Proposition Six Shooter War of the Worlds Wolf Creek The Assassination of Richard Nixon Before Sunset Collateral Dawn of the Dead Downfall Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind Hotel Rwanda The Lost United 93 Clerks II The Prestige Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan Volver Stranger Than Fiction Blood Diamond Children of Men Pan's Labyrinth Dead Man's Shoes An Inconvenient Truth The Science of Sleep The Lookout Death Proof Sunshine Death Sentence Eastern Promises No Country For Old Men Beowulf The Mist Juno There Will Be Blood Cloverfield The Ruins WALL-E The Dark Knight Burn After Reading Milk The Wrestler Donkey Punch Coraline Gomorrah State of Play District 9 Inglourious Basterds Zombieland Brothers Avatar (sorry, Gene) No End In Sight Waltz With Bashir Narc Hard Candy
Tobey Maguire and Jake Gyllenhaal at the Los Alamos ice rink
WARNING: SOME SPOILERS AHEAD
In the interest of full disclosure, I should preface this review by saying that I'm actually in this movie. More specifically, the back of my head makes its major motion picture debut for a grand total of about eight seconds during the big funeral scene toward the beginning.
So I was maybe a little predisposed to like it. Not only am I in it (sort of), the majority of the movie was shot right in my home town. For those of you who grew up somewhere like New York or LA, that's not probably not a big deal. But for us Hilltoppers, it's kind of cool. Even movies about Los Alamos (like Roland Joffe's 1989 film Fat Man and Little Boy) aren't usually shot there.
Brothers, directed by Jim Sheridan (My Left Foot, In The Name Of The Father) and a remake of Susanne Biers 2005 Danish film Brødre, tells the story of Sam and Tommy Cahill. Sam (Tobey Maguire) is the good brother, a star athlete married to his high-school sweetheart Grace (Natalie Portman) and father to two adorable little girls (Bailee Madison and Taylor Grace Geare). He's also a decorated Marine on his way back to Afghanistan. Tommy (Jake Gyllenhaal) is the bad brother, recently paroled after doing a three-year prison stint for armed robbery. Grace isn't Tommy's biggest fan. Neither, it seems, is Sam and Tommy's stern alcoholic father (Sam Shephard).
When Sam's helicopter goes down in Afghanistan and he's presumed dead, Tommy tries in his clumsy way to fill the void left by his absence. He does this at first by getting drunk and calling Grace at three in the morning to come pay his bar tab. Oops. After this inauspicious start, he slowly and inevitably steps up to the plate. After enlisting three friends to remodel Grace's kitchen and spending time with his nieces, Grace -- almost reluctantly -- begins to thaw. Brother and sister-in-law grow ever closer. Eventually, Grace and Tommy spend an evening together smoking pot and reminiscing about Sam. One thing leads to another and, in a weak moment, their emotions (unsurprisingly) get the better of them.
Before long Tommy -- a crude but well-meaning facsimile of his lost brother -- has, without quite meaning to, supplanted Sam's memory in his grieving family's hearts.
And then Sam comes home.
There has been a lot of bitching and moaning about how the trailer gives too much away, and before seeing the movie I would have agreed. After seeing it, we'd all be forgiven for thinking we know exactly what this movie's about: bad brother sleeps with dead good brother's wife, good brother (not dead after all) comes home and, after finding out bad brother and wife got their freak on, flips out and goes on a shooting spree.
But, now that I've seen the film, I have to say that trailer was actually a pretty clever bait-and-switch on the studio's part. Obviously they want to sell this as either a sexy melodrama, a taut suspense movie, or, preferably, both. But Brothers isn't really about any of that. It's not about infidelity any more than it is a thriller about a psychotic soldier with a gun. What it's about is family, and the way war can bend and twist a family into something tortured and unrecognizable.
Sheridan cuts back and forth between Grace and Tommy's domestic life stateside and Sam's harrowing experience as a Taliban prisoner. The potential second-act "oh shit" movie moment of finding out Sam's fate is neatly sidestepped. When Grace receives the call that he's alive, Sheridan handles the moment with nothing more than a ringing phone and a look on Portman's face.
Sam returns a changed man. Haunted by what he's seen and done and carrying a yolk of guilt around his neck that not even his Vietnam vet father can understand, he projects all his fury and self-loathing outward at Grace and Tommy. Whether or not his wife and his brother actually slept together is beside the point. Sam, desperately looking for a place to put his rage, convinces himself of such. He coils up amidst his increasingly concerned family like a tightly smiling snake ready to strike. Grace, Tommy, and the girls are soon terrified of this unfamiliar and maybe dangerous stranger who has appeared in their midst.
In movies like In The Name Of The Father and In America, Sheridan has proven himself to be one of the most exacting chroniclers of familial nuance that cinema has to offer. So it's no surprise that the most convincing parts of Brothers involve the family. Each of these characters could have been stock, but Sheridan and screenwriter David Benioff's eye for detail saves them, and Sheridan leads his cast to some of the finest and subtly affecting performances of their careers.
Portman has never been one of my favorite actresses. She has always seemed so deliberate and hyper-intellectual to me, and her performances have tended to feel like a bundle of ticks and actorly "choices" rather than fully realized characters. Here, in the thankless role of the grieving wife, she manages -- finally -- to eschew her tendency to overthink. She inhabits Grace thoroughly. Grace's pain is almost entirely internal, and Portman lets it bleed out here and there through looks and gestures. When she does cry, the work she and Sheridan have done to keep Grace firmly grounded makes those bigger moments ring true. Later, when she tries to reach out to Sam, the tangled mess of love, torment, guilt, and confusion seems to seep right out through her pores.
Gyllenhaal manages to keep Tommy from drifting into caricature. Tommy is charming, well-meaning, a little flaky, and more than a little devilish. He's also all twisted up with his own Freudian rage and font of self loathing. It would have been easy to go over the top, to hit the dark notes too hard, but Gyllenhaal wisely keeps it simple. The chemistry between him and Portman is thick, but they keep it throbbing at a low hum rather than letting it cycle up to a high whine. When their resolve finally crumbles and they give in to their temptations, the moment is deceptively small but deeply resonant.
The only real false notes for me in Gyllenhaal's performance are the two or three times the script calls on him to play drunk. A wise actor -- okay, Miguel -- once told me that the biggest mistake an actor can make when playing a drunk is to "act drunk" because actual drunks, by and large, try to act sober. Gyllenhaal, unfortunately, goes for the easy choice and you can just see the "acting" all over the screen. Just compare what he does to what Shephard does after the funeral scene, and you'll see what I'm talking about.
Shephard, for my money, is the best thing in the movie. His character -- the stern military father constantly comparing his two sons -- is the most fraught with potential for cliche and melodrama. And the script, to be honest, doesn't do him any favors in the early bits (I almost groaned aloud during his rote "why can't you be more like your brother" moment). But Shephard is a pro and he manages to pivot away from our expectations, presenting a flawed man struggling with his own pain who loves both of his sons deeply but just doesn't quite know how to say or do the right thing. After Tommy starts proving himself to both Grace and his dad, Shephard's scenes with Gyllenhaal ("How'd you get so handy?" he admiringly asks as Tommy puts molding on the cabinets) are textbook examples of how less is usually more and what's not said can be more powerful than what is. Later, when he recognizes that Sam is struggling and stumblingly tries to reach out to him, you just want to give the big guy a hug.
The lion's share of the capital-A "ACTING" burden falls, of course, on Maguire, who has to go from loving husband and father to dangerous psycho in just under two hours. This is where Brothers both soars and falters. I had an animated discussion with the folks I saw the movie with afterwards, who felt that they just didn't buy his character from the start. He never seems to really connect with either Portman or his children before he ships out, and so the impact of his loss on the family is not quite felt. My friends were never really rooting for him to come back, they said, which lessened the impact of his return.
I could see their point, but -- whether intentional or not -- the stilted nature of his performance felt true to me. Sam is a professional soldier who, it's suggested, has been away before. It seems not only plausible to me but almost necessary that he would struggle, even in the absence of the trauma later inflicted upon him in Afghanistan, to completely plug back into his civilian life. The same would be true for anyone, military or not, who was away from his family for extended periods of time. I would imagine that most of the men and women currently serving overseas right now would identify with his struggle.
However, the question of whether Maguire -- eternally geeky, awkward, and seemingly light as a feather -- is believable as a Marine at all is debatable. I bought it...just. One of my movie-going compatriots suggested it might have worked better if Maguire and Gyllenhaal had swapped roles. I'm not sure I could buy Maguire as a paroled ex-con any more than I buy him as a soldier., but having seen Jarhead (2005), I can agree that Gyllenhaal would have made the more convincing Marine.
Sheridan's touch with the family dynamic is near perfect, but he stumbles badly when he turns his attention toward Afghanistan. It didn't help that I kept noticing how much "Afghanistan" looked like the outskirts of Albuquerque, but even putting that aside I was just never quite able to buy into the reality the film tries to present. Every Afghanistan scene feels like a different movie, complete with mustache (or beard)-twirling Taliban baddies and tired war-movie dialogue ("Give them nothing, Private!" Sam shouts at a fellow prisoner who's being tortured. "Your life depends on it!"). Sheridan and Benioff seem not altogether interested in really capturing the verisimilitude of war, so they try to shorthand those scenes as much as possible. Unfortunately, that means that when Sam is finally pushed into an irredeemable act of violence the moment is simply not earned.
That makes it even more impressive, then, how much power is in the film's punch after Sam arrives home. What Maguire puts forth in the last forty-five minutes or so of the movie is amongst the most haunting screen acting I've ever seen. Four simple scenes stand out to me. In the first, Sam -- utterly unable to connect with his civilian life and desperate to rid himself of the guilt chewing away at his fevered brain -- tries to talk his commanding officer into sending him back to Afghanistan. "I've just been thinking about my men," he says, smiling and trying to hide the flowering madness that lurks behind his eyes. In the second and third, Sam very quietly confronts both Tommy and Grace about their relationship. "I can forgive you," he tells Tommy...and we almost believe him. Again, Sheridan does more here with looks than with dialogue. The third scene features a birthday party set around a dining room table, and it's one of the scariest scenes you're likely to see in a movie this year.
Sam is a ticking timebomb, as the saying goes, and when he finally blows (again, no spoiler here; it's all in the trailer) the look of utter disconnect in his eyes as he rages is both terrifying and utterly heartbreaking.
Upon leaving the theater, I have to admit that overall I was a bit underwhelmed. I described Brothers as two-thirds of a decent movie and one third of a very good movie. But the damn thing put its claws in me and had me tossing and turning all night. I still think, in a stronger year, Brothers would probably have a hard time getting nominated for an Oscar. This year, however, I wouldn't be surprised to see it at least get a nod. When it's good it's very good, and it has moments where it actually approaches great.
I have no idea what the film's commercial prospects are. The conventional wisdom, after notable failures like In The Valley of Elah and The Kingdom, is that films concerned with either of the current wars (Iraq or Afghanistan) are destined to fail at the box office. Nobody wants to get bummed out when they go to the movies, the thinking goes. But in Brothers Sheridan deftly avoids the temptation toward politics (as much as is possible, at least) and keeps his lens focused squarely on the human drama. You could probably call Brothers an anti-war movie if you really wanted, but it's far from a polemic. In light of President Obama's decision to send 30,000 more troops into Afghanistan and the recent tragedy at Fort Drum, I think Brothers is as fitting and sober a tribute to the men and women in the U.S. military and their families as Hollywood is likely to offer.
I'm sort of enjoying this later-period George Clooney. In both last year's Burn After Reading and the just-released The Men Who Stare At Goats, Clooney seems to be shooting for a subtler, more A-list version of William Shatner, cleverly tweaking his movie-star image and his rugged good lucks for the sake of comic absurdity.
Goats is the sort-of directorial debut of actor/screenwriter/producer Grant Heslov. I say "sort of" because I looked him up on IMDB and saw that he has actually directed a few things before, none of which seem to have gained any real notice. But with Goats (probably because of his Clooney association, with whom he co-wrote Good Night, and Good Luck) he's rocketing out of the gate with a solid pedigree film crammed full of bonafide movie stars (Clooney, Kevin Spacey, Jeff Bridges, Ewan McGregor).
The comedy, based on the book of the same name by journalist Jon Ronson, purports to be the mostly true story of a top-secret group of New Age "supersoldiers" -- led by a Dude-ified Bridges as Bill Django-- formed in the 1970s and trained in the art of psychic warfare. The story revolves around a sadsack journalist named Bob Wilton (McGregor) who somehow manages to convince one of these soldiers, Lyn Cassady (Clooney), to let him tag along with him on a covert mission into Iraq in 2003. Throughout the drive into the desert Cassady tells Wilton all about the history of the "New Earth Army", which is revealed though a series of meandering but basically amusing flashbacks. We're introduced to a motley crew of possibly batshit "psychics" including Django, the naive and hippie-dippy General Hopgood (Stephen Lang), the certifiably nutsoid Gus (Stephen Root), and the sublimely oily Larry Hooper (Spacey). We witness the rise of the New Earth Army and its eventual corruption and demise under Hooper's Machiavellian stewardship. Meanwhile, Wilton and Cassady stumble into a few scrapes -- including getting kidnapped, riding along with a bunch of cowboy Blackwater douchebags (led by Robert Patrick, who seems to be channeling the spirit of George W. Bush), and almost dying of thirst in the desert. All the while, Cassady repeatedly attempts to demonstrate his "superpowers" to the skeptical Wilton, with generally anticlimactic effect.
The movie is pretty amiable, and it has only the barest hint of a narrative to hold it together. Watching it meander toward its conclusion is certainly an amusing and, most of the time, agreeable experience. But there is something slightly discomfiting about the tone. Heslov seems to want to make a biting Three Kings or M.A.S.H.-styled satire, but he doesn't really have the strength of his convictions so he relies largely on slapstick for the comedy. The movie wants so desperately for you to like it that it smiles at you when it should show teeth, caresses when it should cut. The modern-day framing story is set in the early years of the current Iraq War, and the light approach to what should be relatively heavy subject matter (all the psychic nonsense aside) left me feeling a little queasy. A car being blown up by an IED is used for comic effect...and it is funny, until you stop and realize that this shit is still going on right now.
Particularly unpleasant -- in light of the recent massacre at Ft. Hood -- is a scene in which a young New Earth Army recruit, whacked out on LSD, stumbles naked across an Army base and starts shooting. To be fair, Heslov and the studio can't really be blamed for the unfortunate timing, and the scene itself is not meant to be funny. But the relatively quick shift back to farce left a sour taste in my mouth.
Overall, I'd give The Men Who Stared At Goats a mild recommendation. Clooney's performance alone makes it worth the price of admission. He plays Cassady like a slightly crazed and sun-blasted Clark Gable, and manages to hit all the right comic notes without ever quite tipping into caricature. He's able to elicit laughs with a mere twitch of his eyes (I just about peed myself during the "sparkly eyes" moment). The same can't be said for Spacey and Bridges, however. Their performances -- while funny -- are much broader and more conventional.
I really hope Clooney keeps channeling his inner Shatner for many years to come.
Judging from the several (okay, four) Facebook messages I received after I posted my last review, it seems I stoked some interest in Shane Meadows. It also seems I misspoke a bit when I referred to him as "...one of the finest and least talked about filmmakers working today." That's not exactly true. In Britain, it appears he's talked about a great deal. Over here, though, he continues to fly under the radar.
Also, before I wrote the Dead Man's Shoes review it didn't occur to me to check and see if This Is England is also on Netflix Instant Viewer. It is. And, in all honesty, it's the superior film. So watch them both. They're awesome-tacular.
It was further suggested that I should mention some of Meadows' other films -- particularly his acclaimed A Room For Romeo Brass (1999), which also stars Considine. I saw that one not long after it first came out, and I remember enjoying it. He also directed Twenty Four Seven (1997), Once Upon A Time In The Midlands (2002), and last year's Somers Town. I haven't seen Midlands or Somers Town yet, but I believe they're all available on DVD.
Anyway, in an effort to keep your interest piqued, here are the trailers to Dead Man's Shoes and This Is England, courtesy of YouTube.
My The Men Who Stare At Goats review will be up shortly.
Dead Man's Shoes is a deceptively simple little revenge film. You would be forgiven if, after reading the Netflix plot description, you dismiss it as something you've probably seen before.
In a nutshell: Richard (Paddy Considine), a British soldier and war veteran, returns to his tiny hometown in Northern England where he at first threatens and then brutalizes a group of local thugs who perpetrated a nasty and dangerous prank on his mentally disabled younger brother (Toby Kebbell).
If you've ever seen the Michael Caine classic Get Carter (1971) or the Charles Bronson anticlassic Death Wish (1974) -- or have even a passing knowledge of them -- you can probably guess where this goes.
But the opening credit sequence -- a series of 8mm home movies scored to Smog's mournful "Vessel In Vain" -- should tell you right away that writer/director Shane Meadows is up to something slightly different here. Meadows and Considine take this pulpy genre construct and use it to explore some pretty heady themes of grief, rage, and familial guilt and resentment. What promises to be a fun and nasty thrill ride will end up breaking your heart.
Meadows is one of the finest and least talked about filmmakers working today. Like all true directors, he understands that the root of a great film lies in the performance. In both Dead Man's Shoes and his followup This Is England (2006) -- a harrowing journey through the history of England's skinhead movement and its corruption by the rise of the National Front -- Meadows demonstrates a knack for matching the right actor with the right part (Considine here, the terrifying Stephen Graham in England). These aren't showy performances, but they'll hit you hard.
Meadows' style is not quite verité, but -- like Alejandro González Iñárritu (Amores Perros, 21 Grams, Babel) -- he uses verité to create a gritty and fully realized environment, and then blends it masterfully with a more traditional narrative approach. Like Iñárritu, the effect can border on histrionic at times. But, unlike Iñárritu, Meadows knows when to quit. He refuses to pound us over the head with social commentary, instead letting it bleed organically through the characters and the story.
Dead Man's Shoes is a simple movie, but you're unlikely to find a genre film this emotionally rich being produced on this side of the pond. Check it out.
