Mother

“Mother”

South Korea. 2009. Directed by Bong Joon-ho. Screenplay by Bong Joon-ho and Park Eun-kyo. Story by Bong Joon-ho. Starring: Kim Hye-ja, Won Bin, Jin Ku, Jeon Mi-seon, Yoon Je-moon, Song Sae-byeok, Kim Byung-soon and Moon Hee-ra.

Rating: ★★★½

From the very opening scene of Bong Joon-ho’s latest film, Mother where we see the titular character swaying and dancing in the hay field, we instantly intuit two things. One is Bong’s unique directorial trademark that presents, as in his brilliant 2003 crime thriller, Memories of Murder, a visual splendor of South Korea’s countryside that will counter the quiet oddities, pleasant or not, of the people who reside there. The other is that this will be no ordinary tale of maternal love as her slightly off-kilter movements in the field already start to play to and against the public image of its central actress, Kim Hye-ja, who has had one of the longest veteran careers of playing mother roles in Korea.

The play on Kim’s public screen persona feels more pointed and enhanced by the fact that her character is never given a name and is simply known as Do-joon’s mother throughout the film. As the movie opens, we see that her only son, Do-joon (Won Bin) is a 23-year-old, mentally handicapped man whom the mother refuses to lose sight of. She is fiercely and almost obsessively overprotective of her son and believes that she must assist him in just about everything from feeding him medicine to even tying his shoe. That certainly seems to be truer when he sustains a minor injury in an abrupt hit-and-run car accident and when she must rescue him from a police station after he gets into some trouble with the law. The one who encouraged him is Jin-tae (Jin Ku), who claims to be Do-joon's best friend but appears to have a bad boy streak in him and had gotten Do-joon to join him in provoking and even physically beating some rich, haughty golfers.

That is nothing, however, compared to the more serious trouble he gets into soon thereafter when he is suddenly arrested for the murder of a local teenage girl whose body was found on a rooftop. The police suspect that there was rape involved as well and have simply pointed the finger at Do-joon after finding a ping-pong ball with his name inscribed on it. They think it is an open and shut case and quickly get a signed confession out of him without a care as to whether Do-joon knows what he is actually signing. His mother, however, firmly believes that her son is not be capable of committing such a horrible crime and so she sets out to find the real killer herself while her son sits idly in jail.

The premise at its core, like the very little seen The Deep End with the wonderful Tilda Swinton, is the maternal extension of the old Hitchcockian wronged man story. Bong’s movie has a deceptively simpler story than the Rubik’s cube of a plot that The Deep End surrounded its lead with but his more direct and ironic approach enhances the emotionality of both the mother’s quest and the central murder mystery. It would be unfair to even hint at the specific mechanics of how Bong plays the details of his mystery with and against his typical sense of irony that is pushed this time to greater and more overt extremes. I will say that I was happy to actually be fooled and blindsided, for once, by where the film ultimately ends up and fooled so, even with all the various clues there, because of clever misdirection and not needless concealment or cheating.

As with the past films from Bong, many of the movie’s strengths are in the tiny details, even if it does not quite have as much of the cutting, deeper social commentary of South Korea’s countryside that Memories of Murder had (although it does not necessarily need it). Some of them are in the dark comedy he gets from occasionally tipping the realistic observations of the situation to just the brink of histrionic and make us wince while we laugh (such as in the crinkles he adds to the expected social prejudice against Do-joon and his mother). Others are in the ways he plays again with both movie and social clichés and the mother is able to find allies in the most unlikely people including the local photo developer wonderfully played by the always underrated Jeon Mi-Seon (who also played Song Kang-ho’s girlfriend in Memories of Murder). Also watch for the significance of the way the mother’s needle kit is applied and how each application carries such different physical and emotional weights.

Perhaps the biggest surprise, however, is that Bong has somehow managed to extract what is arguably the most subtle and delicate performance in the 68-year old Kim Hye-ja’s long career. Kim is well known for her theatrically frenzied and often way over the top acting style in playing very pushy maternal characters and, to be sure, you will certainly catch a handful of times when she shows that widening crazy eyed look of hers here. But even those instances are very carefully reined in and controlled and much of the rest of the movie is in the way she utilizes her aging face to play such different emotional speeds from unyielding maternal love to indomitability through haggardness. She is also wisely never turned into a sudden action thriller heroine and her physicality, while certainly capable in later scenes, never breaks with character or with her age.

The same goes for Won Bin who gives his best performance to date and abandons his pretty boy looks from past movies to play her mentally handicapped young son without judging or condescending to the character. His role, of course, is more limited than Kim’s but is responsible for two very tricky dramatic shifts in his relationship with his mother that he avoids sentimentalizing by playing the notes with as much dull dispassion as hidden agony. The other supporting performances from Jin Ku playing the best friend to Jeon Mi-seon playing the local photo developer are also quite tricky as they present characters that both may or may not plausibly be allies to the mother character, if they should be at all.

For director Bong, Mother is a shrewdly modest story after his 2006 megahit, The Host (which is the highest grossing film in South Korea to date). But it proves yet again, like Memories of Murder, how few directors today can match him in blending the artistic and the commercial; to craft a story that makes its own eccentricities so matter-of-factly and yet stylishly accessible while brewing the audience slowly with the hidden depths it unveils. Bong said he wanted to explore how far a mother’s fierce love will go and when we later see the mother dancing again, we understand and are unsettled by what he means.

Up

“Up”

USA. 2009. Directed by Pete Docter and co-directed by Bob Peterson. Screenplay by Bob Peterson and Pete Docter. Story by Bob Peterson, Pete Docter and Thomas McCarthy. Starring: the voices of Ed Asner, Jordan Nagai, Christopher Plummer, Bob Peterson, Delroy Lindo, Jerome Ranft, John Ratzenberger, David Kaye, Elie Docter and Jeremy Leary.

Rating: ★★★★

The latest wonderful movie from the geniuses at Pixar, Up at last brings us an adventure that so cheerfully and confidently goes against the grain of today's culture over-fixated on youth by presenting a hero that also happens to be a curmudgeonly old man. Most family adventure stories present their protagonists as the typical young gung-ho personalities that are at times actually too callow to realistically deal with their surroundings and as a result the adventures themselves are often so considerably dumbed down. This film, by centering on an older hero who has retained a nugget of adventurous idealism his whole life allows all the characters and story to have more real emotions and stakes.

The film first opens with wide-eyed, 7-year-old adventure scout named Carl Fredricksen, who dreams of going to a lush place in South America called Paradise Falls. He then meets his match in a girl named Ellie, another young explorer who shares the same dream and is even more avid than Carl is. This at first seems like the setup for a typical children’s adventure but then quickly and surprisingly segues into a lovely opening montage of their eventual courtship and later marriage. They save money to pursue their dream of traveling to Paradise Falls but everyday life and welfare intervenes with their savings. A tire breaks down, the house needs repairs and hospital bills stack up particularly as Ellie becomes progressively ill in their older years. This montage that is so impeccably and movingly told without dialogue and serves as merely the setup for our 78-year old protagonist, Carl (Ed Asner) and the rest of the movie is worth the price of admission all by itself.

Soon, Carl is left as a widower and is then threatened to be placed in a retirement home. So what does he do to honor Ellie’s memory and fulfill their dream without ever actually stepping outside his home? He tethers thousands of balloons to his house to float it to the sky. Everyone who has seen the poster or the previews already knows that but the sequence of the house making its ascent in its entirety is a pure, colorful marvel to behold on screen, particularly with the equally elegant score by Michael Giacchino, as it perfectly captures that blithe feeling one gets when seeing a hot air balloon lift off the ground.

Just when Carl is about to relax by himself all the way to Paradise Falls, however, he suddenly hears a startling knock on the door and finds that there is a stowaway on board, an Asian-American boy named Russell (Jordan Nagai) who is aspiring to be an adventure scout not unlike how Carl was when he was young. Carl, being the initially cranky man that he is, finds him a nuisance particularly after due to his earlier encounter with Russell and his unusual persistence to help out an elderly man for a merit badge from his scout leader. Of course, Carl does not have the option to kick him out of the house (although there is a brief, funny fantasy moment in which he fleetingly entertains that thought).

Much more about their eventually very touching bond and the rest of their adventure, I would hesitate to reveal, including the villain of the story that Pixar wisely makes a point of not revealing too much and does arrive as something of a meaningful surprise in this one. What I will mention are some ingenious, inspired sights and ideas in the film. One is how they skewer the old, silly cliché of talking dogs with some dogs Carl and Russell encounter. Audiences have complained for years about how dogs moving their mouths to talk about humans always look so ridiculous, no matter how hard they try to make it convincing with special effects (the truly awful Good Boy! comes to mind from several years back). This movie comes up with the brilliant, satirical solution of having collars around the dogs’ necks that hilariously act like ventriloquist sound devices that translate the dogs’ thoughts into human language.

Another is the huge, magnificent airship that Carl and Russell later end up in, which perhaps takes its slight cue from some of Hayao Miyazaki’s films such as Castle in the Sky or Howl’s Moving Castle. All the tiny details including the methods of steering, the wings and the ropes that tether the ship to its ballast are meticulously introduced to deliver all kinds of surprises in the climactic adventure. That it belongs to the story's antagonist is crucial, as contrasting it to the protagonist’s vehicle symbolically signifies the disparate personalities they represent in balancing self-aspirations and reality.

Up, after Ratatouille and WALL·E, is the third great movie in a row for Pixar and a personal triumph for director, Pete Docter for whom this is a significant leap forward from his last film, Monsters, Inc (in addition to having contributed to writing the Toy Story movies and WALL·E). It has, of course, become passé to say that Pixar is making more mature stories that will give adults as much, if not more, reason as children to go see these animated films. However, in another sense, just as many English scholars would give so much of their knowledge to relive their first thunderstruck impression of reading a Shakespeare play, I would envy children who get to enjoy these films on their own level and then later discover deeper levels anew as they grow up with repeat viewings over the years.

The movie also marks the first Pixar film rendered in 3-D and, although I am still not convinced about the necessity of the technique’s existence, I will say that it is as well done here as I have seen in any film so far. There are a few sequences that do get more visual enhancement due to the 3-D such as the dazzling house floating sequence in the beginning and they wisely completely avoid having objects purposely flying out of the screen to “grab” the audience (if anything, for me at least, that actually prevents me from getting closer to the movie itself). But the real strength of the film, as with all Pixar features, lies in the storytelling that, as of yet, 3-D has yet to really make a contribution to. Until the technique can offer something beyond a small, extra sense of visual spectacle (and perhaps James Cameron’s long-anticipated live-action 3-D film, Avatar coming in December will change this), there is not much lost watching a great movie like this in just the 2-D format.

Beyond the astonishing, crisp visual sights, however, what remains the most indelible in the end is Carl himself, so wonderfully and wittily voiced by the veteran actor, Ed Asner. This is where the montage is once again so key because we need it to understand the depths beyond Carl who may seem like just a lonely, cranky old man we see around the block before the adventure starts where he proves to be more physically agile than we expect (though never in an impossible way). The contribution of writer, Thomas McCarthy, whose last film was the wonderful The Visitor, must have been invaluable to understanding that similar theme of a man breaking free from years of emotional inertia and regaining vitality and meaning in his life. And the movie never makes the misstep of having Carl foolishly sidelined or outsmarted by the child, Russell (adorably voiced without cloying by newcomer Jordan Nagai). Not that Russell does not serve as a nice point of empathy for kids but Carl remains the hero and this is centrally his story.

As aforementioned, Up, like all true and great family movies, will appeal to kids and adults in different ways but I would particularly recommend that grandparents take their young grandchildren to see this or vice versa. By having younger audiences cheer for a hero who carries a lifetime of experience and heart and the adults identify with a hero who rejuvenates himself through adventure, watching this could bridge some gaps that neither they nor their grandparents knew existed. And if that sounds a bit too serious, only the Pixar folks can combine that with an exuberant adventure that resists conforming to Hollywood clichés and familiar genre conventions.

Ip Man

“Ip Man”

Hong Kong. 2008. Directed by Wilson Yip. Screenplay written by Edmond Wong. Starring: Donnie Yen, Simon Yam, Ka-Tung Lam, Yu Xing, Siu-wong Fan, You-Nam Wong, Chen Zhi Hui, Lynn Xiong, Hiroyuki Ikeuchi, Yu-Tang Ho and Shibuya Tenma.

Rating: ★★★½

There is a point in the Hong Kong martial arts movie, Ip Man in which an angry, combative opponent of the titular hero mocks the latter for practicing a style of martial arts called the Wing Chun Fist that had been originally invented by a woman. I wonder if that man actually knew the rest of the old story. There have been various tales and legends debated over the years about the origin of the Wing Chun but the most widely told and accepted states that a woman named Yim Wing Chun invented it as a response to a man who tried to force her into marriage. He challenged that he would accept her refusal to marry him if she can beat him. She quickly went to a Buddhist nun, learned how to fight and invented her own boxing style to ultimately defeat the coercive man.

The film's title character, Grandmaster Ip Man, before becoming one of the most prominent proponents of Wing Chun and later the famed teacher of the late Bruce Lee, faced an even greater conflict and threat of subjugation during the Sino-Japanese War of 1937 and Wilson Yip's fictionalized account of his life is a worthy addition to the old wushu epics based on a real-life Chinese hero that crosses biography with a slight bit of lionized folklore. That trend seemed to have diminished in the face of overdone stylizations of martial arts such as Hero and House of Flying Daggers (both directed by Zhang Yimou). But I, for one, have always preferred the more traditional genre films that just let the martial arts style speak for itself such as the Once Upon a Time in China films and the recent Fearless and Ip Man is one of the most rousing to come along in a while.

Like the hero in Jet Li's Fearless, Ip Man (Donnie Yen, in a true career highlight performance and who incidentally played Wing Chun's later husband in the 1994 film version of Wing Chun with Michelle Yeoh) is already a proficient and virtually unbeatable martial artist, although he does not display the boastful arrogance in the beginning that propelled Huo from Fearless to seek out fights to test his might. The fights rather come to him as, in the opening scenes, masters from other martial arts schools constantly come to challenge him as he is rumored to be the best martial artist of Foshan, a town that has a historical reputation for breeding highly trained wushu experts. Although he himself deliberately chooses not to open a martial arts school despite the urging of his businessman friend, Zhou Qing Quan (Simon Yam) to take his son as a disciple, the repeated challenges that come to Ip's door annoy his wife (Lynn Xiong) who thinks he is too carried away with his fighting and training to pay attention to his family.

Thus, when a group of cocky out-of-town folks believe they can trample on the reputation of Foshan by beating all the martial artists, of course they will eventually land on Ip's doorstep as well. That sets up a terrific, prolonged fight sequence that shows the countless, lightning-quick punches Ip can land on his opponent's face and chest in the blink of an eye and how he uses merely the stick of a window duster to defeat an opponent with a large sword. When he wins the battle, the whole town including the local cop, Li Zhao (Ka Tung Lam) praises him as a hero despite having earlier criticized the validity of martial arts.

All of that fills the generally lighthearted half hour of the movie but it turns out to actually be a setup for the sudden transition into the darker historical event of Japanese military occupation that triggers the Sino-Japanese War during WWII. Information in captions reveal the town's population is decimated to a quarter by the Japanese soldiers, thriving factories are destroyed and the remaining people's properties are confiscated including Ip who is forced into abject poverty and must look for menial labor to barely feed his wife and son. He finally swallows his pride to work at the coal mines despite not having the right clothes to wear for the job (echoes here of Russell Crowe’s Jim Braddock during the Great Depression from Cinderella Man).

One day, Li who is now working as an interpreter for Japanese soldiers comes to the coal mine to try to recruit any Chinese people to challenge and fight students of a Japanese martial arts training school in order to win bags of rice. Ip is initially uninterested in this but a tragedy that hits close to home shakes up his personal patriotism and hence he goes to the training school himself, which sets up a far fiercer fight sequence where he challenges ten Japanese students and shows his fearsome and bone-crunching might and a style of punching for which the word, “swift” is a severe understatement. This, of course, grabs the attention of the head Japanese General Miura (Hiroyuki Heichi) and his sadistic guard, Sato (Shibuya Tenma) and embroils Ip in progressively greater conflict even though he quietly tries to work in the small fabric factory mill his friend, Zhou has just started.

This kind of general story outline will be familiar to fans of the martial arts genre whose films such as Bruce Lee’s Fist of Fury and Jet Li’s Fist of Legend in 1994 are very often propelled by the feeling of Chinese nationalistic pride and no wonder considering the endless tyrannical savagery that the Japanese people inflicted throughout Chinese history. The visual palette by cinematographer, Sing-Pui O reflects that when, once the occupation starts, it switches to a grayer, ashen-like color scheme that suggests the town Ip Man is in has become almost like a tomb both physically and mentally. Some people starve to death when unable to scrape a meager living and others who cannot find jobs become bandits wielding axes to extract money out of factory owners, and director Wilson Yip (who is a regular collaborator with Donnie Yen) and writer Edmond Wong subtly suggest more than show the almost dooming atmosphere to full dramatic weight within a brisk and efficiently paced 106 minute running time.

Against that backdrop are the brilliantly staged martial arts sequences that reminded me of how much I missed good old-fashioned, grounded, realistic choreography as opposed to the overused wire-assisted flying and scaling up on walls. The fights that are mostly hand-to-hand combat are some of the best from the veteran action director Sammo Hung (who is the best in the business alongside the better known Yuen Wo-ping). They are also some of his fiercest, which is justly fitting considering the untrammeled directness of the Wing Chun Fist that was founded on the notion that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. The camerawork also very wisely goes back to basics in deftly shifting between medium-length spatial shots of combat with brutal close-ups of rapid fists and punches crunchily hitting faces without unnecessary slow-motion. The musical score by Kenji Kawai is also one of the more stirring in blending the tones of looming sadness with pulsating notes to compliment the action scenes.

Then there is Donnie Yen. He is not that well known in the US and has been under the shadow of some of his contemporaries like Jet Li whom he had fought on screen as an antagonist in a few movies like Once Upon a Time in China II and Hero. Some may initially think that Yen is the only remaining actor to be tapped on since Jet Li has announced his leaving the traditional wushu epic genre but the extra, edgy ferocity Yen usually brings in his combat style actually makes him a more ideal fit to the role regardless. And because he so thoroughly embodies such a thoughtful, composed and sane personality to ground the very intense physical requirements of the character (he had to train intensively for four months to learn the Wing Chun fist) and later his individual crisis of questioning the value of his own martial arts, it is difficult for me to picture anyone else who could have played this role.

The supporting cast including the ubiquitously reliable HK actor Simon Yam is all solid but one true standout performance comes from Ka Tung Lam playing the cop turned interpreter who, in many ways, is the most complex and dynamic character in the movie and also presents the biggest departure from the conventions of the martial arts genre. When we first see him, we hardly like him as he seems like such an oily weasel that frowns upon martial arts and later a coward and a “lackey” as Ip calls him when he is actually helping recruit Chinese martial artists to fight for bags of rice. But Lam and the screenplay modulate his unlikely character to become the one who may be subtly moved by Ip Man and his dramatic arc gradually reveals his own depth of patriotic loyalty and even defiant heroism rather than just standing in a helpless position of watching his countrymen die.

Yes, there may be some who complain the film as a biopic fudges some historical facts (and one detail the movie leaves out is that Ip Man himself in real life served as a police officer in pre-WWII China). But just as a boxing style is surrounded by so much folklore and legends, the truest things at the center are the integrity and elegance of the style and the concentration of body, mind and spirit that it builds in its practitioner in difficult times. By simply relying and focusing on those important elements and stripping away unnecessary stylistic flourishes to distract from them, Ip Man creates a fine, classical entertainment in the martial arts genre.

Observe and Report

“Observe and Report”

USA. 2009. Written and directed by Jody Hill. Starring: Seth Rogen, Ray Liotta, Michael Peňa, Anna Faris, Dan Pakkedahl, Collette Wolfe, Jesse Plemons, Celia Weston, John Yuan, Matt Yuan, Randy Gambill, Alston Brown, Cody Midthunder, Deborah Brown, Aziz Ansari, Patton Oswalt, Eddie Rouse, Lauren Miller, Rafael Herrera and Ben Best.

Rating: ★½

Observe and Report finally confirms two long-running suspicions I have gathered hints about in Seth Rogen as a comedian and an actor over the years. One is that there is a continual mean streak to his playing the same old clueless schlub he consistently typecasts himself in. The other is that his depth of range to play such a character does not go very far beyond that of an average sketch on Saturday Night Live. Thus, when he is given considerably darker comedic material here to work with in this film compared to the past raunchy sex and stoner comedies he has somehow built a household name through, he and the filmmakers make us feel squirmy rather than unsettlingly amused.

Now I am not saying that one cannot make a good, black comedy about Rogen's one-track mind security guard, Ronnie Barnhardt, whom some have described as Paul Blart: Mall Cop from earlier this year filtered through the mind of Travis Bickle. In fact, a character similar to that of Bickle in Taxi Driver was already seen through morbidly comedic lenses by Scorsese and Robert De Niro as Rupert Pupkin in The King of Comedy. But good comedy, no matter how morbid, requires a real basis in truth and heart in its backbone and writer/director, Jody Hill (whose first film was the lame and almost as mean-spirited The Foot Fist Way) lacks the skill to connect the laughs with what should be elements of character empathy. Hence, we cringe at some of the supposedly hilarious parts that are based entirely on shock value and we scratch our heads throughout when it later tries to take itself seriously with the antihero's bipolar disorder and sociopathic behavior.

We first meet Ronnie Barnhardt as he takes his job as head of security at a shopping mall very, very seriously. A flasher has been on the loose in the parking lot and when he ends up harassing Ronnie's long-time crush, Brandi (Anna Faris), who works at a cosmetic stand at a mall, Ronnie makes it his personal mission to find this flasher. The mall's CEO, Mark (Dan Bakkedahl), however, does not really trust Ronnie and since it is a criminal matter, he calls in Detective Harrison (Ray Liotta) to handle the case. But then when a store robbery takes place during the mall's closing hours, Ronnie, who has had dreams of being a real police officer, recruits his own “task force” consisting of his right-hand man, Dennis (Michael Peňa) and Asian twins, John and Matt Yuen (John and Matt Yuan). There is also Nell (Collette Wolfe), a coffee and donut shop worker who gets mocked by her fellow employees and especially her boss for merely being a little immobile due to a cast around her leg.

There are some funny one-liners here and there in these opening scenes but one-liners are all they are and they can already be found in the red-band trailer. Moreover, there is instantly a snaky, nasty streak that grows in Rogen's character as he poses and cruises around “investigating” but really just picking on minority concession stand owners such as the rather tastelessly named Saddamn (Aziz Ansari). The latter results in a big, long, unimaginative cursing match that simply goes on and on and on. Then there is a gaping misogynistic hole that the movie never recovers from when Ronnie forces Brandi to an odd date, watches her get drunk to the point of throwing up and commits what is essentially date rape, which is supposed to be outrageously funny and endearing because he says, “I accept you” and kisses her after she vomits. Anna Faris has gone on interviews to state that she thought this scene would never make the final cut and I think this scene should work as an acid test for the ladies unfortunate enough to see this as a date movie: If the guy is laughing at this scene, date the guy no more.

Then, about a third of the way through, the movie abruptly shifts to try to introduce the more serious elements in Rogen's character to try to explain his sociopath behavior and this is where it just about breaks into two. Just like drama, comedy, especially when it turns dark, requires a realistic entry point at its core and the only way we can care about this one-track minded guy with bipolar disorder is to treat it with at least a smidgen of gravitas. This, of course, puts the movie entirely on Seth Rogen's shoulders and this is where he is way behind his fellow comedic actors like Jim Carrey, Adam Sandler or even Will Ferrell in properly playing up enough drama to even be darkly comedic (which is probably why even in Knocked Up, his character's supposed transformation to end up with Katherine Heigl was frivolously rushed with a mere five-minute montage). When we see him strutting around acting up in brutal, lewd or hostile fashion with a squint and maybe a few tears, there is a flippant clownishness that he wears like an obnoxious funny hat he refuses to take off. Because he never takes his own role seriously, we cannot either and it is just as much writer/director Jody Hill's fault that he cannot properly gage in his star how much he wants his character to be mocked or embraced.

I know that some may think that I am just being high-minded and prudish but vulgarity and political rudeness are not necessarily what I am complaining about. I am complaining about the simple lack of an actual approach from director Hill in dealing with this material. He thinks that pushing as far as he can go in terms of political incorrectness and crudeness will be enough to get the laughs. But as I have said before, shock humor is the easiest and knee-jerk way to get a response as is the gratuitous violence on display when Rogen's nightstick graphically breaks bones. It takes real wit and a conviction in situation to redeem it for catharsis. Think of some of the dark British comedies like Hot Fuzz or Shaun of the Dead that alternate tones with ease and the key is that they manage to create a fully realized and somehow believable absurdity within their scenarios rather than having the characters just performing cheap vulgarities. But despite the opportunities to mix in smarter consumer satire scenarios within a shopping mall, Hill hardly explores any of them and without a consistent credibility in character or situation, you have a movie that is uneven and tone-deaf.

The dearth of overall inspiration extends to the casting as well. Besides Rogen who seems either unwilling or unable to take himself seriously enough to just dive into his character, most everyone else seems predictably and lazily typecast. Ray Liotta's hard-boiled cop ready to pop act is awfully trite by now and Anna Faris is once again playing up the overdone clueless blond stereotype from past movies that is rendered far worse here by the aforementioned horribly demeaning aspects in her character. Michael Peňa does extract precious few laughs with some exaggerated glances trying to look cool although not enough to move past being a comic caricature while John and Matt Yuan just seem to be there to be the token Asian twins as they are really given absolutely nothing to do except to be the butt of Rogen's silly line, “You are my infantry. If one of you dies, God gave me another one.” And what is a nice girl like the one played by Collette Wolfe doing in this movie? She seems transplanted from another movie that gives the mean-spirited protagonist some undeservedly sappy scenes where she inexplicably falls for him simply because he is the protagonist.

As for Rogen, I do not know: With every successive movie he headlines from Knocked Up and Pineapple Express to Zack and Miri Make a Porno, there simply grows an indignation inside me about how this guy is not cut out to be a comic leading man (his only decent role in my book was a supporting one in the still very funny The 40-Year-Old Virgin with Steve Carell). Now putting him in the muddier material of Observe and Report clarifies for me why. Moreover, he also seems stuck in his own world where he plays roles where he can continually get away with acting like the juvenile teenagers from Superbad and as jerky towards everyone around him, particularly women, in the veil of comedy. I do not mind dark, vulgar or raunchy comedies in and of themselves because I believe that comedy can redeem most anything but even as a guy, I get increasingly bothered by Rogen's characters and would like to tell him to get out of his own basement, grow up and learn some manners within his movies before he can pick up the refined tools for cathartic comedy. And you know what, even Kevin James as Paul Blart: Mall Cop, for all its various silly inanities, is way ahead of him.

Two Lovers

“Two Lovers”

USA. 2008. Directed by James Gray. Written by James Gray and Ric Menello. Starring: Joaquin Phoenix, Gwyneth Paltrow, Vinessa Shaw, Moni Moshonov, Isabella Rosselini, John Ortiz, Bob Ari, Julie Budd, Elias Koteas, Samantha Ivers, Jeanine Serralles, David Cale, Evan Lewis, Anne Joyce and Marion McCorry.

Rating: ★★★

Few actors working in movies today can essay inwardly tortured, brooding characters more convincingly than Joaquin Phoenix, which is why it is unfortunate that he has become the subject of publicity jokes since his announcement to quit acting. Part of it probably has to do with how many people shun the idea that a serious actor like Joaquin Phoenix would decide to become a hip-hop rap artist considering the majority of rap artists or singers who fail to make the leap to becoming a serious actor. Then there was that comic skit by Ben Stiller at the 81st Academy Awards ceremony that attempted to emulate Phoenix's new bearded look from his appearance on an episode of The David Letterman Show (and was embarrassing and actually horribly lame and unfunny).

All of that, along with the fact that writer/director James Gray publicly criticized Phoenix for complaining about tiring of acting on the set, may be contributive to why his latest film, Two Lovers has only gotten a muted release in the US. Despite that Phoenix may be somewhat at fault for that, that is still a shame because the movie is a fine acting showcase for his talents. It is also a more focused effort for writer/director James Gray who has a tendency to put way too many plot points in his movie blender but here creates a deeper character study of a man with bipolar disorder who incidentally finds himself shaken by the dilemma of falling for two radically different women at the same time. And after numerous years littered with feathery, lame romantic comedies, it is nice to see a romantic drama that actually contains some feelings we can empathize with.

The movie opens quite starkly as we see Phoenix's Leonard Kraditor suddenly jumping off a small bridge in New York City into a river in an attempt to drown himself. He is rescued by other passersby and returns to his Jewish home where his parents, Reuben (Moni Moshonov) and Ruth (Isabella Rosselini) quickly figure out that he had made yet another suicide attempt. Believing that perhaps being introduced to a new girl in his life might help him break out of his sad shell, they introduce Leonard to Sandra Cohen (Vinessa Shaw) who is the daughter of family friends, Michael (Bob Ari) and Carol (Julie Budd). As Reuben then explains to Leonard, the parents of both families also hope the union of the couple will help complete a merger of their Jewish families' laundromat businesses.

Then, one night on his way home, Leonard comes across an apartment neighbor, Michelle (Gwyneth Paltrow), who seems to be running away from someone in her apartment. Leonard offers to let her hide in his family's apartment for a little while and is instantly drawn to her feisty personality. He obviously knows who his parents would prefer and although Michelle brings out a little seen side of him when she invites him over to the dance club with her friends (which humorously shows some of Phoenix's break dancing moves), we start to see that she could potentially spell more unhealthy emotional trouble for Leonard. But he somehow seems more smitten with Michelle perhaps because he feels he can show more of his affectionate protective instincts around her as opposed to the other way around when he is with Sandra, who wants to share more of her own protective warmth around Leonard.

Director Gray, as he similarly did for the Russian crime neighborhoods in his previous efforts, Little Odessa, The Yards and We Own the Night, displays an instinctive visual feel for the middle-class Jewish neighborhood he depicts and also does not settle for obvious caricatures or clichés in familial relationships. There is no reason to doubt that both Leonard and Sandra come from loving and caring parents who have their best interests in mind. It also avoids the typical convention of the women knowing of each other's existence and that allows the eventual repercussions and rationale for Leonard's feelings and dilemmas to remain entirely interior and personal. That it works so well is largely due to Phoenix's nuanced portrayal of this withdrawn yet gentle character who may be unwise in letting his romantic longing be swayed by his urge to avoid his own problems rather than properly face them.

Besides Phoenix's anchoring performance, the two actresses playing his potential love interests also deliver fine work playing against their usual types, even though Vinessa Shaw ends up slightly getting the shorter end of the stick. Gwyneth Paltrow delivers some of her strongest work as a woman who is probably more manipulative and sneakily enabling of Leonard's problems than meets the eye but with enough of a dose of naiveté to evade admitting that even to herself. I only wish that Shaw was afforded the same amount of complexity and that Gray and his co-writer, Ric Menello wrote her to move beyond the obligatory and default nice girl that the family approves of. Isabella Rosselini, on the other hand, stands out among the parental figures as she has a subtle, crucial scene that reveals either a surprising trust and understanding in her son or a firm belief that her motherly patience with him will eventually be justified in the end. I should also mention the always reliable Elias Koteas who is in just two scenes in the film but establishes a key flesh-and-blood presence that I will leave you to discover.

For director James Gray, Two Lovers marks a departure from his usual crime fare. His previous films, while often skillfully directed in individual scenes, always fell short of winning me over due to a consistent, overambitious sense of plot crowding. But somehow his shift to observe the matters of a love triangle has freed him from that and allowed him to look more intently than most recent films in the romance genre. Based on this movie, he and Phoenix, who has now collaborated on three of the director's four movies, could have made even more interesting character pieces if the latter had not decided to give up his acting career in favor of his hop-hop rap phase. Well, even Sean Penn said that he wished to quit acting before and hopefully Phoenix will return to his serious acting roots again.

Watchmen

“Watchmen”

USA. 2009. Directed by Zack Snyder. Screenplay by David Hayter and Alex Tse. Based on the graphic novel by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons. Starring: Malin Akerman, Billy Crudup, Matthew Goode, Jackie Earle Haley, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Patrick Wilson, Stephen McHattie, Carla Gugino, Matt Frewer, Laura Mennell, Rob Labelle and Gary Houston.

Rating: ★★

You cannot blame Zack Snyder's long-awaited movie version of the graphic novel, Watchmen for straying too far away from its highly acclaimed original source but in this adaptation, it is strangely not a plus. Yes, the movie is almost slavishly faithful to the inspired, award-winning graphic novel (save most notably for a couple of key plot points towards the conclusion) but the key word is there is slavishly. It is one thing to see a film really cinematically interpret the material onto the screen and quite another to see one like Watchmen that just utilizes the graphic source novel as a superficial blueprint.

Now I did thoroughly enjoy the original 1986 graphic novel created by Alan Moore (who is so vehemently opposed to any of his works being filmed that he asked his name be removed from the credits) and illustrated by Dave Gibbons. It portrayed an alternate universe in which the Vietnam War was won through the use of superheroes, former President Richard Nixon was hence elected for four more terms until 1985 when the story is set and nuclear tensions between the US and USSR have only heightened. The film project was passed on through a couple of studios and several filmmakers including Paul Greengrass and Terry Gilliam who wanted to film it as a mini-series (which I would have preferred considering the multitude of back stories). As the director, Zack Snyder has now made it, the movie only disappointingly underscores his fanboy-appealing obsession with employing the same surface theatrics that he used in his last film, 300 rather than seriously depicting the more flesh-and-blood and less archetypal characteristics required for this story.

As in the graphic novel, the movie opens with one past superhero, Edward Blake aka The Comedian (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) being viciously attacked by an even stronger assassin and finally thrown out of his high-rise apartment. It may seem like a random killing but Rorshach (Jackie Earle Haley) believes there may be a larger plot to target the other Watchmen consisting of Dan Dreiberg aka Nite Owl II (Patrick Wilson), Laurie Juspeczyk aka Silk Spectre II (Malin Akerman), Adrian Veidt aka Ozymandias (Matthew Goode) and Jon Osterman aka Dr. Manhattan (Billy Crudup), whose skin radiates blue and whose superpowers helped him almost singlehandedly win the Vietnam War for the US. Despite that victory, it also ultimately propelled Nixon to outlaw superheroes after years of endorsing the Watchmen and the previous group they took the place of, the Minutemen that included Hollis Mason aka Nite Owl (Stephen McHattie), Sally Jupiter aka Silk Spectre (Carla Gugino), who is also the mother of her later predecessor, Silk Spectre II and The Comedian who stayed active throughout the span of both clans while being generally a hedonistic, vicious, uncouth lout.

Rorschach, who gets his name from his facial mask that keeps changing ink-blot patterns, pays a visit to each of the now retired Watchmen, as his diary presents his reflective musings and also serves as the voiceover narration throughout the film. The movie also keeps the same structure of inter-cutting various heroes' back stories at various points in the main present story; so much the same, in fact, that what worked in the comic occasionally becomes muted on the screen, as resorting to excessive flashbacks in movies often end up robbing some of the forward narrative momentum as it does here. In any case, the filmmakers have certainly scrambled to cover their bases within their 161-minute running time to try to get the fans to savor each character and the non-fans to come up to speed on the complicated, multi-layered story.

A story like this, however, needs standout performances at the center to bring the various dimensions of these characters to life and this is the part of the film that shows Snyder is far more interested in visuals than simply getting story and character interaction right first, which is quite apparently difficult given that the actors are in front of a blue screen throughout as in 300. Perhaps Snyder trusted the mostly first-rate cast including Billy Crudup and Patrick Wilson to let the acting take care of itself (except for Malin Akerman, whose acting skills everyone is picking on for good reason) but few of the actors ever seem completely at home in their roles. Only Jackie Earle Haley actually makes a lasting impression as he seems to truly absorb his character and reflect the tortured psyche that was permanently scarred by a heinous crime and thus propelled him to become a vigilante. Carla Gugino also adds in some sass and spice in her small role playing Silk Spectre as a 50s superhero vixen and later a 67-year old woman, although with Righteous Kill and this movie, she may want to take on a role that is somewhat less demeaning (with her character having a penchant for rough sex in the past one and almost getting raped here).

But one shocking disappointment is Matthew Goode, who had been good in past movies like The Lookout but comes across as a 90s pretty boy rapper type playing dress-up as opposed to the rich, confident tycoon he is supposed to be after being the only one who has revealed his true identity as one of the Watchmen to the world. As for Malin Akerman, well, her track record is not very good with past films like The Heartbreak Kid and 27 Dresses and seeing her faced with scenes here where she is called upon to strike some higher dramatic notes (as when she discovers a revelation about her origin late in the film) only underscores her decidedly narrow emotional range on screen. The Valley Girl speak she often inflects in her dialogue certainly does not help matters either.

To be sure, some of the visuals that copy directly off the comic book page are arresting particularly when Doctor Manhattan starts taking frequent detours to Mars after feeling increasingly detached from earthly human beings. But that is also part of the problem: The surface visual wizardry is way too glossy for its own good. The visual panache worked for a movie like 300 where the characters were all archetypes anyway as opposed to more human characters but here, combined with some lackluster acting, it repeatedly keeps us at arm's length to get into the personalities of the superheroes. Additionally, the endless freeze-frame zooms that Snyder employs to show some of the hard R-rated brutal impacts like a punch to the face or a graphic arm-break are getting quite tiresome now after 300. It also ends up actually lessening the full visceral impact of the violence itself and prevents the audience from feeling the physical and psychological pain and, within a story that attempts to explore the troubled and harsher psyche of superheroes, the splatter violence combined with the pyrotechnic flash becomes mindlessly quease-inducing rather than as appropriately unsettling or disturbing as the characters and the audience should be feeling.

It is all unfortunate that the visual whizzes and bangs get in the way of supplying a better dramatic backbone because actually the one thing that was admittedly improved in the film version was the ending. Some of the absurdities have been removed and the choices characters make seem a little bit more logical than in the graphic novel. But, by then, it is too little, too late. We are not fully engaged with these characters and the movie has not allowed us to ponder the moral balance in the brink of nuclear war to make the risky and audacious statement it wants to make at the end.

It may seem rather peculiar that a movie that stays so close to an accomplished work of art could end up being so mediocre and unmemorable but not when one considers what is really required in a real film adaptation. The fact that graphic novels practically provide moving storyboards to film can make a director think it might be enough to just lazily try to replicate the images on screen. True adaptation, faithful or not, is not just about visually filming the descriptions of its source but also about filmmakers providing their own personal interpretation to view the characters and story. Robert Rodriguez in his faithful film version of Sin City got it right because he treated the inherent drama in his operatic pulp story as seriously as his admiration for the pictures prepared for him by its source from Frank Miller. Watchmen, on the other hand, ultimately provides a textbook example of an adaptation where mindlessly faithful reverence of a comic book has drained out the greater potential for a singular, focused dramatic vision.

Reactions to the 2009 Oscars

“Reactions to the 2009 Oscars”

Even with the fresh presiding of host, Hugh Jackman, the Oscars this year was more of a ho-hum affair. You cannot fault Jackman for that, as his opening song and dance number was a welcome contrast to the usual, now somewhat tiresome routine of a stand up comic. The ceremony, however, was still too long and had a sense of overt smugness among celebrities in giving pats on each others’ backs and basically trying to please everyone. It also did not help that there were some disappointing wins based obviously more on general politics than true merit.

But first, some positives: Slumdog Millionaire won the Oscars for Best Picture and Best Director as widely expected as well as six other wins including Best Adapted Screenplay. Considering that the other small number of brilliant movies such as WALL·E, The Dark Knight, The Wrestler and The Visitor were ignored from the Best Picture race, it was the only sensible and valuable movie to win. It was also nice to see the kids from Mumbai getting their big, prestigious Oscar moment when the Best Picture winner was announced and the moment when director Danny Boyle jumped up and down like Tigger was priceless.

Also, as widely predicted, Heath Ledger received the first posthumous Oscar in 32 years for The Dark Knight and I am relieved that they kept the emotionality of the late Heath Ledger’s crowning moment fairly low-key. Heath’s parents and sister calmly came up to the stage to pay the most personal tribute to the distinctive work that he accomplished and no extraneous montage was needed to express the pervading sentiment that a great actor will be missed. And who knows, maybe his truly final onscreen role in Terry Gilliam’s The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus will also be worthy of a nomination next year.

Unfortunately, however, that was about the only thoroughly deserving acting win of the night. I know I am not alone in saying that the most disappointing was certainly Sean Penn in Milk upsetting Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler. Yes, Penn’s work was a technically great piece of acting but was nowhere near as raw or potent as that of Rourke who found the character that he could just commit and throw himself into. The Academy, however, often likes to try to “dictate” their own winners’ speeches, I think, and they wanted Penn to make an Oscar speech that would make a grandstanding political statement for the times. Well, once the political issues and baggage pass by, time will tell which performance in which movie will be better remembered in the years to come.

The Best Actress in a Leading Role went unsurprisingly to Kate Winslet for The Reader. Now she was passed over many times with her past nominations and arguably should have really won for her first nominated role in 1995’s Sense and Sensibility but I do not believe that her performance in The Reader is the one she ought to be remembered for (and I actually feel pretty confident in saying that it will not be). I also know that as consistently great of an actress as she has been, we have not seen the best from her just yet. Personally, equal to wanting to see Rourke up on the Oscar stage perhaps giving a blunt, most politically incorrect speech, I would rather have loved to see Melissa Leo humbly rewarded for her fearless, entrenched performance in Frozen River. If there is an optimistic way to look at this, however, it is that since the Oscar burden is past her at a relatively young age, Winslet will have freer reign to aspire to greater and higher artistic goals. Also, that moment when she asked her father to whistle and got it to be able to wave to her parents was kind of cute.

Penelope Cruz took the Best Supporting Actress prize for Vicky Cristina Barcelona, although I hoped that the Academy would show a little more imagination and depth to appreciate work like Marisa Tomei’s in The Wrestler or Viola Davis in Doubt. I, for one, felt, however, that Cruz did not even give the best performance in the movie itself; the lesser known British actress, Rebecca Hall did in a much less flashier and more understated way and should have received a nomination instead. But Cruz’s performance was compared in some circles to that which might have been given by a younger Sophia Loren and thus was probably deemed friendlier to win. She also had the benefit of a rather recent nomination in a more memorable performance in Pedro Almodovar’s Volver from 2006 and, much like Winslet’s award, this might have been another makeup Oscar that might not be completely deserved (right, Martin Scorsese?).

All the acting categories were presented in the new format of bringing five past winners within the given category and each of them picked one nominee to pay a direct and more personalized compliment speech to. This may have sounded good on paper but without showing the actual clips from the movie and with the unevenness of the quality of the speeches (and also some of the performances), some ended up coming across as sappy while others came as weak praise. Anthony Hopkins’ compliments to Brad Pitt’s work in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button was particularly faint with the only good specific thing he could say about the performance being that he aged backwards (also because it is true). As a result, along with the other categories' presentations showing a prolonged generalized montage of achievements before saying the actual nominees, the whole affair ended up feeling a little more self-congratulatory and dragging the ceremony way too long. Perhaps if they are going to try this again next time, they should also play the clips from the nominees so that they serve as a terse evidential guide on what makes the characters and performances in the respective films deserve their merit.

The host, Hugh Jackman, however, came away largely unscathed from many of the ceremony’s problems and, if anything, the great talent and showmanship he has shown in Broadway gained wider visibility and will earn him more notice. His opening number showcasing a literally cardboard cutout scenarios from the Oscar-nominated films (after cracking a joke that the current state of the economy has caused this downsizing) were quite hilarious from re-enacting the game show from Slumdog Millionaire, putting his face through holes on top of cardboard drawings of reverse aging or replaying the duel of Frost/Nixon in a surprising duet with Anne Hathaway. Then, the skit with Tina Fey and Steve Martin that followed and presented the screenplay Oscars was a comedic jewel, particularly the opening line when Fey said, “It has been said that to write is to live forever,” and Martin replied, “The man who wrote that is dead.”

There were two more distinctly memorable moments, however. One was when James Marsh’s Man on Wire won the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature and Philippe Petit came up on stage to perform a magic trick and then try balancing the Oscar trophy on his chin for several seconds. The other was the “In Memoriam” montage that had the brilliant background addition of Queen Latifah’s beautiful live rendition of “I’ll Be Seeing You.” Numerous significant people passed on in the last year such as Anthony Minghella and Sydney Pollack (who were posthumous nominees as producers of The Reader), Bernie Mac, Charlton Heston, Roy Scheider, Paul Scofield, Stan Winston, Ricardo Montalban, Isaac Hayes and, of course, Paul Newman. Having Queen Latifah’s smoothly legato jazz singing voice was a masterstroke and did wonders for capturing the perfectly reverent tone for the annual tribute.

What really, really fell flat though was the idea of performing the medley of the three songs nominated for Best Original Song right before announcing the winner. I had shivers thinking about how they will awkwardly combine the more Bollywood-styled songs like “Jai Ho” and “O Saya” from Slumdog Millionaire and the slower, more contemplative song, “Down to Earth” from WALL·E (which was performed in the ceremony by John Legend). When they actually shamelessly meshed “Down to Earth” with “Jai Ho” at the end, it was really like fingernails on a chalkboard and I was literally shaking my head in disbelief. They were not just ramming globalization down our throats but the entire globe itself. When they announced the final winner, “Jai Ho,” I was simply glad that it was over and maybe wished the Bollywood dancers and performers would do just that song again to make me forget what just happened.

In total tallies of awards, Slumdog Millionaire scored eight (besides the three major awards, it also won Best Original Score, Best Original Song, Best Editing, Best Cinematography and Best Sound Mixing), Milk scored two with Penn’s win and Best Original Screenplay for Dustin Lance Black and I was relieved that The Curious Case of Benjamin Button ended up taking home just three technical Academy Awards including Art Direction, Makeup and Visual Effects, all of which were deserving despite the movie’s general failure as a sweeping story. I can also understand why Best Sound Mixing ended up being awarded to Slumdog Millionaire because sound mixing is about controlling sound levels and getting that right was crucial to giving a sense of spatial reality in the slums of Mumbai, along with providing a great Bollywood musical number at the end. But why, oh why did WALL·E, which unsurprisingly won the Best Animated Feature Oscar, lose out the Oscar for Sound Editing (which gave The Dark Knight its second Oscar)? I guess that the flashy whiffs, booms and bangs are easier to notice than the carefully timed electronic noises and space object movement that are more subtly buried and notably crucial to the story.

Another shocking result was the awarding of Best Foreign Language Film that went to Departures from Japan, which has been seen by virtually no one in the US other than in the Hawaii Film Festival. I would have loved to see an innovative and daring film like Waltz with Bashir become the first animated film to ever win this category but since I have not seen Departures and the Academy requires voters to have seen all five films in this category, I will wait on full judgment. But I have to say it would have to be quite something to shoulder off Waltz with Bashir or even The Class and with the Academy’s questionable track record of properly judging merit in foreign films, the award leaves me somewhat skeptical to the point of guessing one of the following. In the case of Waltz with Bashir, either (a) they were not ready to award their first foreign film Oscar to an animated film or (b) they did not want to give the Oscar to Israel in light of the political conflict in the Gaza strip. And in the case of The Class, they perhaps did not want to stack up the Oscar along with the Palme d’Or it already received at Cannes.

Apropos to the overall ceremony, at least you have to give the director, Baz Luhrmann some points for trying to make a Broadway-styled Oscar show and I actually hope they try it once again. But I really wish that the Hollywood or government politics are toned way down so that there can be some truly deserving and credible wins and that even the deserving wins do not feel like they have ulterior agendas. Otherwise, if they continue this pattern, maybe people will (and quite possibly should) start to think that just getting recognized with a nomination has more value and merit to it than actually getting up to the Oscar podium, which consequently means that less people may choose to see the Oscar ceremony in the future.