La Vie en Rose

“La Vie en Rose”

France. 2007. Directed by Olivier Dahan. Written by Olivier Dahan and Isabelle Sobelman. Starring: Marion Cotillard, Sylvie Testud, Pascal Greggory, Emmanuelle Seigner, Jean-Paul Rouve, Marc Barbe, Gerard Depardieu and Clotilde Courau.

Rating: ★★★★

The moment I first saw Marion Cotillard as Edith Piaf in the new biopic, “La Vie en Rose,” I could not restrain my sheer astonishment at the transformation. It’s not just the fact that she does some of her own singing, the old-age makeup, her frazzled, thinning hair or the high-pitched, sassy vocal tics that she has down pat but really the way she holds her body in perfect slouched stillness. I thought I could not see more amazing embodiments of real-life singers than Jamie Foxx as Ray Charles or Joaquin Phoenix as Johnny Cash but I thought wrong.

Olivier Dahan’s “La Vie en Rose” is a masterful, ambitious biopic because it abandons any sense of chronology to tell its compelling story of the tiny but penetrating French singer. This strategy of jumping back and forth through time has been panned by some but I think that it’s the film’s most audacious merit. Biographical films that tell their icons’ stories in chronology get criticized for feeling disjointed anyway because a movie cannot possibly entail an entire lifetime and must leave gaps in between. So why not tell the story like a series of fractured recollections and memories, as we all do our own?

The strategy is employed with such thematic fluidity as it reflects Edith Piaf herself, who lived almost entirely for the moment as everything around her was chaotic and fleeting. When she was a child, her street singer mother abandoned her with her circus performer father. He left her with his own mother who ran a brothel, where she somehow found a real parental figure when a working prostitute, Titine (Emmanuelle Seigner) adopted her. Her father then took her back when he needed her for his circus act.

Most great artists are cited as born performers. This movie, on the other hand, painfully shows that Edith was more of a thorough bred performer from childhood who was basically ordered to conjure up some talent to display at every turn. Thankfully, she was also a true, born singer. When her father commands her during a street circus act, she sings the French national anthem and the crowds are amazed at her resonant, penetrating voice. The fact that she was raised this way, however, brings an extra sadness to her choral performances, where the audience cheering is almost like a Pavlovian call for her.

The original French title, “La Môme” refers to the nickname given to her after her talent is spotted literally on the streets (though the international title, “La Vie En Rose,” which is derived from one of her famous songs and translates loosely to “My Life as a Rose,” is equally meaningful). After years of singing on the street to make a meager living until her early 20s, she is discovered by an impresario named Louis Leplée (Gerard Depardieu). Impressed with her singing, Leplée gives the petite, 4’8” dynamo singer the name, "La Mome Piaf," which means “the kid sparrow.” Other figures soon discover her including Raymond Asso (Marc Barbe), who coldly and forcefully trains her not to merely sing the words but enunciate them with real heart and emotion. The rest then became history as she sang all across Paris and New York City and rose to become arguably the most renowned French singer of the 20th century (though more people in the United States need to rediscover her music).

In a way, it’s a wonder how Edith was able to muster her strength to live her life in her own terms despite that happiness and sorrow frequently intertwined with each other as she fell in love with many people in her life (she had numerous lovers and married twice). There is one man in the film she proclaims to be her true love, the famous boxer, Marcel Cerdan (Jean-Pierre Martins), despite that he was married with kids. Yet, his flight to come to New York presumably at her insistence crashed. The three-minute long take sequence where she assimilates the news and breaks down is as incredibly heartbreaking as it is technically astonishing in the way it captures his presence floating in and out of her frame of mind.

The key to understanding the film’s structure really comes full circle in the film’s closing song, Piaf’s famous “Non, je ne regrette rien,” which means “No, I regret nothing.” Despite her chaotic life, no one could powerfully imbue meaning into those words like Piaf could. As the song’s lyrics go, after all the joy and grief, the good and the bad, she could still forget the past and carry on for the moment until her premature death at 47 (she looked to be in her 70s by that time presumably due to her drug addiction and her widely varying age appearances are flawlessly rendered throughout in the makeup).

I come back to Marion Cotillard who looms as a towering center through all these emotional upheavals. Anything less than brilliant acting from her would have robbed the film of its personal, biographical core and Dahan judged correctly to trust that he could circle his fractured events around her performance. Here is a movie worthy to live on along with the astounding, piercing legacy of music that Piaf left behind.

Hairspray

“Hairspray”

USA. 2007. Directed by Adam Shankman. Screenplay by Leslie Dixon. Based on the 1988 John Waters film and the musical by Mark O’Donnell. Starring: Nikki Blonsky, John Travolta, Amanda Bynes, Michelle Pfeiffer, Christopher Walken, Zac Efron, Elijah Kelley, James Marsden, Taylor Parks and Queen Latifah.

Rating: ★★★½

Remakes are coming in more than anticipatory quantities these days but sometimes the most pleasant kind of surprise is to see a familiar formula polished to sizzle and pop off the screen. “Hairspray” is such an example, as it adds spit and shine to craft a dazzling entertainment. All it wants to do is get our toes tapping and it does just that wonderfully with naivete and innocence.

This adaptation of the popular Broadway musical based on the 1988 John Waters cult hit plays like a passing of the baton from the veteran generation to the stars of the future. On the one hand, it is a reunion of the musical dancers of yesteryear like John Travolta, Michelle Pfeiffer and Christopher Walken. And just like the original did for Ricki Lake, it creates star-making roles for Nikki Blonsky, Zac Efron and Elijah Kelley.

The film’s opening number, “Good Morning, Baltimore” by Blonsky as Tracy Turnblad immediately gets us bouncy as it establishes the cheerful, pleasingly plump teenager who looks at life in 1962 with such sunny optimism. She can’t wait for the ennui of her school day to be over to go home and watch the Corny Collins Show with her best friend, Penny Pingleton (Amanda Bynes).

No one including Tracy’s mother, Edna (John Travolta in drag) would think that Tracy could fulfill her dream of being on the famed TV show but that doesn’t stop her. She initially gets turned down by the villainous manager of the show, Velma Von Tussle (deliciously played by Michelle Pfeiffer). But when one of the high school show performers, Link Larkin (Zac Efron) is impressed by her dance moves with the African-American dancers led by Seaweed (Elijah Kelley), he gets her back on the audition and the host, Corny Collins (James Marsden) gets her on the show.

The most enduring appeal of the material is the way it treats its complex subjects of prejudice against race and weight with wide-eyed idealism in its heart and music. Being the optimist to look on the brighter side, Tracy simply looks at diversity with youthful curiosity, not indifference, as she willingly initiates a protest to eliminate having Negro Days on the show led by Maybelle (Queen Latifah) and integrate the races (“If we can’t dance together, we’ll march,” she says to Maybelle). Even its attacks on those who are indifferent are done without an ounce of cynicism.

Most people are not aware of director Adam Shankman’s background as a dance choreographer. Here he has finally found a project to realize his talent. He’s got the ripe source material from Mark O’Donnell’s musical and the lyrics and music from Marc Shaiman and pulls out all the stops to direct and move smoothly through the meticulous, enthusiastic dance numbers.

Nikki Blonsky is simply dynamite in the lead role and exudes endless amounts of energy and verve, as do her equally talented teenage counterparts, Zac Efron, Elijah Kelley and Taylor Parks as Seaweed’s younger sister. They surely must have gotten some tips from a veteran like John Travolta, who shows that he's still got it 30 years after “Saturday Night Fever” even while convincingly playing a woman under the fat suit. Meanwhile, Christopher Walken, as Tracy’s father, moves and sings only as Walken can when not giving quiet words of encouragement to Tracy on the side or struggling to get off the Whoopee Cushion that makes farting-like noises. His character does take an unnecessary detour in him trying to impress Pfeiffer in his store called the “Hardy Har Har,” but even this is redeemed by a jazzy number he performs with Travolta as he make amends. And watch for an irreverent cameo by John Waters towards the beginning and fleeting ones by Ricki Lake and Pia Zadora.

The story is familiar to most people and those who are not will know more or less where it will end up but “Hairspray” almost accepts the predictability as a challenge to renew. What it reminds us more than anything else is the enormous amount of human skill and effort required to produce just one effect: a big, cheeky smile on our faces. It’s all in the do.

A Mighty Heart

“A Mighty Heart”

USA. 2007. Directed by Michael Winterbottom. Screenplay by John Orloff. Based on the book by Mariane Pearl. Starring: Angelina Jolie, Dan Futterman, Irfan Khan, Will Patton, Archie Panjabi and Denis O’Hare.

Rating: ★★★½

Everyone watched the news as it happened in January 2002. A Wall Street reporter named Daniel Pearl went out to interview an Al Qaeda terrorist and was kidnapped. An international operation was launched to bring him back. Then the video came…

Michael Winterbottom’s “A Mighty Heart,” which is based on the personal memoirs written by Daniel’s wife, Mariane Pearl, is valuable in showing what a headstrong, resilient woman Mariane was through these exhaustive events. It is far too easy to brush aside the tragic event as just another news headline. What a movie like this crucially does is to remind us of the effects it has to the people involved and what character it brings out.

The movie begins with a voiceover narration by Mariane (Angelina Jolie) explaining their work as journalists in Karachi, Pakistan and how Daniel (Dan Futterman) wanted to interview one last person, Sheikh Gilani before leaving. He promised to come home by 9 p.m. After there is no word from Daniel, Mariane and her friend, Asra (Archie Panjabi) call the authorities including the Captain (Irfan Khan, in a great performance) and Agent Bennett (Will Patton) and the Pearl home is turned into an intelligence base.

Director Michael Winterbottom deliberately chooses not to pump up the tension to excess levels in detailing the search for Daniel Pearl. He shoots his film in a straightforward documentary style as he did in his previous real-life based films such as “In This World” and the film is strongest in the second act when it turns into a police procedural of sifting through the terrible intricacies of terrorist networks around the country and across the globe. The writer, John Orloff’s screenplay is always clear in following through the trail of calls from Daniel’s phone to his contact to the next contact and so on. The sad thing about the whole ordeal is that, I think, the closer the intelligence operatives and police officers got to the main suspect via interrogations and even tortures, the more compelled the terrorists became to ultimately send a message of fear through the taping of his beheading.

The film’s success above all depends on the precise, measured performance delivered by Angelina Jolie. I have to say I have never been the greatest fan of Jolie after she got typecast in the dreadful “Tomb Raider” films and all the unnecessary camera mugging in and out of the big screen. But she is a real actress, as her Oscar-winning role in “Girl, Interrupted” abundantly proved. There has been some controversy regarding a Caucasian woman playing a person of mixed race (Mariane is of Afro-Cuban and Dutch ancestry), but whatever the case, I can say Jolie truly disappears into her role and lets the strength of Mariane Pearl shine through.

The most remarkable attribute about Mariane, who was pregnant at the time, is the calm resilience she maintained through the frustration of the investigation. There are a couple of moments when she flakes off a tear but she keeps a restrained, courageous front on the outside perhaps to not burden the Pakistani and American operatives who are already stressed to bring Danny home. It is heartbreaking to see how she maintained hope upon receiving pictures of her husband from the terrorists, since we already know the ultimate outcome of the situation. This makes her ultimate emotional breakdown more devastating when she finally hears the tragic news.

The movie is tasteful in not explicitly showing what ultimately happened to Daniel Pearl, as it should be. Mariane’s reaction to the tragic event is what stays with me most. When an interviewer asks whether she has seen the video, she sharply replies, “Have you no decency?” (A detail that is left out of the movie is her fight against CBS, which tried to broadcast the video of Daniel’s death). She makes clear in interviews the loss she feels but humbly never singles herself out to be a tragic heroine. She knows of the 230 other journalists who were killed during the time of Pearl’s kidnapping and empathetically understands that terrorism is not just a personal issue but a global one (as I write this, I am thinking of the sad current plight of the South Korean missionaries who were kidnapped on July 20, 2007 in Afghanistan).

Within Mariane’s response to the incident, a moral victory can be claimed over the terrorists who completely lack common sense and choose cowardly tactics like harming an innocent. To witness a humble person who thinks with such sense and moral reason is what makes “A Mighty Heart” strangely uplifting. And it is how Daniel Pearl himself would want to be remembered.

Sicko

“Sicko”

USA. 2007. Documentary written and directed by Michael Moore.

Rating: ★★★½

I’ll readily admit that I’m not a big fan of Michael Moore. He does make documentaries that are eye-opening but also makes them too sarcastic and manipulative with culturally familiar music and images to make more commercially accessible and entertaining as in “Bowling for Columbine” and “Fahrenheit 9/11." And everyone knows he doesn’t always impart the balance and objectivity of a true documentarian and some of his points of argument have to be taken with a large grain of salt.

Those things are also true in his latest film, “Sicko,” a scathing attack on the American health care system. But they didn’t bother me much with this film. You would have to be an ignorant fool to think that the health care system isn’t a disaster and there is no denying that his new documentary incites anger and outrage and is a brutally effective wake-up call for change. Moore’s best documentaries such as “Roger & Me” have a noticeably sincere heart at their core and “Sicko” is his best work since that one because it has that quality, too, as it opens with troubling anecdotes of various real-life Americans who have been devastated by health insurance companies.

First, we meet the Smiths, a couple who had good jobs and lived a comfortable life until Jim had three heart attacks and Donna had cancer. Now, after paying hefty medical bills and filing for bankruptcy, they are forced to move into a small basement bedroom in their daughter’s home. Then there is another man who accidentally severed his middle and ring fingers while working with his saw and he had to choose which finger to reattach based on monetary value. In the film’s most disturbing scene, we see a patient in a hospital gown literally dumped on the side of the road because the hospital rejected them after they could not pay. They’re some of the 50 million people in America who don’t have coverage on health insurance.

The film presents much information about the way that health care works in America. This includes interviews with workers in health insurance companies such as one who breaks down and cries at the thought of turning down a patient whom she had to deny according to company policy despite knowing that the patient had a life-threatening condition. There is also a clip of Dr. Peeno, who made a public hearing on May 30, 1996 in front of the House of Representatives about how she had to deny a patient “a necessary operation that could have saved his life,” again according to company policy.

All this essentially highlights that the insurance companies and drug companies are just another group of privatized business enterprises. Businesses must make profit and to make billions of dollars, they can only do it one way: Charge hefty sums of money from the rich and deny claims for those who can’t afford it. Were insurance companies always made for profit? Moore presents a tape from the Oval Office of Nixon’s initiation of the original Kaiser plan for HMOs from 1971 and Nixon himself says, “It’s for profit.”

So should health care be made universal by the government like it is in other countries? The politicians during the time of the red scare didn't think so, fearing the evil of “Socialized Medicine” (this is one of the points where Moore’s withering sarcasm kicks in). Yet, as Moore correctly points out, the fire department, the police and the mailing system are all universal. And for all the talk by the politicians and the media trying to persuade about the evils of “socialized medicine” taking away the freedom to receive treatment, which system turns down more patients and actually takes away that freedom?

Moore doesn’t give any easy solutions to the issues he raises. He does, however, provide one sound voice of reason through Tony Benn, a former Member of British Parliament, which drew wide applause from the audience I was watching with. Benn philosophically argues, “Choice depends on the freedom to choose and if you’re shackled, you don’t have the freedom to choose.” He then adds, “The people in debt become hopeless and hopeless people don’t vote and I think if the poor came out and represented their interests, there would be a true democratic revolution.” Other American conservatives in the movie agree and argue for universal health care, much to the liberal Moore’s shock.

Moore visits other countries such as Canada, France, U.K. and Cuba and the generally rosy portraits of these countries is where I would take some of that grain of salt. Yes, they have universally free health care, medications require very little payment (in the U.K., all medications cost 6.65 pounds no matter what the prescription) and life expectancies are statistically longer. But those countries' citizens pay a much higher percentage of their income in taxes. Yes, it is baffling that the richest country in the world is only ranked 37th in world health care, behind France (1st), U.K. (18th) and Canada (30th). But I had to do some research myself afterwards to find that Cuba ranks 39th, below the United States.

However, that doesn’t take away from the fact that the 9/11 volunteer workers who bravely helped out on that fateful day cannot receive treatment because they were not on the government payroll. This forms the climax of the movie when Moore takes people to Guantanamo Bay where the prisoners including some Al Qaeda terrorists receive equal health care within the prison. Of course, they are rejected and they illegally move to Cuba where they apparently receive free health care and cheap medication. This whole sequence does feel a little too much like performance art but the point is valid and clear: the noble volunteer workers who worked to save lives should receive better health coverage than the terrorists who destroyed life.

It is true that Moore’s film is a little too biased and upfront in its views and therefore flawed as a documentary. But aren’t we all human beings and therefore flawed as well? And isn’t it a basic human right for help to come to the sick and needy? Moore’s main argument in “Sicko” is that it’s high time that the people involved in the health care system realize that if they haven't already.

Days of Glory

“Days of Glory”

Algeria/France. 2006. Directed by Rachid Bouchareb. Written by Rachid Bouchareb and Olivier Lorelle. Starring: Jamel Debbouze, Roschdy Zern, Samy Naceri, Sami Bouajila, Bernard Blancan, Aurelie Eltvedt and Mathieu Simonet.

Rating: ★★★½

“Days of Glory” is a valuable film for many reasons. Chief among them is that it recognizes the Algerian men who fought with the French army to fend off the Nazi resistance. They did all this despite being discriminated against and basically treated as men of a political slave colony to France.

This kind of similar prejudice is clearly not uncommon throughout history, no less in the United States, which took a long time before finally recognizing the first African-American regiment in the Civil War, as depicted in Edward Zwick’s wonderful “Glory.” The heroes in this film, directed by Frenchman Rachid Bouchareb, are even more unfortunate, as they were not even really fighting for their true nationality.

In its filmmaking approach, Bouchareb’s film is more in line with the older WWII films like “All Quiet on the Western Front” rather than modern war films because it is not about the battles but about forgotten heroes. Bouchareb correctly judged that putting the hyper-realism of gruesome dismemberment would actually take away from the focus on the social injustice suffered by these men.

The opening scene shows Said Otmari (Jamel Debbouze) wanting to go off to fight the war before his mother stops him. She tells him that she would rather live in extreme poverty rather than lose her son. When she asks him why he wants to go, he can’t give a definite answer but simply hugs her and goes to fight anyway.

The movie is smart enough to know that it cannot really explain the motivation of a man defending a country that has colonized and oppressed his own, though it does indicate that a few people did it just for the money. That the film does not spell out much of its buried messages and feelings in words becomes a subtle strength throughout the film. Some may argue that the film does not explain enough but I personally appreciated how the film was not dialogue-heavy and how the subplots were without pattern and cliché.

One of the most refreshingly moving subplots is the quiet love affair between one of the soldiers, Messaoud Souni (Roschdy Zem) and Irène (Aurelie Eltvedt), whom he meets during a soldiers’ parade in France. Neither person really says a word to each other upon first meeting but we only need to see their exchange of glances to know they’ve fallen for each other. When their romantic interlude in the bedroom ends with a quiet embrace, it speaks volumes more than a typical, gratuitous love scene would have. If others around them were as unprejudiced as they are…

Of course, the truth was far from for the Algerians including Said, Messaoud, Yassir (Samy Naceri) and Abdelkader (Sami Bouajila) who did not receive the privileges French infantrymen had including relays back to their home and opportunities for military promotion. And the discrimination was not only according to ethnicity but also skin color. There is a cruel moment when the soldiers are all receiving food and a French chef refuses to let a dark-skinned soldier take a tomato. After much argument and frustration, in a symbolic, powerful moment, one of them finally viciously makes his point of fraternity by crushing the bucket of red tomatoes in the mud.

All of this leads to a pivotal battle reminiscent of the bridge scene from “Saving Private Ryan.” Four of the soldiers run into an ambushed front and find that they must protect a group of French country men. Because they choose to protect the country despite all the unfair treatment and the lack of recognition, the movie becomes a quiet study of altruism as well as heroism. For all the mistreatment done to them by their colonizing country, they choose to nonetheless serve it patriotically by humbly protecting the innocent people in it.

The closing captions in the end brutally indict the French government, which cut off pensions to the North African veterans in 1959 and have been lazy about following up on a court order to restore them in 2002. Thankfully, after the movie was screened at the Cannes Film Festival in 2006, the government responded and the film took on historical importance as well as artistic value, as it precipitated the restoration of equal pensions. Movies like “Days of Glory” are a testament to the power of cinema.

Note: The original French title is "Indigènes," which translates to indigenous, a title the North African soldiers found debasing and did not want to be called.

Because I Said So

“Because I Said So”

USA. 2007. Directed by Michael Lehman. Written by Karen Leigh Hopkins and Jessie Nelson. Starring: Diane Keaton, Mandy Moore, Gabriel Macht, Tom Everett Scott, Lauren Graham, Piper Perabo and Stephen Collins.

Rating: ★½

“Because I Said So” opens with a black-and-white montage of various loving mothers and daughters hugging and embracing each other. I’ll bet that they would resent their inclusion into this film if they actually saw this supposed romantic comedy. A movie this inept and unrealistically awful about parent-child relationships doesn't deserve to have such a loving montage.

The tagline of the movie says, “She’s just your normal, overprotective, overbearing, over-the-top mother” to describe Daphne Wilder (Diane Keaton). I would agree with all of that except that she is anything but normal. She is all of the other things though to the point that it is a wonder that her daughters, Maggie (Lauren Graham), Mae (Piper Perabo) and Milly (Mandy Moore) stayed sane enough for so long.

The story exists in some strange, discordant time travel divide. On the one hand, the movie wants to show how hip it is by having the youngest daughter, Milly announcing to Daphne that she’s about to sleep with someone she may be related to. I was curiously thinking it time traveled back to the the age of the Russian royal family that had consanguine marriages.

On the other hand, there is Daphne’s antiquated thinking that Milly is unhappy despite her great career success because she has not yet met her life partner and married at 25. Just how oppressive is Daphne to find a suitor for her daughter? She comes to see her daughter right before her date and then sticks around to tail her driving with her date. Moreover, she actually puts out a personal Internet ad as a mother looking for a good match for her daughter. At this point, I looked for indications that this movie was meant to be taken as a farce but alas, it’s sadly not. And, of course, all the potential rejects that answer are nothing but unpleasant and unfunny stock cliches.

Do we have to be told that she is eventually going to meet two potentials for her daughter: the right guy and the wrong guy? The one she approves of is Jason (Tom Everett Scott), a successful architect who seems to have it all. The one who observes with amusement to all this is Johnny (Gabriel Macht), a guitar player and teacher who apparently doesn’t pass Daphne’s litmus test. No points for guessing which guy is which.

So Milly gets set up with Jason thanks to her mother but coincidence of all coincidences, she somehow runs into Johnny in the street and is smitten with him as well. This is where the movie turns from annoying to just plain sour, as Milly starts dating both guys simultaneously. And oh yeah, because the movie wants to show how “modern” it is about sexuality, it has her kissing and sleeping with both guys after, I think, her first dates with them. Suddenly, I am thinking that this is not about a wrong guy, right guy decision anymore but about two guys who don’t deserve to be played by a selfish brat. That is particularly true about Macht, who is the only one who survives this train wreck and at one point does the only sensible, if still clichéd thing to do with Milly: walk.

What is most dismaying about this film is not so much the regressive thinking the movie has about women (shocking considering that two women wrote the screenplay) but more that all the characters are just as superficial and egocentric as the title suggests. There is truth in the saying that mother knows best but a wise parent knows when to see their own mistakes and knows when to let go, particularly when the child is 25 already. Daphne lacks the capacity to do both and is only tyrannical about enforcing her opinion of what she feels is right for her daughter. Maybe it is no surprise that she raised an equally narcissistic daughter like Milly. With all that, they don't deserve the sugar-syrupy ending the movie eventually tacks on.

I often observe that when Hollywood strikes gold with a certain image, it ends up making fool’s gold imitations for the next 10 years. That would accurately explain Diane Keaton who gave an Oscar^®-nominated performance as a glowing woman in her 50s in “Something’s Gotta Give” and is now relegated to playing a sloppy, pale shadow of that here. Blame it on the screenwriters, the director or Keaton, take your pick. As for Mandy Moore, I kept thinking of her breakout performance in the underrated "A Walk to Remember" as a defense mechanism against this most unwise career choice of hers.

Speaking of “A Walk to Remember,” that movie had a moving wedding scene where Moore's character's minister father, played by Peter Coyote, quoted Corinthians 13 saying, “Love is patient, love is kind. It is never jealous, it does not boast, it is not proud.” I suggest that the people behind “Because I Said So” watch that scene or read the passage and get an idea of what love really is, parental or romantic.

Breach

“Breach”

USA. 2007. Directed by Billy Ray. Story by Adam Mazer and William Rotko. Screenplay by Adam Mazer, William Rotko and Billy Ray. Starring: Chris Cooper, Ryan Philippe, Laura Linney, Caroline Dhavernas, Gary Cole and Dennis Haysbert.

Rating: ★★★

“Breach” opens with an archival news clip from February 2001 of Attorney General Ashcroft announcing in public that Robert Hanssen, who was responsible for the greatest security breach in United States history, has just been captured. The irony in the film is that it takes yet another thicket of deception to finally arrive at that fact. In the world of espionage and intelligence, the movie seems to suggest, there are only lies and even more lies and the only thing that crucially matters in the end is which side those lies are protecting.

Some people, particularly those who are not familiar with the original story, will feel that the film loses some of its suspense because it reveals the capture of Hanssen from the very start. But this crucial piece of information is necessary in a movie that really uses the espionage thriller to build an effective morality play. Most spy thrillers show the layers of intrigue and intricacies in the inception and development of an espionage mission. This film shows the process of how those layers must be broken down to capture a cunning traitor and the insurmountable toll it takes on the people involved.

We are first introduced to Eric O’Neill (Ryan Philippe), an FBI trainee with aspirations of becoming an agent. He starts out doing mostly surveillance work on suspected arms dealers and terrorists but FBI agent supervisor Kate Burroughs (Laura Linney) calls him in on a seemingly mundane assignment: to watch on Robert Hanssen (Chris Cooper) as his clerk and detect any peculiarities including his suspected sexual deviance. Eric at first cannot understand the purpose of his assignment, as he sees nothing wrong with Hanssen who religiously goes to Catholic Church and is a family man with his wife, Bonnie (Kathleen Quinlan) and his kids. That is, until Kate, along with fellow agents, Rich Garces (Gary Cole) and Dan Plesac (Dennis Haysbert), finally informs him that he is believed to be a double agent who has been selling secrets to the Russians for years.

From this point on, the movie develops into a cat-and-mouse duel between two men throwing lies after lies like spears. Cooper, who can beguile and project pain at turns in the blink of an eye, is a good choice for Hanssen, a treacherous man who has so comfortably settled himself and everyone he knows into his self-righteous web of deceit. Philippe’s role is equally tricky as the younger supposed clerk and protégé who must dig for the truth in his mark while giving back very little of his own. Their interplay crackles in some effective, suspenseful scenes such as when Eric has to make up a consistent story to keep Hanssen from going back to his car that the FBI agents are searching through for incriminating evidence.

What makes the film more interesting is how Eric fools Hanssen by tapping into a common human weakness: guilt. Being a churchgoer, Hanssen, despite his double life, does have a grasp and understanding of what guilt is. What we don’t know and the movie wisely doesn’t hint at is which part of his double life he feels penitent about when he later breaks down and cries while praying at a confessional.

Eric’s line of work inevitably starts to affect his marriage with Julianna (Caroline Dhavernas), no less because she is frustrated with Hanssen’s insistence on bringing the couple to church and imposing their religious beliefs on them. Moreover, his wall of secrecy builds an ever greater distance from his wife and his professional life spills over into his personal life in unexpected ways. After a series of frustrations and concerns on her part, there is a surprising scene where he himself is duped by her into revealing a secret about Hanssen. If honesty is supposed to be the best policy within a marriage, the movie seems to argue that people who work in intelligence live with bucking that trend or turn it into a game of mistrust.

The director is Billy Ray, whose previous effort, “Shattered Glass” was about a group of honest journalists trying to sniff out a suave liar in their midst. The heroes in “Breach” are devoted people who must live in a web of deceit everyday so that the country’s citizens can make an honest living. And when they go home and pray, they have no idea how much deception to admit to or what they really feel sorry about.

White Hunter Black Heart

“White Hunter Black Heart”

USA. 1990. Directed by Clint Eastwood. Screenplay by Peter Viertel, James Bridges and Burt Kennedy. Based on the novel by Peter Viertel. Starring: Clint Eastwood, Jeff Fahey, George Dzundza, Charlotte Cornwell and Norman Lumsden.

Rating: ★★★

There is a theory that a truly great film director has to be obstinate and uncompromising to any opinion or advice anyone else on the film set would have, reasonable or not. Think about a director like Stanley Kubrick who was such a perfectionist that infamously required over 100 takes of the same scene (actor Jack Nicholson who worked with him on “The Shining” refused to work on any of his films ever since). John Huston was another prime example, a man whom most people cited as being very difficult to work with. Paul Newman once described him as an “eccentric’s eccentric.” Yet somehow he managed to make great films like “The Maltese Falcon” to be admired by many for decades to come.

When he was scouting for locations in Congo and Uganda for the shooting of his famous 1951 classic, “The African Queen,” he had brought along Peter Viertel to Congo and Uganda as a script doctor to accompany him. Viertel eventually published a fictionalized novel based on the experience called, “White Hunter, Black Heart.” The account was a brutal, unflattering portrait of a director who got distracted from actually making a film in Uganda to indulge in his infatuation with hunting down an elephant.

Bringing this novel to the big screen would seem of no interest to Clint Eastwood, who, before this film, had completed playing Dirty Harry Callahan in “The Dead Pool” from 1988. That is perhaps why audiences could not buy him directing himself playing a character based on Huston in “White Hunter, Black Heart” from 1990. That is a shame because the movie marked a significant shift in Eastwood’s career from playing gruff, no-nonsense antiheroes like Dirty Harry and The Man with No Name to deconstructing that very persona in the movies he has directed himself in. Eastwood has been quoted as saying that he personally hates violence and his directorial efforts since then have attempted to present an anti-violence argument.

For Eastwood to play a larger than life legend like John Huston (the character’s name has been changed to John Wilson in the film) must have required some courage. It is a daunting challenge for an icon to play another icon and some may be a little jarred by Eastwood’s imitation of Huston’s swagger and mannerisms in the opening scenes. But it handsomely pays off in a complex performance that takes his typical gruff, do-as-he-wants persona and deprives it of the masculine heroics.

The beginning scenes of the movie feel a little disjointed and do take a while to take form. We first see Pete Verrill (Jeff Fahey), the Peter Viertel counterpart, meet Wilson in his large mansion in London to discuss the script and write the final draft. The various scenes work well freestanding, including one where Wilson stubbornly insists on his need to shoot in Africa for authenticity in front of the film’s producer, Paul Landers (George Dzundza) and the financiers. Yet somehow the expository moments of Wilson taking Verrill under his wing to lavish dinners lack cohesion.

Once they move to Congo and Uganda, the film takes shape into a journey of obsession. Wilson becomes entranced with the thought of killing an elephant, despite repeated warnings that they are already behind schedule on the film’s shooting. Verrill serves as the crucial observer and the voice of reason. Not that Wilson really ever cares to listen, until it may be too late.

There is a scene early in the film that immediately lets us know that this is not going to be any kind of exciting action film or safari adventure. Wilson is mad at a British man who is being racist at a Ugandan waiter and picks a fight with him. We first see him winning until the tables quickly get turned and he gets pummeled to a pulp. This sets up the rest of the film, which strips away the heroics and the potential for cathartic release of violence found typically in Eastwood’s action pictures.

Why is Wilson so bent on bagging an elephant? When Verrill finally confronts him, he does give an answer, which I won’t reveal, except to say that it does not make his obsession any more comprehensible or justifiable to Verrill, Landers or anyone else. The buried implication is that a deep obsession by nature obliterates any sense of motive or purpose, if it ever existed at all.

“White Hunter, Black Heart” is not quite up there with Clint Eastwood’s great films like “Unforgiven” and “Letters from Iwo Jima” but it stands as one of his most interesting and ambitious efforts. It also serves as a key to understanding Eastwood himself, who has made a prestigious, highly personalized career from bucking his familiar character trends of yesteryear while working almost completely outside the normal Hollywood studio system. He has indeed continued to build an impressive resume as a filmmaker and he will perhaps also be remembered as a legendary director, just like Huston.

Norbit

“Norbit”

USA. 2007. Directed by Brian Robbins. Story by Eddie Murphy and Charles Q. Murphy. Screenplay by Eddie Murphy, Charles Q. Murphy, Jay Scherick and David Ronn. Starring: Eddie Murphy, Thandie Newton, Terry Crews, Clifton Powell and Cuba Gooding, Jr.

Rating: ½

“Norbit” is one of the most oddly unpleasant films I’ve ever seen and that’s saying a lot considering the number of Eddie Murphy bombs that have come out in recent years. It’s so bad and out of touch with human nature that it plays like a minstrel show of the ugliest stereotypes gone horribly out of control. If you’re looking for most everything that’s wrong with the Hollywood studio system these days and Murphy’s periodic lapses into gross excess, you’ll find it here.

So “The Nutty Professor” made money because they made a funny, entertaining film out of putting Eddie Murphy playing different characters in a fat suit. So let’s get the most awesome makeup artists in Hollywood and convincingly dress Murphy in a fat suit again – great idea, right? The problem with many Hollywood studio executives is that they learn the words but never study the music. All great comedians instinctively know that appearance alone is not funny and the material, not the delivery, should primarily elicit the laughs. Murphy himself has understood this idea and realized his potential in films such as “The Nutty Professor" and "Coming to America" but not here.

As I watched this completely laugh-proof, alleged comedy, I could almost imagine the four writers of this film including Murphy himself having a committee meeting, brainstorming every single fodder for broad stereotyping on a chalkboard and testing its limits to offend and disgust. Let’s see what we can think of: obese people, Asians, pimps, children, old people and, just to be sure, women, too. This may sound like I’m just trying to get all politically correct but the movie’s most egregious offense is that all the jokes, PC or not, are just ugly and unfunny.

Every scene from the opening of the title character, Norbit’s grotesque childhood of being adopted by his Chinese restaurant owner, Mr. Wong to the last frame of the shrill, overweight Rasputia swinging a shovel around in a brawl is just flat, dull and depressing. Eddie Murphy, of course, plays all these characters, although they are not so much performances as licenses for cheap shots. It is all the more distressing to watch Murphy fumbling and bumbling about in these roles because I know deep down inside he is an intelligent individual who’s just made a series of unfortunate decisions here.

Norbit has no friends as a kid other than Kate and they share a kind of sweet puppy love. You know your movie is in trouble when this little 2-minute montage is the best and sweetest thing your movie has to offer. Well, minus the bit where the two kids are shown pooping next to each other in adjacent toilets. Try explaining that to the child actors…

Of course, Kate goes away and, enter, the most aggressively obnoxious character in the film, Rasputia. She becomes Norbit’s girlfriend literally by brute force – on others who tease Norbit and Norbit himself. As adults, Norbit and Rasputia tie the knot and Rasputia turns out to be a real witch of a wife. Rasputia's equally brutish brothers also terrorize Norbit when not taking every opportunity to call a woman they see a "ho" or the profane word that rhymes with "witch."

In other insulting comedies, the cheap, humorless gags on Rasputia’s girth and weight (including the beaten down, "emptying the pool in one splash" joke) would be the cause of ruin, but in “Norbit,” they are the least of the film’s problems. This film goes several steps further to include those jokes as part of Rasputia’s overall diabolical, oppressive nature, including cheating on Norbit at will and preventing him from ever leaving by crushing him physically and emotionally. This is not ugly caricature drawing, but mean-spirited squashing of human decency.

Kate the nice girl, now played by Thandie Newton, comes back into Norbit’s life and is obviously his highway to happiness. To be fair, Murphy and Newton do have a couple of moments of sweetness together, but everything around them is so aggressively offensive that you look for whether even these scenes are meant as shallow jokes. Do I have to make a point of the fact that Kate is model-thin? No, because Rasputia and the movie do it already, in yet another bitter diatribe towards skinny people, which I guess is meant to be a counterattack to all the fat jokes the filmmakers aim at Rasputia. Not that it makes it any less awful or unfunny…

So will Norbit be able to free himself of Rasputia’s clutches? Will he be able to prevent Kate from marrying that jerk of a boyfriend and get her back? Am I supposed to focus enough to care when I’m rolling my eyes most of the time? I could go on and on, but no, I would like to stop. I don’t want to devote more thought and energy to this piece of junk than its makers did.

Transformers

“Transformers”

USA. 2007. Directed by Michael Bay. Story by John Rogers, Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman. Screenplay by Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman. Starring: Shia LaBeouf, Megan Fox, Josh Duhamel, Tyrese Gibson, Rachael Taylor, Anthony Anderson and Jon Voight.

Rating: ★★½

Considering that “Transformers” is basically an explosive battle between huge, metallic robots, it is no surprise that Michael Bay decided to direct the live-action version. Being a Bay film, several things go without saying – blue-tinged cinematography, very frenetic editing, and lots of metallic toys from robots to the usual cars, semis and other vehicles blown up for good measure. To put it succinctly, Bay is not exactly into being subtle.

In “Transformers,” he certainly uses every arsenal of his technical proficiency at pyrotechnics to elevate a children’s cartoon to the level of great summer entertainment. But alas, he doesn’t quite reach the mark. There is much to be said about the astonishing visual effects on display and his story is certainly miles better than that of junk like “Armageddon,” “Pearl Harbor” and “Bad Boys II.” It’s too bad that Bay has still not realized that his style of mindless, jarring explosions can be very deadening and boring.

For those who are not familiar with the toys, the comic books or cartoon show, the opening voiceover narration gets everybody up to speed about the intergalactic war between two teams of extraterrestrial, transforming robots – the Autobots, the good, and the Decepticons, the bad. They have fought for years for a powerful hybercube known as the Allspark, which can be used to transform other metallic objects and technologies to their own making. Unfortunately for humanity, that cube has landed on Earth and the Decepticons arrive. One of them that stealthily comes in as a military chopper launches a massive, deadly attack on a military base, leaving only Capt. Lennox (Josh Duhamel) and very few others as survivors. In response, the secretary of defense (Jon Voight) recruits a group of computer geniuses to decipher a strange signal that was received during the attack.

Enter Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf), an average teenager who talks his hapless father, Ron (Kevin Dunn) into buying him a new car. The new car looks merely like a worn down yellow sports car but he uses it to impress his beautiful classmate, Mikaela Barnes (Megan Fox). No sooner does he realize that it is really a transforming Autobot called Bumblebee (voice of Mark Ryan). Moreover, an old souvenir he has, a pair of his famous explorer great grandfather’s glasses, may hold the key to finding the Allspark and thus saving humanity from the hands of the Decepticons.

The best thing about Bay’s films, even his bad ones, is that they often introduce the latest in cutting-edge visual effects and this film certainly pushes the ante. The visual effects done by Industrial Light & Magic are as astonishing as they are seamless in the way they show the robots “transforming” back and forth into everyday automobiles and other objects, including a CD player. The robots in this film, if anything, assure us that we won’t be seeing herky-jerky movement of metal any longer.

For a while in the first half, the film also seems to slow down to tell its story and give personality to the characters, robots or human. LaBeouf pretty much plays the same role he did in “Disturbia,” the average teenager trying to impress another pretty girl who soon turns into an unlikely hero. He and his new car get some big laughs as the latter somehow instinctively knows the precise music to play to get the two potential lovers in the mood. Of course, there is a human-robot friendship that happens between develops Sam and his personal Autobot, as well as the others led by Optimus Prime (voice of Peter Cullen). The screenplay, despite some terribly hokey dialogue, attempts to add some dimension as the Autobots argue about whether the human race is worth saving.

All that is ultimately for moot, however, once the long, really long third act ensues, which involves a duel between Optimus Prime and Megatron, the leader of the Decepticons. I remember why I was never interested in the Transformers as a kid beyond owning a few of their toys: because it’s not that interesting watching metal fighting and clanging at each other. Come on, robots, couldn’t you actually think of some kind of strategy when you’re apparently more powerful than the humans and the fate of the world is hanging on the balance? Or couldn’t the humans come up with an intelligent way to one-up them instead of just running or shooting futilely? It certainly doesn’t help that Bay’s editing of his endless metallic explosions is so frenetic and quickly cut to induce pure nausea and confusion as to which robot is really throwing which around at any moment.

I am sure the Friday night action crowds and teenage boys won’t care too much and will be entertained by what the film has to offer. After all, it is the summer of gigantic explosions and, better yet, it is not a sequel. But if Bay wants people to believe there’s more to this movie than meets the eye, he can’t fool me.

Ratatouille

“Ratatouille”

USA. 2007. Written and directed by Brad Bird. Starring: the voices of Patton Oswalt, Lou Romano, Ian Holm, Janeane Garofalo and Peter O’Toole.

Rating: ★★★★

Would you want to see a story of a Parisian rat who wants to become a chef? I certainly would, as will everyone else, if it is from those geniuses at Pixar. After all, the studio managed to make toys, bugs, monsters, fish, superheroes and even cars come to photorealistic life.

Yes, at a time when Hollywood studios crank out digital animation at a dime a dozen, the Pixar films have never forgotten about that little thing called story. This time, they have made their most mature film to date with a narrative that would typically serve an artistic, independent film. Add in some awesome digital animation and you've got another instant...well, you know the blurb.

We are introduced to Remy (Patton Oswalt), a rat with an acute sense of smell, who sneaks into homes to read cookbooks and watch TV shows from the famous French chef, Gusteau. This doesn't sit well with the rest of his family and clan who avoid the humans and simply steal whatever food they can from the garbage. Not Remy, as he adores the humans and envies their abilities to “discover and create.”

One day, when he gets separated from his family, he sees that he has stumbled into Gusteau’s kitchen. There he meets the new garbage boy, Linguini (Lou Romano) who knows nothing about cooking. But when Remy is able to cook a stew that impresses a food critic and Linguini takes the credit, the duo strikes an unlikely partnership and Linguini becomes the new cook in the kitchen.

The film has the usual hilarious pleasures that children will enjoy such as how Remy controls Linguini’s actions by pulling strands of his hair or an old granny blasts her house to pieces with a shotgun just to take out a rat infestation. But writer/director Brad Bird, whose previous effort was “The Incredibles,” goes way beyond simply providing the jokes pitched at adults. What other animated film have you seen that features French culinary artistry, the battle to impress famed food critic, Anton Ego (Peter O’Toole) and outsmart a scheming cook, Skinner (Ian Holm), a touching friendship between a rat and a human and even a human love story between Linguini and Colette (Janeane Garofalo) all seamlessly rolled into one?

As is the case with each Pixar film, every animated frame of this feature is a breakthrough. It may sound odd to say that an animated film plays like a travelogue through the city of love and great food but not anymore. From the smooth waves of the Seine River to the great, jazzy musical score by Michael Giacchino, reminiscent of Edith Piaf’s classic music, the imagining of Paris is as astonishing as it is wondrous. And the animators must have taken numerous wildlife videos of scampering rats to get that motion just right.

One of the many brilliant story touches is in how the rats talk to each other but never to humans (though they can understand the latter). Thus, once Remy lands in the kitchen at the 20-minute mark, the film boasts some fine screenwriting, as the rodent shows all of his understanding and knowledge of delicious cooking purely through action and facial gestures. Of course, it is anyone’s guess when the others in the kitchen will intuit that a rat is behind the culinary perfection.

Speaking of culinary senses, I had complained about a film called “Perfume” last year for being unsuccessful in communicating the sense of smell to the big screen. Here, freed into the realm of animation, Bird “blindfolds” the audience by fading the screen to black and visualizing the aroma and touch to the tongue in colorful images. And the single funniest moment in the film is a literal visualization of the old phrase, “just like Mom used to make.”

The Pixar guys also never make the mistake of riding on box office star appeal over talent with their voice casting. Patton Oswalt, best known from Comedy Central’s “Reno 911,” provides humorous, adorable touches of moxie, innovation and sheer wonder. The biggest delight (no pun intended) is the legendary Peter O'Toole, who can make or break a restaurant with a glowing or scathing food review, and delivers a final stately monologue to provide the perfect conclusion.

In the film's most insightful scene, when his father shows a series of dead rats and traps in an animal store to explain the trappings of a rat's life, Remy simply replies, “Change is nature." Sometimes humans forget that idea and we stop thinking to “discover and create.” Here is a film to remind children and adults alike.