Long Overdue, Part Three

1. "The Skeleton Key." There are times I just wish that Hollywood would give up trying to do haunted house stories. I mean, haven't films like "13 Ghosts" and "The Haunting" taught them anything? Apparently not, because they're at it again in "The Skeleton Key", and by and large they're not doing it any more successfully than they have in the recent past.

Kate Hudson stars as a hospice worker who takes a job at a typically spooky southern mansion inhabited by a typically spooky southern couple played by Gena Rowlands and John Hurt. Hurt seemingly doesn't have long for this world, but Hudson soon learns that there may be SUPERnatural rather than natural reasons for his illness. And those forces seem to be coming for her, not caring in the least about the rule (repeated at tiresome length throughout the film) that magic and the supernatural "don't work if you don't believe."

Hudson's character is jaw-droppingly naive, doing things and going into places that nobody with half a brain would think of doing or going. And the script seems to be unsure of whether she's supposed to be a typical helpless horror movie female or a Sigourney Weaver/Ripley-like warrior against the forces of darkness. Rowlands and Hurt don't really fare much better either, and it's embarassing in particular to have to watch Hurt stuck in a nothing part that doesn't even let him use one of his greatest strengths, his voice. There's also the way that the very "Southern-ness" of most of the characters is supposed to make them all sinister and evil and out to get poor Northern Kate... and there are even times when the film is a touch racist.

On top of all of this, either the script was just badly written or the film was poorly edited, because we're constantly being told that the "rules" of the supernatural are such and such, only to have some spirit completely contradict them a little later in the movie. With all of this, though, it should be mentioned that the final ten minutes or so provide a real whallop... the kind of thing that might have made for a real gem of a movie if the entire film could have been on the same level. But Murphy's Law of Modern Horror Movies once again has proven to be too powerful a force to be defeated.

2. "The Great Raid." One of the final Miramax films to actually involve the Weinstein Brothers, "The Great Raid" is a relentlessly, ruthlessly, doggedly (sorry for the Nick Danger reference that most readers won't get) old-fashioned war movie, the kind that John Wayne would have been proud to star in back in the 1940's. (I do believe that Wayne made some fine films, mind you... it's just that all of THEM were WESTERNS.) The eerie thing is that although this is a World War II story, there are more than a few echoes of both the first and second Iraq Wars in its plot, and how you feel about that conflict can't quite help but effect part of your response to this film.

Even strong supporters of the Bush Iraq policy, though, may find themselves dismayed by the movie's wooden acting (Benjamin Bratt is not going to become an A-list star on the basis of his role in this film, and Joseph Fiennes continues to give us evidence that his performance in "Shakespeare In Love" was a fluke), and even though the film supposedly tells a true story, I can only say that it's amazing how much reality sometimes imitates war movie cliches.

It seems that near the final days of the war in Europe, the Allies were making a final push to retake territory near a notorious Nazi POW camp. But since the Nazis were aware of them, the Allies were concerned that they would kill all the prisoners before they got there rather than let them be rescued... so, a select group of soldier were given the assignment of conducting the great raid of the title to break into the camp and free the prisoners before the Allied forces arrived. With the utmost respect to the actual men who went through this experience... both the prisoners and the soldiers... this movie trivializes their experience and makes the reality of what they went through seem like something out of a bad war movie. It also makes the "Pearl Harbor" (hello, Michael Bay) mistake of too often giving us the actual historical events of the war as background to a love story, as if the romance is more important than the literally earth-shaking and history-making events going on around it.

We're treated to a musical score that's often more appropriate to a romantic film, as well. And perhaps most disappointing of all, director John dahl, who has given us such imaginative gems of modern noir as "Red Rock West", "Rounders" and "Joy Ride", has completely erased any detectable trace of his distinctive directorial style, and made a war movie that could have been made by any talentless assembly-line hack. I don't believe that directors should ONLY make films in what the public perceives as their little niche areas, mind you... only that I hope Dahl never tries to make another war movie. "The Great Raid" has actually been on the shelf unreleased since its completion about two years ago. Once you see it, you'll understand why.

3. "The Aristocrats." It's not that I am personally OFFENDED by "dirty" jokes, it's just that I feel that they're usually too easy a way of getting a laugh... people will laugh at the "dirty" element even if the joke isn't all that funny. With a few exceptions, it's the sort of material that doesn't produce even a mild grin for me. So when I heard the premise of "The Aristocrats"... a star-studded lineup of comedians telling their individual variations on what is claimed to be the dirtiest joke ever told... I wasn't very hopeful. Surprise, surprise.

The actual joke "The Aristocrats" really ISN'T all that spectacular, as several of the comics in this film note. What it DOES do, however, is allow every comic who tells it to improvise on it like a great jazz musician and do so many individual variations that they make it their own. As long as they open with a guy walking into an agent's office to talk about his new act, and finish with the agent asking the name of the act (which is, of course, "The Aristocrats!"), absolutely anything goes in between, as long long as it's guaranteed to offend somebody. It's absolutely amazing to see how many possible alternate versions there can be, and how each one is so very different from any of the others.

George Carlin manages to take perhaps the filthiest material of any of the versions and make it hysterical. Kevin Pollack does a very funny story about Christopher Walken telling the joke, and performs the joke imitating Walken. Tommy Smothers tells the joke to an uncomprehending Dicky (who has never heard it before), eliciting a response from Dicky that produces as big a laugh as the joke itself. Cathy Ladman even manages a version in which the middle portion describing the act is not just just clean and wholesome but extremely sweet, only to FINISH with an obscene PUNCHLINE. It really is like a summit of the greatest jazz players of all time... imagine a documentary featuring Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Chet Baker and dozens of others each performing their own personalized version of the same song. That's not far from what "The Aristocrats" is like.

"The Aristocrats" is obviously not for everyone. Anybody who finds "blue" material offensive should probalby go to see "March Of The Penguins" (which does happen to be a very fine film) instead. But they'd be missing out on a rare lesson in just how comedy is created, sometimes out of the least promising material. I've often watched some of my favorite comedians and wondered how they shaped the jokes they're doing and how much of the humor is in the material as distinguished from the person performing it. This movie finally provided me with answers.

4. "Red Eye". Back inthe 70's and 80's, Wes Craven was a master of horror, one of the best makers of scary films of his time. But after the endless string of ever less impressive "Nightmare On Elm Street" movies, and pictures like last year's well-written (by Kevin Williamson) but badly directed werewolf film "Cursed", he had clearly lost the touch. In "Red Eye", he abandons the supernatural for a sinister villain who is entirely human, but is unable to stop his continuing downhill slide.

Boarding a latenight "Red Eye" flight, Rachel McAdams ("The Notebook") is surprised to find that the handsome, charming stranger she had run into in the airport is seated directly next to her... what a coincidence! But it's no coincidence... the stranger (played by Cillian Murphy, The Scarecrow of "Batman Begins") works for a very nasty group who plan a political assassination at the hotel McAdams works at, and it's Murphy's job to force her to reassign the victim's room to another location that will make the murder much easier. If she doesn't? Well, they have her father under close watch, and if she refuses, he dies.

The movie starts out quite promisingly, and for a while builds up a nice tension-filled atmosphere, in large part due to the performances of McAdams and Murphy. Murphy, in particular, makes for one of the best villains in a long time... I have honestly not seen any actor since Christopher Walken first came along over 25 years ago who just radiates such intense creepiness with everything he does and every line he says, but at the same time can be convincingly charming and sweet. If he turns out to have the kind of RANGE that Walken does, he's in for a great career, and we're in for some very interesting films.

This isn't ultimately one of those interesting films, though. For one thing, it takes the wonderful Brian Cox... the ORIGINAL Hannibal Lecter... and completely wastes him in the nothing part of McAdams' father, mostly just seen talking to hsi daughter on the phone. Then they make the major, major mistake of having the plane land at about the one-hour point, and when the characters get out into the world the claustrophobic tension dissipates and the movie becomes just another chase flick, and Murphy somehow apparently becomes as indestructible as The Terminator. I suppose that Craven did an overall better job with "Red Eye" than he did with "Cursed", and MAYBE this indicates an upturn in his career, but if this had been the kind of movie he started out making at the beginning, he wouldn't have the reputation he has today.

5. "Junebug." In "The Skeleton Key", Hollywood asked us to believe that everyone in the south was sinister and evil and out to corrupt and/or kill the pure, innocent northerners. In the independent "Junebug", we get a broader look at the American south, and find it to be a place where the range of people is just as wide as it is anywhere else... and the problems are very much the same, too.

Embeth Davidtz stars as a sophisticated art dealer who travels down to the south to convince a mentally retarded artist that he should grant her the right to do a New york gallery show of his paintings. Her husband is from the same area, so he travels down with her to visit the family (whom Davidtz has never met before), and her presumptions of superiority and assumptions that she knows everything about these people are definitely challenged. And yes, a lot of people go through a lot of changes as a result of the experience. But the movie isn't out to teach you any lessons, it's out to tell you a story.

And that story is a strange kind of "road" movie where the road being travelled is as much "inside" as it is an exterior path. This is not a "slam the big city northerner" movie either, and Davidtz plays a fully-rounded character who is simply the victim of some common prejudices and misconceptions, who winds up making a big journey along a road toward understanding that "others" are not so other. And some of the more reactionary southerners come to realize that northerners are just people, too.

Considerable, and poignant, drama is added to the proceedings by the most outstanding performance in the film... Amy Adams as Davidtz's sister-in-law, pregnant with her disinterested and emotionally distant husband's unwanted (by him) child, but still able to see the things that make life worth living. The combination of pain, joy and fierce optimism in Adams' character is amazing to watch, and if I had an Oscar vote, she would have a lock on a nomination right now.

"Little", quiet movies can sometimes have just as much impact in their own subtle ways as films that are big productions, often because they tend to be a lot closer to life as most people live it. "Junebug" is a fine example of that kind of film.