Long Overdue, Part Two

1. "Must Love Dogs". Well, since romance itself isn't really my "cup of tea" you naturally wouldn't expect romantic comedies to be my favorite movies, but that hasn't stopped me from enjoying some of the classic of the forties or more recent efforts like those from British writer Richard Curtis ("Notting HIll", "Love Actually"). And the cast of this film is exceptional. But the movie itself? Not so much.

Diane Lane play a 40-ish divorcee whose family feels she's been out of the dating game long enough, and are constantly tries to find her the perfect match. Her sister goes so far as to place an ad for her at an online dating site, which gives us the inevitable montage of losers... until she meets mister perfect, played by John Cusack. At which point the movie ought to logically be over, since there's absolutely no obstacle to their relationship. But this is Hollywood, where these things don't have to make sense, so it's stretched out for another hour.

Lane, Cusack, Christopher Plummer (as Lane's Father), and Elizabeth Perkins (as her sister) are all excellent, and there are some scattered witty one-liners here and there. But there simply is nothing for any of these people to work with. We know how the story's going to end, we know for that matter everything that's going to happen prior to that ending... and I guess there are people for whom that kind of thing is comforting. I just don't happen to be one of those who finds this much formula reassuring.

In the midst of all the formula, though, there is one genuinely real sub-plot. Christopher Plummer makes you feel both the pain he still has over his wife's death and the lonelyness he's trying to eliminate from his life by finding a relationship of his own, and the relationship he eventually strikes up with the widowed Stockard Channing has all the sense of reality that the rest of the film lacks. If there were ever a sequel to this film starring Lane and Cusack, I probably wouldn't bother, as much as I like them both. But if it were about Plummer and Channing, I'd be among the first in line.

2. "The Chumscrubber". Or, Hollywood tries and fails to get hip once again. This so-called independent film (distributed by a division of Dreamworks) tells the story of a group of alienated teens who spend most of their time spaced out on drugs... until the local supplier commits suicide. Then they're determined to force the dealer's best friend (played by "Billy Elliot"'s Jamei Bell) to tell them where his remaining stash was kept. Even if it means kidnapping his younger brother.

Of course, the kidnapping doesn't go as planned, and all kinds of mayhem results. Problem is, the stuff that's supposed to be funny is just lame, and the supposedly dramatic moments are totally unconvincing, especially when the characters are supposed to be having big, significant crises of conscience... they come across more like the characters being just mildy peeved.

It would probably help if the script bore even the slightest resemblance to how actual teens in real life act, talk or behave, but the writers of this film have apparently never met a real kid and have based everything they wrote about them here on characters from other teen movies. A lot more attention is spent on getting the supporting characters of the parents real, and the film actually manages that from time to time. Glenn Close makes up for her lackluster performance in "Heights" in her "Chumscrubber" role of the grieving mother of the suicidal drug dealer. Ralph Fiennes and Rita Wilson as the town Mayor and his fiancee give brief, fitful glimpses of the kind of "American beauty" horror underneath the perfect suburban marriage that few movies get right. And Allison Janney is both scary and funny as Bell's mother.

Unfortunately, all of them are only token supporting characters in a movie that devotes most of its time to trying to show how hip and contemporary the film-makers would like us to think they are. And all their efforts do is to show us how totally out of touch they are with what's going on with a generation they're no longer a part of. Does that sound like something you want to go to a theatre and pay to see? I didn't think so.

3. "Broken Flowers." After films like "Stranger Than paradise", "Mystery Train" and "Dead Man", Jim Jarmusch had established himself as one of the quirkiest... and most wonderfully inventine... truly independent film makers around. But when I heard the premise of "Broken Flowers" I was genuinely concerned that this would be the movie where Jarmusch sold out. Turns out I needn't have worried.

Bill Murray stars as a wealthy guy who's made tons of money off computers (but who doesn't actually own one), who one day receives an anonymous letter claiming to be from an former girlfriend, telling him that they had a son about twenty years earlier whom he doesn't know about, and that son is now trying to track down dear old dad. Murray's neighbor convinces him to go on a cross-country search looking up the five women he calculates might be the one who sent the letter, and is on the receiving end of some surprises from old flames like Sharon Stone and Tilda Swinton.
You can understand my concern.

But Jarmusch gives these characters all the quirks and eccentricities you'd expect from his previous films, and the cast absolutely refuses to play them with any of the standard over-the-top Hollywood style. Jarmusch is even still using the same kinds of camera tricks he used back on "Stranger Than Paradise" (as in when each scene fades completely to black before fading back up again for the next scene), and the story refuses to make any (well, hardly any) commercial compromises.

"Broken Flowers" is a SLIGHTLY more accessible Jarmusch film that is still clearly Jarmusch all the way. The film is alternately funny (in a very low-key way), serious and touching, and the cast is uniformly fine. Yes, even Sharon Stone. You don't find many directors these days who will take all the unhurried time a story and characters need to establish themselves, but when you can, the resulting film is almost always one you will remember. And more and more as time goes by, Jarmusch seems to slowly becoming very nearly the only game in town.

4. "Saraband". Ingmar Bergman announced his retirement as a director more than twenty years ago, and since then he has worked in theatre, in television, written a couple of novels and written a series of screenplays directed by others, but has stuck to his vow about directing. Now, in his late 80's, he has directed what will probably be his actual last film. Is it a classic on the same level as the ones that made his reputation? Not quite, no. But it's still head and shoulders over a huge portion of contemporary cinema, and not a bad film at all on which to go out.

In 1973, Bergman gave us a brutal analyses of a modern marriage in "Scenes From A Marriage". In "Saraband", we meet that same couple 32 years later, still played by the stars of that film, Erland Josephson and Liv Ullman. They haven't spoken in years, but some recent tragedies in Ullman's life have gotten her thinking about Josephson again, and wanting to get in touch. When she does, it seems like all the bitterness had never happened. But it doesn't take long...

It's one thing to simply have two people arguing and trying to tear the other apart. You see that all the time. It's quite another to see two people who clearly still care about each other as much as they did when they first married, but are unable to resist their personal, petty, selfish needs that lead them to destroy the other person out of sheer spite. This is strong stuff indeed for an American moviegoing audience that is not exactly accustomed to investing themselves emotionally in the films they see. In "Saraband", you may find yourself almost feeling guilty for eavesdropping on such sensitive subjects as Ullman and Josephson try and fail and try again to re-establish some kind of familial connection between themselves and their now-adult children.

A lot of moviegoers react the same whenever I try to recommend a movie to them that is definitely not typical "feel-good" stuff: "Oh, that sounds depressing, I don't want to see that!" But it's long been my contention that a movie doesn't always have to make you feel good to be a good movie, and that you can often learn valuable things from movies that take you outside of your normal comfort zone. Nobody has ever done that better than Bergman, and he does it yet again in "Saraband." Since he very likely won't ever be doing it again, you'll probably never get another chance to see it done this well. Better take that chance while you have it.

5. "The Edukators". This German film mostly features characters sitting around talking and debating ideas and philosophies. There is some occasional action... a break-in, a kidnapping... but those are over quickly and we get right back to the talking. Yes, this is actually a movie about IDEAS. Terrifying, isn't it?

The "Edukators" of the title are three German youths... two men and one woman... who break into the homes of the wealthy and powerful, not to steal anything, but to simply scare them with the knowledge that their secure homes can be violated so easily... and leave notes saying things like "Your days of plenty are numbered." These young people are what folks like George W. Bush would call radical leftists, and are beginning to realize that they will have to find some other way of getting their messages across, when they pull their last break-in, and wind up kidnapping the house's owner... who turns out to be a former student radical himself, now turned conservative and wealthy like so many of his former peers.

When so many people formerly dedicated to righting society's wrongs and helping the defenseless turn into selfish greedy types willing to step on anyone if it will help them get ahead, it isn't easy to maintain a belief in what matters most... especially when confronted with someone who used to be "one of your own", and who now lives by the philosophy of "Under 30 and not a liberal, no heart. Over 30 and still a liberal, no brains." How do you remain dedicated to doing what's right when everything you see around you seems to indicate that those who do what's convenient are the ones who get rewarded?

Instead of car crashes and explosions and the like, these are the kinds of things this movie is about. But that doesn't mean that you don't get well-rounded, well-written characters or weak performances. All of those are top notch. It's just that all of those things are in service of the film's ideas, and the debate over them is as fascinating as the action in any Michael Bay film. No, wait, what am I saying, that's way too much of a compliment to Michael Bay. It also has what has got to be a strong contender for the best ending of the year. "The Edukators" is a movie that will not only make you think, it will make you GLAD it did. How often are you going to get that in a movie theatre?