One... Two... Oops!
1. "2046." Though there are filmgoers who haven't acquired the taste, there are many others who are convinced that Wong Kar-Wai is one of the genuine genius film-makers in the world. His latest, "2046", might not convince anyone who wasn't already on his side to begin with, but true believers such as myself will find all the more reason to believe.
Five years ago in "In The Mood For Love", Mr. Chow (Tony Leung Chiu Wai) came very close to an affair with his great love, an unhappily married neighbor played by Maggie Cheung), but never actually crossed that line, a fact which has haunted his life ever since. He has since become a serial womanizer, pursuing affairs with a string of beautiful women while attempting to find with one of them the feelings he knew with his lost love, inevitably failing. Meanwhile, he writes the science fiction novel "2046", about a future in which nothing ever changes and where people who have been separated can reunite.
The film moves back and forth in time, and back and forth between the "real" world and the fictional world of his novel in a style that might frustrate those accustomed to straightforward, linear narratives, but which long-time Wong fans know adds depth and impact that standard storytelling techniques couldn't hope to do. Wong is also the master of loneliness, and together with Leung has created one of his classic lonely characters in Mr. Chow, a man who knows even as he desperately tries to recreate his great past happiness that he's doomed to fail. And as in Paul Haggis' "Crash", where a strong script inspired great performances in less than great actors, Wong's brilliant screenplay has brought forth surprisingly forceful acting from performers who haven't given us a lot of that lately, particularly Zhang Ziyi, who FINALLY reminds us once again of the promise she had in her earliest films.
"2046" is a unbelievably beautiful-looking film with a story at its heart that is painfully sad, and yet beautiful in its own way as well. It once again proves Wong Kar-Wai to be one of the world's great film makers, and Tony Leung Chiu Wai to be one of the world's great actors. You clearly don't need car chases and explosions to make a good movie... nothing makes for a more powerful story than the simple emotions that people struggle with every day. And nobody knows how to work that kind of magic better than Wong Kar-Wai.
2. "Cronicas." American moviegoers have gotten to know John Leguizamo as an over-the-top comedian and wise guy. And while he is a very good comic actor, he's capable of a lot more than that. The Mexican film "Cronicas", while by no means perfect, at the very least earns itself many points by allowing him to demonstrate that to us.
Leguizamo stars as a Miami-based tabloid television reporter not tremendously unlike Geraldo Rivera, who likes to put himself at the center of all of his stories. As the film opens, he has travelled down to Mexico to report on the serial killer who has murdered over a hundred area children. When a prisoner in the local jail attaches himself to Leguizamo and begins giving him exclusive tips that could lead to the killer's identity, he figures he has the story of a lifetime. But while it might make him a legend, the story could also destroy his reputation, or even his life.
Leguizamo's performance is expertly understated most of the time, with his flashes of intense emotion coming only where they're appropriate, and never going too far. His is a character you have to understand but not sympathize with... a very difficult combination... and he pulls it off perfectly.
The movie is an indictment of a too common kind of journalism, a kind that has inspired American movies that have taken easy aim at too many easy targets, reducing a complicated problem to a too-simple solution. "Cronicas" supplies us with none of those simple solutions, and in fact leads us to a point that has us shivering and uneasily asking ourselves how much of what it depicts is happening every day in the U.S.
On the other hand, the plotline could have used a few more complications. The lack of any real questions about the killer's identity go a way towards reducing the suspense. And there doesn't seem to be any real reason for Leguizamo's affair with his married co-worker other than that the script requires it. And why put an actor as accomplished as Alfred Molina in a film, only to give him just three scenes... and even then just glimpsed on a TV screen? But what the film does wrong is minor in comparison to what it does right. Most American thrillers are lucky if they can just accomplish the "thrill" part. "Cronicas" is a thriller that ALSO makes you THINK, and at a fraction of the usual Hollywood budget. Twin Cities audiences should seriously think about getting over to the Oak Street Cinema to check it out.
3. "The Brothers Grimm." Terry Gilliam has one of the most brilliant cinematic minds today... and I don't say that merely because he was born in Minneapolis. With a string of films like "Time Bandits", "Brazil", "Baron Munchausen", "The Fisher King" and "12 Monkeys", you had to wonder when he was finally going to show that he's only human after all, and give us a movie that just doesn't live up to his reputation. That time has finally arrived.
If you were expecting a biography of the famous brothers, forget it. This story re-imagines them as European ghostbusters, but phony ones... traveling from town to town claiming to be able to rid villages of assorted supernatural menaces, but faking every menace so that they will be guaranteed to triumph and the grateful villagerrs will reward them handsomely. But when they encounter the real thing, their abilities are really put to the test.
The central plot conceit is old and hackneyed, and a little too reminiscent of a film from about ten years ago called "The Frighteners", starring Michael J. Fox and directed by Peter Jackson. That's not really the kind of film that should serve as your role model if you want to impress audiences. Neither Matt Damon nor Heath Ledger seem to be giving it their all, or even their half. And the well-publicized battles over control of the film that Gilliam fought with the notorious Weinstein brothers, resulting in his walking off the movie and making another entire film (the upcoming "Tideland") before coming back to finish "The Brothers Grimm", show time and again throughout the movie.
But then there are the segments when the brothers encounter the very supernatural beings and situations that would "later" inspire their legendary fairy tales. These are the moments that show what a incredible creative imagination Gilliam has and are indeed worthy of any of his previous best work. Little Red Riding Hood, Rapunzel, an extremely creepy/frightening and at the same time silly Gingerbread Man... these are the kinds of creations nobody else could hope to do as well, and that will make this film's audiences all the sadder that Gilliam wasn't able to give us an entire movie just with the fairy tales. Or maybe it WOULD HAVE also worked as a biofilm of the brothers with their famous characters added. We'll never know, unfortunately. As it is, I'm just eagerly awaiting the release of "Tideland" (in which Gilliam reuinites with his "Fisher King" star Jeff Bridges) and hoping that IT will be a genuine showcase for his strengths.
Five years ago in "In The Mood For Love", Mr. Chow (Tony Leung Chiu Wai) came very close to an affair with his great love, an unhappily married neighbor played by Maggie Cheung), but never actually crossed that line, a fact which has haunted his life ever since. He has since become a serial womanizer, pursuing affairs with a string of beautiful women while attempting to find with one of them the feelings he knew with his lost love, inevitably failing. Meanwhile, he writes the science fiction novel "2046", about a future in which nothing ever changes and where people who have been separated can reunite.
The film moves back and forth in time, and back and forth between the "real" world and the fictional world of his novel in a style that might frustrate those accustomed to straightforward, linear narratives, but which long-time Wong fans know adds depth and impact that standard storytelling techniques couldn't hope to do. Wong is also the master of loneliness, and together with Leung has created one of his classic lonely characters in Mr. Chow, a man who knows even as he desperately tries to recreate his great past happiness that he's doomed to fail. And as in Paul Haggis' "Crash", where a strong script inspired great performances in less than great actors, Wong's brilliant screenplay has brought forth surprisingly forceful acting from performers who haven't given us a lot of that lately, particularly Zhang Ziyi, who FINALLY reminds us once again of the promise she had in her earliest films.
"2046" is a unbelievably beautiful-looking film with a story at its heart that is painfully sad, and yet beautiful in its own way as well. It once again proves Wong Kar-Wai to be one of the world's great film makers, and Tony Leung Chiu Wai to be one of the world's great actors. You clearly don't need car chases and explosions to make a good movie... nothing makes for a more powerful story than the simple emotions that people struggle with every day. And nobody knows how to work that kind of magic better than Wong Kar-Wai.
2. "Cronicas." American moviegoers have gotten to know John Leguizamo as an over-the-top comedian and wise guy. And while he is a very good comic actor, he's capable of a lot more than that. The Mexican film "Cronicas", while by no means perfect, at the very least earns itself many points by allowing him to demonstrate that to us.
Leguizamo stars as a Miami-based tabloid television reporter not tremendously unlike Geraldo Rivera, who likes to put himself at the center of all of his stories. As the film opens, he has travelled down to Mexico to report on the serial killer who has murdered over a hundred area children. When a prisoner in the local jail attaches himself to Leguizamo and begins giving him exclusive tips that could lead to the killer's identity, he figures he has the story of a lifetime. But while it might make him a legend, the story could also destroy his reputation, or even his life.
Leguizamo's performance is expertly understated most of the time, with his flashes of intense emotion coming only where they're appropriate, and never going too far. His is a character you have to understand but not sympathize with... a very difficult combination... and he pulls it off perfectly.
The movie is an indictment of a too common kind of journalism, a kind that has inspired American movies that have taken easy aim at too many easy targets, reducing a complicated problem to a too-simple solution. "Cronicas" supplies us with none of those simple solutions, and in fact leads us to a point that has us shivering and uneasily asking ourselves how much of what it depicts is happening every day in the U.S.
On the other hand, the plotline could have used a few more complications. The lack of any real questions about the killer's identity go a way towards reducing the suspense. And there doesn't seem to be any real reason for Leguizamo's affair with his married co-worker other than that the script requires it. And why put an actor as accomplished as Alfred Molina in a film, only to give him just three scenes... and even then just glimpsed on a TV screen? But what the film does wrong is minor in comparison to what it does right. Most American thrillers are lucky if they can just accomplish the "thrill" part. "Cronicas" is a thriller that ALSO makes you THINK, and at a fraction of the usual Hollywood budget. Twin Cities audiences should seriously think about getting over to the Oak Street Cinema to check it out.
3. "The Brothers Grimm." Terry Gilliam has one of the most brilliant cinematic minds today... and I don't say that merely because he was born in Minneapolis. With a string of films like "Time Bandits", "Brazil", "Baron Munchausen", "The Fisher King" and "12 Monkeys", you had to wonder when he was finally going to show that he's only human after all, and give us a movie that just doesn't live up to his reputation. That time has finally arrived.
If you were expecting a biography of the famous brothers, forget it. This story re-imagines them as European ghostbusters, but phony ones... traveling from town to town claiming to be able to rid villages of assorted supernatural menaces, but faking every menace so that they will be guaranteed to triumph and the grateful villagerrs will reward them handsomely. But when they encounter the real thing, their abilities are really put to the test.
The central plot conceit is old and hackneyed, and a little too reminiscent of a film from about ten years ago called "The Frighteners", starring Michael J. Fox and directed by Peter Jackson. That's not really the kind of film that should serve as your role model if you want to impress audiences. Neither Matt Damon nor Heath Ledger seem to be giving it their all, or even their half. And the well-publicized battles over control of the film that Gilliam fought with the notorious Weinstein brothers, resulting in his walking off the movie and making another entire film (the upcoming "Tideland") before coming back to finish "The Brothers Grimm", show time and again throughout the movie.
But then there are the segments when the brothers encounter the very supernatural beings and situations that would "later" inspire their legendary fairy tales. These are the moments that show what a incredible creative imagination Gilliam has and are indeed worthy of any of his previous best work. Little Red Riding Hood, Rapunzel, an extremely creepy/frightening and at the same time silly Gingerbread Man... these are the kinds of creations nobody else could hope to do as well, and that will make this film's audiences all the sadder that Gilliam wasn't able to give us an entire movie just with the fairy tales. Or maybe it WOULD HAVE also worked as a biofilm of the brothers with their famous characters added. We'll never know, unfortunately. As it is, I'm just eagerly awaiting the release of "Tideland" (in which Gilliam reuinites with his "Fisher King" star Jeff Bridges) and hoping that IT will be a genuine showcase for his strengths.
posted by Joe Bunce at
1:53 PM
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