Vaunted Vendetta: Valedictory or Villainous?
Now Playing: V for Vendetta (2006, d. James McTeigue)
OK, you may now officially revoke my comic book geek credentials. I have only skimmed Alan Moore’s V for Vendetta. Not for lack of interest; it was just one of those books that I missed when it came out, and when I had time and means, I never got around to reading it because I already knew all the major plot points. I will read it now that I’ve seen the movie…but enough. The mea culpa is basically to explain why I won’t be assessing the movie as a translation of the book.

Or will I? Much has been made in the press over Moore’s removal of his name from the film’s credits, but that’s a standard practice for Moore, and probably a good one given the cinematic crimes that have been perpetrated in his name (From Hell, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen). Yet James McTeigue’s—-and, despite the rumors that it was ghost directed by the Wachowski Brothers, I’m going to refer to it as his movie because his name is on the credits—-V for Vendetta does a better job at nailing the vibe of Moore’s dystopian visions than any of the previous attempts. Much of Moore’s work is dedicated to examining and subverting the concept of the superhero, and the script (credited to the Wachowskis) gets that. The film adopts the vocabulary of the superhero action flick for its own ends, and does it more or less successfully. McTeigue nails the tone (somewhere between arch seriousness and mordant parody) and look of a Moore-penned graphic novel, and doesn’t feel the need to dumb the story down for the audience.

Of course, V for Vendetta’s plot is rather simple compared to Moore’s later works. In the not-too-distant future, America has collapsed under the strain of disease, war, and economic disaster. Britain has once again assumed the mantle of superpower, but at the price of freedom. Dictator Adam Sutler (John Hurt doing a Big Brother to complement his turn as Winston Smith in 1984) and his five “fingers” (ministers who control different aspects of the government: propaganda, secret police, etc.) keep the country in a constant state of fear and repression. A lone vigilante in a Guy Fawkes mask, known only as V (Hugo Weaving, though we never see his face) is wreaking havoc by exploding buildings and murdering members of the government. When he rescues a young girl, Evey (Natalie Portman, doing a pretty decent English accent), from an assault by government-sanctioned thugs, she gradually becomes involved in his plot to bring down the government. V’s motive for the murders is gradually revealed through a dogged police inspector’s (Stephen Rea) investigation.

Not surprisingly, the film is a bit of a mishmash of ideas, some of which work better than others. The notion that words both spoken and written have power beyond their literal meaning is nicely played up throughout. More problematic is the idea that blowing up buildings is an appropriate form of social protest. When asked by Evey what is to be gained by blowing up Parliament, V answers (I’m paraphrasing) that the act represents a way of bringing an idea forcefully into the public consciousness. Part of me thinks that this is tired radical polemic that should have been discarded after the rads blew up the University of Wisconsin’s Sterling Hall back in 1970. On the other hand, relatively recent events have demonstrated the power such acts can have on the psyche of a nation. V is intended to be a bit of a cipher: we are supposed to be conflicted about the fact that we’re rooting for a murderous terrorist. The film (and, of course, the story on which it’s based) engages in a moral cop-out, though, by creating a cartoonishly fascist opponent for V. It’s easy to root for a vigilante that’s taking out the equivalent of the Third Reich; less so when the government bears a closer resemblance to the ones we have in the west today. The terrorist sees things in black and white; everyone else has to view things in shades of gray.

Moral queasiness aside, there’s a lot to recommend about V. The film has a great visual style, made bittersweet by the fact that it was the last film that DP Adrian Biddle completed before his untimely death last year. The script, as I noted above, is a cut above the average Hollywood claptrap and doesn’t feel the need to explain every single thing right away. We get a very solid turn by Portman, who’s always an appealing presence (well, as long as George Lucas isn’t directing) but has had difficulty finding parts that allow her to live up to the promise of her first screen role in Besson’s Leon. Weaving does great voice work, and is excellent physically, though it’s impossible to know how much of that was provided by James Purefoy, who was originally cast as V but fired after filming began. Rea, so droopy it seems his cheeks are on the verge of melting right off his face, is sympathetic and projects enough competence to be believable as the Chief Inspector. The rest of the largely British cast, including Stephen Fry as a closeted TV host and Hurt, who seems to be channeling Ian MacKellan’s Richard III, are quite good as well.

But the million-pound question remains. Is the setting of the film meant to be an allegory for present-day America? Obviously, the original story was written in Thatcherite England, so that can’t have been Moore’s original intent. Yet it’s eerily resonant for a contemporary American audience. Is this because of the prescience of the source material, or does the Wachowskis’ script cleverly tilt us in that direction? I suspect a little of both, but I’ll have to read the graphic novel to know for sure.

Et tu, Netflix?
Now Playing: The Throttling Controversy
Ever since the piss-poor selection at my local video stores (which had long since stopped being Mom-and-Pop operations; I was dealing with the twin monsters Blockbuster and Hollywood) finally drove me to try Netflix about two years ago, I have been singing its praises to anyone who’ll listen. There’s a local distribution center, and there’s hardly ever more than a day’s wait between arrivals. The selection is excellent; they have had every title I’ve ever searched, with very few exceptions: foreign discs without official US releases (understandable), and Lukas Moodysson’s 2gether (I don’t get this, as I’ve seen the disc in Best Buy, but one out of thousands ain’t bad). Netflix’ policy of stocking discs that are uncensored and presented in widescreen set them apart from the lowest-common-Christian- right-denominator policies of Blockbuster, Wal-Mart, and others. Sure, I’ve had to wait for popular new releases, but these generally aren’t the ones at the top of my list anyway. I don’t buy a DVD unless I’m pretty sure it’s one I’m going to watch over and over. Netflix gives me the opportunity to preview before I buy. And, while I’d buy the entire Criterion Collection sight unseen if I could afford it, Netflix has made it easy for me to watch their beautifully transferred films at a reasonable cost (they don’t have Pasolini’s Salo, but I don’t think I really want to watch that one anyway).

Now we find out that they’ve been engaging in a process called throttling, slowing down the delivery times for those who rent frequently (a good discussion of the practice can be found at www.hackingnetflix.com. That explains why The 40 Year Old Virgin has been sitting atop my queue with “Very Long Wait” status since before it was released. On the one hand, it’s understandable why they engage in this practice. Their business model depends on most renters receiving movies less frequently—on the order of five a month or so. If everyone maxes out their movie rentals, Netflix will be hemorrhaging cash in the form of postage fees. In the past, this has worked fairly well—-the company has even reduced fees since I’ve been a member. However, they seem to have not counted on the advent of cheap DVD burners and geeks who continually request titles to burn them without watching them.

On the other hand, and this is why people are upset, this policy hurts the very people who made Netflix the undisputed champion of the rental-by-mail world. The rabid film buffs, those who want more than the latest big-budget claptrap to pop in on Saturday night, those who don’t live in a city with a bunch of revival houses and want to see the lesser known and foreign films they’ve been reading about—hell, even parents with kids, who have a lot more disposable time for watching DVDs since every late-model SUV now apparently comes equipped with convenient electronic pacifiers for the kiddos. Why not post a clearly-worded explanation of how throttling works and a list of things people can do to avoid being throttled? I wouldn’t even be averse to the idea of a subscription upgrade which would un-throttle your account. Maybe this is already in place, but there’s no way of knowing, because the legalese of the policies section of Netflix’ site is so vague it sounds like something crafted by a team of bureaucrats, which it probably was.

The real thing that sticks in the craw is, I suspect, something that has happened time and time again since the Internet boom of the ‘90’s—-we allow ourselves to buy into the myth that the Internet has somehow changed the nature of business. It hasn’t. It has revolutionized many aspects of business, to be sure, but the fundamental nature of business will never change. It’s about margins, profits, overhead, supply, and demand. We consumers can and do delude ourselves into thinking that companies really care about us, that successful companies can be built by doing business the way we would if we were tycoons in a perfect world, that there is more to business than the bottom line. We can do that, but we’re just setting ourselves up for disappointment. Ben and Jerry care more about making money more than they care about saving the planet with ice cream, and Netflix is a corporation, not a super-cool local video store that figured out how to fight back against Blockbuster on the Internet.

In the end, I figure that you can’t be angry at the scorpion for stinging you as you help it cross the river. Because my queue is mainly made up of old, unknown, and foreign films, throttling really hasn’t slowed down my movie watching noticeably. Hey, Netflix, I thought you were cool, but you’re really just a square in a grey flannel suit. It’s not your fault. But I have to wonder: this practice is obviously intended to ensure that copies of new releases are on hand for potential subscribers using free trial memberships. Once they sign up and their queues start getting throttled, how many will drop their subscriptions because, lacking a clear explanation of the policy, they figure they’re just getting bad service? And how many loyal subscribers will you have driven away because of your opaque policies and evasive responses to complaints? I shudder at the thought of a return to the dark days of the big-box rental behemoths or, even worse, a mail-based system dominated by Wal-Mart. But I can’t think about that too much. I have to get home and see if 40 Year Old Virgin is in my mailbox yet.

Bride of It Came From the Queue!
Now Playing: Chopper
In the interest of keeping the blog (somewhat) current, I’m going to start posting capsule reviews of recent arrivals from my Netflix queue when I don’t have any big-screen reviews for this space. We kick off with:

Chopper (2000, Andrew Domanik) The film that launched Eric Bana’s career as an international star, this low-budget Australian production has style to spare and gives Bana a better role than any he’s had since (sorry, Ang Lee). Based on the “autobiography” by famous (to Australians, anyway) criminal Mark “Chopper” Read, the film does a nice job of showing us how this psychopath became something of a folk hero in his native country—through his personality, sheer audacity, and adherence to a (twisted though it may be) moral code. Perhaps Read’s best asset, though, is his skill as a storyteller, casting himself as the anti-hero in tall tales of prison and crime. Exactly how much of the story is fact and how much is embellished is left unexamined, though we do see reenactments of some of the events in the film spun by Chopper to his own advantage, casting doubt upon the veracity of some of Chopper’s other exploits. Other than the storytelling subtext, there’s really not much going on under the surface of the film, but it’s well made and well acted (especially by Bana), and provides a nice fat-free 90 minutes of entertainment. There’s some subtext here about the nature of our tendency to elevate criminals to celebrity status (a cultural trope shared by Australians and Americans), but in the end, the movie is simply seduced by Chopper--just like the reporter in the film’s framing narrative, it knows its subject is a monster, but chooses to look the other way. Domanik doesn’t shy away from depicting Chopper’s mindless brutality, but in the absence of deeper examination, we’re left with a vivid portrait of a somewhat likable thug and little else. I found it interesting that though the film clearly means to criticize Read’s hunger for celebrity, it ends up bolstering the self-spun legend perpetuated by the man himself.

Some of this may be due to the participation of Chopper himself on the project. According to the IMDb, Chopper himself picked Bana to play him after seeing him on an episode of the comedy show Full Frontal. The screenplay is attributed to Domanik and based on Read’s bestselling books, but a series of video segments in the Image DVD’s bonus features (collected under the heading “Weekend With Chopper” illuminate some of his contributions while putting to rest any dispute about the veracity of the scene in which Chopper has another inmate cut his ears off. These segments, which were apparently culled from the director’s home movies of interviews with Read, show Read at home, drinking beers and spinning tales, many of which appear verbatim in the film. Watching the real Chopper, it becomes apparent how well Bana nailed the character, an imposing physical presence who can switch between jovial raconteur and bloodthirsty hooligan in the blink of an eye. Whatever you think of Read, you have to give him his props as a casting agent. Other extras include a feature-length commentary with Domanik and Read, as well as deleted scenes and the film’s original trailer.

In the queue: The Ballad of Cable Hogue Casque d’Or Samurai Champloo, Vol. 5

What the World Needs: Another Best-of List!
Now Playing: The Best Films I Saw in 2005
OK—-the usual caveats apply: “Best of” lists suck, these are films shown theatrically in Denver this year—some are older, others haven’t been released yet, I didn’t see everything, they are not listed in any particular order. Also, since I listed my honorable mentions a couple of weeks ago, I have thought of some other ones, which are included here.

Why We Fight (d. Eugene Jarecki) Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 911 was high on my list last year for its troublemaking sense of outrage, but Jarecki’s film is a better all-around analysis of the reasons we now find ourselves embroiled in a colossal misadventure halfway around the world. Not interested in propping up easy targets for our disgust (although neocon apologist William Kristol does a great job of being one all on his own), Jarecki presents interviews with people on all sides of the political spectrum, showing us the heretofore invisible lines connecting a retired New York City cop, a Vietnamese refugee, a young man considering enlisting, and the pilots who dropped the first bombs of the Iraq War. Using Eisenhower’s famous farewell speech as a framing device, Jarecki posits a thesis that the war is a result of something more insidious than partisan politics on either side of the aisle: the military-industrial complex, unchecked, quietly determining foreign policy. In this context, David Eisenhower’s memory of his father warning him, “God help this country when it has a president that doesn’t understand the military,” is more terrifying than anything Moore’s alarmist film could conjure.

Tsotsi (d. Gavin Hood) Hood’s adaptation of Athol Fugard’s novel (written in the 1960s, but not published until 1989) updates its action to the post-apartheid slums of Soweto. It is a testament to both Hood and Fugard (and, sadly, to the lack of progress in the world) that the material remains both relevant and utterly shattering. Anchored by a riveting performance by Presley Chweneyagae and some great supporting work by the ensemble cast, this story of a young gang leader who begins to question the senseless violence of his lifestyle when he accidentally abducts a baby in a stick-up gone wrong leaves an indelible mark on the viewer. Tsotsi’s subject matter and stylish camerawork will draw comparisons to City of God when Miramax releases it stateside next year; and although I loved that film as well, this film is an altogether different thing thanks to its heart and sense (though tiny) of hope. Kudos to Hood for presenting the film in Zulu, Xhosa, and Afrikaans rather than pandering to American audiences by using English or, worse yet, dubbing it. I just hope Miramax has the good sense not to replace the incredible soundtrack, which features songs by Zola (who also has a role in the film), with the latest disposable rap act, as it has been known to do.

The Devil’s Rejects (d. Rob Zombie) There may be more of the titular deportees now that Hell has surely frozen over with my inclusion of a Rob Zombie joint on a best-of list. I guess I’d better get used to it, because the more I think of it, the more Zombie’s minor exploitation classic stands apart from the weak, intellectually bankrupt horror fare served up in unnecessary remakes of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Amityville Horror. From the rollicking, stylish credit sequence scored to the Allman Brothers’ “Midnight Rider,” Zombie gets us to sympathize with his family of murderous hillbilly freaks on the run, and then indicts us by pulling no punches when it comes to presenting their acts of extreme violence and sadism. Here, Zombie has been able to synthesize his obviously vast knowledge of movies (and not just horror movies) into a stylish and cohesive film that’s more than just a collection of in-jokes and references for the horror geek crowd. Zombie also proves he’s a credible director, getting great performances from everyone from the gruesome leads to TV and B-movie mainstays such as PJ Soles, Priscilla Barnes, and Ken Foree. I may never watch this film again—it’s just too rough a trip—but it’s been a long time since a genre film had such a profound impact on me. Watch it alongside Oliver Stone’s reprehensible Natural Born Killers for an object lesson in how to do this kind of film the right way. Perhaps the film’s most amazing achievement can be found on the DVD release—a director’s commentary track that is actually engaging and informative, proving that beneath his heavy metal image lurks an intelligent, thoughtful guy who really knows his way around a film camera. I’ll be interested to see where Zombie goes next—having mastered the grindhouse aesthetic, can he turn his gifts on another genre, or will he end up repeating himself?

A History of Violence (d. David Cronenberg) Another film that indicts the audience for its enjoyment of screen violence, A History of Violence proved that even commercial Cronenberg is better than 90% of Hollywood’s output. The straightforward plot (adapted from a graphic novel) doesn’t prepare you for its abrupt tonal shifts into slapstick and graphic brutality. And what to make of the fact that its (extremely well-staged) sex scenes made the audience at the screening I attended more uncomfortable than the violence? Great lead performances from Viggo Mortensen and Maria Bello, with a great supporting turn by Ed Harris--who’s always better as a bad guy--and a totally bizarro cameo by William Hurt, who appears to be having more fun than should be allowed. When the final credits roll, you might be tempted to leave with a shrug, but the film gets under your skin and infects your consciousness like something out of a…Cronenberg movie…

Oldboy (d. Chanwook Park) A film from 2003 that finally got a release here so that those of us without all-region DVD players could find out what all the buzz was about. The middle film in Chanwook Park’s loosely related “Revenge Trilogy” starts with an ingenious premise that seems a bit contrived, then builds to a tragedy of Shakespearean proportions, complete with an almost unimaginably perverse (in terms of both the action onscreen and the violation of the relationship established between filmmaker and audience) denouement. Yet the film’s coda seeks to recover some shred of the humanity stripped from the main characters by the all-encompassing desire for revenge. Min-sik Choi gives a haunting and utterly convincing performance with very little dialogue, and director Park’s visual sense, already a strong point of his previous films, reaches new heights here with indelible images such as the brilliant single take dolly-shot of Choi fighting his way down a long corridor full of thugs. I don’t think it would be possible for this film to be remade for American audiences by Hollywood, and that’s an infinitely good thing; I just hope that the audience response was sufficient that we won’t have to wait another three years to see the just-completed third installment, Lady Vengeance.

King Kong (d. Peter Jackson) Yes, it’s too long. And overindulgent. A couple of subplots could have been shed without injuring the plot. It contains more cheese than a deep-dish pizza. Who freaking cares? Had Peter Jackson trimmed it down to 2 hours, it would have been a lean, CG-driven action spectacular…just like 10 other movies that come out this or any other year. In indulging his love of cinema and the 1933 original, Jackson produces a big-screen spectacle that’s both epic and personal, an incredible thrill ride, and (against all odds) a convincing love story between a giant ape and his human girl.

Grizzly Man (d. Werner Herzog) Werner Herzog’s oddly affecting portrait of Timothy Treadwell, the bear lover who was eventually killed and eaten in the Alaskan wilderness, is much more than a simple examination of the man, which would have been interesting enough. Herzog, with typical technical excellence, examines his view of the relationship between man and nature--which he sees as indifferent, chaotic, and brutal—by contrasting it with Treadwell’s, which enshrined nature as a paradise. Beyond that, Herzog explores the kinship he feels with Treadwell as a filmmaker, sharing a filmmaker’s appreciation of the construction of narrative as well as of the accidents that add unforeseen beauty to a film. In allowing Treadwell to speak largely for himself, Herzog creates empathy for a man who was at best misguided and at worst insane; but he also creates an ironic undercurrent which would have been lost on Treadwell: this man, who by all accounts wanted to shun human society and become a bear, earns our sympathy because we see his passion, along with his ignorance and self-centeredness—his essential humanity, in other words.

More Honorable Mentions:

Sin City (d. Robert Rodriguez & Frank Miller) – A stunning technical achievement, yes, but what made this film was the way it unapologetically rubbed our noses in the pulpy (notice I don’t say noir) sleaze of Miller’s graphic novels. Rodriguez could have avoided the DGA flap by inventing a new title for himself-—most of the film was already “directed” by Miller’s cinematic panels. Still, Rodriguez deserves credit for bringing them to bloody life onscreen--Lucas’ greenscreen epic seemed completely inert by comparison.

Save the Green Planet! (d. Jun-hwan Jeong) - Jeong’s remarkably assured debut provides another strong argument (as I’ve been saying for a couple of years now) that South Korea is producing the most consistently well made and entertaining films of any country today. Despite the ending, which lets the protagonist off the moral hook, this film is completely riveting from start to finish, carrying the viewer along through a rollercoaster ride of tonal shifts from horror to comedy to elegiac sadness, all told with a distinctive and confident visual sense. Truly a one-of-a kind film.

Munich (d. Steven Spielberg) – I’m not in the camp that would fault Spielberg for creating a slick, suspenseful thriller that makes the audience question its desire for bloodshed. Hell, A History of Violence did the same thing. Nor can I fault him for not creating a big emotional beat on which to end the film (which has been one of my problems with all of Spielberg’s “serious” films, save the excellent Catch Me If You Can.) No, the thing keeping this off my “best of” list was that, despite the fact that this was Spielberg’s most morally ambiguous film, he still has a tendency to paint with too broad a brush—all the Palestinian victims are depicted as intelligent, friendly family men, as if the shaky moral ground of murder for the sake of revenge isn’t quite enough. That, and the climactic baptismal sex scene/Munich flashback was simply preposterous and took me completely out of the movie. Still, the scene in which the team symbolically violates a female assassin with zip guns is one of the most discomforting things I’ve ever seen in an American movie—I didn’t think Spielberg had those kind of grapes, to be honest.

Good Night, And Good Luck (d. George Clooney) – A top-notch effort from Clooney and his very talented ensemble cast. Well done in just about every respect, the film fails only in that it can’t conjure up any real dramatic tension, a shortcoming tacitly acknowledged by the writers (Clooney and Grant Heslov) by their inclusion of a tangential bit of plot about a secretly married couple on Murrow’s staff. Still, a well-acted, well-made film that makes us long for the days when the news media actually cared about such trifles as journalistic integrity.

3-Iron (d. Ki-duk Kim) – Lo, another South Korean film, but one that has little in common with the others on this list save its excellent craftsmanship. 3-Iron is a haunting and lyrical tone poem more in the vein of Wong Kar-wai, this film never tips its hand as to “what it all means,” instead offering a meditation on themes of alienation, loss, and freedom. The ending can be taken both literally and metaphorically, and is absolutely beautiful.

Haven’t Seen But Maybe Could Have Made the List: Capote, Brokeback Mountain

Wish It Had Been Better: Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (bring back Cuaron!)

What Was All the Fuss About? Wallace and Gromit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit

Really Wanted to Like, But Was Disappointed By: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

Son of It Came From the Queue!
Now Playing: The Battle of Algiers (1965); Murderball (2005)
I finally got around to watching the Criterion release of Gillo Pontecorvo’s The Battle of Algiers, and suffice it to say I was pretty much blown away. I’m not sure why I put off watching it since its DVD release several months ago; I suspect it had to do with not wanting to set my expectations too high from reading all the pieces touting its impact and relevance. Could a film from 1965 retain the visceral punch of the most powerful political filmmaking even for today’s war-weary audiences? And then some.

Raw, angry, and vital, not only does Pontecorvo’s masterpiece still hold the ability to shock, I wonder whether it would even be shown in the US today were the names of the players changed to the US Army and Iraqi insurgents. Right down to the minute details, viewers cannot help but be struck by the similarities between the efforts of the French military to suppress the uprising by the Muslim terrorist organization FLN in 1950’s Algeria and our own current imperialistic misadventure in Iraq. From the use of women as terrorist bomb delivery vehicles to the use of torture by the occupying forces, it’s astounding how analogous the situations are.

As angry as it is (and few films I’ve ever seen come close), the film stops just short of propaganda. The French are by and large portrayed not as bloodthirsty sadists, but as military men trying to carry out their orders in difficult, if not impossible circumstances. Pontecorvo is unflinching in depicting not just their brutality, but that of the revolutionaries as well. Even though he sides with the anti-colonial aims of the revolutionaries, Pontecorvo depicts the escalation of violence evenhandedly, with a sense of both its inevitability and its dehumanizing effect on everyone involved. He can, perhaps, be forgiven for ending the film with an epilogue celebrating the eventual victory of the Algerians—in 1965, revolution was in the air, and no one wanted to believe that they were fighting for transitory victories. Four decades later, however, the powerful sense of d?j? vu the film imparts is tempered with another, sadder sense: that humans, unable or unwilling to learn the lessons of history, may be forever doomed to keep repeating the mistakes of the past.

The trailer from Rialto’s 2004 re-release of the film, included on Disc 1, imparted two tidbits I found fascinating. One was that no documentary footage was used in the film. Some of the footage is so expertly shot (and some inconsistencies in the film stock throughout help the illusion) that I had assumed that it was in fact actual archival footage. The other was that the film had been recently screened at the Pentagon. How anyone can watch this film and come away with the notion that a war between superior military forces and entrenched guerillas is “winnable” in any sort of traditional sense is beyond me. Then again, the President’s gaggle of neoconservative yes men must have come away from the film with a different message than I did. Perhaps they felt that the French lost because they didn’t blow up enough civilians, or didn’t go far enough in torturing their captives.



The documentary Murderball, despite the stated intentions of its filmmakers, does drive home the fact that its quadriplegic rugby-playing subjects are pretty much just like normal folks. It does this not through its depiction of the players, but by resorting to the familiar tropes and plot movements of just about every sports-related documentary ever made. The narrative is shaped to set up a conflict between Mark Zupan, one of the most hardcore players of what no one who has seen the film will deny is a pretty hardcore sport, and Joe Soares, a fierce competitor who spitefully became the coach of the Canadian Olympic team after being cut from the US squad. We’re shown only the matches that set up the familiar sports-movie dramatic arc: underdog Canada beats confident US; US comes back to win in a pre-Olympics match; big grudge match looms large for the film’s climax. And even though actual events didn’t give the filmmakers the “one match for all the marbles” ending they clearly wanted (the US and Canada met in a semifinal at the ’04 Paralympics in Athens, not in the gold medal round), they shape the narrative so that it has that effect.

Having said that, the fact that Murderball is such an enjoyable film is largely due to the outsized personalities of the players. These guys are pretty much high-level jocks, and confinement to a wheelchair doesn’t change the personality traits necessary to achieve on that level. As one of Zupan’s friends puts it, “Mark was pretty much an asshole before the wheelchair, so I can’t say that had anything to do with it.” It may be eye-opening to see quadriplegics hitting each other, getting drunk, and having hot girlfriends (one of the film’s most hilarious sequences happens when one player details the lengthy conversational process whereby girls he picks up finally get around to asking if he is able to have sex), but it’s the personalities that keep the film enjoyable throughout. Tripartite named filmmakers Henry Alex Rubin and Dana Adam Shapiro include a couple of moving subplots about a recently injured young man coming to terms with his paralysis and Zupan’s troubled relationship with Christopher Igoe, the high school friend responsible for the accident that injured him; but the focus is mainly on the players themselves in the context of their sport, and that’s as it should be. Rubin and Shapiro let the personalities shine through, and by the end of the film, you do feel as if you know these guys a little. Soares complains in one of the DVD’s supplements that he’s portrayed somewhat inaccurately, and I agree that the narrative paints him as an antagonist. But it’s clear, despite his frequently obnoxious behavior, that he is a person who loves his family deeply, and whose considerable pride was wounded when he was rejected by his team.

Murderball is certainly enlightening for those of us who have not known a person with such a disability; and it’s uplifting, for those that crave that sort of sports movie. But mostly, it’s just fun to hang out with these guys a little bit. You get the sense that they’d be a fun group to have a beer with…as long as you didn’t take them on in any sort of competition. There’s no new ground being broken here, but it’s a solidly made, thoroughly entertaining film that stays true to the humanity (in all senses, positive and negative) of its subjects. And that’s definitely worth something.

Oh, Boy! It's Lists Time Again!
I'm waiting until I see Syriana and King Kong before publishing my best of 2005 list (you never know...), so to stem the overwhelming tide of requests, here are my honorable mentions, along with my choice of worst movie of the year:

Honorable Mentions: Serenity - A fun, well-written science fiction romp that didn’t pander to audiences or come with a multimillion dollar marketing strategy attached. Not quite the home run fans of the TV series (at least the relatively objective ones) were hoping for, nonetheless a good effort from a first-time director and an excellent ensemble cast.

Batman Begins - Featured a stellar cast and for once wasn’t a betrayal of its source material. Chris Nolan and David Goyer created a Batman for those of us who grew up with Neal Adams’ brooding crusader and hit our teens with Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns.

Head On- For presenting an honest, moving love story that had nothing at all to do with the sappy pabulum foisted on the public by the Hollywood machine. Sexy, heartrending, and ultimately cautiously hopeful, this movie felt like the real thing. And if it didn’t necessarily encapsulate the Turkish immigrant experience, it did a great job capturing aspects of it for a foreign audience.

Layer Cake – Thank you, Matthew Vaughn, for rescuing the Cockney gangster genre from the flashy jokiness of your earlier Guy Ritchie-directed productions. A good Bond movie is probably too much to hope for--let’s just hope Daniel Craig’s career is more like Sean Connery’s than Roger Moore’s or George Lazenby’s now that he’s officially stepped into the tuxedo.

The Worst Movie I Saw in 2005: Since I couldn’t bring myself to watch The Dukes of Hazzard despite the presence of Broken Lizard and Jessica’s Daisy Dukes, I have to give out this year’s Zircon-Encrusted Turd Award (hey…ZETA Awards…I like that) to Tim Story’s Fantastic Four. Combining a fundamental ignorance about what made the original comic great (although it must be said that Chris Evans’ annoying Human Torch pretty much nailed the character, as did Michael Chiklis’ Thing, despite one of the worst makeup jobs in film history) with pedestrian direction, a lackluster script, a lack of cool action setpieces, and cinematography that was at times so dark one couldn’t tell exactly what was going on onscreen; Fantastic Four exemplified everything that’s bad about Marvel’s rush to squeeze every last dime out of their comic book properties before the comic movie craze dies. You know your movie’s a failure when comic book authorities (I refer you to moviepoopshoot.com’s Comics 101 professor, Scott Tipton) acknowledge that Roger Corman’s legendarily awful unreleased version had a better grasp of the characters and their world. Ioan Gruffudd and Julian MacMahon are pretty bad, but they look like Olivier and Brando next to Jessica Alba’s mindbendingly horrible performance, so bad it would give Galactus himself indigestion were he to consume a planet on which this film was being shown. Of course, the viewing public disagrees with me; this stinker did great box office and a Story-directed sequel has already been announced. Fool me once…

It Came From the Queue!
Now Playing: DVD Roundup
Prime Cut (1972, d. Michael Ritchie) From its extended title sequence, a long journey through a slaughterhouse and meat processing facility used by its owner, crooked Kansas City eminence Mary Ann (Gene Hackman) to rid himself of unwanted visitors, one can tell that the film is going to combine menace and offbeat humor in that deadpan way of the best American films of the early 1970’s. When semi-retired Irish mobster Nick Devlin (Lee Marvin) is dispatched from Chicago to bring Mary Ann back in line, he discovers the ranch is trafficking in human flesh as well as bovine. A gentleman’s gentleman, Devlin rescues a young girl (Sissy Spacek) from sexual enslavement and sets about bringing down the overly confident (and possibly insane) Mary Ann. There are some minor detours along the way, but the simple plot is not the point. It’s more about great individual moments, such as a scene in which Mary Ann and his sausage-chomping hulk of a brother (Gregory Walcott) engage in an impromptu wrestling match in his kitchen as a squadron of eyeshade-clad book cooking accountants looks on. Ritchie film doesn’t rank among his best work (The Candidate, The Bad News Bears), nor among the best of this (to my thinking, anyway) great era in American film, but if the mention of quirky tough guys, washed out color palettes, and vintage Lalo Schifrin scores gets your movie-watching juices flowing, Prime Cut is definitely worth checking out. The newly-issued DVD from Paramount features a nice transfer and good monaural sound, but is devoid of special features.

Head On [Gegen die Wand] (2004, d. Fatih Akin) Cahit Tomruk (Birol Űnel) is an immigrant Turk living in Hamburg, earning money for booze and drugs by picking up empty bottles in a club. He’s a shell of a man, lacking human connection, old enough to have attended the old school punk shows whose posters cover the walls of his tiny trash-strewn flat. When a drunken car crash lands Cahit in the hospital, he meets Sibel (Sibel Kekilli), a young woman whose repressively traditional Turkish family has driven her to attempt suicide. She wants to experience sex, drugs, rock ‘n’ roll—in other words, the life of a typical western girl. She offers Cahit a deal: if he will marry her so that she can escape her family, she will cook, clean, take care of him—be his wife in all respects except the conjugal. Perhaps recognizing a kindred lost soul, he grudgingly agrees, and what follows constitutes one of the most original and touching love stories I’ve seen in years.

Of course, nothing proceeds according to Hollywood template, which makes Head On unexpectedly moving, even as it careens between the comic and the tragic. Akin juxtaposes scenes of nearly unbearable brutality with those of surprising tenderness. Despite their often stupid behavior, he evinces a profound empathy with the characters; he understands that sometimes we surrender to self-destructive impulses because they’re the only way we can feel alive. With wonderful performances by Űnel and Kekilli and a distinctive (but never ostentatious) sense of style, Head On is a true punk rock “love story” that’s no less effective for its lack of conventionality. Highly recommended.

Exhuming McCarthy
Now Playing: Good Night, and Good Luck (2005, d. George Clooney)
The time has come, people, to forgive George Clooney for Batman & Robin, The Peacemaker, and, yes, even Return of the Killer Tomatoes. More than that, it’s time to recognize that his talents extend far beyond acting. For a long time now, I have felt that Clooney has been our greatest “movie star,” equally at home in comedy and drama, his handsome features and easy manner a throwback to an earlier archetype we haven’t really seen since Cary Grant. Since attaining superstardom, he has chosen interesting mainstream roles and contributed to the independent filmmaking world through his partnership with Stephen Soderbergh in Section 8 Films. But with his directorial efforts on Confessions of a Dangerous Mind and now Good Night, and Good Luck, (and with buzz building about his performance in the upcoming Syriana) it’s time to recognize Clooney as the guy who’s got it all and can pretty much do it all. He’s like Orson Welles without the creative genius—-but with the ability to finish a film on time.

Lest I get too carried away, let me say that Good Night, and Good Luck is not a masterpiece. It’s not the kind of film that’s going to have audiences standing up and cheering and it won’t win a bunch of awards (though I hope I’m wrong about that) come Oscar time. But it is a nearly perfect film in that it accomplishes everything it sets out to do with a style, economy, and mastery of technique that you just don’t expect from that good-looking doctor from ER. As in 2002’s Confessions, Clooney shows an admirable restraint, a great understanding of cinematography, and a sure hand with actors. Of course, his fame allows him access to some of the best people working in Hollywood today, but how often has a great cast and crew been brought together to become something altogether less than the sum of its parts? In the first of many good choices, Clooney and Grant Heslov’s script examines the escalation and denouement of Senator Joseph McCarthy’s infamous HUAC witch hunt solely through the frame of reference of the CBS newsroom at the time, and specifically Edward R. Murrow’s Face to Face program, which went on the attack at the height of the hearings, exposing McCarthy for the dangerous fraud he was at a time when doing so could have been tantamount to career suicide. We get no framing news reports, no backstory, no perspective of the “man on the street.” Instead, Clooney stays for the most part within the smoke-filled confines of the news department, presenting the film like an installment of "Playhouse 90" or one of the other TV dramas of the 1950’s. Robert Elswit’s superb camerawork perfectly captures the feel of black and white television from the 50’s, and Clooney wisely uses no background music—-though he does adopt the conceit of a jazz singer (Dianne Reeves) recording contemporary songs at CBS as a transition device. The 50’s aesthetic allows Clooney to seamlessly incorporate actual footage from the era, creating a perfectly self-contained world in which the viewer is immersed. It’s not a pseudo-documentary, but it does feel like a contemporary drama, and so has the air of authenticity.

David Strathairn, who may not have given a bad performance in his professional life, does great work here. His Murrow radiates an intelligence and integrity that befits the exalted newsman, but also the weariness and disillusionment of a man who has devoted his life to the news medium only to bear witness to the beginning of its downfall. He takes on McCarthy not because he’s a crusader or a true believer but because he has dedicated his life to the now-quaint concept that news should present the truth of any situation as objectively as possible—-an ideal he saw being thrown aside by the news media in fear of attracting the dangerous attentions of the Junior Senator from Wisconsin. The performances are uniformly excellent, especially Clooney as Murrow’s dedicated producer Fred Friendly (whom my father reminded me went on to do Monday Night Football—what a resume!) and Ray Wise as Murrow’s ill-fated colleague Don Hollenbeck. Frank Langella gives appropriate gravity to CBS eminence gris Bill Paley, making us long for that simpler time when network decisions were made by people rather than legions of committees and consultants. Langella’s performance is nicely nuanced; we can see his personal affection for Murrow through the veneer his patrician persona, yet we don’t doubt for a minute that he will send Murrow packing once he starts costing the network significant money. Also great are Robert Downey, Jr. and Patricia Clarkson as a husband and wife newsroom team who are forced to conceal their relationship because of company policy, but their characters represent the film’s most serious misstep. Their subplot is largely superfluous, and while it is a good device to convey the workplace tenor of the time, it could have been truncated and achieved the same effect. As it is, it reeks of filler to pad the film’s relatively brief running time.

Here’s the thing. Good Night, and Good Luck is a very good film. But more than that, it’s an important film. Not an Important Film (I’ll write about the difference one of these days), but an important film. The parallels between the McCarthy era and ours are evident everywhere, and Murrow’s speech about the deteriorating state of television that bookends the film is so prescient that it’s hard to believe they are his actual words (they are). Without resorting to cheap nostalgia, the tone and substance of Clooney’s film create an elegy for the high water mark of television news, the moment when the medium fulfilled its promise and almost immediately started its decline. It encapsulates the debate so relevant to the TV news medium today—what is its obligation to the truth? Is it merely to present a “fair and balanced” viewpoint, with all sides given “equal” time (as Fox News and others have amply demonstrated, equal time doesn’t always mean equal consideration), or is there sometimes a greater truth to be uncovered? I’m not sure, but then again these days I’m getting most of my news from the Internet and "The Daily Show."

Pulling the Trigger
Now Playing: A History of Violence (2005, d. David Cronenberg)
If A History of Violence is David Cronenberg’s attempt to sell out to the studios, then he’s having the last laugh. It may have spendy production values, an A-list cast, and a story based on a comic book, but audiences expecting a Hollywood vigilante flick will leave scratching their heads. Cronenberg cannily adopts the trappings of such a picture, but refuses to give the audience the expected payoff of either a protagonist who has gone through a dark place only to emerge happily reunited with his loved ones, or the big “oh shit” moment where he realizes the horrible consequences of his actions. All the people our putative hero dispatches (and there are many) deserve killing, but Cronenberg (working from a screenplay by Josh Olson) refuses to let us feel comfortable about it.

The movie’s trailers spell out the blood-simple plot. Small town diner owner and all-around standup guy Tom Stall (Viggo Mortensen) is closing up when two hoodlums on the lam come in, threatening to do some very nasty things to Tom and his employees (we know they mean business from a creepily chilly opening sequence). Acting on instinct, Tom disarms and kills them, becoming a local hero in the aftermath. Though he shuns the spotlight, media attention is pervasive, and attracts one-eyed Philly mobster Carl Fogaty (Ed Harris, who I always like better as a bad guy), who shows up with two henchmen to harass Stall’s family. Fogaty is convinced that Tom is actually a hood named Joey Cusack, and is determined to bring him back with him and take revenge for the loss of his eye. His persistence begins to wear on Tom’s small town lawyer wife (Maria Bello, in a fine performance) and son Jack (Ashton Holmes)—does Tom’s facility with violence belie a hidden criminal past?

All of this sounds like a typical (albeit watchable) crime flick. But a synopsis cannot begin to convey the profound ambiguity that Cronenberg invests in the story. He puts us in situations where we are rooting for Stall to take violent action, but when Stall takes that inevitable step, we cannot feel good for the character. Cronenberg seems to be saying that there is a hidden reservoir of violence within us all, but that tapping into it is not a cause for celebration for there is no going back afterward. Simpleminded critics have seen this as Cronenberg (a Canadian) criticizing America’s violent society. To view the film in those terms is to completely ignore Cronenberg’s body of work. In most of his films, Cronenberg serves up incredibly graphic violence (though one of his most effective, Dead Ringers, merely suggested it with some really ghastly-looking gynecological instruments), but even in his early horror work, the violence is never an end unto itself, but a way to get under the audience’s skin, to infect their thoughts with indelible images that create resonances long after the film is over.

Cronenberg confounds expectations throughout the film, perhaps most effectively by turning the final act into a gruesome comedy, as Tom confronts the head of the Philly crime family (a scene-stealing William Hurt). In fact, throughout the film, there are moments where the audience is encouraged to laugh, either out of embarrassment (there are two sex scenes which are quite graphic by current Hollywood standards) or even outright physical comedy. But I don’t think the appropriate reaction is to stand up and yell (as Jeffrey Wells reported happened at the Cannes premiere) “Stop laughing--it’s not funny!” Cronenberg is too expert a director to get a reaction other than the one he intends. He’s one of the few directors working outside the exploitation genre who won’t shy away from graphic sex and violence, but what sets him (and a few other gore auteurs such as Takashi Miike) apart from the hacks of the industry is his complete mastery over the form and function of what he’s showing (and not showing) us.

A History of Violence is the kind of film that takes time to properly assess. Leaving the theater, I was ready to place it somewhere between The Dead Zone and The Fly in the Cronenberg oeuvre; that is to say quite good but not great. Yet it has a lasting effect, and lingers in the thoughts a long time after it’s over. And that, kids, is the mark of a great director.

Fox Can't Take the Sky From Me!
Now Playing: Serenity (2005, d. Joss Whedon)
Reviewer’s note: Since every man, woman and child with even a passing interest has no doubt already seen Serenity at one of its myriad advance screenings, this doesn’t necessarily qualify as a scoop. Nonetheless, I was able to see it before its official theatrical opening, so I guess that counts for something. As any discussion of this film seems to be framed by the user’s feelings on the past works of its creator, I’ll lay it out briefly before I begin the review in earnest. I am not now, nor have I ever been a member of the Joss Whedon fan club, though I think he’s quite talented. I thought the Buffy TV series was entertaining, but certainly not the apex of broadcast drama that some seem to feel it is, and I’ve never seen a complete episode of Angel. His writing for film has had a spotty track record: one great script (Toy Story), and a couple of interesting but ultimately flawed ones (Alien: Resurrection, Titan AE). I tried an episode of Firefly, the series upon which Serenity is based, when it was originally airing on Fox, but didn’t get into it for the same reason that it suffered an untimely cancellation: the network’s monkeying with the episode sequence made it impossible to get into Whedon’s impressively detailed universe. Still, enough people proselytized to me about its pleasures that I resolved to give it another chance on DVD. However, I wanted to see the film from the point of view of a non-fan, so I tried to wait to watch the series. A temporary Netflix drought and a persistent sci-fi yen conspired against my best-laid plans, however, and I popped the series pilot in my DVD player. I was an instant convert; Whedon’s nicely drawn characters and trademark snappy dialogue combined with familiar western-themed plots and solid ensemble acting to create a wonderfully addictive television experience. Like the legions of Whedonites that convinced Universal to pick up the movie rights, I began to anticipate Serenity as a chance to spend a little more time with the characters to which I had become attached over the course of series’ fifteen hours. With Whedon writing and directing, there was no chance the film would fail to deliver on that count. The big question on everyone’s mind (not least the studio plants in my row at the screening who kept asking everyone what they liked about the show) is: Will it play to the unconverted?

The answer is yet to be determined. My feeling is that it will, thanks to the familiarity of the tropes and some good action and special effects, but that newcomers will miss much of the nuance that made the series memorable to begin with. If you hadn’t seen the series, you wouldn’t know that Shepherd Book (Ron Glass, in fine voice and cornrows) was ever a member of Serenity’s crew, or that Inara Serra (the lovely Morena Baccarin) is a Companion—-a well-educated concubine-for-hire that enjoys the exalted position of a geisha in the futuristic world of the film. Her relationship with Captain Mal Reynolds (Nathan Fillion), who was smitten with her but unable to accept her profession, formed much of the romantic tension of the series. Do you need to know these things to enjoy the movie? No, but without those layers of context, the feature may seem like just another sci-fi western, albeit one with great dialogue and really likeable characters.

Newcomers get a tightly-constructed introduction to the world of Firefly. Sometime in the future, we’re told in the film’s intro, Earth’s population used up the planet’s resources and set off into the galaxy to claim new homes. As civilization spread out, a central government emerged to provide order to the core worlds. Settlers on the edge of civilization rebelled against this authority, and a bloody civil war ensued. On the losing end were the rebels, or Browncoats, with whom Reynolds served. In the aftermath, he and his crew are able to eke out a living through petty crime and chartered transport; the latter is how the crew came to include fugitives Dr. Simon Tam (Sean Maher) and his enigmatic and possibly insane teenage sister River (Summer Glau), who Simon rescued from some sort of mysterious MK-Ultra style government mind-control experiment. Just what it was and why River was selected was clearly meant to be a mystery unraveled over the course of the series, but Whedon makes this the focus of the movie, answering most of the lingering questions. A top-secret, unnamed Operative (Chiwetel Ojiofor) has been dispatched to recover River by any means necessary, and as Reynolds and crew try to stop him, they begin to solve the mystery of their strange and dangerous passenger.

In his first directorial effort for the big screen, Whedon demonstrates an extremely able touch with his actors (chemistry developed over a year of working together no doubt helps), and, more surprisingly, fairly decent cinematographic instincts—not that anyone’s going to mistake him for Kubrick, but his frames are decent enough. The movie’s television roots show in the plotting, however. There are no subplots, just a direct line of action from beginning to end. It’s not enough to do the movie in, though—-the ride is thrilling enough that we aren’t looking for detours during the course of the film. In retrospect, though, it seems like Whedon may have sacrificed an opportunity to broaden and deepen his ‘verse to provide something the studio felt like it could sell.

Nitpicks aside, Serenity is one hell of a good time. Whedon and crew get the tone just right, serious when it should be but never so much that it gets pompous (Star Wars prequels, I’m looking at you). I can’t think of a serious sci-fi film with as many genuine laughs that don’t rely on in-jokes (ahem, Star Trek: The Next Generation films). Whedon’s trademark dialogue walks the line between witty and precious, and almost always stays on the right side. There are genuine scares, great effects, and believable action. The acting is solid throughout, especially from Ojiofor and Fillion, but even from series favorites Alan Tudyk (as wisecracking ship’s pilot Wash) and Adam Baldwin (channeling Warren Oates as grumpy hired muscle Jayne Cobb), who have been relegated to diminished roles in the feature. Best of all, Whedon isn’t afraid to make his universe dangerous. He risks alienating the rabid fan base with the fates of some of the characters, but he’s apparently paid attention to his westerns—-in just about all of the best ones, not all of the characters we care about make it to the end of the trail. And in these franchise-happy, merchandising-driven times, one has to respect a creator putting his babies in situations where some or all of them may not make it to the end. There are no dream sequences, no Deus-ex-machina moments, and it’s saying something that I’ve been conditioned to assume these cop-outs are coming.

I left the screening with a big grin on my face, knowing that I had seen a space opera the likes of which are all too rare these days. The fan in me may have subdued the critic, but I don’t think that’s the case. After all, I’ve loved Star Trek since I was four years old, but no amount of irrational nostalgia could convince me that Star Trek 5: The Final Frontier or Star Trek: Insurrection were good movies by any stretch of the imagination. I think if the public gives Serenity a chance, the film will do well at the box office. And the fan in me hopes that happens, just on the chance that success will warrant a sequel, and I’ll get to spend another couple of hours with the characters I’ve grown to love.