EVEN THE RAIN: The Film Babble Blog Review

EVEN THE RAIN (Dir. Icair Bollain, 2010)

In FrançoisTruffaut’s DAY FOR NIGHT (1973), the famous French director (playing a fictional famous French director) said: “Making a film is like a stagecoach ride in the old west. When you start, you are hoping for a pleasant trip. By the halfway point, you just hope to survive.”




As the producer and director of a low budget film about Christopher Columbus in Cochabamba, Bolivia, Luis Tosar and Gael García Bernal can relate to that sentiment greatly.




The "Cochabamba Water Wars" of 2000 are raging, and García Bernal just happened to cast the leader (Juan Carlos Aduviri) in the demonstrations against the water hikes to play a pivotal part in his film - Hatuey, the Taínotribe chief who led a rebellion against the Spaniards in 1512.




Tosar and García Bernal fret about how this conflicts with their filming, but Aduviri simply states: “There are more important things than your movie.”

Scenes from the film within a film about Columbus are often presented without the film makers or crew visible, with documentary style recordings from the actual protests interspersed throughout so a jolting juxtaposition occurs.




We feel the stress in the faces of the extras hired on the cheap as they are unable to take a break from the reality that plans to privatize their vital water supply will threaten their already poverty stricken existence.




Aduviri, is aware of being exploited by the film makers, but is determined to push on for his cause. His passion rivals theirs, as well it should, and the fragility of a threadbare film project contrasted with the escalation of rioting demonstrators is striking to say the least.




By the time the finale comes around, the historical context of both events in Garcia Bernal and Tosar's film, and the overwhelming severity of the strike against the Bolivian goverment is tightly intertwined.




Director Bollain is sympathetic in her storytelling drawing vast humanity from the performances of Garcia Bernal, Tosar, and especially Aduviri who definitely steals the film.




EVEN THE RAIN is a powerful film that illustrates just what it means to survive, whether through cinema or through the strength of one's convictions.






More later...

Win Win (Saturday, April 2, 2011) (22)

Writer/director Thomas McCarthy has a very straight-forward, frank style to his comedies. He makes movies that are totally set in our world, inhabited by characters who we could easily know as our neighbors (or ourselves) who get into difficult situations partly because of their own doing and partly because they have bad luck. His latest film, Win Win, explores how when stuck inside a world of deep malaise, people do dumb things for good reasons, and that, as with life, stuff generally works out in the end.

Mike (Paul Giamatti) is a suburban lawyer in New Jersey who has a small practice that he is struggling to keep afloat. He's married to a wonderful, loving woman, Jackie (Amy Ryan), who takes care of their two kids and has a very sensible head on her shoulders. Mike is also the wrestling coach of the local high school, where his team is one of the worst in the area. He loves wrestling and working with the kids, but the team's mediocrity and the floundering of his work is getting to him.

As part of an elaborate and unethical scheme, Mike becomes the guardian for one of his elderly clients, Leo (Burt Young... Paulie from the Rocky movies) for which he gets a few thousand dollars a month. One day Leo's estranged grandson, Kyle (Alex Shaffer), shows up unannounced and Mike feels obligated to take him in until his mother (who is in jail and rehab) can come collect him from Ohio. Kyle, a champion high school wrestler, joins Mike's team and starts to make an impact on their record and the structure of Mike and Jackie's house beings to help him. The problem, of course, is that this could all fall apart if Mike's scheme is exposed.

This is a particularly well written script. I really like the structure of this story, going from order to chaos to order, but in a very natural, understandable way. After it ties up in the end it is clear how we got to that point. It does not feel overly-manipulated by the writer, which happens much more often in movies than I'd like. It seems like more often than not, writers have an idea for a story and an ending and put a bunch of filler in the middle for no reason that moves along clumsily to that end point. The plot here winds along very organically, which fits in well with the matter-of-fact style of the film.

McCarthy loves the mediocrity and sadness of Northern New Jersey (those words are my judgement, not his). Unlike directors like Todd Solondz or Kevin Smith who delight in the weirdness of the place and paint caricatures of it, McCarthy's New Jersey is very direct: a suburban area that has a life apart from the big city it is next to, but is somehow a place of lost dreams. Life is what it is, in this place. It's not romantic, it's not silly, it's just a bit grimy but mostly good.

My biggest problem with the film comes down to this issues of naturalness, or lack thereof, where the script gets a bit jumbled. Mike's friend and business associate is Vigman (Jeffrey Tambor) a CPA who he shares the office with. Vigman is his assistant wrestling coach and good for a funny line here and there (Tambor is typically dorky, bitter and hilarious here). Unfortunately McCarthy also includes another character, Terry (Bobby Cannavale), Mike's best friend who is going through a mid-life crisis and sees helping Kyle and the wrestling team as some sort of mid-life mission. The problem is that there is simply not enough material here for there to be two friend/coach/confidant characters. It would have been better if these two characters had been merged into one. Cannavale's tone is also too jerky, too frat-boy for the film, which is otherwise sorta subtle and dark and clever.

Amy Ryan has become one of my favorite actresses in recent years with her work in The Wire, Gone Baby Gone, a comedic role on The Office and the HBO series In Treatment. She's always fantastic and never overdone. Here she continues this great streak as a woman who you almost feel bad for (she's very average) until you realize she's probably the strongest and most sensible characters in the film. She also does the most impeccable life-long-New Jerseyite accent I've heard in awhile.

Perhaps the best thing McCarthy does in this movie is to make Paul Giamatti somewhat likable. I think this is his most natural, normal, calm character since he played Pig-Vomit in Private Parts (he was brilliant as Harvey Pekar, but Pekar was a weird guy very much up the Giamatti explosive alley). Giamatti has become almost unwatchable for me as each one of his characters reaches a new depth of sadness and misanthropy. Here he's just a normal schlub with normal life problems on his back. He tries to figure out a way out of his situation, but digs himself deeper into a hole. This normal, every-manness of the character is totally the core of this film. It's a lot of fun.

Stars: 3.5 of 4

In a Better World (Saturday, April 2, 2011) (20)

Susanne Bier's In a Better World, which won the Oscar this past year for Best Foreign Film (over the far superior Dogtooth), is about bullying and facing bullies head-on. It is far from a subtle film, generally clobbering you to death with parallels, symbols and important meanings of small gestures. There is no way to watch this movie and not understand exactly what Bier is trying to get you to understand. This makes for a dull viewing experience; I'd much rather watch something and have my own journey deciphering it rather than having my hand held through the narrative.

Anton is a doctor in Africa for Doctors without Borders (or some NGO just like that). He works in a very poor village where people not only suffer from typical diseases like malaria and infections, but are also being beaten and cut up by a local warlord who terrorizes them. Anton's family back in Denmark is hanging on by a thread. He and his wife are separated and about to get a divorce and their early-teen son Elias is constantly the target of classmates at school for being fat (and partly Swedish... Danish kids can be so cruel!). If you didn't understand the connection, both Anton and Elias deal with bullies in their daily lives.

Elias meets Christian, a transfer student who has been living in England for several years with his parents. His mother just died and he and his father have moved back to the family estate to regroup. Clearly Christian is emotionally affected by his mom's death, and he doesn't like that Elias is the butt of classmates' jokes. The two become friends when Christian violently defends Elias. This sets the tone of their relationship: loyalty, but at a price.

Bier might have more White European guilt than any other director working today. One of her last films, After the Wedding from 2007, was about a Danish man trying to split his life between a swank Copenhagen family and his job as an orphanage director in India. I guess it's nice that she makes movies about sad, poor people who are not as well off as Euros, but her back-and-forth style in this film and that earlier one is a bit tedious and uninspired. I'm smart enough to understand that a white doctor in Africa or India is probably seeing things that he wouldn't see back home where he's from, I don't really need him to sit around contemplating how different the worlds are.

There is a very nice moral dilemma moment when Anton has to decided if he should keep his doctor's ethics and help save the life of the warlord, which would in turn let the evil man live to hurt and kill other villagers, or if he should let him die, playing God and saving more people down the line. This is a sorta fun moral game that one can think about for hours and hours. What are the limits of ethics and morals? Is it ethical to let one man die so you can let hundreds others live? This should really be the core of the film, but it's really just a chapter in a greater story. I think this is a mistake in the script (by Anders Thomas Jensen).

Aside from the pain of seeing people starving and sick in Africa, this is not a very difficult movie. It's nicely shot and well acted, but it's directed more like an after-school special than an Oscar winner. There is nothing particularly challenging and generally the Euros live to buy Ikea another day. The Africans are basically forgotten about by the end, which is a strange twist on this holier-than-thou tale. Interesting....

Stars: 2 of 4

Super (Saturday, April 2, 2011) (21)

Super is a gonzo comic book movie straight out of the brain of a disaffected 15 year-old boy... or out of the brain of writer/director James Gunn. There is nothing here that your mother would like. It's crass, bawdy and silly - sorta Mystery Men meets Evil Dead.

Frank (Rainn Wilson) is a loser fry cook living in Anytown Exurbia, U.S.A. He has a terrible life and his wife, Sarah (Liv Tyler), hates him and only married him because she was getting straight after a stint in rehab. She leaves him for Jacques (or Jock, as Frank understands his name) (Kevin Bacon) a piece-of-shit strip-mall strip club owner and drug dealer, which sends him into a downward spiral of self-loathing.

One day he goes into a comic book store and meets the clerk there, Libby (Ellen Page). The two decide that they will design their own super hero personae (the Crimson Bolt and Boltie) and fight bad guys on their own. It's very similar in story (and tone) to Kick-Ass and Scott Pilgrim (both from last year).

What follows is one of the silliest Looney-Tunesy riffs I've seen in a long time. It's totally gross with tons of blood and foul language, but totally enjoyable. It's a sad world of despair and cruelty and Frank, as the Crimson Bolt, is violent and remorseless. After he blows someone's head off with a gigantic gun, he steps on his brains to rub in the point.

The script here is hilarious, bittersweet and very clever. Gunn has the perfect mix of stupidity and archness to make the dialogue feel as real as anything you'd see from an art-house think-piece. The acting is fantastic, particularly the supporting cast of Bacon, Tyler and Michael Rooker. Both Wilson and Page are actors who frequently err on the side of overdoing roles, but here they are both understated and give great, painful performances.

The best scene of the film, and one of the best comedy scenes I've witnessed in a long time, has Libby throwing herself at Frank, who is not really interested in her (he is, after all, trying to win back Sarah's heart). She convinces him that if they wear their costumes the sex will be better and easier for him to take and he won't really be cheating on Sarah. She puts on music and does this weird, uncomfortable dance (reminiscent of that Elaine Benes jig from Seinfeld), which is utterly unhot. She then mounts him and proceeds to... well, to rape him in the most silly and awkward way. In terms of "funny rape" scenes (yes, there's a category for that) it's up there for me with the one from Observe and Report (the best funny rape scene ever).

More than anything, this is a tale of melancholia and pitifulness, set in the most average, beige Americana background. It is hilarious, but there is a dark cloud of pain lying below the surface. I think it's a rather deep movie (like Observe and Report) that is wearing a gross-out comedy gown. I think there is more there than meets the eye... underneath the superhero mask.

Stars: 3 of 4

Potiche (Friday, April 1, 2011) (19)

Continuing in his effort to make a film from every genre (including some genres you never knew existed), Francois Ozon's Potiche is a silly and lightly satisfying farce in the most classic French style. The story is pure popcorn nonsense, the writing and directing are rather unremarkable, but overall, this is a good and not great movie.

Suzanne Pujol (Catherine Deneuve) is a woman whose family has owned an umbrella company for a few generations (see: Demy's The Umbrella's of Cherboug) and has married a strong-willed man who is managing the plant now (it takes place in the 1970s). At some point he leaves the helm of the factory for health reasons and she takes over control. To this point she's been an obedient housewife ('potiche' means "trophy wife," en francais) managing a large house. Now she has to make business decisions in the midst of union troubles at the factory.

To help her comes Maurice Babin (Gerard Depardieu), now a Communist member of the national assembly, and formerly a political radical in the '60s. The two had a passionate romance once upon a time and now their close working relationship rekindles some of those flames. Suzanne has to manage her heart, the business and the family and keep her head about her.

The supporting cast here is great, lead by Fabrice Luchini as Suzanne's domineering and foolish husband, Robert, and Jeremie Renier, as the fabulous and possible gay (or just really into the disco scene in a French way) son, Laurent. I know this is a silly thing to say from this point in the middle of his career, but I think that in 50-some years we will look back at Renier's career the way we see Jean-Pierre Leaud's as a man who grew up in front of our eyes, almost literally, through the films he made.

The script, adapted by Ozon, is rather efficient and the story is paced well. The last act gets a bit too silly, I think, as Suzanne decides to stick with her husband and run against Maurice in the national assembly election. There are some funny bits in the film and some draggy bits as well. It's a nice movie, but nothing incredibly special. I think the acting is probably the best thing it has going for it, though that should be what you get when you hire some of the most talented actors in the world, non?

Stars: 2.5 of 4

Miral (Friday, April 1, 2011) (18)

Ugh. This fucking movie... So Julian Schnabel has made three fabulous movies up to this point: Baquiat, Before Night Falls and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. I think he films are much more interesting, much more visually appealing and much more approachable than his other artworks (I really don't like his broken plates on canvas "paintings). Miral, however, breaks that streak as it has a really terrible story, is full of terrible film cliches, has no clear narrative structure with lots of waste and was apparently cast by a blind person (and a deaf person).

The story follows the Palestinian freedom movement from the creation of Israel in 1948 to sometime randomly around the Oslo Peace Accords in 1993 (apparently the Second Intefada wasn't important or something). Miral (Freida Pinto) is a girl born to two Palestinian people in the 1970s. After her mother dies, her father puts her into an orphanage for Palestinian girls in East Jerusalem (I think) set up by Hind Husseini (Hiam Abbass) who is a sorta political person. There she is raised on the edge of political radicalism, but never really becomes a radical herself.

At some point when she's a teenager she gets a boyfriend who is more of a radical and she begins peacefully protesting Israeli treatment of Palestinians with fliers and picket signs. Then she's arrested and then there's a peace agreement (I don't mean to give too much away. Sorry). That's about it. More than anything, this is a really, really dull story where basically nothing happens. It doesn't really give a good view of the Palestinian struggle (Arafat and the PLO are never mentioned, as far as I could tell) and doesn't really explain any amount of world history that was happening at that time.

There's nothing wonderful about the look of the film, nothing you haven't see a million times in other movies. Schnabel plays with colors throughout the film, so sometimes you get washed out, super bright desert scenes, sometimes he puts a blue or red filter on the lens and you get blue or red scenes. The camera seems to move a lot, in one sequence he tilts it up to look at the tops of trees in a woods and spins... I think I've seen that before in one of his movies (maybe Diving Bell). It's all a bit paint-by-numbers filmmaking and not really interesting.

OK - so let's talk about how Freida Pinto is an Indian woman born in Mumbai and is not Palestinian. This was really totally distracting for me throughout the film. I heard an interview recently with Schnabel who said that Rula Jebreal, who wrote the memoir the film is based on (and who is now Schnabel's girlfriend), looks Indian so he cast an Indian in the role that is based on her. Well, that would be great, if the movie was called "Rula" and it was hyper-realistic - but it's not. It's a
movie called Miral and there is no sense in not casting a Palestinian, or Arab, woman in the role. It's weird and culturally dishonest.

Then there's the fact that the film is in English and not Arabic. Two of his first three films are not in English. Before Night Falls is a film about Cuban poet Reinaldo Arenas and it is in Spanish and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is about French fashion editor Jean-Dominique Bauby and is in French. So why the hell is this movie in English? It's totally distracting, especially when there are English-speaking characters in the story - like a US military guy who mysteriously comes in and out of the first act of the film and is played by Willem Dafoe.

The film has been getting a lot of press about how it's anti-Israeli or something. I really don't see that totally. It's anti-Israeli the way that Star Wars is anti-Empire or the way Pan's Labyrinth is anti-Spanish fascists. That is to say that the Israelis are painted so broadly and are so bizarrely one-dimensional that they almost cease to exist as real characters or a real negative force.

There are several (turgid, terribly written) lines of dialogue where you hear Palestianians commiserate about " why won't they let us build new houses?" or "why are the settlers in our land?" Well, yes - those are good questions - but empty questions really won't scratch the surface of the issues. We see IDF soldiers acting like dicks at checkpoints. OK - buy why are they acting like dicks? And is it only the soldiers who are acting this way or do Israelis on the street agree with them. The fact is we see basically one civilian Israeli in the whole film, played by Schabel's daughter Stella... and she's a pretty cool girl, who is then dropped from the plot.

My favorite bad part of this bad film (aside from the all-brown-people-are-the-same mixup) is that end credits song is some obscure Tom Waits tune, sung in English, sorta a bluesy, mournful rock piece. Uh, Julian, are you telling me there wasn't something more relevant to the story or the region that you could have put in this spot? Maybe a song from the rough geographic area (by a Palestinian musician? Even a Palestinian rock song? Something in Arabic?)? What's the point in all this cultural gobbledygook? I don't really know and I bet Schnabel doesn't either. This is very much the throw-pasta-at-the-wall approach to making movies. It doesn't stand on its own at all, is incredibly boring and is pretty dishonest as a historical narrative.

Stars: .5 of 4

SOURCE CODE Is Fun, But Has A Major Glitch

SOURCE CODE (Dir. Duncan Jones, 2011)

So Jake Gyllenhaall is jarred into consciousness on a Chicago commuter train sitting across from Michelle Monaghan who’s in mid conversation mode.

She thinks he’s somebody else, and from his reflection in the train’s restroom mirror – he is somebody else.

While still scrambling to figure out what’s going on, a massive explosion destroys the train and kills him, her, and hundreds of people. Then Gyllenhaall wakes up again, but this time in a dark chamber in some sort of laboratory with Vera Farmiga in a dark blue military suit on a video monitor.

Farmiga explains to Gylennhaall that he is on a mission to inhabit a specific passenger’s mind the last 8 minutes before the train is blown up in order to identify the bomber and thwart future attacks.

Therefore Gyllenhaall is thrust into the same scene again multiple times, GROUNDHOG DAY style.

This is a juicy premise that comes equipped with some tasty twists. Gyllenhaall, who is revealed to be a army helicopter pilot, is a smart guy so it’s fun to watch him try to figure out the suspects and manipulate the situation, all the while flirting with the playful Monaghan.

As Farmiga’s superior, a stodgy Jeffrey Wright is sternly looking over her shoulder spouting out the necessary exposition about the source code that they are utilizing: “It’s not time travel; it’s time reassignment.”

As the second film of director Duncan Jones (whose first movie MOON is seriously worth checking out), SOURCE CODE is stylishly paced, elaborately assembled, and is filled with stunning visuals, but it has one fatal flaw that is really difficult for me to wrap my brain around.

Thing is, to reveal that flaw would be committing a major Spoiler! crime, so I’ll just say that this film is close to 80 maybe 85% of a superb surreal action thriller.

It's one of Gyllenhaall's most appealing performances displaying the right amount of tension and humility. By this point he doesn't have to prove that he can carry a movie, but it's still cool seeing him again give it the "old college try."

Farmiga shows that even with her lips prudishly pursed, wearing a drab uniform, and with her hair pulled back into a bun is still collassally cute. Her performance ain't bad either - she conveys a restrained sense of urgency throughout.

Monaghan doesn't have much of a character despite being the love interest, but she makes the most of it. Wright as the handicapped "source code" scientist, is all sinister in his cold calculations in a predictable "heavy" manner, but although he's mainly a device - he's not a narrative problem like the one that keeps me from being 100% on board with this movie.

So much of this film is so good that I definitely recommend it, but that one particular plot hole (that I'm dying to go off on, again - Spoiler! city) just keeps bugging me.

I know I over-think these things, and that most folks will see it as a slick serviceable popcorn picture and go about their day, but SOURCE CODE is so close to absolute brilliance in its meticulousness that I can't help but zeroing in the one element that almost derails the entire endeavor.

However, maybe getting wrapped up in that one glitch in the system is just as much fun as getting wrapped up in the rest of it.

More later...