Two and One Half Stars
Steven Soderbergh's "The Girlfriend Experience" recalls an observation by Jack Nicholson on the set of "The Shining", defending director Stanley Kubrick's approach. He said, "You go mad with something like realism and then you come up with someone...who says 'Yeah it's real, but it's not interesting'." Such a problem plagues "The Girlfriend Experience", which is so deliberately improvised that it becomes a distraction. Soderbergh's poetic, often ethereal visual style is at direct odds with the blunt, droll exchanges that comprise the bulk of the film's substance.
The film is real, but that isn't necessarily why it isn't interesting. If you would like to know what Soderbergh is getting at, you need only listen to any one of the myriad conversations that permeate "The Girlfriend Experience", in which people carry on about the state of the economy, and the 2008 presidential election, during which the film is set. At a time of great economic turmoil, those who can still afford an escort at $2,000 an hour spend their costly time advising said escort where and how to invest her money, though the primary commentary of these conversations is that they're advising her to invest it at all.
The girl is Chelsea, played distantly by adult film star Sasha Gray. IMDB lists her performance in "The Girlfriend Experience" right between the films "Fox Holes" and "Roadside Ass-istance". That said, her performance here is an intelligent one, delicate and brave. And if she seems amateurish, well, Sodergergh goes to such lengths to make the entire project feel amateurish that it hardly matters. He clearly has a lot of confidence in his young starlet, leaving the camera on her for what seems like minutes on end as she listens to her boyfriends, er, clients ramble on through financial advice and questions about her profession and financial advice again. Soderbergh's film may be blunt and shallow, but Ms. Gray is anything but.
Four Stars
Considering that so much time is spent looking over the steering wheel of a shabby taxi cab into the back seat, Ramin Bahrani's "Goodbye Solo" is a beautiful film. His characters are plagued by earthly problems, but they are not defined by them. Senegalese cabby Solo (Souleymane Sy Savane) does everything he can and more for his suicidal patron William (Red West) but in the end it is his own demons and character flaws that stifle redemption, and he must admit defeat.
Bahrani, one of America's great directors of this decade, has done more than anyone else to dissect the nature of American multiculturalism. His films begin with cultural barriers and then move past them into themes that are universally human. Ethnicity offers only surface definitions. In one of the film's many great exchanges, Solo, his reggae music turned up in the cab, asks William about his favorite music. We can be fairly certain that Solo never actually looked up the music of Hank Williams. What was important about that scene was the two mens' shared enthusiasm for music in principle. In the end, it is their shared understanding of each others' pains that elevates the film to such a powerful emotional pitch.
Invictus
Three Stars
Clint Eastwood's "Invictus" is, in essence, a hammy feel-good sports movie that made me feel good. I can handle that. Eastwood, in his aging career, is not maturing however. He seems to be losing confidence in his audience's intelligence, a problem that plagued last year's "Gran Torino" as well. Too much thinking out loud. Too many heavy-handed emotional cues from the music or slow motion or otherwise, but it's Morgan Freeman's eloquent portrayal of South African president Nelson Mandella for which I am recommending "Invictus", for which I was made to feel good. Pay attention to Eastwood's exquisite opening sequence, in which privileged white children practice rugby on a neatly gated green lawn while impoverished black children play soccer across the street in a dirt pasture enclosed with chicken wire. The way Eastwood moves back and forth between them subtly allowing the disparity in abundance to balloon on its own until Mandela's victory procession slyly accentuates the divide between the two is exquisite. It is Eastwood's finest moment in terms of pure cinema since "Unforgiven".
Julia
Four Stars
If Job had been a con man, his caper would have progressed something like the crime catastrophe "Julia", directed by Erick Zonca. But more than debunking nearly every crime thriller cliche in the book, the film is a triumph for Tilda Swinton, who alongside Zonca creates a woman we both (or neither) care for and (nor) detest, but above all understand. This is one of those rare and valuable instances when a performer is confronted with a character of nearly infinite dimensions and understands every one of them.
Julia's plot to help her neighbor kidnap her son from his grandfather crashes over and over through the floor and comes to rest on a floor less stable than the one before. Swinton allows the twists and turns of the story to draw new and unforeseen elements, both positive and negative, from her character. Zonca wisely spends over a half hour with Julia to begin the film, observing her drinking problems, her nymphomania, her profound lack of compassion, so that when the crime finally happens it is developing out of her character, not the other way around, and everything that transpires from then on out feels absolutely inevitable. The film's final line is perfect. Funny and self-reflexive, yet enigmatic and foreboding, it is a perfect moment, which is always a good way to leave.
Nine
Two Stars
To say that "Nine" doesn't survive the transition to the screen would be unfair, because the film doesn't really make an attempt to transition at all. After all, what would a Tony Award winning musical do without a stage? I don't mean that necessarily as a criticism. Many films have stayed true to their theatrical roots and succeeded (think of Kazan's great "A Streetcar Named Desire"). No, the problem I have with "Nine" is the effect that said stage has on the source material, Federico Fellini's brilliant "8 1/2".
Fellini's wonderfully sardonic observation of the creative process seamlessly meanders between fantasy and reality. It is the seamlessness that's important. Not being able to discern the ideas from the inspirations, the dreamscape from the wakefullness emblematic of the artist's subversive venture, is itself the central theme of Fellini's film, which is the best film ever made about movie making. With "Nine", however, director Rob Marshall tells the concrete story of Guido Contini (Daniel Day-Lewis) and the creative block hindering his massive new film "Italia" in one reality, then returns to the stage for musical numbers that symbolize his fantasies. Marshall's consistent use of black and white further sorts the mystery for us. The result is an adaptation of "8 1/2" that isn't so much an interpretation as it is an instruction manual, which greatly inhibits our ability to interact with it.
Day-Lewis is himself inhibited. One of the best and certainly the most selective of actors working today, the most we are allowed of the man's brilliance are in early scenes when his Guido speaks intuitively of the film-making process to a crowd of excited reporters. One of those reporters is Stephanie, played by the radiant Kate Hudson, and if "Nine" did anything, it was to remind me of how frustrating Hudson's career choices have been since "Almost Famous". The woman is tremendously talented, and here she seems almost to be satirizing her own career, as a superficial fashion queen with a warm, real smile.
Penelope Cruz and Marion Cotillard, both fearless, are also restrained from doing to their characters what they're capable of, and Nicole Kidman's plastic Claudia is an obvious homage to Anita Ekberg in another Fellini film, "La Dolce Vita". Marshall even brings her and Day-Lewis (whose Guido was initially played by Marcello Mostroianni, who also played the male lead in "La Dolce Vita") to a fountain in Rome.
The Road
Two and One Half Stars
John Hillcoat places nearly all of the emotional stock of "The Road" in the starkness of his cinematography. It only modestly succeeds. The cinematography is indeed stark, as was the case in Hillcoat's earlier film, "The Proposition", which was a good film. Unfortunately, he openly sidesteps the characterization necessary to make "The Road" poignant. A soft-spoken narration by the man played by Viggo Mortensen explains to us the stories he would tell to his son (Kodi Smit-McPhee) about his wife(played in enigmatic flashbacks by Charlize Theron). These stories must be summarized in narration, apparently, because Hillcoat couldn't find time for moments of that kind of intimacy amidst an episodic narrative dictated by countless shots of the famished duo quietly navigating this beautifully realized post-apocalyptic world. It is a misguided decision. So much of "The Road's" plan of attack is based on the decay of beauty, particularly internalized through memory. Not showing us these exchanges is, I think, why the film never reaches the emotional firepower its gunning for.
This decade has offered an interesting evolutionary step for the post-apocalyptic thriller. "The Road", like Timur Bekmombetov's "9" earlier this year and Alfonso Cuaron's remarkable "Children of Men", have sidestepped the cause and effect progression of the apocalypse in favor of the inherited conflicts that follow. This deceased, gray world is so often more of a backdrop than a spectacle, and Hillcoat is keen to incorporate it into the narrative arc, to interact with it. The Man's resourcefulness reveals subtle details that make this world tragic without ever seeming nostalgic.
The dichotomy of Hillcoat's commentary is deeply rooted in the withering of compassion by earthly experiences and human interaction. Smit-McPhee's young boy is, as they always are, innocent, though Hillcoat wisely avoids making him cute or optimistic. His generosity is borderline Christlike. Mortensen's father is pessimistic, suspicious, reclusive, and attempts to project these qualities onto his unprepared son. It's a story that can be told in pretty much any setting. Think of Capra's "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington", or Antoine Fuqua's "Training Day" or any other tale of idealistic youth revitalizing the values of their disenfranchised elders. The problem is that Hillcoat tells when he should show, and is perhaps too loyal to the barren dialog of Cormac McCarthy's novel to really capture a revealing and provocative atmosphere. But damn, that cinematography sure is stark. Expect an Oscar nomination for Javier Aguirresarobe.
Sherlock Holmes
Two and One Half Stars
Guy Ritchie is not a patient or talented enough director to handle the likes of Robert Downey Jr., who in "Sherlock Holmes" feels muted in a role begging for the exact opposite. I think the problem is that Ritchie is too quick to cut away. He doesn't understand the significance of a reaction shot, which is where the magic of an RDJ performance so often lies. The man could conduct a symphony orchestra with his eyebrows, and so often it is that final rise or fall or skewering of his brows that can make a shot or cap an exchange, a technique that Ritchie's headlong style does not have time for.
From a narrative standpoint, the mystery proceeds in a fairly straightforward manner, even though the film often doubles back on itself to poke us in the ribs and say "gotcha". It's subject, involving world dominion as they always do when one wants to up the ante, is nice and fun, and just almost makes sense after about five minutes of relentless explanation at the end. A technique involving Holmes rationalizing his way through the progression of a fight scene before executing it flawlessly is used about three times over the film's two hour plus running time, but is not utilized during the climactic fight scene. Ultimately however, the project fails to be engaging because it fails to properly develop its villain, Lord Blackwood (Mark Strong). Blackwood exists entirely in shadows and ominous exchanges on the street, and Holmes is locked in a one sided chess match which thoroughly deflates the tension.
Sin Nombre
Four Stars
A beautiful is world passing by, visible from the top of a train unintentionally carrying hundreds of desperate Mexicans north toward America, but in "Sin Nombre" that beauty is no refuge, not when you know its secrets. It is permeated by a vengeful gang who relentlessly pursue Casper (Edgar Flores) north, like the demons of his past. They are waiting for him at every station, at every open stretch of rail, anxious to pump him full of bullets for killing their leader. His one act of redemption, saving the beautiful Sayra (Paulina Gaitan) from rape and robbery from his own gang, provided him only with piece of mind and the promise of death. The twelve year old boy he recruited into the gang, ostensibly ruining any promise of a fulfilling or prosperous life, is ironically leading the charge against him. But damnit, if he can just get young Sayra safely across the border, he'll at least still have that piece of mind.
Up in the Air
Four Stars
Jason Reitman's exquisite "Up in the Air" is being called a "recession era fable", but I think the recession is more of a backdrop. A utilized backdrop to be sure, but what he's really up to here is a commentary on the growing psychological differences between us as Americans, the effects that accessibility and technology have had on such important institutions as love and family. Vera Farmiga deserves an Oscar nomination as the median of this theme, but then so does Geore Clooney, our generation's Cary Grant, as the tragic one man corporate firing squad who's home is between homes (if one can be said to be ahead of him) and whose family longs for his return only in passing. This is an important film, I think, and a must see. Does it deserve comparisons to Frank Capra's depression era films? Probably not. But Preston Sturgess perhaps? Absolutely.
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