BBC Prize Review

***

“Every war is different,” says Anthony Swofford as the movie “Jarhead” comes to a close. “Every war is the same.” Looking back on his experience, he sees that the first Gulf War and the Marine Corps have become ineradicable parts of who he is: “Every jar-head is me.” The screen shimmers and shifts into a scene of a desert patrol dwarfed by distance and hazed by heat waves. “We are still in the desert,” he says. The screen darkens. The credits begin to roll.

A critic once observed that audiences emerge from a comedy talking animatedly with one another, but after a tragedy they come forth subdued and solitary, each absorbed by his or her own thoughts.

“Jarhead” is not a tragedy but a tragic coming-of-age story. As in “The Last Picture Show,” a young man discovers what a cruel, destructive business life can be. Swofford emerges from a war that has consisted of a long, maddening wait followed by a hard march through the surreal aftermath of battles already won by jets dropping smart bombs, toward a horizon blackened by Saddam’s burning oil wells. He returns home to find that his girlfriend has left him for another man. His best friend, who suffered with him through the combat that never came, dies as a civilian, possibly a suicide, as he was thrown out of the Corps with a dishonorable discharge.

Subdued and solitary, I waited outside the theater for my wife.

“So, what did you think?” I asked her when she came out. “Definitely not a John Wayne movie,” she said. “No,” I responded, reminded of Clint Eastwood sharing a victory cigar with a young Marine beneath an American flag raised atop a hill in Grenada in “Heartbreak Ridge.”

“It wasn’t as dark as the book,” I said. “In the book,” she replied, “you couldn’t see Swofford’s smile.”

Jake Gyllenhaal does display an engaging, youthful grin in the early part of the movie. He plays the twenty-year-old Swoff very well. And Jamie Foxx does Sgt. Sykes brilliantly. Against the backdrop of a night made at once hellish and spectacular by blazing oil wells, the Sergeant tells Swoff that he (Sykes) could have joined his brother and had a nice safe job stateside, but with no chance to see such sights as this. “I love this job,” he says. “I thank God for every day he gives me in the Corps. Oorah… You know what I mean, Swoff?” Foxx’s delivery is flat, point blank, neither sarcastic nor enthusiastic. He is an exhausted soldier giving himself a pep talk he scarcely believes in any longer. Get out your Oscar Nomination forms.

At dinner we tried to recall what was book and what was movie. I did not remember the scene in which the soldiers are interviewed by a TV journalist from the book, but from Kubrick’s “Full Metal Jacket.” From “Full Metal Jacket” also, I believe, came the bizarre business of a soldier’s sardonically making a corpse his buddy. The war-is-surreal-hell moral of the movie reminded me of Coppola’s “Apocalypse Now” – a film the young jar-heads watch with sexual intensity in Mendez’s movie. But the scene in which the soldiers sit down to enjoy a home movie one Marine’s wife has made – of herself being humped by their next door neighbor – that, we all agreed, was in the book.

I remember when “Battle Cry” came out in 1955. Unlike the Boy-Scout-clean soldiers of most WW II movies of that era, these Marines said Hell and Damn. And one of them actually shot the finger at some troops riding past – What a shocker!

A Jacksonville, NC Daily News reporter interviewed several Marines from the local base who saw the movie. Excerpt:

Their reviews seemed to be positive, especially concerning the portrayal of the relationship between Marines and how deployments and war are mostly about sitting around and waiting.

“I thought it was good,” said Lance Cpl. Richard Usher, 19, from Tampa, Fla. “From what I know, it’s accurate. They did say ‘Oorah’ way too much.”

Lance Cpl. Josh Rader, 29, of Georgia, said he thought the movie was one of the more accurate portrayals of the Marine Corps, with the only more accurate movie being Stanley Kubrick’s “Full Metal Jacket.”

“A lot of the training, they dramatize it more,” Rader said. “I’d say it’s probably more accurate.”

Lance Cpl. Adam Blades, 20, with 1st Battalion, 2nd Marines, agreed, but took exception to the actors’ ages.

“The actors were a little old,” he said. “The majority of guys going over there are like 18 and 19. But it was pretty cool. As accurate as I’ve seen.”

*****

If you’re a Coen brothers fan, you’re gonna be extremely delighted with NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN. This is Ethan and Joel at the pinnacle of their directing careers, something that should not be missed by anyone interested in film or entertainment. Forget FARGO. Push aside THE BIG LEBOWSKI. Move over O’ BROTHER WHERE ART THOU. No Country is leaps and bounds beyond those. In fact, it reigns supreme as 2007′s best film.

I don’t always agree with movie critics but this time they got it right. It is the first time that Associated Press reviewers David Germain and Christy Lemire have both selected the same film as their #1 pick. With more award nominations than you could shake a stick at (including four Golden Globes, three Screen Actors Guilds, probably a gaggle of Oscars and many, many, many others), No Country will undeniably have directors, actors and screenwriters jumping up on stage come awards ceremony time.

Equal parts thriller, western, crime-drama, and action, No Country weaves a tapestry of excellence throughout its length.

The first note of excellence must be directed at Spanish actor Javier Bardem. Probably not very well known to most American audiences, Javier has cemented himself as the leader in portraying a psychopathic killer and (dare I say it!) has surpassed that of Anthony Hopkins in his SILENCE OF THE LAMBS Hannibal Lecter role (something that I thought would never happen). Ruthless, unforgiving, sociopathic, and in desperate need of a new hair style, Anton Chigurh (Bardem) is flawless. Every time he showed up on-screen I felt a chill run through my bones (“Call it”). Absolutely perfect.

The next note of excellence must go to Josh Brolin and Tommy Lee Jones. Llewelyn Moss (Brolin, PLANET TERROR) is the lucky/unlucky soft-spoken Texas cowpoke/hunter who stumbles across a veritable fortune in drug money only to be relentlessly pursued by killer Anton. Mr. Moss’ gradual decline in health (mainly due to wounds inflicted on him by Anton) is painful to watch up until the very end. Sheriff Bell (Tommy Lee Jones) is the opposite of Anton Chigurh. He doesn’t understand all of the death and destruction laid at his feet. He longs for a time when murders were easy to track and solve, not these new-fangled deaths where bullets aren’t used (air-guns do just fine) and there seems to be no rhyme or reason to their patterns.

The fourth (perhaps this should’ve been first) note of excellence goes to the Coen brothers for their perfect adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s novel by the same name. Many lines of dialogue were lifted verbatim from the novel itself, including the ending monologue by Tommy Lee. It’s noteworthy to mention here that the Coen brothers not only directed but wrote the screenplay, too.

The final note has to go Cinematographer Roger Deakins (he’s worked with the Coen brothers on many occasions and also did the exemplary JARHEAD work). Every scene was so well thought-out and so convincingly filmed that viewers are carried freakishly easy through this incredible story.

It’s difficult to do justice to this film with one short review, simply because there are so many great elements to it. The casting was spectacular — with Woody Harrelson (NORTH COUNTRY) and Kelly Macdonald (THE GIRL IN THE CAFÉ) pulling in exceptional supporting roles — as was Carter Burwell’s haunting original musical score and Mary Zophres impeccable costume designs.

If you missed this film at your local cineplex, you may have gypped yourself from experiencing this amazing cinematic event. Now you’ve gotta wait for the DVD to be released and then …it’s your call.

I don’t really want to say goodbye
I don’t really want to leave you
But now I have to go away
Stay away from you forever

What we had was something special
Deep down from our hearts
But now I have to go away
And leave you from my heart

For all that you have given me,
I can return but love. For you
Bound up the wounds I did not see
And gave me hopes and passions new.

I can return but love for you,
Whose unmoved faith my heart did move,
And gave me hopes and passions new,
And loved me till I turned to love.

Whose unmoved faith did my heart move?
The mother of my heart, not blood,
Who loved me till I turned to love.
And I became the soul I would.

The mother of my heart, not blood,
Bound up the wounds I did not see.
And I became the soul I would
For all that you have given me.

Roses are Red

violets are blue

you are a stinker

I am too

****

A somewhat schematic script – you can almost see the boxes being ticked as each issue is dealt with – does not ultimately detract from a fine achievement. The story surrounds the succumbing to HIV-AIDS by a life-loving young man at the time when the world was taken by surprise by the ferocity of the hitherto-unknown virus. The various reactions – bewilderment, fear, panic, hatred, self-loathing, guilt, determination, courage, loss, grief and, of course, love – are all charted in the five central characters.

There can be little argument, I’d have thought, concerning the excellence of Michel Blanc’s performance; nor of the puzzling awfulness of Lorenzo Balducci’s – whyever was this Italian actor cast as an American who had been brought up in Australia?

Julie Depardieu’s character is the least developed of the central quintet but nevertheless the actress manages, as ever, to make a fully-rounded contribution.

Emanuelle Beart’s striking features and dynamic screen presence make it difficult to assess her as an actress. In the end she didn’t convince me she was any kind of writer, but she was entirely convincing as a mother with ambivalence to her baby. The scene where her character talks to her own mother (the late Maia Simon, in a brief but noteworthy final performance) about the difficulties surrounding her own birth is one of the most tender in the film.

Johan Libéreau is touching as the doomed Manu, fleshing out what seems to me to be a somewhat idealised character – unreflective but sensitive, foolhardy yet vulnerable.

But the film ultimately belongs to Sami Bouajila as the policeman who finds himself in the most unexpected of relationships. It’s by far the most complex role and also, perhaps for that very reason, the most believable. Bouajila embraces the contradictions, possibly realising, as Heath Ledger proved so memorably in Brokeback Mountain, that struggles with sexuality can produce compelling drama.

Les Temoins is well edited, photographed and, on the whole, well directed. The influence of Truffaut’s Jules Et Jim is all-pervading, but it’s none the worse for that. The film’s biggest advantage is that it tackles its subject in an entirely unsentimental way: the same script made in Hollywood would undoubtedly turn into something unspeakably gooey – the memory of Philadelphia, with which it could all too easily be compared, makes me shudder. Les Temoins is way, way above that.

****

When I went into the theater to see Gone Baby Gone, Casey Affleck was not what I pictured when I read Dennis Lehane’s Patrick Kenzie novels. But he won me over and will now forever be Kenzie as far as I’m concerned.

Gone Baby Gone is a tough and gritty movie about a child abduction and the lives it destroys. You can see the end coming a little too early in the movie, but it’s still fascinating watching Kenzie slog through a lot of awful stuff before you get there. Ben Affleck has proved that he can direct a movie with the best of them. There was nothing slack or boring for the entire running time, and the ending will give you something to argue about over dinner after watching the movie.

The best detective movie I’ve seen in a while.

****

A very good comedy that for the most part is sweet and intelligent but still comes across as lacking in the script department when some of the characters are concerned. The interaction between Ryan Reynolds and Abigail Breslin is sweet but the story about Reynolds quest for love is not very interesting to say the least and the women he has affairs with don’t have much time apiece to have the audience really get to know them plus add to the fact that they are mostly cliché stereo types anyway and you are in a complete loss of originality. Of the three women, only Rachel Weisz manages to bring more to her character in terms of solid acting and complexity but that’s really because Weisz is one of the best actresses of her generation and always brings her A game to what ever she does, so much so with this film that she does nearly steal it from the leads (Reynolds and Breslin) and almost lifts the film above its cliché script problems with her fun sense of charisma but she doesn’t have that much screen time and she is stuck with the most stereo typical role of the film( that of career woman) and her subplot involving Kevin Klein as her mentor does not fit with what the film is about at all and does not add to it. Despite the short comings of her character and her story, Weisz’s performance is the film’s one true gem.

Isla Fisher is stuck with the most predictable character in the entire film (That of the free spirit who is a lot more in touch than she seems) and you can see a mile away on where her character is going to end up, which is a shame because Fisher is a fine comedic and dramatic actress that can do a lot more if giving the task but once again, the script is stuck in cliché mold and she’s not giving enough to make her character any more interesting than she can. The worse served out of all of this is Elisabeth Banks who really does not have much of a character to work with at all (That of the sweet girl next door) and she comes across as more of an after thought than some one with substance. Which is a shame because Banks is a good actress who can do much more if given a much better character to work with and that’s the real crime of this film.

It’s a fairly good film but it needed to have more substance than it did. Like I said before, the interaction between Reynolds and Breslin are really good and their chemistry as father and daughter is genuine and sweet but outside of them and Weisz’s scene stealing performance, the film is dragged down by its own inability to give the actors more outside of their cliché characters and surroundings and that where the film falters.

****

Preposterous and exceedingly dull tripe in which the CEO of a supposedly dynamic thrusting ruthless pan-European organisation, who shuffles about as though he’s at death’s door, spends all his time sitting alone in his office, in the car or at home, drinking, daydreaming and generally moping about, painfully uttering cryptic or subversive remarks when paid a call, with five second pauses between each word, is under covert investigation by the company’s resident psychologist in order to determine whether he might possibly not be quite up to the job? I’m sorry mate – even the most indulgent fellow board members would have long since got shot of an embarrassing washed-up liability such as this. That it should be an issue at all let alone the crux of the story is absurd. We have ludicrous conversations between this tired old man and the equally unconvincing psychologist, debating for instance who should take the greater credit or blame for the recent apparently ruthless restructuring whereby the company improved productivity by so many hundred per cent but at the tragic human cost of putting some alcoholic production line workers out of a job. What the production actually is, other than that it involves factories pumping out smoke as you see in the occasional intercut clips, remains conveniently obscure, or at least for as long as I could bear watching, which was until about half-way through. The firm’s offices, personnel and methods are a disjointed, unbelievable collection of clichéd images and notions clearly gleaned from from secondhand reports rather than personal experience. Whether you love or hate big private enterprise it isn’t so utterly colourless and static as depicted here. Unfortunately the human characterisations other than the CEO are equally sketchy and poor. The psychologist himself who has the first-person role in the proceedings seems to behave in a fairly arbitrary way with no real involvement or motivation. His non-relationships with one or two women are depressing without feeling authentic. Many films with equally serious defects as these have some redeeming features on a more superficial level that make the experience at least bearable. This one doesn’t. There is not a hint of visual or verbal interest in any of the inordinately drawn-out, unremittingly dark or bleak scenes. The occasional bit of relief is afforded in the musical sound-track, including traditional Turkish song or something of that ilk, techno rock and melancholy string quartets, but here again what might have been a diverting interlude goes on and on and on and on while the drab characters do nothing and the clumsy plot stands becalmed. Of the few films I have walked out on this deserved its premature dismissal the most.

***

The Gang’s All Here! 

On the big screen this 4 drag queens are unmasked. There is nothing appealing or revolutionary about them. They are a walking, reactionary embarrassment. That’s what happens when the small TV screen is transplanted to the big Cinema screen. The truth comes out. Remember Bill Cosby’s translation? Over 2 hours of the most excruciating dissection of characters I hope I’ll never meet. The Make Up, the wardrobe, the dialog! Really depressing. I was admonished by a Sex and the City devotee because I was appalled at the movie without having ever seen the TV series. Okay, I plead guilty to that and that’s only why I’m giving it a 2 and not a 1.