Happy Thanksgiving! Here’s Our Traditional Turkey Dish.

Celebrating once again the cinema of Turkey, the land that copyright infringement laws forgot.

Spend the holiday with friends.

Do you have big plans for the holiday tomorrow? Ours involve a lot of not blogging. We’re going to not blog as hard as we can. But, since traffic here on SBR has grown so much lately we want to re-present the Thanksgiving special we published last year, thereby killing two birds (maybe even turkeys) with one stone.

We’ll start where any civilized discussion of a sovereign nation’s culture should begin. By looking at how the Turkish entertainment industry rips off Batman and Robin, ostensibly in the cheapest manner possible:

Yeesh. You can’t really call them “caped crusaders” because they don’t have capes. For that matter, “crusader” may not have the same connotation in Asia Minor. Whatever, the clip is typical of Turkey’s devil-may-care attitude about copyright. YouTube is chock-full of  Turkish riffs on most Western geek culture mainstays, riffs that almost always employ (in a clumsier manner than their American cousins) dizzying amounts of violence, sex, and overwrought soundtracks. Did we mention they’re also really cheap-looking? It bears reiteration. Check out the Turkish Star Trek: 

As the clip shows, the Turkish Captain Kirk is much better at walking than most American actors. Still, the language barrier makes impossible understanding why a peasant hangs out on the bridge and pesters the legitimate crew members.  The bridge set also seems to be in some kind of basement garage, if those metal support posts are any indication.

Still, where there’s Star Trek there has to be its dumber, more exciting cousin Star Wars, right? 1982′s Dunyayi Kurturan Adam (“The Man Who Saves The World”) used bootlegged footage from Star Wars Episode IV as well as stock footage of American and Soviet test rocket flights to tell its weird, garbled saga about… stuff in space? The musical score to this clip’s interminable opening credits sounds like public access television music from the 1970s, and it only gets worse from there.

Not content to hit George Lucas up once, Dunyayi Kurturan Adam also pilfers the themes to Raiders of the Lost Ark as well as Battlestar Galactica. Eventually achieving cult status by sheer power of  its awfulness, the film spawned a 2006 sequel. In a case of bad art imitating more bad art,some fans of the original complained the follow-up was a letdown – just like Lucas’ recent efforts.

Finally, given Marvel Comics’ love for merchandising we’re not entirely sure this next clip is even a bootleg. 3 Dev Adam (“Three Mighty Men”) was a startlingly low-budget, brazenly lurid 1973 abomination depicting an ersatz Captain America’s struggle to stop an evil, pudgy Spider-Man knockoff from running amok through Istanbul. Cap was joined in his efforts, for some reason, by a copy of the legendary Mexican luchadore El Santo. Meanwhile ”Spiderman” and his two girlfriends idly torture and kill people in depraved ways or have sex in front of puppets. If you’ve never seen a man guinea pigged to death, here’s your chance:

Probably the single most trivial thing you will learn this week: 3 Dev Adam featured Turkish star Aytekin Akkaya, who also appeared in Dunyayi Kurturan Adam.

That’s about all we can stand right now. We’ll be back next week with our latest edition of Miscellaneous Debris. Have a happy, safe holiday weekend.

- Michael Kabel

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Preview: Crazy Heart

Jeff Bridges stars as a faded Country music star hitting the comeback trail. 

Jeff Bridges has built a career of playing outsiders, losers, and misunderstood souls, from his earliest leading roles to later, under-appreciated projects like American Heart and The Fabulous Baker Boys to the still-in-theatres The Men Who Stare At Goats. He’s seldom given a bad performance in forty years (though he’s appeared in a few bad movies) and created at least one cinema legend in Jeffrey “The Dude” Lebowski. Yet for all that work the man has yet to win a Best Actor Academy Award, despite four nominations going back to 1971′s The Last Picture Show. 

His latest film, Crazy Heart, might be the film that changes that. Based on Thomas Cobb’s novel and adapted and directed by first timer Scott Cooper, it tells the story of Bad Blake (Bridges), a washed up and alcoholic country singer whose fortunes improve when he falls for a music journalist (Maggie Gyllenhaal) sent to profile his life and career. Colin Farrell co-stars as Tommy Sweet, a former member of Blake’s backup band since risen to stardom himself, and who gives his former boss a shot at a comeback. 

Bearing immediate resemblance to The Wrestler, judging by the trailer below the film also draws influence from well-remembered works such as Tender Mercies (1983) and the 1976 remake of A Star Is Born. Actually, the connective threads run pretty tight: Tender Mercies starred Robert Duvall as a washed up country singer undergoing spiritual rebirth, and Duvall produced and appears in Crazy Heart, too. A Star Is Born featured Kris Kristofferson as a faded music star, and with his leathery skin, scraggly beard and flowing hair Bridges’ Blake looks an awful lot like that legendary singer-songwriter. The rustic cinematography also reminds us, though more implicitly, of Hal Ashby’s 1976 Woody Guthrie biopic Bound For Glory and Clint Eastwood’s Honkytonk Man (1982). 

Kristofferson (Not Bridges.)

 

Which is not to say that all that homage is necessarily a bad thing. For years now, raiding the film legacies of the 1970s and early 1980s has helped energize the careers of filmmakers such as Steven Soderbergh and James Gray, and of course Quentin Tarantino seemingly can’t help but return to those wells again and again. But the films that Cooper ostensibly draws from here – Tender Mercies especially – are particularly well-regarded, both critically and by devoted fan bases. Bridges is such a slam-dunk for a part like this it’s sort of surprising that it hasn’t happened yet (1989′s The Fabulous Baker Boys, in which he played a hard-drinking and self destructive lounge pianist, notwithstanding.) For the sake of creating a story around his undoubtedly pitch-perfect turn the rest of the film needs to be more than the sum of its influences. 

Ultimately it’s always a pleasure to watch Bridges work, and this part is exactly the kind of role for which Academy members love to vote; a win for Bridges might also serve as mea cupa for chickening out on giving The Wrestler‘s Mickey Rourke the statue he deserved last year. Everybody needs redemption sooner or later, even Oscar voters. 

 

Crazy Heart opens in limited release December 16. 

-Michael Kabel 

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70s Cinema: Fat City

John Huston’s overlooked masterpiece follows the struggles of boxers and boozers in Northern California.

At what point does life pass you by? When and how do you reconcile yourself that your hopes and dreams, no matter how sincere, are not going to come true? John Huston’s superb 1972 life-on-the-skids drama Fat City, adapted by Leonard Gardner from his own novel, follows two boxers who pass each other on the escalator of success. One is rising  just slightly up, the other is starting a long road down. The two are guided by a trainer and manager whose belief in the sweet science is an act of faith, and hindered by women who trap them for the most mundane of reasons. There are no miraculous comebacks planned, no short trips to glory. Their tragedy is that they are average, working class people in a working class sport, in a small city where work is almost all there is.

Yet Huston (who spent a brief time as an amateur boxer himself)  and Gardner never let the story get bogged down, focusing instead on character development and context rooted in compassion. Billy Tully (Stacy Keach) was once a promising heavyweight until an ill-fated marriage combined with a disastrous loss in Panama to end his career. Reduced to sleeping in flophouses and working the fields outside the dreary Northern California town of Stockton, as the film begins he’s nonetheless not quite finished with himself. Working out at the YMCA, he happens across Ernie Munger (Jeff Bridges), a kid fresh out of high school with talent to burn. Tully recognizes Ernie’s gift and encourages him to see his old manager Ruben Luna (Nicholas Colasanto).

Ruben takes the boy under his wing, training him and putting him into a stable of up-and-coming fighters who tour neighboring towns to fight in  gritty matches with small purses and high risks of injury. Ernie loses his first fight, even getting his nose broken, but throughout Ruben encourages his fighters with visions of riches to come. An early scene in which the old man expresses his hopes for Ernie to his wife tells his life’s story: she doesn’t bother rousing from a half-sleep to listen, because she’s heard it many times before, about many fighters who’ve come and gone.

Meanwhile Tully has fallen into the orbit of a bitter drunk named Oma (Susan Tyrrell), stealing her away from her imprisoned boyfriend over the course of one long, boozy conversation. The two settle into a shabby domesticity, with Tully sliding into the part of caretaker and companion to Oma’s blowsy dissipation. The two are so pathetic in their slow-burning need for one another, with Keach and Tyrrell so adept at circling each other, that the scenes focused on them are almost painful to watch.

Ernie keeps fighting, winning amateur matches while planning the arrival of a child with his girlfriend Faye (Candy Clark). Tired and exhausted by the rigors of the fields, Tully returns to Ruben’s gym, getting himself together long enough to qualify for a comeback match. But his previous career casts a long shadow, and Ruben is only able to secure him a match against Arcadio Lucero (Sixto Rodriguez), a Mexican fighter with a reputation for fierce efficiency. Tully wins the long and brutal bout, not so much from his own skill as from Lucero’s secret kidney injury. “Did I get knocked out?” Tully asks as the final bell rings.  Rather than gloat, he embraces the hurting Lucero, giving the film a moment of transcendent grace.

A moment that doesn’t last. Tully has no more left the match than a long-simmering grudge against Ruben erupts again, sending him into a self-destructive tailspin that’s worsened by finding Oma reunited with her paroled boyfriend (real-life welterweight champ Curtis Cokes). The final scenes of the film are a heartbreaker. Tully and Ernie kill time in a decrepit cafe, with a possibly punchdrunk, possibly drunk Tully realizing the emptiness of the life before him in a devastating moment of clarity. The story ends with the ambivalence that was so common throughout the 70s, challenging the audience to put the pieces together for themselves.

Huston and cinematographer Conrad L. Hall (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid) cast the town of Stockton, full of Depression-era buildings and rooms poorly lit by too much flourescent glare, with an objectivity that never condemns or celebrates the town’s ramshackle durability. Like its inhabitants, the town weathered adversity but didn’t come out of hard times unscathed. The cast, Keach and Tyrrell especially, give their roles a profoundly lived-in feel (ironic for Keach, given his subsequent well-publicized battles with drug addiction) that rings true without ever seeming patronizing. Keach is mesmerizing, allowing glimmers of youth and charm to shine through Tully’s hard knock present, even while bitterness and rage keep him from moving forward.

Of the supporting characters, while Colasanto would later carve a place for himself in TV history as Ernie “Coach” Pantusso on Cheers, here he’s equally moving as a trainer with bigger hopes than he can handle. Finally, real-life lightweight champion Rodriguez, in his only film appearance, makes the most of every second as the outwardly menacing Lucero. Watch for the scene of him leaving the arena alone after the fight, departing with his dignity intact despite defeat.

- Michael Kabel

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DVD Review: Star Trek

Action-packed reboot of the beloved franchise boldly comes to DVD and Blu-Ray this week.

One of the biggest hits of last summer’s movie season – and a giant cause for relief among the franchise’s devoted fans – J.J. Abram’s (Lost, Mission: Impossible 3) re-energizing take on the Star Trek mythology arrives on DVD and Blu-Ray this week in a variety of single and multiple disc editions. It’s a hell of an action movie, and though explicit comparisons to rival franchise Star Wars aren’t entirely fair, this new Trek has the same sense of dizzying momentum. Maybe too much momentum, and possibly too much action for its own good.

The Star Trek TV series and films have never preoccupied themselves with stunts and pyrotechnics, often proudly wearing their cerebral ambitions on their form-fitting sleeves. While Abrams and company have jettisoned such a restrained attitude in favor of adventure, the new film’s bravado often sometimes drags it down or lets it skip over important plot clarification. Also noticeably missing is the Utopian optimism that, at its best, let the original series and its various children transcend their budgets as well as the usual pitfalls endemic to episodic science fiction.

The story’s basics are familiar but made vividly fresh by a crisp production design as well as Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman’s taut script. Centuries into the future, young James T. Kirk (Chris Pine, Bottle Shock) spends his childhood near the Iowa shipyards that construct massive starships used by the United Federation of Planets to bring stability to the galaxy. An orphan whose father died saving the U.S.S. Kelvin from an attack by the belligerent alien Romulans, young Kirk is recruited into Starfleet by veteran officer Christopher Pike (Bruce Greenwood, The Sweet Hereafter) on the strength of his natural aptitude and his father’s heroic legacy.

Jump ahead three years and Kirk has breezed through San Francisco’s Starfleet Academy, even rigging a no-win mission simulation test (which veteran Trek fans will recognize as the Kobayashi Maru from Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan) in his favor. A disciplinary hearing, spearheaded by Academy instructor Spock (Zachary Quinto), is interrupted by a distress signal from Spock’s home planet of Vulcan. With the rest of Starfleet’s armada preoccupied elsewhere, it’s up to the cadets to respond in seven brand new starships including the venerable U.S.S. Enterprise. The Romulan craft that destroyed the Kelvin has returned again, and with help from his friend “Bones” McCoy (Karl Urban, The Bourne Supremacy) Kirk stows away beneath Captain Pike’s notice to help out.

The action that follows includes time travel, black holes, the destruction of planets, parachuting from low-Earth orbit, and swashbuckling sword fights. It often seems as if frequent Abrams collaborators Orci and Kurtzman threw everything they could devise into the chain-of-set-pieces script, leaving no idea discarded. For the most part that damn-the-torpedoes strategy works. Other times, including a tedious man vs. monster chase sequence on an ice moon (itself too derivative by half of The Empire Strikes Back), all that action instead feels superfluous and distracting from the main story thread.

And it’s a very linear thread. One thing happens and then another, each sequence building on the one before rather than happening from circumstance. Abrams et. al. have a lot to accomplish in the film’s two hours, yet despite the diversions, repetitious stunts and sometimes glaring plot holes the story makes sense without seeming simplistic; it’s easy to see where everything might have dissolved into chaos instead. The stakes, thanks to the Romulan commander Nero (Eric Bana, Munich), are demonstrably high enough that the rapid pitch continuously seems justified. Add that to Kirk and company’s relative inexperience and you feel justified in believing the danger.

What’s missing most is backstory, and context. We are told that the Federation is a noble cause but not of its origins, or why Earth and other alien worlds remain devoted to its purpose. The time-travel elements are explained but not developed, so that depending on your familiarity with that trope’s mental contortions the ensuring plot details will seem opaque at best and frustrating at worst. Kirk’s childhood is given only the barest amount of explanation, likewise the motivations of bad guy Nero or the Romulans in general. Extant Trek continuity is apparently filled with details on almost all of the above (we’ve just scratched the surface ourselves), so there was no shortage of source material from which to draw. Maybe Abrams and company have deferred such embellishments until the already-announced sequel? Whatever the case, the story needed greater depth to bring the film’s setting into a completely coherent focus.

Luckily the cast is up to the script’s ambitious challenges. Pine, given the task of bringing the famously pre-politically correct Kirk to the modern age, finds his character not in the swagger but rather in the relentless self-confidence that made William Shatner’s Kirk legendary. Quinto, a talented actor not given much to do on Heroes anymore except beckon or arch his formidable eyebrows, builds Spock from barely restrained and (oddly enough) seething emotion. Urban is underused as the crusty Dr. McCoy, as is Simon Pegg (Hot Fuzz) as Chief Engineer Montgomery Scott. Playing the heavy, Bana makes the most of a perfunctory role. In origin movies like this it’s enough for the villain to simply be menacing, but thanks again to impeccable costuming and production design a large part of that work is already accomplished. Still, he makes the most of each line of dialogue allowed him.

Speaking of design, the new Enterprise vessel looks great most of the time. This latest interpretation of the classic shape is sleek and detailed, keeping the recognizable form while incorporating new elements including a dynamic new electrical effect to the warp nacelles. The bridge is a swirl of translucent display screens and fluorescent lights, selling the movie’s futuristic setting all by itself. Less impressive, unfortunately, are a generic-looking medical bay and an engineering section that’s exactly as anonymous as any petrochemical refinery. For such a classic and famous ship you’d expect a bold new vision of its engine room to be just as impressive and well-thought out. It’s something to consider as Abrams and his group boldly go into plans for the sequel.

- Michael Kabel

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(Note: An earlier version of this review appeared for the film’s theatrical release.)

DVD Review: Up

Too much violence and a muddled script drag Pixar’s latest release down.

At the risk of stating the obvious, after last year’s masterful Wall*E probably anything Pixar produced next would suffer in comparison. With Up, the studio’s tenth feature film, co-directors and screenwriters Pete Docter and Bob Peterson have instead made a frequently uninspired, sometimes dragging jungle adventure that too often bears comparisons to one of rival studio Dreamworks’ dreary marketing centerpeieces.  Too long in the middle and too predictable by half, the film is the studio’s least achievement since the little-loved Cars. Sadly, it’s also seldom fun to watch.

To its credit, the film begins well, with the kind of sweet nostalgia that has infused depth and pathos to the studio’s previous The Incredibles, Ratatouille, and of course Wall*E (that little robot casts a long shadow.) As a youth growing up sometime in the era of movie serials and dirigibles, plodding and  uncoordinated Carl Fredricksen (voiced by Ed Asner) dreams of following in the footsteps of his hero, the explorer and big game hunter Charles Muntz (Christopher Plummer). When he stumbles upon Ellie (Elie Docter), a neighborhood girl who shares his romantic wanderlust, the two kindred spirits grow up together and get married instead.

The montage showing their long and contented life together (despite their inability to have children) is the highlight of the film. Set entirely to Michael Giacchino’s lovely score and without dialogue, the sequence fills in a flurry of details with grace and sincere emotion (a good example: notice the subtle class distinction in evidence at the wedding) After Elie passes away and the home they shared becomes surrounded by high-rise construction projects, a 78-year old Carl attaches thousands of balloons to his house’s fireplace as a means of transporting it to Paradise Falls, the Venezuelan jungle (and home to Muntz) that was Ellie’s unrealized dream. The plan goes fine until Carl realizes the house has a stowaway in the form of chubby, cherubic Wilderness Explorer scout Russell (Jordan Nagai).

Despite Russell’s earnest bumbling, Carl gets the house close to the falls, landing just three days’ hike from the spot Ellie wanted to see. The trek through the surrounding jungle forms the second act, and that’s where the film gets lost in several different ways. Russell discovers a rare (and eminently merchandise-friendly) rainbow-colored ostrich thing that, unknown to them, flees pursuit by the talking dogs bred by Muntz to patrol the jungle for interlopers. The old explorer, it seems, is determined to capture the bird after scientists dubbed his previous specimen a fake. Helped by the simpleminded but loyal hound Dug (Peterson), Russell convinces Carl to help get the bird to safety after Muntz and his dog pack turn on the hapless newcomers.

The chase from Muntz’s dirigible encampment and through the jungle, towards the bird’s – whom Russell names Kevin, for no discernible reason – sanctuary goes on too long, absorbing time that would better serve the story if used to flesh out the characters. Russell especially remains static throughout, all dim-witted enthusiasm and wide-eyed gusto that’s not as effective a counterpoint to the glum, rickety Carl’s grief-fueled determination as it needs to be. The product of a broken home and quietly despondent over an apathetic father, Russell in his own way years for for escape as much as Carl. But in dumping his entire backstory into a single scene Docter and Peterson instead seem content merely to get his motivation over with. To quote Diana Rigg in The Great Muppet Caper, “It’s plot exposition. It has to go somewhere.”

Likewise the one-dimensional Muntz, who suffers for lack of depth in comparison to other Pixar antagonists such as The Incredible‘s Syndrome, or for the kind of freewheeling snarl demonstrated by Monsters, Inc.‘s Randall Boggs. Muntz is ostensibly obsessed with bringing Kevin back to the world for his own glory, but doesn’t do much beside point and shout orders to his canine goon squad. Plummer’s rich voice, full of Old World patrician authority, isn’t utilized to its potential as a result. Asner, an underrated character actor in the 70s and largely forgotten since the 80s, gives his performance a full range of emotions despite the repetitive situations into which Carl is flung.

Ultimately, all the running around has to lead somewhere, but a plot point involving Carl revisiting his battered house/ship for a last encounter with Ellie’s memory only leads in turn to more chasing, as situations dovetail tidily towards a conclusion. That’s fine, but it suggests Docter and Peterson know the film’s heart is its strength, and cash in on that warmth to move the plot forward. Worse, the chasing includes some pretty intense violence, including a beating given Dug by the pack’s domineering leader Alpha, fiery airplane collisions, and Muntz’s long fall to his death. Creating animation that holds adult audiences’ attention is a laudable goal, but getting there through the use of violence is an awful lot like cheating.

Fortunately the film comes to its senses near the end, with a lovely denouement that puts all the characters happily together while only seeming a little forced. The closing credits are clever as well, presented as a family album that, like Wall*E again, advances the characters’ stories in a nice “bonus scenes” kind of way. Finally, the short film before the feature, a weird and high-concept fable entitled Partly Cloudy, is strictly hit or miss. I found it didactic and meanspirited, but the audience surrounding me seemed to enjoy it.

Up is the kind of film that you might love coming out of the theatre and esteem less each time you think about it. It is not Pixar’s best work, but given its many flaws in comparison to their previous accomplishments it’s hard not to think maybe they weren’t trying to outdo themselves at all. How sad to think that in making Up such gifted creators might have been aiming low all along.

- Michael Kabel

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Note: An earlier version of this review originally ran for the film’s theatrical release.)

Review: The Men Who Stare At Goats

George Clooney and Ewan Mcgregor star in a funny, sad comedy adventure.

From the perspective of our post-ironic, cynical-for-hipness’ sake zeitgeist, the countercultural movements of the 1960s and 70s, which embraced New Age mysticism and vague iterations of Eastern philosophy, seem a little naive and self-indulgent. That’s neither a completely unfair nor inaccurate assessment. Still, before shopping malls sold ankh medallions and Tao t-shirts, millions of Americans spent years looking for something vaster and more powerful inside themselves and the universe around them, sometimes taking strange paths to get there.

To hear The Men Who Stare At Goats tell it, even the U.S. Army got in on the act, devoting years of research and funding towards building a “New Earth Army” of psychic spies and supersoldiers that could accomplish any number of mystical feats. Based on British journalist Jon Ronson’s 2004 account of the First Earth Battalion’s long and flawed history and directed by Grant Heslov, the movie cruises with a zany comic momentum that’s loaded with amusing flashbacks. It’s chiefly a road movie in the desert, starring America’s leading man George Clooney as a Battalion veteran and Ewan McGregor as the hapless, cuckolded reporter following him in desperate hopes of a story as well as other things he seems at a loss to pinpoint.

Clooney plays Lyn Cassady, once the star pupil of Battalion founder Bill Django (Jeff Bridges), a Vietnam veteran who went to investigate the counterculture on behalf of the Army and came back a convert to all its trippy teachings. Cassady was a “Jedi Warrior,” he tells reporter Bob Wilton (McGregor), one of a vanguard of soldiers who would conduct war by embracing peace. The two meet in Kuwait, as Cassady prepares to embark on a “secret” mission into the Iraqi desert. Wilton follows, becoming both straight man, witness, and eventual disciple of Cassady’s eccentric behavior.

The two are kidnapped, blown up, rescued by a trigger-happy American security company, and eventually brought to the base camp for the Army’s current version of psychological warfare. This modern program involves subliminal messages put into music for our own soldiers and torturing detainees with the theme song to Barney the Dinosaur. The camp is directed, it turns out, by fellow New Earth Army veteran Larry Hooper (Kevin Spacey), who years before had selfishly put the whole project on the path to ruin. Django is also present, albeit a drunken and weary version of his former self. As Cassady endures a crisis of faith in his life’s work, Wilton and Django set about “liberating” the camp using huge amounts of LSD.

The film works best when its manic comic momentum carries it forward, effortlessly moving between Cassady’s desert roamings to the Battalion’s salad days and back again. There’s a third-act twist into some potentially dark territory that thankfully never quite materializes, and the final resolution comes across a bit pat and a little too easy. Everything that happens is funny enough, as far as drug humor goes, especially involving Spacey’s climactic act of confrontation. As a running gag, telling McGregor – who possibly wishes we’d all forget his participation in the Star Wars prequels – about Jedi warriors is funny in a meta kind of way the first ten times the script does it. After that the laugh factor starts to wane.

But anyone expecting a point to the movie, or a theme, shouldn’t look to the plot but instead to the performances, Clooney and Bridges in particular. McGregor is a capable straight man to them both, but the two actors inject a feeling both of loss and regret into their roles, playing men who devoted their life to something that may actually have been hogwash all along. Cassady carries a bad secret around with him, and Django has let his faith collapse into despair. It’s tempting, but maybe a little simplistic, to see the present-day Django as Bridges’ beloved Dude Lebowski after eight years of war and terror: nervous, tired, aching for a vanished serenity. He’s not abiding so well after all.

Likewise, Clooney gives his best performance since Syriana in a film that bookends his 1999 Desert Storm adventure Three Kings. Apparently borrowing Dennis Farina’s moustache and stripped down physically to not much more than leathery skin and sad eyes, Cassady is a dying shell of a man whose true motivations for going into the desert are less enlightened than he wants Wilton to believe. What’s left of Cassady, like Django, is a relic of a more optimistic time, and Clooney expresses this with half-completed sentences, almost adolescent self-righteousness, and a patience with Wilton that borders on condescension. Faced with death and despair, his leap of faith towards Django and their lost, futile ambitions becomes a defiance to a world that’s left them both behind.

At least, that’s one interpretation. The obvious symbolism here is of a holy man wandering the desert looking for his teacher, the desert in this case being a combat zone filled with shoot-first countrymen and Iraqi criminals bent on kidnapping. Yet the film’s biggest weakness lies in not bringing those ideas to the surface or fleshing them out as much as they deserve. Heslov moves the script along, possibly too fast to explore the issues raised by those central performances, with a result that’s not everything it could be. That’s a shame. A film that took a closer look at such ideas in a modern American setting would really be something to stare at.

- Michael Kabel

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DVD Review: The Merry Gentleman

Michael Keaton’s haunting, intelligent directorial debut comes to DVD November 10.

One of our favorite films of the past year, The Merry Gentleman is a fascinatingly opaque bit of filmmaking that lingers with you long after its credits fade. You will sometimes wish it moved faster and that it would open itself more, and reveal something besides only the tantalizing amount of information that its very shrewd and deliberate script wants to divulge. The ending will haunt you, not in a satisfying sense but rather in a way that compels you to make sense of its painstakingly-wrought ambiguity. And you might actually love the film for all of those reasons.

Directed by Michael Keaton – an intelligent leading man long overdue for a major comeback - from a script by relative unknown Ron Lazzeretti (The Opera Lover), the film often manages literary feats of structure and innovation while remaining grounded in a concrete sense of place and tone, with a premise that’s familiar but no less well-executed. Keaton also stars as Frank Logan, a solitary and antisocial tailor who also (though we’re never told why) moonlights as a contract hit man. Yet he is not the real star of the film. That place is occupied – gracefully, charmingly - by Scottish actress Kelly Macdonald (No Country For Old Men) as Kate Frazier, a woman escaping her abusive policeman husband by escaping to a nondescript (though vaguely Chicago) major city.

Their solitary existences bring them together, of all times, at Christmas. Following a hit on someone in Kate’s office building, Frank attempts to throw himself off a neighboring rooftop, after glimpsing her in a wonderfully constructed moment of grace. But she sees him instead and screams, averting his suicide. Later, the two formally meet as Frank shows her a small kindness, and their friendship slowly begins to percolate. Kate is the type of person you suspect would rather not risk inconveniencing anyone with her company. She’s strong but vulnerable to even the basic ruthlessness that most people take for granted; her attempts at isolation only bring other lonely souls into her path, including an emotionally needy co-worker (Darlene Hunt) and Dave Murcheson, the police detective (Tom Bastounes) investigating the shooting.

But she’s drawn to Frank, probably as much because he asks nothing of her and doesn’t seem ready to offer anything for which he might expect gratitude down the line. “I think we’re good for one another,” Kate tells him. When minutes later she explains, “You’re possibly the sweetest man I’ve ever met” you get a sense of how bad her life must have been to that point. The script moves ahead in time, cleverly, and there’s a sense as spring rolls around that the two are making progress helping one another emerge from their respective shells. Then of course their respective pasts close in on them. Kate’s husband (Bobby Cannavale) tracks her down, spouting born-again Christian rhetoric that, not surprisingly, makes the skittish Kate even more terrified. Meanwhile Murcheson and his partner dog the shooting investigation as well as the apparent suicide of one of Frank’s associates. Frank is unafraid, permanently removing Kate’s husband from her life and continuing his tailoring business.

The pivotal scenes arrive as Murcheson visits Frank’s store. The two men size each other up, instant dislike getting submerged by going-through-the-motions polite conversation. “I tend to see the suit, not the person inside it,” Frank tells the detective, a pretty unsubtle way of explaining that life is often meaningless to him. Murchison ambles off, ready to confront Kate – the object of his affection as well as a potential witness and accomplice alike – of his concerns. His clumsy, well-intentioned effort pushes Kate and Frank into a confrontation that’s minimal on dialogue but no less emotionally resonant. Kate is ready for them to admit the truth about each other but Frank’s not there yet, setting up an ending that leaves more questions than it’s prepared to answer.

Even when playing the comic buffoon (Beetlejuice, Mr. Mom), Keaton the actor has always prioritized reserve, holding something back from the audience that gave his characters nuance and depth. In directing a film his greatest flaw may be following that impulse with too much trust. The film is slow-paced, and there are times when the script begs for elaboration – even a hint or line of dialogue would suffice. And as good as Lazzeretti’s script is at building suspense and giving its characters lines worth saying out loud, it also often explains something (such as in Kate’s dialogue mentioned above) that’s obvious to anyone paying attention. As the film dares its audience to think, the occasional lapse in artistry feels too much like “gimme” questions. The narrative skips ahead at least once, leaving details in its timeline unresolved.

But these complaints are petty grievances. Keaton knows how to direct himself and (with one exception) his actors, mining fascinating complexities out of virtually every role. MacDonald gives Kate layers of anxiety and innocence, letting her be paranoid in one scene and carefree the next. Bastounes is exceptional as the self-sabotaging Murheson, a man at once reaching out for someone’s warmth but retreating into his police authority whenever challenged. He’s the third part of Frank and Kate’s lonely constellation, dimmer by comparison but no less sincere despite his lack of self-awareness. Only Cannavale fails to impress, bringing too much ham to his rambling fire-and-brimstone monologue. We understand that his character is a petty and vile man because Kate has already sold us on the idea. Cannavale’s overacting only sets her own efforts back.

And the ending: vague, inconclusive, maddeningly open to interpretation. There are dozens of pat endings possible, and if you’ve been watching movies for any length of time you can imagine probably half that many without really trying. If the last five minutes are flawed, they’re still not enough to undermine the beauty and intelligence of the 105 minutes preceding them. The Merry Gentleman is in that sense daring right until its wide-open end.

-Michael Kabel

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(Note: Parts of this review originally appeared for the film’s theatrical release.)

Sick Transit

Seven films to watch while you’re laid up with the cold, H1N1, or whatever else gets you down.

NOT recommended viewing. For so many reasons.

Welcome to cold and flu season! Each year untold millions of people get the common cold, the flu, the stomach flu, and a variety of other painful and discomforting illnesses.Many sufferers cope by parking themselves on the couch and in front of the DVD player , creating some prime movie-viewing time.

Watching a favorite movie is pretty much the best way to spend a sick day. You don’t have to move around, you don’t have to think that much about the plot (since it’s your favorite, you’ve seen it before already) and you can pause the film for trips to the bathroom, kitchen, or medicine chest. For those of you who don’t have a “favorite” movie to help get you through the long, queasy recuperation hours, consider these classics. We’ve tried to include a variety of stuff, representing several genres.

Office Space - If you’re not going in to work you owe it to yourself to laugh at American office culture. Mike Judge’s (Idiocracy) comedy, in which Ron Livingston gets hypnotized into not giving a damn about anything his boss or company wants, remains the perfect way to laugh at all the healthy worker drones spending the day at their jobs. Bonus sick day activity: Drawl like office middle manager Bill Lumbergh (Gary Cole) to everyone you speak with, as in: “Hello, pharmacy? I’m gonna need you to go ahead and refill my prescription. Yeah, that’d be great.”

In The Good Old Summertime – A favorite among Judy Garland’s legions of fans, this romantic comedy/musical puts her at professional odds with fellow music shop salesman Van Johnson, even while the two fall in love as pen pals when off the clock. Proudly warm and nostalgic for its soundstage-perfect Victorian Era setting, the film features Garland as irresistable as ever and Johnson well-cast as a suitor so straight-laced he seems almost quaint by modern standards. And if store owner Mr. Oberkugen seems familiar, you probably also saw S. Z. Sakall play Carl, the maitre d’ at Rick’s Cafe Americain, in Casablanca. Bonus sick day activity: Sing along with Garland, especially during the showstopping “I Don’t Care.”

The Dirty Dozen - The epitome of classic Hollywood cinema that doesn’t ask too much of the brain, director Robert Aldrich’s fast-paced adventure stays enthralling right up until the last, disappointing final scene. Still, it’s a hell of a lot of fun to see while you’re watching it. Bonus sick day activity: Devise your own resolution to the Dozen’s raid on the Nazi castle, one that doesn’t uphold the Establishment status quo but instead lets Posey (Clint Walker) and Jefferson (Jim Brown) survive.

High Noon - Speaking of guy films, this high-water mark of the Western genre has everything a good Western should: an iconic good guy (Gary Cooper), a ferocious antagonist (Ian MacDonald) and a whole town up for grabs. Director Fred Zinnermann (From Here To Eternity) films the story in real-time, ratcheting the suspense up even further. Not for nothing, but it’s also probably got the coolest theme song of any Western ever made. Bonus sick day activity: Count off the townspeople running from outlaw Frank Miller (MacDonald) on their big clay feet; come up with your own argument to give the sheriff’s wife (Grace Kelly) that yes, sometimes violence is the answer.

Planes, Trains, and Automobiles – Especially topical this time of year, John Hughes’ masterwork tells the hilarious story of an uptight yuppie (Steve Martin, giving probably his best performance) and an uncouth shower curtain ring salesman (John Candy, definitely giving his) stuck with each other while trying to get home for Thanksgiving. The ending is amazingly touching without falling into hokum, a rare feat in most Hollywood films. Bonus sick day activity: Follow Del Griffith’s (Candy) suggestion and play pickup sticks with your butt cheeks; alternately, wash all your pillowcases.

Stripes - Ivan Reitman’s spoof of basic training and army operations works from such an episodic script you can basically watch the film in ten and fifteen minutes doses. Nevertheless, stars Bill Murray and Harold Ramis put in some sublime comic acting, bolstered by a wide ensemble cast including Candy, Judge Reinhold, Sean Young, Warren Oates and John Larroquette. Fans of the Canadian series SCTV should look for cameos by alumni Dave “Doug McKenzie” Thomas and Joe “Count Floyd” Flaherty. Bonus sick day activity: Teach yourself to march and drill the John Winger (Murray) way, by shouting Manfred Mann songs and making goofy faces.

The Lord of the Rings trilogy – Probably best if you’re going to be laid up all weekend (or for several days, anyway) the monumental LOTR saga has everything you could want from a film series – adventure, intrigue, romance, a metric ton of action – while still remaining approachable and reasonably episodic. The plotlines start to drag a bit at times, and director Peter Jackson’s (King Kong) sense of restraint gets out from under him in the third chapter. Nevertheless, taken as a whole the trilogy delivers hours and hours of riveting viewing, especially the epic Battle of Helm’s Deep. Bonus sick day activity: Take a shot of Vitamin C every time Frodo (Elijah Wood) or Legolas (Orlando Bloom) stare at something in close-up. You’ll be up and moving around in no time.

Take it easy and we hope you feel better.

- Michael Kabel
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