Dear Zachary (#5)

This one made a few best documentary of the year lists, so when I noticed that MSNBC was broadcasting it, I put my DVR to work and saved it. (Turns out MSNBC picked it up as a distributor, and is now showing it fairly often)

Going in all I knew was the basic premise, that the filmmaker was "writing a letter" to his best friends son, following his fathers' murder. I found the film to be ghoulish at times, and more news magazine special then serious documentary. Visually it seemed to borrow a lot from 20/20 type production values which doesn't help to differentiate it. The story has tragic twists and turns, but throughout seems to be confused about the story its telling. What begins as a celebration of his friends life, turns into a graphic account of his murder and it's aftermath, which seemed to undermine it's premise. After a crucial revelation which I won't ruin here, the documentary morphs again to a advocacy argument for victims rights and bail reform. The filmmaker attempts to pull all the threads together by focusing in on his friends parents, but it doesn't quite come together.

Doubt

Doubt is a movie that succeeds despite a number of problems. Strong performances, smart pacing and strong tone help move the film past it's initial shortcomings and delivers a smart, taught drama.

Doubt starts with an 0-2 count. The film, of course, is based on a play by John Patrick Shanley, and it does not seem that there was a lot of work done to smooth out the emotions for the larger presentation. Also, the subject matter seems slightly dated; This was a movie that feels like it should have been made in 2003. It must have been extremely timely as a play, but it's right up against it's expiration date in late 2008.

Second, the characters are something out of every Catholic memoir. The twist, though, is that the easy-going priest, tough-as-nails nun, and idealistic new apprentice (here, Amy Adam's Sister James) are usually played for laughs. That was a winning formula for pictures like Heaven Help Us. Shanley plays it for drama.

Despite all these initial dings, Doubt is an engrossing film. Shanley welcomes us into a 1964 Catholic School. The turmoil of in the country is secondary to the turmoil within the Catholic Church itself. This is the time of Vatican II, and the reforms and liberalization of that council are brought alive by Father Brendan Flynn (Phillip Seymour Hoffman), a young priest who views the stern, scolding manner of the church as hopelessly outdated. Father Flynn likes to talk with the boys of the school, play basketball, and try to present an authority figure who can also be viewed as a friend.

Sister Aloysius Beauvier (Meryl Streep) will have none of that; She is the school's principal, and runs the place with an iron Habit. Discipline comes fast and severe in the school. Talking in class is worthy of a trip to her office. She advises the nuns to hang glossy framed pictures of the pope to act as mirrors. That gives the nun the ability to see the students misbehave while writing on the board.

Just how opposed is Sister Aloysius to any type of reform? She hangs pictures of Pope Pius XII, not the then-current Pope Paul VI or predecessor Pope John XXIII, both of whom presided over Vatican II. It's a subtle jab that most non-Catholics (and most Catholics, really) would miss, but it speaks volumes to just the kind of person we're dealing with with Sister Aloysius. That kind of subtlety permeates the script: Witness Father Flynn entering Sister's office and taking her chair behind the desk; a comment on the pervasive sexism of the time. The tables turn as the scene progresses and the sister's initial obsequience is replaced with moral outrage, and she dominates the room. Shanley's gift is in these details, even if the actors on screen slowly eat him alive as a director.

The national flux is also present at the school. Kennedy is dead and the civil rights movement is in full gear. Young Donald Miller (Joseph Foster) is the school's first and only black student. Everyone at the school tries to integrate Donald with the rest of the class, in their own ways. But Donald presents challenges beyond the race issues. There is polite talk about the biy's nature. That leads to some friction, and none of it serves Donald well. Father Flynn takes an intense interest in Donald.

Given this context, it's easy to see that Sister Aloysius does not like the new Priest at her parish. A simple gesture caught in the first frames of the film, combined with a crying Donald sent back to class after a meeting with Father Flynn, is all the evidence she needs to try and have him removed. An accusation is made, and Flynn and Beauvier spend the next hour battling over its implications. Sister James, new to the school, and new to being a nun, tries to broker a peace between her two mentors, and ultimately becomes a pawn in their game.

Doubt winds itself tighter and tighter as the story develops, leading to explosive outbursts as accusations and threats come to a head. Hoffman delivers a fine performance, presenting a priest struggling hard to loosen the reins of the church on its members. Flynn very well may have secrets, however, and Hoffman is careful to show a little deviousness in the corner of the priest's eye.

Streep meanwhile, is given a tighter box in which to work. What results is a new formula of The Devil Wears Prada's Miranda Priestly: Take out the urbanism, add in another cup of reserve and sneering condescension, and what results is a character tougher and more resolute than her remarkable work in that earlier film. It's hard to tell whether it's Streep playing too large or the character written that way. She does have one shining moment, when speaking with Donald's mother (Viola Davis in a small but powerful performance), where a flicker of humanity tries to peek out from the opressive nun-ness of the Sister.

There's too much Actor with a capital A on the screen in two critical passes. The two major clashes between Hoffman and Streep both descend into screaming matches, which is fine, and was warranted by the script, but it left no room for the two master performers to modulate their emotion, or create any hint of, well, doubt within themselves. Hoffman comes off better in the exchange, purely because his character has more flexibility within himself. Amy Adams's optimism and befuddlement at all things unpleasant whips a little air into the stifling debate and rancor Hoffman and Streep conjure up. Shanley would have done well to pull these two titans back just a little, to provide a little more range, and an opportunity to defend the odd twist at the end of the picture.

Still, Doubt does an admirable job overcoming it's original sins to deliver a taught and suspenseful movie. Shanley's script may still read as a play, but it reads as a good one, and the complexities leech themselves out around the block-like characterization. And if inflexibility and it's degradation of the soul is a central theme here, the twist in the last few frames of the movie undercut that message. No spoilers here, but the 180-degree change is not justified by previous events. It doesn't quite ruin the movie, but it's jarring to see.

That said, Doubt is well-worth an in-theater experience.

Gran Torino

Clint Eastwood is the last in the line of Hollywood tough guys. The vast majority of today's manly stars are more studly than anything else. They are descendants of the House of Newman, where your manliness is defined by sexiness and virility. Eastwood is the last great King of the House of Wayne. And while John Wayne defined macho, Lee Marvin defined tough, and Steve McQueen defined cool, Eastwood's lasting legacy to film may be in defining ornery. Dirty Harry Callahan, Blondie, Gunny Highway, Josey Wales. The man has made a career of not suffering fools gladly.

At 78, it's a thin line between tough-guy ornery and old-man crotchety. Eastwood walks that line with ease in Gran Torino. He plays Walt Kowalski, the last of the old factory workers in his Michigan neighborhood. Slowly but surely the remaining Polish working-class families have left, and in their place is America's new working class; a mix of ethnicities and races, none of which please Walt.

Don't hold it against him, though, because there isn't much left in this life that does please him. We meet Walt at his wife's funeral. We watch him seethe as his grand kids walk in, late, wearing football jerseys, mid-riff shirts and belly-button rings. He snarls at his sons, who spend the entirety of the post-funeral gathering counting the minutes and arguing with their wives about the etiquette of an early departure. He growls racist epithets at his new neighbors, a Hmong family, threatening them with his comparison to the Koreans he killed some 50-plus years ago. He forcibly removes his son from a birthday celebration for suggesting he move into a retirement community.

So it comes as a surprise to everyone, then, when Walt takes decisive action to defend the next door neighbor from a Hmong gang. The youngest son, Thao (Bee Vang in his debut film), is a dork. Dogged by his sister, mother, and grandmother, bullied by his cousins, and ignored by everyone else, Thao tries to fit in by joining the gang. His initiation? Steal Walt's 1972 Gran Torino. The boy fails, and finds facing the business end of Walt's army-issue M1 rifle. Just one night later, a carload of gang members come to take Thao away. The struggle spills onto Walt's lawn, and the M1 makes it's second of many more appearances in the film, this time to defend Thao.

Now a neighborhood hero, Walt bristles at the attention his foreign neighbors give him. Deliveries of flowers and food from a grateful Hmong community are met with racist derision. Overtures at friendship by Thao's sister Sue (Ahney Hur, also her debut) are parried. But the young woman is relentless in her outreach, and Walt soon warms to the family's hospitality.

Seeing his neighbors as people for the first time, Walt perches himself on the porch like a rooster overseeing the business of the coop. Any signs of danger are met with aggressive defense. Walt has found new meaning in late life. The young toughs of the neighborhood have found a new and challenging target.

If there is a hint of crotchety in Eastwood's performance, it's played for laughs, and any hint of doddering evaporates quickly when the going gets tough. Crotchety people complain about hoodlums. Ornery people threaten them with rifles and handguns. Eastwood knows he's 78, and knows viewers will wonder whether his fraying body can hang on to the bridle of his rage. It can, of course, and he toys with our doubt. Never has the prototypical old man demand of "Get off my lawn" carried such fearsome authority and malice. If Walt Kowaksi is indeed Eastwood's last on-screen performance, then he leaves the stage with his reputation intact, and in the process gives us one more great anti-hero to fear and admire.

While Eastwood shines, the remaining cast of unknowns struggle to keep up. Vang and Her get the most screen time with the legend. While Her has her moments, both show their inexperience. It's enough to take you out of critical scenes; Her's feigned nonchalance at a potential sexual assault feels a little too forward and defiant; Vang's screams of betrayal and frustration with Walt a the end of the film come off as too childish and outraged. Christopher Carley's Father Janovich, the young and determined priest set to save Walt's soul is another nuisance to Walt for his naivete, and to viewers for his grating performance.

The dialogue is also a bit too on the nose and uneven, which, when combined with shaky supporting performances, sometimes gave the movie a slightly amateurish feel. At those moments when the movie loses focus, it becomes a slightly-better better version of Falling Down. Overall, however, Eastwood's Oscar-caliber performance saves the film from Rental Hell and makes it worthy of an in-theater experience.

Sex and The City: The Movie (#4)

Sex and the City- The Moive-  This movie was 18 hours long. Honestly it was like a miniseries. That said I didn’t hate it. The first half really seemed like a victory lap, hitting on all the familiarities of the series for long time fans, and it wasn’t really until the second half that the plot kicks and you get some character advancement. All in all some funny bits, and solid story albeit with some really obvious foreshadowing, that fans of the show probably enjoyed a lot more then the uninitiated or uninterested.

Milk (#3)

MILK- Directed with a delicate and poetic touch by Gus Van Sant, with strong performances from a deeply talented cast, and anchored by perhaps the best performance of Sean Penn’s career, this may very well be the best movie of the year.  Milk is altogether an incendiary call to stand against injustice, inspiring biopic, history lesson, and inspirational call for hope and meaningful change through political action. Van Sant deftly cuts between documentary footage and photographic images from the media, which gives the story a powerful context that calls to mind not only the complexity of what Milk accomplished , but also how similar the contemporary political debate around gay marriage is. The only misstep, to nit pick a fine movie, was the wheelchair bound gay adolescent who calls Milk out of the blue, seemingly too coincidently, at his, not one, but two lowest moments in the movie. The character clearly is intended to inspire hope to our hero, reminding him why he is making the personal sacrifices he is, so he can inspire others. MILK is too good for such an on the nose moment, that I found distracting and not needed.

As an aside, I ask, is there a better actor working today then Sean Penn?  I’m eagerly awaiting the Spicoli as an adult movie that the world demands.

Valkyrie (#2)

Valkyrie- I was kinda meh on this one right after I saw it, but like it even less now that I’m sitting down to write this. I think it was problematic on a number of levels. I think the deck is staked against a movie like this to begin with. How do build suspense successfully in a movie about the plot to kill Hitler, when you kinda already know how that works out? Despite the intricacies of a plan, that was an assassination and a coup of the Nazi government, not a lot happens. There is a lot of talking, and walking, and then more talking, culminating in some shouting and then running.  Tom Cruise was kind of personality-less, and didn’t really carry the movie well. A range of great charcter actors like Bill Nighy, Terrence Stamp, and Eddie Izzard aren’t given much to do.  Very forgettable.

Kung Fu Panda (#1)

Kung Fu Panda- This was a nice surprise, from the appreciated clever use of the word awesome in the opening credits, to the exceptional character design, and well paced action; it was pretty enjoyable from start to finish. This was a great role for Jack Black, whose Jack Blackness was reigned in, more like School of Rock, then the awful Tropic Thunder performance. One nit pick would be somewhat pointless celebrity voice casting of all the supporting characters that had few, or no lines. Why cast Jackie Chan as a Monkey and then not let him say anything. The only thing that kept this from being a great animated movie was a clarity of theme or “message” in an unforced way.  The whole “there is no secret ingredient”, seemed a little awkward and not as effective as a culminating realization for the hero, should be. Overall though, it was enjoyable for its outstanding visuals, and silliness.

Popcorn Brothers Dig the Movies.

Its only been 09 for a few days and I've already seen four movies. What can I say I like the movies. Popcorn Brothers will be the place where my counterpart and I post a range of features, all stemming from our film addiction

Among the things you'll be seeing her, is a pretty regular update of every movie I watch this year. I'm hoping this will be part log, and part place for some quick thoughts about the movie.  I'm not sure if ambitous is the right word for such an endeavor, but I'm looking forward to it.

Joe