There's something out there in 'The Vast of Night'

[THE VAST OF NIGHT opens in northeast Ohio on Friday May 15th at The Mayfield Road Drive-in in Chardon, the Elm Road Drive-in in Warren, and the Magic City Drive-in in Barberton.]

Review by Bob Ignizio

While THE VAST OF NIGHT is set in the 1950s, its themes are just as relevant today as they ever were. On the surface, the film is about two small town teenagers – radio DJ Everett (Jake Horowitz) and switchboard operator Fay (Sierra McCormick) – trying to track down the origins of a mysterious radio signal that interferes with both the phone system and Everett’s broadcast. What it really seems to be about, though, are small town fears. Both the fear of being stuck in a place where you don’t belong and don’t see much future, and the opposite but equal fear of leaving that place, no matter how stifling it might be.

Director Andrew Patterson, working from a script by James Montague and Craig W. Sanger, allows his film to unfold at a leisurely pace. Not only does that give us plenty of time to get to know our two leads and the world they inhabit, but it allows the mystery and suspense to build slowly and naturally. There’s talk of UFOs and possible alien abductions, and a subplot about a government cover-up that touches on our nation’s legacy of racism. But Patterson plays it subtle, and doesn’t try to juice things up with contrived action or peril. There is a satisfying (albeit ambiguous) payoff in the end, but it’s far from the sort of climax one would find in a more mainstream film.

Movie Review: 'Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps'

1987’s Wall Street is one of the defining movies of its decade.  This year’s sequel… not so much.  As Money Never Sleeps begins, Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas) has finished serving a long prison sentence for the crimes he committed in the previous film.  He’s released just in time to write a book warning of the 2008 financial crisis which would make his corporate raider exploits look positively quaint by comparison.  But the truth is, this movie is far more concerned with soapy melodrama than director Oliver Stone’s trademark political vitriol. 

Rather than follow the money, the movie follows the romance between up and coming trader Jacob (Shia Lebouf) and Gekko’s daughter Winnie (Carrie Mulligan).   Their relationship becomes complicated when Jacob falls under Gordon’s spell.  Winnie wants nothing to do wither her dad, but Jacob offers to help father and daughter reconnect in exchange for a little help dealing with Bretton James (Josh Brolin), a corporate scumbag who is at least somewhat responsible for the suicide of Jacob’s mentor (Frank Langella).   I won’t give away the ending, but let me just say that it’s pure cornball schmaltz.  It all adds up to something like a big budget extended episode of Dallas.  Still, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t entertained.  Call it 2 ½ out of 4 stars. 

Movie Review: 'The Town'

Doug (Ben Affleck) and his friends are armed robbers from the Boston suburb of Charlestown.  As the film begins the gang, dressed in snazzy skeleton costumes, are pulling a major bank heist. To insure a safe getaway, they take bank manager Claire Keesey (Rebecca Hall) hostage. Claire is eventually set free, but Doug's right hand man Jem (Jeremy Renner) worries that she might identify them. Doug promises to look into the matter and find out what Claire knows. This being a movie, that leads to Doug and Claire becoming romantically involved. Meanwhile the FBI, led by Agent Frawley (John Hamm) is closing in on the robbers.

Nicholas Cage Goes Over the Edge in 'The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans'

In the aftermath of hurricane Katrina, police officer Terence McDonagh (Nicholas Cage) makes a fateful decision to rescue a prisoner trapped in the rising floodwaters.  In doing so, he injures his back and winds up needing pain medication for the rest of his life.  But prescription drugs alone just won’t do the trick, and it isn’t long before Terence is hooked on cocaine and heroin, often sharing his stash with his prostitute girlfriend Frankie (Eva Mendes).  Terence tries to keep it together when he’s picked to head up the investigation of a multiple homicide, but his vices threaten to drag him down.

The above paragraph is a fairly accurate summation of the plot of The Bad Lieutenant, but it doesn’t begin to describe the movie.  This remake in name only of Abel Ferrara’s 1992 film takes what could have been a fairly pedestrian crime and sleaze storyline and turns it into a twisted black comedy that gives Nicholas Cage his best role in years.  The film is directed by Werner Herzog, surely among the best living directors still making films.  Unlike Ferrara, Herzog isn’t interested in his Lieutenant finding redemption.  He simply wants to see how far over the edge this character can go.  And with Cage in the lead role, that’s pretty damn far.

This is a very funny film, and one that is constantly blurring the line between “funny strange” and “funny ha-ha”.  As for the story, most of the threads do get wrapped up, but in such an arbitrary (and funny) way that it’s clear Herzog isn’t interested in anything resembling a traditional plot resolution.  Is Bad Lieutenant a masterpiece on the same level as other Herzog films like Fitzcaraldo or Aguirre The Wrath of God?  I’m inclined to say no, but that doesn’t change the fact that I was never less than mesmerized by the film.

Fly Me to the 'Moon'

Sam (Sam Rockwell) is nearing the end of his 3 year contract as a miner on the moon base Sarang.  His only companion is the computer GERTY (voice of Kevin Spacey), and the satellite allowing live communications with his employers and loved ones back on earth is in need of repair.  Perhaps it’s the resulting loneliness that is causing Sam to hallucinate.  While driving a lunar rover on a routine mission, one of Sam’s hallucinations causes him to have an accident.  Shortly after awakening in the infirmary, Sam sees GERTY having a live conversation with mission control.  He is also prohibited from leaving the base, but manages to trick GERTY into letting him out on the pretense of doing some repairs.  Driving back to the site of his accident, Sam is surprised to find… himself, still unconscious in the crashed Rover.

So what the heck is going on?  Is this an hallucination?  Is one of these “Sams” a clone or a robot?   Both Sam and the audience get the answer to these questions fairly quick.  This isn’t one of those movies all about some “mind blowing” secret.  It’s about the ramifications of what Sam learns, both for him personally, and in a broader sense, for all of human society.  This is the sort of thoughtful and adult science fiction film that used to be commonplace in the late sixties and early seventies.  Comparisons to 2001: A Space Odyssey and Silent Running seem particularly apt, but this is no mere homage.  Rather Moon is a film that embodies the spirit of those films and applies it to something fresh.

I also have to give the movie kudos for using old school special effects techniques.  When I was watching the movie, I thought to myself, “wow, that’s some of the best CGI I’ve ever seen.  That land rover looks like it’s really there.”  Well, it was really there.  The film used models, and there’s a subtle feeling of tactile reality you get from using models that just isn’t there with CGI yet.  Most of the moonbase was built as an actual set, as well.  Everything looks so good, it’s hard to believe this movie was made for $5 million. 

This is a very minimalist film.  To a large degree, it’s just Sam Rockwell talking to himself.  Luckily Rockwell is one of the best actors working these days, and he’s more than up to the challenge of carrying the film.  That said, Spacey does a great job as the voice of GERTY, recalling HAL9000 while at the same time presenting a different take on artificial intelligence. 

I have to applaud the vision of writer/director Duncan Jones.  Moon is smart, relevant, and gripping, with the science fiction elements always subservient to story and theme.  There are no action scenes or moments of artificial drama, but the film is never for a second dull.  This is just a great story told well, and easily one of the best movies of 2009.  Sadly I’m just now seeing it, but it would have landed somewhere in my top 5 for sure.  4 out of 4 stars. 

'Up in the Air' is a good, but light-weight film

Ryan Bingham (George Clooney) is a professional hatchet man.  When businesses have to downsize, he’s the guy who gets called in to deliver the bad news.  Bingham has no close friends or family, and loves having a job that keeps him constantly on the move from one city to the next, living out of airports and hotel rooms.  He finds a kindred spirit in businesswoman Alex Goran (Vera Farmiga).  The two strike up a casual “fuck buddy” relationship after meeting in a hotel bar, and soon they are coordinating their schedules so they can get together for booty calls.

Ryan’s freewheeling lifestyle gets put in jeopardy when young computer programmer Natalie (Anna Kendrick) comes up with a way to do his job over the internet.  Dreading the thought of being tied to a desk, Bingham convinces his boss (Jason Bateman) that Natalie needs to see what it’s like to do the job face to face before implementing her plan.  The two then set off to relieve hundreds of American workers of the burden of employment, stopping at various famous locations along the way to take pictures of a cardboard cut-out of Bingham’s sister and her future husband for a wedding present. 

While it is Bingham’s job that drives the plot forward, the movie is more concerned with the idea that happiness is impossible without meaningful relationships.  That's fine, but then the movie takes it further to say that happiness is impossible without a spouse and children.  This is most clearly expressed by Natalie, who looks at Alex and Ryan as though they were insane for not wanting a more traditional relationship.

At times the movie shows some ambivalence towards this idea - Natalie is dumped by her boyfriend, one of Ryan’s sisters is shown having separated from her husband, and there’s a final twist regarding Alex that I won’t reveal.  But that ambivalence is undermined by the film’s closing montage of (real) fired workers talking about how their wives and children gave them the strength to cope with their situation.  Look, whatever helps a person deal with something as serious as losing a job, I’m for it.  But the implication here is that those without family, like Bingham, are somehow worse off than they are.  Ah yes, poor little rich boy.  This is the film’s final word on the subject.  It kind of reminds me of the scene in They Live where Roddy Piper puts on his special sunglasses, looks up at a billboard, and instead of the ad that should be there sees simply the words “marry and reproduce”.  No doubt the evil aliens from that film would approve of Up In the Air’s message.

Still, as Roger Ebert often says, it’s not what a movie is about, but how it’s about it.  And for the most part, Up In the Air is a well made, enjoyable, and funny film.  Clooney is perfectly cast.  I can’t imagine any other actor making this character likeable as he goes about destroying lives while bragging about his fancy hotel and rental car membership cards.  Vera Farmiga is excellent, as well.  With this film she should make it onto the ‘A’ list, and hopefully won’t have to star in crap like Orphan again anytime soon.  The one weak link for me is Anna Kendrick’s Natalie, though I blame writer/director Jason Reitman rather than the actress.  As written, the character is a comic relief caricature that just doesn’t seem to exist in the same universe as Clooney and Farmiga’s nuanced, believable characters. 

I’ve already mentioned my distaste for the film’s trite message that marriage and kids are the only road to happiness.  I also can’t help but think, given the current economic climate, that more of substance should have been said about all the people Bingham fires.  Mostly, though, the movie just plays being fired for laughs.  And yeah, watching Zach Galifianakis and J.K. Simmons respond to the loss of their jobs is funny.  But losing a job in real life isn’t.  The movie only offers one moment in which we see just how serious that can be, when we learn that one of the people who lost their jobs committed suicide.  The scene does have some power, but its main purpose seems to be moving the plot in a new direction rather than any sort of serious commentary. And then we’re on to the montage of happy jobless people.  Up In the Air is still a good movie; it's just not a great one.  3 out of 4 stars.

Not so 'Precious'

Precious

In the opening moments of Precious, we learn that the morbidly obese title character (Gabourey Sibide) has been raped by her father and impregnated by the man twice.  The first baby was born with Down’s syndrome, the second is on its way.  When her latest pregnancy is discovered by the school, she gets expelled.  As for Precious’ mother (Mo’nique), in her better moments she tells her daughter that education won’t do her any good, and her best hope is to, “get your fat ass down to the welfare.”  But most of the time she just abuses Precious physically, verbally, and sexually.  For good measure, all the kids at school and in the neighborhood pick on Precious.  It’s no wonder the girl has retreated into a fantasy world.  But wait, there’s a light at the end of the tunnel.  Precious is referred by her principal to an alternative school populated entirely by other cultural stereotypes.  There, thanks to the efforts of her language arts teacher Ms. Rain (Paula Patton), she learns that literacy is all it takes to overcome such crushing adversity. 

No doubt there are people in this world who have endured lives as horrific as the one Precious leads in this film.  That said, seeing as this book was written by a teacher not unlike the film’s Ms. Rain, I’m guessing Precious and all her myriad problems were a composite of several real life students as opposed to a fictionalized version of any one of them.  That’s what it feels like, anyway.  I'm also guessing that at least some of them can read, and that hasn't solved all their problems.  Furthermore, the material is handled by director Lee Daniels in such a melodramatic and manipulative way that it veers towards caricature.  The end result is more like some right-wing Senator’s anti-welfare diatribe than the story of perseverance and empowerment it professes to be. 

On the plus side, the performances are excellent across the board.  If Sibide fails to make Precious a real human being, blame it on the script, not her.   The film asks a great deal of the first-time actor, and whether portraying the utter despair of her reality or the fantasy of appearing on a music awards show, she gives her all.  Mo’nique also shines in the kind of role few actresses would want to take, almost (almost) humanizing a monster.  There’s also good work from Lenny Kravitz and bad movie punch-line Mariah Carey, proving if nothing else that director Daniels has a knack for getting good performances out of his cast.  I’d be tempted to give Daniels credit for knowing how to push an audience’s emotional buttons, but damn, how can you not feel sorry for Precious?  Daniels’ storytelling abilities, on the other hand, are nothing to write home about.  The movie has a ragged feel that can’t entirely be laid at the feet of its editor.  For all its four-star reviews, Precious just isn’t that good of a movie.  2 out of 4 stars. 

Adoring Egoyan

Adoration, out now on DVD and BluRay, begins with Simon (Devon Bostick) telling his French class a story about his parents.  His father (Noam Jenkins) was a terrorist who planned to use his mother (Rachel Blanchard), pregnant with Simon at the time, as an unwitting suicide bomber.   This is a lie, as we soon learn, but why is Simon telling it?  And what is the real story of how Simon’s parents died, leaving him in the care of his uncle (Scott Speeman), and why does his French teacher (Arsinée Khanjian) have such an interest in him?

Like most of writer/director Atom Egoyan’s films, Adoration follows an emotional rather than a linear path to reach these answers.    There are many surprises along the way, but this isn’t the sort of movie that’s only about the big twist at the end.  If anything, Egoyan tries to deal with too many ideas here.  A subplot about how Simon’s story goes viral on the internet, while not exactly out of place, almost feels like it could have been a whole other movie.  The main story, about how the characters all need to make sense of and make peace with the past, is compelling enough on its own.

The themes and storytelling devices in Adoration should be familiar to anyone who has seen Egoyan’s previous films like Exotica or The Sweet Hereafter.  Like those films, this is a gripping, intelligent drama that keeps you guessing.  That said, it doesn’t quite have the same emotional resonance.  Still, even lesser Egoyan is more interesting than 90% of the movies that get released these days.  3 ½ out of 4 stars.

Lars Von Trier takes you to Hell

Lars Von Trier’s Antichrist is a beautifully shot, incredibly well acted film that handles its subject about as well as it can be.  That subject is the death of a young child, and how that child’s parents try to cope with the tragedy.  The process is depicted metaphorically, and includes sex scenes that on their own would have earned the film an NC-17 rating.  Eventually things come to a head in a climax of harrowing violence and insanity that the characters must get through in order to get on with their lives. 

It’s an extremely powerful film, and despite the tone of the fantastic it employs to tell its story, the raw horror and unpleasantness is undiminished.  Much of the credit or blame goes to writer/director Von Trier, but without such committed actors as he has here in Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsborug, it wouldn’t work nearly as well.  While I would be shocked to see it happen, both of these actors deserve Oscar nominations for the incredibly difficult work they do here.

Suffice it to say, this is not a movie for those seeking a little light entertainment at the cinema, and it’s easy to see why Antichrist has polarized audiences.  This is an uncompromising, unflinching art film that belongs in the halls of movie infamy alongside Passolini’s Salo: 120 Days of Sodom, Godard’s Weekend, and Greenaway’s The Baby of Macon.  If I had children of my own, I don’t think I could have handled this movie.  And yet, the film is so well done I can’t help but say that I think it’s one of the year’s best.  Just don’t ask me to watch it again.  4 out of 4 stars.

Why So Serious?

A Serious Man
4 out of 4 stars 

An early scene in A Serious Man, the latest from writers/producers/directors Joel and Ethan Coen, references the paradox of Schroedinger’s cat.  It’s an illustration from the field of quantum physics in which there is a cat inside a box that may be either alive or dead, or possibly both simultaneously.  According to the illustration, the cat will remain in this indeterminate state until someone actually looks inside the box.   In other words, we don’t know what we have until we examine it.  Until then, all possibilities remain, but none of them are “real”.   That’s a major simplification of a pretty complex idea, but it should do for this review.

The man who provides this illustration is college physics professor Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg), who doesn’t realize how apt a metaphor it is for his own state of unexamined existence and unrealized potential.  That all changes one day when Larry wakes up to find everything he believed to be true is wrong.  His wife (Sari Lennick) is leaving him, the only time his son (Aaron Wolf) has any use for him is when the TV antenna on the roof needs adjusting, his daughter (Jessica McManus) is stealing money out of his wallet, and his freeloading brother (Richard Kind) is tying up the bathroom draining his sebaceous cyst and getting into small time trouble with the law. 

It’s just as bad at work as it is at home.  Larry’s tenure could be in jeopardy due to a series of anonymous letters accusing him of moral turpitude, he’s having trouble with a student trying to bribe him for a better grade, and someone from Columbia House Records keeps calling to collect on the last four selections of the month, which Larry is sure he never ordered.    How and why is all this is happening ?  Is it bad luck or a curse from God, and what can be done about it?  No one, including the rabbis at Larry's synagogue, seems to have any answers.  Larry could use a hug, but the only one offering is Sy (Fred Melamed), the man his wife is leaving him for. 

That’s an awful lot of misfortune for one man and one film, but this being the Coen Brothers, comedy and tragedy walk hand in hand.  Some of the film’s funniest moments are its darkest, proving the old axiom that it’s tragedy when it happens to you, it’s comedy when it happens to someone else.  The film gives the audience a lot to think about, including issues of faith, the nature of truth, the power (or lack thereof) of storytelling, and what it’s like to be a middle class Jew living in the suburbs.  It probably requires more than one viewing to fully digest, but like most of the Coen Brothers’ works, it also functions as pure entertaining cinema.  Each member of the mostly unknown cast is a perfect fit for their role, and the writing and direction are the Coens at their best.  No doubt the ending will annoy some, but it’s completely in keeping with the central theme.  Two characters are left hanging between life and death.  What’s their fate?  You’ll have to look inside.

Your Tax Dollars at Work

The Men Who Star at Goats
3 out of 4 stars

Based on Jon Ronson's book The Men Who Stare at Goats and his BBC documentary The Crazy Rulers of the World, this movie tells how the United States military, demoralized by Viet Nam, set out to create a new kind of soldier.  Turning to new age philosophy and the paranormal for inspiration, a special unit code-named Project Jedi was created.  The unit was involved in a great deal of goofiness such as trying to walk through walls and stop the hearts of farm animals with the power of the mind.  It also led to the creation of a fairly nasty hand-to-hand combat weapon called "The Predator" that looks like a harmless piece of plastic, and most infamously to the use of music like the Barney theme in the torture and interrogation of Iraqi prisoners of war. 

These facts are weaved into a fictional story in which reporter Bob Wilton (Ewan McGregor) inadvertently runs into “Jedi” Lyn Cassady (George Clooney) while on assignment in Iraq.  Cassady allows Wilton to accompany him on what he claims is a secret mission.  As the two men get in and out of one scrape after another, Lyn tells Bob how the Jedi unit was started by Viet Nam veteran turned new age space cadet Bill Django (Jeff Bridges).  Cassady was the most promising member of the unit, much to the chagrin of fellow “super soldier” Larry Hooper (Kevin Spacey).  Eventually, Lyn reaches his objective and we learn the final fate of Project Jedi.

The film begins with the statement "more of this is true than you would believe".  Unfortunately, more has been changed or omitted than I would have liked.  Like, for starters, an actual point of view.  The movie tries to have it both ways, showing Lyn and his fellow Jedi as delusional buffoons one moment, and as the real deal the next.  It also tries to whitewash some of its characters by blaming the more controversial techniques that came out of the project on breakaway members who had turned to “the dark side”.   This timidity dulls the film’s efforts at satire considerably, turning what should have been a biting indictment of military madness into a light-hearted romp.  As far as light-hearted romps go, it's an entertaining one, and there's no doubt the cast is great.  So check out the movie for a few laughs, and then check out Ronson's book or documentary for a few more laughs as well as some disturbing truths.

Taking a Break From the Halloween Blogs to 'Whip It'

I've already botched my attempt to do a horror related blog every day in October, anyway, so screw it.  I'll get back to the horror soon, but today I'm going to do a quick review of Drew Barrymore's directorial debut Whip It.


Bliss (Ellen Page) is a fairly typical 17 year old girl whose mother pushes her to take part in beauty pageants.  It's not exactly her thing, but there doesn't seem to be much else to do in her small hometown of Bodeen.  Then one day Bliss discovers there is a roller derby team based out of nearby Austin.  She goes to see a match and decides to try out.  This being a sports movie, the team Bliss tries out for are the roller derby equivalent of the Bad News Bears, perenial losers The Hurl Scouts.


The plot hits a lot of the beats you'd expect a movie like this to hit, and by the end there's probably more extraneous drama piled on than necessary.  On the plus side, Whip It has a few unexpected twists on the usual formula, the characters are likable, and the jokes are funny and flow naturally from the situations.  It's not a great movie, but it's an enjoyable one.


Ellen Page is excellent in the lead, playing a more vulnerable and realistic teenager than she did in 'Juno' and coming across as completely believable.  Good supporting cast, too, including director Barrymore, Alia Shawkat, Marcia Gay Harden, Juliette Lewis, Kristen Wiig, and an almost unrecognizable Jimmy Fallon.  As for Barrymore's direction, it's nothing flashy.  Just solid meat and potatoes storytelling, which is fine in my book.  3 out of 4 stars.

'Inglourious Basterds' and the power of propaganda

The first thing you see on the screen in Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds is a title card that says, “Once upon a time in Nazi-occupied France”. In film geek shorthand that’s a nod to Sergio Leone’s masterpiece of the spaghetti western genre Once Upon a Time in the West, and Tarantino has said in interviews that this is a spaghetti western that just happens to take place during World War II. But more importantly, as with Leone’s film Tarantino uses “Once Upon a Time” to let the audience know up front that what they are about to watch is a fairy tale, and any expectations of realism or historical accuracy should be left at the door. Because believe me, realism and historical accuracy are the least of this movie’s concerns.



The story proper begins with Nazi Colonel Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz) intimidating and manipulating a French farmer via trademark Tarantino dialog into revealing where he has hidden a Jewish family. Landa then has his soldiers kill the family, but the girl Shosanna (Melanie Laurent) manages (and to at least some degree is allowed by Landa) to escape. Meanwhile, a special unit of Jewish-American soldiers has been assembled by Lieutenant Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt). Their mission is to go undercover in France and kill as many Nazis as possible, in the most horrific ways they can think of. In addition, every member of the Basterds is expected to scalp their victims.

Returning to Shosanna, we find her now living undercover in Paris as a theater owner. She winds up hosting the premiere of a new Nazi propaganda film after a chance meeting with its star, Nazi war hero Frederick Zoller (Daniel Bruhl). When Shosanna discovers that all the highest ranking members of the Third Reich will be attending the premiere, she comes up with a plan to take them all out. The Basterds learn of the premiere as well, and not knowing of Shosanna’s plan set one of their own in motion.

Okay, for those of you who just want to know if the movie is fun, and don’t really care to dig too deep: yes, the movie is a lot of fun. It’s everything you expect from Tarantino – the great dialog, memorable characters, references to obscure pop culture trivia (my favorite this time being one character using the alias “Antonio Margheriti ” – look it up), near perfect use of music, and of course the crazy, over the top violence and action. But like Kill Bill Volume 2, this is a more mature Tarantino. Basterds feels more personal, and although he still borrows from other movies, it’s done in a less obtrusive way.

Despite what you may have been led to believe by the trailers, Brad Pitt is not the star here. He’s a blast hamming it up, but his Lieutenant Rayne is more of a large supporting role. The real star of the film is Melanie Laurent, and her strong, believable performance anchors the film and gives it a much needed sense of weight to balance the exploitation movie antics of Pitt and his crew. Christoph Waltz has gotten the lion’s share of acting praise for his portrayal of Landa, and it’s certainly deserved. However, I was also impressed with Bruhl, who has the difficult task of playing a character you dislike yet still need to feel some sympathy for.

Okay, now to go looking for deeper meaning in a movie that most people probably just want to sit back and enjoy with a bag of popcorn and a coke. Most critics have seized on a quote from Tarantino that the film is about “the power of cinema bringing down the Third Reich”. That’s true up to a point, but I see Basterds as being just as much, if not more, about the power of film to do evil, specifically in the form of propaganda.

There are overt references in Basterds to Leni Riefenstahl, the female director who made the infamous German propaganda films Triumph of the Will and Olympia. And then there is Stolz der Nation, the faux German propaganda film-within-a-film we see in Basterds. Stolz heroically depicts how Zoller single-handedly kills hundreds of American soldiers. In one of the few moments in Basterds to humanize a German character, we see that Zoller is clearly uncomfortable with this cinematic depiction of his deeds, even as the audience cheers. Later there is a scene involving Zoller and Shosanna where the film exerts its power over Shosanna at a critical moment. She knows the film is a lie, and knows Zoller for what he is, but for just a split second it affects her and she pays a price for it.

Stolz is the kind of thing we are used to seeing as propaganda, but is it really so different from watching the Basterds beat, scalp, and gun down dehumanized Germans while making wise cracks? What are The Basterds if not a kind of propaganda? They are essentially cartoon characters, calling to mind the covers of WWII era comic books (almost without exception drawn by Jewish artists) where Captain America or the like would deliver a roundhouse punch to Hitler, or some bespectacled caricature of a Japanese soldier. Of course when the propaganda is on our side, we tend to look at it as just harmless entertainment. Propaganda is something those other bad countries make, not us. But regardless of how deeply you choose to look into this film, it’s one of the most daring and original, not to mention fun, movies of the year. 4 out of 4.

*** Note ***

Lest anyone say they weren’t warned, large portions of this film are in various foreign languages with subtitles. If you’re illiterate I can understand this being a problem, but since you’re reading this review I can only assume that’s not the case. Suck it up and read a little. Also, there are some extremely gory and violent scenes in this movie. If you’ve ever watched a Quentin Tarantino movie before, this should come as no surprise. If anything, this is kind of tame after the non-stop blood orgy of Kill Bill. Still, I feel it bears mentioning for those who might be unfamiliar with Mr. Tarantino’s body of work.

***

The Merry Gentleman

Kate (Kelly MacDonald) leaves her abusive husband and gets a job in the big city. While leaving work Kate sees Logan (Michael Keaton) standing on the ledge of a building and cries out, startling him into stepping back. Although it’s never made explicit why Logan wants to end his life, it’s likely that guilt over his job as a hitman is at least part of the reason. Tom Bastounes rounds out the main cast as Dave Murcheson, a police officer assigned to investigate Logan’s most recent job. He interviews Kate as a possible witness, and becomes smitten with her. Logan is interested in Kate as well, but his reasons aren’t entirely clear at first.


It sounds like The Merry Gentleman would be a thriller based on that description, but it’s not. It’s more of a drama about how the lives of three damaged people intersect with and affect each other. None of these characters are honest with each other, and the way these deceptions keep them from connecting meaningfully seems to be one of the primary themes. The movie is also concerned with questions of religion and faith, and whether and to what degree God intercedes in the world. This is perhaps most clearly stated when Kate talks about praying for her husband’s death, and wonders if God would grant such a prayer.

The Merry Gentleman is Michael Keaton’s first time as a director, and he delivers a subtle, low key film. The performances, especially MacDonald’s, are excellent. There is no pat ending to the film; it leaves plenty of loose ends dangling, giving the viewer something to ponder and discuss. There are no heroes or villains as such, no traditional romance. It’s slow moving and melancholy, and I’m sure some people will find it boring. For others, including myself, it’s a nice break from the typical summer fare. I can’t say I loved this movie, but I did like it, and beyond that, I respected it for doing something different. 3 out of 4 stars.