MOVIEreviews

M A D I S O N _G R A Y | deep_SIGHT; You gotta reinvent yourself like crazy. ---David McKenna; Short, Medium, Long, XLong; A film is the world in an hour and a half. ---Jean-Luc Godard
: CRAZY/BEAUTIFUL (2001)
IMDb Ebert; Directed by John Stockwell and written by Phil Hay & Matt Manfredi — You know what they say, opposites attract? Well, they sure do in this coming-of-age romantic-drama about two LA high school seniors from opposite sides of the tracks.; Nicole (Kirsten Dunst) is white, rich, and "crazy." Carlos (Jay Hernandez) is Latino, poor, and "beautiful." She's crazy because girls just wanna have fun and also because she has a troubled family life. So she drinks, does drugs, and drives around with her equally wild-and-crazy girl friend Maddy (Taryn Manning). He's "beautiful" because he's got his act together—he's serious about school and has a plan for his future.; Nicole has a father and basically no mother. Carlos has a mother and no father. Her family is cold and dysfunctional. His family is warm and solid. It's kind of like Romeo and Juliet: They love each other but there's a price to pay. They confront hostility and rejection by their respective support groups. Also at the heart of the story is Nicole's dysfunctional relationship to her father.; In the end, Carlos has to choose between LOVE and his FUTURE—between Nicole and his dream of becoming a Navy pilot. Nicole has to find a way to reconcile with her father. It's a fun and poignant variation on the standard works-every-time "girl meets boy, girl loses boy, girl gets boy" story.; Of course Nicole and Carlos are both wonderfully crazy AND beautiful in their own way—and in ways they learn from each other about spontaneity, love, self-worth, and loyalty. If, as David McKenna says, the only power of a storyteller is to withhold information, then Crazy/Beautiful illustrates the power of withholding. It's full of surprises. And full of wonderful beautifully rendered human emotions that build on these surprises.; I like the acting—Kirsten Dunst is WONDERFUL. Jay Hernandez is also very good, extremely likeable and fine, and so are supporting actors Bruce Davison (Tom Oakley, Nicole's father) and Taryn Manning.; I like the script by Hay & Manfredi.
I like the sound track.
I like the spirit and message of the movie.; It IS crazy/beautiful.; 1-10 SCALE: 8; __© j9h/July 10, 2001; MADE (2001); IMDb Ebert; Jon Favreau (written by, directed by, and starring), with Vince Vaughn — Picking up (sort of) where Swingers (1996) left off, Made (no, not Maid, as a friend of mine wondered) is a kind of fun but hard-edged comedy/drama buddy film about sparring, rough-and-tumble LA losers who get involved in a small-time organized-crime scheme, which takes them to New York to do a dope/dough drop—all in the hopes that they will finally "make it" (you know, as in life...financially and all?).; One (Ricky/Vince Vaughn), tall and thin, good looking (no one thinks so more than he), self-centered, cocky, fast talking, and in your face—with a special kind of grace-under-pressure thick-as-a-brick smarts (this guy REALLY thinks he's cool)—just wants to have fun. The other (Bobby/Jon Favreau), short and stocky, an average-looking joe, sensitive, sober, reflective, and withdrawn, but no less fighter when he has to be (he's trying to make it as a boxer), is dead serious and wants to rescue his stripper-girlfriend Jessica (Famke Janssen) and her pre-school daughter Chloe (Makenzie Vega) from life on the wrong side of the tracks.; The film is marked by the drama of basic visceral sensations, in the form of places/images/situations, music, emotions, and the jab and feint of some brilliant and percussive word-boxing. The film has an impressive improvisational quality—its R-rated rapid-fire dialogic exchanges fluctuate between talented, clever, and funny, and too-cute, rude, and mean. Vaughn plays the part, which Favreau has expertly written, beautifully. They are both obviously quite talented. They make a terrific, though hard-to-always-like, semi-sweet 1-2 punch (and counter-punch). The penguin scene is inspired. Structurally the film works: LA/Act 1, NYC/Act 2, LA/Act 3. Peter Falk and Sean 'Puffy' Combs add fun color as white (LA) and black (NYC) mob bosses Max and Ruiz.; Weaknesses? Overwritten gratuitous hard-on-the-ears profanity (take it EASY guys!...and check out Taxi Driver: Cybill Shepherd's one utterance of the F-word has ten times the dramatic effect of the zillion times you say it)—Vaughn's character, especially, needs to be more rigorously shaped beyond the one-dimensionality of his over-the-top profanity-heavy glibness. Underwritten story lines vis-a-vis the underdeveloped supporting characters: Every scene is about either Bobby or Ricky or both. There's never a scene where we get to see, for example, Jessica and Max, or Chloe interacting with her school friends or teacher. It's totally buddy-centric. And that's part of the reason that the low-budget movie comes off as fairly naive and amateurish. (Friend and critic Dali Plavsic points out that the camera work is also very amateurish.) Even Taxi Driver (1976), perhaps the paradigm of the keep-it-focused-on-the-main-character's-point-of-view-at-all-times film breaks away from DeNiro for two crucial scenes (though he does hover outside). Woody Allen, the master of Chekhovian major/minor character development and complexity (as Plavsic points out about Hannah and Her Sisters, for example), Favreau ain't (yet).; Grade for Made? 1-10 SCALE: 6; __© j9h/August 2, 2001

SHADOWS AND FOG (1991)*

Woody Allen (written by, directed by, starring) — The streets may be foggy, menacing, and awash in ambiguity and confusion, but things are clear in the harsh light of the brothel in this beautifully filmed low-contrast b&w comedy/drama—quasi-horror-film parody—about a misfit amateur-magician bookkeeper who is roped into a vigilante effort to stop a strangler on the loose on a dark and dreary eerie night in the City...and the circus is in town (wouldn't you know?). An amazing cast: Donald Pleasance, Mia Farrow, Lily Tomlin, Cathy Bates, Jody Foster, Wallace Shawn, W.H. Macy, John Malkovich, Madonna, John Cusack. As (almost) always, Woody is wonderful. Funny, disarming, offbeat, and entrancing—as actor, writer, and director—he probes two favorite themes: sex and death.*[1992 according to IMDb but film itself says 1991]

1-10 SCALE: 9

__©j9h/August 2, 2001

SHREK (2001)

IMDb Ebert

Read the film review What's love got to do with it that appears in the August 13, 2001 issue of The Christian Science Sentinel.

1-10 SCALE: 9

TAXI DRIVER (1976)

SPOILER WARNING: Includes plot developments that you DO NOT want to know about ahead of time if you haven't seen the movie.

IMDb Ebert

Directed by Martin Scorsese and written by Paul Schrader — IMDb outlines the plot like this: "A mentally unstable Vietnam war veteran works as nighttime taxi driver in a city whose perceived decadence and sleaze feeds his urge to violently lash out." And lash out he of course does. I was reluctant to see this movie, and, let's not kid ourselves, it IS a really rough ride, especially during the ridiculously graphic slaughter scene, but it's a total must see for anyone seriously interested in filmmaking.

As one commentator on IMDb puts it: "A towering classic of American cinematic power. Martin Scorsese teams up with one of the most intense actors of that time to create a masterpiece of urban alienation. Paul Schrader's magnificent script paints a portrait of loneliness in the largest city of the world."

Robert DeNiro (Travis Bickle) is brilliant. This is DeNiro at the high point of his powers, three years after his fine understated work in Bang the Drum Slowly (1973), two years after winning an Academy Award for The Godfather: Part II (1974), four years before another tour de force in Raging Bull (1980), six years before he becomes an annoying self-parody, and is outshined by Jerry Lewis, in The King of Comedy (1983). Paul Schrader's script is amazing—now I know what he meant when he said "I don't think it's very useful to open wide the door for young artists; the ones who break down the door are much more interesting" because he breaks the doors down in this film BIG time.

Scorsese's sure and daring direction, Michael Chapman's equally provocative cinematography—alternating between a matter-of-fact realism and a dreamy montage-expressive romanticism—and Bernard Hermann's deeply haunting bi-polar score are in perfect harmony with Schrader's smoldering and explosive verbal/visual urban nightmare. So are the performances by supporting actors, including Cybill Shepherd (Betsy; a total dream boat—what a face, sooooooooo beautiful and wonderfully expressive of the subtext of her beguiling dialectical character), Jodie Foster (Iris), Peter Boyle (Wizard), Harvey Keitel (Sport), and (providing much needed intermittent comic relief) Albert Brooks (Tom). It is a seamlessly integrated whole, a totally blended, pitch-perfect aesthetic package (in spite of the give-me-a-break ridiculous brutality of admittedly perhaps THE archetypal scene of personal violence in the history of cinema).

And the last 15 minutes, after the bloodbath—just when you think this neo-Shakespearean tragedy is (finally) over? Holy Smokes. They are absolutely INCREDIBLE. It's the best part of the film. Just the simple fact that it's not over is stunning...and then where it goes? Well, genius. The slow motion overhead tracking shot, the no-one's-gonna-rush-me tempo and deeeeeeeeeeelay, the surprising resurrection and related story-line developments, dreamy Betsy reappearing, now in the mesmerizing rear-view-mirror shots of Bickle's taxi (and you can HEAR the line she doesn't actually say to DeNiro after she exits the taxi and leans in to talk to him)...the final minutes as the credits roll (right justified, I love it— + "hey, this movie ain't over yet, pal," you can just hear Scorsese saying, "you're not walking out till I'm done and that means you sit there while the credits roll...'cause you can't be too sure what's gonna happen next, and it ain't over til it's over and it ain't never over so just sit there and keep your eyes peeled, got it?...you talkin' to me???")...then Fade Out.

A masterpiece for sure. Disturbing though it is. But, it's disturbance is at the heart of its startling dramatic power. Schrader and Scorsese push the limits of Travis Bickel's spiraling descent into madness, moving the opposing dramatic poles of normalcy and derangement farther and farther apart. On the one hand, there is everyday life (stability/sanity/tranquility)—established at the start of the movie and represented by daytime, though, ironically, this is the time when he "works for the government." On the other hand, there is demonic life (imbalance/alienation/violence), which takes increasingly explicit form as the movie unravels—it's represented by nighttime, when Travis is, officially, the Taxi Driver. Then there is the genius of finally divulging information withheld—through the breath-taking ploy of withholding for as long as possible a single thing in a movie that had withheld little if anything until now: Not only does Travis live (!), but the dead guys were mob bosses. And thus Schrader sets the stage for the total surprise that the pathological anti-hero he's-got-a-screw-missing villain has become a chick-magnet media-made hero in a genre-switch from the deepest tragedy to the heights of cynical comedy. (And yes, boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl—or, at least, he COULD have her if he wants.) I have one word to say: a sensory-shocked, reluctant WOW. Schrader calls it a "documentary of the mind." It is that. This is the real deal. I can't get the plaintive alto saxophone of Herrmann's haunting love theme out of my mind...

Main Title (Herrmann)

1-10 SCALE: 10

jef7rey HILDNER'S television show about movies, FILM SPACE, airs weekly on the public access channel in Williamstown, Massachusetts.