Next week will feature lists and summary pieces about the past year in film, as we in smaller markets only get to see a clutch of films a few weeks later than those of you lucky (or unlucky, depending) enough to live in NYC or LA.
I will say this: I'm shocked the Director's Cut of Kingdom of Heaven got buried at one cinema in LA for two weeks and no one outside the loop even heard about it. It's at the top of my "All-Time Movies I Liked A Lot and Wanted to Love But Some Studio Prick Decided I Wanted the Choppy Version of Instead of the Real Cut So I Thought a Completely Innocent Director Was at Fault" list.
This is made even more criminal in that it's one of the few really solid, successful attempts at a respectful representation of Muslim crusaders. Salahaddin (usually pronounced "Saladin" with a very proper English accent) in particular isn't the fire-breathing satan dragon he's been portrayed as in the past, whether in popular cinema or literature.
I wonder if the "Extended Edition" of Gladiator is better than the "Theatrical Cut" that didn't thrill me too much.
Love Tragically
The story of Tristan & Isolde has seen nearly as many permutations as that of Romeo & Juliet, including an excellent opera by Wagner. Conspicuously lacking was a feature film adaptation, which the story can now successfully claim...depending on your taste.
The trailer for T&I also illustriously joins the ranks of the "Trailers of Doom", previews that summarize the entire movie in roughly 2-3 1/2 minutes. Good work, marketers, you've managed to make the entire movie relatively unsurprising to anyone who caught the three minute version. My mother actually mentioned she was glad one wouldn't have to waste the money on seeing it, since the ad team did such a good job of showing it to us as a free bonus for seeing Brokeback Mountain.
T&I is very well-shot and acted, perfectly designed and costumed, and full of stock characters and story elements you've seen before in the myriad tragic love stories that derived their stories from this one. If you're remotely familiar with what the movie's about, you know what you're going to see.
The fight choreography, I must say, is very well-done, for any boyfriends being dragged to see the movie against their will. The violence outweighs the lovin' at nearly a 4:1 ratio. All sorts of weapons are used, from maces and spears to single swords and shields. At one point, we get a tournament fight where the combatants use a single sword and dagger each that blazes by from move to move.
The plethora of 18-24 year-old girls sitting around me this afternoon cooed each time James Franco looked dreamy and gasped each time the lovers were betrayed by themselves or forces outside their control. Almost all of them left the auditorium with tears streaming save one particularly cute girl who could be heard saying "am I the only girl who didn't cry" to her date.
Sumptuous in composition and not remotely spare in its attention to detail, the strong performances by Sophia Myles, James Franco, and Rufus Sewell, along with the rest of the cast don't change the fact that you can predict what's happens next the whole way through. A few moments that come off unintentionally goofy are entirely forgivable, but it is indeed a story you've seen before.
The attention and care paid in the production values let you focus on the story, which doesn't hit you too hard over the head with messages of considering what you are and are not willing to give up for the sake of love. Sometimes, the illogical, ill-advised, and generally disapproved choice is the best one to make for yourself and the one you care for.
No matter what, it's better than most all other (non-expanding/platform) new releases out at theatres.
Syriana and The Squid
Just as both movies were leaving town (or so I thought), I caught Syriana and The Squid & The Whale. Both movies shot up the charts in contention as two of my favorites of the year, one probably thanks to the other.
I saw the first show of the day of The Squid & The Whale was only seen by about six people other than me. Four of these six were little old women who had a terribly spirited conversation about Splenda and sugar substitutes.
Squid shows all the messy details of a divorce, from the outside in and from the inside out. Jeff Daniels and Laura Linney, two actors who are consistently at the top of their game, play the husband and wife who make their kids' lives hell for the majority of the running time as a result of finally deciding their marriage won't work.
Noah Baumbach, a sometimes-collaborator of Wes Anderson's, shows the same talent for casting as his colleague, and a similarly bare style that comes off successfully, likely thanks to lower expectations than people have of "the" Royal Tenenbaum. Unfortunately, after an expertly-crafted piece like this one, Noah will be cursed with similar preconceptions.
The coping mechanisms the two young men stuck in between their parents develop are darkly comic and spiritedly tragic, thanks to how honest they come off. The elder brother elects to mimic his father while his younger brother clings closer to mom. Throwing a wrench in an already complex machinery, younger brother starts plowing headlong into puberty at the same time.
The Squid and The Whale is a story about a young man fighting against himself whose parents don't realize that they're helping hurt him. It isn't terribly import who is the squid and who is the whale.
Playing in the Sandbox
While I waited for Syriana to start, I saw at least twenty or thirty people stream in to the next show of Squid. It seems people have caught on to when movies are leaving town, as Thursday afternoons aren't often that busy.
Soderbergh's Traffic is ten times the movie Crash is, and so is Stephen Gaghan's Syriana. Whereas Haggis' movie is super-important because people saw it in droves, Gaghan's is important thanks to its actual content.
Syriana is about the soldiers of cultural imperialism and how they're crushing us with ethnocentric, anti-global business policy.
The complexity of that sentence's structure is on-par with that of the film itself. For some, that's a major negative, but I'm glad that among a sea of alleged "thinking man's movies," there is one that actually deserves the title.
The Molasses-to-Rum interchange from character to character takes time to develop and establish the connections between the ensemble as they relate to the oil trade and each other. Crash uses the "coincidental event" tie as a reason to smash everyone into each others' path, which honestly comes off as pretentious.
Syriana sidesteps this pitfall by establishing the players as characters who are already interconnected by the oil business. There is an interconnecting event, but it doesn't try so damned hard to seem important and excessively didactic.
Powerfully moving performances abound from Alexander Siddig, George "Fat" Clooney, Matt Damon, Tim Blake Nelson, Chris Cooper, and Amanda Peet (a shocker). One of my favorite notes in the film comes from the wisened lion that is Christopher Plummer. While berating a materialistic marionette prince, he spells out the "friendly relations" between the West and the Middle East almost better than the trailer-featured diatribe from Tim Blake Nelson.
The most under-recognized actor of 2005 and even 2004, Jeffrey Wright, gives a fantastic performance as a man struggling under the yoke of racial prejudice. Wright's plight highlights the fact that the civil rights movement only changed surface problems for a bright, innovative black man in America. His work here, in addition to Broken Flowers and The Manchurian Candidate, is just as award-worthy as he was in Angels in America last year.
Having Squid to warm my cinematic mind up was useful going into Syriana, as the majority of movies I saw in 2005 didn't make me think to much. Much to my delight, the movie didn't leave town, but rather moved across town to the AMC 20. If you're in Tallahassee or another town where Syriana is hanging on by a thread, be sure to catch it before it disappears.
The Producers: The Movie Musical In Rearview
I saw the adapted adaptation again this past Wednesday night, and I enjoyed it about a hundred times more than I did the first time around. I found myself laughing and carrying on, and giving less of a care about attention to detail than...enjoying the hell out of it?
It may have been the company (castmates from a local production of Jane Eyre), or just not caring as much about scrutinizing it, but I found myself having a lot more fun than I think I should have.
On a related note, we have our first piece of Arthouse Cowboy reader email:
I just finished reading your piece on The Producers and have to take issue with your comment "I've enjoyed the Broadway Cast Recording more as "isn't that funny, they made it a musical" than "it's revolutionized theatre" as some would falsely allege". I know I'm writing this from Australia but I don't know of anyone who has claimed it has revolutionized theatre. I've seen it (on stage) and whilst it was fun, it's a forgettable show with the worst set of lyrics I've encountered in many a year. My reading is that when it opened on Broadway, most critics saw it as a throwback to a fun, silly musical comedy that they don't make anymore and a slap it the face to the bloated English invasion a la Phantom of the Opera (and the less said about that film the better). But revolutionary? Come on!
Regards,
Warren Jones
Me to him:
I wholeheartedly agree with where I think you're coming from: the "revolution" comments and others like them come from the same folks I know here in the states who just love the newest thing to death as soon as it opens and herald it as "the show that saved Broadway".
The Producers did, unfortunately, revolutionize one thing: ticket prices. The Producers shot prices through the ceiling and did change Broadway, albeit it for the worse.
If you love reading or hate reading, feel free to fill my digital ear with comments or criticism.