The International

"The International" is a poorly-structured, lackluster thriller by the director of possibly the most energetic film in years ("Run Lola Run", the only film of his that gets mentioned by anyone besides Ebert, and by a lot of sites, including The Playlist) Tom Tykwer. It's about the tracking down of a seedy bank called the IBBC by two agents: Louis Salinger (Clive Owen), a troubled man with a bad record with Interpol, and Eleanor Whitman (Naomi Watts), the straight woman who's trying to keep Salinger in line while trying to stop the bank's force.

The IBBC tries to take hold of the debts of conflicts and buys missiles from China and sells them to help do so. They are headed by Jonas Skarssen (Ulrich Thomsen), a horribly rounded, steel-braced, and accented man at the top who's currently trying to make a deal with a revolutionary group in Liberia. The bank keeps the operations clean by killing every man who steps in the way. Basically, the film is about Salinger's hopes of bringing the corrupt financial institution to justice. This, of course, leads him to many locales around Europe and the globe. Although there is some intrigue injected into this insipid film, there is no real interest.

The film and its advertisements are built around a fight scene in the Guggenheim Museum. This is in fact very well-done, although all the art has been replaced with just screens thus detracting the realism just for a single choice mechanism (a reflection). Other than that, Tykwer's efforts here to create excitement are foiled. In the end, "The International" spouts an odd, perhaps brilliant take on how effective the whole investigation was, and leaves you wondering. I guess that's really the best that can be said for it. The screenplay, by rookie movie screenwriter Eric Singer, is cliche and massively boring. As with the film, there are one or two nice moments, but altogether, it reeks of oldness.

This is purely a theoretical film, not visually grabbing but pretty well composed (although the cinematography is pretty standard by means of the genre). Owen and Watts are very tepid, as is the support by Thomsen and Armin Mueller-Stahl as a Communist who's also involved in the bank. Really, the plot behind "The International" doesn't seem like it could fuel much, although it's conceptually interesting. Neither could the visuals, acting, or anything else associated. Was I pulled in? Only slightly. That's okay, but there needs to be more here. C

The Hurt Locker

Kathryn Bigelow's "The Hurt Locker" is a hard-hitting, loud, and realistic take on the war in Iraq, much like "Three Kings." As screenwriter Mark Boal said (at a Q & A session following the film last night), this is a "combat film," as opposed to "In the Valley of Elah" or "The Lucky Ones," both of which did mediocre at the B.O. (although Bigelow said that she didn't really care about entering a revenue-low genre). And man, is the film intense. Practically every scene is.

It begins (after quoting thrill-seeking journalist Chris Hedges) with a small robot running through the streets of Baghdad. This is piloted by Sanborn (Anthony Mackie) and Thompson (Guy Pearce), the resident bomb defuser. The explosives don't reach their target, so we see Thompson go into action. He's killed by a massive explosion (one of the most well-orchestrated I've ever seen), calling for a replacement and threatening the balance between Sanborn, Eldridge (Brian Geraghty), and the defuser. The replacement is intensity-craving, brash Will James, played by Jeremy Renner. He shows that there is a new force on the team, which resonates harshly with straight-man Sanborn. Mackie is very affecting here, and perhaps helps the audience enter into this sandstorm of a movie, a stylistic but true-to-life piece. Boal also said that he had been on "runs" with the bomb defusers, observing the action enough to put together a screenplay. It feels as deep as it is.

Beyond Pearce, there are also two other actors in bit parts as contractors (although I won't reveal who they are so you can have the surprise of spotting them). Other forces that shouldn't go unnoticed are the FX team, who create amazing explosions, and the director/writer team, who elicit the right amount of tensity. There were a couple problems, though. There was a lack of real resting time within the film. I mean, one crazy thing happened one after another (sometimes amounting to three major events in one scene). This could have been solved with padding the film a little bit with a little stoppage time, thus moving the length from 131 minutes to 150 or 155. That could have made a pretty sizable difference. Otherwise, "The Hurt Locker" is a very good war film, but this time about how war can fuel the cravings of violent, masculine men. A-

Note: The title of the film was also discussed at the Q & A. Boal attributed it to a term used in sports and war. I thought possibly it could have been referring to the suit of a defuser. Am I the only one?

Goodbye Solo

"Goodbye Solo" is Ramin Bahrani's follow-up to his previous success "Chop Shop," a sad film about a young auto mechanic and his sister living in New York. Set in the director's home state of North Carolina, specifically Winston-Salem, "Solo" doesn't measure up exactly, but it still has a lot of good going for it. It chronicles the relationship between optimistic, outgoing, Senegal-born cab driver Solo (Souleymane Sy Savane) and one of his "valued customers," a sad, shaken old man named William (Red West). It goes to show that the casting is top-notch, also in the way that Diana Franco Galindo was chosen to play Solo's Hispanic stepdaughter Alex who he is teaching French (as I believe that language is one that they speak in Senegal).

Since Solo is a naturally cheerful individual, he tries to change William's mind about committing suicide on a mountain, while trying to get a job as a flight attendant, and to help his wife. Savane is a talented and charismatic actor, and his work here is stunning and affecting. West is less impressive, but still puts in enough and a little more to keep things on track. There's also something about the film and the setting that also quite appealing. It's hard to describe, but perhaps it is the combined force of Savane, West, and Galindo.

Somehow, however, this venture seemed to be lacking something. There was not as much of a punch as Bahrani's previous work, and the story seemed to go pretty much unfulfilled. Bahrani and Bahareh Azimi, his screenwriting partner, go 90% of the way to where they need to be. The 10% is a pretty glaring omission. For "Goodbye Solo" to be a full film, there needed to be a little more fleshing-out involved. Don't get me wrong: the opening sequence was one of my favorite film moments of the year. The absence of non-diegetic music was refreshing as it always is. And Savane's performance might end up being a real contender (unfortunately, I think chances may be slim due to the release date and the lack of Academy-style appeal). There just wasn't enough. It needed to be 10-20 minutes longer, and possibly that time could be used to establish backstory between the two leads. That block wasn't there, which doesn't render the film mediocre. It's a very good film, and almost a fantastic one. B+

Best Films of 2008 (Re-Issue)

1. The Wrestler (directed by Darren Aronofsky)
2. Hunger (directed by Steve McQueen)
3. Waltz With Bashir (directed by Ari Folman)
4. Synecdoche, New York (directed by Charlie Kaufman)

5. Man on Wire (directed by James Marsh)
6. Doubt (directed by John Patrick Shanley)
7. Happy-Go-Lucky (directed by Mike Leigh)
8. Gomorrah (directed by Mateo Garrone)
9. Rachel Getting Married (directed by Jonathan Demme)
10. Milk (directed by Gus Van Sant)

Tokyo Sonata

Kiyoshi Kurosawa's "Tokyo Sonata" is a profound and extraordinary yet flawed film. It follows an affluent Japanese family who start to lose control since the chemical balance of position is disrupted. How exactly? It's a ripple effect. The father (Teruyuki Kagawa), who maintains a steady hand in the family and has the same disconnect that many fathers do, gets discharged at work, and falls into the unrelenting grasp of unemployment. As his friend does, he tries to hide his misfortune from his family. Why exactly? Well, because control and dignity are important in an affluent Japanese family. This is felt since he's lost both, and he can't bear to show it.

His younger son Kenji (Inowaki Kai) wants desperately to play the piano (for good reason), and his older son Takashi (Yu Koyanagi) wants to enlist in the American army. Since he's consumed by his losses, the father tries to restrict them. His wife (Kyoko Koizumi) understands and sees beyond the literal plain. This also helps when she's held at knifepoint by a desperate ex-locksmith (Haruka Igawa), whom she helps with insight. It's a bizarre turn of events, but Kurosawa turns it into a unique and amazing piece of transcendence.

The film is like a Japanese adaptation of Ian McEwan's "Saturday," what with the constant realism sprinkled with insanity. But there's even more than that here. "Tokyo Sonata" concludes perfectly and shows how beauty triumphs over currency and need of dignity. There's much more to life than the father first realizes. Kurosawa, Max Mannix, and Sachiko Tanaka create a great script on these ideas, one that's at once sad and subtly funny. The acting is also very good as well. The real flaws of "Tokyo Sonata" come from the editing department. Like Teruyuki Kagawa's character, Koichi Takahashi (the film editor) has a hard time keeping a steady hand, and like the character again, sometimes is a little too strict. If it was a little tighter, the film could be in control. Kurosawa’s brilliance, however, should not be overshadowed, and “Tokyo Sonata,” I reiterate, is a very strong representation of despair and its destruction, but furthermore what can be salvaged and finding the place where you are most comfortable. A-

Summer Hours (L'heure d'ete)

"Summer Hours" is a skillfully but tiredly made film caught in an ocean of melodrama and disconnect. It's about a French woman (Edith Scob) who has a ton of valuable pieces of art (display cases, paintings, vases), and how her family reacts and deals with her death. It's a movie with very limited potential that doesn't get that far since it's not that interesting and kind of dreary. It shares many similarities with last years much better "A Christmas Tale," not only because of its reunion-based structure and French roots, but because Emile Berling has parts in both films, the one in the former being much more significant. The other piece has an advantage because of two things: a standout performance (by Mathieu Almaric) and a story of much more dramatic weight, interest, and connection.

Here, the plot could possibly be done well with (since it has kind of an interesting idea, like my friend said and others said, about how art has lost significance, and it has that whole grand family thing going on; if only it was a little more interesting), but Olivier Assayas is content with leaving it at ground level, and that's not enough. The three children, Adrienne (Juliette Binoche), Jeremie (Jeremie Renier), and Frederic (Charles Berling, who I bet has some relation to Emile) all seem to be straying from their mother. Frederic is the one that Helene (the mom) wants most of the assorted art to stay with, since he stays in France most of the time and the other two are mostly around the globe. Frederic is most devoted to the inheritance, and he thinks it's a fine idea to keep the house in the family. The other two disagree, wanting to auction off most of the art. Apparently, Jeremie needs money, but the movie hardly goes into that beyond a couple of words. There is also the subplot of Frederic and his rebellious, doobie-smoking daughter (no, this does not imply the film is of the "marijgenre"), and also of the maid Eloise and her ties to the house and ex-owner. These plots were cliche and sentimental, respectively.

I thought the most interesting facet of the film was the supposedly fictional artist at its core, one that Helene apparently had some sort of incestuous relationship with (the artist is her uncle). Most of the valuable art is his creation, but the film is much less about him. It's more about the auctioning of the art (which is super-duper-EXCITING). Is this enough to make a movie about? Not really. I've grown to expect at least little more out of cinema. C

Up

As you may know, I'm not exactly smitten with the touchy-feely detailed antics of Pixar. I did enjoy "Monsters, Inc." and "The Incredibles" and believed that "Ratatouille" had an interesting premise of sorts, but not until last year's powerful and innovative "Wall-E" was I impressed by a product of the animation company. No, it was not perfect, but it was quite an improvement from what I'd seen previously. At parts, I was severely moved. But that was the work of Andrew Stanton. Pete Docter, "Up"'s director, only doctored with the story of "Wall-E" and had no say in the real bulk of the film. Here, he gets to control his own film. He didn't write it, so he can't be attributed with the successes and failures of the gimmicky idea and MacGuffin of the film. That was Bob Peterson. He's the force that drove "Up" into the skies and then into the ground.

He spins a piece of magical realism, a house propelled by balloons. This is the idea of Carl Fredricksen, who's inspired by Charles Muntz (Christopher Plummer), a real crackerjack explorer that has seen South America and Paradise Falls. Fredricksen is a fanboy, and as he is going about his idolatry of his favorite adventurer, he meets a young girl also sharing his obsession named Ellie, who has a Cher-like set of hair and a possibly even more avid passion for Muntz. To make a long story short, the two get married, and dream of making it to Paradise Falls, but Ellie passes on and Carl (now played as an old man by Ed Asner in his Pixar debut) now becomes a recluse of sorts. Since as a young boy he made a promise to get eventually to South America, Carl vows to keep it true.

Just as he's about to be carted off to some cliche retirement home, he takes off with his house, using the balloons to keep him off the ground (they have a previous significance-Carl was a balloon vendor at a zoo). It's sort of like an Americanized, animated knockoff of "Danny Deckchair" which I doubt Bob Peterson ever saw or heard about. Anyways, literally like 90 seconds after he takes off, he's interrupted from his relaxation by boy scout wilderness explorer cliche animated youngling Russell (Jordan Nagai). He unfortunately makes the plot utterly predictable. The film's major plot point can be seen much before it's intended to. So, the two travelers make it to Paradise Falls but land on the other side. Fredricksen wants to be right on the edge of the falls, so the two begin a semi-epic journey through the tropical undergrowth and bump into two major characters: Kevin, some sort of bizarre, toucan-esque bird that makes a pretty funny call, and Dug (Peterson's voice), a collared, somewhat sadistic but overall amusing dog. Dug is trying to catch the bird, and bring it back to Muntz, who's been staking out in the jungle, searching for it all the time. Why? Because it signifies his legitimacy, since he originally brought back a skeleton and no one believed that he had found a new species.

I won't reveal much more, but just let you know that it all eventually dissolves into misguided chase scenes and underwhelming CGI animation, not unlike the special effects in the "Star Trek" film (sort of agreeing with Ebert, who has a distaste for big CGI and "Star Trek" but also loved this movie). Pixar, too focused on the little details, seems to forget that a film needs some sort of hook or point of interest besides little references and such. Fredricksen's quest to get from one side of Paradise Falls to the other is actually quite pointless, or at least it becomes pointless. It seems like some sort of vehicle to drive the film onwards. This shows all the more that the film is really, really rushed. Maybe it was to get it to Cannes where it would be the first animated film to open (as the Playlist said, "Inglourious Basterds" was the very same, so that's how I got this idea).

The editing is where the film most goes wrong. It might have been trying to mimic the 40's style (oh, right: the film's coy ideas of that decade are really quite cliche), but altogether it comes off really clipped. There is too much emphasis on the transitions (which grow extremely strained in the closing minutes) and not enough on less hyperkinetic cutting. As I've said before, the last 20 minutes make almost absolutely no sense and would be considered purely rushed if not for the sentimental hooks that are provided. It seems in the end that the whole structure is scrapped just for a couple of throwaway jokes and such. In the end, "Up" is the Pixar movie with the least amount of effort altogether. There were some nice details, but it still seems that Pixar is trying to tinker with success. C

The Lucky Ones

"The Lucky Ones" is a calculated screenplay of a film, predictable, mildly surprising at best, pretty awful at worst. It's about the coming home of three soldiers, two on thirty day leave, one permanently. It sets these three into obvious and at times over-the-top situations, and we are subjected to bad acting, dialogue, and editing for the duration of roughly two hours. Tim Robbins is a respectable actor, so how did he get attached to such an off-peak film? He plays the elder statesman, who gets home and within minutes is back on the road, barreling away from a wife who's threatening divorce and a kid who's bound for Stanford but can't make up the $20,000 he needs to supplement his scholarship. It's an affable, no-show performance that isn't Robbins' best work. Rachel McAdams and Michael Pena, neither of which I very much like as actors, step up as the younger soldiers. McAdams is as a gung ho, devout Christian who's smitten with some sort of folk hero whose guitar supposedly belongs to Elvis and who robbed some sort of tiny casino. Pena is a subtle man who's wounded in his sex organs and who talks about skills so much, he nearly puts Napoleon Dynamite to shame. These types are in one car, providing for some melodramatic incidents and other shenanigans, including Hummer product placement and a CGI tornado. Neil Burger, who made the fantastical film "The Illusionist," comes up very short here, especially in terms of screenwriting. He may have been aiming for a mix of satire and middlebrow humor, but he just ended up with a handful of recurring, unfunny patriotic jokes and such. My least favorite bits had to do with the music and the episodic, meaningless editing. The score, by the experienced Rolfe Kent, is no Philip Glass and forces a tone not relevant enough. It only reinforces the fact that this film is pretty unnecessary. Naomi Geraghty, previously associated with the wonderful "In America" which I recall had very good editing, has such a weak hand here that everything scurries along, with no time to consider what just happened. "The Lucky Ones" doesn't seem to be one of those contemplative movies at all. I really don't know why it was made. It's a screenplay, not a film. C-

Tyson

James Toback's "Tyson" is able to unveil a different side of Mike Tyson. It's structured like Tyson himself would have structured it, as he mentions in the doc that he loves conversation. The film is pretty much an 90 minute conversation, using the sound and feel of Tyson's voice, track over track over track, captivating and moving in its devastation.

Disturbed by his childhood, shaken by the death of his trainer, unable to get a hold on himself, Tyson is authentic on camera with Toback, who he's comfortable with. The boxer speaks on the violence, sex, and religion of his life, and with such passion, it's very enrapturing. He's fascinated with women, and he's sexually active. All of his relationships with women turned disasterous, and it seems to be his brutal anger that drove him to be like that. It's hard to hear Tyson's thoughts on his fight with Evander Holyfield, murderous, destructive thoughts that rage on with him throughout the fight. Excluding this fight, Tyson believes that boxers and pigeons are alike in the way they swarm and attack each other for the goods, although they live together like brothers all the other time. This is probably true.

When you analyze Tyson's style, you see that he does not have the brute force of Holyfield or the quick feet of Muhammed Ali, but instead he has pure aggression and rage, and what Tyson says definitely reflects this. This rage is ultimately what has swallowed him whole. He reiterates that he "cannot trust anyone" and that his anger is pointed at himself. His talent is really there, but you can see that gradually Tyson isn't, and he repeatedly falls apart. On another note, the reason the techniques that Toback employ in the film work is because Tyson has a monologic, poetic style as a speaker that pulls you in and gives Tyson's words meaning. "Tyson" as a film is powerful and incredibly moving since it shows the inner core of a man that the media has made out to be a terrible person. In some ways, Tyson can be bad, but he's also very vulnerable and shaken from his roots. That makes "Tyson" a deep, nuanced portrait of a fighter, who's career in the end hurt him as much as a taxing blow from an opponent. A

Star Trek

"Star Trek" is some sort of attempt to monetize a bygone series that lays just perfect untouched by my standards. I'm not a Trekkie by any means, I have a fondness for the show and get some of the jokes, etc. I'm sure that J.J. Abrams' new film is not an embellisher. It's full of overblown special effects, performances, and dialogue, and I don't like it. Some of it is pretty good, actually, but altogether, it's dominated by its visuals, that are numbing after a while. It seems like action films these days are made with the sensibility that the audience pays to see shit being blown up.

"Star Trek" is in no way an exception to this rule. J.J. Abrams' amazing computer generated dreamcoat is not at all satisfying. Admittedly, there's a little more to "Star Trek" then that. Namely, it's Zachary Quinto as Spock. The actor is able to keep his emotions believably in check like his predecessor (who also makes an appearance). Upon this building block, "Star Trek" shows stabilization. He's matched by a decent Chris Pine as James T. Kirk, who befriends Spock after some academic troubles. This is also after Nimoy has instructed Kirk to verbally dismember Spock so he can captain the Enterprise. This scene is a bizarre and mistaken interjection here, and it seems utterly detached for Kirk, who seems to be presented as a heroic character. Here he does something kinda sadistic. Not that Spock has not been mistreated before. We all know he's half-human, half-Vulcan, and he's subject to some bullying on his planet. His planet also gets bullied, by the stereotypical Nero, played by a totally misused Eric Bana. He isn't anywhere as good as he is in the Spielberg masterpiece "Munich." He's another reason the film can't reach greatness. I couldn't stop thinking about how different Bana was here, how boring.

When the film boards the Enterprise, it goes right. Simon Pegg, John Cho, and Anton Yechlin all turn in good performances as Scotty, Sulu, and Chekov respectively. Bruce Greenwood is a very uninspired choice to play Pike. Zoe Saldana is Uhura, and she's okay. But I'm drifting into a type of nostalgia. The references to the original series were nice: the beaming, the guns, etc. Did it need a new place, on a new launching pad for possibly another line of spinoff films? No. I said it last time with Cloverfield, which was superior, and now, for old time's sake: Better luck next time, J.J. C+