Movie Review - This Man Must Die (1969)

This Man Must Die (1969) (Que la bête meure) is a Claude Chabrol thriller with some of the same structural elements shared by quite a few of his other films like the sea as an important background element and a nasty antagonist introduced in mid-plot who dominates the rest of the story.

A little child getting murdered is another Chabrol motif that is repeated here. Perhaps Hitchcock was correct when he said all directors mainly shoot the same movie over and over again throughout their careers.

This Man Must Die's main plot is similar to the American TV and film classic The Fugitive. But instead of a doctor chasing a killer in order to prove his own innocence in the murder of his wife, the anti-hero Charles Thenier (played by Michel Duchaussoy) chases those who kill his six year old son in a hit-and-run traffic accident.

It's a riveting story about non-relenting hatred and vengeance.

Like in Christopher Nolan's Memento (2000), Charles Thenier constantly takes notes in his little notebook, making no secret of his plans for his son's murderer. But he keeps a notebook not because he has a memory problem, as the case in Memento. The convoluted reason becomes all too clear at the end of the movie.

A major twist in the story arrives in Act 2, when Charles is forced to go to bed with the alluring Helene Lanson (Caroline Cellier) who might be the possible killer of his son.

Why?

He has to ingratiate himself to her graces and thus learn the identity of the driver who killed his son in broad daylight while Helen was sitting in the passenger seat. The ploy works.

When we are introduced to the monstrous antagonist Paul Decourt (acted to chilling perfection by Jean Yanne) at mid-point, it's like gasoline pouring over fire.

The service station owner well-to-do Decourt is the kind of sadistic and lecherous brute that you'd like to see punished bad. He is also the driver of the car that killed Charles's son.

The way Paul's aging mother blindly roots for his evil son sends a chill down the spine. Every time Paul eviscerates his own teenage son and wife in public with grave insults and mean jokes, the Mother backs him up with the same nasty glee.

At the end, justice is served in a way perhaps not expected. Closure attained. We are left with the thrill of a perfect chase arriving at its cinematically proper (if not totally legal) conclusion to serve a just cause.

Movie Review - Innocents With Dirty Hands (1975)

Innocents With Dirty Hands (1975) (Les Innocents aux mains sales) is another Claude Chabrol crime thriller with familiar plot elements: a young and gorgeous woman married to a man much richer than herself; the sea and the confrontation in a boat, etc.

The film features two mega stars: Lovely Romy Schneider as Julie Wormser and volatile Rod Steiger as her impotent but rich husband Louis Wormser.

Add to that the young stud-next-door Jeff Marle (acted by Paolo Giusti), and you've got yourself a classic explosive triangle that does not fail to produce some deadly fireworks.

A transparent plot ploy that Chabrol uses in this film is the detective couple Commissaire Lamy (François Maistre) and Commissaire Villon (Pierre Santini).

Why do we need these two Commissaires? So that they can talk endlessly among themselves and over delicious French food and tell us what's going on.

It's exposition of the most blatant kind and a rather weak crutch for a director with as developed a visual sense as Chabrol.

But Chabrol exonerates himself in the very last scene where he uses a certain visual element (which I will not disclose) which is as unforgettable as a similar element used in the very last scene of the Antonioni classic L'Eclisse (1962).

That's one scene which speaks volumes of the incomparable power of "motion pictures" and how indeed a picture is worth a thousand words.

Yet the problem is to find that one appropriate image in a proverbial haystack of infinite visual possibilities.

To find that perfect image which not only underlines a plot point but also reveals a character's spiritual truth and predicament takes a special kind of genius. And Chabrol, just like Antonioni or all the other legendary directors and writers of the silver screen, has that "golden touch" in spades.

Book Review - “Marlon Brando” by Patricia Bosworth

Just like in Einstein's universe light beams bend while passing around large celestial objects, Marlo Brando was also a giant of American drama, bending all the rules and changing everyone that came into contact with him.

He was a combustible original. He more than anybody else defined what it meant to be an “American male hero” in the post-WW2 era.

Without his volatile acting paradigm and personal example there probably would not be a James Dean, Robert De Niro, or Al Pacino, or perhaps even a Johnny Depp.

When the Omaha, Nebraska born Brando picked up his bags at age nineteen, hit the road from his hometown Libertyville, Illinois and arrived in New York City in “faded dungarees and sporting a red fedora,” he was not even sure if he wanted to be an actor.

Yes, his raw talent was obvious from every school production he took part in while growing up. And true, he thought he was going to “knock everyone dead” in the Big Apple sooner or later. Nobody ever accused Brando of being modest for sure.

But acting? That was a slow evolution, according to Marlon Brando, an excellent biography by Patricia Bosworth.

Bosworth lays out the voyage that took the cocky 19 yr old kid from north of Chicago to the zenith of Tinseltown and then back and down to the turbulent waters of self-doubt and vacillation in vivid colors and exquisite anecdotal details.

Thanks to Bosworth, we follow how a group of dedicated actors shaped by the method acting as thought by Stella Adler at her Actors Studio has changed the whole landscape of American drama; how there really is a before- and after-Brando school acting thanks to the far reaching impact of Brando masterpieces like The Wild One, On The Waterfront, A Streetcar Named Desire, The Godfather, Last Tango in Paris, and Apocalypse Now.

After finishing the book, we realize the tremendous importance his father Marlon Brando Sr. played in his life.

Almost a century after the invention of psychoanalysis by Freud it now feels perhaps a bit lame and corny to say this but it was true in Brando's case: throughout his life he suffered from not being able to express the anger he felt towards his father.

His whole career was driven on by his desperate need to prove himself to the old man who believed the Junior would never be able to add up to anything in life. Boy, was the Senior wrong!

Marlon Brando practically worshiped his mother but his relationship with the Senior certainly took its toll on him until the day his father died in 1965.

Equally important to Brando was his childhood friend Wally Cox with whom he remained close. Especially after becoming more successful and famous than he'd ever dream, Brando took refuge in the comfort and security of his old friends like Wally and the tranquility of his Tahitian estate.

Camille Paglia, quoted by Bosworth, provides the best summary of Brando's impact on American and world cinema:

“Marlon Brando, mumbling, muttering, flashing with barbaric energy, freed theatrical emotion from its enslavement by words.”

“Brando brought American nature to American acting, and he brought the American personality to the world… Brando, the wild, sexy rebel, all mute and surly bad attitude, prefigured the great art form of the Sixties generation: rock and roll.”

Marlon rocks to high heaven in Bosworth's autobiography. Highly recommended.

Movie Review - In The Valley of Elah (2007)

We are in the fifth year of a bloody war in Iraq with no end in sight.

The wounds are still open. Our nerve-ends are still bleeding.

Watching In The Valley of Elah within such a historic context is not possible without going through a range of burning emotions.

This Paul Haggis (of Crash) written and directed work is a downer for sure. I can't see how one can watch this movie and feel good about ANYTHING. Period. It should've been rated triple-X if the idea is to save our kids from a mental breakdown.

(Warning: plot points revealed.)

Let me start off by commenting on Tommy Lee Jones who plays the lead character Hank Deerfield, a retired military police and a father who loses his son not on the battlefield in Iraq but to a senseless murder committed by his very own army buddies back at home base.

Ladies and gentlemen — TLJ is an American institution. His craggy tired face, like perhaps that of Clint Eastwood, has turned into an American Monument and a cultural icon.

In a lot of scenes he does not even need to say anything. He just needs to present his face to the camera at a certain angle and look in a certain way, and wham! It's all there.

Susan Sarandon as his wife and Charlize Theron as Det. Emily Sanders also shine bright. We are in the presence of some world-class talent here.

Yet it's hard to find a single character in this whole production, with the exception of Det. Sanders, whom we can root for.

The plot points themselves pile up on us like hot heavy granite blocks. You get crushed with the unrelenting weight of one hopeless development after another.

Misogynist male cops making ruthless fun of a young female detective…

Young soldiers butchering and burning their buddy for no apparent reason at all (chalked up to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder – PSTD)…

Civilian and military investigators botching up the investigation every step of the way…

Sadistic US infantrymen torturing wounded "hadjis" in Iraq…

An immigrant custodian at a local high school who does not know which end of the American flag should be up on a flag pole…

Take your pick.

I have to admit I could not hold back my tears at the end of the movie not only because of the Deerfield couple's pain but also due to the way Hank Deerfield gives up on America and hoists the Old Glory upside down on the same high school flag pole, with his own hands.

That was a devastating scene. Hard to swallow.

I'm aware that the script is based on a true story (of late Specialist Richard R. Davis) but still you end up wondering: what have we got left if we "give up on America"?

Who can afford to do that? Is artistic license good enough an excuse or incentive to conclude a film on such a note?

Which brings me to a closely related issue – the way most Iraq War related films are bombing at the box office.

I think the American public are sick and tired of seeing one Iraq movie after another in which the servicemen and women are nothing more than sadistic losers who come back home as psychotic killers.

The American movie fans cannot believe that the glass is empty all the way down to the bottom, as frequently depicted in these movies.

We are still yet to see a more balanced crop of war movies in which the glass is half full.

But then perhaps that's a long order with a war like this which was launched on wrong intelligence and false premises.

Movie Review - There Will Be Blood (2007)

Is this how the West was won and built? Unfortunately yes.

Mad-dog prospectors lusting after silver, oil and power; taking life-and-death chances with their bodies, minds, and souls…

Equally dogged preachers, freewheeling rascals and speculators of every kind roaming them arid hills burning with hope.

Winning some. Losing some. Fast forward a hundred years: welcome to California!

There Will Be Blood trolls a similar territory painted by a gentler brush in the Triple-Oscar-winner classic Elmer Gantry (1960) by Richard Brooks, featuring Burt Lancaster and Jean Simmons.

Is it a coincidence that both movies were adapted from Sinclair Lewis’s novels? I think not.

If this Double-Oscar winner were a vehicle it would be a 53 footer tractor trailer barreling down the highway of history, flattening quite a few “national creation myths” on its path.

Daniel Day Lewis’s Oscar-winning maniacal performance as Daniel Plainview raises both the art of acting and our understanding of America’s past to a new orbit.

The film is remarkable for two technical details as well:

1) This is the only film I’ve seen where there is no dialog during the first 14 minutes and 45 seconds.

It’s a remarkable feat to carry a major movie that long with only images.

Compare with two other great films of 2007, Michael Clayton and No Country For Old Men, which start off with long scenes of voice-over exposition.

2) This film, just like a part of its 2007 competitor No Country For Old Men, was also shot in Marfa, Texas.

Actually I heard that the sets of the two films were very close to one another; practically over the opposite sides of the same hill range.

At some point (I think it was the oil rig fire scene), there was so much smoke over the horizon drifting in from the TWBB set that the NCFOM crew had to postpone shooting to the next day.

But it’s not over. Another Hollywood classic was also shot in Marfa, Texas – Giant (1956), a George Stevens film featuring Rock Hudson, Elizabeth Taylor, and James Dean. (Incidentally, in that film Dean again played an oil prospector who got rich but then destroyed himself.)

These three films got nominated for a total of 25 Oscars [9 (Giant) + 8 (Blood) + 8 (No Country)] and ended up winning 7 [1 (Giant) + 2 (Blood) + 4 (No Country)] .

Not bad for a little town in West Texas, is it?

(WARNING: plot points revealed)

In a nutshell: Daniel Plainview, a nobody from nowhere, claws his way to oil riches around 1900s by using his ruthless determination to succeed.

In the process he uses an adopted boy as his son, to ingratiate himself to the locals as a “family man” and buy their land for as cheap a price as possible.

But Plainview is not the only jackal in town. The budding preacher Eli Sunday (played with a mesmerizing presence by Paul Dano of Little Miss Sunshine) is the chief obstacle between him and his unquestioned dominance.

Preacher Sunday also knows the real score and tries to shake down Plainview in more ways than one.

In the last horrifying scene Plainview proves that preacher Sunday is not his equal when it comes to a Pyrrhic victory which destroys the winner as well.

Writer-Director Paul Thomas Anderson has created a masterpiece that will endure the test of time. One of the best films I’ve seen in a long while.

Movie Review - Lions for Lambs (2007)

At the most fundamental level, a movie has to decide whether it’s a documentary or a dramatic work. We also have to decide whether we want to watch an educational, didactic film or a work of dramatic fiction.

Lions for Lambs fails on both levels. It’s neither one nor the other. It lectures through drama, but without teaching anything new.

Despite strong writing, directing and brilliant acting, it maintains a split-personality. It’s a film about war on terror that might have served its purpose better if delivered as a Political Science paper or a New York Times Magazine cover story.

But the thing is, that Poli-Sci paper or NYT article has been done already, more than once. We already know every single argument pushed forward in this film directed by Robert Redford and written by Matthew Michael Carnahan.

Thus not only its endless talking-heads sequences violate the main tenets of telling a story through “motion pictures,” but it also fails to enrich our understanding of the national predicament by saying something that we have not heard before.

Here is the “main message”: poor kids with superior ethics go and die in the hell of Iraq and Afghanistan fighting for us while rich kids kick back, enjoy themselves to death with all kinds of silly diversions on college campuses and thus become complicit in the national tragedy. Why? Because they choose the easy path out and eschew their responsibilities to become more engaged in the national political process.

Please tell me you haven’t heard that one before!

The film is structured as three parallel STORIES (technically, “sequences”) taking place simultaneously in real time but in totally different contexts, all tied to one another within the general context of war in Afghanistan.

STORY 1: Veteran journalist Janine Roth (played by Meryl Streep The Divine) is invited to the young and upcoming Republican Senator Jasper Irving’s office (played by a sharp-as-ever Tom Cruise) for an official leak on the latest and baddest military campaign about to be unleashed in the mountains of Afghanistan.

STORY 2: Professor Stephen Malley (brought to life by Robert Redford who is aging better than any French wine) is fencing ideas in his office with, Todd Hayes (Andrew Garfield), one of the smartest students that ever passed from his lecture hall. Malley is trying to shake Hayes out of his complacency. Hayes returns the favor by reminding the professor the hypocrisy of it all.

STORY 3: A night-time U.S. Special Forces ambush on a godforsaken mountain top in Afghanistan. The squad carried by a transport chopper comes under heavy fire (thanks to faulty military intelligence). While they try to evade enemy fire, private Ernest Rodriguez (Michael Peña) falls off the chopper. And incredibly, his buddy Lt. Arian Finch (Derek Luke) dives after him WITHOUT a parachute! Incredible as it may seem, both survive the fall and live to fight the Taliban forces closing in on them.

Background: both Ernest and Arian were in Prof. Malley’s poli-sci class. While the rest of their classmates were thinking to advance their careers and make a lot of money, the two buddies shocked both their friends and Prof. Malley by signing up with the Army in order to do the “right thing.”

The irony of it all is that Redford also makes it clear that Arian and Ernest’s sacrifice does not change a darn thing back in Washington. There, in the capital of the nation, politics and journalism business continue to prosper as usual.

The film ends with the same split personality that it starts. At the end we still have not learned a new way to approach the deadlock and solve it. We are also not even sure if any effort is worth it to begin with.

Lions for Lambs makes sense only as an artistic witness to a depressing time in history when America did not know how to back out of a controversial war in which crucial mistakes were made by more than one parties involved.

Movie Review - 3:10 to Yuma (2007)

3:10 to Yuma tries to break the traditional Western-movie mold like Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven (1992) did. But at the end, 3:10 fails to solve one of the equations that it sets for itself in Act 1.

Basically this is another "delivering the criminal to justice" story with a "morality play" at its core.

Protagonist Dan Evans (Christian Bale) is a crippled Civil War veteran and loser of a farmer who cannot even command his own son’s respect.

He emerges as an unlikely hero turning down all incentives to betray himself. He resists the easy way out and sticks with a higher principle until the bitter end.

(WARNING: plot points revealed)

Time and place: Post-Civil War Arizona.

Dan Evans is a farmer with a wife, two boys, and a bad leg who struggles not to lose his ranch to men and nature. Rain is scarce and crops are bad. Plus, a local developer to whom Evans owes money is trying to push him off the land to resell it at a profit to the railroad company.

Into this picture, enters the cocky highway bandit Ben Wade (Russell "Gladiator" Crowe).

Wade is a cocky rotten apple with a Robin Hood complex. He believes killing, pillaging, and holding up stage coaches is nothing more than a “wealth re-distribution” project.

Our antagonist is caught after a bloody hold up. Evans signs up for $200 as one of the guards to take the toxic Wade to the train station in the faraway town of Contention.

The goal is to eventually put him on the “3:10 to Yuma,” the train that will take Wade to justice and probably to the gallows. That’s when things start to get interesting.

Wade’s psychotic posse tracks down the group in order to set Wade free. During the perilous trip to the train station, Wade and Evans, the prisoner and the guard, find themselves on the same side while fending off against the Indians and other unwelcomed parties. That’s when the line between the lawmen and the law-breaker gets blurred up.

Much of Act 2 and 3 is filled with The Chase. Guns are fired. Dynamites explode. Horses are ridden to exhaustion. Bodies start falling here, there and everywhere.

At the end the main plot (taking Ben Wade to justice) and the sub-plot (Evans trying to redeem himself in the eyes of his son) dovetail nicely. That’s the first equation and it’s solved to our satisfaction.

What does not work is what Wade does in the last scene. That’s the second equation that addresses Wade’s inner world and his psychology. What Wade does in the end is totally inexplicable given his career as a hardened criminal. That really comes across as a major let down, as a “neat solution” forced upon the story line for the sake of casting a heroic halo over the main antagonist.

We are living in a confusing world, don’t we? No wonder even the Westerns are confused these days.

Movie Review - King of California (2007)

A California comedy with a heart.

Michael Douglas is “Charlie,” a jazz base player, a dreamer, and a loser who spends a few years in a mental institution for a tune-up from the neck-up.

His sixteen year old daughter Miranda ( Evan Rachel Wood) has lost half of her heart when her mom left the house years ago but she managed to learn how to take care of herself.

In a sense, father and daughter switched Emotional IQs over the intervening years – he became the child while she grew into what he should've been; the responsible one.

However, being responsible sometimes means burying one's dreams. That's an option Charlie has never entertained.

So it goes… no sooner than Charlie is released from the psychiatric ward he shares his life's ambition with Miranda: to find the long-lost treasure of a 17th century Spanish captain. He is dead serious about it and uses both his metal detector and ancient books about the era to convince Miranda.

(WARNING: plot points revealed.)

After her initial resistance, Miranda agrees to play along. This childish man is after all the only parent and possibly also the only friend she's got left in life.

But STOP! They have an obstacle in the shape of a giant Costco warehouse. The secret Spanish treasure is buried under that chunk of concrete, according to Charlie's best calculations.

Joined by his former band member Pepper (Willis Burks II), they hatch a plan.

After breaking into the Costco warehouse at night and digging at the “Mark of X,” the story takes a really bizarre turn.

At the bottom of the hole dug on the warehouse floor, Charlie and Miranda find a pool of water. Miranda is pretty sure it's the sewer. Charlie thinks it's a pool of sulfur hiding the sunken treasure ship.

By taking full advantage of Costco's shameless product placement, Charlie finds a diving suit and oxygen tank and dives right in.

At the end, Charlie finds the sunken treasure he was looking for. Miranda finds her treasure too, which is not minted in the 17th century: her new-found love for a man that showed her the correct way to live in life.

A sweet little feel-good flick with no ambitious agenda. Nothing here to set the House of Drama on fire. It delivers the 93 minutes of pleasant distraction that it promises at the outset.

Michael Douglas proves that his prodigious range as an actor covers sensitive mindful comedy as well. Written and directed by Mike Cahill.

15 Nominees for Worst Movie Dialogue Ever

By Entertainment Weekly

THE MOVIE: Notting Hill (1999)
THE SCENE: Famous Hollywood actress Anna Scott (Julia Roberts) is attempting to convince bookish William (Hugh Grant) to give her another chance.
THE LINE: ''I'm just a girl, standing in front of a boy, asking him to love her.''

THE MOVIE: Star Wars: Episode III — Revenge of the Sith (2005)
THE SCENE: Natalie Portman's Amidala tries to get her hubby, Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen), to give up his megalomaniacal Dark Side ways.
THE LINE: ''Hold me, like you did by the lake on Naboo.''

THE MOVIE: Jerry Maguire (1996)
THE SCENE: The hard-hearted sports agent (Tom Cruise) drops his emotional armor and declares his love for Dorothy (Renée Zellweger) in front of all of her friends.
THE LINE: ''You complete me.''

THE MOVIE: Ever After (1998)
THE SCENE: Danielle (Drew Barrymore) — the purported inspiration for Cinderella — is trying to explain to, of all people, Leonardo da Vinci (Patrick Godfrey) why her romance is impossible.
THE LINE: ''A bird may love a fish, signore, but where will they live?''

THE MOVIE: Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992)
THE SCENE: Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee) tearfully breaks up with her boyfriend and heads to her death.
THE LINE: ''I'm gone, like a turkey in the corn. Gobble gobble!''

THE MOVIE: X-Men (2000)
THE SCENE: Weather-mistress Storm (Halle Berry) finally gets the upper hand during a fight with fellow mutant Toad (Ray Park) and delivers this très witty bon mot.
THE LINE: ''You know what happens when a toad gets struck by lightning? The same thing that happens to everything else.''

THE MOVIE: Sin City (2005)
THE SCENE: Gutter avenger Dwight (Clive Owen) is watching lovingly as the woman of his dreams (Rosario Dawson) guns down a bevy of prostitute-hating baddies.
THE LINE: ''My warrior woman. My valkyrie. You'll always be mine, always and never. Never. The Fire, baby. It'll burn us both. It'll kill us both. There's no place in this world for our kind of fire.''

THE MOVIE: Pretty Woman (1990)
THE SCENE: Hooker-with-a-heart-of-gold Vivian (Julia Roberts) looks down her fire escape to see her favorite ''John'' Edward (Richard Gere) climbing up to ''rescue her'' from her crappy life.
THE LINE: ''And she rescues him right back.''

THE MOVIE: She's All That (1999)
THE SCENE: Laney (Rachael Leigh Cook) is on the receiving end of the makeover of a lifetime, transforming her from meek geek to high-school hottie.
THE LINE: ''I feel just like Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman. You know, except for the whole hooker thing.''

THE MOVIE: Love Story (1970)
THE SCENE: After Oliver (Ryan O'Neal) spends all day searching the Harvard campus to apologize to his doomed lover (Ali MacGraw), she delivers the most lunkheadedly inaccurate romantic proclamation ever.
THE LINE: ''Love means never having to say you're sorry.''

THE MOVIE: A Cry in the Dark (1988)
THE SCENE: Aussie mom Lindy (Meryl Streep) is on the witness stand, giving testimony about the disappearance of her infant daughter during a camping trip.
THE LINE: ''A dingo ate my baby!''

THE MOVIE: As Good as It Gets (1997)
THE SCENE: Simon (Greg Kinnear) gets his groove back as an artist by sketching the nude form of hopeful waitress Carol (Helen Hunt).
THE LINE: ''You're why cavemen chiseled on walls.''

THE MOVIE: Four Wedding and a Funeral (1994)
THE SCENE: After a whole movie of romantic comedy-related obstacles, Carrie (Andie MacDowell) ignores the weather as she finally hooks up with Charles (Hugh Grant).
THE LINE: ''Is it still raining? I hadn't noticed.''

THE MOVIE: Dirty Dancing (1986)
THE SCENE: Finally invited to the ''big kids' dance party,'' Frances ''Baby'' Houseman arrives with an awkward present.
THE LINE: ''I carried a watermelon.''

THE MOVIE: City of Angels (1998)
THE SCENE: Maggie (Meg Ryan) waxes philosophically as she's in bed with Seth (Nicholas Cage), an angel who's become human.
THE LINE: ''We were made to fit together.''

A Texas Town with 3 Oscar Winners

TRIVIA: Which small Texas town was used to shoot three different Oscar-winning films? And how many Oscars in total did they win?

Marfa, Texas was where No Country for Old Men (2007), There Will Be Blood (2007), and Giant (1956) were all shot. Among them, these three movies have won a total of 7 Academy Awards.

There Will Be Blood (2007) won 2 Oscars.
No Country For Old Men (2007) won 4 Oscars
Giant (1956) won 1 Oscar

Interesting thing is, both 2007 movies was shot during the same time. Here are the details from IMDB web site:

“While on location in Marfa, Texas, No Country for Old Men (2007) was the neighboring film production. One day, director Paul Thomas Anderson and his crew tested the pyrotechnical effects of the oil derrick fire, causing an enormous billowing of smoke, intruding the shot that Joel Coen and Ethan Coen were shooting. This caused them to put off filming until the next day when the smoke dissipated from view. Both this film and No Country for Old Men (2007) would eventually become the leading contenders at the Academy Awards a year and a half later.”

Movie Notes – "Michael Clayton" (2007)

Michael Clayton is one of the better legal thrillers that I've watched in a long while. The reasons are many.

1) In every film school across the country they'll drill into your head not to use Voice Overs. Why? Because a VO is exposition and exposition is death in a medium that depends on moving images. You're supposed to show, not tell.
However, many great movies violate that rule. MC is one. "No Country For Old Men" and "Atonement" are two more.

The creative twist in MC is that the VO is not addressing us, the audience, directly but another character in the film that we later realize to be MC himself. That works well in that long opening sequence, thanks to the camera taking us on a ride into the bowels of a law firm building late at night while the VO (Tom Wilkinson) sets the feverish tone for the rest of the movie.

2) I especially loved the "Michael Clayton" character (George Clooney) created by Tony Gilroy. Neither a hero nor an anti-hero. Just a wonderfully flawed down-to-earth character who falters frequently but saves his soul at the end. Just like "us"?

MC reminded me the "Detective Keith Frazier" character acted to perfection by Denzel Washington in Insider Man (2006). These are both characters a little out of their depths when the heat is turned on all the way up. But eventually they find their stride and balance and emerge on the right side of their conscience. They are not exactly paragons of wisdom and virtue but compared to the deeper muck around them, they don't smell that bad either.

3) MC is woven like a tight basket with quite a few sub-plots that add extra texture and depth to the story and helps us identify with it at any entry point that we choose. Here are some of them:
Michael tries to forgive his brother Timmy without, however, rewarding his alcohol and drug use.

Michael tries to find the $75K to pay off the debt of his collapsing restaurant adventure.

Michael tries to maintain his relationship with his 6 year old son Henry who lives with Michael's ex and her new husband.

Michael asks his other brother Det. Gene Clayton to help him with his investigation without jeopardizing Gene's upcoming retirement.

4) There is a scene in which MC stops his car and walks up a hill towards three horses. A very lyrical scene indeed. For some reason I was pretty sure Tony Gilroy wrote that scene after reading James Wright's unforgettable poem "A Blessing." Check it out and compare: http://www.sover.net/~nichael/nlc-poetry/jw1.html

5) Yes, it happens again! As our protagonist walks away from his car, the damn thing EXPLODES in the background! Did you see "No Country For Old Men"? If I see one more film in which a vehicle explodes into flames as our Protagonist or Antagonist calmly walks away from it, I think I'll just throw up. I'm kidding of course but then you never know.

See BELIEVER magazine's April 2008 issue for a hilarious list of all the recent films with that obligatory "automobile exploding in the background" scene.

It's incredible the way such "beats" sometimes catch on among script writers like an epidemic. After the third or fourth time you see it the novelty wears off and you end up staring at the "movie of a movie."

An unusual legal thriller which does not have a single court room scene.

Tony Gilroy tried for six years to get Clooney sign up for the title role. It was worth it. Highly recommended.

Movie Review – The Apartment (1960) and the “Mad Men” of Yesteryear

The Apartment (1960) is a nostalgic time-capsule of a bitter sweet and 100% politically incorrect comedy fortified by the neurotic tenderness of the immortal Jack Lemmon (who has thankfully reincarnated as Kevin Spacey) and the talent and irresistible Irish good looks of Shirley MacLaine.

Of course I’m not even tipping my hat off to Billy Wilder (“Some Like It Hot”) who both directed this classic and co-wrote it with I.A.L. Diamond because I don’t even dare wear a hat when I enter any house that Wilder has built.



Bud Baxter is a low-level insurance adjuster working for a humongous insurance company. He is just a tiny bee buzzing at his desk in a hive of faceless workers but he has a dubious distinction – he lets his bosses use his apartment for quickies with their favorite secretaries in return for promotions up the corporate ladder.

Yes, Bud Baxter is a reluctant in-house pimp. His guilty conscience is his chief redeeming value.

The pimping-for-promotion equation works well until the “elevator girl” Fran Kubelik (Shirley MacLaine) with whom Bud falls in platonic love also visits his apartment, unknown to Bud, with his boss Sheldrake (Fred MacMurray of the unforgettable film noir classic “Double Indemnity”).

After many plot twists and gyrations it all ends well, as expected. The lovers hold hands and the world is set on a better orbit around the sun.

Mad Men

One thing that needs to be said about The Apartment from the vantage point of 2008 is what a different view of the good-old bad-old 50s it reflects for those like me who are the fans of the AMC TV series “Mad Men” created by the Sopranos producer and writer Matthew Weiner.

The Apartment has the very same incredibly oppressive treatment of women in a corporate setting but with fangs removed and the gaping wounds cut out of the script.

It is hard to believe how much the American society and culture has changed since then and in no small measure thanks to all the feminists of the yesteryear that some of us love to hate for one reason or another.

Yes, I still cringe at the image of a helmeted and hapless Jane Honda visiting Viet Cong to prove her ”independence.” Yet I cannot help but applaud the fact that we are not living in the America portrayed by the Apartment or the Mad Men. I believe and know that we are all better for it.

Coppola, Coen Bros., and Hitchcock's Top Trick

Francis Ford Coppola and the Coen Brothers really know how to strangle a man. Just go back and watch Godfather Part II (1974) and No Country for Old Men (2007).



It's not the throat that counts. It's the feet.

We fall for their artistic trick "heels over head".

Scene: Michael pulls a confession out of Carlo Rizzi, his sister Connie's hapless and abusive husband, who conspired with Barzini to get Michael whacked. Michael gives Carlo his fake airplane ticket to Vegas and sends him on his way to the car waiting outside.

But once Carlo takes the front seat, he is choked to death by one of Michael's bodyguards sitting in the back seat.

This is one of the most horrendous strangling scenes I've ever seen since we do not see Carlo's face or throat at all but the way his feet scampers wildly when the head is jerked back towards the back seat.

We watch only the soles of Carlo's shoes... They kick the windshield glass out and then rest lifeless as we watch the whole scene from outside the car.

The reaction, is more scary than the act itself, as Hitch thought us a long time ago.

The lesson is not lost on the brilliant Coen Brothers.

In No Men, they wrote a strangling scene again chilling in its brutality because, although they show the grotesque faces of two men in mortal struggle (the obvious choice), they also portray something else: the skid marks the cowboy boots leave on the cheap linoleum floor (the choice of genius) as the sheriff's deputy struggles desperately to avoid the preordained end. But he is overmatched.

The aftermath as the camera pans from the ceiling POV... Hundreds of curving ugly scuff marks on the floor speak much louder than any amount of blood could have spoken.

As Coen Bros fans well know, the meek-looking gentle brothers are not averse to showing copious amounts of blood as well. But those boot marks on the floor is still a masterpiece that belongs in the Cinematic Murder Hall of Fame.

Living the Life of a Story Writer as Act 2 Eats Up the Protagonist

Living with the awareness that one is a story writer before anything else, a screenplay writer in particular, brings a different sort of awareness, a different sort of edge to one’s daily life.

As I’m thinking about the harsh and predictable reactions to NY Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s dramatic fall (what a story!), I feel that I’m reacting a little bit differently from my friends, none of whom are screenwriters.

For one thing, I’m aware of just too many possibilities, variations, subtext, sub-plots, reversals, non-linear sequences, plot points… because that’s what I do every day.

I’m of course fascinated by the scandal that cut down The Leading Actor in the middle of a rising Act 2.

What a morbid fascination that is. How human. Guilty as charged.

The Fall is like a bad traffic accident and you know that. You can’t help but rubberneck.

But I’m also aware of the INFINITE reasons why Mrs. Spitzer might have chosen to stand by the Governor while he “apologized” to the cameras without, however, mentioning any specific reasons whatsoever why he is apologizing, in a way that only a top-notch lawyer can manage to pull through. I take note of that for a possible future script.

I can imagine the STORMS raging in that placid looking (and beautiful, if I may add) Harvard Law graduate woman in blue conservative dress and pearl necklace. I can imagine billions of neurons firing in every direction, calculations made quicker than nebulas form in the universe. Explanations, interpretations and discourses readied for different sets of people in her life – friends, family, children, parents, clients, associates, neighbors, one level inside the other like a giant endless onion. Heavy lifting ahead. Monumental lifting.

I can imagine the two once upon a time falling madly in love, two successful smart young students with the world at their feet… those days and nights at the Harvard Square… and now perhaps scared to sit together at the same table or brush their teeth side by side in front of the same bathroom mirror…

I also think a lot about that young prostitute and what will happen to her life; in which direction forces of fate will pull her towards; and how will she feel 30 years from today when gravity and loneliness takes its toll and perhaps a hard-earned wisdom emerges as her constant companion.

I can imagine all that because I’m a screen writer and it’s only natural for me to react that way.

I can also imagine myself and others in the same situation too. That warms up an interesting spot in my chest, a palpable softness towards all others, whether they are fallen or still standing strong on their feet; a vulnerability that probably would not be there if I was not writing stories or thinking about them on a daily basis.

Invisible precious dividends of a life time spent thinking about stories.

It’s not always money and fame (rarely actually).

It’s also love and compassion (every day).

P.S. The golden touch of fate that is beyond the imagination of any script writer -- a legally BLIND man replaces Gov. Spitzer to lead New York State to a brighter future. You can't make that up. No sirrieee.