This Bull Can Rage: JCVD

There’s a lengthy, uncut scene in JCVD in which Jean-Claude Van Damme looks into the camera and delivers a stirring, sometimes tearful monologue that made me think of Robert De Niro in Raging Bull. Oh, I won’t be so bold as to say that what Van Damme does here, playing a fictionalized version of himself, surpasses or even rivals what De Niro did as boxer Jake La Motta. But while it isn’t in the same neighborhood, it’s at least in the same county. It’s a performance that takes seeing to believe. And, even then, accepting what you’ve seen might not come naturally. Which is precisely what makes JCVD a magical, if modest, cinematic experience. Until now, Van Damme, the karate-chopping “Muscles from Brussels,” has been a punchline as often as he’s been a puncher. Here, he’s just a knockout.

It’s a clever bait-and-switch. Director Mabrouk El Mechri, who co-wrote the screenplay with Frederic Benudis and Christophe Turpin, has created a satire, heist flick and character examination rolled into one that toys with our preconceptions of the forgotten action star – sometimes satisfying them, other times defying them. That’s why it works. To consistently subvert our image of Van Damme would have meant shattering the pseudo-reality of the character while becoming as predictable as a crank call on April 1. Instead, JCVD gives us a recognizable personality who is deeper, more fragile and more talented than we expect, and yet one who is familiarly washed-up and still comically compared to fellow 1990s standout Steven Seagal, who is mentioned so often in this film that he should get an acting credit.

The story begins in Brussels. Van Damme returns to his native land after starring in yet another amateurish action flick that will be lucky to find an audience on DVD. Privately, the Universal Soldier star desires credibility, but even more he yearns for steady work. Anything to pay the bills. In Los Angeles, Van Damme is mired in a custody battle with one of his ex-wives. His cute blond-haired daughter doesn’t want to live with him because she gets teased at school in a town where it’s more disgraceful to be related to a Used To Be than to a Never Was. A decade removed from his last major commercial success, Van Damme is still competing for roles with Seagal, only the gigs don’t pay like before. His longtime lawyer threatens to drop the custody case if Van Damme can’t come up with some money immediately. But Van Damme’s pockets are empty. His ATM and credit cards won’t work. And so like a nobody he heads off to wait for a wire transfer, only to be harassed for photos and autographs along the way by people who remember when he was a somebody.

This is a man at the end of his rope. And so if this seems like it’s the easiest role Van Damme has ever played, keep in mind that it’s also the best. While the imminent potential of a Van Damme roundhouse kick infuses JCVD with some fanboy suspense, this is an actor’s film, not a martial arts expert’s. And that’s a departure. Up to now, Van Damme’s career has resembled that of an adult film star’s: It’s his physical prowess that’s landed him roles, not his acting chops. And so while in the past his earnest line readings between sequences of sweaty action have often made for unintentional comedy, it’s fair to ask: Was Van Damme entirely to blame? To put it in adult film terms: How much thought goes into writing the pizza-delivery scenes? (Nuff said. But, just in case, consider that in 1993’s Hard Target, Van Damme plays a mullet-wearing, bow-hunting Cajun named Chance Boudreaux who has an Uncle Douvee played by Wilford Brimley. I mean, really. Name an actor who could have pulled that off with his dignity intact.)

In this picture, Van Damme acts like a world-weary man who is too exhausted to put up a fight. One look into his hopeless eyes might leave you feeling sympathetic toward the character, and yet neither Van Damme the actor nor JCVD asks that we feel sorry for the real man. JCVD has a wry sense of humor about its star’s career and celebrity. Van Damme makes it clear that he knows we’ve been laughing at him at least as often as we’ve been laughing with him. He knows our expectations are nil. And if the guy truly lacked talent beyond his fists and feet, he’d blow this opportunity by overplaying every scene like Norma Desmond hungry for a close-up. But instead Van Damme exudes quiet confidence and poise, as if he’d come to Hollywood from the stage rather than the dojo. His hangdog expressions are so convincing that it would be easy to forget this is all an act. And yet in JCVD, Van Damme’s act is the show. The movie is propelled by an intriguing little plot involving a case of mistaken identity and a villain who looks like a cross between No Country For Old Men’s Anton Chigurh and Fredo Corleone circa The Godfather: Part II, but there’s no mistaking that its chief allure is the metamorphosis of Van Damme into an utterly captivating figure.

The only significant blunder then of JCVD is that it obscures Van Damme within a questionable visual treatment by cinematographer Pierre-Yves Bastard that leaves the actors over-lit and yet ill-defined. The bank interiors especially are almost two-toned – not black-and-white but light-and-dark. The technique succeeds in creating a dreamlike aesthetic that reinforces that this is a meditation on a fictionalized Van Damme and not a docudrama. But if Kodak sent you prints like this, you’d mail them right back. Still, it’s a small misstep for a film that is otherwise impressively assembled. The screenplay is structured so that bits of the action to unfold twice from alternate perspectives, but JCVD never overstays its welcome in any one scene. It’s entirely void of filler – as lean as Van Damme himself. And the whole 96-minute exercise is capped off by what I’m ready to call the best final shot in cinema this year – a sublime marriage of writing, staging and acting by Van Damme.

Of course, as much fun as the film provides, JCVD doesn’t do anything to elevate Van Damme’s previous performances. Nor is it conclusive evidence that Van Damme was capable of this kind of depth before, or that he’ll match this performance in the future. In the argument that the key to strong acting is strong writing, this is Exhibit A. And yet to imply that JCVD is nothing more than that would be unjust. There’s genuine talent on display here, and you don’t have to grade on a curve to call Van Damme’s performance what it is: terrific. Whether critics and art-house types can deign to be so praiseworthy remains to be seen. But long past the point in his career when Van Damme might have been able to demand respect, he has finally earned it. His self-portrayal isn’t better than De Niro’s best work, no. But it’s better than a lot of it. And there’s no shame in that.

Irritatingly True: Happy-Go-Lucky

Your Honor, fellow members of the critical blogosphere, movie lovers everywhere: It is with great frustration and a hint of shame that I announce that I am recusing myself from the case of Objectivity v Happy-Go-Lucky. This is difficult for me. As a proud member of the cinema-loving jury, I had hoped to fulfill my critical duty by writing a thoughtful review about Mike Leigh’s film, which is enchanting critics around the country to the tune of an 84 score on Metacritic. But after much soul-searching, I have determined it would be unethical to proceed. See, ladies and gentlemen, I have a previous relationship with one of the defendants, the uber-upbeat Poppy. And despite repeated attempts to convince myself otherwise, there’s no way I can give Happy-Go-Lucky a fair trial.

Oh, yes, Your Honor. I realize that Poppy is only a fictional character, played with aplomb by Sally Hawkins. I’m not insane. I don’t mean to imply that I’m a character in Leigh’s film. I simply contend that I have known Poppy before, under different names and guises. I have worked with Poppy. I have met her at parties. I went to school with Poppy. In fact, I went to school with several Poppys – more on that later. And it’s because of my Poppy-filled past that I recognized her right away in Leigh’s film. Within five minutes, I’d say. And as soon as I realized who Poppy was, the totality of Leigh’s vision and Hawkins’ performance was rendered moot, because – gosh, there’s no other way to say this – I absolutely loath Poppy.

What’s wrong with her? She lacks self-awareness. She’s ditzy. She’s obnoxious. She’s disrespectful. She turns everything into a joke. She’s smart but behaves stupidly, which is worse than being stupid. She takes almost nothing seriously. She masks her self-doubt with awkward jokes, like SNL Weekend Update correspondent Judy “Just Kidding” Grimes. She’s always “on.” She avoids reality. She’s faux optimistic in the sense that she lacks an ability for pessimism, which means she sees the proverbial half-full glass as entirely full because she’s blind to the empty half. She’s annoying. She’s immature. And she lacks substance.

Poppy irritates me to no end. I think I handle it OK. I don’t go into saliva-spewing fits of rage like Scott the driving instructor, played with chilling conviction by Eddie Marsan. But if I spot a Poppy, I walk the other way. Check that: I run. Which is why spending nearly two full hours with Poppy made watching this film absolutely excruciating. Was that the point? Perhaps. I realize that Leigh is playing with audience preconceptions here. He knows that we’ve been raised on cynical fare where no good deed goes unpunished. He knows that screenwriting gurus like Syd Field suggest that dramatic architecture is built on the pillars of conflict and change. He knows that unremittingly cheerful people like Poppy populate the planet and yet are almost criminally overlooked by dramatists, who find more color in the terminally anguished. But, well, did I mention that Poppy irritates me to no end?

It’s a pathetic argument, I know. And it’s beset by hypocrisy. After all, is Poppy all that different from Johnny Depp’s J.M. Barrie in Finding Neverland? There’s another individual who refuses to grow up, and we admire him for it; Barrie’s iron-grip on childhood fantasy is nothing short of courageous. So what’s Poppy’s crime? Is it being less interesting, or avoiding the death of a loved one that underscores the limited power of positivity? That seems unfair. Even I agree. If Barrie never grows up, why should Poppy? Then again, I wonder: Would critics be so quick to celebrate the exuberance of the character if she were a he and if he were played by Adam Sandler? My suspicion is at that point more people would call a spade a spade and an immature adult an immature adult. But maybe I’m wrong.

What does it say about me that I find Poppy so disagreeable as to be unwatchable? There Will Be Blood’s Daniel Plainview is abhorrent and primitive and I find him captivating. No Country For Old Men’s Anton Chigurh is even more one-note, and he’s vicious, and yet I’d rather sit down to dinner with him than with Poppy – provided he didn’t have any loose change in his pockets, of course. So am I really this cynical? Is Leigh’s film cleverly revealing some frustration with my own life that I’m so put off by the sight of someone so utterly content? And who I am I to say that Poppy is empty? Maybe she has a lot to teach me. But I doubt it.

Your Honor, Poppy behaves like a giggly, insecure teenage girl. She’s as tedious and as false as a posturing frat boy. She is the epitome not of an optimism I hope to achieve or maintain but of a vapidity I try to avoid at all costs. I cannot celebrate her. I cannot enjoy her. I recognize that Hawkins’ performance might land her an Oscar nomination for Best Actress, and, believe it or not, I would support it. Hawkins’ immersion into Polly is entire. She plays the character as conceived. Poppy is false, yes, but Hawkins isn’t. It’s actually to Hawkins’ credit that I find Polly so aggravating. And I’m thankful that Happy-Go-Lucky provided me with two fleeting scenes in which Poppy sobers up long enough for me to enjoy Hawkins’ range and depth. Her talent is unmistakable. So why can’t I appreciate this film?

I don’t mean to be so rigid. I hate that this statement implies I subscribe to the notion that all films need to have, you know, plot, and/or that those plots must follow established, consumer-friendly conventions. Fuck all that. Why, it was only a few weeks ago, in a review of Meantime, that Ed Howard of Only The Cinema made this astute observation: “Leigh is undoubtedly a downer, and his films engage with political and social realities only to the extent of documenting the ways things are and why: he sees no way out for these people and thus offers no solutions. This unwavering commitment to actuality, to giving center-stage to the forgotten and ignored, is Leigh's greatest strength. These are people who, in mainstream cinema as in life, have no voice and no representation, and Leigh's humanist attention to these downtrodden sectors of society is the only attention they're likely to get.”

Your Honor, I cheered that observation then and cherish it still. I’m grateful that Leigh is telling these stories with his singular voice. I wish there were more filmmakers like him. I hope that the process of watching Happy-Go-Lucky perhaps knocked down some walls of preconception that will make it easier for some other unconventional film to come along in the future and find my heart. But movie-going and art appreciation is subjective. The charge of the critic, in my opinion, is to be objective enough to recognize one’s subjectivity and then to write honestly from that perspective. To praise as a masterpiece a film that didn’t so move me would be disingenuous. To condemn a film merely for shining a light on a truth I find disagreeable would be a crime. And so I admit today that I cannot formulate any reasonable judgment on Happy-Go-Lucky. Polly’s aura has blinded me with irritation.

Bourne Again: Quantum Of Solace

You noticed. Of course you did. You watched the hyper-cut fistfight that unfolds at about five blows per second. You saw the hero speeding around on that motorcycle. You watched him, on foot, leap from one balcony to the next in frantic rooftop pursuit amidst a romantic European setting. You watched him brawl people for reasons he didn’t always understand while wrestling a personal monster within. You saw all this and you said to yourself, man, this James Bond guy reminds me a lot of Jason Bourne. And he does. And that’s the problem.

In a series 22 films long, James Bond has made the mistake of being married before (On Her Majesty’s Secret Service). And he’s been silly before (the Timothy Dalton era, for example). And he’s been tired before (most of the Pierce Brosnan era). But he’s never been a wannabe before. Until now. Congratulations, Bourne fans. The circle is now complete. When The Bourne Identity was released in 2002, Matt Damon’s spy was but the learner, but now he’s the master. Quantum Of Solace is many things not-so-good: boring, one-note and often unintelligible. But worst of all it’s this: a white flag of surrender.

Even if you adore Bourne, and even if you’ll never stop loving Bond, it’s a sad thing to witness. It’s like watching Batman emulate Robin, the Fonze trying to be like Richie Cunningham, Jack Nicholson aping Christian Slater. No offense meant to Bourne, but this whole thing is backward. James Bond is James Bond. He’s an icon. He’s a brand. He hasn’t always been worth seeing, but people have been going to see him for 46 years just the same. A guy like Bond is so big-time that he doesn’t realize that a guy like Bourne exists. And if he does, he pretends not to. Heck, it even goes with the character: cocky to the end, shaken not stirred. But Quantum Of Solace finds its Big Man on Campus looking like a fifth-year senior so desperate for relevance that he’s taking cues from the incoming freshmen. Pathetic.

It’s not as if they’re bad cues. Not in principle, anyway. But for all the Bourne-esque elements being added, the trademark Bondian ingredients are disappearing faster than you can say, “Bond, James Bond.” In fact, that celebrated introduction is one of the quintessentials of the 007 series that you won’t find here. Ditto: “Shaken, not stirred.” Also, like 2006’s Casino Royale before it, we’ve still got no Q and no gadgets. A suggestively named female adversary, ala Pussy Galore? Nope. A diabolical villain with grand, Lex Luthorian aims who could be stopped by no one other than Bond? Not that either. So who is this guy?

He’s a brooder. We learned that much in the previous film, and it’s even more pronounced here. Daniel Craig’s Bond spends the entire picture glowering about his lost love, Eva Green’s sultry Vesper Lynd, whose demise at the end of Casino Royale marked what is arguably the most heartbreaking moment in the history of the franchise. And yet even though Vesper’s death and the mystery of whether she was trying to save or betray Bond are designed to serve as 007’s chief motivating force in this picking-up-where-we-left-off sequel, Bond comes off less like a man ruined by love than like a moody teenager who just got dumped and wants you to ask him about it. Casino Royale established the blond Bond as cold, stubborn, unflinching and most decidedly pissed off. This one just seems grumpy.

This is a Bond without swagger, without humor, without charm and, get this, without libido! Bond beds exactly one woman in the film, and we don’t get to watch, and he delivers his pickup line with all the joy of someone ordering a hamburger at McDonald’s. It’s wrong. By snubbing these cherished elements of the series, we’re left with exactly four traits that tie this character to the brand: he looks good in a suit; he works for a broad named M (Judi Dench); he has a British accent; and he calls himself James Bond. That’s it and that’s all. And, sure, you can argue that the Bond series needed a reinvention, because it did. But this is an overhaul akin to building a triangular sandcastle in Malibu and calling it one of the Great Pyramids. To be fine with this character representing the Bond franchise is to be OK with a Superman who can’t fly, a Lone Ranger who doesn’t ride a horse, a Harry Potter who can’t cast spells, or a Catherine Tramell who doesn’t know her way around the bedroom. What’s the point?

But Quantum Of Solace would have been a disappointment even had it aced its character study. For years, Bond adventures opened with action spectacles. In Quantum Of Solace it’s hard to get away from them. Combining the freneticism of a Paul Greengrass Bourne film with the bloat of Peter Jackson’s King Kong, the action sequences aren’t just over-frequent, they’re overdone. Each smacks of “bigger,” “faster” and “more expensive,” as if those ingredients assure “better.” They don’t. If you’ve seen Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest, you have the right idea. These are action scenes to be endured rather than enjoyed. Watching one of them is like being rattled about in a cocktail shaker. It’s enough to make me wish I could order my Bond merely stirred.

Directed by Marc Forster and edited by Matt Chesse and Richard Pearson, Quantum Of Solace is frequently incomprehensible. Sometimes it’s intentional, such as in the opening car chase in which Bond comes around a bend to see a wall of police cars waiting for him, only to have the “Oh, no!” moment spoiled when 007 simply hangs a left around a corner we didn’t know was there. Sometimes it’s unintentional, such as the boat chase in which Bond and hottie Olga Kurylenko’s Camille bicker, strategize or trade meatloaf recipes; I couldn’t tell you which, because I couldn’t hear a word either of them said amidst the howling motors. (Aside: Wouldn’t this film have been more Bondian with an actress named Camille playing a woman named Olga, instead of the other way around? But I digress.)

I want to be able to dismiss Quantum Of Solace as a single misstep. In the end, that might be all it is. (The 007 series has rebounded before, and it can do so again.) But I fear this is indicative of something more. Until now, the Bond films have largely been paint-by-number, but the films have remained true to their own definitive color palette. Not anymore. It’s no longer a matter of comparing Craig’s Bond to that of Sean Connery or Roger Moore. Because as of now, Bond is back in the tank with the rest of the action heroes, most of them pretenders who would love to establish the kind of celebrated iconography that Quantum Of Solace cavalierly snubs. Which brings us to the other way that this James Bond reminds us of Jason Bourne: He doesn’t know who he is. This is a man without an identity.

The Truth Hurts (& Heals): Rachel Getting Married

She thinks about it first. Then she gives in. She dances. For a moment, she even lets go. Then she stops, suddenly aware of herself. This is Anne Hathaway’s Kym at her sister’s wedding reception in Rachel Getting Married. And if you think this moment is incidental, think again. For the others shaking their booties under the tent, this dance is just like any other. But not for Kym. A drug addict on leave from a rehab clinic, Kym’s dance might as well be her first. Because this time she’s sober.

Jonathan Demme’s film about a woman trying to figure out who she is and where she fits in the world is filled with small but profound truths like this one. Sadly, many of them will go overlooked, because they are just that subtle, because you might need to know a little about addiction and recovery in order to spot them and because for all its brilliant understatement Jenny Lumet’s screenplay also includes moments when significance is jammed down our throats with a shovel. Yes, like its main character, the film’s faults are uncomfortably apparent and sometimes definitive. But more often than not Rachel Getting Married succeeds by doing what any recovering addict must: it forgoes the illusion of perfection and lives one moment at a time.

As the title suggests, the moments unfold around a wedding – an elaborate and yet intimate affair at Kym’s childhood home in Connecticut. Kym arrives from the inpatient clinic to a house abuzz with final preparations. She is embraced by a father (Bill Irwin) who believes that with nonstop enthusiasm he can will peace and harmony on his family’s present and past. She is greeted apprehensively by Rachel (Rosemarie DeWitt) who is eager to see her sister and yet fearful that Kym will eventually be replaced by a drug-fueled monster. She is treated with disdain by Rachel’s friend (Anisa George) who sees Kym as nothing more than a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Such is the sentence of a recovering addict. Kym’s image is constantly filtered through a prism of what she was before. And that includes the image Kym sees when she looks in a mirror.

This is how Rachel Getting Married stands out. Films showcasing family dysfunction and/or exploring the ills of addiction are easy to come by. Demme’s picture is special because it demonstrates the impact of addiction on an entire family. The film shines when scribbling its story in the margins, through glances unreturned, through conversations avoided and through truths left unsaid. Kym’s family history is one best felt intuitively, and we do. Their demons forever threaten to knock us off our feet like an undertow. Where the film gets into trouble is when it surrenders to the overt – a sister’s yearning for a sibling long gone, a father’s breakdown over a sentimental keepsake. These unfortunate episodes when Lumet communicates in all-caps defy the film’s otherwise overpowering emotional realism.

But on the whole, Rachel Getting Married thrives, in large part because it effortlessly evokes the truism that for so long eludes Caden Cotard in Synecdoche, New York. Indeed, life’s extras are stars of their own stories, and Lumet’s screenplay is populated by characters focused on their own plotlines. Kym can’t see beyond her tenuous sobriety and keeps waiting for some acknowledgment and support. Rachel has her life pointed toward a future with her soon-to-be husband, and she guards details of this transition to ensure that her sister remains an extra in this new act, instead of a supporting player. And then there’s Debra Winger’s Abby, Kym and Rachel’s quasi-estranged mother, who has such tunnel vision for her own storyline that she makes only a cameo appearance at Rachel’s wedding.

This is a film in which the characters seem to live beyond the frame, so it’s only fitting that the frame should move. Demme and cinematographer Declan Quinn capture the action in the all-too-familiar jerky hand-held style that feels like a tired indie cliché until it proves to be the natural choice. While the home-video aesthetic matches the wedding tableau, Demme’s camerawork helps us to identify with Kym: As her invisible travel companions, we are outsiders. Unwanted guests. Over time it becomes clear that the resentment of Kym has less to do with misbehavior past or present than with the way she changes the atmosphere of her surroundings. Kym is a black cloud, casting a shadow of heartbreak and angst into every room she enters, and the roving camera underlines the tranquil home’s vulnerability.

Prior to this film, you might not have expected that Hathaway had it in her to be a storm of doom, but her performance is entirely convincing. Hathaway owns Kym’s isolation, anger, shame and self-centeredness. At one end of the spectrum, Kym flashes childlike unease in the presence of her mother. At the other end, she disappears into the empowered serenity of her mandatory AA meetings – the one place Kym doesn’t have to carry the weight of an addict’s stigma. For a promising young actress still searching for her limits, the film is a showpiece. And yet the strongest performance might be that of DeWitt, who as Rachel gracefully rides the wave from bitter to joyful, from vindictive to nurturing. The treat is that Hathaway and DeWitt share so many scenes together. As well any film I can think of, Rachel Getting Married lays bare the tangled contradictions of sisterhood.

With that said, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that watching this film is a tumultuous experience. A handful of scenes are so uncomfortable that you’d be wise to avert your eyes. But unlike Noah Baumbach’s Margot At The Wedding, Demme’s film doesn’t revel in misery or dysfunction. At its core, Rachel Getting Married is hopeful – a hopefulness perhaps best exemplified by Rachel’s marriage, which bucks the cinematic cliché by presenting a couple that’s confidently in love from the moment we meet them right on through “I do.” How refreshing. In this film, discomfort is a transitional phase to something better. It’s a sign of growth. When the film begins, Kym has already seen an addict’s proverbial rock bottom, and so Lumet’s screenplay finds her at an arguably more awkward phase: the uphill climb. Before Kym can find out who she is in recovery, she must make peace with herself about who she was. The process is rarely pretty. But it’s honest.

Down the Rabbit Hole: Synecdoche, New York

Charlie Kaufman is the writer of such imaginative films as Being John Malkovich and Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind, and with Synecdoche, New York he is out to prove that he’s a genius. Philip Seymour Hoffman’s Caden Cotard is the convention-bucking theater director of Death Of A Salesman, and with Synecdoche, New York’s play-within-a-play he’s out to prove that he’s a genius. Tom Noonan’s Sammy Barnathan is an actor obsessed with Caden Cotard, and in Synecdoche, New York’s play-within-a-play-within-a-play he’s out to prove that Kaufman and Cotard are geniuses. Anyone detect a pattern?

Synecdoche, New York, both written and directed by Kaufman, and for all intents and purposes starring him, is a film packed with visionaries that has eyes for only itself. Kaufman’s previous films have been self-aware and even self-referential – in Adaptation, Nicolas Cage plays a tormented screenwriter named Charlie Kaufman – but this is the first time that a portal into Kaufman’s mind has revealed nothing more than the screenwriter’s brain. Whereas with Eternal Sunshine Kaufman viewed familiar concepts (love and fate) through the kaleidoscope of his imagination until they were distorted enough to seem new again, here he takes a microscope to the mechanism. Synecdoche has themes and emotions, sure, but they are peripheral distractions – ends necessitated by the means. For all the effort involved in creating a spectacle on par with The Great and Powerful Oz, the film ultimately prefers that we bow down in praise of the little man pulling the levers.

Some will say that’s Synecdoche’s triumph. Don’t believe them. This is a film in which art imitates life until Kaufman’s life is the only art we see. The main character, and Kaufman stand-in, is Hoffman’s Caden, a theater director who is doomed by a literally fatal blend of aspiration and self-doubt. Recipient of a “genius” grant that gives him virtually unlimited funds for his next project, Caden resolves himself to live up to the grant’s name and its worth. He starts by procuring a seemingly infinite warehouse in which to stage the production, which of course creates the pressure of designing a drama big enough to fill it. He determines that this next play will be his lifetime achievement, and thus he operates like a man determined to spend his lifetime achieving it – as if anything less would be settling for mediocrity. He becomes so consumed with the fear that he’ll die before making something of himself that he begins to age more rapidly – growing noticeably weaker, sicker and frailer by the day. Paralyzed by his own expectations and void of any true artistic vision, Caden slaves away at vagueness for so long that his dogged pursuit of art becomes his art. His play can never be realized, because then he’d lose the struggle and the whole operation would cease to have meaning.

Caden’s play within Kaufman’s play generates another play within that. That’s where Noonan’s Sammy comes in, playing Caden trying to direct his theatrical performance and sort out the pieces of his life at the same time. Confused? Don’t worry about it. Per the structure, Sammy will illuminate Caden, who illuminates Kaufman ad nauseam. Meantime, we sit back and endure the tedium with little to grasp onto. Sure, it’s nifty the way all these physical worlds and pseudo-realities sit one inside the other like nesting dolls, but what does it reveal beyond Kaufman’s cleverness? Caden’s long-time-in-coming epiphany is the notion that all the extras of the world – regular folk like you and me – are in fact stars of their own productions. But while that’s true in the big picture, it’s a sham within this one. Just like Caden is seen walking past his actors, spitting one-line directions at them to suit his whims while they slave away in his interminable rehearsal, Kaufman is less concerned with any of his individual players – Caden included – than with the enormity of his undertaking.

If Synecdoche seems complex, challenging or elusive, you’re working too hard and giving Kaufman too much credit. Yes, the film has peculiarities, like the always-burning house of Caden’s assistant and quasi love interest Hazel (the ever captivating Samantha Morton), or the diary that writes itself. But these are empty riddles. They can be answered however you’d like because they lack any official definition. By contrast, in Citizen Kane we at least come to learn that Rosebud is a sled, leaving us to figure out for ourselves what’s so damn important about it. Here we merely get the word. With Synecdoche, Kaufman is faking it like a wannabe poet at open-mic night, convinced that the convolution of the tale makes it profound. To be moved by this indistinct mindfuck is to read your horoscope in the paper and believe it’s written especially for you. Your emotional reaction will be genuine, but it says more about you than about the art.

Kaufman’s unconventional approach is refreshing on the whole, but a filmmaker shouldn’t be praised for playing his instrument backward and occasionally hitting the right notes. Combine Kaufman and this impressive cast, which also includes Catherine Keener, Michelle Williams, Emily Watson and Dianne Wiest, and it’s hard to resist the urge to impose depth on this 124-minute tangled mass. But save for an intriguing first half-hour that’s brightened by a winsome Morton, it just isn’t there. Guess what: if it looks like an anvil and feels like an anvil, it’s an anvil. Synecdoche is dead weight. It’s a gigantic idea that delivers nothing beyond the blunt force of its scale. Like Caden, Kaufman put so much attention into the meta and the minutia that he lost track of any emotional core, the reason for creating the story in the first place.

As chance would have it, prior to seeing Synecdoche I was killing time in a bookstore and happened to pick up from the bestseller rack the self-titled autobiography of Slash, the guitarist from Guns N Roses. After glancing through the photo inserts, I thumbed to the chapters pertaining to 1991, when I was a freshman in high school and the band was at its peak: releasing two albums simultaneously that debuted at the top of the charts and creating mind-bending epic videos for play on MTV. In his book, Slash describes how the creation of those albums (Use Your Illusion I and II) required him to lay down his guitar riffs alone in a recording studio, whereupon the tapes would be sent to lead singer and creative director Axl Rose, who put all the pieces together in Howard Hughes-like seclusion. It worked. The band’s output was more complex and lush than ever before, and yet it marked the moment Slash felt the band’s identity slipping away: Guns N Roses was creating records, true, but it was no longer making music. It wasn’t a band anymore.

So seems to be the case for Kaufman. Synecdoche marks the moment his storytelling process finally overwhelmed his story. For the moment, he has disappeared down the rabbit hole, and in a year that has seen tremendously disappointing films from such gifted storytellers as Steven Spielberg and M Night Shyamalan, it’s hard to keep from fearing that Kaufman might never come back out again. To complete the previous cautionary tale, it’s worth noting that after a sloppy follow-up album (The Spaghetti Incident), Rose set to work on the band’s next supposed masterpiece, Chinese Democracy. The year was 1995. As of today, the album remains unfinished. If Synecdoche is a window into Kaufman’s psyche, America’s most talented screenwriter may be sinking into his own abyss of ambition, expectation and neurosis. It would be a loss for us all.

Favorite Films A-Z

Last week, Fletch over at Blog Cabins created a meme that has been spreading through the movie-loving blogosphere like an Angelina Jolie-Jennifer Aniston catfight rumor. I’ve been tagged to participate at least twice, by The Film Doctor and He Shot Cyrus. So, here we go …

The meme: List your favorite films alphabetically – picking one film for each letter of the alphabet. Simple, right? Until you start making decisions. To make it less maddening, some bloggers have tried to reduce the pool of available films, like Larry Aydlette at Welcome to L.A., who selected from noirs, thrillers and detective movies only.

Me? I approached it with a desert-island-list mentality. In other words, I wanted the films to be watchable more than classic (you know what I mean), and I wanted the collection of 26 films to cover the genres as much as possible. Thus, the movies had to be from my DVD collection, because otherwise they aren’t favorites.

Here’s how it played out:

All The President’s Men
Bull Durham
Chinatown
Die Hard
Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind
Field Of Dreams
The Great Escape
Heat
Indian Summer
JFK
To Kill A Mockingbird
Lawrence Of Arabia
The Magnificent Seven
The New World
On The Waterfront
Parenthood
Quiz Show
Rear Window
Star Wars
The Thin Red Line
Unbreakable
Vertigo
When We Were Kings
X (no entry)
Y (no entry)
Zodiac

I’m pleased with my list. It includes some of my all-time favorites (All The President’s Men, The Great Escape, On The Waterfront, Star Wars), two Hitchcocks (Rear Window and Vertigo), two Malicks (The New World and The Thin Red Line), a sports movie (Bull Durham), a Western (The Magnificent Seven), a noir (Chinatown), a super-hero movie (Unbreakable), a documentary (When We Were Kings), an epic (Lawrence Of Arabia), an action classic (Die Hard), a love story (Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind), a Steve Martin comedy with heart (Parenthood) and a mostly-unknown-movie-I-never-grow-tired-of-that-happens-to-include-Diane-Lane (Indian Summer). It’s a good list. I could stay quite happy on my desert island with that collection.

Painful omissions? Letter M was the hardest because it pitted my favorite Western with my favorite King of Cool (The Magnificent Seven) against The Muppet Movie, an overwhelming childhood favorite. Leaving out Kermit & Co feels wrong, but I decided I could live without The Muppet Movie so long as I had episodes of TV’s The Muppet Show, and the meme doesn’t exclude that. So that’s how I got around that one. Beyond that, it was most difficult to leave out those ‘little movies’ that aren’t all that great but that never fail to deliver. We all have ‘em. Beautiful Girls, Diner and Elf are three of mine. And while picking The Great Escape for G was a no-brainer, it was a punch to the gut to see The Godfather, The Graduate and Groundhog Day fall by the wayside.

Now, as part of the meme process, I’m supposed to tag at least five people to participate and keep this thing going. Instead, I’d like to encourage anyone and everyone to take part.

If you’re a blogger, fill out your list and link back to Blog Cabins. Cooler readers, leave your lists in the comments section below, as a link or as text.

Do it! Now! Especially you “lurkers” (regular readers but infrequent commenters) like Brew, T-mouse and others. You know who you are. Join in!

It’s Over: Politics & Movies Blog-a-thon (Nov 4-9)

The Politics & Movies Blog-a-thon has concluded with 23 posts, one of which is the gateway to 25 more. I'm pleased.

If you haven't yet, I encourage you to settle in and do some reading. There's more here than you can get to in one sitting. I'd like to thank all those who contributed posts, as well as those who were active in leaving comments. Quite literally, the blog-a-thon would be nothing without you.

Enjoy the spoils after the jump ...


Day 6:

"Eat Your Vegetables" - Gee Bobg
I don’t know how my mom ever got me to watch the film 1776 in the first place ... Ever since she did, I have spent a large part of my life trying — and failing, mostly — to persuade others to see it too. But the movie is almost impossible to describe without making it sound like “eat your vegetables” or “floss your teeth” or “do your homework” — something boring but essential because it’s good for you (shudder), even though it’s actually as entertaining a two hours as you’re ever likely to spend.

"The Road To Guantanamo (2006)" - The Cooler
But the story of Ruhal Ahmed, Asif Iqbal and Shafiq Rasul, often called the Tipton Three in reference to the area of England from which they hailed, is eye-opening. And upon hearing their tale in this measured and unsettling film, the luxury of ignorance is lost.


Day 5:

"Five Films for Mr. President" - Octopus Cinema
Five recommended films for the current (but not for long) president, Mr. George W. Bush. And no, W. isn't one of them.

"A View to a Kill: Remembering JFK" - The Cooler
A rerun of one of this blog's initial posts that's too appropriate for this blog-a-thon to ignore: And on this Presidents’ Day weekend the film is worth remembering if for no other reason than its rare effect: in reflecting history, JFK writes it, too.


Day 4:

"Election Overlook" – The Dancing Image
Holy cow! It’s a one-man politics and movies blog-a-thon! Twenty-five posts covering movies past (Mr. Smith Goes to Washington) and present (W.), fictional (The Contender) and factual (Taxi to the Dark Side), plus stuff in between (Fahrenheit 9/11). Check it out!

"Meantime (1984)" - Only The Cinema
If Naked is a fully realized artistic statement on poverty, homelessness, and depression, then Meantime is the unmediated reality behind the art, its semi-documentary ugliness spewed up onto the screen like the aftermath of a particularly nasty bender.

"More Thoughts on the Society of the Spectacle" - Only The Cinema
As a follow-up to my recent post I have been reading Debord's 1988 essay "Comments on the Society of the Spectacle." ... One of Debord's comments seems especially relevant to the state of the world today, so much so that I felt I really had to post this here.

"The Neocon Country" - Forward to Yesterday
It’s silly to look for one-to-one allegories to historical events in most movies. It’s even sillier to see direct parallels to recent events in a western made 47 years ago. But, to wax Rumsfeldian, my goodness gracious but it’s hard to ignore the anti-neoconservative stance of The Big Country.

"Political Poster Children" - The Cooler
And though one would suspect that the W. posters would join a long line of provocative or at least evocative political-movie artwork, a quick scan of the library suggests otherwise. Below is a hardly-complete collection of promotional posters for political films.


Day 3:

"Assassination Meditation" - The Cooler
I love movies with assassinations in them. Assassination films incorporate an uncanny visceral tension and a disturbing sensation of dread that satisfy the cinematic thrill junkie in me ... What’s your favorite assassination film?

"W. (2008)" - Bohemian Cinema
Not the extremely-Liberal lashing you were expecting, W. is a film with noble motives and some thoughtful scenarios. Brolin's performance expertly walks the line between acting and impersonating as he and director Oliver Stone attempt to bring the last eight years to a close.


Day 2:

"The Best Recent Political Documentaries" - The Moviezzz Blog
When I first saw (The War Room), I have to admit I wasn’t its biggest fan. I thought maybe that was because, since I was a Paul Tsongas supporter in 1992, I kept hoping for a different outcome.

"The Day After: One Blogger's Opinion" - The Cooler
Warning: In the following, the author of this blog shares his political views. This post has nothing to do with cinema. Well, almost nothing ...

"The Great McGinty, Magnificent Sulzer" - Octopus Cinema
The Great McGinty has achieved a type of peculiar transcendence, especially in the current tempestuous political climate. With all the recent talk about vote blocking, mistakenly lost votes and intentionally mistaken tallies, there is a particular relevance in the film's first act in which McGinty earns his keep by voting a total of 37 times.

"Rockying the Free World" - Chicago Ex-Patriate
The training sequences then turn into a sort of political mindfuck. In order to clear his head and focus on the fight, Rocky insists on living and training in the barren countryside with no luxuries, while Drago has the best science and technology as his disposal. In other words, Rocky, the great American hero, becomes a representation of Communism.

"Society of the Spectacle (1973)" - Only The Cinema
His film was radical and surprising when it was made, in 1973, and it remains today an eye-opening examination of global power, control, and oppression.


Day 1:

"Here and Elsewhere (1976)" - Only The Cinema
As with so many of Jean-Luc Godard's films, Here and Elsewhere is an intensely mediated, indirect examination of reality (or, as Godard would probably prefer, realities). It is not so much a political film as it is about political films, about the ways in which images, sounds, and their combinations can contribute to or impede understanding.

"Idiocracy (2006)" - Tractor Facts
But at the center of Idiocracy, and what I like to think ties it to Election Day '08, is Luke Wilson's character of Joe. Like Joe "Blow", Joe "Sixpack", or Average "Joe", Wilson's Joe implies a middle-of-the-road, independent, working-class man. But what Mike Judge adds to his "Joe" is a sense of apathy. He's a decent man, but Joe just wants to glide through life without leaving many bruises behind. Unfortunately that entails not leaving any fingerprints either.

"It's an Easy Choice" - He Shot Cyrus
Equal rights for everyone.

"JFK (1991)" - Radiator Heaven
This blurring of reality and fiction by mixing real footage with staged footage makes it difficult to discern what really happened and what is merely speculation. Stone does this in order to create what he calls "a countermyth to the myth of the Warren Commission because a lot of the original facts were lost in a very shoddy investigation" and simulate the confusing quagmire of events as they are depicted in The Warren Commission Report.

"My Fellow Americans: Reaching Across the Aisle" - Strange Culture
If there's one lesson to pull away from this film is that the only time republicans and democrats seem to effectively work together it is when they are forced to.

"Nixon: A Ghost Story" – The Cooler
For historical truth, we have encyclopedias. For emotional truth, we have art. Upon examining its moments of haunting, Nixon turns out to be less a political film than a ghost story.

"Secret Ballot (2001)" - Ferdy on Films
Having your eyes on the stars and your feet on the ground is always the prudent thing to do, especially in a representative democracy, and especially in one as large and diverse as the United States. An object lesson in the wisdom of this advice can be found in Secret Ballot, a film that premiered just a year after the Election Dysfunction of 2000 that shows us the beauty and limitations of democracy in a gently satiric way.


Preamble:

The following links aren’t official submissions to the blog-a-thon, but they’re in the same thematic ballpark. To get everybody warmed up, I’d like to point readers toward the excellent video essays of Kevin B Lee and Matt Zoller Seitz, published a few weeks ago at Moving Image Source:

Born on the Fourth of July - "Arsenic and Apple Pie" (Oct 14)

JFK - "Unreliable Narratives" (Oct 15)

Nixon - "Fear and Self-Loathing" (Oct 16)

Queue It Up: The Road To Guantanamo

[In contribution to Politics & Movies Blog-a-thon, The Cooler offers the following review, written upon the film’s release in the author’s pre-blog era.]

"Son, we live in a world that has walls, and those walls have to be guarded by men with guns. Who’s gonna do it? You? You, Lt. Weinburg? I have a greater responsibility than you could possibly fathom. You weep for Santiago, and you curse the Marines. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know – that Santiago's death, while tragic, probably saved lives. And my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves lives. You don't want the truth because deep down in places you don't talk about at parties, you want me on that wall, you need me on that wall." – Col. Jessep, A Few Good Men

The thing I’ve always appreciated about Aaron Sorkin’s A Few Good Men is that it refuses to pretend we live in a world where every problem has an easy answer. After watching the movie, all of us would hopefully agree that the killing of Pvt. William Santiago in a hazing ritual gone wrong is indefensible by any interpretation. But that doesn’t change the fact that, in a wider view, the crazed Col. Jessep has it right. Our world has walls. And until peace, love and understanding sweep the globe, those walls need to be guarded. By people (men or women) with guns. By unflinching people. By people willing to do the grotesque and incomprehensible. To save lives.

I kept that in mind as I watched Michael Winterbottom’s docu-drama The Road To Guantanamo, which tells the true story of three British Muslims who were imprisoned, harassed and – depending on your definition – tortured for more than two years for a crime that amounts to being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Not all of the trio’s mistreatment came at the hands of our military. Nor was it entirely unjustified. But the story of Ruhal Ahmed, Asif Iqbal and Shafiq Rasul, often called the Tipton Three in reference to the area of England from which they hailed, is eye-opening. And upon hearing their tale in this measured and unsettling film, the luxury of ignorance is lost.

Told through dramatic reenactments and authentic interviews with the Tipton Three – a style reminiscent of the mountain-climbing film Touching The Void – Guantanamo begins with the three friends gathering in Pakistan to celebrate Iqbal’s forthcoming arranged marriage. It is October 2001, in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of September 11, and tensions are mounting in neighboring Afghanistan, where American retaliatory strikes are looming. Knowing this, the Tipton Three, and a fourth man who wouldn’t live to tell his version of the events, decide to cross the border into Afghanistan.

Their motivation is unclear. Implications are made that they want to capitalize on the favorable exchange rate to provide aid to innocent Afghans. More than anything, thogh, these four men – ranging at the time from 20 to 24 – seem hungry for adventure, like frat boys on spring break. Yet their decision to go into Afghanistan is as short-sighted as it is ill-advised. By walking into a war zone, the men not only put themselves in harm’s way, but in the aftermath provide an angle of attack for anyone intent on incriminating them in a not-entirely-wild conspiracy theory.

If you believe the trio’s story, you sense their ignorance. The men go from Kandahar to Kabul and wind up by mistake in Kunduz, where Allied Forces capture them with fleeing Taliban fighters. By that point, the group of four vigorous friends has been reduced to three shattered souls lucky to have survived a long night of shelling that introduced them to the wail of pain and the stench of blood. The worst is still to come, starting with a heinous journey in a tractor-trailer that causes dozens to die from suffocation, heat exhaustion or, when the conscientious soldiers create air holes in the metal container, machinegun fire.

After making it through that ordeal, the men are relieved to be turned over to U.S. Marines, and they presume their release is imminent. But the story is still beginning. First at a detention camp in Kandahar and then at Camps Delta and X-Ray in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the men are imprisoned for 26 months despite a lack of official charges. In that span they are shaved, cavity searched, forced to squat in uncomfortable positions, woken every hour for headcounts, held in solitary confinement, blindfolded, demeaned and beaten. Oh, and questioned. Over and over again, for hours at a time, they are questioned.

Is anyone surprised? Or, perhaps more importantly, are we offended? Keep in mind the time and place this unfolds. Keep in mind the absurdity of the idea that a group of friends would travel into a war zone in essence for the fun of it. Keep in mind that these are just three possible links to al Qaeda that must be investigated. Is it still too unconscionable for you? Would it help to imagine the year as 1944 and these men as Nazi POWs? Might you then be willing to agree that not everyone deserves a mint on their pillow, or even a pillow?

Point is, there is a degree to which we must give a nod to Col. Jessep. We might find it grotesque and beneath the lowest level of human decency to force men to defecate on themselves while squatting for the entire length of a 22-hour flight. But can’t we agree that what happened at the World Trade Center was worse? Can’t we agree that our very freedom to be repulsed by the actions of our military is protected by those willing to do the repugnant?

I make all those arguments in defense of the unsettling, to prove that I recognize at least its potential purpose, and to try and convince you that I’ve considered all the angles when saying the following: There are things that happen to the Tipton Three at the hands of their U.S. captors that are entirely indefensible. I’m thinking specifically of instances well into the men’s detention when interrogators insist that they have documents proving the men’s allegiance to the Taliban, even though they don’t; or when they insist that they have video showing the men at an al Qaeda rally, even though they don’t; or when they insist that they are positive the men are allied with the Taliban, even though by that point the opposite is obvious.

Why do the interrogators do this? It can’t be to protect Americans, because once it becomes clear that the men aren't a threat, it’s a waste of time and thus a disservice to citizens in need of protection to continue to berate the innocent. Thus the only possible motivation for bullying men into knowingly false confessions is to avoid admitting a mistake, to save face, to validate questionable behavior. How spineless! How unforgivable! How immoral!

The movie doesn’t mention this, but then-Secretary of State Colin Powell said of Guantanamo Bay and the issue of the Geneva Conventions, “Because we are Americans, we do not abuse people who are in our care.” Interesting. So what does it mean then when Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld says, in news footage replayed in the movie, that Guantanamo Bay follows the Geneva Conventions “for the most part”? Am I to assume there are multiple acceptable interpretations? Am I to assume that our government would be content with other nations treating American POWs according to the rules only “for the most part”?

All of these issues have nothing and everything to do with the film itself. Nothing in the sense that Road To Guantanamo brings forth no wild theories about the Tipton Three or Guantanamo Bay (to my knowledge, no part of the Tipton Three’s story has been refuted, and much of it has been substantiated by authoritative sources). Everything in the sense that Winterbottom’s film isn’t something one could or should casually dismiss. Working with Mat Whitecross, Winterbottom constructs a spellbinding re-creation of the Tipton Three’s grueling journey from Pakistan through Afghanistan to Cuba. But by incorporating the talking-heads approach, the filmmakers demonstrate that while they want you to feel the experience of the subjects, above all they want you to acknowledge the story’s reality.

Part of that reality is this: No matter how unpleasant or unreasonable their treatment, the Tipton Three are lucky. At least they got out. As of the film’s release in July 2006, there are approximately 480 detainees at Guantanamo Bay, only 10 of which have been charged before military commissions. The rest sit and wait, presumably answering the same old questions, as U.S. interrogators look not for admissions of guilt but confessions of despair. Days before the Tipton Three were released in March 2004, the FBI, in utter desperation, tried one last time to coerce the men into signing documents falsely proclaiming their allegiance to al Qaeda.

What does that do for your patriotism? Like the fictional A Few Good Men, Winterbottom’s film doesn’t suggest there’s an easy answer to Guantanamo Bay, but the picture makes a point: When it comes to the protection of this country there are some truths we avoid because it’s easier that way and there are others kept hidden from us because they have no justification. In times like these, it would be easy to foist the blame on the military. But we shouldn’t do that until we’ve looked at the situation honestly and figured out exactly where we stand and where the line should be drawn. Guantanamo gets that conversation started.

[“Queue It Up” is a series of sporadic recommendations of often overlooked movies for your Netflix queue.]

Political Poster Children

[For the Politics & Movies Blog-a-thon.]

Oliver Stone’s W. wasn’t short on publicity materials. There were as many as 10 different promotional poster designs, some of them lackluster (a pair depicting George W Bush as either “Angel” or “Devil”), others of them inspired. Too inspired, in fact. As I argued in my review of W., Stone’s film never captures its subject with greater accuracy or commentary than is achieved in two of the print ads: one showing Josh Brolin’s Bush resting his chin on his folded hands in childlike contemplation, the other showing him sitting back in his chair in the Oval Office with his boots resting on his desk in Texas cowboy arrogance.

Those images advertise the film that Stone should have made, but didn’t. And though one would suspect that the W. posters would join a long line of provocative or at least evocative political-movie artwork, a quick scan of the library suggests otherwise. Below is a hardly-complete collection of promotional posters for political films. Of these, I think The Candidate best evokes the film’s philosophies (though the poster for The American President makes it clear that it’s a love story more than a political yarn).

If you notice a glaring omission, please point it out in the comments section, and I’ll try to add the image. Reactions to the current collection are encouraged.

Assassination Meditation

by Hokahey, for the Politics & Movies Blog-a-thon

Political films aren’t my favorite genre. I can appreciate the artistry and performances in films like All the President’s Men and Primary Colors, but I’m happier seeing a film from most other genres. Though not entirely a political film, Citizen Kane, without a doubt, contains the most iconic single image of any political film: Kane, the candidate, delivering his loud, bombastic speech in front of that huge campaign poster of himself. The camera pulls back, and, well, you know, classic!

A curious side story here: Back in the early days of the VCR I finally told myself that it was time to see Citizen Kane for the first time. I knew it had something to do with politics – I had seen that classic image – and for some reason I thought Kane gets assassinated at the end like Willie Stark in All the King’s Men. I suppose my disappointment that the film didn’t end with Kane’s assassination is one of the reasons I first considered Welles’s classic to be highly overrated. It was not until I began watching Citizen Kane three times a year – when I show it to three different sections of my American history course which includes a big unit on American film history – that I began to see the beauty of that film. I’m now a very big fan of Citizen Kane, even though it isn’t an assassination film.

I love movies with assassinations in them. Assassination films incorporate an uncanny visceral tension and a disturbing sensation of dread that satisfy the cinematic thrill junkie in me.

My favorites have to be The Day of the Jackal, directed by Fred (High Noon) Zinneman, and The Manchurian Candidate, directed by John Frankenheimer – both of which are about assassinations that never happened. I can’t say which contains my favorite assassination. Perhaps Candidate is the better film, but the suspense in Jackal is masterfully developed and gut-wrenchingly memorable. Both films include twists that come at the very crucial final moment when the rifle has been raised at the target – in Jackal it’s Charles De Gaulle being shot at by a hired assassin played by Edward Fox – in Candidate it’s a presidential candidate aimed at by a brainwashed Korean War “hero” played by Laurence Harvey.

Assassination plots are more suspenseful when plans go awry, and that happens in both of these films. I won’t give away one of the most abrupt setbacks for the nameless assassin played by Edward Fox; even though you’ll be ready for a surprise, it will catch you unawares. For Laurence Harvey’s Raymond, things go wrong in a surrealistic sequence in which a Queen of Hearts and a random spoken idiom coincide serendipitously in a bar near Central Park. And in both films, the assassin gets through security by means of a clever disguise. In the climactic sequences, the suspense is built by the ubiquitous trappings of assassination film: the triumphal music introducing the target; the confusion and ironic merry-making of the oblivious spectators; the dawning awareness of the plot; the frantic dash to avert tragedy.

A very obscure gem of an assassination film that I have only seen on television is Nine Hours to Rama with Horst Buchholtz (the seventh gun in The Magnificent Seven) as the leader of the conspiracy to assassinate Mahatma Gandhi. Covering the tight timeframe of the hours just before the killing, this film examines the bitterness and motives that drive the assassin – Naturam Godse. And just like the above two films, things go wrong, as they historically did, as the assassin’s accomplices are picked up by policemen for a silly mistake. And, too, just like in the best assassination films, the assassin works his way through an agitated crowd while policemen make their fruitless last-minute dash to stop the deed from happening.

Many might consider Oliver Stone’s JFK to be the granddaddy of all assassination films, but I put it in a different category because it doesn’t follow the classic pattern of the assassination film in which suspense mounts as perpetrator and/or victim moves toward the assassination that must come toward the end of the film. JFK is a masterful examination of the myriad details of Kennedy’s assassination, but it is more focused on the conspiracy theory than on the assassin, his motives and the deed.

Perhaps the best portrait of a would-be assassin is Taxi Driver, which memorably depicts Travis Bickle’s alienation and bitterness, exacerbated by his frustrating dalliance with a woman from a totally different world. Taxi Driver does a great job of analyzing the development of the kind of person who randomly fixates on a political figure whose death will be the assassin’s catharsis.

Another memorable anatomy of an assassin is Andrew Dominick’s The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. Casey Affleck is superb as the wimpy, obsessive outcast who stalks Jesse James to rub elbows with infamous greatness – then to achieve his own notoriety by becoming the man who shot Jesse James. Casey Affleck’s Bob Ford has all the traits of the assassin: he’s a bitter loser; he has a fascination with guns; he is obsessed with his target; he wants to be known.

In the long sequence covering the fateful day, Dominick does a masterful job of depicting Ford’s tension and Jesse’s foreboding. The water Bob splashes on his face seems slowed down by nervous pressure. Jesse sees something ominous in the loss of his daughter’s shoe. When the time comes, Bob’s face is drawn and pale with tension; he looks sick. And, as in all good assassination films, the fateful moment arrives with leaden, heart-pounding inevitability. The assassin cannot be stopped.

Are there any new assassination films on the way? Ah, yes, Valkyrie, with Tom Cruise as Klaus von Stauffenberg, the man assigned to set off a bomb to kill Hitler during World War II. Though Hitler, unfortunately, doesn’t get offed, the story of the plot to assassinate him is a fascinating one, so hold off researching it before you see the movie and you will enjoy some suspenseful surprises. Meanwhile, Spielberg plans a 2010 film called Lincoln, with Liam Neeson in the title role. The summary slug suggests that the film covers more than just his assassination – though the plot to assassinate Lincoln includes enough weird twists and mysteries to fill an entire film.

Who would you cast to play John Wilkes Booth? What’s your favorite assassination film?