Call it Fate, Call it Karma: Knowing

A Nicolas Cage performance is like the sun: you stare directly into it at your own risk. From silly hair to silly accents to plain old silly acting, Cage routinely serves as the walking punch-line in scenes that aren’t meant to be funny. On those terms, it’s fair to call Cage something of a joke as an actor, but he deserves some respect, too. If nothing else, Cage is a bankable joke, starring in about two movies a year and routinely winning the box office battle (on opening weekend, anyway) in the face of critical scorn. How does he do it? You tell me. Anyone who suffered through Ghost Rider shouldn’t want to see Next, just like anyone who winced through the trailer for Bangkok Dangerous shouldn’t want to see Bangkok Dangerous or any Cage movie thereafter. And yet Cage continues to star in films and attract audiences at the same time, almost as if fate were involved. But now I’m getting ahead of myself.

Cage’s latest film is Knowing, an inane sci-fi yarn about fate, “randomness” and disasters in which Cage plays John Koestler, a professor, widower and father who gets thrust into the part of investigator, protector and action hero. It might seem ridiculous on paper, and it is, but at the same time it’s a good role for Cage. Much like his Benjamin Gates character in the National Treasure films, Cage’s Koestler is an incidental lead: we don’t care what he thinks or how he feels, we just want him to move us from one plot point to the next. And move us, he does. True to form, Cage swings from under-animation to over-animation as if clueless about what’s in between, and it hardly matters. Knowing is so explosively absurd and so absurdly explosive that Cage’s performance is moot. You’ll find no bigger Cage loather than me, but I have to admit that I can’t think of a single actor out there who would have made this a better film.

Much to my surprise, it turns out that a bigger cinematic sin than casting Cage is utilizing a screenplay that was written by committee. Ryne Douglass Pearson, Juliet Snowdon and Stiles White are credited for Knowing’s screenplay, which feels like the cinematic equivalent of a potluck dinner in which no one arrived with the main course. Knowing is a mishmash of reheated leftovers. There isn’t a single thing about it that feels unique. Not its main character’s numbers obsession or his ability to see the future (The Number 23 meets Next). Not the menacing dudes in black coats (Dark City). Not the climactic visitation (Close Encounters Of The Third Kind). Not the decimation of Manhattan by natural disaster (The Day After Tomorrow, to pick one of way too many). Certainly not the creepy black-haired girl who forecasts doom (The Ring). Heck, not even the goofy sign language ritual between father and son (Sudden Death). Nothing. Knowing is a bucket of table scraps tossed into the empty trough that is March for our desperate consumption.

We should be offended by any film that treats its audience like undiscerning cattle, and yet I’d be lying if I didn’t confess that the cud tastes good from time to time. Not that it should come as a surprise. Knowing’s methods are tried and true, proven to please. Sure it’s eerie when Koestler must investigate the abandoned house in the middle of nowhere in the dark of night. Sure it’s exhilarating when a subway car goes screaming down the tracks toward another car that’s still servicing the platform during rush hour. Sure it’s compelling to try to figure out who the dudes in black are, and what they want and why they need to drive cars when they can seemingly materialize wherever they want. This kind of stuff – like serial killers and sex scenes – provides can’t-miss stimulation, but only for a short time. In the end, quality matters, and this is where the film fails to satisfy. Watching Knowing is like diving into a large bag of Funyuns; only those with the strongest of stomachs or the blandest of palates will make it all the way through without feeling nauseous.

When it comes down to it, the truly revolting thing about Knowing isn’t Cage’s acting or the blatancy of its unoriginality, it’s the sloppiness of its execution. This is a film, directed by Alex Proyas, that takes every shortcut available without shame. Need to make a search for a missing girl scary? Have people search the grounds by flashlight rather than turning on any building lights. Need to add an extra wrinkle to the cryptic sheet of numbers that’s at the center of the plot? Have the only two letters on the page (capital Es) inexplicably written backward so that they are mistaken for the number 33. Need to convey sorrow or worry or angst? Have the main character chug alcohol instead of, you know, emoting. Need to heighten the intensity? Have a police officer run in fear from a crashing plane that, due to poor staging, he couldn’t possibly see approaching. Need to heighten the intensity even further? Have the survivors of the plane crash run across the field while on fire. Still not intense enough? Create a subway crash in which the derailed train consumes thin CGI figures like a vacuum cleaner sucking up cartoon clouds of filth in a Hoover commercial. For every problem, Knowing provides a tired solution.

All that said, there will be worse films than Knowing this year, I’m sure of that. Here, when all else fails, at least we’ve got Rose Byrne, whose ability to take a poorly written character in ridiculous circumstances and make her seem semi-plausible is a considerable achievement. Also noteworthy is the show-stopping CGI spectacle of Manhattan being blown to bits, which is so impressively achieved that I can almost forgive the cliché. Almost. Knowing borrows from so many different films that it never defines itself. It’s a film with twists and turns and mysteries that becomes less interesting the more one thinks about it. Knowing, simply put, is a disaster long ago forecasted. This is a Nic Cage film, after all. Some things are written.

The Conversations: Overlooked, Part II—Solaris

In Part II of our "Overlooked" installment, Ed Howard and I discuss Steven Soderbergh's Solaris to close out the third edition of The Conversations over at The House Next Door. In analyzing Soderbergh's film, our debate touches on Andrei Tarkovsky's 1972 film of same name, Stanislaw Lem's original story and, you guessed it, Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey (inevitable, right?).

In Part I, posted yesterday, we discuss David Gordon Green's Undertow.

Check out Part II. Add to the conversation by leaving comments at The House Next Door.

Previous Editions of The Conversations:

David Fincher (January 2009)
Mulholland Dr. (February 2009)

The Conversations: Overlooked, Part I—Undertow

For the third edition of The Conversations, Ed Howard and I discuss a pair of “overlooked” films from the past 10 years. In Part I, now live at The House Next Door, we debate David Gordon Green’s Undertow, which leads to some discussion of Terrence Malick (no surprise) and even Quentin Tarantino. In Part II, appearing tomorrow, we take on Steven Soderbergh’s Solaris.

Check out Part I. As usual, Ed and I hope that our conversation will lead to a larger one among our readers. If you are so inspired, please leave your comments at The House Next Door.

Previous Editions of The Conversations:

David Fincher (January 2009)
Mulholland Dr. (February 2009)

Notebook: Happy Birthday, Steve (and Stuff)

Not Enough Cool
Steve McQueen died of cancer in 1980 at the age of 50. Were the King of Cool still living, today would be his 79th birthday. Seventy-nine. That’s up there, to be sure. Not a take-it-for-granted age, by any means. On the other hand, you know who else was born in 1930? Gene Hackman. Sean Connery. Clint Eastwood. Armin Mueller-Stahl. Just to name four. The first two aren’t working anymore, but the latter two are; Eastwood is as engaged as ever.

On a day like today it’s hard to keep from wondering what the second half of McQueen’s career might have looked like, had he been allowed to have one. In Unforgiven, might he have taken Hackman’s place, or even Eastwood’s? If not starring in Best Picture fare, might he have at least made a memorable TV cameo, as his Nevada Smith costar Karl Malden did at the age of 88 when he heard the confession of Martin Sheen’s Jed Bartlet on The West Wing? Might he have had a Nobody’s Fool or a Road To Perdition, as his The Towering Inferno costar Paul Newman had in his 70s? Might he have broken hearts like his The Great Escape costar James Garner did in The Notebook at 76? Might he have taken up directing, as Eastwood has? Might he have seen his dream project Yucatan blossom according to his vision? (It’s now being directed by McG.) We’ll never know.

Oh, sure. It’s possible that McQueen’s later years would have resembled those of Marlon Brando, an actor with significantly greater talent who nonetheless managed to embarrass himself more often than not near the end. Perhaps instead of celebrating his love of automobiles by giving voice to a character in Pixar’s Cars, as Newman did, McQueen would have instead appeared as some kind of Patches O’Houlihan character in The Fast And The Furious. I cringe at the thought, but it might have happened.

Still, chances are good that McQueen would have given us at least one or two more performances, of whatever size, that would be worth cherishing. I’m grateful for the performances he left behind, but today is a day to wonder what might have been.



Mythbuster?
Speaking of McQueen: Here’s a story (and video) about a recent effort to determine the legitimacy of the famous motorcycle jump from The Great Escape. Oh, there’s no question that stunt man Bud Ekins, not McQueen, was the one who pulled it off. The question is whether the motorcycle Ekins rode was enhanced for the performance.

The conclusion? Read it and see it for yourself. To a degree, the jury is still out. But one thing's for sure: As the stunt rider attempting to duplicate Ekins’ feat says perfectly: “What they lacked in equipment, they sure made up with balls. Wow.”

Wow, indeed!



Making Love in Two Lovers
In his rave of Two Lovers, Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle writes: “The movie has only one flaw, a funny one: Two Lovers is another movie in which pants and underwear magically become permeable in the face of erotic desire. The standing-up, easily achieved sex interlude has become a movie cliché to rival the 555 phone exchange.”

That’s about right. (Spoilers ahead, if you’re picky.) The scene in question involves Joaquin Phoenix’s Leonard, Gwyneth Paltrow’s Michelle, a Brooklyn rooftop and winter clothes (including jeans for Michelle). Anatomically speaking, it isn’t very convincing. On the other hand, it does get the point across, documenting the consummation of Leonard’s romantic obsession while illustrating the tenuousness of their bond. Is this the moment Michelle falls for Leonard, or is it merely the moment she gives in? The brevity of the act and its uncomfortable beginning (it’s a while before Michelle is kissing back) invites us to speculate – like so many other scenes in the film.

To that degree it works. Still, LaSalle is right, too. And it struck me that director James Gray might have been better off utilizing a trick from the silent film age. After Leonard and Michelle share their awkward kiss, he could have cut to an intertitle reading: “And then they fucked.”


Etcetera
It’s easy to forget that Kristen Stewart is only 18. Given the poise of her character in Panic Room she seemed about that old in 2002. Watching Stewart's recent appearance on Jimmy Kimmel’s show, I was struck by Stewart’s smarts (she’s clever) and her youth (she vibrates in her chair like a kid waiting to be excused from the dinner table). It’s going to be interesting to watch her career develop to see if the Twilight series proves to be her breakthrough or her undoing . . . Quick plug for the “Counting Down the Zeros” project going on over at Film for the Soul. If you want to write (or read) about films from the past decade, in monthly celebrations, that’s the place for you . . . Did you know that David Lean wanted to film a sequence for Lawrence Of Arabia at Petra, the site later made cinematically famous by Indiana Jones & The Last Crusade? I learned that today in Tom Stempel’s latest “Understanding Screenwriting” column over at The House Next Door.


Editor’s Note
A word about the format. This is the first of what will be regular Notebook features here at The Cooler. How regular? It’ll vary, as will the style. From the beginning, I’ve had one hard rule about blogging: post only what I’d want to read. If that means I’m the only one who wants to read it, so be it. If that means that I go two weeks without a new post, so be it. The point is, I’ve strived to keep The Cooler a filler-free zone. But with the demands of the day job only increasing of late, I’m often finding it tough to sit down and write at length (due to lack of time or energy, or both), and sometimes I'm struggling just to get to the movies I want to see (still haven’t been to Watchmen yet). As a result, many little ideas that I might have enjoyed developing into something more are drifting away unexpressed and unexplored. Not good. I’m hoping that the Notebook series will allow me to satisfy my blogging urges even in the busiest of times. Even more, I hope that the items I post here will spark reactions from my readers. Expect to encounter some highlighted notes on movies, some mini reviews, some tales of movie-going and perhaps even notes on sports, politics, life, whatever.

Shades of Gray: Two Lovers

The main character in Two Lovers, an only child named Leonard, lives at home with his parents in a messy room. Leonard’s mother lectures him about leaving wet towels on the floor and tries to keep an eye on her son by getting on her hands and knees and peering through the crack underneath his door. When company comes over, the parents stay at the dinner table and talk while the visiting daughter, Sandra, joins Leonard in his room, sitting on his bed and looking at pictures. Leonard is awkward. Sandra likes that. She has a crush on Leonard that he returns on instinct. But Leonard also has eyes for a cute blonde he’s just met named Michelle who lives in his family’s apartment building, across the courtyard. At night Leonard sits in the darkness of his room and looks toward Michelle’s window, hoping to see her undressed. If this makes the love triangle at the center of Two Lovers sound childish, that’s because it can be. But James Gray’s latest picture is also an intelligent and mature drama, and the balance of these seemingly mutually exclusive moods is what makes the film so interesting, and so genuine.

Two Lovers reveals that there’s nothing necessarily grown-up about attraction. Leonard, played by a muddy-mouthed Joaquin Phoenix, is something of a modern Terry Malloy. He isn’t stupid, just simple. He isn’t shy, just solitary. He isn’t lost, just aimless. Leonard suffers from bipolar disorder, or depression, and maybe more. He’s locked in a state of arrested development that he’s either too unable or too uninterested to outgrow. It is said that Leonard has been living back at home for just a few months, and that’s believable, and yet it remains possible that he’s been there on and off for years, maybe all his life. Sandra, played with charm by Vanessa Shaw, is drawn to Leonard’s vulnerability – a human quality that isn’t easily faked. Sandra is pretty, and we imagine that there are lots of men who desire her, but she wants someone who needs her. That’s Leonard. Trouble is, Leonard is convinced that he is needed by Michelle (Gwyneth Paltrow), who is delicate, dangerous and just the kind of shiksa that would make his mother nervous.

The above details are things we learn over time, and often we’re just guessing. Gray co-wrote the screenplay with Ric Menello, and his film leaves considerable room for interpretation. That’s the whole idea. Two Lovers routinely plays with our expectations, sometimes satisfying them, sometimes defying them, sometimes leaving us stranded in between. It’s an apt approach for this material as it reflects the uncertainty of the characters themselves; they are reading one another for clues, and we are reading them. Consequently, not a single character satisfies our first impressions – not even the earnest Sandra, whose grounded affection for the troubled Leonard seems too good to be true, until over time Sandra proves to be just as good and just as true as she appears. Imagine that. Meanwhile, Leonard turns out to be more vibrant than his suicidal introduction would suggest. Michelle is more troubled and less secure than the confident woman who Leonard finds in the hallway. Leonard’s mother, played to perfection by Isabella Rossellini, proves to be surprisingly trusting, in her own way. And Michelle’s married lover (Elias Koteas) might be an upstanding gentleman after all. Or maybe not.

These characters can’t be bottled, and Gray doesn’t begin to try. Two Lovers is less a character examination than a character meditation. Its scenes are allowed breathe, its characters are allowed live. There’s no rush to get anywhere, because there’s nowhere more interesting to go. Gray’s film lives in the moment, letting the moment speak for itself. The characters are neither exalted nor reviled, they just are. Gray isn’t playing games with the audience. Instead his story reflects life by devolving as often as it evolves. By the end of the film there’s no question that Leonard has been shaped by his experiences, but underneath it all he’s remained the same person all along. It’s to the film’s credit that we can imagine either Sandra or Michelle being the right (or wrong) woman for Leonard. Two Lovers suggests that the bond of love has less to do with what we see in others than with what we allow others to see in us.

Two Lovers is one of too many movies to be set in and around New York (Brooklyn, specifically), but it’s one of the few that truly inhabits the place. The sets feel lived-in, particularly Leonard’s home, with its hallway full of old family pictures. When Michelle enters the place for the first time and says that it smells of moth balls, you might find yourself nodding in agreement, as if we can smell it too. Leonard’s room, meanwhile, is disheveled in the kind of way that suggests he’s never quite moved back in or that he never really left. Leonard says he’s been there just for a few months, just like he says his previous girlfriend left him a few years ago over health concerns that rendered them unable to have children. And these stories might be true. Or maybe instead of giving us Leonard’s backstory, Gray’s film is giving us a window into Leonard’s delusions. It’s somewhat fitting actually that Phoenix’s bearded, rambling promotional tour for this film has Americans wondering whether he’s lost himself to drugs or is just experimenting with some kind of performance art. In Two Lovers, things are rarely as straightforward as they seem.

The one thing that’s inarguable here is the quality of the acting from Phoenix to Moni Moshonov, who plays Leonard’s father. Shaw is enchanting as Sandra. Paltrow is understatedly fantastic as Michelle. And Phoenix turns in arguably the best performance of his career, in what might be the final performance of his career, should he hold true to his recent retirement announcement. (Let’s hope not.) The characters these actors create are forthright and naked and yet elusive and mysterious. They are as interesting at the end of the film as they are at the beginning. Yes, these characters make poor decisions. They exhibit desperation. They say the wrong things. They lie to the people who love them. They lie to themselves. What’s more real than that? Two Lovers is a film not to be taken at face value. That’s precisely what makes it honest.

Pungent: Perfume: The Story Of A Murderer

[Following up the review of The International, The Cooler offers the following review, written upon the film’s release in the author’s pre-blog era.]

Near the beginning of Tom Tykwer’s Perfume: The Story Of A Murderer, there’s a sequence of images so repulsive that you’ll have to beware your gag reflex. Fish heads, entrails, blood, maggots and filth – all delivered to us rapid-fire – make up the environment that sees the birth of Jean-Baptiste Grenouille. The location is Paris. The time is somewhere in the 18th Century. And the collective visual assault on the senses is so overwhelming that it might inspire you to cover your mouth and plug your nose. Which of course is precisely the point.

Based on a 1980 novel by Patrick Suskind, Perfume is a mesmerizing thriller about a man’s dark romance with his superhuman sense of smell. Jean-Baptiste, played in adulthood by Ben Whishaw, can detect the scent of a woman from around a corner. He can even pick up the aroma of glass. And were he to go wine tasting with Sideways’ Miles Raymond, Jean-Baptiste would be able to distinguish not just the scent of a nutty Edam cheese but the stench of the hand that had plucked the grapes.

Jean-Baptiste’s skill is a blessing and a curse, both to the man and to the movie about him. For Jean-Baptiste, his unparalleled talent takes him out of the slums and to the nape of the upper crust, but it also leads him on a murderous rampage. For Perfume, Jean-Baptiste’s immense olfactory ability provides the elements for one of the most unique characters in cinema history, while rendering him a challenge to portray cinematically. After all, how does a filmmaker let an audience identify with a character who identifies with the world around him solely through smell?

If the filmmaker is Tykwer, he does so by ramping up the visuals and targeting images we associate with odors: a fish market, a mound of flowers and a woman’s sweet scented hair. After enough of these are processed, we begin to smell the world through Jean-Baptiste’s nose as if the theater were equipped with AromaRama or Smell-O-Vision, the two disastrous late-1950s experiments in cinema “scent-tracking.” And what a world it is! Jean-Baptiste’s unquenchable urge to bottle beauty leads him to murder women so he can capture their scent: basting their naked bodies in animal fat, wrapping them up to marinate and then extracting their oils from the fat.

It’s a gruesome process, but Jean-Baptiste carries out his task without pause, and that’s part of what makes this 147-minute movie – at least 20 minutes too long – so intoxicating. Like Hannibal Lecter, Jean-Baptiste is an artist of evil. We are drawn to him and repulsed by his actions in equal measure. As the young beauties of Grasse begin to die almost one a night, we fear for those like the virginal Laura (Rachel Hurd-Wood) and yet we never quite reach the point where we want Jean-Baptiste stopped – not before he completes his masterpiece. With John Hurt providing a charming storybook narration to go with Frank Griebe’s succulent cinematography, Perfume inhales us. It’s a movie that goes to the depths of putrid evil and comes up smelling like roses.

World Weary: The International

I have no idea what The International is about. I mean, I do. I understand that its plot centers on an Interpol agent and an assistant district attorney from New York who are investigating the illicit practices of a multinational bank that deals in weapons and coups in order to profit from the inevitable debt of war. That makes sense. Where I get lost is in trying to determine why someone thought this would make for a scintillating movie – beyond providing an excuse to stage an elaborate shootout in the Guggenheim Museum, that is. Starring Clive Owen, Naomi Watts and some picturesque cityscapes from around the world, The International dresses itself up as something worthy of our attention, but as with Faberge eggs or Ryan Seacrest, there’s no substance beyond the style. Even worse, there isn’t much style.

It’s the last part that cuts deepest. The International is directed by Tom Tykwer, who in 1998 burst into the American consciousness with the electric fight for love that is Run, Lola, Run and who recently directed one of the three most memorable vignettes of Paris, Je t’aime, plus the overlooked (if far from perfect) Perfume: The Story Of A Murderer. In these instances, Tykwer’s compositions have been vibrant and evocative if not always grand. Here it’s something of the reverse. Armed with what must be the biggest budget of his career, Tykwer cashes in with some striking long-shots of Lyon, Milan and Istanbul, to name a few, but his architectural ogling fails to achieve emotional resonance. Saddled with a muddled and limp screenplay by Eric Singer that is aching for an infusion of Tykwer’s unhinged virtuosity, the director plays it safe precisely when he should take a chance, coming off like a filmmaker desperate to prove to the Hollywood suits that he can button up and march to orders.

The result isn’t a tragic film – The International is too blah to be truly offensive – it’s a missed opportunity. Singer’s screenplay is so marginally interesting, so lacking in personality and so reliant upon clichés that The International might never have been more than just OK. Still, few filmmakers have proved as adept as Tykwer at getting a lot out of a little. His 5-minute Paris, Je t’aime chapter plays in memory as if it must be three times that length, given all the story that his hyper editing manages to pack into it. Run, Lola, Run, meanwhile, is notable for repeatedly covering the same ground over its 80 minutes without ever failing to reinvent the material. By contrast, nothing about The International feels inventive or even energetic. The Guggenheim shootout is compelling in the way it takes a tranquil environment and reveals it to be fit for a cinematic showdown, thrillingly repurposing the landmark the way Alfred Hitchcock did with Mt. Rushmore in North By Northwest. But even that showstopper is somewhat of a disappointment. When the highest compliment I can extend to the choreography of the Guggenheim sequence is to give thanks to what it isn’t – an overly chaotic brain freeze shot by Paul Greengrass and edited by Christopher Nolan – it suggests to me that kudos belong mostly to Frank Lloyd Wright.

I’d like to believe that Tykwer’s urban panoramas amount to more than architecture porn, but I fail to find a much deeper meaning. In North By Northwest, the location-hopping has the effect of establishing (and then reestablishing) Roger Thornhill’s vulnerability. Cary Grant’s Thornhill goes from being an anonymous ant in New York’s concrete jungle to being the target of a nefarious operation so widespread that he cannot escape it by plane, train or automobile. It seems Tykwer would like to believe that his frequent shots of towering buildings similarly demonstrate how the International Bank for Business and Credit (IBBC) has the entire globe in an anaconda-like squeeze. Trouble is, The International works against itself, putting a far from magnificent face on its otherwise anonymous evil, thereby neutering the potency of both. (We’re supposed to tremble at Ulrich Thomsen’s Jonas Skarssen? Really?)

What the globetrotting and location-worshiping of The International is in fact designed to do is to confuse the audience into believing that interesting visuals equate an interesting plot and that moving the story geographically is the same thing as advancing it dramatically. It isn’t. The Bourne movies have made a habit of setting their action in tour-guide-worthy locales, but in those instances the exotic locations are the icing on the cake. Jason Bourne will run over rooftops in his frantic pursuits regardless, so he might as well run over rooftops in scenic Tangier; it’s a win-win. Strip away the lush vistas and we’d still watch Bourne run. Not so with The International, in which the icing is spread on thick in hopes of obscuring the blandness of Singer’s cake. In this film, what’s interesting to look at is the only thing that is interesting.

The rule extends to the cast, too. Owen and Watts provide a combination of swagger and sexiness that camouflages their characters’ insipidness. As dull as The International often is, it would be even worse with recent Oscar nominees Richard Jenkins and Melissa Leo in the starring roles, which isn’t as misplaced an observation as you might think. After all, Owen’s Louis Salinger is supposed to be some kind of office man, according to the plot, which I think means that he wouldn’t be the type to pick up a discarded Uzi and reflexively provide cover fire during the Guggenheim sequence. But maybe that’s the way desk guys at Interpol roll. In any case, Salinger is about as action-heroic as they get, right down to the pet babe at his heels who doesn’t have any responsibilities beyond looking pretty and being someone with whom Salinger can exchange inane dialogue. To Tykwer’s credit (I think), the director makes every effort to make Watts relevant, but eventually it becomes ridiculous. In one late scene, Tykwer repeatedly cuts away from a Salinger interrogation of Armin Mueller-Stahl’s Wilhelm Wexler – as scintillating a piece of drama as there is in the entire film – to show Watts’ Eleanor Whitman observing the action through a small window. “Yes,” the cutaways silently scream, “Naomi Watts is still in this movie!”

Now that I think about it, maybe silent screaming is the way to go, because overt communication is hardly The International’s strength. Singer’s screenplay includes cliché groaners like “What was that back there?” and “Don’t talk to me about procedure and protocol!” and “Make sure he wasn’t killed for nothing!” Its “dramatic” conclusion includes the inside man sneaking away from the villain at Istanbul’s ancient Souleymaniye Mosque by asking, “Is there a bathroom I can use?” Of course, even that isn’t as preposterous as the story’s one-legged assassin who knows to turn away from security cameras but fails to realize that wearing a designer prosthetic that leaves (you guessed it!) a distinct and rare footprint might not be such a hot idea. Then again, maybe the assassin was trying to make a bold statement, which is more than I can say for Tykwer.

The Eyes of March

The Cooler will get back up to speed in the week ahead. In the meantime, here are 15 celebrations of cinematic eyes – some more famous than others – from 15 different films.

Revisiting My Inner Fanboy: Revenge Of The Sith

[Everyone is talking about Watchmen right now. At least, I think they are. Up until this week it’s seemed as if everyone has been talking about how “everyone is talking about Watchmen,” with no one actually talking about Watchmen. But I’m buried with work at my day job (you know, the paying gig), so maybe I’m wrong. In any case, a lot of Watchmen fans are going to be really excited or really upset this weekend. And that got me thinking about my review of Revenge Of The Sith, which is mostly about my relationship with the Star Wars series. Here it is, as written upon the film’s release.]

Revenge Of The Sith, George Lucas’ sixth and final Star Wars film (and the third tale episodically), begins with the kind of frenetic action sequences that typified its prequel predecessors. First there’s an aerial dogfight, complete with parasitic droids, and then there’s a collection of scenes in which Jedi swashbucklers Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi terminate dozens of mechanical foes with a few easy swings of their light sabers.

To those whose Star Wars allegiance leans toward the nonstop action and digital frenzy of 1999’s The Phantom Menace and 2002’s Attack Of The Clones, these early scenes in Sith will inspire a familiar excitement. But for the rest of us, especially those like me who grew up on the original trilogy, the first 20 minutes of Sith are nothing more than a painful reminder of unrealized promise, of wasted opportunity, of a bygone age, of a world we once loved a very long time ago, in what might as well have been a galaxy far, far away.

Officially, we 70s-born children of Baby Boomers are considered Generation X, but it would be just as appropriate to call us Generation Star Wars. For so many my age, Episodes IV-VI weren’t just movies of our youth, they were our youth, or at least a significant portion. Take me. I was born less than five months before the original Star Wars debuted. I was 3 when my dad took me to see The Empire Strikes Back, and when I turned 6, I celebrated my birthday and the upcoming Return Of The Jedi with an R2-D2 cake.

I had all the toys: the action figures and the gear that held them – Han Solo’s Millennium Falcon, Luke Skywalker’s X-Wing, and the Empire’s Tie Fighters. I went to school wearing a red backpack with Yoda’s visage on the flap and the phrase “May the Force be with you” above it. So powerful was the grip of Star Wars on our imaginations that in the third grade, more than two years after Return Of The Jedi debuted, my championship soccer team was nicknamed the Ewoks.

The movies remained, and still remain, fresh in our minds because my generation obsessed over these films in a way previous generations never could. It wasn’t that we had greater passion, just greater access. So far as I know, I’ve never once seen the original cut of the original Star Wars in a movie theater, and yet I’d venture to guess that I’ve watched that movie more than any other; my Star Wars fandom is due as much to the invention of the VCR as to the movies themselves.

We got our first VCR before I was in the first grade, and I can still remember the Christmas it arrived. It was silver and black, a heavy monster of a thing. Instead of the front-loading designs of today, tapes were inserted into a tray that popped up from the top of the machine. This beast worked in some form or another until my senior year of high school, at which point it became a 30-pound clock in my bedroom until I saved enough money to buy a replacement before I left for college.

Not surprisingly, the first tape I owned was the original Star Wars. It arrived the same Christmas as that enormous VCR, and in my mother’s memory the tape and the VCR set back Santa Claus more than $100 and $1,000, respectively. For that kind of money these days someone could buy the entire original Star Wars trilogy on DVD, a DVD player to play it, a TV to watch it on and still have more than $500 left over. And yet on a pay-per-view scale I’m not sure I’ve ever had a movie come at such a bargain.

By the time I was a teenager, still wearing out my individually-collected Star Wars tapes, my love for the films had hardly dimmed. In high school, completely by accident, I found multiple friends who had grown up loving the movies as I had. Together we not only enjoyed the series as it existed but traded “what-might-have-been” tales about the three episodes before our trilogy and the three episodes after that Lucas had outlined on paper but seemed unwilling to put to screen. You can only imagine our excitement a few years later when word spread that Lucas would not only film Episodes I-III but would repackage the original trilogy for rerelease on the big screen, too.

When Lucas’ tricked-up version of Episode IV hit theaters in 1997, I was attending Washington State University. Sleepy Pullman didn’t have enough screens to take a chance on a rerun, so a friend and I made the trek to Spokane (90 minutes away) to find a theater where it was playing. A few years later, back home in Oregon for the summer, I celebrated the release of Episode I – The Phantom Menace by waiting in line for seven hours to get a ticket opening day; an activity that was followed shortly thereafter by a two-hour wait to get good seats.

Despite, or maybe because of, my upbringing, I did my best to temper my expectations for the prequels. I reminded myself that Lucas hadn’t made a Star Wars film – or any movie for that matter – for more than 15 years. I noted that at the age of 22, I was far more likely to be critical of Lucas’ work than I had been in my youth, when the odyssey was warmly welcomed with blind acceptance. But these attempts at reserve were futile. I chucked them out the window the moment I read “a long time ago” and heard those trumpeting first notes of John Williams’ score. Suddenly, I was a kid again. The only problem was that The Phantom Menace and Attack Of The Clones didn’t live up to my childhood memories. Not even close.

Looking back, the faults of Menace and Clones are more or less the same. Lucas went heavy on goofy bits like Jar Jar Binks, armed with the claim that he was making a kids’ movie, but at the same time he created characters that did nothing but ramble about politics in conversations so obscure that even adults struggled to follow along. The fantasy landscapes that were so vital to the success of the original trilogy were once again given great attention in the prequels, but, at the technology-friendly turn of the century, Lucas’ full submergence into CGI gave the environs fantastic detail but also a sort of weightless, lifeless quality. Equally dead was the dialogue, which reduced talented actors like Liam Neeson, Ewan McGregor and Natalie Portman to zombie-like monotone. Then there were the action sequences, which in terms of glitz and firepower put the original series to shame, but which were so frequent, so accelerated and so chaotic that they were frequently incomprehensible and infrequently exhilarating.

The Phantom Menace, undermined by Jar Jar and a now notorious “Yippee!” by Jake Lloyd (as young Anakin), is highlighted by two thrilling sequences: Anakin’s pod race and the three-man light saber face-off pitting Kenobi and his Jedi master Qui-Gon Jinn against the awesome-looking Darth Maul. Those scenes didn’t inspire in me the same kind of excitement as the original trilogy, but they were enough that I saw the movie in the theater three times and bought the episode on DVD, if only to keep my Star Wars library intact.

Menace had some rough spots, I recognized that from the start, but I gave it a positive review on the grounds that it was a serviceable beginning to a vast saga, and because I figured that with his bookends set Lucas would rebound with a more focused Episode II. Instead, Attack Of The Clones continued the series’ regression. It’s a film void of redeeming qualities, with special effects that seem thin, a love story that is flat and action sequences that are either dull (Jedi vs. droids), cliché (the assembly-line misadventure) or ridiculous (Yoda vs. Count Dooku). I saw it once, hated it and refuse to see it again. Ever.

And so it was that this year, at the age of 28, I approached Revenge Of The Sith with mixed emotions. Talking to me in one ear was the optimist, believing that Lucas would finally see the light and breathe some life back into the series and his legacy. But in the other ear was the cynic, telling me that as bad as Clones had been, Sith could be even worse. The optimist assured me that the series would end on a high note. The pessimist said that I was stupid for ever hoping to see the prequels on screen, and that a clunker of a conclusion was the price I would pay for wanting to have my cake and eat it too.

I was so nervous that Revenge Of The Sith would flop that as the movie began I might as well have been covering my face with my hands and looking at the screen through parted fingers. With Attack Of The Clones all too fresh in my mind, gone were my hopes for the extraordinary. Now, as if watching a future-Hall of Fame baseball player, years past his prime, limping to the plate for his final at bat, I just hoped the film wouldn’t strike out and embarrass itself.

Sadly, for its first 20 minutes Sith takes home-run swings and gets nothing but air. Filling the screen are those predictable action sequences with swarming droids being cut to pieces by Jedi so effortlessly that you wonder why Lucas even bothers to show it. Back in Episode I, these scenes were meant to showcase the Jedi’s immeasurable talent and the droids’ inefficiency, but they quickly grew pointless (and redundant). Having Obi-Wan take on a battle droid is like sending John Wayne into a duel against an unarmed little girl. It’s such a mismatch that it isn’t worth watching.

Equally hollow is the continuing love affair between Anakin (Hayden Christiansen) and Padme (Natalie Portman), a couple with less romantic chemistry than C-3PO and R2-D2, or even Luke and Leia, who are brother and sister. From the start, the whole point of the prequels has been to chronicle the metamorphosis of a good-natured Anakin into an evil Darth Vader. Yet through two full episodes and almost a half-hour of the third, Anakin’s story arc is as flat as the desert of Tatooine. From the beginning, he has talent and knows it. He wants to be accepted by the Jedi council but is consistently denied. Several times throughout the prequels, Anakin steps before his fellow Jedi to demand some respect. He speaks calmly at first but then with a flash of anger. And since the second Jedi tenet – after the one about serving others – is to speak as if sedated, Samuel L. Jackson’s Mace Windu always reacts to Anakin’s mild temper tantrums by looking around the room with a pained and bewildered expression on his face as if he’s caught a whiff of a fart and is trying to determine its source.

I was beginning to wonder how many times Lucas could recreate this scene before the end of Sith when, midway through my calculations, an interesting thing began to happen. With each passing minute, as the storyline of Episode III drifted closer to that of Episode IV, Lucas’ treatment of the series underwent a similar shift. As if caught in the Death Star’s tractor beam, Lucas, perhaps against his own will, began to tell the Star Wars legend the way he had in the first place, as a simple mystical tale of good versus evil that is highlighted by special effects but not expressly about them.

Ironically, or maybe not, Lucas’ turn toward the light parallels Anakin’s turn toward the Dark side. The change begins with the scene in which Supreme Chancellor Palpatine – who all Star Wars devotees have long known is really Darth Sidious in disguise – begins to coax Anakin toward evil with a fable about Darth Plageus the Wise, who learned how to keep those he loved from dying but who could not protect himself from being slain by his apprentice. The way Palpatine tells the story smacks of the original trilogy, not just because the actor doing the talking, Ian McDiarmid, is the only human player from the original series to have a significant role in the prequels, but also because the Palpatine’s tale is meant to allude to the fable Obi-Wan tells Luke in Episode IV about the way Darth Vader “murdered” Luke’s father.

By making this allusion, Lucas does something that he might not even realize. He slows down. True, this scene could hardly be considered long or drawn out when compared to movies outside the Star Wars saga, but within it, and especially within the prequels, this patient, steady conversation stands out like a wookiee in a room full of jawas. And it’s remarkable what a difference it makes.

Except for his complex action sequences, Lucas’ prequel films have been chockfull of miniscule scenes of throwaway dialogue that at best move the plot from point to point but almost never do anything to evoke – forget about develop – a sense of character or even a mood. Up until Palpatine’s chat with Anakin, there’s almost nothing about the prequel characters that we didn’t know from the backstories of the original trilogy. But here, Palpatine, who as the Emperor in the original trilogy wasn’t much more than a figurehead, starts to become perhaps the most richly-painted character of the early films, and McDiarmid’s contribution to that is not to be overlooked.

The other character from the original trilogy who finds new life in Sith is Yoda. A puppet in the early days, Yoda here is a digital creation that’s as lifelike as a little green, pointy-eared creature ever could be. Some of that has to do with our growing acceptance of CGI, and some of it has to do with improvements to the craft. But like Lord Of The Rings’ Gollum before him, Yoda takes life not only from outstanding artwork but from the script that treats him as an equal character.

When Yoda and Sidious come face to face – make that face to knee – they engage in what is easily one of the best duels of the prequels, or even the Star Wars series at large. At last, it’s a battle with a hint of mystery, as we know that neither opponent will back down but that both must live. Nearly as exciting is the final confrontation between Anakin and Obi-Wan. It’s overdone and overlong, but it effectively explains the roots of Anakin’s physical transformation into Darth Vader, which is as significant as the spiritual one.

Speaking of spiritual transformations, what’s so surprising about Revenge Of The Sith is that Lucas doesn’t settle for just having the plot of Episode III line up with that of Episode IV. Although a little too late, Lucas actually does his best to make the final transition between the prequels and original trilogy as seamless as possible. Episode III’s final half-hour is full of allusions to the original Star Wars episode, and twice Lucas even uses – gasp! – actual, physical sets from the first film! Obviously there’s a tremendous amount of potential for CGI sets, both for the director, who can save money by filming against a green screen, and for moviegoers, who can be treated to fantasy worlds that can’t be built with bricks and mortar. For the moment, however, real still looks real and digital still looks fake by comparison. For proof, watch the scene set inside Bail Organa’s ship – the one that the Empire famously attacks at the beginning of Episode IV – and notice how the light reflects off the white walls of that set to give it depth, compared to any of the hundreds of scenes Lucas shot against digital backdrops, which are always exhaustively detailed but disappointingly two-dimensional.

Lucas has made his fame off of technology, but if he hadn’t been so dedicated to digital his prequels would have been enhanced, even with the same actors, the same plot and that same repugnant dialogue. Until a CGI-heavy yet emotional drama comes along to prove otherwise, I remain convinced that having actors constantly working against a green screen damages their performances. First, it hinders their ability to soak up the mood of the scene; just like a costume can feed the personality of a character, so can the surroundings. Second, CGI virtually eliminates the chance for any “happy accidents” or improvisation, because almost every shot needs to be storyboarded. Third, when acting for someone like Lucas, who’s stubbornly dependent on green screen, actors have almost nothing to do.

Think about that. How many scenes during the Star Wars prequels are nothing more than two characters talking to one another while walking down a hallway? The characters don’t sit down because there aren’t any chairs in the room. They don’t pick up a magazine because there’s no coffee table. They certainly don’t do anything as mundane as prepare a meal (as Aunt Beru does near the beginning of Episode IV), because that would require multiple physical props that would have to rest in an physical kitchen set. Thus the actors just walk and talk. And while that’s all they’re asked to do, it’s also all that it seems they do. No wonder Lucas’ dialogue is so limp.

Nitpicking aside, however, Revenge Of The Sith is a triumph: focused, intense, funny and dark (it’s the only Star Wars film to be rated PG-13, and while blood is rare the rating is deserved). Sith is the best movie of the prequel trilogy by a landslide, and probably the third-best Star Wars movie overall, ahead of Return Of The Jedi, which benefits from the momentum of its predecessors, an advantage Sith didn’t have.

It seems now that Lucas just needed a two-film warm-up to get in the zone, and I wonder whether he sees what I do: that the storylines for Episodes I and II should have been condensed and combined; that Revenge Of The Sith should have been the second film of the prequel series, ending abruptly, ominously, with the first mechanical breath – that chilling, awesome breath – taken by the helmeted Darth Vader; and that the third film should have showed Vader in his villainous prime.

Still, I give Lucas credit. Twenty-eight years growing up with Star Wars and I’m excited again. Twenty-eight years, and I’m back wanting more – a thought that was unimaginable to me when I walked out of Episode II. The wonderful thing this time is that “more Star Wars” is a surefire treat. The next steps in the saga take me home, to those old VHS tapes, to that original trilogy that suddenly seems new again, to the movies I’ll love forever and that made me love movies.

Queue It Up: Half Nelson

[The Class and Half Nelson are stories about struggling teachers. That’s where their similarities end. The Cooler offers the following review, written upon the film’s release in the author’s pre-blog era.]

“One thing doesn’t make a man.” That’s what Dan Dunne, a teacher and basketball coach at a Brooklyn middle school, says one night to Drey, one of his students and players. A short while ago, Dan was ejected from a game for arguing with an official, but that isn’t what he’s referring to. The incident on Dan’s mind happened several weeks ago, when Drey found her teacher in the women’s bathroom getting high – a crack pipe in his hand, a dazed look on his face. At the time Dan and Drey exchanged apologies and pretended not to notice the elephant in the room as it stomped around them. But now, in the silence of the car, the elephant begins to trumpet words unsaid, and Dan can’t ignore it any longer. As he searches for the words to express how he feels, it’s difficult to tell whether Dan is attempting to justify his previous behavior to Drey or to himself. Probably both.

This is Half Nelson, a wonderful film by newcomers Ryan Fleck and Anne Boden that takes a hotshot young white teacher, Ryan Gosling’s Dan, and a tough black student, Shareeka Epps’ Drey, and pits them against one another in a battle of wills. If that overview makes Half Nelson sound like too many other schoolhouse dramas you’ve seen before, rest assured that it isn’t. This isn’t Dangerous Minds or Stand And Deliver. This isn’t the story of a dedicated teacher who turns slackers into scholars. Dan is often motivated, but there’s no evidence to suggest that he’s an outstanding instructor. Straying from the school curriculum, he attempts to teach dialectics to eighth-graders who would struggle just to spell it. In the students’ blank expressions we can see that they don’t quite understand, and yet Dan’s energy piques their curiosity. They can tell he cares, and so they sit quietly and listen.

Drey is among these taciturn souls. She is average. At least, she seems to be. If Drey is especially gifted in class or on the basketball court, the movie never reveals it. Her unlikely friendship with Dan is the product of chance (the bathroom incident) and a broken home. Drey’s father is absent. Her brother is in jail for dealing drugs. Her mom works long hours as an EMT. That’s why Drey is drifting through the school that night when the other girls have gone home. She has nowhere to go, and no one to help her get there. Dan can relate. His addiction renders him equally alone and adrift. Dan and Drey are two people who never knew how much they needed a friend until they got one.

Their relationship takes on the tenets of dialectics. Dan and Drey are opposites, pushing against one another. Dan is supposed to be the leader, the guiding light, order among chaos, but his addiction neuters his ability to be a role model. Drey, who is being looked after by her brother’s drug-dealing friend Frank (Anthony Mackie), is supposed to be the one perilously on the edge, desperately in need of help, and yet she’s as grounded as a rock. Pushing against one another – by what they stand for more so than what they say – their friendship leads to turning points: the night Drey questions Dan at his apartment; the night Dan objects to Frank taking Drey home; and other moments I won’t reveal. Slowly their lives change, not in circles but in spirals. The question is: are Dan and Drey spiraling upward or down?

Half Nelson isn’t something you’d categorize as a “surprising” movie, but you never know where it’s going. It’s positively alive, moving in a direction but without direction. The cinematography, consisting largely of close-ups, features a camera that is often on the move, occasionally losing focus to illustrate Dan’s turbulent mental state. Twice the film employs parallel editing to tremendous effect. First, when Dan has dinner with a fellow teacher (Monique Curnen’s Isabel) while Drey digs into her mother’s cosmetics to explore her femininity. Later, when Dan’s wine-chugging upper-class family demonstrates the ills of substance abuse while Drey, fast becoming Frank’s apprentice, explores the gains.

This film doesn’t glorify substance abuse, nor does it vilify its victims. In one of the film’s most poignant scenes, Dan meets his ex-girlfriend in a park. Back when they dated, they used drugs together. Now she’s clean and moving on with her life. In his ex, Dan sees someone he loves and used to be close with. He also sees someone he can no longer understand. Like his ex, Dan has tried rehab, but it doesn’t work for him. At least, that’s what he tells himself. When you’re an addict, excuses are everywhere, and Dan is all too eager to buy into his illusions. The only time he struggles to validate his habit is around Drey. Leading her to drugs would be as inconceivable to Dan as giving them up himself.

Such honesty of character is the Half Nelson’s beauty – owed to brilliant performances from Gosling, Epps and Mackie. This picture serves as my introduction to Gosling, and the experience of watching him was akin to an awakening, reminding me of the first time I saw Russell Crowe in L.A. Confidential. Gosling is nothing short of mesmerizing. He doesn’t chew the scenery, he is the scenery. Introverted or extroverted, Gosling’s Dan overwhelms us with this presence. It’s a cliché to say that a stunning new actor reminds of a young Marlon Brando, but here it’s true. As with Brando’s Terry Malloy in On The Waterfront, it’s as if I can a hear Dan thinking – as if a narrator were whispering voice-over monologues into my ear.

Epps’ performance doesn’t have the complexity of Gosling’s, but it’s similarly satisfying and unforced. Take note of the ease with which Drey breaks from her trademark scowl into a blinding smile. Then ask yourself: Which of those expressions is “acting”? Epps’ Drey comes off like a real schoolgirl who had a movie constructed around her. In such a fantasy, Frank would be the heavy, unequivocally evil. Instead, Mackie brings so much compassion to his performance that we can never quite vilify him. Frank is the stranger on the street corner looking at you with a gentle smile: we can’t tell whether he’s sinister or a softie. Maybe he can’t either.

Half Nelson’s final scene is a bit ambiguous, and for some it might seem downright incongruous. But I found it to be precise and fulfilling. Once again, Dan and Drey sit in the silence, this time at opposite ends of a couch, looking for the right words to bridge the gap. The message of this scene isn’t that things will change, it’s that things go on. Life keeps spiraling. Dan and Drey have encountered turning points. They have acted as one another’s opposing force. Maybe now they can just be friends.

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