jürgen fauth’s muckworld

We’ll be voting for the annual New York Film Critics Online awards tomorrow, and below is a round-up of all the last-minute watching and re-watching we crammed in. Instead of fabricating any more blurbs, is it ok if I just slap some star ratings on the titles and grab a few telling screen shots? Oh, good.

My best-of list for 2007 is almost done, too, but I’m waiting to see There Will Be Blood one more time before posting it.

• Atonement. ****
• Eastern Promises.****
• The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. ****
• Michael Clayton. ***
• Superbad. ***
• Into the Wild. ***
• Juno. ***
• Hairspray. **
• Gone Baby Gone. **

People who, like me, have seen too much:

Almost serviceable fantasy adventure based on the first book of Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy. On the plus side, some nifty ideas (people’s souls walk next to them in animal, or “daemon”, form), spiffy Victorian/steampunk designs, icy Nicole Kidman, and in the lead, an adorable girl (Dakota Blue Richards) with Sarah Polley eyes, trying to save her kidnapped brother. On the down side, it all feels terribly derivative, and most of the CGI isn’t up to 2007 standards — the roar and clang of a climactic ice bear smackdown had the theater cheering but the daemons especially look lousy.

Eva Green descends on a vibrating broomstick to spout fantasy gobbledigook, Sam Elliot and Daniel Craig don’t have much to do, and once you get past the peculiar specifics of Pullman’s world, the story never strays from familiar hero’s journey territory. One key moment is lifted directly from The Empire Strikes Back, a final battle restages Minas Tirith without any emotional investment, and the strained farewell doesn’t have half the rousing ring of the Sam Gamgee speeches it’s trying to emulate. Some of us thought it was a bathroom break, not the ending. There’s just enough talk of religion, authority, and free will to get me curious about the books’ purported atheist attitudes. Opens December 7.

The Golden Compass. Chris Weitz, 2007. **

The trailer:

The Assassination of Jesse James By the Coward Robert Ford
Dullsville and then some. Artfully shot, for sure, but ripping off Malick isn’t as easy as it looks. The voice-over narration, always describing what we already saw, doesn’t create openings but locks the movie down even more than the airless, repetitive scenes between paranoid outlaws. Sam Shepard disappears much too early, and soon thereafter, the drama completely stalls. After thirty minutes, I was begging for Casey Affleck to shoot Brad Pitt in the head already, but there were two more hours to go. Andrew Dominik, 2007. *

3:10 to Yuma
Now, this is how you do a western: engaging, exciting, and steeped in sepia tones. Russell Crowe plays a bandit who has to be brought to justice; Christian Bale is the one-legged stand-up guy to do it. Together with his performances in Rescue Dawn and I’m Not There, Bale is one of my favorite actors this year. James Mangold, 2007. ***

The Bucket List
The trailer for this movie is so hideous, we just had to check it out. Also, we might have been drunk. If Jack Nicholson throwing up in a hospital gown or jumping out of airplanes is your idea of fun, go right ahead. Sanctimonious Morgan Freeman is starting to get on my nerves. Rob Reiner, 2007. *

In Between Days
We had high hopes for this unassuming coming-of-age story about a Korean immigrant. I’m perfectly willing to stomach a slight story, mannered direction, or uncommunicative main characters — but if you heap them on top of each other, I’m probably already asleep. 83% on Rotten Tomatoes. So Yong Kim, 2007. *

The Brave One
Jodie Foster and Terrence Howard have what they call “good chemistry” in this surprisingly gripping tale of New York City revenge. Neil Jordan, 2007. ***

In the Valley of Elah
Worlds better than Crash, but that’s not saying much of anything. Tommy Lee Jones and Charlize Theron try to solve the murder of his son, an AWOL soldier on leave from Iraq. In the process, they discover all sorts of truths about important issues. See Redacted instead. Paul Haggis, 2007. **

Once
Every bit as lovely the second time around. I finally discovered the title in the film, and I have a new favorite line: “Can I bring my mother?” Marcy’s review. John Carney, 2007. ****

No Country for Old Men
Wildly overpraised. Yes, I can see the expert filmmaking here, but all the sumptuous cinematography and vivid attention to detail is lavished on a story full of walking cliches and a lousy third act. On second viewing, the glaring problems with both plot and character — what Marcy called “lack of soul” — are impossible to ignore. Llewelyn’s too foolish to care for, the Coens avert their gaze at the crucial moment, and Bell’s defeatist retread of Marge Gunderson leaves us with a dire moral: “you can’t stop what’s coming.” Oh well then. No Country wastes a lot of hard-boiled effort on a tale that ends with an Old Testament shrug. Joel and Ethan Coen, 2007. **

• Matt Zoller Seitz
• Glenn Kenny
• Jim Emerson
• Jonathan Rosenbaum
• Rotten Tomatoes: 95%

Robert Zemeckis’ high-tech “performance capture” adaptation of the Old English poem turns actors–Ray Winstone, Anthony Hopkins, Robin Wright Penn, John Malkovich, Angelina Jolie–into rubbery action figures. Only Crispin Glover, covered in a disgusting, festering texture, manages to infuse some sort of twisted soul into his Grendel. I saw this in 3-D, which is sorta groovy if you’ve taken some preventive aspirin, but it also further increases the sense of artificiality. The action sequences have all the excitement of a video game cut scene.

Beowulf is only one of a slew of recent movies that wouldn’t have been possible without The Lord of the Rings, and Zemeckis lifts dozens of shots directly from Peter Jackson. Of course, Tolkien in turn would be unthinkable without the Anglo-Saxon poem — and so we come full circle.

Long ago, in the Age of Heroes, I wrote an essay about “hyperfiction” that used the cheap carnival effects of early 3-D movies as metaphor for the teething troubles of a new form. I was tickled to see that even at this late stage, 3-D still means “Poles in Your Face,” along with all manners of swords, naked torsos, dripping saliva, and flaming arrows. It’s true that Neil Gaiman’s script manages to put a somewhat interesting spin on the original epic, but first and foremost, Beowulf is self-satisfied spectacle. I’d rather play God of War. Opens Friday.

Beowulf. Robert Zemeckis, 2007. **

• 300
• Beowulf and Grendel
• Beowulf at Rotten Tomatoes
• Wikipedia
• The trailer:

Squinting past giant “PROPERTY OF” watermarks one screener at a time in the annual quest to catch up with potentially award-worthy releases.

Waitress
It’s awful what happened to Adrienne Shelly but hasn’t the statue of limitations on uncritically praising her last movie expired by now? Even Marcy was much too kind. Adrienne Shelly, 2007. *

The Namesake
Generic-soapy family saga did nothing for this here immigrant, but Marcy was pleased. Directed by Mira Nair and based on the novel by Jhumpa Lahiri. Mira Nair, 2006. **

Great World of Sound
Inventive indie with hilarious & heartbreaking use of reality elements. We have a guest review by Jessica Pallington. Craig Zobel, 2007. ***

Talk To Me
Don Cheadle’s truth-talking DJ Petey Greene is one of the most ebullient characters on screen this year, and his duds are to kill for. Too slick and biopicky by half, though. Marcy dug it. Kasi Lemmons, 2007. ***

Bonus Viral Video
Neal Pollack’s The Landlord. “Do you understand what comedy is?”

A cheerleader confesses her lust for another girl with “I Wanna Hold Your Hand” while football players tackle each other in slow motion all around her. Bono is the walrus. A platoon of soldiers schleps Miss Liberty through the jungle to the tune of “She’s So Heavy,” and Eddie Izzard, surrounded by over-sized Blue Meanie puppets, becomes ringmaster Mr. Kite: this is Julie Taymor’s Beatles phantasmagoria, Across the Universe.

In the fashion of a Broadway jukebox musical, Taymor marries a familiar songbook to an even more familiar plot, lifted wholesale from Hair. Jude (Jim Sturgess), Lucy (Evan Rachel Wood), Max (Joe Anderson), Sadie (Dana Fuchs), and JoJo (Martin Luther McCoy) hit all the familiar stations of the Sixites: they drop out of college, they drop acid, fall in love, protest the war, hang out in the Village, burn their draft cards but are sent to Vietnam anyway, etc. etc. Whenever a Beatles tune can be shoehorned into the scene, they burst into song.

Some of the covers, many of them slowed down to ballads, are quite lovely, and in some of the more far-out setpieces, Taymor’s visual imagination thrills. But for every inspired moment, there are three flat-out embarrassing ones. The set-ups for the songs are so labored that you can’t ignore how arbitrary the entire project is. Oh my god, what’s wrong with our new friend Prudence? She locked herself in the bathroom and she won’t come out? Let’s sing a song for her! And what exactly is the point of setting “Strawberry Fields Forever” to images of the Vietnam War? Are you really dragging the assassination of Martin Luther King into this just so you can cue “While My Guitar Gently Weeps?”

The attention to Sixties detail and passing nods to cultural touchstones can be enjoyable (you have to be quick to see the striped shirt on Cowboy Neal or the mural on Leary’s house), but everything about Across the Universe feels canned and pre-digested. It’s candy-colored cute-weird without the threat, urgency, or madness of the truly weird-weird. It’s the counterculture domesticated, history defanged, and set to a catchy soundtrack. Yes, Across the Universe is slightly demented, but it’s not nearly demented enough.

Across the Universe. Julie Taymor, 2007. **

• Rotten Tomatoes: 52%
• The trailer:

Noah Baumbach can certainly write snappy dialogue that rings true, but after about half an hour, the characters’ limitations and the improbable storyline of his new family drama had me checking my watch. And what’s up with the bleached, underlit look? Marcy is writing the review for About.com; I’ve got more photos from the press conference with Nicole Kidman, Baumbach, Jennifer Jason Leigh, John Turturro, and Jim Hoberman on flickr.

Margot at the Wedding. Noah Baumbach, 2007. **

• Rotten Tomatoes
• The Squid and the Whale
• More from the New York Film Festival
  

I took a break from the festival today to catch up with reviews. Here’s a quick rundown:

I’m Not There
Todd Haynes’s Dylan picture only truly takes off when a Dylan song is playing, and that should tell you something. Cate Blanchett is great fun, but I liked her even better in tonight’s Elizabeth: The Golden Age. More on that soon — and I’ve got video of the press conference with Haynes, too.

Paranoid Park
I saw this strictly out of professional curiosity, and Gus van Sant did not disappoint: yet another artful bore.

The Man From London
Everybody seems to be digging out their favorite “on drugs” lines for this year’s NYFF, so here goes: The Third Man on Ambien.

Secret Sunshine
Once again, my festival favorite (at least so far) comes from South Korea. No distributor yet, but you can get Lee Chang-dong’s Oasis and Peppermint Candy on DVD.

I’m Not There. Todd Haynes, 2007. ***
Paranoid Park. Gus van Sant, 2007. *
The Man From London. Béla Tarr, 2007. ***
Milyang. Lee Chang-dong, 2007. *****