jürgen fauth’s muckworld

Pleasantly old-fashioned comedy about the world of mid-twenties pro-football featuring George Clooney and Renée Zellweger trading snappy dialogue like movie stars of yore. Speakeasy fisticuffs, big guys who knock the umpire into the mud, and a bogus war hero (John Krasinski) who also falls for the dame provide good-natured slapstick. Includes a bona fide newspaper headline montage, the judge from The Wire as first football commissoner, and Clooney/Zellweger riding an ancient motorbike with sidecar. One could do worse with an April studio movie. Opens Friday.

Leatherheads. George Clooney, 2008. ***

Since I’m behind the curve on most items in this Konsum roundup, the soundtrack for today’s post is provided by Talking Heads, performing “The Great Curve” in Rome in 1980. You can download a DVD of the entire show from Dimeadozen.

4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days
As apparently the last critic in New York City to see the freshly Academy-snubbed 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days, I don’t have much to add to the universal acclaim the film has garnered — only this: if you take a look at the Rotten Tomatoes page, you’ll see adjectives like “excruciating,” “harrowing,” “wearing,” “wrenching,” “bleak,” and “unblinking.” All of those fit, but it seems to me the terminology applied to blockbusters like The Bourne Ultimatum isn’t inappropriate, either: 4 Months is also an edge-of-your seat thriller.
4 luni, 3 saptamani si 2 zile. Cristian Mungiu, 2007. ****

Woman on the Beach
My favorite at NYFF06 — at least until INLAND EMPIRE showed up — is currently playing at Film Forum. Reason enough to take another look. Lo and behold, it’s still a wonderful film. J. Hoberman.
Haebyonui yoin. Hong Sang-soo, 2006. ****

The Duchess of Langeais
An About.com review of Rivette’s Balzac adaptation starring Jeanne Balibar and Guillaume Depardieu is forthcoming.
Ne touchez pas la hache. Jacques Rivette, 2007. ****

The Wire, Season 1
Yes, we’re ridiculously far behind, so I can barely participate in the conversation at this point. Anybody who’s been following this blog knows that I’m a sucker for structure, and The Wire’s intricate plot lines left my head spinning. Looking forward to catching up with the remaining four seasons, like, this weekend. ****

30 Rock
I love every single character on Tina Fey’s show, from Alec Baldwin’s head of TV and microwave programming to nutso Tracy Morgan and Kenneth the Page, and I haven’t seen a TV show that delivers as many smart laughs per minute since the first season of Arrested Development. 30 Rock makes me happy. ****

Californication
Thoroughly enjoyable HBO series about a sex-and-booze addicted writer (David Duchovny) who is still in love with his ex-wife (Natascha McElhone), and whose novel God Hates Us All was adapted into the “Tom and Katie” vehicle Crazy Little Thing Called Love. ***

Gregg Araki’s stoned follow-up to Mysterious Skin, playing now at the IFC Center and out on DVD in January, deserves a proper review on About.com. For now, a few screenshots to prove that Anna Faris’s fearless performance owns this movie the way Luisa Williams owned Day Night Day Night — only funnier. One girl’s buzzed screwball odyssey through L.A., Smiley Face had me laughing hard for the entire duration… until the most unforgivable ending since Yella ruins it all.

Smiley Face. Gregg Araki, 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%

Ray Ruby (Willem Dafoe with slicked back hair and a lucky leisure suit) runs a New York strip club where girls wearing g-strings and glitter gyrate to Grace Jones, but beneath the sleazy exterior beats the heart of a romantic. Ray Ruby’s got a dream: he wants his club to be a place where every kid gets a chance, where people take care of each other, and everybody has a good time. Between strip acts, he croons syrupy ballads. No wonder the place is called Ray Ruby’s Paradise.

But Paradise is in a spot of trouble. Ray has to contend with “shifting demographics,” the rent is in arrears, the dancers haven’t been paid, the obnoxious landlady (Sylvia Miles) wants to let Bed Bath & Beyond take over. During one hectic night, girls confess they’re pregnant, the tanning machine in the basement goes up in flames, and the gourmet cook feels under-appreciated. Owner Johnie Ruby (Matthew Modine), a “big shot hair dresser,” threatens to pull the plug but takes a minute for a quick back room dalliance with Monroe (Asia Argento), who specializes in on-stage acts with her Rottweiler. On top of it all, Ray has a gambling problem. It looks like he may have won the lottery, but he lost the damn ticket. No wonder he’s oozing desperation, no matter how radiant his sweaty smile.

With Go Go Tales, Abel Ferrara has made his first “intentional comedy,” telling stories of a bygone New York he recalled with relish at the NYFF post-screening press conference. Go Go Tales is a joyful mess. Not every gag works, not every character convinces, and most shots of the near-naked dancers are entirely gratuitous, but the film’s sensory overload and exploitative mood seem entirely appropriate for the subject matter, and Ferrara’s evident love for the world shines through even the most haphazardly improvised scenes. Like Ray Ruby’s Paradise, Go Go Tales is far from perfect, but it’s a hell of a sleazy good time anyway.

Go Go Tales. Abel Ferrara, 2007. ***

• Official Site

Here’s my video in three parts of the press conference with Abel Ferrara, Willem Dafoe, Sylvia Miles, Shanyn Leigh, and Frankie Cee. Richard Peña leads the discussion.

“A funny story, in its way, about a man who wanted to poison his wife and found he’d be lost without her.” With these words, Richard (Pierce Brosnan) sums up the events of Ira Sachs’s second film. Note the careful qualification “in its way,” which already suggests that perhaps Married Life isn’t all that funny, and maybe not much of a story, either. In fact, it’s the first film at this year’s New York Film Festival that I wish I had walked out of.

Read the entire review on About.com.

Married Life. Ira Sachs, 2007. *

What a relief. After The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, I wasn’t alone in diagnosing Wes Anderson with a damn-near terminal case of arrested development. With this story of three brothers on a spiritual quest through India, the precocious director with a sweet tooth for all things quirky proves that he has found a way forward: The Darjeeling Limited is his best work since Rushmore. With Owen Wilson, Adrien Brody, and Jason Schwartzman. Roman Coppola, director of the underappreciated CQ, co-wrote the screenplay.

The film screens together with a short film, Hotel Chevalier, that serves as a prequel and stars a very naked Natalie Portman. We’ll have a full review and much more from the New York Film Festival on About.com as soon as we get rid of this leaden jetlag. The Darjeeling Limited will open on September 29.

Update: Marcy’s review of The Darjeeling Limited.

Hotel Chevalier. Wes Anderson, 2007. ****
The Darjeeling Limited. Wes Anderson, 2007. ****

The trailer: