Miracle at St. Anna

I planned to post this over a week ago, but never got around to it. Oh well...

I should preface this review by saying that Spike Lee is one of my favorite directors. I tend to like his films more than the critics do, and I'd have to say although he's been nominated only twice for an Oscar (in 1989 for Do The Right Thing's screenplay, and for the documentary 4 Little Girls) I believe he's made more truly great films than, say, Clint Eastwood, who's won five times. It saddens me to report, then, that his first war movie, Miracle at St. Anna, is definitely not his greatest work. It's far from his worst, however.
You see, Spike Lee's biggest problem has always been his tendency to lose focus of his main narrative and veer off-course. He has a strange case of what's commonly known as "first-time filmmaker" syndrome, where the director, making his first film and not sure whether he'll ever get the chance to make another, throws everything he's ever wanted to do into his first film, thus overloading it with an embarrassment of riches. This is a forgivable phenomenon with filmmakers, and it's usually a one-time deal. The problem with Spike is that he's been making films for over 20 years, and still suffers from this. This results in films that are 20-30 minutes too long, filled with great sequences, but are also a chore to sit through.
Miracle at St. Anna is no different. It contains two of the best sequences Spike has ever directed; the first is a dramatization of the massacre at St. Anna, where hundreds of women and children were slaughtered. One shot in particular, which goes on for several minutes, follows a soldier's handgun as he draws it, holds it out, and slowly trudges through the dead bodies, shooting anyone still alive after the initial machine-gun fire. It's hard to describe, but it's one of the most powerful sequences on screen this year. The other sequence follows a group of black soldiers as they attempt to buy food at a southern malt shop, are refused service, and leave in defeat. Walking to their jeep, they retrieve their guns, return inside, and demand service again - this time at gunpoint. Coming at a late point in the film, and told in flashback, it's a brilliant sequence. It's capped by a stylized ending beat, where the soldiers in question are in a group, staring at the camera, as one by one they slowly leave the frame. It's audacious in the best way - pure Spike Lee.
But for all the great things in the movie, it has quite a lot of problems. Like I said before, it meanders in the way a lot of Spike's movies do. It starts with one thing, goes to another, tries something else, and eventually gets back on track. It's frustrating, to say the least. We spend time with characters who have little, if anything, to do with the big picture, and precious little time with the things and the people who seem to matter. (SPOILER ALERT) The only soldier of the group to survive, who we see later on in the bookend segments, has probably the least amount of scenes in the WWII segments. (SPOILER OVER) There's also some strange attempts at humor in the first third of the film, and it just doesn't fly. Probably the thing that hurts the film the most is the casting of Omar Benson Miller. He's decent, but he only has a certain range, and he's trying to pull off things that he just can't do. He's playing a simpleton, but it's more like an actor's idea of what a simple man would be like. His scenes are some of the most cringeworthy of the film, although he does get better as the picture goes on.
But, you know what? It's still a good film. And it still got me in the end. I think I have a tendency to forgive Spike Lee more than most people, because I can see where he's coming from. The end of the picture is probably the most saccharine and melodramatic thing he's ever done, but I was right with it, the whole way. It's satisfying. The rest of the movie? Not so much. But even a semi-satisfying movie is better than usual these days.

Look for a new update tomorrow (Thursday) night.
But until then, I just wanted to mention that I've finally finished cataloging a list of all my DVDs, for insurance purposes (yes, all 700 of them) and the link to that list is found at the right. So for you people that know me - if you want a copy of anything, let me know.

Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist

I loved this movie. It was easily one of the best times I've had at the movies this year. It's getting mixed reviews, but I think it's a case of - as cliched as it sounds - the critics truly being too old to enjoy it. This is really a film for people 25 and under. It captures a time and a place and it's going to seem foreign to anyone who hasn't experienced it. This is a movie for young people, and if that includes you, get ready. This picture doesn't talk down to you, and it doesn't go out of its way to pretend it knows you. It may sound like I'm overstating it here, but in my mind I'm right on target: This movie captures the youth of today in the way American Graffiti did in its time.
Graffiti is seen today as an all-encompassing portrait of American youth in the early sixties, but in reality it focuses mostly on the "cruising" subculture of the time, and branches out from there. Nick and Norah is set among the indie music scene, and while this could have easily turned into a studio plot to target a specific audience, in the hands of the filmmakers it becomes not a gimmick, but a way to define these characters.
The world of this film is a world without adults. The night, as always, belongs to the youth. And for the youth of this film, for whom music plays such an important part in their lives, the big city is the only destination. It's hard for me to think of a movie in recent memory that has captured the excitement of the city that young people experience. A break from suburbia, if only for a few hours on a Saturday night, was the best feeling in the world. Anyone who lived within driving distance of a major city as a teenager will identify with this film.
This is not a perfect film, but there's so much in the movie that works, and it does so much right, that it's an easy movie to fall in love with. Some critics have criticized the movie for a lack of conflict, but that's one of the reasons I enjoyed it so much. It's so refreshing to see a movie that has such love and affection for its characters, and a group of filmmakers so confident in their material, that they allow their characters to live and breathe and interact and communicate, and refuse to bog that down with irrelevant plot points and unneeded character conflict. I was so dreading the ending of the picture, fearing the film would go where most relationship movies go: where the girl finds the guy in some sort of situation which prompts her to leave him, and thus he has to win her back in some way. How many times have we seen that? Thankfully, this movie's smarter than that. If that's the sort of thing the critics are talking about when lamenting about the lack of "conflict", then it seems as if they've grown accustomed to the tired formulas.
This is director Peter Sollett's second film after 2002's great Raising Victor Vargas, and it was well worth the wait. Vargas cost a mere $800,000 and was shot on Super-16mm, and even though Nick and Norah cost $9 million and was shot on 35mm, his style has remained consistent: it's a very intimate film, with lots of film grain and beautifully underlit settings. Everyone was amazingly well-cast, from leading roles to supporting players, and it goes without saying that Michael Cera and Kat Dennings are a great on-screen couple. And although most attention will probably go to its great selection of songs, one of the biggest successes of the film is the original musical score by Mark Mothersbaugh, known for his frequent collaborations with Wes Anderson. The score really holds everything together, and does a nice job of underscoring some emotional moments at the end.
So yes, without a doubt, go check this one out. If it sounds like your type of movie, or you're a fan of someone in the cast, you probably won't be disappointed. And just a quick film-geek note: this was the first film I've ever seen projected digitally, and let me say... wow. It was only a 2k projection, and it looked beautiful. No artifacting whatsoever, and this movie was shot on film and had lots of grain. Well, the days of $3,000 film prints are over. I can't wait for more theaters to get digital projection installed. Not to mention it'll be much easier (and cheaper) for independent films to be distributed. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: film is dead.