Here's the deal: Closer isn't nearly as dark as you've heard, but it is emotionally brutal. A stellar cast and a show-stopping turn by Natalie Portman highlight this movie, which centers on the love/hate relationships of two couples in London. A lot of it is darkly funny, and one of its charms is that you go from loving the characters to hating them, sometimes all within the same scene. Many people have reported feeling depressed after viewing this film; the fact that they're watching people emotionally destroy others. I have to say that I felt rather differently than that after seeing this. Not happy, per se, but... content. The film really puts in perspective the relationship that you're in (if you're in one, of course) and, in my case, the fact that I could never cheat on anyone. You do feel above these characters after watching, and you feel good about yourself for it.
Mike Nichols (The Graduate) directs this, and the result is electrifying. When people talk, it's more like enemies exchanging gunfire than a conversation. Patrick Marber adapts his play to the screen, and apart from the usual shortcomings such adaptations have, it translates amazingly well. Portman, as I mentioned before, does a 180 degree-turn from anything she's done before, playing an emotionally damaged stripper (pretty crazy for her, I know, but trust me...it works). Clive Owen has become my new person-to-watch, after seeing him in Sin City and this...he definitely has presence. Jude Law somehow shows up in another good movie (he's gotta have the best agent in Hollywood) and he's pretty damn good in it too. The only real drawback is (no surprise) Julia Roberts, who thankfully underacts this time, and so she mostly gets away unscathed here. I suppose this is where we might as well start talking about flaws. Julia is one (and hell, she's not even too bad here), but her character is the biggest flaw in the film. It's the most underwritten of the four characters, and most of the time you don't know why the hell she's doing what she's doing. I would say that that might be the point, but that idea goes out the window as soon as we see the end of her character's dramatic arc, and witness that the filmmakers were going for some sort of emotional resonance with her character that never really hits home, since her character isn't really explored. The others are fully developed, however. The movie doesn't really suffer from the usual feeling of a play adapted to a film; it's probably because the story focuses on just the four people for a reason, within the confines of the story. The dialogue is great too: snappy, fast-paced and brutal. Some sexually explicit talk in there too, so if you're sensitive to that stuff, then I'd think twice before checking it out (it's no more than in Boogie Nights or a Kevin Smith movie, but it is there, so that's your warning).
So, not everyone's cup of tea, but for those who enjoy this type of thing, it's pretty good. Worth a look just for the performances.
3 stars (out of five)Donnie Darko: The Director's Cut
Well, no big surprise here: The root of the problem with this new version of Donnie Darko can be found by going back to that good old saying we all know: If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Richard Kelly had a good film on his hands with the original Donnie Darko, but alas, we have here the disappointing failure that is the director's cut. A failure, yes, but an interesting one at that. In a strange way, it's amazing to see Kelly destroy his film, cut by cut, change by change. The reason for the changes is this: Darko was Kelly's first feature, in 2001. Newmarket Films, the company that released the film, wanted Kelly to cut it down from its original cut of 132 minutes, to 113 minutes. This is completely understandable. The film was a weird little movie, and they wanted to get it under 2 hours so that the most people possible could see it. Kelly agreed, and the film was released that way. It bombed at the box office, but it grew a huge fan base on video. Kelly was then given the chance to edit a director's cut for release in theaters. I had a feeling about this director's cut, the first time I heard about it. My feeling was that any reasons for the original film being good were just a fluke, and that as soon as Kelly was able to apply his original "vision" to the movie, it would collapse. Well, my suspicions were correct. This may be the first time that a director's cut has actually significantly worsened a film. It's one of those cases where the filmmaker compromises in the face of problems that he has, and actually makes a better film for it. I don't know how good a filmmaker Kelly may really be (when he's not forced to cut things out), but I know now that hardly anything that made the original film good is still surviving in his director's cut.
To be fair, the two films should be considered two separate films. The new film delves more into the science fiction aspect of the story, and really does feel epic in scope. It feels a lot more like a film that's trying to mix a little bit of everything in, more so than the first. The additions feel like way too much in the beginning, and bog it down quite a bit, but when the plot gets into full swing, everything sort of feels just about right. However, the additions aren't just the only thing in here. Many major changes (mostly music changes) plague this version of the film. Right away, the movie starts off on a bad note by replacing Echo and the Bunnymen's "The Killing Moon" with INXS's Never Tear Us Apart. Now, the INXS song was the original choice by Kelly for the opening, but he couldn't afford the song originally. But the funny thing is, "The Killing Moon" actually works a hell of a lot better than his choice, creating a weird sort of atmosphere right from the start (not to mention, the INXS song is slower, and starts the movie off on less of a bang). So anyway, right from the start I had a bad feeling about this. The film continues on, and every few minutes or so, during a scene change, a page from the "Philosophy of Time Travel" book in the film is superimposed into the screen, explaining why things are happening. This was probably what distressed me the most. One of the charms of the original film was how it didn't really overly explain things. The viewer pieced things together in their mind, and at the end, we may not know exactly how every little piece came together, but we understand enough to make the ending of the film work, and it actually comes together as a sort of a simple and beautiful ending, in the midst of the chaos of the rest of the story. Now, I originally thought that that charm was what Kelly intended; not explaining itself, that is. Well, now I know it was obviously because of the cuts he had to make that the first film ended up the way it did. One thing I am glad about, though, is that Kelly didn't change the music that accompanies the last sequence. He originally planned to use the U2 song "MLK." After difficulties obtaining the rights to the song, he decided to use the Gary Jules cover of the Tears for Fears song "Mad World" instead. It's another case of a replacement song working out much better than what he had originally intended to use. Well, he could probably afford the U2 song now, but he didn't change it, and I think it was mostly because the Gary Jules cover has become a big hit itself, and was actually about as popular as the film. Well, at least we didn't lose that.
The last part about this cut that just drives me insane, from a geeky technical viewpoint, is the new sound mix. There are major problems with the new sound mix. The whole thing has been re-mixed for theatrical (and therefore, DVD) release, and the dialogue is BURIED in the mix. You can barely hear it. Especially when you compare it to the old mix. Even worse is the fact that Michael Andrews' score is buried down in the mix also. Everything is drowned out by the sound effects and the bass. I don't know what they were thinking. I was listening to this on a pretty good 5.1 system, turned up pretty loud, and I had to strain to hear voices and the familiar score. A little too much work went into making this movie seem "bigger" than it really is, in terms of the sound. What's even more troubling is the fact that Kelly messed with Michael Andrews' score itself, cutting pieces out here and there, most notably, the opening music cue that plays before the first song is now gone. Wow, way to fuck with a good movie...
Original film:
3 ½ stars (out of five)Director's cut:
2 stars (out of five)Maria Full of Grace
The most acclaimed foreign language film of the year, Maria Full of Grace overcomes a slow start and a dragging third act to become one of the more memorable films in recent memory. Catalina Sandino Moreno transcends language in her performance, and all of the supporting players are equally good. The biggest problem with the film is that it relies on its central plot device a little too much (the fact that a girl is transporting drugs to America by swallowing them, and the suspense that arises from that), and everything before and after it suffers a bit because it doesn't have as much punch. The scenes of her training herself to be able to swallow the large pellets with drugs inside, and the subsequent scenes of the trip to America, these sequences are fascinating, and worth the price of admission alone. But the scenes that follow in America just feel phony, and we don't really care about any of the characters besides Maria. Nobody's character is really that well-defined, besides Maria. The rest of the film doesn't quite live up to the originality of the original idea. The middle section in the film, however, dealing with the transporting of the drugs, is riveting. But anyways, it's definitely an above-average film. It doesn't quite deserve the "masterpiece" status it's been getting, but the middle section accomplishes exactly what it tries to do. It's always entertaining, and it's not a bad way to spend a couple hours. Not a bad way at all.
3 ½ stars (out of five) Vera Drake
What an incredible film. What an incredible work of art this is. I haven't felt this much emotion pouring from a film in years. Every single character is clearly defined, and there's a dozen of them. The family really feels like a family. These people really feel like people. And when everything starts to get torn apart, you feel real emotion. THIS is what a motion picture drama is. THIS is a film that knows exactly what it wants to do, and fucking does it. This is the film that Million Dollar Baby wanted to be. Compared to this, that film is just a picture of a Polaroid of a drawing of a real human drama. Imelda Staunton won all but two of the critics' awards for her performance, and it's easy to see why. The fact that she doesn't have the trophy on her mantle right now shows everything that's wrong with the Academy. She gives - hands down - the best leading actress performance of the year. Anyone that doesn't think so is fucking blind. (My previous pick was Kate Winslet in Eternal Sunshine...While that's a great one too, this is just amazing). Staunton just blew me away.
And the rest of the picture is at that level, too. Mike Leigh wrote and directed this, and he wisely gives the actors lots of room and lets moments drag out when they need to. In fact, the film didn't even have an actual script - just an outline of scenes and bits of dialogue. The improvisation is part of what makes the family interaction so realistic and therefore makes the tragedy so affecting. But it's all very smooth; you can never tell when a bit was scripted or when it wasn't. And once again, the direction in this was superb. It's a slow movie, but it's wonderfully paced. It's never too slow, it just takes its time. And I have to mention the supporting cast. Even the smallest roles were wonderfully cast and played.
Well that's enough of that. It's a wonderful film though, it really is. And don't be scared off by the subject matter either. It handles it very tastefully. It's a film that really does grab you and doesn't let go. An excellent picture, and a reminder that good, simple films still do exist. Gotta update the Top 10 of the Year List for this one...
5 stars (out of five)
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