Cynical Cinema

Season Four of Weeds begins tonight on Showcase, 10 p.m. I still love Weeds, four years in. The concept of a TV show about a weed dealing suburban soccer mom frankly, sounded awful to me when I first heard about it. But Mary-Louise Parker, Kevin Nealon and Elizabeth Perkins make it work. In fact, Nancy (Parker) makes this show sing. She is just magnificent. At the end of season three, she had just burnt down her house, and the DEA had discovered her stash and her drug operation. And Celia (Perkins) was being questioned by the cops. As season four begins, Nancy and her family are on the run to a border town in California. The DEA is interrogating everyone else, and they all pin the grow op on Celia. There are some really strange scenes involving Celia and the agent questioning her. Sort of a really twisted Basic Instinct interrogation-seduction thing. Bizarre. But worth it. Check out Weeds tonight.

There is an absolutely phenomenal box set being released on August 26th. Woody Allen has been one of the greatest American directors for many years, and while he is mostly remembered for his all-time classics, Manhattan and Annie Hall, every one of his films is worth watching for one reason or another. With his latest, Vicky Cristina Barcelona in theatres, Alliance Films decided to release Woody Allen: The Collection today, August 26th. Every movie in this box is good, some are great. And while six of the discs have been readily available before this on DVD, the seventh is the bonus.

Wild Man Blues, a 1997 documentary film about Woody Allen, has been a hard-to-find item for some time. Not a film about Allen the film maker, but a film about Woody Allen the jazz musician. Allen, when not making films, plays jazz clarinet at a New York club. This film, directed by Barbara Kopple, follows Allen around as he takes the jazz ensemble on the road. The documentary was made right around the time when the public image of Allen was at it’s lowest. He had just left Mia Farrow for their stepdaughter Soon Yi Previn, and people were beginning to look on him as some kind of sexual predator. This film was accused of apple-polishing by some critics upon it’s release. As though it were some kind of brown-nosing attempt by Kopple to repair Allen’s tarnished image, and the movie was quickly forgotten. But in watching it now, it is merely a window into the man’s private life, his relationship with Soon-Yi, which really does appear to be pretty normal, and his relationship with his parents, which is eye-opening.

The other films in the set are all second-rate Woody Allen films, which would be first-rate films by almost anyone else. Mighty Aphrodite, the film for which Mira Sorvino won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar, is a pretty fluffy film that works best as a reminder that Mira Sorvino CAN actually act. Bullets Over Broadway is a brilliantly funny comedy about gangsterism and the roaring twenties, featuring terrific performances by Chazz Palminteri and Dianne Wiest. Everyone Says I Love You is a musical comedy that is absolutely jammed with star power, and as such is one of the only Julia Roberts movies, AND one of the only Drew Barrymore movies, that I actually enjoy. Deconstructing Harry is a very dark comedy that is equally star-studded, with Robin Williams, Demi Moore, Billy Crystal and dozens of others in perhaps Woody Allen’s most under-rated movie. Celebrity is also jammed with big names, but isn’t one of Allen’s best efforts. And Scoop is likely the low point of the box set, with Scarlett Johanssen turning in a surprisingly mediocre performance and Hugh Jackman being a little more irritating than necessary. Not a horrible movie, but weak by Woody Allen standards.

Woody Allen: The Collection is a must for fans of his work, with Wild Man Blues being the icing on the cake. Get this box set, then pick up Annie Hall, Manhattan and Crimes And Misdemeanors, and you have all the Woody Allen you’ll ever need.

The first actor we see in The Spiderwick Chronicles (out June 17th from Paramount Home Entertainment) is David Stratharin. He is writing a book about creatures in our midst, beings that exist among us always, that we can’t see because they choose to remain hidden. Through his book, we catch glimpses of drawings of these creatures, but we don’t see enough of them to know what’s coming. Strathairn, you see, is Arthur Spiderwick, the man who discovered this realm existing in tandem with our own. And he recorded all the secrets of this realm in a giant book, the Spiderwick Chronicles. We learn fairly fast that this book was never meant to be read by anyone, ever, because reading it could bring about the end of the world as we know it. Of course, someone is clearly going to come by and read it anyway.

That someone is Freddie Highmore (Charlie from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory), who actually appears as twins in the film. The two have very distinct personalities, and Highmore does an excellent job making sure that we always know which twin is which. Simon is a bookish, nerdy pacifist. His twin brother Jared, however, is the trouble-maker. The bad apple. The one kid the family doesn’t understand. Right away, we know Jared will be the star of the movie, because it’s always that kid who ends up being the star. The bookish intellectual is nowhere near as interesting as the angry rebel, we suppose. Jared’s anger seems to stem from several sources, like an absentee father, a sudden move to a new town and a new house. It must be summer, because the kids don’t have a new school or anything, and are allowed to roam about the giant house alone while their mom’s off at work.

Pretty soon, of course, Jared finds this book. And he opens it and reads it and unwittingly brings forces of evil down on his house and his family. His older sister is a fencer, which comes in handy when she has to slash up some goblins. His mother is never home during the film, so she is going to be in for a big surprise when she gets there. Simon rarely leaves the house, and when he discovers this world of goblins and evil-doers that exists right outside the door, he sets his brain to work devising defenses against the bad creatures. And Jared hits things, yells at his mom, hates the world and fights with his siblings, even in the middle of the most dire circumstances. Which becomes kind of annoying. Jared, through a lot of this movie, despite being the hero, is not very likeable. Highmore does a terrific job with the character, but he’s written in such a cliche’d “where’s may father? I HATE you” sort of way that it’s a little distracting.

Also irritating is the fact that the creatures have names we have already heard. We already know about goblins. We’ve heard of elves and griffins. We may well be familiar with those things. So why include things like that, and then make up three or four creatures of your own? I think the answer to that may well lie within the books. My youngest step-son tells me that the books are FAR different. I think what he means (if I understand correctly) is that the movie leaves out a lot of what is in the books in terms of detail. But then, what kids’ movie doesn’t? Eragon, Chronicles of Narnia, even How To Eat Fried Worms. They are all forced to skip large chunks of the story because of time constraints, and the challenge is keeping the story intact and understandable while trimming it to that hour-and-a-half running time.

And for the most part, the director, Mark Waters, does a good job of this. Not only does he get a high-calibre performance out of Freddie Highmore, he manages to craft a terrific alternate universe with charming and interesting characters, and he keeps the pace moving along briskly. The only time the movie slows down is when Jared has one of his distracting temper outbursts. It’s nice to see David Strathairn in a kids movie like this, his presence adds a certain amount of credibility to the whole proceeding. Also cool is the presence of Martin Short and Seth Rogen as the voices of two of the friendly creatures, and the very brief but very bizarre cameo from Nick Nolte. The Spiderwick Chronicles is one of the better movies aimed at kids around ten years old. It’s no classic, but it’s above-average. And when it comes to kids’ movies these days, that is certainly good enough.

It was the mother of Jesse James, in real life, who would select the words for his epitaph. “In Loving Memory of my Beloved Son, Murdered by a Traitor and Coward Whose Name is not Worthy to Appear Here”. The new movie, starring Brad Pitt and Casey Affleck, feels that Robert Ford’s name IS worthy to appear in their title alongside that of James. That the two men were equally important parts to the same story. It’s a story that has been told many times, in books, music, and of course movies. Jesse James has been played by Tyrone Power, Red Barry, Roy Rogers, Clayton Moore, Audie Murphy, Robert Wagner, Robert Duvall, Kris Kristofferson and Rob Lowe. Among others. The worst portrayal of James was Colin Farrell’s in American Outlaws - mostly because that movie was so very very terrible. The best may well be Brad Pitt in this film. Whose title I won’t keep typing for fear of developing carpal tunnel syndrome.

But Brad Pitt is outdone considerably in this movie by Casey Affleck. Yes, Casey Affleck, the kid brother of Ben, who has never appeared in any significant role in his life and yet all of a sudden finds himself in two of the biggest roles in two of the best movies of the year! And he is good. In both - it isn’t just his brother’s direction that makes him great, he is just legitimately an excellent actor. Robert Ford has been played by John Carradine, whose four sons became actors. Son David was later killed by Uma Thurman. He has also been played by John Ireland, and some guy on an episode of Little House on the Prairie. But the best protrayal is without a doubt Affleck’s in this movie, and he richly deserved his Academy Award nomination as best supporting actor. Although Brad Pitt is a Movie Star, and his public persona dwarfs his talent, people forget that he is an outstanding actor. Outdoing him in a movie is a considerable achievement.

Pitt at his very best reminds me a little of Paul Newman, and watching this movie reminded me of Paul Newman’s portrayal of Billy The Kid in The Left-Handed Gun (1958). He’s an outlaw on the edge of sanity, paranoid and almost childish in his outlook. He seems to be the kind of guy who has reached the end of his rope, and almost welcomes his own death. Death is his deliverance, and I think the title of the movie makes it pretty clear it happens, and as such this is not much of a spoiler. Sam Rockwell, Zooey Deschanel, Mary-Louise Parker, and Sam Shephard are all excellent in supporting roles, and James Carville makes a bizarre appearance as the governor. Nick Cave shows up as a saloon singer, and Hugh Ross lends just the right tone to keep the story moving as the narrator.

Jesse James, in his day, was about the most famous person in America, outside the president, because his exploits were followed in the papers. He was a celebrity simply because he was someone that people had heard of, and there were not many of those around at the time. Even at the time, he was considered a hero in the west, because the papers protrayed him as an anti-establishment fighter on the side of good. But of course, he was really just a bandit and a murderer who happened to get good press. Che Guevara he was not. This movie captures the tone perfectly, Robert Ford being an idol-worshipping sycophant to James and his gang at first. He has been a die-hard Jesse James fan since he was a small boy, and now that he comes face to face with the reality of the outlaw, he becomes completely torn between his hero-worship and his desire for self-preservation. And the film has a surprisingly un-dramatic conclusion, given the subject matter contained so succinctly in the title. Like the best westerns of all time (and this is among the top 200 ever made) death is just something that happens as a natural course of living, whether it be because of the elements, sickness, or at the hand of other men.

Westerns have gone through many ups and downs in movie history. John Ford’s Stagecoach, in 1939, was the first movie to suggest that westerns could be real feature films, A-list movies, rather than continuing as it was in B-movie, black-and-white serials and the like. That was the golden age of the western, when John Wayne and John Ford were kings, Gary Cooper and Jimmy Stewart were major stars, and films like The Searchers, High Noon, Shane, and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance were among some of the best ever made. There was a big resurgence in the western genre during the 70s, when the Spaghetti Westerns of Sergio Leone and Clint Eastwood breathed some life back into the genre. Then it died again, until the 90s, when Unforgiven in 1992 became one of the greatest movies of all time, and quite possibly the best western. This resurgence led mostly to B-grade fluff, like Bad Girls and The Quick And The Dead, and nothing of substance. I sincerely hope now that films like 3:10 to Yuma and The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford mark a more substantial return to significance in the history of the western, and that more movies like this one can be made. But even if not, the fact that this particular movie was made is reason enough to be happy.

When I rented Romance and Cigarettes, I did so because of the cast and director. John Turturro directed this film, and it stars James Gandolfini, Kate Winslett, Susan Sarandon, Mary-Louise Parker, Mandy Moore, Eddie Izzard, and two of my favourites - Steve Buscemi and Christopher Walken. Based on that cast alone, I picked it up and watched it. So imagine my surprise when James Gandolfini, in the first scene, Tony Soprano, began to sing. Yes, Romance and Cigarettes is a musical! A bonkers, insane, weirdly entertaining musical. Everyone sings, and the musical numbers feel unnecessary, but they are the most entertaining part of the film. The basic premise is that Gandolfini is married to Sarandon, but cheating on her with the much-younger Kate Winslett, who has never looked sexier in a movie. Sarandon catches him, and effectively ends their relationship, which has an effect on the children (Mandy Moore, Mary-Louise Parker and Aida Turturro - who plays Ton’y sister on The Sopranos…weird).

Gandolfini’s character is named Nick Murder, a strange name, and he comes off as a modern, filthier Ralph Kramden. His buddy at work, Steve Buscemi, is a modern, much filthier Ed Norton. Every character is a bizarre weirdo, and they each have twisted and strange relationships with each other. And the movie is filthy. There is a weird but effective scene where Winslett talks to Gandolfini in an incredibly dirty phone call while Sarandon sings Janis Joplin’s Piece of My Heart. Christopher Walken, as “cousin Bo” (of course) has several of the best scenes, including a demented take on My Delilah, which ends with him using a knife to stab his wife, then singing into that knife as though it is a microphone. He is one of the strangest of the cast, in that he talks almost exclusively in movie lines and song titles. Mandy Moore’s creepy take on the song “I Want Candy” is mercifully cut short.

Overall, Romance And Cigarettes is fun and exuberant while still being tragic and sad. There are parts that are downright gloomy, which sort of takes away from the more entertaining moments. But watching these terrific actors, especially Walken, do their thing is more than enough reason to rent this film. It is not perfect, or even great, but it is more than enough fun for a Sunday afternoon.