Dailies—Feb/Mar 2006
A roundup/recap of the current best and rest in film and DVD. In this installment: Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, Capote, The Assassination of Richard Nixon, Crash, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, 9 Songs.
Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room
I must admit that, walking into Alex Gibney’s Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, I knew little about the largest corporate bankruptcy in history (and in turn, the largest corporate crime), and that the only reason I was drawn to it was because I smelt another one of those classic trainwreck tales with an irrestistible built-in gawk-factor. As it turns out, Enron’s jaw-dropping crash-and-burn has all the ingredients of a good tragedy (as insensitively oxymoronic as that might sound) – greed, power, scandal, flawed characters – that’ll grip and fascinate even numbers-phobic dummies like myself who won’t understand a single equation of its stock-trading mechanisms. The best thing: the inclusion of The Simpsons parody, a masterstroke of economical satire which shrewdly condenses the entire rise-and-fall arc of the doco into a rollercoaster ride that lasts several seconds. In theatres now.—AY [Read More]
Capote
No doubt about it: Capote is a film that lobbies egregiously for a Best Actor Oscar, and gets away with it. But nevermind. Uninterested in the patchwork quilt biography of recent one-man resurrections such as Ray, director Bennett Miller and co. extrapolate the bones of the creative period before and during and making of In Cold Blood. Refreshingly, flashbacks and child actors aren't welcome. Hoffman alone is brilliant, although props must also go the way of Clifton Collins Jr, an underrated character actor never better here as shotgun murderer Perry Smith. The film is a cold, calculated piece of work, but positively, is something of an exercise in "truthiness". Shrouded in the woozy twilight of Kansas' high plains, it's instead conjured on literary mythology – on the fiction appended to the non-. Truman Capote and Harper Lee in cahoots emerges not so much as fact, but legend. I repeat: this is not a biopic. In theatres now.—TW
The Assassination of Richard Nixon
This God’s lonely man diatribe is a delusional monologue on Nixon’s administration, capitalism, and all the other bullshit that comes with being an American. Sean Penn overcompensates on the loner quotient as would-be assassin Sam Byck, one of those awkward individuals who never quite learned the ropes of life. Livid at the world, he hijacks a plane. Destination: The White House. Supporting roles for Naomi Watts (the wife) and Don Cheadle (the friend) fail to eventuate into anything more than over-billed cameos. It ends violently, if not unremarkably; Byck’s botched 9/11 precursor a mere blip on the radar of assassination attempts. No doubt letters to Jodie Foster would have made more of a splash.—TW
Crash
Paul Haggis’ Crash is a whirring arena of racial bumper-cars getting in one another’s way, but nothing feels quite so geared to the 2k5 sensibility as Ludacris trying to keep his dick hard in a cruel and harsh world. For the most part, Haggis is content to ride his fourth-hand Anderson-via-Soderbergh-via-Altman buzz, a lineage that leaves me wondering why directors are constantly drawn to LA when looking to dump their bang bus of A-listers alongside x pounds of cocaine. Might be a geographical thing – isn’t LA notably sprawling, a kind of open-top counterpart to NY’s glass ceiling? – that leaves it suited to the whole bit about lives gradually converging in small, separate bursts across its surface. Plus, it’s also the epicenter of celebrity culture-slash-$$$the american dream$$$, which rhymes perfectly with having to watch the prettiest people do tha ugliest things. But just how necessary is a straight-faced, megaphone-aired treatise on racism now? Okay, I guess since it’s an essentially irresolvable point, the question answers itself, but there’s also something slightly dangerous in the way Haggis colour-codes the world so vehemently because it – paradoxically – leaves almost no room for degrees of interaction: characters are reduced to slugging racial slurs like they’re some kind of apocalyptic currency, and I don’t know if a post-911 society is the kind that needs to be shouted at. Haggis has the right idea here; he just needs to turn the volume down. New to DVD. (commentary w/ Paul Haggis, Bobby Moresco & Don Cheadle; behind the scenes; music video)—DL [Read More]
The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants
A revolt against stupid mean girls, this surprisingly composed teen dramedy shoehorns four diametrically opposed friends into a steely pact sewn on a pair of thrift shop jeans – and so The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants is born. Note to parents: this is the kind of film you rent for the delicately-poised teenage girl. Crucially, it understands that domesticity is no longer bliss, that families are no longer concrete, and that strong friendships are our only hope in this shit-for-brains world. It also couldn't care less about fashion, or cliques, or high school prom, with not a bitch slap or a cat fight in sight. Stars the un-Cosmogirl quartet of Amber Tamblyn, America Ferrera, Blake Lively and Alexis Bledel. A sequel would work. New to DVD. (deleted scenes w/ commentary by Ken Kwapis; "Suckumentary"; cast commentary on selected scenes; behind the scenes; conversation w/ author Ann Brashares; trailer)—TW
9 Songs
Despite its polarizing, brazenly uncommercial experimentalism and the controversy surrounding the explicit hardcore performances of the actors, Michael Winterbottom’s 9 Songs is actually a lot more gooily romantic than one might expect. The, er, naked plot is – to quote one of the characters describing the topographic make-up of the Antarctic – “an exercise in reductionism”. It consists mainly of two types of scenes: the bedroom trysts between Brit Kieran O’Brien and American Margo Stilley (whose decision to launch into her acting career with this film is a commendably ballsy move if anything) and their visits to the Brixton Academy to check out Britain’s indie-rock-stalwarts-of-the-moment. It’s indulgently improvisitional, which means sitting through some dead space, and shots that linger on for a beat too long, but the film nevertheless taps into the drug-taking, sexually frank hedonism of youthful contemporary relationships with a considerable degree of authenticity. More intriguing is the film’s lyrical, dreamy quality that evokes ‘60s-‘70s European cinema: the grubby DV-to-film visuals produce a palette that strangely resemble nostalgic super 8 footage, while Michael Nyman’s beautiful, melancholic keys gently plonking in the background is the perfect soundtrack for tearful pining. 9 Songs kept summoning up thoughts of Alain Resnais’ work. Maybe because it’s most satisfying as an impressionistic collage, a memory capsule containing the scattered, lovingly remembered fragments of a couple’s private universe. New to DVD.—AY [Read More]
» Text by Aaron Yap, David Levinson and Tim Wong.
Enron: The Smartest Guys in the RoomI must admit that, walking into Alex Gibney’s Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, I knew little about the largest corporate bankruptcy in history (and in turn, the largest corporate crime), and that the only reason I was drawn to it was because I smelt another one of those classic trainwreck tales with an irrestistible built-in gawk-factor. As it turns out, Enron’s jaw-dropping crash-and-burn has all the ingredients of a good tragedy (as insensitively oxymoronic as that might sound) – greed, power, scandal, flawed characters – that’ll grip and fascinate even numbers-phobic dummies like myself who won’t understand a single equation of its stock-trading mechanisms. The best thing: the inclusion of The Simpsons parody, a masterstroke of economical satire which shrewdly condenses the entire rise-and-fall arc of the doco into a rollercoaster ride that lasts several seconds. In theatres now.—AY [Read More]
CapoteNo doubt about it: Capote is a film that lobbies egregiously for a Best Actor Oscar, and gets away with it. But nevermind. Uninterested in the patchwork quilt biography of recent one-man resurrections such as Ray, director Bennett Miller and co. extrapolate the bones of the creative period before and during and making of In Cold Blood. Refreshingly, flashbacks and child actors aren't welcome. Hoffman alone is brilliant, although props must also go the way of Clifton Collins Jr, an underrated character actor never better here as shotgun murderer Perry Smith. The film is a cold, calculated piece of work, but positively, is something of an exercise in "truthiness". Shrouded in the woozy twilight of Kansas' high plains, it's instead conjured on literary mythology – on the fiction appended to the non-. Truman Capote and Harper Lee in cahoots emerges not so much as fact, but legend. I repeat: this is not a biopic. In theatres now.—TW
The Assassination of Richard NixonThis God’s lonely man diatribe is a delusional monologue on Nixon’s administration, capitalism, and all the other bullshit that comes with being an American. Sean Penn overcompensates on the loner quotient as would-be assassin Sam Byck, one of those awkward individuals who never quite learned the ropes of life. Livid at the world, he hijacks a plane. Destination: The White House. Supporting roles for Naomi Watts (the wife) and Don Cheadle (the friend) fail to eventuate into anything more than over-billed cameos. It ends violently, if not unremarkably; Byck’s botched 9/11 precursor a mere blip on the radar of assassination attempts. No doubt letters to Jodie Foster would have made more of a splash.—TW
CrashPaul Haggis’ Crash is a whirring arena of racial bumper-cars getting in one another’s way, but nothing feels quite so geared to the 2k5 sensibility as Ludacris trying to keep his dick hard in a cruel and harsh world. For the most part, Haggis is content to ride his fourth-hand Anderson-via-Soderbergh-via-Altman buzz, a lineage that leaves me wondering why directors are constantly drawn to LA when looking to dump their bang bus of A-listers alongside x pounds of cocaine. Might be a geographical thing – isn’t LA notably sprawling, a kind of open-top counterpart to NY’s glass ceiling? – that leaves it suited to the whole bit about lives gradually converging in small, separate bursts across its surface. Plus, it’s also the epicenter of celebrity culture-slash-$$$the american dream$$$, which rhymes perfectly with having to watch the prettiest people do tha ugliest things. But just how necessary is a straight-faced, megaphone-aired treatise on racism now? Okay, I guess since it’s an essentially irresolvable point, the question answers itself, but there’s also something slightly dangerous in the way Haggis colour-codes the world so vehemently because it – paradoxically – leaves almost no room for degrees of interaction: characters are reduced to slugging racial slurs like they’re some kind of apocalyptic currency, and I don’t know if a post-911 society is the kind that needs to be shouted at. Haggis has the right idea here; he just needs to turn the volume down. New to DVD. (commentary w/ Paul Haggis, Bobby Moresco & Don Cheadle; behind the scenes; music video)—DL [Read More]
The Sisterhood of the Traveling PantsA revolt against stupid mean girls, this surprisingly composed teen dramedy shoehorns four diametrically opposed friends into a steely pact sewn on a pair of thrift shop jeans – and so The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants is born. Note to parents: this is the kind of film you rent for the delicately-poised teenage girl. Crucially, it understands that domesticity is no longer bliss, that families are no longer concrete, and that strong friendships are our only hope in this shit-for-brains world. It also couldn't care less about fashion, or cliques, or high school prom, with not a bitch slap or a cat fight in sight. Stars the un-Cosmogirl quartet of Amber Tamblyn, America Ferrera, Blake Lively and Alexis Bledel. A sequel would work. New to DVD. (deleted scenes w/ commentary by Ken Kwapis; "Suckumentary"; cast commentary on selected scenes; behind the scenes; conversation w/ author Ann Brashares; trailer)—TW
9 SongsDespite its polarizing, brazenly uncommercial experimentalism and the controversy surrounding the explicit hardcore performances of the actors, Michael Winterbottom’s 9 Songs is actually a lot more gooily romantic than one might expect. The, er, naked plot is – to quote one of the characters describing the topographic make-up of the Antarctic – “an exercise in reductionism”. It consists mainly of two types of scenes: the bedroom trysts between Brit Kieran O’Brien and American Margo Stilley (whose decision to launch into her acting career with this film is a commendably ballsy move if anything) and their visits to the Brixton Academy to check out Britain’s indie-rock-stalwarts-of-the-moment. It’s indulgently improvisitional, which means sitting through some dead space, and shots that linger on for a beat too long, but the film nevertheless taps into the drug-taking, sexually frank hedonism of youthful contemporary relationships with a considerable degree of authenticity. More intriguing is the film’s lyrical, dreamy quality that evokes ‘60s-‘70s European cinema: the grubby DV-to-film visuals produce a palette that strangely resemble nostalgic super 8 footage, while Michael Nyman’s beautiful, melancholic keys gently plonking in the background is the perfect soundtrack for tearful pining. 9 Songs kept summoning up thoughts of Alain Resnais’ work. Maybe because it’s most satisfying as an impressionistic collage, a memory capsule containing the scattered, lovingly remembered fragments of a couple’s private universe. New to DVD.—AY [Read More]
» Text by Aaron Yap, David Levinson and Tim Wong.
The Hangover: A groom, a dentist, a teacher and a fat Jesus go to Las Vegas. Don't judge a movie by its trailer. More slick, sustained entertainment here than I Love You, Man. The funniest commerical comedy of the year thus far.
