Elegy: Love among the ruins

Elegy (2008) • View trailer for Elegy
Four stars (out of five). Rating: R, for nudity, sexual content and profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 9.5.08
Buy DVD: Elegy


His 1997 Pulitzer Prize and 2001 American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medal notwithstanding, Philip Roth seems doomed — in certain circles, anyway — to be remembered for his scandalous third novel, 1969's Portnoy's Complaint, and for his ongoing obsessions with promiscuity and Jewish angst.

Mindful of sexual harassment issues, college professor David Kepesh (Ben
Kingsley) always waits until the end of term before throwing a party for his
students. He always hopes to find at least one who will be properly intoxicated
by his worldly presence, but gets more than he bargained for with Consuela
Castillo (Penélope Cruz), who, during their initial conversation, reduces him to
schoolboy clumsiness. Fortunately, things will improve from here...

And, more recently, for succumbing to a perfectly natural desire to explore tales of aging men indulging in affairs with much younger women, which puts Roth in the equally excellent literary company of, say, John Updike. One cannot really fault a male literary lion who, upon reaching "a certain age," worries about his increasing obsolescence. Eventually (with luck), we all will.

Elegy, exquisitely adapted by screenwriter Nicholas Meyer from Roth's short novel, 2001's The Dying Animal, is the saga of a celebrated man of letters and cultural observer who, thanks to the proximity to young people granted by his day job as a college professor, embarks on a passionate affair with a former student.

The encounter proves revealing in many respects: some anticipated, others quite surprising.

But branding this film as nothing more than an "old guy beds Penélope Cruz" fantasy is an unjust snub that overlooks some phenomenal acting, the core truths of Roth's story and director Isabel Coixet's obviously sincere desire to respect both halves of this May/December romance.

David Kepesh (Ben Kingsley) is, as he constantly reminds Consuela Castillo (Cruz), 30 years her senior. This seems all the explanation required to describe the apparent folly of allowing a pleasant one-night encounter to blossom into a relationship, but he's merely lying to himself; the truth of the matter — and we see this in Cruz's luminously expressive gaze — is that Consuela loves him and couldn't care less about the age gap.

He's the one with the hang-up, but the whole "age thing" is just an excuse.

Following an unsuccessful youthful marriage, Kepesh has spent the rest of his life trolling for deliberately short-term affairs, due — we're quickly led to believe — to his desire to live according to the sybaritic lifestyle that he believes is mankind's "normal" predilection. He repeatedly espouses this theory when interviewed, and during debates with his longtime best friend, poet George O'Hearn (Dennis Hopper).

In a film laden with revealing exchanges of dialogue, by the way, none are better than these comradely encounters between David and George. Kingsley and Hopper share a relaxed comfort that feels completely natural; we can't help wondering if this scripted familiarity is equally strong off-camera.

George obviously has David's number, and David knows it ... but puts up with it.

David fears intimacy and actual human contact, and believes himself incapable of both, because he intellectually insists mankind isn't wired for it. He admires early American hedonist Thomas Morton and has, in fact, over-analyzed the art of lovemaking to such an absurd degree that he has stripped love itself from the equation.

Vicky Cristina Barcelona: Erotic fantasy

Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008) • View trailer for Vicky Cristina Barcelona
3.5 stars (out of five). Rating: PG-13, for earthy sensuality
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 9.4.08
Buy DVD: Vicky Cristina Barcelona • Buy Blu-Ray: Vicky Cristina Barcelona [Blu-ray]


I've often lamented about the utter inability of American directors to wrap their brains around European sexual sensibilities, whether remaking French sex comedies or simply navigating the terrain on their own.

Too often, the results lack the necessary je ne sais quoi that (for example) French or Spanish directors so perfectly capture in romantic comedies that invariably come populated with a huskily handsome fellow and not one, but two or three nubile cuties who seem perfectly content to share their man ... or even other.

Vicky (Rebecca Hall, left) and best friend Cristina (Scarlett Johansson),
vacationing in Barcelona, have just received an eye-opening offer from an
attractive Spanish artist, to spend a weekend with him; he promises good food,
good art and plenty of lovemaking. With, he optimistically hopes, both of his
guests. How Vicky and Cristina react to this offer, and what subsequently
happens, fuels this film's earthy eroticism (which, alas, remains rather
subdued, thanks to the PG-13 rating).

This isn't a problem with Woody Allen's Vicky Cristina Barcelona, a film so thoroughly drenched in Spanish atmosphere and sexual laissez-faire that one would swear it had been made by Pedro Almodovar ... all the way down to that director's by now familiar fixation on star Penélope Cruz.

Vicky Cristina Barcelona is — for the most part — a thoroughly charming and playfully erotic study of two young American women who get far more than they bargained for, when accepting an invitation to spend the summer in the deliriously romantic city of Barcelona.

But, much as we'd prefer not to be troubled by real-world issues, this film is, in fact, written and directed by Woody Allen, a cinematic artist whose fondness for very young women has become just as notorious as that displayed by Roman Polanski. In both cases, their fixation on gals barely out of their teens — or even younger — casts an unsettling pall over a project of this nature.

In order to better appreciate this film, I therefore had to willfully forget that it came from Allen's obviously lecherous sensibilities; who could forget Scarlett Johansson's breathtaking bathing suit "reveal" during a key moment of Allen's Scoop?

With Vicky Cristina Barcelona being Johansson's third Woody Allen film in four years, it's definitely safe to say that the filmmaker has found his newest muse — after Dianne Keaton and Mia Farrow — while Johansson has found her current mentor. Nothing wrong with that, except that Allen's various excuses to parade his young star in various levels of undress feels a bit like ... well ... stalking from behind a camera.

OK then, the obvious solution is to overlook Allen's involvement, and simply appreciate the film for its own languidly sensuous atmosphere. Trouble is, that's utterly impossible, because Vicky Cristina Barcelona is narrated throughout, and quite extensively ... by Christopher Even Welch, who most certainly is not Woody Allen.

And yet the often lengthy narrative monologues "read" just like Allen. It's profoundly distracting to keep hearing quintessential Woody Allen commentary emerging from somebody else's mouth. Why he'd have selected somebody else for all this narrative "fill" is utterly beyond me, but it's an intrusive distraction throughout the entire picture.

So now we have two things to overlook ... but, in fairness, those able to do so will be rewarded with a frequently charming, sexy and romantic interlude of the sort for which Eric Rohmer has remained so famous.

Traitor: Issues of faith

Traitor (2008) • View trailer for Traitor
3.5 stars (out of five). Rating: PG-13, for violence, brief profanity and dramatic intensity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 8.29.08
Buy DVD: Traitor • Buy Blu-Ray: Traitor [Blu-ray]


Espionage thrillers have become quite distressing.

Heinous terrorist acts aren't really all that new; all the way back in 1977, the film adaptation of Thomas Harris' Black Sunday was a nail- biting race to derail a plan to detonate an explosives-laden blimp hovering over the annual Super Bowl game.

The quietly honorable Samir Horn (Don Cheadle, left) has trouble explaining
his point of view, let alone his behavior, to a shadowy CIA contractor (Jeff
Daniels) who tends to favor ruthless "solutions" to any perceived problem.

Even so, the landscape has changed in these uneasy early years of the 21st century. Whereas previous fictitious plots — suggested, as they often were, by real-world events — generally involved lone crackpots, single assassins or at worst a small group of dedicated killers, today's politically charged action flicks often focus upon the legions of religiously brainwashed Islamic fanatics who've replaced skinheads and covert Nazis as the reflexive villains of choice.

And, let's face it, a plot to have 50 bomb-toting true believers detonate their explosives — while riding 50 buses filled with average folks taking random journeys across the great American heartland — feels a little too possible to be dismissed as sheer screenwriter's fantasy.

But writer/director Jeffrey Nachmanoff's Traitor takes awhile to get that far. In the meanwhile, we're given a fascinating character study of a former U.S. special-ops agent gone rogue: a man given quite persuasive substance thanks to another of star Don Cheadle's immaculately layered performances.

To say that Samir Horn (Cheadle) is complex would be the gravest of understatements; although devout enough to carefully unroll a carpet and pray even when in prison, Samir is introduced while on a mission in Yemen, as he supplies explosives to Islamic terrorists quite prepared to use them. And not just the explosives themselves, but the knowledge required to design foolproof bombs.

"I can prevent you from blowing yourselves up," he explains, somewhat mordantly adding, "unintentionally, anyway."

The quip does not go over well with Omar (Saïd Taghmaoui), an Islamic "patriot" who doesn't trust Samir for a second. His suspicions seem well-founded when their meeting is interrupted by local soldiers — the good guys — assisted by visiting counter-terrorism FBI agents Roy Clayton (Guy Pearce) and Max Archer (Neal McDonough).

As it happens, Clayton and Archer have been trailing Samir for quite some time; Clayton believes their quarry opportunistic but not a radical ... in other words, somebody who could be "turned" toward U.S. interests. Samir surprises them; even the threat of an almost certain death in a Yemeni prison does not bring a flicker to the almost sadly analytical gaze he turns on Clayton.

If anything, the offer seems to insult him, and further harden the as-yet-undisclosed resolve that dictates his actions.

Star Wars: The Clone Wars -- Animated groan

Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) • View trailer for Star Wars: The Clone Wars
Three stars (out of five). Rating: PG, for unrelenting action violence
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 8.28.08
Buy DVD: Star Wars: The Clone Wars

OK George, now you're just getting greedy.

Star Wars: The Clone Wars never should have been released theatrically; it's the sort of slap-dash, blatantly opportunistic project for which Disney has become infamous, with its direct-to-DVD "sequels" such as The Little Mermaid II: Return to the Sea and The Lion King II: Simba's Pride.

As if Anakin Skywalker, right, hasn't enough to worry about, he's also in
charge of the insufferable Ahsoka Tano, his new Padawan learner (apprentice);
when this character isn't getting into trouble, she indulges in too-frequent and
always insufferable bouts of The Cutes.

Although these probably are short-term financial gains, in the long run they do nothing but weaken the original franchise and dilute our pleasant memories of the first films.

The same is true of Clone Wars, which feels like precisely what it is: an overlong promo for the cartoon series debuting this fall on TNT and The Cartoon Network. (Indeed, it's actually three half-hour episodes stitched together.) And, frankly, that's where this film belongs: on TV. It would have made an impressive small-screen first chapter of the series to come ... but on the big screen, commanding movie theater ticket prices?

Not a chance.

Granted, a sizable segment of the Star Wars fan base will gobble up any new visits to this galaxy far, far away; I'm sure some folks even adored The Star Wars Holiday Special, which left glazed eyes on the rest of us back in November 1978. For the truly ravenous, though, too much never is enough; such passion has fueled scores of paperback adventures and kept dozens of marginal sci-fi writers comfortably housed and fed.

Do I sound cynical? It's hard not to, when something like Clone Wars serves up such ammunition. More than anything else, this film demonstrates that Lucas has abandoned any notion of pleasing adult viewers, and now is content to cater to the much younger demographic that probably also loved 1984's The Ewok Adventure (another TV miscalculation).

In fairness, much of this film looks pretty cool, most particularly the space-bound skirmishes between ships of varying sizes, and all land-based encounters with droids and other mechanized agents of destruction. At moments, such action scenes have the imaginative scope and thunderous fury of the beloved clashes between X-wing fighters and Death Stars that still set the hearts of aging fans a-fluttering.

Tell No One: Spread the word!

Tell No One (2008) • View trailer for Tell No One
4.5 stars (out of five). Unrated, with nudity, sexual content, violence, profanity and dramatic intensity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 8.22.08
Buy DVD: Tell No One • Buy Blu-Ray: Tell No One [Blu-ray]

To employ a phrase I don't get to use nearly often enough, this is one of the best pictures Alfred Hitchcock never made.

French filmmaker Guillaume Canet's riveting adaptation of Harlan Coben's novel, Tell No One, hits the ground running and never lets up. It's a mature, thoughtful and rigorously intelligent thriller that eschews noisy gunfire and car chases in favor of solid character development and a twisty plot that demands one's full attention.

Alex (François Cluzet) watches while his wife, Margot (Marie-Josee Croze),
cuts another notch into the tree that has a carved heart with their initials: a
treasured reminder of yet anothe ryear spent in happily married bliss. Sadly,
this is the deliriously romantic calm before a truly horrific storm; Alex and
Margot are about to be ripped apart in the worst possible way.

That is, alas, the one minor drawback. The subtitles don't capture quite all of the essential dialogue — anybody with the slightest familiarity with French will catch phrases that get left behind in translation — and that forces us American viewers to watch even more carefully.

Ah, but the rewards are worthwhile. Canet guides a solid cast through a meticulously constructed plot that doesn't waste a line of dialogue or even the slightest of background characters.

François Cluzet stars as Dr. Alexandre Beck, a pediatrician introduced with his wife, Margot (Marie-Josee Croze), as they enjoy a lively dinner with friends and family. The following day, Alex and Margot — childhood sweethearts who grew up together and eventually married — enact a familiar ritual, as they find a particular tree in a lakeside forest, and add another notch to the carved heart that carries their initials.

This is followed by a sexy swim, and then a contemplative cuddle on the lake's floating wooden platform.

Margot returns to shore first, and then Alex hears something. He listens, catches what sounds like a cry of alarm, and swims madly back to the dock, only to be beaten unconscious and left to drown.

Fade to black.

Eight years later, Alex has gotten on with his life, although he still desperately misses Margot, murdered that horrible night by a rampaging serial killer. The circumstances remain murky; even with an obvious suspect, the police mistrusted Alex for quite some time, despite his having spent three days in a coma. Although no physical evidence tied him to the crime, his unconscious body was found on the dock ... and nobody can explain how he got out of the water.

Now, like some ghastly resurrected nightmare, Alex is forced to confront the entire incident again: Police have discovered the bodies of two men, killed by gunfire and buried at the lake not far from where Margot's body was found. One carries a key that leads to a safe-deposit box, the contents of which include some damning photos of Margot, at some point prior to her death, and taken after she was beaten badly by ... somebody.

Once again, police suspicion falls on Alex.

Bottle Shock: A vintage tale

Bottle Shock (2008) • View trailer for Bottle Shock
3.5 stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, for brief profanity, fleeting drug use and mild sensuality
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 8.21.08
Buy DVD: Bottle Shock • Buy Blu-Ray: Bottle Shock [Blu-ray]

In terms of French cultural pride, nothing could have been more catastrophic.

Consider it from their point of view: They may have had to acknowledge American military superiority during World War II, may have had to surrender the field in terms of subsequent economic clout, may have watched in horror as boorish, lowest-common-denominator marketing behemoths such as McDonald's and Disneyland infiltrated the entire known universe ... but France always had its wine.

As Bo (Chris Pine, right) watches from a safe distance, visiting British wine
connoisseur Steven Spurrier (Alan Rickman) dubiously eyes the jelly glass that
holds a small-time Napa Valley winemaker's prize vintage. The supercilious
Spurrier little realizes that, after the first swallow, his opinion of California
wines will begin to climb ... and that's only the beginning.

No matter what else, the French knew they remained superior when it came to transforming grapes into a libation that had fueled metaphor-laden poets for the same hundreds of years that winemaking techniques had been perfected in regions such as Bordeaux, Burgundy and Chablis.

In matters of The Grape, the French reigned supreme ... and they never let the rest of the world forget it.

Until that horrible afternoon in 1976, during what came to be known as the Judgment of Paris.

Director/co-writer Randall Miller's Bottle Shock employs this actual event — so famous that its results have been preserved for eternity in the Smithsonian (and I'll bet the French don't think much of that) — as the setting for an amiable little drama that lacks the focus and greater screenwriting savvy of Sideways, but nonetheless tells an engaging story.

Or, to construct an appropriate metaphor, Miller's film is more Merlot than Cabernet: certainly pleasing to the palate, but not nearly as complex or precise.

The problem, mostly, is one of focus. One must greet any film that "requires" four screenwriters with suspicion, because the results often are overcooked in an effort to be all things to all viewers. When Miller and fellow writers Jody Savin, Ross Schwartz and Lannette Pabon concentrate on the actual details leading up to that fateful day during our bicentennial year — and particularly when Alan Rickman is on the screen — everything is a droll and understated delight.

Unfortunately, too much screen time is wasted on the good-natured hijinks and lack of focus from the other young, counter-culture protagonists. It's as if Miller & Co. worried that their wine-drenched narrative might be considered as stuffy as French arrogance to teen and twentysomething viewers, and therefore found it "necessary" to sex up these proceedings with a contrived romantic triangle involving the frequently underdressed Rachael Taylor, who added a similar dose of pulchritude to last year's Transformers.

Hey, she's charming, intelligent and easy on the eyes ... but she's also frequently distracting here, particularly when the screen time could be better spent on some fairly essential backstory elements that never get properly addressed.

The year is 1976, and the narrative initially bounces back and forth between two settings, starting in Paris, where wine connoisseur and displaced Briton Steven Spurrier (Rickman) scrambles for a way to put his lovingly designed but invariably empty tasting room/retail outlet on the map. His next-door neighbor, the mildly vulgar but definitely more savvy Maurice (Dennis Farina), insists that part of the problem is Spurrier's blinkered purchasing instincts.

Henry Poole is Here: Whimsical fantasy

Henry Poole Is Here (2008) • View trailer for Henry Poole Is Here
3.5 stars (out of five). Rating: PG, for brief profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 8.15.08
Buy DVD: Henry Poole Is Here • Buy Blu-Ray: Henry Poole Is Here [Blu-ray]

The quiet, unshaven man, some unknown sorrow weighing him down like the chains binding Marley's ghost, pays cash for the dilapidated, cookie-cutter house in a drab, middle-class Los Angeles neighborhood.

He moves in with minimal furniture, closes all the drapes and pulls all the blinds, and withdraws into a subsistence diet of doughnuts, pizza and alcohol. He wants only to be left alone.

Henry Poole (Luke Wilson) only wants to be left alone, and he naively believes
that retreating within his own house will afford that level of privacy. Imagine
his chagrin, then, when the house itself has other ideas...

God — fate, karma, whatever — has other plans.

Henry Poole Is Here is a quiet little treasure: a rare movie that treats faith, hope and religious conviction with a dignity too frequently absent on the big screen. Director Mark Pellington (Arlington Road, The Mothman Prophecies) and writer Albert Torres, making an impressive big-screen scripting debut, deliver a tender, character-driven drama that at times feels very much like 2005's Millions, an equally delicate British film that confronted Earth-bound miracles with a similar compassion.

Pellington's film is unhurried and expectant, much like its central character. The atmosphere and approach are wholly unlike this director's previous films and TV work — notably half a dozen episodes of Cold Case — which tended to be exploitative and amped-up. Not all directors can so successfully alter their approach to fit the material, but Pellington certainly does so here; he's perfectly content to let Torres' narrative unfold at its own measured pace.

The result is painfully intimate — far more authentic than any so-called "reality" project, such as the laughably unpersuasive American Teen — as if we were eavesdropping on this man at the worst possible moment.

At the risk of sounding like a soapbox lecturer, this once again demonstrates the degree to which scripted drama — which is to say, fiction — can feel far more real than staged and hokey "documentaries."

The title character, Henry, is played by Luke Wilson at his mopey, disheveled best. The actor keeps his usual smugness and smart mouth corked (or Pellington does), instead delivering a carefully modulated less-is-more performance. Henry dresses so sloppily, tends to himself so badly, that at first blush he could be mistaken for a street person ... but even a casual glimpse into his eyes reveals intelligence, pain and something else. Betrayal? Anger?

Answers come slowly.

Henry has purchased this house, in this neighborhood, because it's close to the house in which he grew up. That one, sadly, wasn't on the market; instead, he contents himself with occasionally staring at it from across the street. Aside from these visits, and his equally brief sallies to a nearby grocery store, he tries to remain indoors.