Better Luck Tomorrow

Actually, I think I like the title of this film more than the film itself. What happens to smart, rich, entitled Asian-American high school kids who start getting mixed up in crime and drugs? Things go more awry (as could probably be expected). The film got made as part of a young-promising-director's prize (which I don't remember the name of and can't find info on), and this is obvious in some of the choices Justin Lin makes for camera placement and movement (the most eye-catching is the camera revolving around three boys huddled together doing...well, I can't tell you). So, it has some interesting elements (other good bits are the dictionary entries and the slow-mo high school scenes). I felt pretty iffy about the ending, though, and since endings are so important, that diminished the quality of the film overall in my eyes. It's entertainment, but I'm not convinced it's saying anything worthwhile. I realize that it caused a great deal of consternation at The Sundance Film Festival because it wasn't "positively portraying Asian Americans," but I think it's more important to find out for yourself whether you enjoy a film all on its lonesome without outside influences. And it is enjoyable, it's just not doing anything earth-shaking.

year: 2002
length: 98 min.
rating: 3.0
IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0280477/combined

Pieces of April

I would have given this film my highest rating but for the digital medium in which it was filmed. You could argue that this type of film is perfect for a hand-held digital camera -- the character's edges are prickly and blurry just as the images are. And for most of the film, you don't notice it all that much. Except for the shots where the camera pans and all the colors bleed out the trailing edge. Or the shots outside which are horribly overexposed (although I'll concede that point if the filmmaker meant it to happen). It's clear it was made on the cheap, but the story itself isn't. An estranged daughter invites her family to NYC for a Thanksgiving dinner she and her boyfriend make. As the film progresses we see her undeniably sad cooking skills juxtaposed with the tensions that build in the family car. It's a sweet and tender film with some fantastic character actors, in particular Patricia Clarkson (from Far From Heaven fame) and Derek Luke (new it-boy from Antwone Fisher) and the ever-fresh Katie Holmes (from, believe it or not, Dawson's Creek). You can expect a true-meaning-of-Thanksgiving ending, with an extra added fillip to bring the story full circle.

year: 2003
length: 81 min.
rating: 3.5
IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0311648/combined

Paper Moon

You all know I think the world of Peter Bogdanovich, so I was thrilled when this finally came out on DVD, plus that it had three documentary shorts included. Before he started directing, he was an actor, and it shows in how good an interviewee he is for these documentaries. (His description of Orson Welles telling him what to do about the title of the film is a hoot.) It's not a hugely deep film or anything -- an orphaned girl travels with a friend of her mother's to Missouri and teaches him a thing or two about how to perfect his cons. Besides being sparklingly filmed in black and white, and using lots of lengthy shots and unique stunt scenes, it's a joy to watch the two O'Neal's acting together. Tatum got the Oscar because she's the perfect grouchy smart-as-a-whip tomboy who under that tough exterior is yearning to be loved. The ending should leave you smiling for a few hours.

year: 1973
length: 102 min.
rating: 3.5
IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070510/combined

Nowhere in Africa

I can see why this film won the Oscar last year for Best Foreign Film. (I just go ahead and put all those that were nominated on my list, hoping that they'll be released at some point in the States.) Actually, I'm going to quote the reason for it winning an award at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (no, I've never heard of it either): "For its unusual narrative and historical perspectives on the international reverberations of World War II." That, on top of the heart-wrenching, but not over-played, emotions of the main players. A Jewish couple and their child emigrate from Germany to Kenya shortly before Kristallnacht and stay there throughout the war. It is a long film, but never plodding or dull. I couldn't help but think how it would feel to be forced to leave your homeland, live in another country so very different and hard to understand, and then have to decide whether to return to the country that ousted you, never knowing if you could trust it again. How much lonelier can you feel? It's clearly easier for the child, who grows up a daughter of both cultures, and all the wiser for it, but it's vastly more difficult for the parents. You cannot help but smile through your tears during the last scene and realize what an unbelievable distance these characters have traveled, in kilometers and in their hearts, since they first came to Kenya.

original title: Nirgendwo in Afrika
year: 2001
length: 141 min.
rating: 3.5
IMDB link: http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0161860/combined

The Matrix Revolutions

Really, I don't see what the big hoo-hah is over this film. Yes, it's not that good, but it's also not that bad. I had an enjoyable time. Perhaps a bit more enjoyable than when I watched The Matrix Reloaded because there is (obviously) a resolution of the storyline. In addition, we see fewer instances of irritating Matrix-like tics than in the previous two films (that "come hither" flap of the hand -- man, was I tired of that!). Instead there's a well-crafted long battle sequence in the huge Port-of- Zion dome as the machines come through the roof. I couldn't at first figure out why I liked this so much. After mulling it over, I think it was because it was real "hand-to-hand" fighting and showcased human desperation, pride and perseverance. I guess I was ready for a real fight scene instead of the super-high-gloss mumbo-jumbo of bullet time fighting. The film wraps everything up with a nice neat bow but not without nods to spirituality, the human condition and faith, hearkening back to the first film. I was surprised at the decent acting, in particular Jada Pinkett Smith and the super-talented Hugo Weaving, who gets to deliver the best line of the film towards the end. It's a truism that if you have extremely low expectations of a film and it delivers more bang for your buck, you have a tendency to rate it higher. That might be what happened when I watched this film, and if so, you'll just have to prove me wrong.

year: 2003
length: 129 min.
rating: 3.0
IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0242653/combined

Life as a House

Best thing about this film? It has no prolonged, excruciating death scene. Which is very welcome, but in this case faint praise. Kevin Kline plays a man who learns he will be dying from cancer shortly, and decides to build the house he's always dreamed of building. He enlists his drug-addled son to help, and others become part of the project as it progresses, namely his ex-wife, her two sons from another marriage, a cop he went to school with, the girl next door and her mother whom he dated briefly after he divorced his ex-wife...and the list goes on and on. There are way too many characters! In particular, I don't get any of the characterizations of the females in this film. Jena Malone is playing a teenage tramp who actually isn't. Mary Steenburgen is a frustrated housewife which we're unaware of until she's in bed with her daughter's boyfriend. And I have no idea if Kristin Scott Thomas is even thinking about her role or just spacing out. The only reason to see the film is Hayden Christensen, who as one other amateur reviewer put it proves that "Star Wars was not his fault." The rest of the film is empty calories -- watch the dying guy destroy his life's work (gee, could you see that coming?), watch the ex-wife fall in love with her ex-husband again, watch the drug-addled son shower with the girl next door because she needs to wash her hair! At least the house is nice.

year: 2001
length: 125 min.
rating: 2.5
IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0264796/combined

The Quiet American

Here's a problem with writing a review of a film many days after you've watched it. I get all muddled about the details. It may be, though, that it's just this particular film's winning combination of sparsity and complexity that are to blame. It's based on a Graham Greene novel, and few films do such a good job of showcasing literary quality. Even the voiceovers have literary merit. At first, I thought the story was like so many other stories -- two men fighting over a girl, with the added exotica of it being set in Vietnam as the French are battling the communists for control of the country. But it's filmed with the slow, stately pacing of a play, albeit one a lot less theatrical and melodramatic. Michael Caine and Brendan Fraser play the men in love with a Vietnamese woman (who is very beautiful, but has little else to do, sadly). Caine is a British reporter who needs a story in order to stay in Vietnam, and Fraser is an apparently dorky, yet kind, American who steals away the woman. The chilling denouement towards the end reveals who Fraser really is, and why he's in the country. I don't know whether I'm supposed to believe it, but even if it is untrue, it most certainly was prophetic.

year: 2002
length: 101 min.
rating: 3.5
IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0258068/combined

Only Angels Have Wings

This is one of those sweet older films that has some fantastic lines, but then also has dreadful lines that make you crinkle your nose at the screen. The scenes between Jean Arthur and Cary Grant sparkle, for the most part, because of the understated sexual innuendo that you don't hear in films nowadays (i.e., flirting the clever way). But then there are breast-heaving scenes between Rita Hayworth and anyone within spitting distance, and that's simply embarrassing. The film is set in some fantastical South American country with dripping palm fronds and ice-covered mountains. And tiny planes (hence the wings in the title) to carry the mail to and from the palm fronds through narrow fissures in the ice-covered mountains. There is a piece in the middle where things get wonderfully complex and you feel the film might completely redeem itself, but then you are subjected to an ending that shows what the Hollywood powers-that-be assumed was how a man should react to a woman asking him whether he loves her. Sigh. The film's worth it to watch Jean Arthur's glorious performance (and Cary Grant's to a lesser degree) and to think, albeit very briefly, on the strange mix of morality depicted by everyone involved.

year: 1939
length: 121 min.
rating: 2.5
IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0031762/combined

Red Dragon

My goodness, Brett Ratner is a little bundle of energy. If you don't think that from watching the film, you will from watching even a small part of the documentary. I knew he was a DVD freak (his collection is renowned), but I didn't know he was Quentin Tarantino-ish. It shows in this film -- you can just see him jumping up and down gleefully when he shoots Ed Norton from below as he's explaining why the eponymous serial killer will never stop. The "from below" shot is traditionally used for suspense, and is used by current film directors for any scene that should give the audience a shock. So, Ratner is at least following in the footsteps of greats. He's also smart enough to use a good screenwriter, who regrettably can't quite shake his original assignment, The Silence of the Lambs, so several ideas and scenes are re-hashed. Still, I think those who weren't fond of The Silence of the Lambs should forego this one. It's just as scary (although not as lyrical). Without the stellar cast, I'm not sure I would have chosen it to watch. Ed Norton (who is a bit flat, to be honest), Harvey Keitel, Mary-Louise Parker, Ph ilip Seymour Hoffman, and best of all Ralph Fiennes and Emily Watson, as the killer and the victim. They seem out of place in a film like this, and they are, but they add those little touches of brilliance that make it worth watching.

year: 2002
length: 124 min.
rating: 3.0
IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0289765/combined

Groundhog Day

I'm convinced that this film is based on a short story that I read in high school. (I don't know the name of it, and if this rings a bell, let me know as it has both me and the entire reference staff stumped.) In the story, a man is promised a whole lotta money to be locked up in a house for 5 years. He accepts and you see him go through certain stages -- the enjoy-life-to-the-fullest stage (going on benders, eating tons of food, etc.), depression (having become fed up with his situation), weary acceptance, and ultimately the realization that he has a chance to become a better person. He reads books he's never read before, and learns to play music and compose his own music. When the five years are up, his phone rings and he's shocked. He'd forgotten that he was a prisoner. Bill Murray goes through very similar, albeit much more funny, circumstances trying to get past February 2nd in Punxatawny, Pennsylvania. In the process he becomes a well-rounded, un-selfish, nice guy instead of the boor he was. And then the girl falls for him. This is one of my fave Murray portrayals (Ghostbusters and Lost in Translation are also at the top of the list, with The Royal Tenenbaums ever so close behind). He gets it all right -- the humor and the pathos. On top of it all, we also get some insight into what it must be like to do take after take after take...

year: 1993
length: 101 min.
rating: 4.0
IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107048/combined