The Aviator (2004)

Premise: Following the life of Howard Hughes (Leonardo DiCaprio), aviator and film producer who was as known for romancing starlets such as Katherine Hepburn (Cate Blanchett) and Ava Gardner (Kate Beckinsale) as he was for aeronautic advances. Despite his encroaching madness, Hughes took on PanAm head Juan Trippe (Alec Baldwin) and Senator Ralph Owen Brewster (Alan Alda) to put an end to an attempt to monopolize the sky.

I just want to comment that it has been very difficult for me to avoid press about a movie I have been anticipating since June. That said -

Vindication! That's my first feeling. Vindication on so many levels. First and foremost - DiCaprio. I did my best to conceal the favour I had long ago bestowed on him when it became unpopular to like him as an actor. Still I held on, and now vindication is mine. Hughes would have been nothing but a whiny germaphobe in a lesser actor's hands. DiCaprio may not possess the sheer physical presence of Hughes, but he is the only actor I could think of that could say to a lowly cigarette girl "I want to know what pleases you", turn her into Jean Harlow (Gwen Stefani), and not walk away from the whole thing dripping in slime. Watching his sinewy body caress the curves of planes and women is something else. Nothing can compare, though, to seeing him take on Juan Trippe across the dinne table with fiery passion, only to become trapped in the men's room when he cannot bring himself to turn the door handle. DiCaprio is devastating.

And again! Vindication for never liking Beckinsale. Maybe it was her sweet but lackluster performance as Hero is Kenneth Brannagh's sun-soaked, Tuscan Much Ado About Nothing, or maybe it was something else. Somewhere along the way, I decided that Beckinsale was terrible. And I am right - that was the worst Ava Gardner I have ever seen. I saw Beckinsale on Oprah talking about how she only had one night to prepare for the role, and it shows.

Of course, it's just plain cruel to compare Beckinsale to Blanchett. I've been keeping my eye on Blanchett since Elizabeth. I don't know how she does it, but Blanchett manages to channel Hepburn here. The way she turns her nose up and that short little laugh are deadly. Her Katherine is a whirlwind. It's no small wonder that Hepburn forever stole Hughes' heart, and her scenes with DiCaprio are phenomenal.

Saints be praised that Baldwin is no longer trapped in the role of leading man. He dives into this fat cat role with terrific restrained gusto, and Alda is there to match him step for step.

John Logan's screenplay, full of fury and understatement, works brilliantly Martin Scorcese's direction. Part of the film was done in Montreal (thank you, end credits!), so I will happily take vindication for that as well. Should anyone ever ask you, all of Martin Scorcese's films (at least the ones I have seen) are about what makes a man. Not what separates him from a woman, but what makes him his own entity: what makes a man a man. He is unabashed in the pursuit of this goal.

Still, while I was breathless with anticipation over whether or not the Hercules really would fly, the rest of the theatre didn't seem as concerned. I have given up on fellow audience members doing anything short of inciting me to violence, but the 169 minute running time did make me a little sympathetic. A -

Desert Saints (2002)

Short: Banks (Kiefer Sutherland) is a hit man who uses women to do the work that may get him caught, then he kills them. For he latest and last hit, he picks up Bennie (Melora Walters), a sultry hitch-hiker with a secret past. Scanlon (Jamey Sheridan) and Marbury (Leslie Stefanson) are feds hot on his trail, and a simple enough hit quickly dissolves into a game of betrayal.

Let's all agree that it has been quite some time since April reviewed a Kiefer Sutherland movie. Aren't you impressed?

You should be.

You should not, however, be impressed with this movie. A ho-hum betrayal tale between cops and criminals doesn't do much for me when it's as formulaic as this one. Of course, that explains why writer/director Richard Greenberg and co-writer Wally Nichols haven't done anything since. There's nothing in the screenplay or direction to catch the audience's attention and/or maintain it.

Sutherland, as always, demonstrates that he's a formidable villain with a tongue laced with double talk and cruelty. He seems nice enough one minute, but that can change in a snap.

Walters wasn't nearly as good, but I liked her anyway. Everything I read described her as "sexy", and, while I wouldn't agree with that, I would go as far as to say that she did more than just put up a tough girl front.

Overall, though, I can't in good conscience recommend this one. It's not enough to anything to be worthwhile and not bad enough for me to dismiss it. C

The Way We Were (1973)

Summary: Well, I'm just going to give you the seemingly ubiquitous plot summary: "Two people, Hubbell Gardner (Robert Redford) and Katie Morosky (Barbara Streisand), have a wonderful romance, but their political views (he's conservative, she's a commie) and convictions (he's about people, she's about principles) drive them apart." Plus you get some McCarthyism and snappy seventies outfits.

Misty water coloured memories! Okay, I just had to get that out of my system before I kept writing.

Oh, young Robert Redford. I don't know what it is about him. I wouldn't go as far as to say that I am particularly attracted to him, yet I am drawn to him. He's magnetic - what else can I say? Passionate and optimistic, but he can turn cold with the drop of a hat. You've just got to watch Redford.

I don't feel the same way about Streisand, though. I love her with Redford, and that scene at the end really is killer - it just wouldn't be without her - but I'm not sure what the big deal is about her. I don't much care for her singing voice.

The screenplay, by Arthur Laurents and David Rayfiel, is intelligent and focused, and it works with Sydney Pollack's careful direction. The direction, in my opinion, may have been a bit too careful, but I guess it was 1973.

Overall, not the best love story I've ever seen. A good one nonetheless. B+

Spanglish (2004)

Summary: Deborah Clasky (Téa Leoni) hires Flor (Paz Vega) as a nanny/housekeeper for her two children, Bernice (Sarah Steele) and Georgie (Ian Hyland), and her alcoholic former singer mother, Evelyn (Cloris Leachman). Deb's relationship with her husband, John (Adam Sandler), is strained at best, and things become even worse when Flor and her daughter, Cristina (Shelbie Bruce), move in with the Claskys for the summer.

James L. Brooks. James L. Brooks. What are his movies about, really? Terms of Endearment? As Good as it Gets? I don't know. I liked both those movies, but it's been too long since I've watched either one of them for me to recall what was so special about them. Funny? Absolutely. Strangely warm? Without a doubt. Great performances? Who could argue with that?

But what does it all mean? What does it add up to? I rather enjoyed his writing and directing here. He didn't entirely go for the big Hollywood ending, instead giving us some of it and leaving the rest to imagination.

Or did he? No. You know what, it was supposed to feel that way, but he didn't really leave anything to the imagination. It's the sets that give everything away. Consider the two houses were the Clasky spend their time. Each is filled with stuff, yet neither comes across as cluttered. They're supposed to have all this stuff, you think. That's life. An accumulation of things that never seem out of place. Only it's not. It's trying too hard.

You get the humour and heart of Brooks movie without any of the weight you would really need to carry it through. I laughed and laughed, and very little of it has any staying power beyond that.

Vega, of Sex and Lucia fame, is a sexily confused and high strung joy in this movie. Wonderfully clad in flowing skirts and peasanty tops, Vega very nearly steals the show. She's so strong and stupid all that the same time.

Leoni, on the other hand, does nothing so worthwhile. Her character is such a bitch, which is exactly what I kept saying during the movie, and she's the worst kind of bitch because she has absolutely no idea what a huge bitch she is. The worst part, however, is that nothing about Brooks' screenplay or Leoni's performance makes Deborah redeemable or worthy of John in anyway.

Sandler, who I have judged to be something of a one performance actor in the past(which the box office never seems to mind), may have something here. Sure, he resorts of his old tricks once or twice, but he showing signs of something deeper here. Something real. We'll see how long he sticks with it.

Leachman, oh Leachman. She is a riot! Evelyn's a joy in every scene she appears in, and nothing about her performance is unnatural in anyway. Frankly, I would have been just as apt to see a movie about her influence on the family as I was to see Flor's.

Vega and Leachman may be worth my time, but I'm not yet convinced about the rest of it. Mostly because of the lack of anything to drive Leoni's character to behave the way she does. B-

One Crazy Summer (1986)

Brief: Hoops McCann (John Cusack) decides to spend his last summer before art school on Nantucket with his best friend George Calamari (Joey Murray) and his family. Hoops meets Cassandra (Demi Moore), and, together with a bunch of townies, they try to save her grandfather's house from the evil Beckersteads who want to put in a restuarant and condos. Of course, all these things caluminate in a regatta.

Everytime I watched say anything . . . in my last house, one of my housemant's boyfriends would tell me how much they support Cusack in the 80s. He would always go on to recommend One Crazy Summer. Thanks to the wonderful Zip.ca, I have finally watched it.

Anyone who calls themselves Savage Steven Holland (writer/director) and who employs Bobcat Goldthwait clearly just wants to have some fun. Sure, Moore can't act or sing, and Cusack has some massively skinny legs. Sure, the dialogue is almost always over the top. Sure, the movie relies more on sight gags than anything else. That's what I look for in a classic 80s comedy. They're just so funny if you don't let their inadequacies get you down.

Sometimes movies are just for fun. It's all about managing expectations, I say. C+

Also, for those of you who didn't know, the Golden Globe nominations were announced Monday. If you would like to see a complete list from those in the know, you want this link: http://www.hfpa.org/nominations2005.html.

And, if you really like your TV, you need to be reading Television Without Pity. Tongue-in-cheek humour and criticism like this can only be written by people who really, really like television: http://www.televisionwithoutpity.com/.

Ocean's Twelve (2004)

Idea: The whole gang from Ocean's Eleven is back. Terry Benedict (Andy Garcia) wants it all back with interest, so they head out to three European cities to get it. Isabel (Catherine Zeta-Jones), however, is something of a jilted ex and hot on Rusty's (Brad Pitt) tail. They get into some trouble when they encounter a rival thief known only as the Nightfox.

Basically, George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, Casey Affleck, Scott Caan, Shaobo Qin, Bernie Mac, Don Cheadle, Carl Reiner, Eddie Jemison, and Elliott Gould are up to their old tricks. And good tricks they are.

Except something isn't working here. And it's Steven Soderbergh.

George Nolfi's script nails the characters, but he ignores the setting as a character. Ocean's Eleven wouldn't have worked if it wasn't set in Las Vegas. It showcased that glittering steel trap beautifully. It's a bad sign, however, when people can't work Amsterdam and Rome. They seem like pretty easy cities to work.

But that's not the point. See, the first movie was a slick caper. Not your usual Soderbergh fare, but something smooth and completely seamless, from start to finish. Not so here. A Soderbergh film without doubt, but now it's no longer a heist movie. It has to be something more. So he sacrifices fun in the place of excessive close ups and disjoin, you-never-know-until-the-end-what's-really-going-on story telling. You could make a case for that in the first movie, but you'd have to see the sequel to understand the difference.

Still there are noteworthy elements at play.

Topher Grace has the best cameo since well . . . I don't even know. I just died when he said that he "totally phoned it in on that Dennis Quaid thing." Just died.

Clooney, my smarmy friend, and Pitt work well together, and everyone looks great. I swear, these movies are more about costuming than anything else. Zeta-Jones looks fabulous the whole way through. I wanted her wardrobe so very much. Too many great items to list.

Did they all phone it in, though? Maybe. B.

Hello again! No time for a real review today, but I thought I'd tell you all that Les invasions barbares was really good, and, if you can stand how dirty these French people are, you should see it. The chemistry between Remy Girard and Stephane Rousseau, who play father and son, is incredible.
I also wanted to leave you this link: http://www.pcavote.com/voting/film/f01.shtml. If you follow it, you can vote for the 31st annual People's Choice awards. You don't have to vote for every category (I avoided the country music section). It made me feel warm and fuzzy to share my opinion with that many more people.
Alright, back to reading and writing take-homes. I can't wait for this week to be over, so I can sink my teeth into some DVDs.

Closer (2004)

Plan: While walking down the street one dismal day in London, Dan (Jude Law) spies Alice (Natalie Portman). She's hit by a car, and he takes her to the hospital. Dan meets Anna (Julia Roberts) when she photographs him for his book about Alice's life. Dan accidentally sets Anna up with Larry (Clive Owen). Dan and Alice attend Anna's show, where Dan discovers that Anna is dating Larry, and Larry meets Alice in front of her portrait.

I keep rolling around in my mind that stat that we've all heard. You know the one, that something like 60% of people cheat? But what is that really? People in monogamous relationships? Do they mean sexual intercourse when they say "cheat"? Kissing? Wanting said things?

Plot summaries are praising this movie for the way it deals with the "adult" themes of adultery, love, lust, sex, and betrayal.

Fair enough praise. Patrick Marber's screenplay, based on his play, is brutally honest about the relationships between men and women. It is, in fact, so insightful about said relationships that it reminds me of an Oscar Wilde play, only without the charm or comedy.

The only real problem I have with Marber's screenplay is that his characters lack even an iota of self-control. A character may appear scrupulous at first, but Marber makes it clear that a persistent person can easily wear them done.

Luckily, Mick Nichols takes an impressive and beautiful cast and pushes them as far as they are willing to go, which in some cases isn't all that far. Nichols has made a movie about sex without showing anything, which is a talent in itself, but he manages to make the ubiquitous sex talk simultaneously artless and artful.

With a whopping cast of six speaking parts, it's pretty easy to get into the individual characters (and why it must have worked well as a play).

I have said in the past that the more I see of Law, the less I like him. With, what, four or five movies opening this fall, how could I not get annoyed? Even so, I saw this one, and I will cautiously suggest that I may be able to like him again. He is not, at any rate, the sexiest man alive. Of course, that's because I have difficulty seeing him as a "man". The way he bats his girly eyelashes and always seems to be play these arrogant asses convinced of their own sex appeal doesn't really turn my crank. He made a pretty good Dan. Dan's a man who believes he deserves many a beautiful woman and has serious issues about his mommy. I buy that from Law.

The thing is, though, Law made it really hard to actually hate Dan. I oscillated between feeling sorry for him and thinking he felt a bit too sorry for himself, but I never really had a reason to demonize his character. The trailers, however, give Dan more of an edge. There are at least two exchanges with Anna in them that do not appear in the movie. If Dan had had that side to him that I saw there, I might have concerned myself with him at little more.

Natalie Portman has come back to us! Gone are the days of Natalie the Robot in the hands of useless George Lucas (yes, I realize that there will be a third movie, but I've chosen to block it out as best I can). Garden State first hinted at it. Portman was charming and sweet there, and under Nichols' tutelage, Portman has become a full fledged star. This is the precocious girl we instantly fell in love with in The Professional, Heat, and Beautiful Girls. She has grown into a sexy young woman full of passion and pathos. So protective was Nichols over Portman's nubile body that he had every trace of her nudity edited out (tricky thing considering her character's profession). I think he gets it though. Portman has finally arrived.

Will the real Julia Roberts please stand up? You know I think she plays the same character in every movie, and she seemed to get away from that here for a little while. Even so, I still felt like I was waiting. Waiting, waiting, always waiting for Roberts to show her true colours, to see what the rest of the world sees in her. Yes, she is gorgeous. I don't think I've ever seen her look so good. But what about the rest of it? Where's all this acting skill that the rest cling to? Roberts' mega-watt smile will never let her down, and I still hope that there's more to it than that.

Owen, who originated the stage character of Dan, is a wonderful ball of sexuality, fury, and embarrassment. I feel it was a cruel trick to set the boy Law up against the man Owen. He could eat pint-sized Law for lunch. Owen is just so masculine, and he's so confident in that masculinity that he's not afraid to play the hyper libido or misogyny that goes along with it. His performances are always restrained, but he's starting to let it out here.

One of the best parts of the movie, though, is everyone's style. Costumer designer Ann Roth has outdone herself. She embraces patterns on patterns (three at once and without a hint of fear), fantastic accessories, and minimalist colour. It's a delight for the eye, I tell you.

Despite it's repetitive nature, I even fell for the Damien Rice song, "The Blower's Daughter", that can be heard in the trailers, TV spots, and throughout the movie. Not to steal a page from the dear Jenelle, but I feel I should the lyrics with you:

And so it is
Just like you said it would be
Life goes easy on me
Most of the time
And so it is
The shorter story
No love, no glory
No hero in her sky
I can't take my eyes off of you
I can't take my eyes off of you
I can't take my eyes off of you
I can't take my eyes off of you
I can't take my eyes off of you
I can't take my eyes
And so it is
Just like you said it should be
We'll both forget the breeze
Most of the time
And so it is
The colder water
The blower's daughter
The pupil in denial
I can't take my eyes off of you
I can't take my eyes off of you
I can't take my eyes off of you
I can't take my eyes off of you
I can't take my eyes off of you
I can't take my eyes
Did I say that I loathe you?
Did I say that I want to
Leave it all behind?
I can't take my mind off of you
I can't take my mind off of you
I can't take my mind off of you
I can't take my mind off of you
I can't take my mind off of you
I can't take my mind
'Til I find somebody new

So, to recap: a nice song, great costumes, and a lot of sex talk. Is that why I go to the movies? Did I really want someone to talk dirty to me while wearing some sassy earrings that I would want to borrow and hear some pretty song in the background? No. B-

The Machinist (2004)

Brief: Trevor Reznik (Christian Bale) hasn't slept in a year. He divides his time between his work as a lathe operator, a 24-hour café where he chats with waitress Maria (Aitana Sanchez-Gijon), and hooker named Stevie (Jennifer Jason Leigh). After he causes an accident at work involving Miller (Michael Ironside), Trevor admits that he was distracted by Ivan (John Sharian). When everyone else denies Ivan's existence, Trevor suspects a larger conspiracy at play.

It has taken many a sleep to come to terms with what this film, and I think I've got a handle on it now.

Much has been made of Bale's astonishing 63 pound weight loss, and it is credited as the most weight change ever made for a film. Compared to Robert De Niro's weight gain for Raging Bull, Bale reminded me more of De Niro's performance in another Martin Scorcese work: Taxi Driver. I don't think I understood what De Niro was doing back in 1976 until I was caught up in Bale's mesmerising performance. It's true that he does a different accent for every character, and I honestly believe this to be his best work to date. He just keeps getting better and better. Bale, looking horrifyingly like a Holocaust victim, overwhelmed me with the latent guilt that drives this movie, and he managed to make, without giving too much away, even the most despicable of characters worthy of wonderfully wrought sympathy. His above and beyond performance should be rewarded accordingly.

Brad Anderson's direction of Scott Kosar's paranoid and thrilling screenplay combines elements of Alfred Hitchcock and Christopher Nolan, forever confounding the audience and driving them forward with an alternatively creeping and racing pace. His direction is electric and harrowing, always hinting but never giving you enough to go on.

Trevor's flirtations with Maria were insubstantial, but Sanchez-Gijon makes her smaller role worth remembering. Stevie is Trevor's true lady, and Leigh works hard to avoid relegating her character to a stereotypical hooker with a heart of gold. In the end, it's just enough to avoid tipping the balance, but there's still something missing from her performance that you can't quite put your finger on. A pulse, maybe. Something other than a black eye to make Stevie as worth caring about as Maria.

Of course, Anderson and Kosar make sure all you really care about is the other characters in relation to Trevor. Sharian's the most compelling of these, with his toothy grin, massive noggin, and air of a bounty hunter about him. Trevor's never clear on what Ivan wants from him, and Sharian makes sure that the audience feels just as toyed with.

If any of you doubt why I believe Fight Club to be a comedy, I recommend you see this one. You feel the theatre feeling not afraid but nervous, like someone will be waiting for you when you get home. Someone you owe, somehow. You know what the ending will be by the time it rolls around, and Anderson and Bale manage to make you still long for it. A-

The Great Gatsby (1974)

Short: Nick Carraway (Sam Waterston) is intrigued by his wealthy and mysterious neighbour, Jay Gatsby (Robert Redford). As his cousin Daisy Buchanan (Mia Farrow) tries to induct Nick into the upper crust to keep her company while her philandering husband, Tom (Bruce Dern), gallivants about town, Nick is manipulated into reintroducing Jay and Daisy, whose past he has only begun to uncover.

Despite the fact that it is also a bit too long and much too slowly paced, an infinitely better film than Alexander.

Okay, maybe not infinitely better. But better none the less.

Just don't ask me to compare the novel. I don't know. I've never read the novel. As much as I understand and even appreciate F. Scott Fitzgerald as a classic American writer and the definitive Jazz Age novelist, I've never picked up one of his novels. Short stories, on the other hand, I've read some of those. Just like me and Nathaniel Hawthorne. I guess I'm just not big on American novelists.

Regardless, this is a pretty good movie. I would agree with the jacket that described Francis Ford Coppola's script as elegant, and Jack Clayton (director) knows how to tell a love story, even if it is more of a fantasy.

Unfortunately, I don't know where he was going with Farrow as Daisy. I always thought that she was something of a manipulative seductress who didn't know her own mind, but Farrow's performance has led me to believe that she was, in fact, out of her mind. Was that the way it was in the book?

Redford lends credibility to the eternally hopeful Gatsby, and his lined forehead and occasional fleeting look of despondency tether his performance just enough to keep the audience captive.

Waterston's accent threw me a little, but I liked his Nick anyway. Nick's a sweet guy, really.

It was probably Scott Wilson, though, who brought the most emotion to his small but influential part as George Wilson. Wilson will not fail to break your heart.

Overall, either Coppola, Clayton, or Fitzgerald himself - maybe a combo of the three? - was much to heavy handed with the symbolism.

And there are plenty of ways to express the fact that it's hot besides having everyone be so darn sweaty. B