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RED: Lesser known films. PURPLE: Lee's comments |
Ocean’s Eleven (2001) I never saw the original, Rat Pack version of this, from 1960. This is the re-make by Steven Soderbergh, and a bit of a departure for him. It’s fairly smart, with snappy dialogue, even though you don’t believe it for a second. An amusing night at the movies. IMDb.com
Ocean’s Twelve (2004) The first time they stole $160,000,000. This time they have to give it back. Has some of the attractions of Eleven, but tries too hard to top itself, too many times. By the end I didn’t quite know who had done what to who. Whom. I suspect there were gaping plot holes, but wasn’t interested enough to root them out. IMDb.com
Ocean's 13 (2007) First feature at the drive in with Knocked Up. IMDb.com
Ocean’s Thirteen Don’t press your luck, Steve.
Off the Map (2003) This is a special little film made by the actor Campbell Scott, who also made Big Night. He’s definitely an actor’s director. It’s hard to describe the delights of this movie without giving too much away, and a plain description doesn’t actually sound that appealing. It’s told from the viewpoint of a 12-year-old girl living deep in the New Mexico countryside with her mother and father. No electricity, no phone, hardly any money, but they’re doing fine ... except the father is totally crippled by clinical depression. He doesn’t know where it came from, or what to do about it. Sounds awful, doesn’t it? But Joan Allen and Sam Elliott and the girl, Valentina de Angelis, along with great support from J.K. Simmons and Jim True-Frost, make it work. It has a hypnotic quality at times, and a great sense of humor. See it. IMDb.com
The Office (2001) BBC sitcom. DVD. The Office only lasted two seasons, which is something the British do a lot more than Americans, preferring not to prolong a funny idea until it’s all used up, stale. This one is absolutely wonderful. No laugh track, no slapstick, no huge laugh lines that real people would never say. No gags. Just the worst boss you have ever seen, a real nightmare, who only wants to be loved and thinks he is funny. He’s not ... on purpose. A great supporting cast. IMDb.com
Offside (2006, Iran) In Iran women can’t attend men’s sporting events. Some girls who are also soccer fanatics try to get into the stadium for the big game with Bahrain. The acting is poor, the writing is boring. The Iranian regime are barbarians. Militant Islamists are barbarians. I don’t even like peaceful Muslims very much. And soccer is a stupid game. So what’s to like? Nothing. IMDb.com
Oliver Twist (2005) You often wonder why someone chooses to remake a film, even if it is based on a classic book. Oliver Twist has been made no less than 20 times, according to the IMDb. Most critics agree that David Lean's 1948 version is the best, with Alec Guinness's Fagin the definitive one. (Ron Moody in Oliver! is a close second, though you can't really compare the two since one is comic and the other definitely is not.)
You don't have to wonder why this director chose to remake this film, however. Roman Polanski's parents were sent off to concentration camps when he was about Oliver's age, and he had to fend for himself on the brutal streets for a long time. No question this story resonates with him. So, though it wasn't really necessary to make this film, I give him points for making a visually stunning movie, full of vivid Dickensian characters. Unfortunately, it totally laid an egg at the box office.
But I had a few thoughts about the book itself. It is one of Dickens' most popular, and it's easy to see why. The book is more complicated than most of the screen versions (maybe one of the several mini-series included the whole plot, but I haven't seen them), and it turns out to be easy to snip out several subplots without any damage to the larger story. And it's the story that, upon reflection, concerns me.
Polanski has left out the beginning, where a desperate woman dies giving birth, and the ending, where it is revealed that Oliver is the long-lost nephew of Mr. Brownlow. Okay, we expect unlikely coincidences in Dickens and other Victorians, as we expect sentimentality. That aside, what makes a Dickens story so compelling to this day is the realistic portraits of the evils of the age, the sheer grinding indifference of the upper classes and their moralistic lackeys to the plight of the unfortunates who Dickens loves so much.
Oliver bothers me. Just look at him. Raised in an orphanage, then sent to the workhouse, unwanted, unloved, on his own. And yet he is so angelic, so full of goodness. How the hell did he survive ten years? In Oliver! he even speaks like a little upper-class twit (twist?), as if he was on the public school track that leads straight to Oxford, and in this new version his speech is distinctly different from the street urchins. Henry Higgins maintained that an Englishman's speech "absolutely classifies him," but he didn't suggest that accents were hereditary. Then, thrown in with a nest of thieves, Oliver never steals anything. Taken in by Mr. Brownlow, he exhibits all the honor and resolve of the class he was born into. And that's the key, isn't it?
Did Dickens even realize that he was making that ancient, eugenic argument that "blood will tell"? His own youth was moderately well-off until he was 12, when his father was thrown into debtors prison and he had to go to work in awful conditions. I can imagine him slaving away, thinking "I'm better than all this." I'm not putting him down; who wouldn't think like that, in that situation? But it's a major flaw in the story for me.
There is also the Merchant of Venice syndrome, with the "bad guy" being Jewish. I don't have a lot to say about that, except to note that the 1948 version was banned in Israel as being anti-Semitic ... and also in Cairo, as being too sympathetic to Jews! IMDb.com
Once (Ireland, 2006) A short and appealing film about people making music. It plays out over about a week, during which a street musician/guitar player/songwriter meets a piano player from the Czech Republic, in Dublin. They are attracted, but for various good reasons they can’t get together. Sometimes you just meet the right person at the wrong time. We were both reminded of a film we both love, Before Sunrise. … unfortunately, I didn’t love this one as much, or even as much as I wanted to. Both characters are people I liked, played by Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová. The writing was good. It’s nice to see something like this made on a very, very low budget. So what was wrong? Here’s why you probably shouldn’t take my review too seriously: It was the music. For one thing, a guy singing with a guitar is not my favorite genre, by a long shot. I thought all of these songs were pretty ordinary, until one toward the end that was in 5/4 time, a bit of complexity you don’t often see in pop music. (Though one of my favorite Linda Ronstadt songs is in 7/4.) I recognize that the sort of songs this man writes appeal to many people, just not to me. I’m a tough sell on lyrics, and I didn’t like any of these. So make of it what you will. You may love it, as huge numbers of people, including Lee, did. It just didn’t quite make it with me. IMDb.com
Once Upon a Time in Mexico (Mexico, 2003) Who needs Montezuma’s Revenge when there are movies as rancid as this? Don’t drink the water, it’ll clean your bowels right out. I’d prefer a severe case of diarrhea to having to see the last hour of this movie. We quit at about 40 minutes. IMDb.com
Once Upon a Time in the Midlands (2002) One of those sweet little British comedies about the working class. I like them, and this is an excellent example. IMDb.com
Once Were Warriors (1994) New Zealand is a fabulously beautiful country. (I've never been there, but everybody I've ever spoken to who has is rapturous about it.) It's so beautiful that, in the opening shot here, Lee said "It looks like a painting!" Well ... what it was, was a billboard advertising "Beautiful New Zealand!" What's behind the billboard as we pull back is sort of like The Road Warrior set in the South Bronx. This is where the social dregs of Auckland live, mostly on the dole, mostly problem drinkers, mostly Maori.
I did a little reading on the Maori. They are not at all related to the aboriginals of Australia. In fact, though they were screwed by the white man, like all indigenous populations were during the Era of Expansion, they got off better than most. And, oddly enough, they had been in New Zealand for no longer than 800 years, so you could call them newcomers. They died of white men's diseases, like all native people did. And there were wars ... but they'd been fighting genocidal wars among themselves for centuries. Bottom line, they got a better deal than most native cultures. Many assimilated. The government has been concerned and sensitive (relatively speaking, of course, there were no atrocities to compare with how the Aussie treated their natives), Maori is an official language in NZ. But the bottom line below that bottom line is that Maoris are nevertheless usually the most culturally and economically disadvantaged New Zealanders.
So I expected this to be about the oppression of the Maori culture, and for the villains to be white. But that's not the story. Though it's pretty much an all-Maori cast, it's about domestic violence and alcoholism, and could have happened in any setting ... though I have to say, if Kiwis are anything like Aussies, they can be epic drinkers, putting away quart-sized bottles of beer like soda pop.
Jake is a self-loathing (though he'd never admit it, even to himself), self-described "son of a long line of slaves." Beth is his punching bag of 18 years, from a good traditional Maori family, who blames herself for getting the crap beaten out of her. They have 5 kids. The oldest joins a gang of Maori youth with tattooed faces, any one of whom look as if he could eat three Hell's Angels for breakfast and not even spit out the bones. We're really talking The Road Warrior here. Another boy is sent into government custody because the family can't control him ... and it's not a terrible injustice, nor is it portrayed that way. If I were the judge, I'd have done the same thing, and it may in fact be his only chance at salvation. The saddest character is Grace, who Beth and Jake both fail in the most basic way.
It's finally a wake-up call for Beth. Maybe things will get better. She seems to be shed of Jake ... but cynical me, I really wonder, if she'd loved a guy for 18 years in spite of all the broken bones and knocked-out teeth and black eyes ... women so often give the fellow just one more chance ... until the guy finally kills her. IMDb.com
One From The Heart (1982) Francis Ford Coppola was said to have directed this entirely from a trailer, watching on TV. Huh? The sets are fabulous; nothing else is. IMDb.com
One-Hour Photo (2002) Robin Williams stretches himself here, and the plot doesn’t unfold quite as you would expect it to. But not real memorable. IMDb.com
Open Range (2003) Opens okay, but degenerates into stupidity pretty quickly. IMDb.com
Open Water (2003) Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh! Get me out of the water!
This is the best thriller I’ve seen in years. Maybe it’s because I have two strong phobias: being underwater, and being in the water with sharks. The first is because I can’t swim, and I can’t swim because the evil Coach S., during my first swimming lesson when I was about 12, thought holding my head underwater would cure me of my reluctance to do it myself. I coughed up a lot of water, went home, never went back and have spend the last 45 years thinking of ways to kill Coach S. The second phobia ... I’m not sure, but I think it has to do with growing up on the Texas Gulf Coast, going to the beach and standing in water so murky you couldn’t see five inches down into it, and feeling things bumping my legs, then seeing seiners haul in 8-foot hammerheads from water no deeper than I had been standing in. Haven’t been in ocean water more than knee-deep since then.
It’s the most claustrophobic movie since Rear Window. The cameras get you right down into the water with these two stranded divers, and you don’t see a lot more than they see. You’re with them as all the illusions of civilization break down, gradually, and they realize that, in the end, we are all meat, and there’s nothing you can do about it. The only questions are which creature will eat you, and whether you’re still alive when they do. WARNING: THIS IS A BAD DREAM MOVIE!!! IMDb.com
Osama (Afghanistan, 2003) Not the Osama I’d like to spend some quality time with; just him, me, and a rusty Swiss Army knife. This is one of the most horrifying movies I’ve ever seen, the first movie made after the Taliban was ousted from power in that miserable country. While they were there, women were not allowed to leave their homes without a male escort, and not allowed to work, so I suppose they were expected to starve to death gloriously, allahu akbar! (God is Great!) A widowed woman cuts her daughter’s hair and dresses her as a boy (calling herself Osama) so she can work. I try to dislike all religions equally, and Da Lawd knows Christianity has much to answer for, both in the past and today ... but I despise Islam. I just hate everything about it. I know these were (and are) fanatical extremists, but still ... You know this story will end badly, and it does. IMDb.com
Out of Time (2003) Denzel Washington. Goes along pretty well until the last reel, which is always the toughest. Not totally stupid, but no more than an entertaining time-waster. IMDb.com
Over the Hedge (2006) How we got this DVD is more interesting than the movie itself. Bruce Willis was finally getting his star on Hollywood Boulevard on October 16th, at 11:30 in front of Grauman's Chinese Theatre. Now, when Vanna White gets a star they close off one lane of the street for a few hours and the one or two hundred people showing up for the ceremony squeeze in there. When Bruce gets his, they close off almost the whole street for the whole morning. (And the other side of the street was getting ready to close for some sort of The Nightmare Before Christmas promotion at the El Capitan Theatre as we were leaving. Hollywood is a thrill a minute!) The street was barricaded into regions for the stars, the paparatizzi, and the hoi polloi. That is to say, us. The place was jammed, probably about a thousand people. We tried to get in and some asshole in the event crew told us the area was closed. Closed? Closed? Then who were those people craning their necks and listening to Johnny Grant, the affable old honorary "Mayor of Hollywood," vamping until the celebs arrived? Another guy told us we had to go into Grauman's parking lot and get green armbands. Why? Who knows, but we went and got them, and were let in with the teeming masses. (There was one level of attendee below us: about 500 people behind the barricades across the street, where a man stood with a sign asking "Bruce Willis, where is my money?")
Once inside we resolved that the next time, we were coming with one of those little folding stepladders. You'd think they'd build a platform, they'd only need to have it about six feet high or so, and people could see better, it'd take them about five minutes to erect it along with the sound system and the barricades. But no, it was the same little dinky two-foot podium they used for Nancy Sinatra's star. Maybe half a dozen people there had brought their ladders. The rest milled around and held their cameras up in the air. Since I'm usually the tallest one there it's not a problem for me, but Lee can't see shit. So I ended up holding the camera as high as I could and hoping for the best.
Eventually all the celebs were assembled in the theater, and Johnny started calling them out. First the man of the hour, then Ben Affleck, Billy Bob Thornton, Jeffrey Katzenberg (the K in SKG, with Spielberg and Geffen, a guy I worked with on an ill-fated project in the '80s), Sly Stallone, Kevin Costner, Demi Moore, Don Johnson (though why a guy whose career is in the toilet would want to be here I don't know), a few others. I managed to get one shot of Costner and a glimpse of Stallone, but of the others I saw not a trace unless they came up to the podium to speak, which was Billy Bob and Ben. Our local city councilmen spoke—briefly, thank god—and a proclamation from Arnold was read. Bruce's mom was there, looking very good, and Scout and Rumer and maybe Tallulah Belle, but I couldn't get any good pictures of them because they were too short.
Johnny Grant had promised us all a free DVD, so when things were winding down us lucky folks with the green armbands were herded back to the Grauman's lot (moo! moo!) and each of us were handed an Over the Hedge DVD and Xtra-Large T-shirt. This was a special edition DVD, with a border around the cover commemorating Bruce getting his star on the Boulevard. Hot damn! Probably be worth a lot of money ... in about 1000 years.
Oh, yeah, I'm supposed to be reviewing the movie here ... Well, what can you say about the 1001st CGI extravaganza featuring warm, cuddly, wise-cracking animals who don't eat each other? The CGI was terrific (yawn). The famous actors who have now completely replaced what used to be voice-over talent in Hollywood are all adequate to the job (snort, snarf). There are some laughs, a few larfs, and even a laff or two (oh, boy, am I sleepy!). The plot is about what you'd expect ... ZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz................ IMDb.com
Overnight (2003) See, what happened was, this bartender named Troy Duffy wrote a screenplay called The Boondock Saints and got it to Harvey Weinstein of Miramax Films. Harv loved it. Next thing you know, Troy’s got a $300,000 salary to direct the film, and a $15,000,000 budget, and also a contract for his band. Whoopee! Suddenly Troy is the Hollywood golden boy. He figures he’s the king of the world! All sorts of actors start sucking up to him: Vincent D'Onofrio, John Goodman, Matthew Modine, Billy Zane, Patrick Swayze. Two guys, Tony Montana (really? That’s the name of the Al Pacino character in Scarface) and Mark Brian Smith, start filming what they figure will be a “Making of” documentary.
Well, it could happen. We know from the example of Quentin Tarantino that a stupid-looking, working class, offensive, blowhard vulgarian can actually conceal some real writing and filmmaking talent. Why shouldn’t Troy be the next one?
For about ten minutes I’m with him ... though I can see he’s riding for a fall, naive enough to think that just because names are on dotted lines, something will actually come of it all. I could have told him different, but he wouldn’t have listened. Troy listens to no one but himself, and the advice is usually bad. For fifteen minutes he’s the biggest news in town. And fifteen minutes later, no one will return his phone calls. It’s easy to see why. He is the very definition of an asshole. Every sentence he speaks contains the word “fucking” at least twice. He betrays every friend he has (many of whom are his brothers). He describes himself as “a deep cesspool of creativity,” and truer words were never spoken.
Amazingly, the film actually does get made, on half the budget he had counted on, and in Toronto. Uh-oh! Moving the production of my movie, Millennium, to Toronto turned out to be the final nail in its coffin. He gets Willem Dafoe and Billy Connelly, two fine actors, to star in it. It is finished, taken to Cannes ... and nobody makes an offer. Probably because it sounds like a piece of shit. We never see any actual footage. (Oddly, it’s become something of a cult film on DVD. Maybe I’ll have to take a look at it ... and maybe not.)
At the end of the film Troy is broke and basically on the street ... but believe it or not, the IMDb lists Boondock II: All Saints Day as currently being in production. I guess you can’t keep a persistent asshole down. Oh, by the way, since I haven’t mentioned it yet ... this is a really good film, in spite of its subject matter. Sort of a low-rent Lost in La Mancha. If you want to see how a film can go horribly, completely wrong, see this one. This is a wonderfully gratifying karma-in-action movie. IMDb.com
Owning Mahoney (2003) Philip Seymour Hoffman, Minnie Driver. Excellent work by both, in a based-on-fact story of a compulsive gambler who managed to steal an amazing amount of money from the bank where he worked for an amazingly long time. IMDb.com