edited by Jonathan Doyle

Mafioso (The Criterion Collection, 3.18.2008) Nino Badalamenti is a supervisor in a car manufacturing plant who hasn't taken a vacation in over two years. On his way out the door to visit his beloved childhood hometown of Sicily -- with his blonde wife and daughters -- Nino is handed a package by his boss and asked to deliver it to a powerful and influential Sicilian gangster named Don Vincenzo. Once in Sicily, Nino has a hoot seeing friends and family, but his wife has trouble fitting in and is unfairly dismissed as a snob by Nino's family. Even more worrisome, Nino finds himself entangled in an intricate web of secret mafioso dealings and is eventually sent on an unexpectedly... elaborate errand. (continued)

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Boy A

"Lust, Caution"

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Uh-oh....Variety's Derek Elley is pissing all over Ang Lee's Lust, Caution from the Venice Film Festival. (You can trust Elley on this one -- no ethnic or nationalistic loyalities in play.) The Elley quote being heard 'round the world is a real stinger: "Too much caution and too little lust squeeze much of the dramatic juice out of...a 2 and 1/2 -hour period drama that's a long haul for relatively few returns.

"Adapted from a short story by the late Eileen Chang, tale of a patriotic student -- who's willing bait in a plot to assassinate a high-up Chinese collaborator in Japanese-held WWII Shanghai -- is an immaculately played but largely bloodless melodrama which takes an hour-and-a-half to even start revving up its motor.

"A handful of explicit sex scenes (in the final act) have earned pic an NC-17 rating in the U.S., where it goes out in limited release Sept. 28. But beyond the notoriety of a Chinese-language picture with full-frontal female nudity, pic lacks the deep-churning emotional currents that drove Lee's Brokeback Mountain and his best other works. B.O. in the West looks to be modest, once the initial ballyhoo has died down."

"Putting on the Ritz" mp3<< previous | next >>Telluride verdict

Posted by Jeffrey Wells on August 30, 2007 at 03:18 PM

comment #1

Ishmael says ...

Couldn't he just be biased against all non-British films? Maybe he feels the need to put down any perceived competition.

The mere fact that such a suspicion can be raised must take a few percentage points off his reliability rating.

Posted by Ishmael at August 30, 2007 03:31 PM

comment #2

actionman says ...

Variety also took a fat dump all over SLEUTH and IN THE VALLEY OF ELAH while praising DEATH SENTENCE.

Posted by actionman at August 30, 2007 03:46 PM

comment #3

sumo-pop says ...

So does this mean you're biased regarding american films? Does he have a history of favoring films from overcast climes? Perhaps he also favors productions from Seattle, Ihear it rains alot there. Sheesh, if you're going to make these accusations at least give other examples of his malfeasance. But cherry picking his reviews smacks of a closet republican.

Posted by sumo-pop at August 30, 2007 04:06 PM

comment #4

Ian Sinclair says ...

For some strange reason Jeff hasn't seen fit to mention that VARIETY has just dumped all over IN THE VALLEY OF ELAH. Here is Robert Koehler's brutal pan:

"The Iraq war has proven as nettlesome to Hollywood moviemakers as it has to Washington policymakers, and "In the Valley of Elah" continues the trend. Working overtime to be an important statement on domestic dissatisfaction with the war and the special price paid by vets and their families, Paul Haggis'follow-up to "Crash" is too self-serious to work as a straight-ahead whodunit and too lacking in imagination to realize its art-film aspirations. Lightning probably won't strike twice for Haggis, with prestigious fall festival premieres unlikely to translate into strong domestic cash flow for Warner Independent, though foreign returns could be brighter.

At its heart, "Elah's" storytelling (inspired from a true story first reported by Mark Boal in Playboy) is the stuff of a James Patterson thriller rather than a grandly elegiac reading of one father's tragedy. Unwilling to opt for the pulp-trash excesses of such military thrillers as "The General's Daughter," the film ends up delivering a poorly conceived message of alarm, bluntly signaling that the war is causing America's sons and daughters severe psychological damage.It also continues a line of recent movies addressing the first Gulf War ("Jarhead") and the current one ("Home of the Brave," "Grace Is Gone") that fail to capture the realities of war experience and familial angst beyond basic truisms and pictorial surfaces.A former Vietnam vet, retired Army sergeant and Tennessee truck-hauler, Hank Deerfield (Tommy Lee Jones) receives a call from Fort Rudd that his son Mike (Jonathan Tucker) is missing, though his unit is back from Iraq. Without having even a modest discussion with long-suffering wife Joan (Susan Sarandon), Hank drives to the New Mexico base to glean more information and hopefully reunite with his son. When Hank arrives, he finds that Mike's unit buddies are keeping mum and base officers like Lt. Kirklander (Jason Patric) and Sgt. Carnelli (James Franco) are little more than bureaucrat lackeys with little interest in the case.

Hank gradually earns the respect of one of the local civilian cops in neighboring Bradford, Det. Emily Sanders (Charlize Theron), informing her that Mike "has been bringing democracy to a shithole ... (and) deserves more than this." Not one for subtlety, Haggis ensures that Emily is not only the only woman in her department, forever marginalized by her male colleagues, but that she's also a single mom to a cute boy (Devin Brochu).

When a murder scene appears to be on the borderline between Army and local jurisdictions, the locals -- except increasingly suspicious Emily -- are willing to hand it over to the MPs for investigation.

The film awkwardly shifts between Hank's emotional realities -- as he watches some disturbing vid clips recovered from Mike's cell phone -- and a cycle of fairly obvious red herrings. One, involving Mike's unit buddy Robert (Victor Wolf), consumes an inordinate amount of running time, and is amounts to a one-dimensional portrayal of American-style bigotry.

While taciturn Hank, a man of so few words that he verges on being mean, cold and heartless, busts a few heads on his way to getting answers, Emily doggedly gets into extended verbal tussles with every authority figure in sight, from Kirklander to her immediate boss, police chief Buchwald (Josh Brolin).

Much of this is woefully familiar in dramatic terms, but viewers may find welcome distractions in cinematographer Roger Deakins' grandly panoramic widescreen visions of a contemporary American West -- emphasizingthe barrenness of the places people live and work -- as well as Jones' laser-focused performance, which is almost radical in its deliberately hardened flatness. As integral and crucial as each piece is to pic, both Deakins and Jones operate in worlds of their own, almost intimidating in their individual power and concentration. Theron gamely works hard to match Jones on screen, but her perf recalls the thankless roles so many of George C. Scott's many co-stars had to settle for. While vet thesps like Patric, Sarandon and Brolin come and go (even the superb Frances Fisher, as a topless barkeep, feels underused), rookie actor and Iraq vet Jake McLaughlin has a few exceptional scenes with Jones that impressively suggest a hidden world of hurt.

Most production departments, particularly Laurence Bennett's site-specific production design, are solid, though considerably less of Mark Isham's plodding and glum score would have been more; ditto some of the song choices (including a closer by Annie Lennox). Odd title, which will surely be a commercial impediment, alludes to the Israeli location of the biblical battle between David and Goliath. "

Posted by Ian Sinclair at August 30, 2007 04:10 PM

comment #5

alan says ...

When I am king, I shall decree that using the non-word "pic" to describe a film will result in imprisonment. Using it without the article "the" in front of it will bump the penalty up to immediate execution. That is all.

Posted by alan at August 30, 2007 04:32 PM

comment #6

Jeremy Smith says ...

I concur with most of Koehler's review.

Posted by Jeremy Smith at August 30, 2007 04:33 PM

comment #7

Rothchild says ...

Uh oh. I wonder if Jeffrey will actually get in a fight with someone?

Posted by Rothchild at August 30, 2007 05:28 PM

comment #8

D.Z. says ...

"is an immaculately played but largely bloodless melodrama which takes an hour-and-a-half to even start revving up its motor."

First you critics bitch about torture porn, and now you're upset that Ang Lee didn't go that route.

Posted by D.Z. at August 30, 2007 05:55 PM

comment #9

John Y says ...

Jeff's going to have to fight a lot of critics over "Elah."

Posted by John Y at August 30, 2007 06:07 PM

comment #10

ASD says ...

My prediction is that by the time December's rolled around and most real critics have called out Elah for the good-intentioned stinker that it is, Wells will be awfully quiet in his support of the film. He'll eventually get bored with fighting a losing battle and then just harbor muted resentment at all the "ivory tower snobs" who have "infiltrated" the world of film criticism.

However, in the interest of full disclosure it should be pointed out the Hollywood Reporter was quite pleased with the film (at least I think they were; in true Reporter fashion the review is 4 parts summary, 1 part analysis). Then again, seeing as how the reviewer shares the same nationality as the production, we should question his intentions.

Posted by ASD at August 30, 2007 06:38 PM

comment #11

malibugigolo says ...

This script was awful. But when the studio head is a co-writer who is to tell him it sucks? Every bit of dialogue ends with an exclamation point. A bad sign.

I think many people take foreign films subtitled as being more intelligent, because you approach them visually at a baser, more emotional level. Just look at My Blueberry Nights by Kar Wai Wong. (or even Antonioni Zabriskie Point) They said the same things, or his characters did that they said in IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE. But because you understand it and because Laurence Block is a hack and too literal it becomes dumb or as
Voltaire said: Anything that is too stupid to be spoken is sung.

Lee's movies and Wong's are not sung when in English and thus come across as stupid as they always were.

Posted by malibugigolo at August 30, 2007 06:57 PM

comment #12

corey3rd says ...

Sounds like another Ang Lee film that will prompt me to take a second act nap.

Posted by corey3rd at August 30, 2007 07:10 PM

comment #13

jeffmcm says ...

"First you critics bitch about torture porn, and now you're upset that Ang Lee didn't go that route."

Yes. All movies are either 3-hour long snoozefests or 75-minute long torturefests. Every movie ever made.

Posted by jeffmcm at August 30, 2007 07:20 PM

comment #14

malibugigolo says ...

A great movie I saw in London (doubt it will make it to the US) is BORN AND BRED

http://arts.guardian.co.uk/filmandmusic/story/0,,2154538,00.html

Have any of you been to the Seattle Film Fest?
It seems any movie I like gets its only showing there.

Posted by malibugigolo at August 30, 2007 07:34 PM

comment #15

Mgmax says ...

Oh man, an Ang Lee movie that's a half hour too long and loses some of the emotional force it could have built up with genuinely moving material by oozing like molasses? Who could have ever believed that?

Alan, Variety gets a pass, they've been talking like that since the 20s.

Posted by Mgmax at August 30, 2007 08:33 PM

comment #16

D.Z. says ...

malibu: "Lee's movies and Wong's are not sung when in English and thus come across as stupid as they always were."

I haven't seen Nights, but last time I checked, people consider Sense and Sensibility, The Ice Storm, and BBM to be among Lee's best work. So that "It sucks, because it was in English" argument doesn't fly.

jeff: "All movies are either 3-hour long snoozefests or 75-minute long torturefests. Every movie ever made."

Probably.

Posted by D.Z. at August 30, 2007 08:58 PM

comment #17

D.Z. says ...

Mgmax: "Oh man, an Ang Lee movie that's a half hour too long and loses some of the emotional force it could have built up with genuinely moving material by oozing like molasses? Who could have ever believed that?"

You're confusing Lee for Spielberg.

Posted by D.Z. at August 30, 2007 09:01 PM

comment #18

BurmaShave says ...

D.Z., 'bloodless' doesn't mean what you think it means in this context.

Posted by BurmaShave at August 30, 2007 09:41 PM

comment #19

bostonlackey says ...

Ang Lee made a dull film? I'm shocked.

Posted by bostonlackey at August 31, 2007 12:57 PM

comment #20

jeffmcm says ...

DZ, have you ever formulated your comments into something more constructive than a five word 'witticism'? You're so boring, with your 'At least he's better than _____" or "You're confusing ____ for _____". You obviously have a lot of opinions. Stupid, retarded opinions, but opinions nonetheless. Why don't you start your own stupid blog so that genetic morons can clog _it_ up with pointless self-aggrandizing nonsense comments as well? It would be the platform you so obviously crave.

Posted by jeffmcm at August 31, 2007 05:08 PM

comment #21

BurmaShave says ...

"DZ, have you ever formulated your comments into something more constructive than a five word 'witticism'?"

You mean like your hero, the pedophile Woody Allen?

"You're so boring, with your 'At least he's better than _____" or "You're confusing ____ for _____"."

At least I'm not killing millions of children like Bush and Cheney.

"You obviously have a lot of opinions. Stupid, retarded opinions, but opinions nonetheless. Why don't you start your own stupid blog so that genetic morons can clog _it_ up with pointless self-aggrandizing nonsense comments as well? It would be the platform you so obviously crave."

If I register a URL under my own name it flags the Sex Offender list again. I've already had problems. Besides, I'm on my mom's computer.

~D.Z.

Posted by BurmaShave at August 31, 2007 06:20 PM

comment #22