..Gary Dretzka
..Noah Forrest
..Leonard Klady
..RJ Matson
..David Poland
..Douglas Pratt
..Ray Pride
..Kim Voynar
..Michael Wilmington

Blindness
plus reviews of Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist,
and Beverly Hills Chihuahua
Plus Quick Hits On This Week's DVDs

..MCN Critics Roundup ..MCN Review Vault

Blindness [Three stars]
U.S.; Fernando Meirelles (Miramax)

Nobel Prize winner Jose Saramago’s futuristic nightmare about an unnamed city suddenly afflicted with an epidemic of “The White Sickness,” or sudden blindness, here is given a first-rate production by director Fernando (City of God) Mereilles. City of God was hot and furious; this one is cold, bleak and full of pain. Mereilles, Saramago and screenwriter/actor Don McKellar startlingly open up an unexpected Hell beneath our feet -- a nightmare where most of the populace is blind, quarantined and left to rot in ill-run hospital-cum-prisons by a terrified government that seems eventually to go missing in action. (Sound plausible?)

This horrific scenario gets an extremely grim but stylish treatment by Mereilles, cinematographer Cesar Charlone and production designers Matthew Davies and Tule Beak, who create a world of devastation, trash, incarceration, and wandering stricken people in the ruins. Their excellent cast is topped by Julianne Moore as the one woman among the quarantined who can (secretly) see, Mark Ruffalo as her increasingly disconsolate doctor husband, Danny Glover and Alice Braga as two of their fellow victim/detainees, McKellar as a thief who gets his, and Gael Garcia Bernal as the proudly depraved “King of Ward Three,” who takes advantage of the quarantine to set up his own private dictatorship, backed by Maury Chaikin as a corrupt accountant. (Sound familiar?)

All of this takes place in the scurviest, scariest jail/hospital this side of 28 Days Later and The Deer Hunter, and later on in a fabulously convincing trashed metropolis.

I haven’t yet read Saramago’s book (I will), but I was a little surprised to see some of the early knocks on Blindness. Granted, it won’t be appreciated by some teenagers wandering around the cineplexes in search of masturbation fantasies and superhero daydreams. But I was gripped by this all the way through, and it’s certainly an example, like Alfonso Cuaron’s fine movie of Children of Men, of the kind of intellectually and emotionally challenging material, that moviemakers with resources should tackle more often. At it’s worst, it’s a super-Twilight Zone episode. At it’s best, it’s a grand dystopian epic of social degeneration.

When Mereilles bathes the screen in milky light, he’s showing us several kinds of blindness: physical and metaphoric. The settings are terrifying, the story is compelling, and the whole cast is top-of-the-line. And, as the doctor’s wife, Moore is tremendous -- a convincingly good and self-sacrificing human being, driven just as convincingly to the most desperate measures. If Cate Blanchett is our new Kate Hepburn, I’m beginning to believe Moore is our new Bette Davis. Except I’m not so sure she isn’t better than Bette.


 
Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist (Three Stars)
U.S.; Peter Sollett (Columbia)

On a night full of sexual angst, hot connections, cool rock n’ roll, gobs of New York City street atmosphere, and some deliberately shitty jokes about the Port Authority Bus terminal, our two title characters, Nick (Michael Cera) and Norah (Kat Dennings), find each other despite the consistent drunkenness of Norah’s best friend Caroline (Ari Graynor), career crises for straight Nick and his gay band mates (including Aaron Yoo) in the fledgling band The Jerk-Offs, the consistent inability of the group to stay together, and the consistent sabotage of Nick‘s old girl friend, materialistic schemer/blonde Tris (Alexis Dziena).

I had fun at “Nick and Norah.“ But I think this one is being over-rated. So sue me. I thought Juno was over-rated too, so maybe I’m just impervious to the charms of Michael Cera.

I admit it’s smart, funny, better done than most of the teenage sex comedies around right now. (Its certainly miles ahead of the upcoming Sex Drive.). And Ari Graynor, who’s the best thing in the movie, not only knows how to play a drunk scene all night long, but she survives that awful Port Authority gag.

All the same, I find it difficult to take too seriously a romantic comedy where a band guitarist with and a flair for mix tapes finally falls for the daughter of a recording company bigwig (his schoolmate, though he somehow doesn’t know it) and the two consummate their lust (their deal?) in her dad’s recording studio.

Talk about wish fulfillment….I also thought Nick was pretty mean to Tris in the end, however much she may seem to deserve it. And did these writers ever vaguely hear of Dashiell Hammett’s “The Thin Man” and the Charles family or are they pulling our chain?

Anyway, I give Nick and Norah’s relationship two and a half years, tops. The movie gets three stars, because I’m a nice guy.



Beverly Hills Chihuahua (Two Stars)
U.S.; Raja Gosnell (Disney)

This works better than you’d expect, but then what could you reasonably expect?

A snobbish Beverly Hills Chihuahua dish named Chloe (voiced by Drew Barrymore) is taken on a Mexican holiday by owner Aunt Viv’s (Jamie Lee Curtis) niece Rachel (Piper Perabo), after spurning the affections of the cute gardener‘s pup Papi (George Lopez). Karma comes down; Chloe gets lost in Mexico, and has to find her way home through unimaginable dangers, with the help of the disgraced but stalwart police dog Delgado (voiced by Andy Garcia) and operatic Chihuahua Monte (Placido Domingo) and despite the hindrance of some very bad humans and animals, notably Edward James Olmos as Amores Perros-style fight-dog Diablo and Cheech Marin as greedy little rat Manuel.
The movie gets going when it hits Mexico, and an incredible amount of production and animation expertise is lavished on this story, which should amuse ten-years-and-under kids and shopaholics whose idea of heaven is Rodeo Drive in the morning. But, at bottom, it’s a lapdog of a script, all gussied up. And the Beverly Hills scenes made me want to arf.

MW on DVD
Picks of the Week

NEW RELEASE

Iron Man (Two Discs) (Three and a half stars)
U.S.; Jon Favreau, 2008 (Paramount)

Casting Robert Downey Jr. as the beleaguered superhero of a Marvel Comics spectacular -- in a big, expensive movie based on Stan Lee’s early tales of crime-fighting Iron Man -- may seem like a nutty or even potentially disastrous decision. But Downey makes his Iron Man director (Jon Favreau) and producers (Kevin Feige and Avi Arad) look like geniuses. He gives his part of Tony Stark -- the Howard Hughes-inspired whiz inventor-mega-billionaire who converts himself into the clanking crusader Iron Man -- a wit, passion, intensity and irony that light up the whole movie.

It’s a brilliant job, in a role that doesn’t seem as if it called for brilliance -- or anything much beyond remembering lines and staying out of range of the special effects. Just how good can an actor be when the major tasks of his movie role require him to be hidden (or faking it) inside a huge flame-throwing, flying robot uniform, while duking it out with (spoiler alert, I guess) another flying, flame-throwing robot supposedly containing Jeff Bridges?

Yet Downey is amazingly right in this part -- and so are his sometimes equally improbable-sounding cast-mates: Bridges as the genial corporate killer Obadiah Stane, Gwyneth Paltrow as Tony’s gorgeous Girl Friday Pepper Potts, and Terrence Howard as trusty Pentagon sidekick Rhodey. This is the kind of dream ensemble that, before the 1978 “Superman,“ you’d never expect in a comic book movie: the kind of actors you want to see in the best, most challenging parts and the most ambitious pictures.

With one small exception though, Iron Man never seems to be wasting their time. Or ours. They all click. There’s even a wonderful performance in a small part by a lesser known actor: Shaun Toub as Yinsen, the brainy, bespectacled fellow prisoner in the Afghanistan Taliban cavern prison where Tony is held in the movie’s first sections, and where the abducted inventor designs and builds the first Iron Man suit. Toub almost makes you cry in his last scene -- which should give you an idea of the heavier emotional tone and weight this movie often carries, even though the show also keeps driving Tony toward his final confrontation with Obadiah -- which we know will be one of those Marvel smart-aleck slugfests and bash-balls that always climaxed the comics.

The movie was written by two teams of writers, and one of those duos, Mark Fergus and Hawk Ostby, also scripted two fine recent neo-noirs, Alfonso Cuaron’s no-kids science fiction piece Children of Men(see above) and Fergus’ doom-soaked crime thriller First Snow. The foursome has done a good, but not extraordinary, job with this material and they’ve done a nifty little political tap-dance; their storyline exploits sentiments both gung ho (Cream those bad guys!) and leftist (The war’s a con and big money rules!).

Overall, it’s another intelligent, well-mounted Marvel job. The actors and the director really elevate this story. Iron Man has all the high-tech virtuosity you’d expect, but tech triumphs by themselves can often be annoying, if the acting and writing aren’t good enough. Here, the writing is fine and the actors are much better than good. For these performances and for the film’s very sharp, very human feel and just-right pace, we have to thank Favreau, who does exactly what a big pop moviemaker should: He gives us what we want.

Extras: Deleted and extended scenes; 7-part “making of“ documentary; 6=part documentary on the comic character; featurettes; Robert Downey screen test.

CLASSICS

An American in Paris (Two discs) (Four Stars)
U.S.; Vincente Minnelli, 1951 (Warner Home Video)

The zenith of the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer musical was achieved by star Gene Kelly in this movie, a six-Oscar winner, and his 1952 “Singin’ in the Rain” -- and I’d hate to have to choose between them. In fact, I refuse to.

An American in Paris, however, does have a much better score -- an all George Gershwin extravaganza, including the Concerto in F (played and conducted by acerbic pianist and one-time Gershwin crony Oscar Levant) and the magnificent “impressions of Paris” title piece, as well as “Embraceable You” “By Strauss” “Our Love Is Here to Stay” and other gems. And it has, courtesy of writer Alan Jay Lerner, a beguiling and bittersweet classic romantic comedy frames: Kelly is Jerry Mulligan, an American WW2 G.I. turned painter (his inspirations include Utrillio and Dufy) who falls in love with the protégé‘-fiancé of his French cabaret-singer chum (Georges Guetary, in a role offered to, and unwisely turned down by, Maurice Chevalier), and woos her to the strains of George and Ira on a back lot Paris that’s almost as dreamy as the real thing.

This movie, which represents producer Arthur Freed's unit at its height, also has what is, inarguably, the greatest single number in the history of movie musicals: The American in Paris ballet -- choreographed by Kelly, danced by Kelly, Caron and a huge light-footed company, and brilliantly shot by film noir master John Alton on sets that glowingly copy the painterly styles of Van Gogh, Renoir, Rousseau, Toulouse-Lautrec and others. I’ve seen the ballet, in context and out, dozens of times, and it never fails to lift my heart and knock me out.

An American in Paris is a movie I’ve always had a huge crush on. In fact Leslie Caron’s performance in this movie, marks one of only five times I fell instantly in love with a movie actress. As for the great Gene Kelly, he was never better -- though he was just as good in Singing in the Rain. You should fall in love with them too -- and with the unforgettable, embracable Paris of George and Ira Gershwin, Toulouse-Lautrec, Kelly, Caron and Vincent Minnelli. Extras: Commentary by Patricia Ward Kelly (Gene’s widow), using interviews from Kelly. Minnelli, Caron, Freed, Lerner, Nina Foch and others; “making of“ documentary; Kelly career profile; video and audio outtakes of missing musical numbers.


The Last Laugh (Two discs) (Four Stars)
Germany; F. W. Murnau, 1924 (Kino)

An old but fiercely proud hotel porter (played magnificently by Emil Jannings), guides guests and luggage into Berlin‘s swanky Atlantic Hotel with great flourish and swagger, resplendent in a uniform that suggests a Transylvanian general. But one day, he stumbles under a huge trunk when the bellhop fails to appear. and is heartlessly robbed of his position -- and his precious coat -- and exiled to the lowly, humiliating job of washroom attendant. Distraught, he steals the uniform for one more appearance at a wedding in the building where he lives. But the theft is discovered, and the broken old man is crucified by the cruel laughter of his neighbors -- the last laughs, it seems.

The Last Laugh, brilliantly directed by F. W. Murnau, has been considered an imperishable classic from its first release, when its innovative tracking camerawork and powerful story stunned viewers. Murnau showed himself a master of the moving camera here, and he and Jannings revealed the stricken soul of the old man while Murnau and his designers and technicians (including Karl Freund, who created and used a precursor of the steadi-cam) also filled the world of the hotel, the street and the wedding with deep focus delights and magical mobility.

Kino‘s superb set contains both the foreign release (with which we’re familiar) and the lesser seen (and superior) German version, which actually uses different takes. This great film should be one of the cornerstones of any film connoisseur’s library.

Extras: Two separate orchestral accompaniments (including the original Giuseppe Becce score, rerecorded); “and a making of” and restoration documentary.

 

BOX SET

The Lawrence Jordan Collection (Four Discs) Four Stars
U.S.; Lawrence Jordan, 1961-2004

An often neglected master of animation gets a career-length compendium here. Jordan, whose live action movie “The H. D. Trilogy” (about poet Hilda Doolittle) is also included here, is best known for a technique similar to Terry Gilliam’s Monty Python cartooning, employing and manipulating 19th century drawings and illustrations with deadpan wit and an almost surreal grace.

The collection’s high spots are the 1986 epic “Sophie‘s Place” and my favorite, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” fashioned from Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s classic poem and the Gustave Dore drawings for it, narrated in full plummy grandeur by Orson Welles.

- Michael Wilmington
October 3, 2008

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09.19.08 - Appaloosa, Ghost Town, Igor, Lakeview Terrace and Hounddog
09.11.08 - Burn After Reading, Righteous Kill, The Women and Bangkok Dangerous
09.04.08 - I Served the King of England, Transsiberian and The Unknown Woman
08. 29.08 - Traitor, Hamlet 2, The Grocer's Son and Alexandra

 

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