Kinematoscope

There are composite films like previously covered Crash and Magnolia, that weave many storylines together, and there are anthology films like Paris, Je T'aime and Coffe & Cigarettes which present separate short films, one after another.

Somewhere in between you have what I like to call "Tarantino films," which are organized into distinct chapters that may overlap significantly. Today's entry is structured in such a way.

The pertinent question, though- is it ever necessary? Let's see how we feel after Amores Perros, part one of Alejandro González Iñárritu's mission to DEPRESS THE ENTIRE WORLD.

The Key Players:

Our director, whom I'll simply refer to as AGI frow now on for accent/tilde related reasons, has since completed his "Death trilogy" with the similar in tone 21 Grams and Babel, about miserable things happening to miserable people. Word is that this year's Javier Bardem starring Biutiful will be an awards contender as well.

Screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga spent three years writing Amores Perros, and went on to collaborate with AGI until a bitter falling out about writing credits drove them apart. He made his directorial debut with The Burning Plain, yet another morose composite film that was received with a shrug.

A large ensemble cast boasts on Gael García Bernal (Y tu mamá también, Blindness) as the only future luminary amoung many other recurring AGI players like Adriana Barraza.



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The Story:

The film is divided into three chapters, though the other two plotlines are briefly touched upon in each one.

1. Octavio and Susana- García Bernal plays Octavio, a man smitten with his hoodlum older brother's young wife, and takes to dogfighting to make the money to run away with her. His family dog Cofi, turns out to have a knack for it, and goes undefeated as Octavio and his friend Jorge make plenty of cash- naturally this angers a local thug whose dogs keep losing, leading to a violent confrontation that ends in a car crash. Plus Susana takes the money Octavio was keeping to run away and takes off with the asshole brother instead, after Octavio has him beaten up. Aw.

2. Daniel and Valeria- Valeria, a preeminent supermodel, is gravely injured by said car crash, which leads to tension in her budding relationship with Daniel, a magazine executive who's just left his wife to be with her. When her dog (do you sense a theme?) disappears under the floorboards of their new apartment, tension escalates between them violently the longer they can't get him out.

3. El Chivo and Maru- An ex-revolutionary turned hobo hitman has taken in an injured Cofi after witnessing the car crash, and nurses the poor dog back to health- this only to come home one day to find that the newly-minted fighting champion has killed all of the other mutts that he lovingly takes care of. This seems to cause a shift in his perception of senseless killing, and how he handles his latest job to kill a man's business partner.

The Artistry:

Wikipedia informs me that Amores Perros is sometimes referred to as the "Mexican Pulp Fiction," and structurally I can see why. There's even plenty of crime, but there's virtually no humor, and no one to root for.

García Bernal carries a little bit of magnetism in the first chapter, but it's not enough to get past the abhorrent nature of dogfighting in the first place- certainly by the time he has his brother violently beaten (instead of just sleeping with his wife and then running away with her) we don't really care that he's about to get in a terrible car accident (which is actually the first scene of the film).

I'm not sure what's added to the film by making it almost a straight chapter-by-chapter anthology but teasing us with scenes of Daniel and El Chivo during the first third. The paths of the characters do intersect, but we also see El Chivo kill a man in a restaurant very early, and then we have to wait until the final chapter to find out why. It's kind of maddening, especially during the second chapter.

"Daniel y Valeria" itself feels like the beginning of a horror movie or psychological thriller edited into a different film- the blissful new freedom of the couple (as she had been a secret mistress for quite some time) is immediately marred by the car crash, and then a creeping dread sets in the moment the little dog goes under the floor. Valeria is too suddenly introduced to care for, and the earlier glimpses of Daniel being awkward around his wife (but no scene of him leaving her?) add nothing. By the time she re-injures her leg trying to get the dog out, requiring it to be amputated, the whole plot just seems terribly mean-spirited.

The final third is the best, largely due to Emilio Echevarría's performance as El Chivo, quietly dealing with the most important, or at least cinematic life events. Cofi killing all of his dogs is the best moment wrought from the screenplay myriad crossed-paths, and the scene where he can't kill Cofi in turn is the most moving.

But his attempt to reconnect with daughter, while well-played, is just another of the film's thin parables without the time to have an impact.

Amores Perros has a lot to say, and two and a half hours to say it, but I didn't really end up with anything to speak of by the end, especially not watching it for the second time for this review. There's a big difference between illuminating class differences and simply having characters from different classes, and an even bigger one between a philosophical edge and superficial grittiness.

THE ENDING! SPOILERS!

Let's see. Octavio's brother gets killed, but Susana can't even stomach the thought of being with him (also his friend Jorge was killed in the car crash while Octavio was banged up pretty badly). Valeria as mentioned loses her leg, her billboards taken down and her career over. El Chivo ties up his target and the target's half-brother that wanted him killed, and puts a gun on the floor between them and tells them to sort it out themselves. He takes the money, leaves it for his daughter with a tearful message on her answering machine, cuts his hair and walks off into the sunset with his new dog.

END SPOILERS


Overall: Should It Be Higher, Lower?

Lower. And since they're not on the countdown, I wasn't into 21 Grams or Babel very much either, though I found the former focused enough to be more meaningful.

These films that focus on misery, cutting from various tales of woe as if that illustrated some sort of connection, what are they trying to say? If the message is just "life's a bitch" (or Love, as the case may be), you can spare me the time and the ticket price.

The Legacy:

It did launch AGI as a Hollywood talent, culminating with Babel nearly stealing Best Picture from The Departed in 2004 (this was my fear, anyway). Amores Perros would lose the Oscar but win the BAFTA for Foreign Language.

The Best Video Of It On YouTube:

Ugh. Do I have to? Here, watch an hilarious fan-made version of the trailer instead:



Leftover Thoughts:

-The title doesn't literally translate to "Love's a Bitch," nor does AGI find that to be adequate. See here for various possibilities.

-Again, did Amores Perros have something to say about police corruption, or did it merely just include one corrupt cop?

-As pointless miseryfests go, it's still way, way better than Crash


Coming Up...

160. The Graduate

159. Groundhog Day

158. The Bourne Ultimatum

PREVIOUSLY ON THE IMDB COUNTDOWN: I had to review the sequel to Kill Bill LONG before Kill Bill itself- it was awkward.

But the countdown smiles benevolently on us today, as The Terminator is ranked lower than T2, so we can process everything in the right order. Phew.

What about T3: Rise of the Machines and Terminator Salvation, you ask? Good news! We don't even have to think about them, because they're both pretty terrible!

The Key Players:

James Cameron once was a self-taught special effects supervisor from Canada. But then on one magical day in the early 80s he did ten gallons of coke and wrote 873 screenplays at once (Aliens, The Terminator, and Rambo II: First Blood wer among them), hopped on a unicorn and stormed to the top of the film industry.

Subsequently he only made films as excuses for various obsessions, like his desire to see the wreckage of the Titanic, to invent a new 3D camera (Avatar), or to see Jamie Lee Curtis partially nude (True Lies). Does he seem like an insufferable jerk every time he speaks publicly? Of course! But that's the cross he has to bear, consoling himself with his mansion of frozen orphan tears and his diet of liquified Euros died to look like food.

Beginning with The Terminator, Cameron magnanimously took several actors along for the ride with him. Lance Henriksen and Micheal Biehn would both also appear in Aliens- Biehn in The Abyss, too.

Linda Hamilton will always be known primarily for her role as Sarah Connor, though Cameron did cast her as his fourth wife in the late nineties.

Finally, I have a theory. We all know James Cameron to be a man of science- he even had a plan to fix the BP spill. I propose that nearly thirty years ago he invented a time machine. High on the thrill of discovery, he went to the future, only to discover that he'd traveled too far, and found the human race just beginning to divide in twin races of pure intellect and brute physical strength. He befriended one of the latter, a huge but affable giant, and took him back to our time. But due to the future proto-man's slightly devolved intellect, he could only get work as Hollywood movie star Arnold Schwarzenegger.

It makes a lot of sense, I'm sure you'll agree.



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The Story:

We've all seen it, so I'll be brief- AHH-nold plays a killer robot that looks like an Austrian dude sent back in time to kill Linda Hamilton, who will one day be the mother of the resistance leader in the war with machines we all know is coming. Biehn also shows up from the future, sent by her future son to protect her. Cool?

The Artistry:

Somehow I ended up seeing The Terminator at a very young age, maybe eight or nine. My memory is hazy- was it on video? At a friends house? In any case it was the first rated R movie I'd seen, and it scared the bejeezus out of me.

So I never really gave it another watch for a long time, and can't honestly say I've watched the whole thing through until doing so for this project.

Turns out it's no so scary, but still fun. I don't need to tell you how iconic the lines and images of the franchise are- though in the first installment, only Biehn's "Come with me if you want to live" and "I'll be back" made it everywhere.

And Cameron is of course a master at building suspense, even working with a terribly dated score and familiar cliches like the roomate who doesn't hear impending doom because of her headphones.

Unsurprisingly the effects, while impressive in scope, are a little dated- notably the lasers in the future war bits and the Terminator's obviously fake head when he was removing his left eye.

The script is a little leaden, especially on a human level- I never really found myself invested in the inevitable romance (really? You 'loved a lifetime's worth'?). But the performances carry it as well as they can, Biehn especially. I liked his PTSD flashbacks to the future, and the way he spoke in jargon from his own time, naming the model number (101) of the Terminator as if it would mean something.

The real basis of the appeal, and the reason so much of The Terminator has become cultural shorthand (it's probably the most popular of any "robot war" speculation), is that it taps into the innate foreboding that the future seems to hold. This will get a lot more explicit in T2, but it's easy for someone born in 1984 himself to forget that The Terminator came out during the last years of the Cold War, and even mentions the rise of the machines coming in the wake of a nuclear holocaust.

In the face of the bleak stormclouds comes the idea that we can be meant for greater things, like unassuming diner waitress Sarah Connor. What were her ambitions before this all went down? Other than being stood up on a date, her personal life is hardly mentioned. But she becomes the key to the entire future out of nowhere, perhaps simply because she exists is a world of recurzive paradoxes- she's plucked from the everyday into a harrowing trial of fire until she wins the first battle against an apocalypse rapidly approaching, and it happens seemingly for no reason at all.

SPECIAL SECTION ON PARADOXES! SPOILERS!

Speaking of causality: The Terminator franchise is nothing but chicken-egg paradoxes- John Connor send Kyle Reese back in time to become his father, so he can be born and live to send him back. What? We'll see later that the presence of the Terminator the machines send back leads to their eventual creation as well in T2.

I found myself pondering these loops as the movie went along. There were three Sarah Connors in the phone book, so the Terminator (with less information than Reese) killed the first two before he gets to our Sarah. But what if he had started from the bottom of the list? Maybe Sarah Conner becomes the Sarah Connor precisely because the other two got killed?

The other big irony is that the machines create John Connor instead of preventing his existence, because now his mother knows to prepare him to lead a war against machines in the future.

Also, I have many technical questions about time-travel itself (which the film skirts around by having Reese be a soldier unconcerned with the physics of it all). Why does Reese show up a little after the Terminator? Why can only the two of them come through (he implies no one else can come when interrogated)? Why not find some way to transport future weaponry in organic material, like the machines did? You could wrap some guns in a pig carcass or something.

END SPOILERS


Overall: Should It Be Higher, Lower?

Oh, I like it where it is, really. We'll see in a bit how T2 found a way to preserve the spirit while raising the stakes, gravitas, and action to higher levels.

The Legacy:

Careers launched, a franchise spawned, NFR inclusion already, and so on. And did you know "I'll be back" has its own wikipedia page?

The Best Video Of It On YouTube:

Literally nothing. But this unembeddable featurette includes the following pearl of wisdom:

"I think the love story is really what made it work." - Linda Hamilton

Leftover Thoughts:

-Would a polaroid photo really last 40 years in that condition?

-A quick inflation calculation informs me that this was made for the equivalent of $13 million, which makes the FX all the more impressive.

-the internet would have me believe that Cameron initially met with Scharwzenegger to discuss playing Reese, which would have been a ludicrous idea.

-One of those punks was Bill Paxton? Huh.


Coming Up...

161. Amores Perros

160. The Graduate

159. Groundhog Day

Today's countdown entry, 1986's Stand By Me, is yet another of the many classic 80s films that I missed while I was watching Flight Of The Navigator over and over and over.

From the pop consciousness at large I've gathered that's it's some sort of coming of age tale involving a corpse, a train, and the 50s. And presumably standing near one another, literally or figuratively. Let's see what I missed!

The Key Players:

Rob Reiner makes his second appearance on the countdown as director, working from a short story by the much-adapted Stephen King.

Our story follows a quartet of child stars, each of whom would go on to varying degrees of adult sucess: Wil Wheaton went from the most annoying character on "Star Trek: The Next Generation" to one of the more beloved people on the internet, somehow. Corey Feldman was ubiqitous during the 80s and early 90s, then laid low until nostalgia kicked in. Jerry O'Connell has been in over sixty episodes apiece of three different television series- can you name the two that aren't "Sliders"? And River Phoenix was poised for not only success but respectability (My Own Private Idaho) before OD-ing in 1993.

Jack Bauer Kiefer Sutherland has a supporting role, while Richard Dreyfuss acts as narrator.



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The Story:

Four twelve year old best buds go on a quest to find a dead body in 1959. That's pretty much it. There's our narrator Gordie (Wheaton) who wants to be a writer and is definitely not just Stephen King when he was twelve at all, tough kid Chris (Phoenix), budding psychopath Teddy (Feldman), and butt-of-every-joke Vern (O'Connell). The former three deal with various father-issues throughout the story, while Vern is mostly just a goofball.

Racing the kids to the body is stereotypical older bully Kiefer Sutherland and his posse- everyone seems to imagine that finding the corpse of a kid who got hit by a train will bring them untold glory.

The Artistry:

I dunno. There isn't much I took away from Stand By Me- nothing about it was visually arresting, the child-acting was competent at best, and the story generally ham-fisted in a very Stepehn Kingish, telling-not-showing (with extra telling viz voiceover) kind of way.

40 years from now, will our era be signified solely by top 40 radio hits? The use of Buddy Holly's "Everyday" and The Chordettes' "Lollipop" felt kind of cliche to me, but that's probably not fair- there were fewer radio stations back then, I suppose. But the constant soundtrack selections seemed to do nothing more than yell "IT'S THE FIFTIES! 1959 IN YOUR FACE!" to me. Though the boys singing the theme to "Have Gun Will Travel" was a subtler touch, and I liked the low-key rendering of the titular Ben E. King song as a score motif.

The pie-eating contest (a story of Gordie's we see visualized) is a colorful, if disgusting, digression, but the only scene that stood out to me was the ambling campfire discussion- it seemed like things twleve-year-olds would actually say, and was funny to boot ("Wagon Train's a really cool show, but did you notice they never get anywhere? They just keep wagon training.")

And finally we come to one of my least favorite things: the Unecessary Framing Device. Let's discuss this behind the spoiler wall.

THE ENDING! SPOILERS!

So three of the kids cry about their respective fathers (Vern remains a goofball), then they find the body (deciding wisely to make an anonymous tip instead of glory-hounding), face down the bully, and part ways back in town.

How nice. But through voice-over, Future Gordie (Dreyfus) tells us what became of Vern, Teddy, and Chris- the chief fact being that Chris overcame the odds, became a lawyer, then got stabbed trying to break up a fight at a restaurant.

Gordie has become a successful novelist, after he was lucky enough to have his first book made into a film (which was probably Carrie but with a totally different spelling).

I don't know- it feels manipulative to me. Remember this character you cared about? He died senselessly! You're all a bunch of saps! I know this is basically Stephen King's memoir (and in fact all three of the friends in the novella "The Body" die in young adulthood), but the mechanics of the revelation bug me. What do we gain by seeing Dreyfus looking somber at the beginning and end?

Other than, of course, the eye-rolling last lines of his memoir: "I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was twelve. Jesus, does anyone?"

END SPOILERS



Overall: Should It Be Higher, Lower?

Maybe I'm supposed to be twelve when I see it? Lower. To be clear, that just means that I don't find it countdown-worthy, not that it's terrible. Rob Reiner was still some years away from showing us what 'terrible' means.

The Legacy:

The cloying screenplay got an Oscar nomination despite being clearly the weakest part of the film, and there's the career-launching covered above. It also led to the founding of Castle Rock Entertainment, named for the fictional Oregon setting.

The Best Video Of It On YouTube:

"The kind of talk that seemed important until you discover girls."



Leftover Thoughts:

-Now I can finally check this off of the "Popular Corey Feldman Movies I Never Saw For One Reason Or Another" List, along with Goonies, which I finally saw last year (meh). Next up, The Lost Boys.

-"Mighty Mouse is a cartoon. Superman is a real guy. There's no way a cartoon can beat up a real guy."

-My favorite part about Stand By Me in general might be the Pez line as the poster tag. That's pretty great.


Coming Up...

162. The Terminator

161. Amores Perros

160. Finding Nemo

Antarctica: is it ever any fun? It seems like with a few, penguin-related exceptions, every film that visits our forgotten seventh continent only does so to discover something horrifying buried in the ice. 1982's The Thing might just be the progenitor of this trend.

The Key Players:

Thriller maestro John Carpenter makes his only countdown appearance with arugably his least successful film- The Thing would gain cult status only upon the advent of home video. Still, not even Halloween?
Star Kurt Russell is another face we'll likely never see again (not even Stargate?), since his most notable roles are in Carpenter classics like Escape From New York and Big Trouble In Little China.

Among a small ensemble are grizzled voice for hire Keith David (Pitch Black, Platoon, They Live)and Wilford Brimley (Cocoon, spokesperson for the ADA, and of course mentor to Stephen Colbert via regular 3AM phone calls).



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The Story:

Pretty standard- a collection of scientists (like Brimley) and badass types (like Russell's helicopter pilot and David's...badass black dude?) are stationed at a research base in Antarctica, minding their own business doing science and all, when a krazy Norwegian from nearby crashes his helicopter, blows it up, and starts shooting at a sled dog that was running from him.

He wings one of the scientists during his crazy Norwegian rampage, so the base commander is forced to shoot him. Russell and another guy go to his base, but find only more dead Norwegians, evidence that they had dug something out of the ice, and a horrible, half-human looking burnt corpse.

Naturally, they haul the corpse-thing back to the lab, where Brimley discovers it has familiar organs but is clearly not all human. They put the sled dog in with their own pack, but it quickly turns into a horrifying nightmare monster and sends out tendrils to assimilate the other dogs- Russell breaks out the flamethrower just in time.

Brimley takes some samples or what have you, and discovers that it's some sort of organizism that can consume and imitate any host, on even a cellular level- and very rapidly at that. Realizing that he can no longer trust anyone, he promptly goes nuts and destroys the helicopters and radio equipment before the rest can tie him up in a shack.

After some more chaos and untimely demises (the half-human corpse thing? Totally not dead.), a harrowed half-dozen or so remain. Suspicion falls on Russell, but he holds the rest at bay with a stick of live dynamite and a blowtorch in his hands, and devises a blood test to see who's human and who's not once and for all.

The Artistry:

Alien parasite, isolated base- I settled in for an atmospheric, Alien style horror film. And The Thing is certainly that, in part. But it's also a full-on, gross out creature feature, and it boldly announces so 25 minutes in when that stray dog suddenly isn't a dog any more.

That creation, by Stan Winston and all of the subsequent partially-human monsters created by Rob Bottin, spend the film veering wildly across the line between Evil Dead II excessive hilatiry and genuine, Cronenberg-style horror. It makes The Thing a little dicey in tone- especially because none of the cast really has the time to create a character we might care for, with perhaps a couple exceptions.

Those would be of course Keith David's reactionary badassness and Kurt Russell's gritted teeth: Russell gets the lone character beat before the chaos begins as he loses to a computer at chess.

The Thing has a fun visual look, mostly full of flares illuminating the base at night in bright colors, and the score (by Ennio Morricone!) is a neat balance of 80's synth and histronic strings.

But what I liked most was the pod-person nature of the plot- much more the focus of the John W. Campbell, Jr. novella "Who Goes There?" upon which the movie was based. That's where Russell's improvised test comes from- taking a blood sample from each man and testing it with a hot wire- comes from. Since each part of "the thing" is a separate organizism that defends itself, provoking it should get a tell-tale reaction.

In the movie, Russell figures this out when he sees my favorite of the many disgusting images- a severed head sprouting insect-like legs to crawl away.

THE ENDING! SPOILERS!

The test reveals one man to be an impostor, who then monsters out and kills another one before they can flamethrower him. This leaves four standing, though they realize they've forgotten about poor Brimley, locked out in a shack. David stands guard as Russell and the two others go to give him the test- instead they find an empty shack, and a secret tunnel under the floor leading to what looks like and alien craft made from spare helicopter parts.

They see David leave the base, just before the power gives out- the Brimley-monster has destroyed the generator. Accepting that they're never getting out alive, all three take some dynamite to burn the whole place down and prevent the Thing from reaching civilization. This is pretty much what happens, and you'll never guess which of the three survives and makes it out before the explosion!

David returns (he thought he saw Brimley out there, and got lost, allegedly), and he and Russell share a laugh about how they can't possibly trust one another as they wait to freeze to death. The end.

END SPOILERS



Overall: Should It Be Higher, Lower?

Definitely a solid effort, but not something that would make my top 250. It might be the overdone FX, or the lack of any sort of arc to the story, but I can't see revisiting The Thing in the future.

The Legacy:

Coming out two weeks after E.T. and on the same day as Blade Runner, The Thing fared pretty poorly at the box office, and was an afterthought in Carpenter's otherwise winning 80s career. But it found new, cult-status life after coming out on video and DVD. It's even been made into a comic book series and a video game.

The Best Video Of It On YouTube:

Warning: severed-head-related discretion is advised.



Leftover Thoughts:

-Favorite part: Brimley's hilariously prophetic computer, which takes one look at a cellular animation of the Thing and types out things like "PROJECTION: IF INTRUDER ORGANISM REACHES CIVILIZED AREAS... ENTIRED WORLD POPULATION INFECTED 27,000 HOURS FROM FIRST CONTACT," while Wilford sits there with his face at its Brimliest.


Coming Up...

163. Stand By Me

162. The Terminator

161. Amores Perros

Talk about a familiar story: 2009's Oscars had a clear frontrunner for Best Foreign Film in The White Ribbon, and even a potential spoiler in Un Prophete- but in keeping with the wild nature of the category, the voters went with Plan C and gave it to El Secreto De Sus Ojos (The Secret In Their Eyes) instead, the submission from Argentina.

After some initial wavering, it looks like it's made the countdown for a long stay. Let's hop to it!

The Key Players:

Director Juan José Campanella was first nominated for the Foreign Language Oscar for 2001's El Hijo de la Novia, but spent much of the last decade earning his living directing episodes of "House" and "Law & Order: SVU" before returning to make Ojos in his native Argentina.

And I have it on Wikipedian authority that leading man Ricardo Darín is one of the biggest film stars in Argentina- I've only seen him in Nueve Reinas (Nine Queens), a fun con-men caper remade in the states as Criminal.



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The Story:

In 1999, a retired justice agent name Benjamín Espósito finds himself obsessed with a case from 1974 in which a 23-year-old woman was raped and killed in her home. He decides to write a novel about it, after discussing it with his former department chief, Irene Hastings, between awkward, lost-love-tension-filled pauses.

Flashback to the seventies, when Irene first came in to be his boss, and his biggest problems were ridiculously large piles of paperwork and an alcoholic partner named Pablo Sandoval. He trades barbs with rival detective Romano, and sets off on the fateful Morales case.

The widower, young Morales himself, is what makes the case so memorable to Benjamín: devastated by his young wife's death, he has several conversations with Benjamín about living an empty life.

Romano beats two lowlifes into false confessions, which an enraged Benjamín quickly exposes, causing Romano to transfer away. The detectives find a real suspect in Isidoro Gomez, a childhood acquaintance of the victim's that Benjamín noticed staring at her real creepy-like in every old photo, but can't locate him for a year: all they can find are some letters to his mother that mention random names and taking the train to the city.

Morales, dedicated to his wife's vengeance, takes to waiting in the train station after work every day, for an entire year. Then finally, Pablo discovers the names in the letters are players from the local soccer team's history- they decide to look for Gomez at upcoming matches, and find him at the fifth one.

Benjamín and Irene manage to cajole Gomez into a confession. He's sentenced to life in prison, and alls well that ends well.

Or not: just a year after that, Gomez is seen clearly unjailed on national tv- he's been released by Romano, now a member of an important government agency employing Gomez as a clandestine enforcer and hitman. What?

The Artistry:

El Secreto De Sus Ojos manages to be several different types of film at once, without getting too caught up in any of them.

A Parable Of Lost Love: Darín and Soledad Villamil, popular Argentian stars that have played romantic interests before, bring such a lived-in, subtle chemistry to both time periods that it's easy to take this angle for granted until the very end of the film. The opening, dreamlike sequence is a haunting image of Villamil running after Darín's train as they're parted, perhaps forever, but the actual scene sneaks up on you. The two leads make the romance compelling in its honest frankness, instead of overdoing it like soap stars.

A Straightforward Procedural: The murder itself ends up being more like a typical "Law & Order" plot than I expected- for some reason I expected a larger, behind-the-scenes machination to be behind it, but it never came. It's the soulful obsession of Morales, and the eventual impact of the case on each character's life that propels the film along- the Morales case is almost a feint to get us to look at the wrong hand.

A Historical Drama: As we'll see in the ending, some important political factors in Argentina's history end up playing a part in how it all adds up- another element that slowly encroaches on the plot, lost in news snippets and casual remarks.

A Rumination On Writing: Darín's struggle with the theme of his novel, and what the case means in the present day is a rare framing device that I appreciate- in a memorable element, he takes to writing snippets of phrases on paper by his nightstand, half-awake. One reads "TEMO" ('I fear'), which he thinks he wrote in a fit of paranoia , before he realizes that he meant to write "TE AMO" ('I love you') all along, spelling out the real reason that time of his life was haunting him.

THE ENDING! SPOILERS!

Pablo is accidentally killed, mistaken for Benjamín when sleeping off a bender at his apartment. When Benjamín finds his partner's body, the only two pictures that he had of himself had been turned facedown: Pablo had intentionally confirmed the gunmen's mistake to save Benjamín's life.

Presumably the vindictive Romano is behind the killing, but since the government at the time was rampant with gestapo killings (as the Peronist right escalted its tactics against rebel leftists), he's virtually untouchable. So Benjamín flees to a remote job in the country, as Irene stays behind (her rich family makes her an unlikely target), tearfully running after his train in a goodbye.

Back in the present, Benjamín (who moved back to the city in 1985 after the Dirty War died down to find Irene married with children) visits Morales in a remote town to show him the finished novel. After a tense discussion, the widower admits that he tracked Gomez down, and shot him dead in the trunk of a car.

Benjamín leaves, but remembers Morales' singular dedication to his wife, and his conviction that life imprisonment, not the death penalty, would be the fitting punishment for Gomez. Benjamín sneaks back to discover that Morales has kept Gomez in a home-made prison cell for 24 years (hence the move to the country), feeding and clothing him, but never once speaking to him.

Aghast, Benjamín leaves, and finally goes to Irene to admit his feelings for her- though they both agree it won't be easy (since she's still married and all), they're finally ready to move on with their lives, together.

END SPOILERS


Overall: Should It Be Higher, Lower?

I imagine, as this gains exposure on DVD and so on, that it will go presently higher on its own, without me having to say so.

The Legacy:

One Oscar, One Goya Award (like the Oscars of Spain!) and thirteen Argintine AMPAS Awards. Otherwise, too soon to tell, go rent it or something.

The Best Video Of It On YouTube:

Hey you know what YouTube isn't big on? Subtitles! But check out this insane shot (I assume trickery of some sort is involved) that goes all the way from a blimp's-eye-view of the futbal stadium to our heroes as they search the stands. The shot actually goes way longer as they chase their man through the stairwells.




Coming Up...

164. The Thing

163. Stand By Me

162. The Terminator

So I'm a little too into Oscar predicting. In the last five years, the Pittsburgh Steelers (who I root for because I grew up there), have played in and won two Super Bowls that I watched with only mild enthusiasm.

But during the Academy Awards I groan or fist-pump with every hit or missed call for some reason. So I savor any category with a sure winner.

If only there were such a thing. At the 2007 ceremony, nothing looked safer than Pan's Labyrinth in the Best Foreign Film spot- it even had five 'domestic' nominations, so to speak. It's at number 74 in the top 250, even.

But stealing its thunder (and presently number 56, incidentally) came a German thriller called The Lives Of Others, which walked off with the statue and reviews ranging from "poignant, unsettling thriller" to ""one of the greatest movies ever made!" It was a stunning, awesome debut feature from the awesomely-named Florian Henckel Von Donnersmark.

Hollywood soon came calling, and we all rubbed our hands for his next step.



On paper, The Tourist sounded like a great idea- a thriller based on a little-seen French movie where an unsuspecting average joe is chosen by a Woman of Mystery to be a patsy for her boyfriend, a fugitive millionaire thief.

After a carousel of directors and stars, The Tourist ended up with our man Von Donnersmark and a studio's dream for a leading couple: Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp. Surely we could end up with a tense, throwback thriller right in the same ballpark of The Lives Of Others, which mined the former Soviet Union for endless dramatic silences and tense eavesdropping sessions.

The trailer for The Tourist made it clear this wasn't the case, but it just seemed like it was in a different gear- an action-packed romp with two stars that should have breezy chemistry even on an off day.

The problem is, Von Donnersmark tried to make the latter, but only has the skill set for the former. What results is a languid, under-plotted, barely there sketch of a film that's downright boring.



What went so wrong? I'm not sure what passes for glamorous these days, but the decision to have Depp sport a haircut that resembled a dead animal on his head and Jolie to constantly wear so much dark eye makeup that she could be an anime character (she even wore it to bed!) didn't help matters.

Surely two talented, award-winning thespians could manufacture some chemistry even while appearing to be space aliens, but it's not meant to be: every conversation the leads have is hampered by constant awkward pausing, meaningless silence, and pacing straight out of some other film.

It's the same action-packed trailer/dripping-faucet film switcheroo that The American pulled in September, but instead of overwrought somberness The Tourist just has pointless boredom.

Maybe it's the language barrier, but in this film Von Donnersmark displays a Shamylanian talent for getting wooden performances out of talented actors: Paul Bettany, Timothy Dalton, and (briefly) Rufus Sewell all go to waste explaining the ridiculous plot to us.

Oh yeah, the plot: it's not worth getting into, really. It's contived, muddy, and culminates in the London Financial Crimes Division straight up murdering some people. There's one big reveal halfway through the film that's wholly uneccesary, and one at the very end that, even though it's wholly predictable, is still ridiculously insulting.

But the plot shouldn't matter! Duplicity had a similarly ludicrous structure, but Clive Owen and Julia Roberts relegated it to window dressing. It was fun. The Tourist is what I'll use from now on to defend Ocean's Twelve when people dismiss it as a pointless Euro-trifle: at least it was fun to watch.


Ah, well. In an interview, Von Donnersmark said: "I had just finished writing a screenplay for a dark, dramatic thriller, and when I heard about The Tourist, I thought, 'Maybe I'll do this one first.'" So perhaps his next film will be appropriately Lives Of Others-ian and we can leave all this behind.

Meanwhile, maybe whoever edited that trailer can recut The Tourist into a solid, thrilling half hour.

Leftover Thoughts:

-To be clear, I don't think FHVD should make the same film every time, I just get the impression that his skill set is still developing.

-There was some rumor that Sam Worthington and Charlize Theron were up for these parts, and in hindsight that seems like a much better fit- Worthington seems a lot more like a hapless American (Depp is always the villain himself), Theron has a better balance of vulnerability AND allure (Jolie here is all allure with a hint of lizard-eyes).

-You want to know the TWO MAJOR SPOILERS so you never have to see it? Okay: First, Jolie is a London Financial Crimes Unit agent in deep cover! But actually she's gone dark and fallen in love with her target (the rich thief) anyway, so it's really not a twist at all until she decides she's falling for Depp and wants to catch the rich thief after all. Finally, Depp turns out to have BEEN THE RICH THIEF ALL ALONG OMG! Even though he sent her a note telling her to choose a random guy and pretend it was him! And we even saw a dream sequence of Depp's where he kissed her- wouldn't he have his original face in a dream? And he acted all nebbishy and awkward while being chased by random thugs, even though he was actually the dude they thought he was! ugh. It's a good thing I had nothing invested by the end of this film.

Ah, Sidney Lumet: we meet again. Will we get along this time? (Network being perhaps a slight runner-up to Crash for the 'Least Favorite Of The Countdown So Far" title)

I think so, based on what I know of 1975's Dog Day Afternoon- I haven't seen the whole thing before, and even though it fits into the subgenre of Bad Things Happening To Miserable People that I usually don't enjoy, I do enjoy bank-hostage dramas.

The Key Players:

Lumet just turned 86, yet remains Oscarless. I smell a Thalberg coming on.

Al Pacino, not too long after the first two Godfathers and a winning collaboration with Lumet in Serpico, gets his name before the title and everything.

Chris Sarandon's career has included his memorable villain in The Princess Bride, the speaking voice of Jack Skellington in A Nightmare Before Christmas, and a whole lot of tv guest-work as a doctor/judge type.

Among many in support are Charles Durning (Tootsie, "Evening Shade") and John Cazale (who would appear exclusively in Best Picture nominees in a brief career, cut short by cancer in 1978).



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The Story:

Two Vietnam veterans, the loquacious Sonny Wortzik (Pacino) and the mute, intense Sal (Cazale), hold up a bank right as it closes. After a a third robber, Stevie, leaves due to nerve, they get the manager to open the vault, only to find scarcely $1,100 left after the daily pickup.

Sonny instead takes the money from the drawers (using his experience as a former teller to avoid the alarm-rigged bills and such) and the travelers checks- but his attempt to burn the check register alerts a nearby businessman to trouble- soon the police have the place surrounded.

What follows is a long standoff, in which a Detective Moretti (Durning) attempts to negotiate the hostages' release with Sonny, who's increasingly bolstered by the crowd gathering around the police barricade. A camraderie develops between Sonny and the female tellers, and we learn he was motivated by his partner Leon (Sarandon)'s need for sexual-reassignment surgery (this is in addition to Sonny's female wife and two children).

They demand transportation to the airport and a jet, amid a media frenzy- but you know how these things usually end.

The Artistry:

A September 22, 1972 ariticle in LIFE, which you can read here formed the basis for Dog Day Afternoon, and the end result seems remarkably true to life- John Wojtowicz, the real life Sonny, is even described as "a dark, thin fellow with the broken-faced good looks of an Al Pacino or a Dustin Hoffman."

The movie, seeking to place itself thoroughly in early 70s Brooklyn, opens with a montage of shots of the city set to Elton John's "Amoreena." The rest of the movie has no score, and the documentary feel is only heightened by the opening moments of the heist unfolding in real time.

That tension is brilliantly brought to a head when the phone rings, and the bank manager turns to Pacino with a heart-freezing "It's for you."

The police arriving in excessively huge force is edited brilliantly thereafter by the late Dede Allen, a rush of activity before the film and the hostages settle in for an ordeal.

The undercurrent of anti-establishment sentiment in Dog Day Afternoon works well because it's precisely that- there's no speeches, no heavy-handed allegory, just some offhand and rambling remarks by Pacino about police brutality, and the famous "Attica!" chant to the crowd. That scene, and the crowd's interaction with Sonny and the police have become the most influential part of the film, but Lumet seems just as interested in the media's co-option of any developing story. The awkward, live on camera interview Sonny gives to a local tv station is kind of hilarious ("Couldn't you get a job?") until Sonny cuts it short by cursing on air.

The performances help the film get away with just skimming the thematic surface. Pacino at his wild best, Cazale with an aura of idle sadness as the heist continues, and Durning with an urgent, angry turn as the local cop trying to resolve things before the FBI takes it out of his hands.

And in a showcase for both actors, Pacino and Sarandon share a long phone call that hints at the character's long, complex history- and the long zoom in on Sarandon is flawless, as is the timing of the revelation that the FBI and Durning are listening in.

THE ENDING! SPOILERS!

The FBI gives in and sends a limo for Sonny, Sal, and the hostages to get to Kennedy airport, where a jet is standing by. But even though he inspected it beforehand, a gun was hidden in the driver's side armrest, and the FBI agent driving shoots Sal in the head while Sonny is quietly disarmed.

The hostages flee to safety, and Sonny looks more passive than anything as the credits roll.

END SPOILERS


Overall: Should It Be Higher, Lower?

I liked it! You win, Lumet, and you get a 'higher' this time. May it comfort you in your waning years. Wait (checking the news)- yep, still alive.

The Legacy:

It would win an Oscar for Original Screenplay out of six total noms (including Picture, Lumet, Pacino, Sarandon, and Allen), and has a place in the NFR along with its cultural legacy in Pacino's quote.

The Best Video Of It On YouTube:

Funny how yelling "Attica!" has become cultural shorthand for "I Am A Moron Who Saw A Movie One Time And Also Enjoys Yelling!" instead of for police brutality.



Leftover Thoughts:

-With Carol Kane as a mousy teller, this actually has two people from The Princess Bride in it.

-Shouldn't it be an adapted screenplay? Based on that article? I wonder about these things.


Coming Up...

165. The Secret In Their Eyes

164. The Thing

163. Stand By Me