"Live Free or Die Hard"

Implausible. Over-the-top. Absurd. All of these modifiers can be used to describe "Live Free or Die Hard". But I'll add another one...lots of fun.


Yes, John McClane's fourth go-round with terrorists is nothing more than a silly cartoon, but it has a sense of playfulness that's been missing from a lot of recent screen adventures. Action thrillers have gotten so straight and serious (think the Bourne films) over the past few years that sometimes we fear the hero cracking a smile would hurt him more than anything the worst villain could inflict.


No worries about that here. "Live Free or Die Hard" allows Bruce Willis ample opportunity to crack wise amid the explosions, beatings, and shootings -- just as he did in the previous three entries in the Die Hard series (although the less said about the last one, Die Hard With a Vengeance, the better). But this time he has a partner in jest...a smart-assed computer hacker named Matt Farrell (Justin Long).


Seems Matt is one of several hackers who were hired to help former government agent Thomas Gabriel (Timothy Olyphant) create a program that could take down the entire American infrastructure -- transportation, electrical, gas, you name it. ("It's called a fire sale," Matt explains. "Everything must go.") Gabriel's motives are murky (ultimately it's all about -- surprise, surprise -- money), but he's offing all the hackers he put together, so Willis is tasked with transporting Matt safely to Washington where he can be questioned about Gabriel's plans.


After barely escaping Gabriel's assassins in Matt's apartment, the two unlikely partners arrive in D.C. just in time for all the traffic lights to go out. In the midst of the chaos, Gabriel discovers Matt is in Washington and sends his henchmen out to kill him -- and as we all know, protecting regular folks is what John McClane was born to do.


That includes (but is not limited to): driving a car into a helicopter, driving an SUV into an elevator shaft (with Gabriel's karate-chopping squeeze attached to the hood), escaping numerous fireballs, and barely hanging onto the wing of a Harrier jet as it takes out an elevated roadway in suburban Baltimore. Did I mention the movie is absurd and over-the-top? Yes, I think I did.


(As if things couldn't get loony enough, we're treated to a cameo by filmmaker Kevin Smith as an overweight hacker who hides out in his mom's basement...then again, maybe that's not so hard to believe after all.)



But no matter how often director Len Wiseman and writer Mark Bomback put credibility through the shredder, McClane helps ground the silliness. Willis' natural earthy demeanor has never served a character better than this everyman cop (who, truth be told, feels less like an everyman and more like a Superman this time around) and even though it's been 12 years since he last played him, McClane fits Willis like a glove. The big joke of the movie is that he's a "Timex cop in a digital age". But with Willis in McClane mode, he proves that the world can change all it wants, but a good old-fashioned ass-kicking never goes out of style.

"1408" - Eh...

Extremely well-directed and acted, the new suspenser "1408" is, nonetheless, a disappointment. John Cusack is Mike Enslin, a writer who pens books debunking the ghost stories of supposedly "haunted" motels. One day he gets a postcard from the Dolphin Hotel in New York with a single message: Don't stay in 1408. Intrigued, Enslin travels to New York where he manages to finagle his way into the room despite the efforts of hotel manager Samuel L. Jackson to warn him of the dangers. ("1408 is one evil fucking room," says Mr. Jackson, who's sole purpose in the movie seems to be to drop its only F bomb.) Once checked in, it doesn't take long for the room to start fucking with Mike: among other things, the toilet paper refolds itself, a window slams down on his hand and, perhaps most maddeningly, the clock radio plays the Carpenters' "We've Only Just Begun" on a loop. And that truly is just the beginning as the room does everything it can drive Enslin crazy -- and the movie self-destructs before our eyes.

"1408" has a few chilling moments, and a nice streak of black humor, but it's setup is far more interesting than its payoff. We're never quite sure if everything is just in Enslin's head, or is really happening -- especially the reappearance of his dead daughter, a cruel touch the movie never deals with fairly. Cusack is very good here in what amounts to a one-man show for the most part; he starts off using sarcasm to deal with the otherworldly happenings, and he's quite believable when he sheds his skepticism for real fear. Swedish director Mikael Hafstrom offers some genuinely interesting shots and has a nice feel for the camera, making the small hotel room seem much larger and foreboding than it is. But the last twenty minutes are a cheat, taking us down one path and up another in an effort at a twist ending. If "1408" had set out some ground rules at the start, it may have worked. But the film's internal logic is threadbare, and by the end, its seams are showing.

"Apocalypto" - Impending Doom

First let me get this out of the way...I really don't know what point Mel Gibson was trying to make with "Apocalypto". The end of civilization? The destruction of nature? An allegory about our current situation overseas? Who knows? But I don't really much care. The film is so well-made, so beautiful to look at, and so alive with the joy of filmmaking that such questions are ultimately secondary. Sure, there are those who will rip Gibson for making them sit through multiple beheadings, stabbings, spearings, and other gory dispatches without giving them an overarching reason for having done so. And I say, fuck it...the movie is just an adventure, more violent and bloody than most, but a hell of an entertaining one at that.

As "Apocalypto" opens, we're introduced immediately to a tribe of Mayans in some unnamed South American jungle. A band of men from the tribe is stalking a tapir, and it's here, right off the bat, that Gibson hooks us. His camera fluidly and sinuously tracks through the jungle, capturing these men at work, trying to catch what will be dinner (and, one assumes, much more) for their tribe. We feel like predators ourselves, as if we've been let in on a secret tradition, allowed to watch the men while simultaneously taking part. The thrill of the hunt is just the beginning; after the beast is caught, Gibson gives us a scene of high comedy, as the tribe members play a joke on one of their own. It gets a big laugh, but more importantly, it humanizes these strange men, with their strange markings and strange tongue. It's a brilliant way to get us absorbed into their lives right from the start.

Then a figure emerges from the rest. He is Jaguar Paw (Rudy Youngblood), son of a tribe elder, who hears sounds in the woods. He turns to find some frightened members of another tribe, who explain their land has been ravaged and are trying to make a new start.

After a brief interlude drawing us deeper into the tribe, the village is set upon by the same evil men who ravaged the displaced group seen in the forest. The men of our tribe are all rounded up and brought to a Mayan city, where life is cheap, women are bought and sold, and the men are sacrificed atop a giant pyramid, their severed heads sent tumbling down the steps. But thanks to a sudden solar eclipse, and some quick running (and thinking), Jaguar Paw eventually escapes. The last third of the film consists of Jaguar Paw trying to make it back to his village to save his pregnant wife and son, all while being hunted by a group of deadly Mayan warriors.

From here on out, "Apocalypto" is by turns thrilling and horrifying, but always absorbing. The entire story is told in a dead Mayan language (with English subtitles) but -- as with his previous directing effort "The Passion of the Christ" -- his mastery of the medium is so complete, the film could have been silent and we'd still be able to understand exactly what is going on. Gibson's camera prowls restlessly, drawing us deeper and deeper into a world that's been lost to history. And the set design is incredible; the sequence in the Mayan city, where the captured men are marched to their deaths is a wonder to behold and worth the price of a rental alone.

"Apocalypto" is a breathtaking adventure, directed with gusto and style by a man who, 20 years ago, we probably never would have guessed had this kind of talent behind the camera. Gibson's directing gets more and more assured each time out. And perhaps the best compliment I can make is that I wish I had seen it in the theater, on a big screen. It's that kind of movie.

The film opens with a quote:

But by the end of it's 138 minutes, I don't think we're any closer to understanding what it portended for the story at the start. We do get some sense of a civilization coming to a close (or at least nearing the end), but

"Notes on a Scandal" - The New Odd Couple

One of the odder, creepier dramas to come along in recent years, "Notes on a Scandal" is also, surprisingly, a dryly funny satire of British class mores that features a virtual acting class by two Oscar-winners.

Dame Judi Dench plays Barbara Covett, a spinster-ish teacher at a tough London public school who uses an iron hand with her students, but has long-since given up on the idea that she can change them. Into her drab world enters Sheba Hart (Cate Blanchett), the new art teacher who is tall and pretty and still harbors the idealism of someone who hasn't yet been ground down by the system.

Barbara, who writes all her thoughts in diaries (one shot of her bookshelf shows notebook upon notebook filled, presumably, with her pithy comments), is immediately smitten with Sheba, though it takes her awhile to admit it to herself. (Her diary notes make up the film's sharp narration, as when she refers to Sheba and a fat colleague as "the blonde and the pig in knickers".) Slowly, she gets closer to Sheba, offering advice and counsel, until finally Sheba invites Barbara to her home, which she shares with husband Richard and kids Polly and Ben (who suffers from Down's Syndrome).

It turns out that Sheba was something of a wild child, embracing a punk lifestyle before settling down with the much-older Richard. Barbara, seizing on what she perceives as Sheba's unhappiness, insinuates herself further into Sheba's life -- meeting her for lunch, taking walks. Sheba responds to Barbara's friendship as just that...but Barabra is secretly dreaming of a time when they can be together. And when Barbara finds out that Sheba is having an affair with a 15 year old student, it gives the older woman all the leverage she needs to try and pull Sheba fully into her web...

The two stars of "Notes on a Scandal" both received Oscar nominations last year, and it's easy to see why. Though Barbara is a sourpuss virtually from beginning to end, Dench brilliantly uses body language and sly smiles to subtly show the character's growing (if delusional) belief that she and Sheba are meant for one another. Her dry line readings are also pitch perfect (Example: Barbara accepts an invite to Sheba's house for dinner but tells her diary, "Lasagna disagrees with my bowels." It may not read funny, but try not to snicker at Dench's inflection.) As Sheba, Blanchett actually has the tougher role; she has to play a series of personalities: naive, trusting, playful, lusty, confused and, unltimately, half-crazed with rage. But Blanchett is such a complete actress, she never strikes a false note; her Sheba is less a collection of tics than someone dealing uneasily with competing emotions that make the character feel utterly real and, finally, heartbreaking.

Patrick Marber's literate script gives both actresses meaty lines that let them both shine. The film runs a lean 92 minutes, but builds up such a head of steam and power that it shames similar films twice as long. The combination of stellar script and acting turns "Notes on a Scandal" from just another potboiler into a powerful examination of delusion, lost dreams, and the danger of trusting too much.

Through the Looking Glass - In Praise of "The Parallax View"

parallax: the apparent displacement or the difference in apparent direction of an object as seen from two different points not on a straight line with the object - Merriam-Webster Dictionary

A totem pole fills up the screen. The camera pans left and now we see Seattle's famous Space Needle, which a moment ago was completely covered by the pole. Parallax. Seeing something from two different points of view. It's the Needle where a political assassination that drives the rest of the film will take place, and it's the opening shot that will resonate, tantalizing us with the ultimate question: how far will some people go to squelch their opposition?

When Alan J. Pakula's "The Parallax View" was released on June 14, 1974, the country was in a state of great unease. Vietnam was all but lost (a year later, the choppers would leave the rooftops of Saigon), Richard Nixon was less then two months away from resigning in the wake of Watergate, and Americans, who'd had a good ten years to reflect on JFK's assassination, were in the throes of conspiracy theories questioning exactly who was behind the murder of the president. Mistrust of authority had been a calling card of 60's youth; now it was more palpable than ever as that generation dealt with the inevitable hangover from the good times. The time was right for a thriller that could capture the uncertainty, the off-kilter feeling of the early 70's that the public wasn't being told the whole story.

"Parallax" fit the bill beautifully. I have loved this movie since first seeing it when I was about 16; it's creepy vibe gets under my skin every time no matter how often I watch it.

The story is simple enough. Warren Beatty, in one of his best, most nuanced performances, plays Joe Frady, a recovering alcoholic who writes for a small Seattle newspaper. (Small, indeed...the only other person on the staff we ever meet is Beatty's editor, played with refreshing world-weariness by the great Hume Cronyn.) After the popular presidential candidate Senator Charles Carroll is assassinated atop the Space Needle, a colleague of Frady's (Paula Prentiss) comes to him in a panic, fearing for her own life because, she claims, people who witnessed Carroll's murder are dropping like flies. Frady pooh-poohs her fears until someone very close to him is found dead. That sets him off on a mission to figure out not only that murder but all the others that could be linked to Carroll's. And that mission takes him into the shadowy inner world of the Parallax Corporation, which may or may not be keeping a staff of assassins on call, ready to take someone out at a moment's notice.

In the hands of another director, this story would probably be told rather straightforwardly, with Frady picking up small pieces of evidence as he puts the whole picture together. But Pakula does an interesting thing: he interrupts the main story for little asides that, while not making much sense logically, actually add to the overall sense of forboding.

Take, for example, the fistfight between Frady and a redneck in a bar that takes place early in the film. Sure, we could chalk it up to Pakula trying to goose the audience with a cheap action sequence. But then, when it turns out the redneck is actually a sherriff's deputy -- and that the sheriff is his uncle, sitting just a few feet away -- the movie throws us for a loop. Sure, the fight was exciting, but something else is going on here: namely, the idea that we're never sure who's who and who's doing what. Frady -- and by extension, the audience -- never quite knows who to trust.
Pakula's visual strategy also adds to the film's sense of unease. Working with the great cinematographer Gordon Willis, Pakula shoots most of his wide shots with a long lens, flattening out the landscape so that we think we can see everything, when in actuality we don't quite know what's lurking around the corner.

In many of the tighter, quieter shots, Willis digs into the shadows (one reason why his nickname was "The Angel of Darkness"), giving us dark, shadowy shots that make us question what we think we've seen. (There's a scene where Frady returns to his rented apartment and a man is sitting there waiting for him. But it's shot so darkly we can barely make the other man out at first.) It all supports the film's whole point that sometimes we can't trust our own eyes.

Then there's the famous, much-talked-about slide-show sequence. Frady, having gotten accepted as a possible candidate for work at Parallax, is given a psychological exam where he's seated alone in a dark theater and shown a five minute series of film clips with words like "God", "Mother", and "Father" flashed between the clips, and soft pop music playing on the soundtrack. At first, the words match pictures that we would associate with them -- sunlight through clouds for "God", a woman playing with her baby for "Mother". But then, as the music gets more ominous, the words and pictures don't match up. "God" flashes before a shot of Hitler. "Father" flashes before a shot of a man winding up to smack his kids. "Me" flashes before a shot of a little boy running in a dark hallway. The sequence was obviously created for someone in a questionable psychological state...exactly who Parallax is looking to hire. But once the sequence starts, Pakula never cuts to reaction shots of Beatty. We experience the sequence along with Joe Frady, but our viewpoints are all completely different. Parallax.

"The Parallax View" was the second of Pakula's so-called "paranoia trilogy" that started with 1971's "Klute" and ended with "All the President's Men" in 1976. But I think it's the best of the three. While the other two are good films in their own right, I find flaws in them every time I watch. But "Parallax" is the only one that, to me, sticks to a consistent tone of dread. The fact that, despite some dated elements, it still holds up more than 30 years later is a testament to Pakula's uncompromising, cynical, and despairing vision. It's a movie for anyone who refuses to take the world at face value. They won't think of "Parallax" as fiction; they'll see it as prophecy.

Knocked Up - (K)not funny

I thought Judd Apatow's "The 40 Year Old Virgin" was overpraised, but nothing could have prepared me for the over-the-top reaction to his latest epic (130 minutes! Why, oh, why?!) "Knocked Up". I've read critics calling it "an instant classic" and some praising Apatow for capturing the "way we live now". That would be the case if I didn't think real life was 10 or 20 times funnier than anything in "Knocked Up". Put simply, this movie stinks, glowing critical reception notwithstanding.

And that's a shame, because I liked "Virgin" (My biggest complaint is that it went on too long, a similar problem with "Knocked Up".) and I adored NBC's short-lived series "Freaks and Geeks", which Apatow exec-produced. Maybe I've lost my sense of humor, but I just didn't find "Knocked Up" very funny. Sure I laughed a few times, but most of the time I sat there in silence waiting for it to make me laugh. And I wasn't the only one in the theater.

The film stars Seth Rogen as Ben, a pot-smoking layabout who sole job prospect is scheming with his fellow stoners to create a website that lists movie nude scenes. One night he goes to a club and meets Allison (Katherine Heigl), a pretty TV producer who's just landed an on-air spot on the E! network. The movie sets up their courtship thusly: he makes two jokes to her at the bar (which she sort of laughs at), they start dancing, they get drunk, and suddenly she's inviting him into her bed. I understand that this sort of thing happens quite often in real life, but it's extremely hard to believe here because we know little to nothing about either of these people, least of all what Allison would see in in the scruffy, bear-like Ben, even with beer goggles on.

Anyway, they have sex, and eight weeks later it turns out Allison is pregnant. She decides to have the baby and contacts Ben to see if he'll support her. From here, the movie fills up with all this navel-gazing bullshit about commitment and responsibility, instead of getting onto the business of being funny.

Many of you know my wife Eileen and I are expecting our first child. We walked out of "Knocked Up" amazed at how many opportunities Apatow missed. You could make a screwball comedy just out of the breastfeeding class we attended the other night, yet there's nary a mention of some of the goofier aspects of planning for a baby. It's all a bunch of self-absorbed nonsense.

Then there's Allison's sister and her husband. I didn't give one fat turd about either of these people, or their strident bickering. The only purpose of the husband, as far as I could tell, is so Ben has someone to go to Las Vegas with, do 'shrooms and see Cirque du Soleil. (Seriously, I've seen Mystere. It's very entertaining, but not very funny, either live or in this movie.)

There's more. Reactionary doctors. Feeble attempts at satirizing the TV business. (Ryan Seacrest curses! Hilarious!) Graphic depictions of the birth process. Everything but more laughs and a semblance of reality. One episode of "A Baby's Story" on TLC is funnier than "Knocked Up". And it's an hour and 40 minutes shorter.

The Litmus Configuration - In Praise of "Midnight Run"

Jonathan "The Duke" Mardukas: Jack, you're a grown man. You're in control of your own words.

Jack Walsh: You're goddamn right I am. Now here come two words for you: Shut the fuck up.

Why start my critical analysis of my favorite movies with 1988's "Midnight Run"? Simple...it was on cable the other day, and it's the freshest film in my mind. But also because not much has been written about this buddy-road comedy which I personally think belongs on any list of the the best films of the 1980's.

The film stars Robert De Niro as Jack Walsh, a tough bounty hunter who used to be a Chicago cop. Now his home base is L.A., where he'll make 100-grand if he tracks down and brings back Jonathan "The Duke" Mardukas (Charles Grodin), an accountant who's on the run after stealing $15 million from mobster Jimmy Serrano (Dennis Farina).

Jack finds the Duke in New York and has 5 days to bring him across the country. (Jack is told it'll be an easy gig, a "midnight run".) Of course, it's hardly that easy. Through a series of adventures by plane, train, and automobile, the two men form an uneasy alliance as they try to avoid the FBI (led by agent Alonzo Mosley, played with steely-eyed intensity by the gravel-voiced Yaphet Kotto); two of Serrano's goons; and rival bounty hunter Marvin Dorfler (John Ashton), who's put on Jack's trail by the agitated bondsman who put up the Duke's bond.

Jack also has to put up with the Duke's constant yammering, which is one of the things that makes the film truly special. The Duke is some piece of work: he never shuts up, offers his opinion on everything, and generally drives Jack up a wall. The chemistry between De Niro and Grodin is dynamite. It's one thing to have a character drive another one crazy; it's another to make them work like a long-time comedy team. (Originally, Robin Williams was set to play the Duke, but apparently director Martin Brest liked the way De Niro and Grodin worked together. It was a gamble, but it paid off beautifully, if not at the box office.) Their chemistry is crucial to the classic "litmus configuration" scene, reportedly improvised, where the two men walk into a bar and steal some money by posing as federal agents on the trail of counterfeit bills. Grodin and De Niro play off each other like two old pros who've worked together for years.

The screenplay by George Gallo is a model of narrative efficiency, character development and dialogue, at least as far as action films go. First, narrative. The plot is always moving forward, never slowing down for any bits of business that don't matter. Just about every scene contains either new information that changes the characters' (and, by extension, the audience's) perceptions of what's happening, or some offbeat character touch that deepens our understanding of the people involved.

For example, the opening sequence brilliantly sets the movies action-comedy tone, the relationship between two characters, and a running gag that is integral to building the suspense of the movie's finale all at once. After barely escaping a buckshot shampoo from a shotgun-wielding bail jumper, Jack is on the verge of capturing his prize when Dorfler gets to the man first. As they argue over who will take the bail jumper in, Jack points behind Dorfler, yells "Marvin!", and knocks Dorfler out when Marvin turns to look at...nothing. This gag will be repeated at least twice more before paying off in an unexpected way at the end.

Every character in "Midnight Run" is sharply drawn, even down to Mosley's two assistants. But what really makes them special is Gallo's attention to detail as they change. There's a scene where the Duke convinces Jack to go see the wife and daughter he left behind in Chicago years earlier, telling Jack "this will be really good for you". After seeing his grown-up daughter, and realizing what he's lost, Jack's treatment of the Duke is much different than it had been in the earlier part of the film. (There's a shot outside Jack's old house when he lifts the Duke's coat into a waiting car before closing the door...a brief moment of kindness he probably never would have considered earlier.)

Finally, dialogue. "Midnight Run" has some of the choicest lines ever written for an action movie. I'm not talking about one-liners, though it does have its share of those; I mean actual fast-paced conversation of the kind rarely heard in movies nowadays. The lines that led off this post are just the tip of the iceberg. Jack and the Duke sometimes talk for 5 minutes straight, an eternity in movie time, but a joy for purveyors of great words. And even when they're machine gunning dialogue at each other, there's time for a zinger or two, as when the Duke tells Jack he suffers from aviaphobia.

Jonathan Mardukas: It means I can't fly. I also suffer from acrophobia and claustrophobia.

Jack Walsh: I'll tell you what: if you don't cooperate, you're gonna suffer from "fistophobia".

But to call "Midnight Run" simply a "buddy action comedy" does Gallo and Brest a great disservice. What makes "Midnight Run" so great is how it upends the basic rule of the buddy movie without calling attention to itself. Think about most buddy movies, like "Lethal Weapon" to take one example. They follow a pretty standard formula: two wildly different people are thrown together under trying circumstances. At first they share a mutual dislike, bordering on hate, for each other. But slowly, they develop a grudging affection for one another, before finally becoming, well, buddies. By the end of the film, they like each other, so much so that in some cases you half expect these new best friends to walk off hand in hand.

"Midnight Run" changes this formula ever so slightly that you may not even realize it at first glance. Sure, it throws together two wildly different people, puts them through trying circumstances, and ends with them feeling differently about each other. But the difference is that at the end of "Midnight Run", one can't say for certain if Jack and The Duke have grown to like each other. Certainly they respect one another, but one can't imagine them ever paling around like, say, Riggs and Murtagh in the "Weapon" films. It's that newfound, mutual respect but lack of affection that adds immeasurable poignancy to De Niro and Grodin's final scene at LAX. You know that while these two men's personalities don't, and probably never would, mix, the fact that they've grown together, become better people together, and respect each other for the new people they are is worth more than if they were to just become good friends.

I first saw "Midnight Run" on opening day when I was 13 years old, and it's stayed with me ever since. It may not be the deepest movie ever made, but it sure is one of the most entertaining.

(A word about the music: Danny Elfman's fabulous, brassy-but-funky score, is one of the great soundtracks of the last 25 years. The music works hand in hand with the action, propelling everything forward with great urgency, while laying back with a groovy bass line when we need time to catch our breath. It's a brilliant, unusual piece of work by the man best known for scoring Tim Burton's fantasies. )