The Ice Harvest

“As Wichita falls, so falls Wichita Falls.” Only those who have been to either Wichita, Kansas or Wichita Falls, Texas, or, God forbid, both places, can grasp the bleak desperation contained in that statement. It’s the kind of desperation that would drive a divorced, mildly miserable mob lawyer like Charlie (John Cusack) to steal $2 million from his boss. He and a more hardened mobster named Vic (Billy Bob Thornton) pilfer the money quietly on Christmas Eve and figure on skipping town on Christmas. (Makes sense, because they say it’s actually easier to travel on the actual holiday.) That gives them a whole night to get into trouble and blow the whole thing wide open. Charlie tries to take one last shot at his crush, titty-bar owner Renata (Connie Nielsen), but she has her own agenda. Meanwhile, it turns out the Mafia didn’t get where they are by being stupid about money, so Charlie and Vic wind up with a hit man (Mike Starr) and the top dog himself (Randy Quaid) after them. Add in an ice storm, and hilarity and some raw violence ensue.
The thing is, this is a decent flick where nothing surprising happens. It is pretty cool when a guy locked in a trunk starts blasting away with his backup gun, but you already know that is going to happen from watching the trailer. Everything else is just what you expect in this type of noir, heist movie. It’s still pretty kick-ass, thanks to the awesome cast. Cusack, Thornton, Starr, Quaid, Oliver Platt; they all make this funny, violent movie a joy to watch. My only complaint would be the casting of Connie Nielsen, who is gorgeous as hell, but is more of a two-dimensional caricature of the “femme fatale.”
“The Ice Harvest” is about bad people fighting over money, and I don’t think there is a whole lot under the surface. The only philosophical aspect is when Charlie (Cusack) relays a story about how his alcoholic crook of an uncle and his upright, reliable father died within days of each other. This fuels his existentialist view that “it doesn’t matter what you do; the end result is the same.” By the end, as Charlie shivers in the cold, Kansas wind on the side of the road, you get the sense that he is rethinking that philosophy.

3.5 out of 5

Love Crazy (1941)

This is another William Powell/ Myrna Loy screwball comedy. It’s a light, sweet confection pretty similar in theme to that other Powell/ Loy movie we watched, “I Love You Again.” Here, Powell’s character gets caught hanging out with an old girlfriend. His wife (Loy), files for divorce, and Powell spends the movie faking insanity to forestall the divorce long enough to win her back. Hilarity ensues. Just as in the other film, Powell does lots of physical comedy, while Myrna Loy just holds herself very straight, looking beautiful and saying sensible things. There’s nothing really special about this one, and I didn’t like it quite as much as “I Love You Again.”

2.5 stars out of 5

Wall-E (2008) ****1/2

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For my first movie in the theatre in about a year, I found myself listening to crying babies and watching previews for truly awful-looking kiddie movies. (One of those previews was for a movie with dancing Chihuahuas. They pronounce it really exaggerated, Chee-Wa-Wa, so you know it’s funny.) It was all worth it, though, to see “Wall-E,” the latest charming, deceptively deep animated film from Pixar.

Wall-E is a little trash-compacting robot who is one of the last “living” things left on an earth that has been devastated by trash and pollution. He is one of an army of such robots produced by the Buy-N-Large (BNL, known for their massive superstores) corporation to try to dig earth out of its trash problems. Progress apparently wasn’t fast enough, as all the humans eventually left on BNL starships, hoping to spend a few years in space while the robots made earth livable again. Seven hundred years later, Wall-E is the only ‘bot still going. Powered by a solar cell, he happily turns trash into compact little cubes that he stacks into towering ziggurats that surround and dwarf the skyscrapers of New York. It’s a slow process, but then Wall-E has all the time in the world.

As you might imagine, Wall-E is lonely. He collects interesting human artifacts and spends his evenings watching a VCR tape of “Hello, Dolly,” pining for the companionship he sees on the screen.

Meanwhile, humans have forgotten all about earth. They live a life of sloth and obesity in their starship, reclining in floating chairs while drinking “cupcake-in-a-cup.” The starship, however, automatically sends probes to earth to check for signs of returning life. When one of those probes comes to New York, Wall-E’s world is turned upside down.

There was an article recently complaining that the depiction of future humans in this film is unfair to fat people. Supposedly obesity is genetic, and “Wall-E” is guilty of propagating the “myth” that obesity is a result of sedentary overeating. I don’t know about all that. Seems to me our genes come to us from our ancestors, and as a group, they sure weren’t as fat as we are. Whatever the case, I guess these complaints are the price Pixar pays for putting some actual ideas into their films. “Wall-E’s” messages on the environment, consumerism, and yes, the wages of sloth and gluttony will doubtless raise some hackles, but that is just a testament to the quality of this film.

I, for one, liked the subtle point that the Buy-N-Large company profited at every turn. They built gargantuan superstores to sell people a lot of cheap crap that eventually wound up getting thrown out. Then they marketed the Wall-E robots to clean up the mess. When humans finally had to abandon Earth, it was BNL that supplied the spaceships. Nero may have fiddled while Rome burned, but BNL cashed in while the Earth was destroyed. Of course, you won’t need many guesses to pick which gigantic discount store BNL is based on. I wonder if “Wall-E” merchandise will be sold at Wal-Mart stores.

I haven’t seen all the Pixar movies, but I suspect “Wall-E” may be their best yet. The story is complex enough to keep adults interested, but kids over two years will probably love it. (In my experience, babies may be scared by a few scenes.) The animation is beautiful, and, as with other Pixar films, the characters are more expressive and real than many human actors. (Believe me, if Keanu Reeves were drawn by Pixar, he would have won an Oscar by now.) There is some talk out there that “Wall-E” should be nominated for Best Picture, not just Best Animated Picture. That may be laying it on a bit thick, but I can see where they are coming from. This is an excellent movie worthy of multiple viewings by the whole family.

4.5 stars out of 5

Waydowntown (2000)

One thing I do miss is the Sundance Film Festival. We used to go every year when we lived in Salt Lake, and even made the trek down there the first couple of years after moving to Idaho. Now we’ve got the kid, and blah, blah, blah, excuses, excuses. I still love a good independent film, though. If you don’t know what I mean by “independent,” it means movies made outside the film studio system, generally on a low budget. “Clerks” is a classic, independent film. Kevin Smith made it for peanuts, using friends and family as actors and crew when possible. Sometimes the Sundance Festival will have movies that feature some pretty big-name actors, making you wonder what the movie is doing in an “independent film” festival. Those movies usually make up for the big stars by shooting on really grainy digital video or by showing some gay sex.

“Waydowntown” is more the classic type of independent film, with actors I’ve never seen, sketchy production values, and loads of dialog (which is cheaper to shoot than action.) It’s set in the Canadian city of Calgary, where city designers have installed tunnels and overhead walkways connecting most of the downtown buildings. That means you can go from home to work to a restaurant and back without ever going outside. Brilliant! Get yourself a Nintendo Wii, and you could live a very full life without breathing fresh air ever again!

“Waydowntown” is about a foursome of young office workers who try to do just that, wagering a month’s salary on who can stay inside the longest. The story is set on Day 24, when the rough edges are really starting to show. The movie truly captures the soul-sucking nature of working in an office building. The comedic tone is a bit darker than “Office Space,” and “Waydowntown” is by no means the classic that “Office Space” is, but it’s still a nice ode to throwing off the shackles of cubicle bondage.

The scary thing about “Waydowntown” is that it might be our future. As cities get bigger and more congested, the Calgary system of enclosed walkways connecting everything might become the standard. Cities might become like airports, with security checkpoints to pass through, and once you’re inside, you’re INSIDE. I wonder what effect that will have on people. Will we need those little soundproof booths to step into and scream at the top of our lungs? What breed of hominids will evolve in such an ant farm? I believe I’d rather go out a 20^th story window than find out.

4 stars

I Love You Again (1940)

After an of-its-time disappointment like “Juno”, it made sense to dip back into the archives for something timeless. This classic comedy by W.S. Van Dyke, starring William Powell and Myrna Loy, proved just the thing. It’s a delightful romp filled with physical comedy and surprising innuendo.

Powell plays Larry Martin, a tea-totalling, cheapskate, Chamber of Commerce member. He suffers a blow to the head while saving a drowning man, and he wakes up with complete amnesia for the man who was Larry Martin. Instead, he has recovered his original personality, hard-partying con-man George Carey, an identity he apparently lost following a similar concussion 9 years earlier. With the help of Doc Ryan (Frank McHugh), whom he saved from drowning, Martin/Carey decides to clean out any available “Larry Martin” bank accounts before returning to his shady, big city life.

Once on land, however, Carey discovers that Martin has a lovely wife (Myrna Loy). He relishes the opportunity for a conjugal reunion, but quickly learns that Kay, bored to death with Larry Martin, has taken up with another man and is asking for a divorce. Thus, Carey returns to Martin’s home with the twin goals of swindling some money and winning the heart of his wife.

“I Love You Again” is not one of the greatest films of all time; it is just a funny, little movie that is comfortable in its own skin. The tone and pacing are just right, and the actors have a good time with it. There is plenty of slapstick, physical comedy and some word-play that is surprisingly dirty if you have a dirty mind.

The team of W.S. Van Dyke, William Powell, and Myrna Loy was apparently something of a 30’s and 40’s staple. Powell and Loy formed a Hollywood pair on the level of Bogart and Bacall, though they were a couple on screen only. Perhaps their most famous work was in the prolific “Thin Man” series. The pair was known for excellent chemistry and banter, all of which is on display in “I Love You Again.”

4 stars

Juno (2007)

If you haven’t seen “Juno” yet, you must be living under an even bigger rock than I am. It’s this year’s Little Miss Greek Wedding. “The little movie that could.” “Refreshing!” Surely you’ve heard the unbridled love-fest surrounding “Juno.” What it all boils down to is that a film with a small budget actually managed to find an audience. It happens at least every year or two, but somehow it always feels like the first time.

Once everybody got over the initial rush over this spunky, clever little film and it’s spunky, clever writer Diablo Cody (Isn’t that a spunky, clever name?), we all had to figure out which side of the “Juno” divide we were on. No sooner had people started to see and love the film than a “Juno” backlash started. Now, you either love it or hate it. You are either with “Juno” or with the terrorists. Myself, I went back and forth over it for a few months, loving it, then hating it, and then loving it again. I finally decided I would never be able to stop waffling unless I actually watched it.

The story is fairly straightforward. The title character, a teenaged girl named Juno MacGuff (Ellen Page), does the nasty with her best male friend, track nerd Paulie Bleeker (Michael Cera). A few weeks later she is guzzling fruit punch to provide material for about a dozen home pregnancy tests. (Which, by the way, is what just about every mother I know has done upon getting pregnant. Isn’t one test enough? Maybe two. It’s like, “You had sex; your period’s late, and the line is pink. How much more evidence do you need?!”) She bails out on her initial plan to “nip it in the bud,” and opts for adoption. Juno thinks she has found the perfect parents in yuppies Mark and Vanessa (Jennifer Garner and Jason Bateman), but…wait for it…it turns out they have some growing up of their own to do. See, you knew I was going to say that, didn’t you, just like you will know everything that is going to happen in “Juno” within about ten minutes of the opening credits. The plot is that shopworn and trite, and I find it amazing that writer Diablo Cody is such the toast of Hollywood based on this.

There is a German word, Witzelsucht, that refers to excessive attempts at humor. “Juno” is guilty of HipundCleversucht. Don’t get me wrong; there are some funny lines and catchphrases in the film; I love the term “up the spout” for pregnant. In too many scenes, though, the script is trying too hard to “crackle,” and it’s obvious the actors are reciting lines.

Many “Juno” fans aren’t even paying attention to all that, though, because they are so busy looking for the “reproductive issues” message. It’s hilarious how everyone has tried to claim this movie as a victory for their side. Right-to-Lifers celebrate Juno’s choice of adoption over abortion. Pro-Choicers celebrate the fact that she has a choice at all. Meanwhile, feminists can’t shut up about how great it is that someone made a movie about a girl. The real genius of Diablo Cody is not her screenwriting, but her marksmanship. She has managed to hit some previously unknown political sweet spot that makes all sides of the reproduction/gender issue love her film on some level, while maintaining the original political divisions.

What saves “Juno” as a movie is the acting. Page, Cera, Bateman, Garner, J.K. Simmons (as Juno’s dad), and Allison Janney (the stepmom) all deserve honors for taking this little movie up a notch. They make the movie fun and human enough that I would have to recommend the film despite my “Juno” cynicism. Ignore the hype; go into it expecting a fun, small movie, and you’ll probably have a good time.

3 stars out of 5

The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946)

In case you haven’t picked up on this, most of the movies I watch come from Netflix. It’s an online DVD rental service that charges a set monthly price for which you get to have a certain number of movies checked out at any time. You keep a movie as long as you want, and when you send it back, they just send you the next movie on your list. The cool thing is that instead of wandering aimlessly through the New Releases section of the video store like I did in the old days, I get to build this list, called the queue, at my convenience. Whenever I hear or read about a good movie, I can get online and add it to the queue. The downside is that my wife and I have a pretty long queue, so a movie I add today may not get here for months.

That’s what happened with “The Strange Love of Martha Ivers,” and by the time it arrived, I couldn’t remember why it was on the queue. I’m sure I read about it somewhere, or maybe Netflix recommended it for us. Anyway, sometimes we have to just trust our past decisions, so we popped it in. Turns out it’s not bad. A bit melodramatic, but worth watching. Clearly it was on my queue because it’s a noir, which I dig, and because it is noteworthy for being Kirk Douglas’s first film.

The story is of a love triangle, formed by young Martha Ivers (Barbara Stanwyck) and the two boys who love her. Sam Masterson is a tough, confident boy from the wrong side of the tracks who tries to help Martha escape from the gilded cage of her rich aunt’s mansion, and whom Martha loves. Walter O’Neil is the bespectacled son of Martha’s ambitious tutor. When Martha accidentally kills her shrew of an aunt, Walter and his dad help her hide it, while Sam skips town.

The story then skips ahead twenty years, and at this point you are likely thinking that Kirk Douglas must play the grown-up version of the cool, poor kid, right? Wrong, buddy! He plays Walter, a weak, hollow soul who won Martha’s hand as the price for helping conceal her crime, but who now lives a pathetic, henpecked life in the knowledge that his wife doesn’t love him. Martha, meanwhile, has inherited her aunt’s fortune and used her own intelligence and will to multiply it, but she is tortured by her contempt for her drunk of a mate. Into this circus of domestic bliss walks Sam (Van Heflin), back in town after all those years, and genuinely just interested in looking up his old playmates. Walter and Martha, however, weighed down as they are by all their lies, assume Sam is in town to blackmail them with the truth about Martha’s aunt, steal Martha away, or both. The guilty flee when no man pursues, and thus Sam and Martha are drawn down into the darkness.

Besides having a really lame name, “The Strange Love of Martha Ivers” suffers from some Old Movie maladies. In the first part of the film, all the kids talk in those high-pitched movie-kid voices that they had in all those old films. That drives me nuts. The adults in that first segment are also painfully melodramatic. Once the film skips ahead, and the main actors show up, things get better, but the movie never completely shakes off the aura of melodrama. Lizabeth Scott plays a down-on-her-luck girl and love interest for Sam, and she isn’t that great. She is known as the poor-man’s Lauren Bacall, and she does look remarkably like Bacall, but if a poor man had just a few bucks, he would do better to spring for Bacall herself.

Other than that, the film has some pretty decent performances. Barbara Stanwyck keeps you guessing as to whether she is a victim or a manipulative sociopath. Van Heflin offers a charming performance as well. Kirk Douglas, however, gets the prize for this movie. His portrayal of Walter the henpecked drunkard is astoundingly nuanced; it’s worth watching the film just for him. His career was definitely going somewhere after this first movie.

Finally, I want to point out something about “The Strange Love of Martha Ivers” that I have noticed in other movies made during and after WWII. That was a period when many women had gone to work because of so many men being overseas, and there was some societal duplicity about what the role of women was going to be. On the one hand, “Rosie the Riveter” signs exhorted women to work to help the war effort. On the other, I think many folks were very concerned that it should be clear that once the war was over, those women would give up their jobs to returning men and pursue the traditional female goals of marriage and family. Many movies I have seen from that era seem to be about strong, smart women who make a career on their own, then ultimately meet some terrible fate. In “The Strange Love of Martha Ivers,” the fate of Martha the capable industrialist is contrasted with that of Toni (Lizabeth Scott), a sweet, unambitious girl who puts her faith in a man. I suspect that Hollywood produced stories like this because they subtly promoted the traditional gender roles that an anxious America longed for.

There’s no need to break your leg rushing to rent “The Strange Love of Martha Ivers,” but it is worth watching if you get a chance.

3 stars out of 5.

Once (2007)

Folks say that the Irish respect feeling more than thinking, that they are known for leading with their hearts. Watching the charming Irish film “Once” made me think there may be something to that. The songs of love and heartbreak in this film are full of complex emotion, but they never feel overly sentimental because the emotions flow so naturally from these characters.

“Once” is the story of a couple of unnamed musicians: an Irish lad (Glen Hansard) and an immigrant lass (Marketa Irglova) from some Eastern European country. The girl is impressed by the guy’s sidewalk guitar performances and plays piano for him at the music shop where she gets to play during lunchtime every day. Rather than hopping straight into bed as you might expect, they channel their chemistry to write songs together. These haunting ballads of longing and loss help them each heal their own broken heart. The songs were written by the two actors Hansard and Irglova, and one of them (“Falling Slowly”) won the Oscar for Best Original Song in a Movie. Not bad.

“Once” is not a strict musical because the actors do talk in between songs, but a lot of the story is in the music. Hansard sings about how his girlfriend’s cheating causes him to look back on all their times together with a more cynical eye, which leaves him grieving not only her loss but the loss of those good memories. Irglova sings one about how marrying and having a child young left her feeling lonely in a marriage to a man who didn’t seem to understand her. Normally this kind of emotional content would have me snoozing, but something about these songs made me care.

Audiences weaned on pop princesses and movies where the guy is guaranteed to get the girl may find “Once” hard to get into. For anyone who enjoys subtlety in music and film, this movie is a real treat.

4.5 stars out of 5.

The Namesake (2006)

Quick, name a famous actor from India. Even one of Indian descent. Still thinking? Me too. My guess is that that is why Mira Nair recruited Kal Penn (Kumar from “Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle”) to star in the screen incarnation of the book, “The Namesake.” Maybe star isn’t the right word; sulk is more like it. Penn may have lent this film the benefit of a semi-recognizable lead, but his wooden-Indian performance sucks the life out of the story. That leaves Indian actors Irfan Khan and Tabu to do the actual acting. They do so with the grace of true professionals, but even their nuanced performances can’t justify this drag of a film.

It won’t take long to outline the plot of “The Namesake,” since there is almost no story here at all. The film follows the lives of Ashoke (Irfan Khan) and Ashima (Tabu) Ganguli, a couple of Bengali Indians who immigrate to New York. They have a couple of kids, buy a house in the suburbs, and struggle with being outsiders in America and missing their families in India. Their kids Gogol (Kal Penn) and Sonia (Sahira Nair) are American-born and typically American, but they finally come to accept their East Indian heritage. There, I just ruined the plot for you, because that is basically all that happens. There is some nonsense built up about how Gogol is named for his dad’s favorite Russian author (thus the title of the film), but when they finally reveal why the name is so important to Ashoke, it is quite anticlimactic.

This is the kind of movie that critics love, and audiences hate. Critics will describe “The Namesake” as being “a heartfelt tale of alienation and loss,” or “the truest story yet about the immigrant experience.” The problem is that as far as I am concerned there is no tale or story here. I would have settled even for some painfully naturalistic tale of woe. Instead this film just follows for a few decades the very straightforward lives of an immigrant family. The politically correct thing would be to laud this as a great artistic achievement, but the truth is that I was bored to tears. This movie seems to think it is the first to cover this ground. Here are some examples of supposedly watershed moments from “The Namesake”: Gogol’s aunt tells him to go to college and have all the fun he wants, but marry an Indian girl. Gogol has always ignored his Indian heritage, but when there is a family crisis, he learns to embrace it. Ashima and Ashoke aren’t sure what to do with themselves once their kids are out of the house. This self-congratulatory little film presents this stuff as if we have never seen it before.

If “The Namesake” sounds like your idea of a good way to spend two hours, then have at it. Just don’t come crying to me.

1 star.

Nine Queens (Nueve Reinas) 2000 ****1/2

Fans of “long con” movies like “The Grifters” and “The Sting” will appreciate “Nine Queens” as a respectful, perfectly crafted version of the classic theme. Those less versed in the con game will delight in the plot twists, getting treated to the taut filmmaking style of late Argentinean director Fabian Bielinsky and superb performances by stars Ricardo Darin and Gaston Pauls.

Have you ever wondered how easy it would be to con a few bucks out of a stranger? Juan (Gaston Pauls) and Marcos (Ricardo Darin) make their living out of small con jobs, cheating store clerks and old ladies out of 20, 40, or a hundred bucks. The two meet up, and the more experienced Marcos takes Juan under his wing, suggesting they merge their talents. Together they pound the pavements of Buenos Aires, working harder and making less per hour than most folks with real jobs. They are low-lifes with low aspirations, and one is led to wonder why they expend so much energy and take such risks for such small amounts. The answer, of course, is that it isn’t about the money. They do it for the thrill of putting on a little show, fooling someone else, and getting away with it.

“Nine Queens” takes its first big turn when these small timers get a shot at something big. A call from an old acquaintance of Marcos’s puts them in a position to make hundreds of thousands of dollars selling a set of counterfeit stamps called the Nine Queens to a collector. The question, as in all these grift movies, is “Who is really getting conned?”

I won’t ruin any more of the plot except to say that the payoff at the end is truly a class act. I must also take a moment to praise the outstanding acting of Darin and Pauls. Forgive me if I start to sound all giddy, but these guys are amazing! I first saw Ricardo Darin in “The Aura”, and the difference between his semi-autistic character in that film and his charmer in “Nine Queens” is a testament to Darin’s range. I think it would be fair to compare him to someone like Tom Hanks, and it is easy to see why he is a huge star in Argentina. Gaston Pauls also gives a superb performance in “Nine Queens” as a con-man hobbled by a conscience.

Writer/Director Bielensky keeps the action moving at a taut pace. As they say in the movie theatres, “Eight bucks gets you the whole seat, but you’ll only need the edge!” I have to say again, as I did in my review of Bielensky’s “The Aura,” what a shame it is for the art that this filmmaker died after making only two films. Were he still making movies, I think he would have become a brand name in the world of Spanish-language cinema on the order of Pedro Almodovar. As for “Nine Queens,” the film has been adapted into an Americanized version called “Criminal,” starring John C. Reilly. I haven’t seen it, and I haven’t yet decided whether to check it out. Maybe I’ll just get my own copy of “Nine Queens” instead.

4.5 stars out of 5