Star Trek (2009)

Star Trek hit television screens in 1966. Forty-three years later, it still isn’t safe to go down to a planet’s surface wearing red. The eleventh and latest movie based on the franchise hit theaters in May, and while it isn’t the best of the bunch (Objectively, that honor goes to Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan.), it definitely isn’t the worst.

When I first heard that a Star Trek film depicting younger versions of Kirk, Spock, and crew was in the works, I groaned. The idea smacked of those lame attempts to revamp dying Saturday morning cartoons by making a series about baby versions of the characters. On the other hand, I’m always prepared to give Star Trek the benefit of the doubt. When I saw the trailer for the new film several months ago, I knew I would be giving this one a chance.

The story surrounds a malignant Romulan who travels back in time to threaten the very origins of the Star Trek universe. Sound familiar? Star Trek: First Contact had a similar theme, only that time it was Borg going back in time to prevent contact between humans and vulcans. This time, a rogue Romulan named Nero passes through a worm-hole seeking revenge against the aged Ambassador Spock. He goes back a hundred years or so and encounters Jim Kirk’s father and expecting mother. Twenty-five years later, a brash, rebellious, young James T. Kirk (Chris Pine) accepts a dare to join Starfleet, where he meets other good-looking young people like Leonard McCoy (Karl Urban), Uhura (Zoe Saldana), and, well, you get the idea. Kirk is still a cadet when everybody gets called up to help out with a disaster on the planet Vulcan. It turns out Nero is still wandering the galaxy with, you guessed it, a Diabolical Plan.

Tinkering with the origins of the beloved Enterprise crew is risky business, indeed, given the fans’ obsession with parsing every detail of this franchise. That’s where the genius of this film comes in. Kirk’s dad is killed in the initial battle with Nero, so by traveling back in time and leaving James Kirk fatherless, Nero creates an alternate universe, which explains away any discrepancies between this film and the rest of the franchise. Brilliant! This device also essentially sets up a whole new franchise, and I hear that future New Trek films are planned.

Am I happy about all this? Yeah, more or less. I like Star Trek, but I’m not a real Trekkie, so I don’t have anything serious invested in the franchise. The new movie is not Amazingly Good, like the “Lord of the Rings” movies were, but it is plenty of fun. As one Facebook friend put it, I was “sufficiently Trekked.”

3.5 stars

La Truite (The Trout, 1982)

We rented this for two reasons: Jeanne Moreau is in it, and the DVD case said it was a “sex comedy.” Ha! “La Truite” has neither sex nor comedy, nor anything remotely interesting to say, for that matter. The main character, Frederique (Isabelle Huppert), is supposed to be “The Trout” I suppose, in that she is slippery and constantly wriggling out of men’s clutches. She supposedly vowed as a teenager to use her sexuality to get whatever she could out of men, while giving them as little as possible in return. (Sounds more like what the filmmaker did to me.) Rather than making an interesting tale of that, or even a bit of soft-porn fun, the film presents a dour, tepid take on sexual politics that is as unbearable as it is long. Really, the only thing funny about the film is that I sat through the whole thing, thinking that surely a point would appear somewhere. The joke was on me!

Jeanne Moreau is excellent, as always, but she is wasted in this farce. The rest of the cast either cannot act or were as disgusted by the script as I was and couldn’t fake it. For the love of God, leave this one on the shelf!

0 stars.

Down By Law (1986)

“Have you seen ‘Down By Law?’” This is a question that you might get asked at practically any moment if you spend enough time hanging out with folks on the artsier end of the spectrum, as I do. You should give serious consideration to making the answer to that question a “Yes.” This is one of those films that defines cult classic. Just being able to discuss it will give you significant street cred in certain crowds, and it’s a good movie, too.

“Down by Law” is written and directed by Jim Jarmusch, who described this black-and-white film as a “neo-Beat noir comedy.” The story concerns three men who are imprisoned together in Louisiana. Zach (Tom Waits), a down-on-his-luck DJ; Jack (John Lurie), a down-on-his-luck pimp; and Bob (Roberto Benigni), an Italian tourist imprisoned for manslaughter spend much of the film entertaining themselves in their tiny cell. Zach and Jack tend to grate on each other, but Bob’s childlike charm is irresistible. In one memorable scene, the three stomp around the cell chanting “I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream.” Interestingly, it is Bob who comes up with an escape plan, which lands them all in the Louisiana swamp enjoying the same dynamic they had in their cell.

Early on, I figured this movie would be about unjust imprisonment, but it isn’t, even though all three guys got something of a raw deal. This is just a story of three guys interacting as they deal with the extreme boredom of prison and the extreme stress of escaping. It is interesting that the swamp proves to be just as isolating as their tiny cell was. The wilderness forces them to stay together just as their cell did, so their relationships are unchanged. It is not until they have the option of separating that they feel themselves truly “escaped,” and it is then that their relationships evolve. The one difference seen in the swamp is that it becomes much more apparent that Bob is quite intelligent, and that it is merely his limited English that makes him appear the buffoon.

This film is extremely slow-paced, and filmed single-camera style in black and white. It’s really hilarious, but the humor is slow-moving and subtle. Audiences reared on a strict diet of big-budget popcorn movies will find “Down by Law” hard to digest. If, however, you have developed a taste for movies that require a little more patience, then I highly recommend it.

4 stars

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008)

Once you know the central conceit of “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”- Benjamin (Brad Pitt) ages in reverse - you have a pretty good handle on everything that happens in the film. Benjamin is born as a normal-sized baby (a detail I had wondered about), but he is horribly aged and monstrous. He develops into a crippled little boy with the face of an elderly man. As the years pass, however, rather than dying as his family expects, he slowly gets healthier and younger-looking. His life is by definition rather lonely, but he has a good heart that wins him a few friends despite his bizarre appearance as an aged child. One of them is Daisy (Cate Blanchett), a girl of roughly his age. Over the years their lives separate and re-connect repeatedly. They are clearly each others’ great love, but the reality of Benjamin’s reverse aging, as well as all the more ordinary things like pride and youthful folly, keep cropping up to separate them.

There’s an oft-repeated saying that “Youth is wasted on the young,” meaning that by the time we have enough experience and wisdom to appreciate all that life has to offer, our bodies won’t let us do it. In light of that, you might think that Benjamin’s reverse aging is actually a gift. The film does an excellent job showing that this “gift” tends to separate Benjamin acutely from those he loves or could love. On the other hand, the film suggests that whether we get older or younger over the years is not really the point. As Daisy says, “We all wind up in diapers eventually.” Benjamin’s uniqueness makes him a lonely soul, but he experiences all the usual things like love and loss. The one thing about his progressive youthfulness is that it puts him in a good position to understand the central theme of the film, which is that it is never too late to live your life or to change it.

“Benjamin Button” is inspired by a short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald, which can currently be read online at http://www.readbookonline.net/read/690/10628/. The film was written by Eric Roth (“Forest Gump”, “Munich”) and directed by David Fincher (“Fight Club”). I would describe this as a gentle movie. There are no great shocks to the system, and it might be difficult to mark the dramatic climax. It’s as if the storytellers set up the initial condition of Benjamin’s reverse aging, then just allowed his life to play itself out on screen, with no contrived plot twists or major revelations. (Deistic filmmaking.) Folks expecting an explanation for Benjamin’s condition, or a science-fictionesque exploration of the process will be disappointed. It’s really a nicely paced movie, beautifully filmed in New Orleans. The story is told through the device of an elderly Daisy having her daughter read Benjamin’s diary to her. This shop-worn device feels a bit “Titanic,” but it doesn’t go over too badly. The film’s only weakness may be that it is so gently paced that you may start to wonder if anything Big is going to happen. Hopefully by the end you realize that the biggest thing of all has happened: a life has been lived. Benjamin may age in an unconventional manner, but when all is said and done he gets the same thing that we all get, a lifetime.

4 stars

Slumdog Millionaire (2008)

“Slumdog Millionaire” represents the future of movies in an ever-shrinking world. It’s in two languages, English and Hindi. It’s filmed in India, with Indian actors, but directed by an Englishman, Danny Boyle (“Trainspotting"). The music is a mix of traditional Indian sounds and hip-hop. None of the actors is famous in the West, but with Boyle directing, this can hardly be called low-budget Independent fare. It isn’t Hollywood, either, or Bollywood. “Slumdog Millionaire” is part of a new movement of multi-national, multi-lingual films that will eventually make the Academy Award category for “Foreign Films” obsolete. These movies may make Hollywood, Bollywood, and other centers of filmmaking power obsolete as well.

“Slumdog Millionaire” is only partly about a young man winning millions of rupees on the Indian version of “Who Wants to be a Millionaire?” The film is really about that boy’s life as an untouchable in the slums of Mumbai. His family and neighbors live a life of physical squalor that still has spots of dignity and community, but they are constant prey for criminals, police, and vicious religious pogroms. In this world, the only hope for advancement for a boy seems to be crime; for a girl – prostitution. Jamal Malik, his brother Salim, and their friend Latika come of age as orphans in this world, eventually becoming separated, as Salim and Latika get sucked into the criminal underworld. Jamal, meanwhile, makes an honorable, if undistinguished life for himself in the new India, with a job as a gofer for phone operators in a call center.

Jamal lucks into the opportunity to play on the “Millionaire” show, where a lifetime of being observant pays off with one correct answer after another. In India, where many still seem to believe that your caste says everything there is to know about you, Jamal’s success leads the police to assume he has cheated. They torture and question him about how he got the answers, and it is through his explanations that his heartbreaking life story is revealed.

Some movie critics seem determined to sneer at “Slumdog Millionaire,” while grudgingly conceding that it is a story well-told. They call it a fairy tale, and it IS a fairy tale, complete with a happy ending. I think that all of us who have seen it were aware that we were watching a fictional movie, but these reviewers seem to feel it is important to remind us that it is unrealistic that a boy from the slums could win a quiz show. I think they are the victims of their own liberal snobbery. They doubtless approve of a film that shows the deplorable conditions of a third-world slum, but they can’t enjoy a happy ending that does not involve the government re-distributing wealth to save the slumdogs.

“Slumdog Millionaire” shows a heartbreaking side of India, and it helps put some things about America in perspective. We in the U.S. widely believe that our country provides opportunity for everyone, and that we are less obsessed with class than many other countries. “Slumdog Millionaire” made me realize that we Americans are absolutely right about that. Modern naysayers love to run America down, and one way they do it is by pointing out that classism exists here more than we admit. That may be true, but in “Slumdog Millionaire,” the game-show host teases Jamal repeatedly about being a “chai wallah” (tea waiter) from the slums, to the audience’s delight. Can you imagine a waiter or janitor being teased that way on American TV? Say what you want about America, but here we at least give lip-service to the idea of equal-treatment, respect, and opportunity for all.

“Slumdog Millionaire” is an optimistic movie in a time when we need the encouragement. In these troubled economic times, there are some cynics who have no room for optimism. I think that most of us, however, will enjoy a beautifully told story about how doing the right thing can pay off. Personally, I wouldn’t care to live in a world where people don’t believe in that possibility.

4 stars out of 5.

The Seventh Seal (1957) *****

There are certain movies that loom like Everest, foreboding and unattainable. “The Seventh Seal” is one of those. It’s in black & white; it’s by Ingmar Bergman; it’s in Swedish; it tackles huge issues like death and religion. All the things that make it one of the great films also tend to drive you to watch “Spiderman 3” instead. As a film buff, you know you are supposed to see “The Seventh Seal,” but it tends to sit there like a dreaded homework assignment, put off for another day.

My advice is to get over it and throw that bad boy in the DVD player. “The Seventh Seal” is an amazing movie, and once you get into it, it is not hard to watch. The first few minutes look like some bizarre, art-house schlock, but that is just because all the art-house schlock since 1957 has been trying to look like “The Seventh Seal.”

There are probably endless interpretations of this film, and mine is bound to be unsophisticated. I am holding off on delving into any of the scholarship surrounding this movie until I get my own thoughts down. The story surrounds Antonius Black, a knight (Max von Sydow) returning from 10 years in the Crusades with his squire (Gunnar Bjornstrand). They return, soul-sick and disillusioned by meaningless conflict, to a Europe devastated by the Plague. One morning, Death (Bengt Ekerot) comes to claim Antonius. Faced with the end, Antonius stalls for time by challenging Death to a game of chess. The game takes place over several days of travel, during which Antonius tries desperately to regain his lost faith in the existence of God, while his squire tackles life with a pragmatic, agnostic wisdom. Along the way they befriend a number of people in various stages of joy or unhappiness, but none of them give Antonius the answers he craves.

“The Seventh Seal” is filmed in a stark black & white that displays landscapes harshly, but flatters many of the actors, particularly the lovely Bibi Andersson, who plays a member of an acting troupe. This is a serious film, but there is a lot of humor mixed in. My favorite character is the Squire, a very cool, confident dude. While Antonius agonizes over questions of God and Eternity, his Squire seems content in his atheism. Instead, he spends his energy enjoying life and committing acts of true chivalry. Here are a couple of his quotes that sum up his style quite well: “Our crusade was such madness that only a real idealist could have thought it up.” “Do you have any brandy? I've had nothing but water. It's made me as thirsty as a camel in the desert.” Antonius is a dryer, more earnest character who represents the part in all of us that burns with existential angst when he says, “I want knowledge! Not faith, not assumptions, but knowledge. I want God to stretch out His hand, uncover His face and speak to me.”

I will resist the urge to go into a long-winded discussion of everything I think “The Seventh Seal” means. It would give away too much, and besides, this film deserves to be mulled over, in small pieces, over time. “The Seventh Seal” is not for everyone, but for those willing to invest in a more artsy kind of movie, this is one of the greats. By the time the credits roll on a movie like “Spiderman,” you will already have thought everything worth thinking about the movie, but I suspect I will be mulling over “The Seventh Seal” for years.

5 stars.

Hors de Prix (“Priceless,” 2006)

My wife says the romantic comedy is dead; they just don’t make good ones anymore. On reflection, of course, it’s clear that that is an overstatement. “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” came out just last year, and it was charming and hilarious. It is true, though that the genre is dominated by trite, disposable crap. The formula is pretty standard. Two people meet in some cute circumstance. They have obvious chemistry, and eventually they give in to it and hook up. Then there is some sort of misunderstanding that drives them apart. Then, triggered by obvious clues from the soundtrack, they realize that they were truly meant for each other and re-unite. Bring on the swelling score, the embrace, and the pull-back shot of the lovers in some romantic location, and everyone gets to go home and wait for their check. Hollywood just switches out actors and a few details and cranks these things out, and most of them suck.

Now to be fair to the romantic-comedy genre, I must point out that the same could be said of all Hollywood genres. Hollywood is not about making movies as much as they are about making money. Mostly they make crap, and they serve it up as fast as they can to a public desperate for the next distraction. By its nature, filmmaking requires the collaboration of so many artists and financiers that it is no wonder that most films are such a watered-down mediocrity, pandering to the lowest common denominator in the audience, that I can’t bear to watch. That’s why it is such a huge relief to me when I see something that doesn’t suck.

“Hors de Prix” is a sweet, funny Audrey Tautou movie in French that doesn’t suck. It doesn’t fail-to-suck in an epic, stirring way, the way “Lord of the Rings” didn’t suck. It fails-to-suck in the compact, straightforward way of well-done small films. Tautou plays Irene, a talented gold-digger who is one step short of being a prostitute. She lives glamorously off the largess of the older men she seduces, but she has nothing of her own and is always a day away from poverty. In quiet desperation, she works towards the goal of marrying one of these billionaires.

When Irene meets Jean (Gad Elmaleh), a hotel bartender, she gets the mistaken impression that he is one of the hotel’s wealthy guests. They hook up, but when Irene learns the truth, the pragmatic hussy leaves Jean without even looking back. Jean, meanwhile, is smitten, as Irene is a beauty beyond his wildest dreams. He follows her like a lost puppy, and in order to stay close to her, he becomes a gigolo. Sharing the same profession now, the two finally develop a real connection, and, well, you’ve probably seen enough of these movies to figure out the rest.

“Hors de Prix” never strays from the classic formula; it just executes that formula with grace. This romantic comedy delivers comedy that is understated and unforced, and romance that is actually romantic rather than trite. Now THAT is beyond price.

4.5 stars out of 5

Laura (1944)

I’ve been trying to figure out what I didn’t like about “Laura,” and I think it comes down to the movie trying to pack too many noir mystery staples into one film. The title character is played by Gene Tierney, who is one swell-looking doll. The movie starts with detective Mark McPherson (Dana Andrews) investigating Laura’s murder. He finds no shortage of suspects, including Laura’s fiancé Shelby (Vincent Price), Laura’s aunt, who is keen on Shelby, Shelby’s girl-on-the-side, and Laura’s aged admirer Waldo (Clifton Webb). The movie takes us through the usual rigamarole in which we suspect each person in turn. It also throws in plenty of twists that will be familiar to noir-lovers.

I’m not sure what place “Laura” is supposed to hold in the world of noir. I get the impression it is considered something of a classic, but I never got that magical feeling that is the hallmark of a classic. For example, one major plot device is that detective McPherson finds himself falling in love with Laura as he learns more about her and repeatedly sees her picture. This side of the story may be better developed in the novel, but in the film his morbid attraction is handled in a fairly perfunctory manner. “Laura” is entertaining, but it lacks the distinction of a true classic like “Double Indemnity,” which came out the same year.

2.5 stars out of 5

Elevator to the Gallows (Ascenseur pour l’echafaud, 1958)

One thing I love about certain old, noir movies is how moralistic they are. They may revel in murder, adultery, and all forms of vice, but in the end, the message is, “No matter how perfectly executed the crime, justice will find you.” In “Elevator to the Gallows,” the crime goes off almost without a hitch. Julien (Maurice Ronet), embroiled in an affair with his boss’s wife Florence (Jeanne Moreau), plots with his lover to kill her husband. He kills his employer in his office, staging it to look like a suicide. He makes only one mistake, but he recognizes it before it is too late, and zips back up in the elevator to fix things. Unfortunately for him, the power gets cut, leaving him trapped in the elevator with his boss’s dead body upstairs. He spends the night trying to figure out an escape, while Florence wanders the streets all night wondering what went wrong with their plan.

In a discussion of another noir movie, “The Third Man,” I believe, I commented that many noir films seem to have as a theme a basically good person who gets put into seedy circumstances in which he may or may not turn bad. Louis Malle’s “Elevator to the Gallows” inserts us into the story a little farther along than that. Julien and Florence have already turned bad, and the theme here is another noir favorite, “Will they get away with it?” As in most of these older films, the answer is “No,” but along the way we get treated to the vicarious pleasure of rooting for the bad guys.

With this film, Jeanne Moreau continues her habit of playing bad girls, with this being one of her darkest roles, yet. In other of her films that I have seen, her characters are torn by complex motivations, and they are not completely evil. In “Elevator to the Gallows,” she is really just a murdering adulteress, and probably a gold-digger. A lesser actress might have overplayed an “evil seductress” role like this, but Jeanne Moreau plays it with self-contained grace. The reason she is so good at these roles is that she plays them without shame. She never asks the audience to forgive her or tries to remind us that she is just playing a character. In watching a Jeanne Moreau performance, the audience is confronted with a strong, female character of dubious morality, and we are not allowed to stereotype or pigeonhole her. Moreau brings all the complexity of a real woman to these roles. We may not love her characters, but we are never able to dismiss them.

4.5 stars out of 5

Bad news for my wife

It turns out I have terrible taste in women. The first time I saw Jeanne Moreau on the screen, my reaction was that she was gorgeous, and I still think she is one of the most beautiful women I have seen in a movie. I would place her in the same pantheon as Liz Taylor and Angelina Jolie. Once I started reading about Jeanne Moreau, though, I discovered that she is widely considered to be a talented actress of marginal looks. Even in her film “Jules and Jim” one of the characters mentions that she has appeal, but she is not really beautiful. Really?

I don’t know what is wrong with my eyes. I look at Jeanne Moreau’s strong features, full lips, and natural eyebrows, and I think she is a goddess, and an amazing actress to boot.