These Two Movies Have Literally Nothing in Common (#41: Chinatown; #42: Chocolat)

So I whenever I combine two different films into one entry, I try to find some connective tissue between the two movies. In this case, I'm at a loss.

But whatever, I really don't want to write two separate entries. You'll deal.

#41: Chinatown

You're a very nosy fellow, kitty cat.

One of the crown jewels of American film's true Golden Age (the 1970's), Chinatown is a uncompromisingly harsh deconstruction of the film noir.

Part of the Holy Trinity of iconic Jack Nicholson performances (guess the other two*), Mr. Front Row at the Oscars himself stars as J.J. "Jake" Gittes. A former Chinatown cop making ends meet as a private dick, Gittes gets hired by a Mrs. Evelyn Mulwray to follow her husband, a Water Department executive, to discover if he's having an affair. Gittes does his job. But then it turns out that Mrs. Mulwray may not be the Mrs. Mulwray (Faye Dunaway, excellent). And Mr. Mulwray ends up dead. Before he knows it, Gittes is trying to figure out what (if anything) this all has to do with LA's water supply and Noah Cross, Mulwray's former partner and Evelyn's father (played by a frighteningly serene John Huston). To give away more of the plot would be a sin, as this film has one of the least expected twists of all time.

Working from a lightning in a bottle script by Robert Towne, director Roman Polanski skillfully navigates the audience through the morass of LA corruption - while still making the viewer tantalizingly play catch up. The master stroke of Chinatown is that the scheme Gittes attempts to reveal isn't some "criminal" enterprise to sell drugs, guns, or women. It's instead part of the ordinary corruption, compromise, and coverup that the Powers That Be engage in without reprisal or shame, all in the name of progress.

You get rich enough, you make LA big enough, no one is going to ask where the bodies are buried. At the end, it doesn't matter what your intentions are, so much as whether the right hands were shaken. In the end, it's all Chinatown.

FINAL VERDICT: KEEPER

#42: Chocolat 

Our next film, Chocolat, could not be further from the hard-edged cynicism of Chinatown.

Johnny Depp only eats artisanal handcrafted chocolate. Because of course.

Julia Ormond - who looks likes she was transported from 1950's MGM picture - arrives in a small French village with her little daughter in tow and opens a chocolaterie. As her arrival coincides with the Lenten season, she quickly makes enemies of the puritanical Comte de Reynaud (Alfred Molina). He's right to be concerned, as her very presence - not to mention her exotic chocolates laced with chili peppers - opens up the repressed souls of the quaint villagers (Judi Dench, Jean Reno, Lena Olin, etc.). Johnny Depp also shows up as a fellow wayward traveler and apparent kindred spirit, sporting an Irish brogue and no makeup. 

If you've ever seen a movie ever, even the kind they show on TV, you can guess how this all plays out. 

It makes no matter, the movie never tries to be more than it is and is simply satisfied to skate by on its charm. Which is enough. Just like a decent piece of chocolate, it may be nothing special, but is still damn good in the moment.

FINAL VERDICT: KEEPER

NEXT UP: CHUNGKING EXPRESS

*McMurphy in One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest and Jack Torrance in The Shining.

40 Down

The results so far:

1. Ace Ventura: Keep
2. Adaptation: Keep
3. Adventures in Babysitting: Keep
4. Air Force One: Pitch
5. In the Line of Fire: Pitch
6. Aliens: Keep
7. Amelie: Keep
8. American Beauty: Pitch
9. Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy: Keep
10. Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery: Pitch
11. Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me: Pitch
12. Austin Powers: Goldmember: Pitch
13. The Avengers: Keep
14. Alien: Keep
15. The Aviator: Pitch
16. Batman: Keep
17. Batman Returns: Keep
18. Batman Begins: Keep
19. The Dark Knight: Keep
20. The Dark Knight Rises: Keep
21. Beetlejuice: Keep
22. Best In Show: Keep
23. Big Fish: Keep
24. The Big Lebowski: Keep
25. Blow: Pitch
26. Bottle Rocket: Keep
27. The Bourne Identity: Keep
28. The Bourne Supremacy: Keep
29. The Bourne Ultimatum: Keep
30. Bowfinger: Keep
31. Bowling for Columbine: Pitch
32. The Break-Up: Pitch
33. Bridesmaids: Keep
34. Broadcast News: Pitch
35. Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Keep
36. Captain America: The First Avenger: Keep
37. Casablanca: Keep
38. Casino: Pitch
39. Casino Royale: Keep
40. Children of Men: Keep

28 keepers, 12 pitched. A 30% discard rate.

We are (believe it or not) cleaning out some shelf space, which (ostensibly) is the purpose of this thing. Still haven't counted what we have left to go, but you can expect a rundown every ten films or so to see where we stand.

We soldier on with CHINATOWN next.

Tomorrow Might Suck Too (#40: Children of Men)

Let's face it: last week truly and undoubtedly sucked in the real world. So what better way to forget the pressure cooker bombs, fertilizer plant explosions, and ricin-filled letters of today than to watch a movie set in a dystopian future where every country but Britain has collapsed and oh yeah everyone is infertile for some unexplainable reason? Ah, the escape of the cinema!

#40: Children of Men

 

Alfonso Cuaron's Children of Men is hard to watch in the best possible way. 

Set in London, 2027, no children have been born in almost two decades. The youngest person on Earth, Baby Diego, has just been stabbed to death senselessly after he (like the childish reality star he is) rudely refuses an autograph request. Theo (Clive Owen), a minor bureaucrat with a bottle stowed safely in his breastpocket, stumbles into a terrorist bombing. Then, he finds himself hooded, dragged into a conversion van, and face-to-face with his terrorist-cum-pacifist ex-wife Julian (Julianne Moore). Unwillingly recruited into reviving his activist former self, Theo is soon escorting an illegal immigrant, Kee (Clare-Hope Ashitey) to the Human Project, a possibly mythical collection of scientists working on the infertility problem on an island outside the fascist British government's control.

I don't want to spoil the plot for those who haven't seen this yet, so I'll stop there.

What you should know is that this film is a master course in authorial and directorial restraint. The world of the film is doled out systematically in bits and pieces - direct exposition, unless necessary, is strictly avoided. Long tracking shots from Theo's viewpoint are preferred over cutting between different characters. Resisting the urge to stage shoot-em-up exciting action set pieces, the battles in this movie are viewed through Theo's lens as a series of unsettling, senseless existential threats - which (I can only imagine) war must really feel like to the noncombatants. Rather than answering every question it raises, the film trusts the audience and gives it enough information to fill in the missing pieces on its own. By plunging the audience into Theo's world without a safety net, Cuaron creates a visceral and truly discomfiting viewing experience. Especially discomfiting in that the world of Children of Men doesn't feel all that different from our own.

Nearly equally as masterful as Cuaron's direction is Clive Owen's performance. Owen is not one of my favorite actors, but seriously, the man was born to wear a trenchcoat and the hangdog expression of bitter disappointment Theo bears here. Restrained as well, Owen gives us just enough to know the pain underneath without diluting the strength of will necessary for his character.

Did I mention Michael Caine's indelible performance as Jasper, the heroic hippie pothead? No? I'm an asshole. He's great too. But he's Michael Caine. It goes without saying, amiright?

We really appreciated this blog for a reason to watch these performances and this film again. It really is a masterpiece.

Whether to keep it is a tougher question. I'm not sure we've watched it since buying it in 2007 or so. And, as I stated to begin, it's a tough movie to watch. Not one we're likely to watch again for the fun of it. But. It's so damn good. And because it wasn't a major hit nor crowned with laurels at the Oscars, I'm not sure it will be easy to locate in non-digital form in 2027 (at which point, yes, I sincerely doubt we'll be watching films on DVD). Just to be safe, we ought to keep this one.

FINAL VERDICT: KEEPER

NEXT UP: CHINATOWN

PS: A list of our first 40 films, with keep or pitch verdicts and links to all reviews will probably be up first.

The Job is Done (#39: Casino Royale)

I'd have been the dead one.

N64 made everyone a Bond fan with GoldenEye. If you're of a certain age (roughly 25-35), you probably (and happily) wasted a solid year of your life playing this game relentlessly with three friends. I've seen most of the Bond movies (at least bits and pieces of them) over the years, but none of them matter nearly as much to me as mutliplayer GoldenEye in paintball mode. 

 

#39: Casino Royale

This may be why Casino Royale is my favorite James Bond movie. Famous for ditching (or at least, minimizing) the overstuffed trappings of the 007 franchise, the first film of the Daniel Craig era demands attention in its own right rather than coasting on the sails of former glories.
 

It declares its purpose from the get-go with a brutal assassination shot in grainy black and white: this is Bond without the bullshit. Close on the heels of that haymaker of an opener comes one of the best action sequences ever filmed: a parkour-influenced chase of a bombmaker (played by the amazing Sébastien Foucan). My favorite part has Foucan lithely sliding through a narrow opening in a construction site, while Craig just bulldozes right through the drywall - a great metaphor for his "blunt instrument" Bond.

Over the course of the movie, that blunt instrument gets sharpened into the scalpel with a taste for dry martinis that filmgoers know well, despite his many iterations. The transition from bare knuckles to french cuffs makes more sense than it has any right to, which is really the movie's greatest achievement.

The plot is still quite overstuffed - I'll confess that so much happens it's hard to remember what  is happening, if you know what I mean. But it lends itself to mutiple repeat viewings that way. It's also broken up into essentially four distinct acts: Act I: Becoming 007; Act II: The Ocean Club; Act III: The Poker Game; Act IV: Venice. So when you just can't make it through the whole thing on Friday night, there's a logical place to stop and pick up the next night (like we did). Plus, the ride's so much fun.

Also, Eva Green: best Bond girl ever or best just in general ever? You be the judge.

FINAL VERDICT: KEEPER

NEXT UP: CHILDREN OF MEN
  

Holes in the Desert (#38: Casino)

So, explanation for our long stony silence: our DVD player died. That's right, folks. Our rampant ReViewing Habit killed the combo DVD/VHS player we got for a wedding present nearly eight years ago. After that, our other habit (proscratination) set in and we never made it Best Buy to replace it. Finally, we remembered the DVD burner we had down in the basement and promoted it up to the bigs. So, we're back. Until we drop the ball again.

 

#38: Casino

 

Fan-made poster. Pretty cool.

Martin Scorsese really hasn't made as many mob movies as people think. In fact, he's probably made as many music documentaries as crime films. But when his subject concerns La Cosa Nostra, the man is on all cylinders. Casino, our thirty-eighth film, belongs to this canon, but strains under the weight of its spiritual big brother, Goodfellas.

 

In Casino, Robert DeNiro and Joe Pesci reunite for a look at rise and fall of the mob in 70's and 80's Las Vegas. DeNiro's Sam "Ace" Rothstein is a man with a taste for pastel suits. The ulimate gambler, he's recruited by the Midwestern mob bosses to run the Tangiers in Vegas. Pesci's hotheaded (gee what a shock) Nicky Santoro is sent out west as well, to "keep an eye on things" - which mainly consists of burying problems in the desert. Sharon Stone's Ginger ropes Rothstein in despite her coke habit and obvious gold-digging, but can never let go of her true love, the dirtbag pimp Lester Diamond (James Woods, playing to type). Unfortunately fitting in with the coked-out mob wife archetype, she spends most of the movie ruining things and screaming hysterically.   

 

In a bold move, the movie unfolds largely through voice over. This quasi-documentary approach investigates the ins-and-outs not just of the mob's operations but of these people trying to navigate a world in which they don't quite fit. There is a surplus of interesting detail here, which builds an indelible sense of time and place. All the same, it also makes the film a little cold and hard to connect to. Some scenes feel more like dramatic reenactments than things that are actually happening. Not helping matters is its somewhat padded running time.

 

That being said, the core performances are great across the board and handling a story this epic in scope is not easily done. It's three hours well spent.

 

But maybe not nine or twelve or fifteen hours well spent. Two viewings is probably enough. Very good movie, but not one we plan on re-viewing any time soon.

 

FINAL VERDICT: PITCH IT.

 

NEXT UP: CASINO ROYALE