Leonard Link

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

This latest Harry Potter film was my reward this afternoon for finishing up the assembly of my materials and syllabus for Contracts for the fall term 2009 and getting it to the NYLS Copy Center!

I just read the first few books in the Harry Potter series, but have seen all the movies so far.  This one struck me as almost unremittingly grim.  Most of the time, sets are dark and gloomy and threatening, music is ominous, and everybody is wearing frowns and puzzled looks.  The lead actors have grown into those awkward teen years when they are not quite at ease in their bodies, and some of the dialogue comes across as a bit too studied.  The pacing falters at times.  Michael Gambon is fantastic as Dumbledor, and the other adults do fine work here.  The kids will work their way through it, I'm sure, to be more at ease in the final two films in the series.  (Press reports state that the last novel was so long and packed with events that it is being stretched out into two films....  These producers know how to milk a franchise.)

I would say this movie is not for people who haven't either seen the prior movies or read the books.  That is, this is a slice of action in the middle of a plot, which starts without rehearsing the back story and just stops at a convenient breaking point.  Seen on its own, it would not make a whole lot of sense to anybody not familiar with the characters and their prior development - it would probably just be one big puzzle.  For those who have been keeping up with the story, it advances the plot efficiently and has some notably thrilling scenes - the quidditch match, the classroom scenes with the new professor of potions (broadly played by Jim Broadbent, a new addition to the ensemble), and the underground lake scene.  The technological manipulation to produce the quidditch match is breathtaking.

I'm glad I saw it.  I suspect millions of people will do the same.

Weekend flicks: "Bruno" and "My Sister's Keeper"

I saw "Bruno" on Saturday afternoon.  After that experience, I felt like I needed to see a real movie with characters and a plot and emotional catharsis, so on Sunday I went to see "My Sister's Keeper." 

"Bruno" is, quite literally, a mess.  It centers around a bizarre caricature of a gay "fashionista" portrayed by Sacha Baron Cohen, in effect reprising his "Borat" shtick in a different persona.  But this is much less effective, much less coherent, much much less imaginative, and much much much less funny.  I will admit that there were a few bits of shtick that had me laughing out loud, but a lot of it was just teeth-grittingly bad to watch, gross, sick, and likely to inspire more homophobia that it was supposedly intended to combat.  The entire exercise struck me as pretty pointless, lowest-common denominator "gay jokes" stuff.

On the other hand, "My Sister's Keeper" is a real movie.  Based on a novel by Jodi Picoult, it sets up a poignant family drama of a mother who will do anything to save her little girl suffering from leukemia, to the extent of conceiving another child to be the tissue and organ donor to save the first daughter's life.  Throw in a dyslexic son, a husband far below his wife in academic attainment (she's a lawyer, he's a fireman), and you've got a real stew.  Then throw in Alec Baldwin as the lawyer hired by the younger daughter to represent her in a lawsuit against her parents seeking "medical emancipation" before they can force her to donate a kidney to her dying sister in a last-gasp hope to keep her alive.... I won't give away the plot twist that resolves it all.  

This is a total tear-jerker.  It really had me going.  The author has done everything to wring out the last emotional juice from the audience, and the actors do a great job every step of the way, especially Cameron Diaz as the mother and Jason Patric as the father.  The kids are portrayed by Sofia Vassilieva (Kate, dying of leukemia), Evan Ellingsen (dyslexic Jesse, fated to be ignored by his parents because his older sister is dying and his younger sister is the source of spare parts), and Abigail Breslin, wonder-girl (amazing that a kid who is barely a decade old has a rather lengthy filmography... but she's really good, and finding a young kid who's a really good actor is pure gold).  So don't see this unless you want a really good cry - it will manipulate your emotions into pieces, and the courtroom scenes have more to do with drama than law, but it is a real movie.  "Bruno" really is not, even if it is raking in tons of cash this weekend.

"Public Enemies" - The New Gangster Flick

Genre: Gangster Flick - Cast of Characters include John Dillinger and his moll, Pretty Boy Floyd, et al, and of course J. Edgar Hoover and Melvin Purvis in hot pursuit.  This story has been told on film before, in a variety of styles, and the movie doesn't really try to probe beneath the surface of anything.  It is an action film with lots of automatic machine gun fire, old cars, period sets and costumes, and a curiously restrained and likeable performance by Johnny Depp as Dillinger.  Christian Bale as Purvis comes across as wooden by comparison, but I really liked Billy Crudup's J. Edgar Hoover (who'd a thunk it...?) 

I would say nothing special here.  Very entertaining, fast paced, lots of modern tropes, like the shaky handheld camera scenes, sudden close-ups, dialogue whittier than any of these characters would have been capable of in real life (and anachronistic at times).  I'm wondering how realistic is the scene in which.... oops, I'd better say nothing, since I didn't want to put any plot spoilers in here.... just to say I wonder how fictionalized this account is? 

At any rate, I enjoyed it, it's always a pleasure to watch Depp, whether he's in over-the-top cartoon mode as Cap'n Jack or as a curiously likeable gangster with his own code of conduct as Dillinger - the guy remains cute and hot in just about anything.  The rest of the cast will pass, certainly.  A touch of excitement.  I think it could have been about 20 minutes shorter.

The Hurt Locker - An Important Film

I posted a comment on this a few hours ago but it seems to have disappeared, so I'll do an abbreviated one again.  I saw The Hurt Locker this afternoon and thought it was brilliant.  The filmmaker has attempted to give us some sense of what it is like to be serving on a bomb demolition squad for the US Army in Iraq, circa 2004.  There is a strong sense of realism, great dramatic tension, and also quite a bit of humor.  The relationships of the three men on the demolition team at the center of the film are explored in some depth, and the actors involved -- none of whom I've previously encountered -- were all terrific, especially Jeremy Renner, who plays the central character and is a real scene-stealer.  I recommend this very highly.  I think all of us in the U.S. need to have some sense of what our troops are going through in the Middle East, and although a non-documentary movie is undoubtedly somewhat sanitized, I did get a strong feeling of truth from this film.

Additional shout-out - Director Kathryn Bigelow does an awesome job of pacing Mark Boal's fantastic screenplay.  Main supporting performances from Anthony Mackie and Brian Geraghty are superb.

Francis Ford Coppola's "Tetro" - Indy film in limited release

This afternoon I attended what seemed to be a sold-out screening of Francis Ford Coppola's new film, Tetris, at the Landmark Sunshine Cinema on E. Houston Street in Manhattan.  There was a big line of audience members outside as I exited the theater, so I expect this one-theater run is doing quite well and perhaps word of mouth will help to expand this film to more theaters.

It certainly deserves to be seen.  Coppola has written and directed a provocative drama of a dysfunctional family.  I don't want to load my comments up with plot spoilers, as the plot is very important here.  There is a bit of a mystery as young Benny Tetrocini is trying to find out about his past and confronting an older brother, now known at his instance only as "Tetro," who is puzzlingly secretive.  All of this is sorted out in the end, but I'll say not another word about that.

What is most interesting is Coppola's decision to film large parts of this movie in black and white, leaving mainly depictions of theatrical presentations to be in color.  The movie slips back and forth imperceptibly, and it works quite well.  As to the cast, I was not fully convinced by Vincent Gallo's portrayal of "Tetris."  Gallo is an actor whose work I've enjoyed in other productions, but I had a feel that timing was a bit "off" here.  Perhaps it is just that his character is intended to have emotional/mental problems and to have an enormous family secret he is trying to preserve, and so the character is made at times hostile to his inoffensive younger "half-brother," and can by cryptic and obscure.  Maybe my problem is that Gallo is doing such a good job at portraying this psychologically tortured character that he makes me uneasy.

On the other hand, young Alden Ehrenreich is totally loveable as the younger brother.  In a deft bit of age-appropriate casting, Coppola has placed a young film-student into playing the role of a teenager, and Ehrenreich pulls it off quite convincingly.  I was certainly charmed, and I hope his performance in this film gets the recognition that will help him land more roles.  Maridel Verdu as Tetris's kindly and spirited girlfriend is also simply wonderful, and Klaus Maria Brandauer in the brief role of the celebrated composer-conductor whose relationship with his offspring set the plot in motion is very convincing.

This one is definitely worth seeing, and it's a shame it has opened so inconspicuously in one, out of the way theater.  I hope it goes into wider release soon, and eventually becomes available on-line and on DVD.

Angels & Demons - The Movie [Warning - Plot Spoiler]

This one is SERIOUS nonsense.  That is, the plot is a nonsensical farrago of mixed up history, theology, science... but, in the combination of imaginative novelist, skilled screenwriters, effective directing and editing, passable acting, and magnificent sets, it absolutely grips the attention and doesn't let go.  Paced fast enough so you can't think -- and those who have trouble with convulated plotting should probably read the book first, which I have not done -- it just pulls you quickly along, with a nice little twist in the end: who would suspect the most handsome young actor in the cast would turn out to be.... well, you know.

The one surprise for me was how wooden Tom Hanks seems in this movie.  Perhaps the silliness just left him feeling disengaged, but he seemed to be phoning it in at times, and had a sort of grimace/smirk on his face...  One of his great lines, when encountering protest against letting him in to the Vatican archives to try to solve the mystery, is "you invited ME."  Well, I think perhaps that could be his slogan for the picture.  This is one that pays for the others that he really wants to do.  But this is just a temporary distraction, as one does not go to films like this for the acting, and the otherwise relatively anonymous cast does just fine with the material.

I understand this was #1 in the country in its first weekend of releasing, quickly deposing Star Trek from the leadership.  That's a shame, because Star Trek is a better movie, but this will do fine for some spring entertainment while waiting for more serious films to come along.

Star Trek - The New Movie (2009) [caution, plot spoilers]

I was 14 when the original Star Trek television series exploded on the small screen in 1966 - a prime age to became a fanatical follower of the show, and to remain one for many years.  By the time the successor tv series with different casts started showing up, I had grown up, moved to NYC, and basically abandoned watching network television series, so all my Star Trek memories, supplemented by several movies, are of the original tv cast of the 1960s from those three blissful seasons.

For somebody like me, the new Star Trek movie is an important cultural event, an occasion of intense nostalgia.  I went to see the first matinee showing this morning, not expecting anything great, but anticipating a certain kind of reliving of my youth.  My expectations were satisfied.  This is not a great movie, but for somebody with my kind of feelings about that original tv series, which was an important part of my teen years, this is a very satisfying prequel, providing a suitably imaginative foreshadowing of the gathering of that unforgettable cast of characters staffing the starship Enterprise that appeared on our tv screens way back then.

I think the casting for this film has been marvelously done, particularly Zachary Quinto as Spock, who fulfils the task of portraying a younger version of the character played by Leonard Nimoy in the tv series spectacularly well.   Spock was a particularly important character for me, as I imagine he was for lots of boys who had not yet figured out they were gay but were struggling with feelings of difference and outsider-hood.  I was one of those.  I also empathized with Spock because I was an academically-oriented kid, not the type to run out and play sports in my spare time but more likely to be sitting home reading a book, practicing my musical instruments (piano and double bass) or playing classical music on the phonograph.  (Boy, I'm dating myself with that last word.)  So I identified myself with the cerebral Spock, the inscrutable Spock, the loner Spock, and unemotional Spock.  I instinctively suspected that Spock's rigid rationality was concealing deep emotional feelings for Captain Kirk, and I sensed an erotic undercurrent there -- if only wishful feeling because as that gay kid struggling with his identity, I so wanted to be Spock and receive the love of the reckless, manly Kirk.  (Well, there, now I'm psychoanalyzing myself, the result of going to see a pop culture artifact in a movie theater....)

Anyway, you might understand why I was in tears at the end of this film, when Kirk and Spock have begun that bonding process that was to extend through three television seasons and several subsequent films.  I was reliving that difficult emotional time of finding myself....

Back to the film -- the plot is ridiculous, but no more so than the plots of most of the Star Trek shows and movies.  The plot is merely a device for character interaction, and that's the great merit of this film - it employs plausible actors to portray the younger versions of Spock, Kirk, Uhura, Solo, Scott, McCoy, and Checkov and to depict the beginnings of the relationships they would develop and explore during that first tv series.  Eric Bana as the evil Nemo is a decent stand-in for the long line of villains - sometimes misunderstood villains - who populated the tv show.  I'm an Eric Bana fan, but I found him almost unrecognizable with shaved head and tattoos here - which is great, for he disappears into the role and does it well.  And seeing Leonard Nimoy up there again (now, I've given it away, there's some time travel involved) was a real treat - he's looking great more than 40 years after that original tv series graced the airwaves.

So I hope this is a really big hit, and perhaps, given how young the characters are depicted here, that it might be a precursor to a few more Star Trek movies to take us up to the point where the first tv series kicks in, although that might put undue strain on the imaginative abilities of the writers to come up with even more plots.  And seeing the movie certainly inspires me to consider getting the new special DVD release of the entire original series, recently released.

X-Men Origins - Wolverine

The NY Times really doesn't get it with action-adventure films.  It's about just letting go and enjoying it.  Don't look for any significance.  It's based on a cartoon.  Just thrill to the action, groan at the dialogue, and have fun watching the muscle guys and gals go through their paces.  Special Oscar time for Hugh Jackman's trainer again.  And the special effects guys did just fine, pace The Times.  Didn't look cheesy to me.

State of Play - The Movie

Having seen "Duplicity" recently, and today "State of Play," I think we are in for a run of corporate villains.  In the case of "State of Play," the villains are the ex-military folk who run the secretive companies that are Defense Department contractors in the Middle East and Homeland Security contractors here in the States.  I found this movie continuously involving -- my attention never wandered -- and although Russell Crowe really hammed it up as the old-time investigative reporter for a fictional Washington DC daily newspaper, the plot just hummed along.  Ben Afleck was convincing as the Congressman at the heart of a dangerous conspiracy, and Helen Mirren seemed to be practicing to take over Judy Dench's role as "M" in the James Bond movies with her hard-ass newspaper publisher.  I've not been tempted to see many of the current movies - the plot descriptions sound uninteresting and the reviews even worse - but this one caught my attention and I'm glad I went.  Not a great movie -- there seemed to me to be too many loose ends in the plot, too many times I was thinking "yeah, but???" -- but it was vastly entertaining, and it's almost a relief to see a film set somewhere other than NYC...

"Duplicity" - So what's going on??? (plot spoilers)

I went with my Mom to see "Duplicity" this afternoon.  And we both came out puzzled, not sure whether we had really understood the plot.  There are these two big consumer goods corporations, in hot competition to introduce the next big product that will sweep the boards.  Paul Giamatti is the CEO of one, Tom Wilkinson of the other.  Giamatti is the striver who's out to steal the great breakthrough product from the competition.  Wilkinson is the Master of the Universe who manages to outsmart him.  Julia Roberts and Clive Owen play government intelligence agents (US and UK) who quit their jobs in pursuit of their joint scheme to steal the new product idea and peddle it overseas for big bucks.  They manage to insinuate themselves into these two corporations, in the corporate security (and espionage) departments, thinking they are running the scam, only to discover in the end that Wilkinson has scammed them....  At least, I think I got that right....

While it's happening it is frequently confusing.  Nothing more confusing of course than my old bugbear, the director's decision to have the action jumping around in time.  While everything is clearly labelled with reference to the present (5 years ago, 3 years go, etc.) it is not really clear exactly what is happening and why - especially why Julia and Clive keep staging this rather lame scene every time they meet.  But I think this is the director's aim - to keep the audience confused and off-balance.  I wonder if one would have a better idea what is going on by reading the script - which probably has explanations for the actors... 

But - on the other hand, it was fun, if puzzling.  Julia and Clive work well together - the two sexiest stars going playing Hepburn and Tracy - or at least trying to. 

For me, there was great fun seeing Giamatti and Wilkinson portray fanatical business rivals, having just viewed the HBO series "John Adams" in which Giamatti plays Adams and Wilkinson plays Ben Franklin!  I loved the work they both did in Duplicity.