In Praise of Joaquin Phoenix

We were mightily concerned when he showed up, fat, bearded and incoherent at the Late Show, because we adore Joaquin. We think he is a wonderful actor.  We want to see more of him, when he is clean shaven and articulate.
He was a sssseeexxxyy, evil Roman pervert in Gladiator.

He was fantastic as Johnny Cash, which is no easy feat.

We love him in the James Gray movies We Own the Night and Two Lovers.
And do you remember him as the super sexy, conflicted Catholic father in Quills?

 Fabulous.

You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger

I haven't watched a Woody Allen film since, I believe, Mighty Aphrodite. Or, rather, I have seen some here and there, mostly buoyed by the usually disappointing hype, and it has been the law of diminishing returns since 1989. Except for Vicky Cristina Barcelona, which was graced with charming and resourceful actors, many of his movies just suck and have been sucking for a long time.
I used to be a huge fan when I was a teenager and a young adult. He was a genius. But it's been ages since one can go to one of his movies and not cringe. The humor is not funny and I find his portayals of female characters deeply offensive. They are always either ditzes, or shrews or idiot blonde floozies. And this latest movie is no exception. However, this time, Allen is so sour on everybody, he makes the men terrible as well.
Simply put, there is not one sympathetic character in the film. They all have the potential to be sympathetic, but they are so one-dimensional and their flaws are so petty and overwhelming, that you end not caring for anyone, in a cast that includes Anthony Hopkins, Gemma Jones, Naomi Watts, Josh Brolin (woefully miscast) and Antonio Banderas. They all seem to be at a loss of who their characters are. They end up playing the one note they have been given. It's a shameful waste of talent.
Brolin plays an insecure writer who can't pay the bills and is married to Watts who plays a highly unlikeable woman who has a crush on her boss, Antonio Banderas, who has no character whatsoever, except for his customary charm, which always acquits him, even when sporting ridiculous haircuts (I particularly love him as Puss in the Shrek movies. He is wonderful).
Hopkins plays Watts' dad, who, obsessed with youth, divorces his wife, written as a pathetic idiot and played by Gemma Jones, and falls in love improbably with a very vulgar hooker, played with as much dignity as she can muster by Lucy Punch.
A hooker? Really? Isn't this getting really, really old?
It is hard to make Naomi Watts and Josh Brolin look bad in a film, but Allen achieves it with flying colors. He has nothing but contempt for most of his characters.
Then there's the unnecessary voiceover narration, that adds nothing of value. Without it, Allen would have to give his characters more meat and his structure more heft, but as in many of his late period movies, the script feels flimsy, rushed, unpolished.
There are some moments of horrible irony (territory that he has explored before in movies like Match Point, which I hated, or Crimes and Misdemeanors). But the whole thing feels both flimsy and forced. There is one nasty scene between Naomi Watts and her mother, that I think confirms my theory that Woody Allen is deeply condescending and hostile to women, even as he protests loving them.
As A.O Scott points out in his too kind review, only in a Woody Allen film can an unsavory older creep (Brolin, looking the worst he's ever looked) make the most vulgar overtures to a young beautiful woman (lovely Frieda Pinto) and she just smiles and next thing you know, she is introducing him to her parents.
Icky, creepy and utterly out of touch.
Good actors keep wanting to act in his movies, impelled, probably by Allen's status as a great American filmmaker. Most of the time they are stuck in thankless, unsubstantial roles. If they are lucky (and amazingly plucky) like Penélope Cruz, they can go home with an Oscar. But most of the time, I think they are stuck in the worst possible light, playing half-baked stereotypes in the dark.

On DVD: Bring Me The Head Of Alfredo García

I just saw Bring Me the Head of Alfredo García for the very first time last night. I think my jaw is still on the floor. One of the most gratifying WTF movies ever made.
It's a weirdass, nihilistic, absurdist, strangely poetic, existential Mexican Western, set in the 1970s, with Beckettian overtones, and Warren Oates, who should have been immortal.
(I want Warren Oates to exist forever and be in every movie and it frustrates me to no end that he can't). 
It is bizarrely funny, extremely violent, insanely fresh, crazy good. Isela Vega is fabulous. The editing is bizarre, continuity non-existent, the cinematography overexposed, but the energy, the wit, the outrageousness, the raw verve, all fabulous.
A whole bunch of people are deeply indebted to Sam Peckinpah, bless his ornery soul.
Quentin Tarantino would not exist without him. And I kept thinking of No Country for Old Men, and wondering if Cormac McCarthy didn't have this movie in mind when he wrote his novel. I bet the Coens did. I also thought of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, which this film resembles like a close relative. It's that kind of ironic, misanthropic exploration into human venality, except in this case poor Warren Oates is far more likable than Bogie's character, since he does the deed for love. I'm surprised nobody has wanted to make a remake yet. Perhaps it's too perverse, too wonderfully insane for us wimps of today.

Lebanon

This Israeli movie, which won the golden Lion in Venice this year, is a faithful recreation of what it feels like to be inside a tank, inside a war. When I heard the premise, I didn't think it could work. The claustrophobia would be untenable. But somehow first time director Samuel Maoz and his cameraman have achieved an amazing film that feels claustrophobic and is tough to sit through but it isn't torture. It's a deeply humane film.
Maoz's achievement, which is based on his personal experience as a tank gunner in the first Lebanon invasion of 1982, is to distill the horror of war into such small quarters. The movie is not a political manifesto although it is a powerful statement against war. It is about how war destroys the human soul. How soldiers must contend with their own humanity in an extreme situation of life and death and unspeakable violence when all of a sudden they don't even know why they are there, existentially speaking (there will always be pretexts for war).
The movie makes us ask, what makes countries, leaders, send young men to Hell?
Is it worth the sacrifice? What price survival?

Inception

...aka Deception, starring Leonardo DiCrapio.
Let me put it this way, it takes a lot to make me leave a movie theater before the end of a film. I wished we were at an episode of Mystery Science 3000 so we could just comment loudly to abate the excruciating boredom and the narrative incoherence of the proceedings.
We were far more entertained by a lady who arrived late and sat in our row. So putrid was her body odor that even moving several seats away didn't stem the stink. We had to hold chewing gum to our noses. We preferred to step on the toes of an entire row of moviegoers, rather than pass by her side. Nobody seemed to mind much. It's not like they were going to miss anything intelligible. This was the highlight of the film.
I have not seen so much pointless exposition in a movie since... well, since never. An hour goes by before one has the remotest idea of what the hell is going on. They could have just started the movie one hour into it and no one would be the worse for wear. Because it's not as the exposition helps explain anything.
Inception is incomprehensible. But the worst part is, it behaves as if it were cogent and we're idiots for not getting it.
The idea of manipulating people's dreams has fantastic potential, but is squashed by the fact that the makers of this movie think that human dreams need to have either a gunfight or a car chase or an explosion, or all three, at given intervals. Who dreams like this? People who make movies for male teenage morons (and their older brothers). Hollywood accountants.
I say, bring back the draft and send em all to war, if they like violence that much.
Now, I am BORED AND TEARING MY HAIR OUT WITH BOREDOM by action heroes that have no sense of humor and gazillion dollar pictures with crappily staged chase scenes and shoddy gunfights. Has anybody seen the fucking French Connection, for crying out loud? Learn from Steven Spielberg and John Woo and action masters who have a sense of mischief and lightness and play, I beg of you. And stagecraft.
DiCrapio hasn't made a film in recent memory (last one was the wonderful Catch Me if You Can, 2002) where he shows anything but a furrowed brow, as if he was constipated and shitting eternal bricks at all times. He is supposed to be haunted by the loss of his wife, Marion Cotillard, and if someone is haunting, it is her, but somehow one does not believe for a second that he gives a crap about her.  He's phoning it in, because this is a formula we've seen so many times, it has become stale, even for a pro like him. It looks to be the fate of any American movie star that becomes box office gold that they need to wipe the smile off their faces and behave like Joan of Arc at the stake, without the humility. I can't take all that male self-importance anymore. That "it's up to me to save the fucking world". Don't do us any favors. Please.
I was happy as long as Cillian Murphy, husky voiced, hunky and excellent actor Tom Hardy, and La Cotillard were onscreen. Is it a coincidence that they are not from Hollywood? Peut etre. They were the only alive and entertaining people in the entire movie. Poor Ellen Page tries her best not to be dwarfed by the absurd juggernaut of expense and Joseph Gordon Levitt does the best human impersonation of cardboard ever committed to film. The incoherence, the moronic adolescence, and the self-seriousness of the entire thing just exhausted me.
There are some CGI bits that make you look up once in a while from your own more entertaining daydreams, but my biggest sense of wonder comes from actually wondering why people like this crap, why did it get made and when is it going to stop?