Youth w/o youth

Strange how the movies, just like politics, eat their own. Case in point Youth Without Youth has been regulated to the corner, the last stop on the train tracks to dvd oblivion, a brief release in a limited venue. But it's a strong film from a major director.
Youth Without Youth heralds the return of sorts of Francis Coppola behind the camera. While many of his 60s and 70s era colleagues are more prolific Coppola's varied interest have limited his filmography; the last film he actually helmed was 1997's The Rainmaker. As a film YWY will find its greatest fans among those that feel an affinity for movies like Inland Empire or dreamy European cinema in general. The narrative weaves a story in a kind of elliptical pattern. A young man, Dominic (an agreeable Tim Roth), who's been struck by lightning lies wrapped in bandages in an atmospheric hospital. His story unfolds like a trance (thus the Lynch refernce) that recounts his life, his split personality and his eventual attempt, as a master linguist (he's able to understand blabbering in Sancrit), to help a woman reunite with her reincarnated self - in a cave in Nepal. There's a sense of unworldliness to some of the drama, like the merging of multiple dimensions.
Coppola doesn't let his audience down, YWY's visually stunning whether in close-up or wide tableaux, yet the intricate structure of the story demands more attention than any average programmer. Scenes that are bathed in golden hues blend with important shots of the actors frozen in blue. The action occurs over several years but the timeline seems to allow for back and forth scenes. The camera moves with a confident hand. While it's not an action film there are a couple of grand vistas and some Nazis.
Dominic runs afoul of a doctor who wants to experiment with a million volts on humans, the end effect to lengthen life. But Dominic's own encounter with lightning has him convinced he's a young man in an octogenarian body.
There are rewards in the film's payoff, perhaps thoughts on a film littered with archetypal images. The source material is a story by Mercea Eliade and indeed Coppola finds a visual equivalent to the merger of ancient faiths and modern myths.

Pull a job, any job

Roger Donaldson's The Bank Job provides top notch crime thrills in the heist genre while flushing out the plot with purported "new evidence" about an actual UK bank robbery from the early 1970s known as the walkie talkie robbery. If you are familiar with names like Princess Margaret or Michael X you may know some of the story, and if not the movie compels regardless. The Bank Job stars Jason Statham and Saffron Burrows in roles that allow them to shine rather than languish as second leads or in Stratham's case a B-Movie action guy. Here Stratham carries enough of the movie with a combo of charm and brute force that he can hardly just be referred to as the Transporter guy.
Not unlike the electronic surveillance of The Anderson Tapes the film goes back and forth between the robbery in progress, the branch of government skullduggery that set up the robbery to cover up another covert action, and the police listening to radio transmissions of the break-in on a ham set trying to locate the actual bank that's being robbed. Further complication arise when the robbers make off with the contents of hundreds of safe deposit boxes and raise the wrath of a porno king whose records of corruption payments are among the loot. Meanwhile the British government declares a ban on all news about the getaway declaring the facts will reveal national secrets.
The Bank Job is a conspiracy inside a caper wrapped around a delicious evocation of 70s filmmaking.

Funny Games

If the mark of a good film leaves a welt on the collective soul of its audience then Funny Games is that film. Half of the audience will walk out, the half that watch the entire affair will be left in a twilight state somewhere between ennui and nihilism.
Funny Games is Michael Haneke's virtual remake of the his earlier film, French language version, of the same name (1997). Haneke's films that have been released theatrically in the US are his more recent The Piano Teacher and Cache. Certainly Funny Games pushes enough buttons that I'm compelled to seek out the original sometime soon.
Tim Roth and Naomi Watts (also a producer) with family (son and dog) in tow arrive for a weekend in the country, that is to say one of those estates separated from its neighbors by acres and fences. An idyllic vacation becomes a nightmare when guest of the next door neighbors show up to borrow eggs. After this film Michael Pitt will always be the creepy killer guy. Pitt and Brady Corbet take the family hostage, break the Dad's leg essentially leaving the Mom and son helpless. One scene where Watts finds the dog, now dead, is so truly twisted. She opens the back of the family SUV and the dog topples out. But not before its limp head tips the weight of its girth and proceeds to roll out the car link a slinky. That was a movie moment.
Like a litmus test of our worst fears the film unwinds as a series of psychological mind games. The duo torments their captives with sadistic play and you must decide whether you go along with the games, especially after Haneke breaks the fourth wall (it happens like three times) and addresses the audience directly. There's another scene where a character grabs a remote control and rewinds the action we see unfolding before our eyes. Fans of Cache will not find this surprising but Funny Games is not directed so much at the art house crowd as the multiplex hordes. A bright cast, nice cinematography, well directed tension and in the end a gut turning attitude that rivals the best horror films for comparison.