Henry Poole Is Here shows director Mark Pellington in navel gazing mode. Pellington has done a variety of films including Going All the Way, Arlington Road (shot in Houston), and the recent IMAX docu U2 3D. Henry Poole is being marketed as a miracle movie, although seeing it before I saw its trailer I found it to be more of a low key romantic comedy. Luke Wilson plays Henry Poole with the weight of the world on his shoulders. He thinks he has mere months to live, the result of a rare disease. Using his savings to buy a house in the neighborhood of his youth Poole proceeds to drink himself into oblivion. A next door neighbor claims that a stain on Poole stucco finish resembles the face of Christ. Meanwhile the neighbor on the other side, Radha Mitchell looking quite lovely in a suburban kind of way, has a daughter who stopped speaking the year before. It's easy to see where the film will end up, filmmakers have a habit of painting themselves into a corner and Henry Poole is no exception. There's a light, almost fluffy ambience to the comedy, and Wilson does manage to channel feelings of grief so common to the human condition. Yes, there are a couple of miracles, but perhaps coincidence also plays a powerful hand in the plot. The real miracle would be if this sweet film got some of the love it deserves.
The edge of my seat was the last place I expected to be. Some movies can produce vertigo by tricking the eyes. For instance, a special Imax process called Omnivision (literally a one-of-a-kind screen that stretches both in front of your eyes and over your head, located in Las Vegas) where your entire peripheral vision is engaged. The Omnivision film unsprocketed with a Hawaiian theme and the first image hurled you into the azure Pacific Ocean at rocket speeds. The first reaction is to roll up into a ball and duck under your seat. But this was a documentary on the small screen no less. Yet the effect of watching the Man on Wire trailer on YouTube can leave you dizzy. In the theater the very act of watching high wire hi-jinx being performed with no fear of death coupled with shots establishing the depth of the fall will produce armrest-hugging fear in even the most fleetfooted viewer. Man on Wire documents what has to be the ultimate performance art crime of all time. Artist and acrobat Philippe Petit schemed and planned and surreptitiously assembled an international crew, snuck into both towers of the World Trade Center at the appropriate time, strung cable throughout the night and at daybreak walked across the span about eight times over a period of forty minutes. All this went down on August 7, 1974 although Petit had planned the walk for several years. Petit flew to New York a few times during his planning and as he tells the story in director James Marsh’s Man on Wire he was planning it like a noir crime caper. Marsh unfolds the events like a mystery. Every 20-minutes or so there’s a new character introduced or a new development in Petit’s strategy. To string the wire an initial guideline is shot tower to tower via bow and arrow. How Petit finds the arrow in the dark, and how Marsh recreates this particular recollection, clearly demonstrates how weird the whole expedition had become. When the police finally show up, Petit stops just out of reach of the cop and walks back out into the middle of the wire. This is where you engage the theater chair drink holder located near your right knee as a foothold. We see the participants, as they were through photos and some filmed footage, and in the present day much wiser and over 30-years older. Colorful 1970s industrial shots of the Twin Towers puts their grandeur in perspective even showing the progress of construction. On one trip Petit got to the roof and is seen in photos joking with a crew up there. After taking precise measurements Petit recreated the set up in a field back in France, and practiced the 200-foot walk, even if it was five feet off the ground. When the climatic moment comes we have a combination of re-creation, actual photos and briefly a moment of film shot from a news helicopter spiraling above Petit, a man without trepidation. The title comes from the police description of the crime in progress. The cop had written on the crime report “man on wire.” Part of the fascination rests in Petit’s mischievous manner, an almost uncanny resemblance to the antics of silent film stars like Harold Lloyd or Buster Keaton, both who performed many of their own stunts. Man on Wire includes snippets of other equally death defying walks that Petit performed before being arrested at Notre Dame and the Sydney Harbor Bridge. Petit even contributed illustrations to the new Debra Winger book she was signing at the MFAH last month. Somebody put Petit in a movie with Jackie Chan immediately. Man on Wire opens at the River Oaks Three this Friday.
A little retard goes a long ways in this new film written, starring and directed by Ben Stiller. Before we honor quadruple threat Stiller (he also produces) consider that the best moments in the film are short lived and belong to Robert Downey, Jr., and in a glorified cameo Tom Cruise. Bring on the controversy because it's always good for the box office but also realize that Tropic Thunder is just barely politically incorrect. A bevy of pretty boy actors (Stiller, Jack Black, and Robert Downey, Jr.) are tricked by their novice director (Steve Coogan) into shooting a war film on location in the middle of the jungle. Along with tech advisor Nick Nolte and special effects man Danny McBride (reminiscent of Chuck Bail from The Stunt Man only more deranged), plus supporting actors Jay Baruchel and Brandon T. Jackson, the group finds themselves stranded and fighting a real conflict with Asian drug lords. Most of the really funny moments revolve around Downey (a method actor who's dyed his skin to play Afro) and his ludicrous line readings. "Never go full retard," he advises Stiller. When someone puts a mix video of Downey's best lines on YouTube then you can see all Tropic Thunder has to offer without actually having to sit through the entire film. Downey's character says as much, calling the film-within-a-film some "Planet of the Apes straight to YouTube" movie. "I don't drop character until I've done the DVD commentary." Also funny, but not overwhelmingly, is the film's producer (Cruise in balding and hirsute make-up). Yes you will crack up but somehow you wish Cruise were getting yucks by doing something other than yelling "Fuck you" at his underlings. "A monkey without nuts could do your job," Cruise intones to his assistant Bill Hader. The part in the movie that was to be played by Owen Wilson now has Matthew McConaughey as a harried agent (think Jeremy Piven in Entourage) dealing with his star client. This role wasn't funny to begin with, and McConaughey seems to be rolling a large stone uphill each time he appears. Tropic Thunder's not a total waste of time. If you've seen the summer movies it has more laughs than such supposed winners as Get Smart. It would be impossible not to giggle at Jack Black's surreptitious heroin withdrawal sequence. The benchmark of laughter has been consistently lowered over the last few years that an audience will eat this up like stale popcorn. For the record, in the last decade I would say these are the most brilliant American comedies: The Big Lebowski, Something About Mary, I Heart Huckabees and Superbad. If Tropic Thunder gets a mixed review it's due to the ambivalence of seeing a witty Downey, Jr. making his schtick work while the rest of the film rests on the laurels of what all these guys have done before. Conjure Zoolander but with a lot of violence and you have the tone. Occasionally the cinematography of John Toll makes you think you're in a different, more serious movie.
There are foreign films and then there are foreign films. Talky adult movies that require attention and concentration. That's fine with me, after seeing movies like Step Brothers and Tropic Thunder a movie lover craves true sophistication. Love and Honor stands the samurai genre on its head. Yes there's a fight but only after an hour-and-a-half of heavy drama. Set in a timeless past (the Edo period although it's hard to determine the exact century) our hero is a low level samurai whose main job requires tasting his lord's food. When he's poisoned he nearly dies, only to discover he's going blind. A popular samurai series told the adventures of a blind swordsman, but this isn't that tale. In fact director Yoji Yamada concentrates on how a samurai lives and the minutia of details that define marriage and relations. Now blind, our hero discovers his wife gave herself sexually in order to guarantee her husband's pension. After much discussion he challenges the guilty lord to a duel of sorts. You wouldn't be off the mark calling this a thinking person's martial arts film. Slow and methodical, yet as soothing as a summer rain this film completes Yamada's samurai trilogy. On a different plane but still a spiritual cousin is The Last Mistress from French helmer Catherine Breillat. If you're familiar with Breillat's contemporary films you know that passion and feminist ideals weigh heavily. Unlike Romance or Fat Girl, Breillat's previous films to be released domestically, the drama in Last Mistress, while engaging, hardly shocks. The story follows an upper class stud who marries for money yet keeps a mistress on the side. But things are much more complicated than that. Ryno de Marigny once took a bullet for the lady Vellini and she's totally devoted, as a lover, and as a friend. Though up until that moment she hated his guts. Everyone seems to go along with the convention of adultery, and this includes de Marigny's bride. The joy in The Last Mistress comes from the serious treatment of the subject in a formal and austere manner. The entire movie seems to have two musical passages and only one is indigenous. In The Last Mistress Breillat has advanced her game; she still explores the dark side of human relations but we are removed from too much empathy for the characters.
No matter how hard I try I cannot escape American Teen. Just yesterday I put on the DVD for Son of Rambow and the first thing I see is the trailer for American Teen. I cannot watch the trailer without thinking about your typical MTV reality series. Trying to approach this film with an open mind was slightly harder than most other films. When I watched Bottle Shock last week I never once thought of Sideways, and yet everyone I spoke to afterwards regarding the film mentioned Sideways. Both films are set in the Napa Valley although as plots go they are worlds apart. Perhaps this says something about how people perceive movies - they tend to think about something new in relation to something old. I didn't want to fall for that trip, and thus I wanted to see American Teen with an open mind. Forget that MTV reality shows are so staged and produced to present their version of the truth, this is a real documentary and will not succumb to that false style of reality. Half a reel into American Teen I realized that my worst fears were affirmed. American Teen is a cynical and totally manipulative movie where the filmmakers took the lazy road to entertainment. It's a gussied up version of reality shows - you know those reality TV shows that are the bane of television programming. Everyone is a white high school student and falls into a stereotypic mode of expression: the dweeb, the free spirit cool chick and her gay friend, the handsome jock who's sensitive, the spoiled social chick, the basketball hero. It's not to say that you'd be totally bored with American Teen, you might find yourself time tripping back to days of yore. Or you night be the target audience of young adults and this hits a nerve. One of the students actually shows great emotional range which the filmmakers milk to its maximum effect. In other words point the camera at the little girl weeping with a broken heart. The big question is who can afford college and whose parents have bucks. What I would have given to have Tila Tequilia show up for a cameo. It's worth noting that one of the film's posters mimics The Breakfast Club, a movie that was made before any of the kids on display were born.
