The Edge of Heaven

Some films are able to just cut through the hype of being a cool art film and deliver a series of constant emotional jolts. You know the hopelessness in the last scene of Doctor Zhivago where Omar Sharif dies just as he's about to call out to Julie Christie. In The Edge of Heaven we're talking that kind of hurt repeated in a kind of karmic circle of happenstance.
With its odd character relationships and existential bent Edge of Heaven at first reminded me of a Fassbinder film. How appropriate that Fassbinder mainstay Hanna Schygulla turns up about half way through. A Turkish widower living in Germany picks up a prostitute, and eventually she moves in with him. She's already drawn the wrath of a couple of Musilms who, hearing her talk in her native Turkish, threaten her with harm if she doesn't stop turning tricks. When she dies the widowers son, himself an educated German professor, travels back to Istanbul to find the woman's daughter. At this point the film, while maintaining its directorial point of view, changes stories.
Now the audience tags along with another Istanbul denizen Ayten, the daughter of the woman we met in the first act. Ayten's forced to flee the country when her student political activities escalate to violence. The depiction of a riot and subsequent police raid has an exciting action feel from the directness of the photography to the rhythm of the editing.
There are at least three more life changing encounters and the people we meet during the opening we cross paths with later. But synchronicity moves in a meandering trail in Edge of Heaven. Part of the joy of this film is not knowing and being surprised by the plot twists. Director Faith Akin is herself of Turkish and German descent.

The Women

Perhaps The Women was not meant to translate to modern times. After all it's based on a 1930s play by Clare Boothe Luce where the lead character, a woman whose husband cheated on her, reunites at the end with her sorrowful hubby. A movie was made in 1939 with an all femme cast of the biggest stars of the day, directed by George Cukor who had the right touch even though it's not his best film. Cukor's last film was 1981's Rich and Famous starring Candice Bergen with Meg Ryan appearing as the daughter in her first film role.
Flash forward to the present day and now Ryan stars and Bergen makes a brief cameo as her mom. This version of The Women has been in development so long that the end credits mention New Line Cinema, now defunct, who was at one time going to make the film with Julia Roberts. The current version was helmed by Murphy Brown writer Diane English. If you want to compare the two versions, TCM is running the original next Monday. Hollywood has already slyly observed that women will turn out in force to make genre specific films a success: witness the grosses on The Devil Wears Prada, Mama Mia or Sex and The CIty. The good news is that The Women has so much more wit and oomph than Sex and The City there's not even any comparison. SATC was not particularly written well whereas The Women provides non stop laughs and has a distinct directorial style. That may not matter to its core audience - I heard one female audience member say at the end of The Women that it was Sex and The City without men.
When a group of affluent women get wind that one of the group has been cheated on they all band together for support. Annette Bening has the best grasp on the fraility of their situation. She betrays another friend thinking it will save her job. The look on her face as she talks up her superior on the phone shows the obvious pain of a person selling their soul. In the end a resolution brings everybody closer together even while putting on a kick-ass fashion show. In the original film, a black and white affair, the fashion sequence was in color. By contrast in The Women the fashion show starts out with black and white dresses before it explodes with color.

Righteous Kill

De Niro and Pacino are all the ads need to state. Thinking about other famous movie duos, actors who showed real chemistry together, it occurs that most of them have more than two common appearances. For instance Lemmon and Matthau, or Doulgas and Lancaster have several. And even for Sutherland and Gould I can find three films they worked on, although perhaps the most famous duo in recent memory, Redford and Newman, apparently only shared the bill on Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and The Sting. Technically De Niro and Pacino have been in three films but in Godfather II they never shared a scene together.
Enter De Niro and Pacino, ready to wow and captivate if not quite shock and awe. Naturally Righteous Kill doesn't replace Heat as the dynamic thespians' best film together but it certainly fills the bill for solid entertainment while keeping its serial killer procedural plot on level ground. The last film Jon Avnet directed, also starring Al Pacino, 88 Minutes, was a bit of a potboiler. While I'm never going to confuse Avnet with a world class director, Righteous Kill is so much better and cleaner than 88 Minutes.
Righteous Kill gets the mood and atmosphere of the NYPD correct while subtly adding character riffs that feel appropriate to the action rather than overblown histrionics. It's a good move for the male leads since they turn in performances better than they've shown for years, and the same applies to the supporting crew. You can argue up and down the merits of De Niro in Good Shepherd or Pacino in Merchant of Venice but at least Righteous Kill refrains from unwinding like a paycheck role (think Two for the Money or Hide and Seek).
Our heroes play homicide detectives who, it's revealed in the opening scene, on one previous case planted evidence to get a real raping and pillaging scumbag convicted. As we explore their relationship and their connection to fellow cops John Leguizamo, Donnie Walhberg and Carla Gugino (having a torrid affair with De Niro) it becomes apparent they are fulfilling a kind of star chamber style execution of criminals who got off too easy. But which one is really squeezing the trigger is the question. Other supporting players like 50 Cent and Brian Dennehy briefly show up to lend credence to the proceedings.
Righteous Kill has an elliptical narrative that's meant to keep you on your toes. Pacino and De Niro display the right amount of weariness to suggest they've been flashing badges for too long to care about things like ethics. There's not so much a sense of Dirty Harry as a sense of dirty cops tangled up in their own web of deceit.

Up the Yangtze

A valley was flooded to create a huge dam, the largest hydroelectric dam system in the world. Up the Yangtze examines the people of the area and how they affected by various economic factors.
At one point an interviewee tells a parable that makes sense of all the effort and money being spent along this mighty river. An American ruler and a Chinese ruler are in a car and come to a fork in the road. On the right is capitalism and on the left is socialism. The American leader says turn right, while the Chinese leader says turn right but use the left turn signal.
There are some beautiful shots of ships moving through the dam canals as well as a tasty series of dissolves that show how the water has risen along one section. First we see islands in the middle, but at the end of the sequence those islands and a hut on the shoreline have disappeared. Shots of American tourists on a cruise ship are combined with Chinese who've been displaced. There's even historical footage showing Mao swimming in the river, and also young Chinese eager to find a way to make money on the cruise ships. The film doesn't demand attention but like a great river it keeps on flowing. Up the Yangtze will be appreciated best by those with interest in China or engineers.