The Kids Are All Right

2010 // USA // Lisa Cholodenko // August 11, 2010 // Theatrical Print (Landmark Tivoli Theater)

B - It's too much to assert that Nic (Annette Benning) and Jules' (Julianne Moore) lesbianism is incidental to the emotional vigor of The Kids Are All Right, given that sexual and gender anxiety undergird many of the story's conflicts, not to mention that the plot depends on it. However, writer-director Cholodenko uses the upheaval generated when Nice and Jules' teenaged kids seek out their biological father Paul (Mark Ruffalo) for the purposes of highlighting the universal qualities of middle-class, middle-aged families. The message seems to be, contra Anna Karenina (which the film alludes to), unhappy families all share the same gremlins: resentment, frustration, shame, jealousy, and emotional befuddlement. There's nothing especially cinematic about Cholodenko's approach here, aside from one long, devastating close-up of Benning during a moment of traumatic revelation. Fortunately, the nuanced performances carry the film, elevating dialogue that sometime strays into clumsy satire. It is Cholodenko's talent for finding the wry humor in the strangest places that is most endearing, particularly when it comes to human sexuality, which the film acknowledges is rarely explicable or neat. It's enough to make one forgive the faintly schematic character to the film's narrative arc, or its mean-spirited racial digs and hippie-bashing.

Miami Vice (Unrated Director's Edition)

2006 // USA // Michael Mann // August 9, 2010 // Blu-ray - Universal (2008)

The film's relatively recent vintage notwithstanding, the dreaded consensus seems to have already decreed that Miami Vice belongs in the lower tiers of Michael Mann's oeuvre. However, the film has its lonely and dogged boosters, among them Slant luminaries Ed Gonzalez and Nick Schager, as well as Hugo Stiglitz Makes Movies blogger Kevin J. Olson. Truth be told, it was Kevin's recent appreciation for the film that provoked me to finally visit Mann's contemporized vision of Sonny Crocket and Ricardo Tubbs' neon-drenched world. While I can't share the aforementioned writers' assessment that it is a great work, there is far more roiling beneath Miami Vice's slick surface than might be immediately apparent.

The film's design lustily embraces the faint air of the ridiculous that permeated its namesake television series, at least when it comes to the fashions, cars, and architecture. The world of Miami Vice is one where undercover narcotics officers drive Ferraris, dwell in dazzling condos, and pilot speedboats in their off hours. The cops and crooks alike possess flawless Caribbean fashion sense, sip mojitos behind velvet ropes, and have access to an unlimited supply of firepower, gadgets, and vehicles. Yet Mann presents this world without a wink or a titter, with absolute conviction. It is as though the goal is to submerge us in kitsch to the point where we can no longer detect that it is kitsch. The effect is undeniably heady, particularly when paired with the film's lurid, domineering aesthetic. (The sky itself essentially becomes a canvas for Mann to paint with some truly astonishing hues.) Miami Vice is an aggressively cool film, but it never seems to be striking a pose. It just happens to have been filmed in an aggressively cool alternate universe.

Mann, who also wrote the screenplay, has a focused and elegant conception of what Miami Vice should be, and he is scrupulous about keeping it on track. There are action sequences, but it's not really an action film. The chases and gunplay primarily serve as jittery releases of dramatic tension, rather than delivery devices for drama. It's a story about cops, but it's not really a police procedural. Mann fetishizes the visual language of law enforcement rather than its logistical minutiae. Given that the film maintains the director's preference for emotional chilliness (or at least a forlornness that precludes flamboyant emotional clashes), it can't really be regarded as a character study.

So what is Miami Vice? Ultimately, I think it proves to be a surprisingly simple tale of moral vexation, where the triumph of righteousness—and the tears that result—was never in doubt. While Mann has long exhibited an absorption with male honor codes, his focus has always been on the proximate consequences of such codes. Here he takes a much more melancholy, even meditative approach, particularly in his presentation of the male-female dyads of Sonny-Isabella and, to a lesser degree, Rico-Trudy. Rarely have characters in a Mann joint smelled their unhappy fates on the wind with as much precision as these four, and yet they are still willing to luxuriate in fleeting moments of pleasure, joy, and human intimacy. Whatever the film's flaws or self-imposed restraints, its tone is an undeniable achievement: Mann evokes decadence and moral peril without the aura of doom. Miami Vice is ripe with the sensation that this fallen world cannot accommodate compromises or hesitation, and will never forgive us our bad choices.

The Damned United

2009 // UK // Tom Hooper // August 9, 2010 // DVD - Sony (2010)

This prickly tale of the rise and fall (and subsequent humbling) of notoriously sharp-tongued football manager Brian Clough provides an array of unexpected pleasures. To be sure, the film boasts a worthy pedigree. It was adapted by Frost/Nixon and The Queen writer Peter Morgan from a novel by David Peace, who also penned the Red Riding quartet, which was itself adapted into one of the finest British films of the past decade. However, director Tom Hooper was not known to me, save by reputation as the helmsman of all seven episodes of HBO's lauded John Adams. Accordingly, it's rewarding to witness Hooper's adroit handling of The Damned United's twin timelines (a structure that echoes, among other works, Sean Penn's Into the Wild), as well as his determination to tweak sports movie conventions. There are plenty of histrionic confrontations and tearful reunions, all of them entirely unsurprising, but for a film about football, it boasts remarkably little gameplay footage. Hooper and Morgan keep the focus on Clough's personality: his unflagging ambition, unfortunate taste for conflict, and self-destructive hubris. It's a daring thing to make a sports film about the limits of personal achievement, even if the subject is a manager rather than an athlete. The Damned United's full-throated commitment to its themes is impressive, and that commitment drips from every frame and performance. Cinematographer Ben Smithard's striking recreation of 1970s England is exquisite, from moldering Leeds to sun-kissed Brighton. And while Michael Sheen doesn't quite seem to inhabit the same world as his fellow performers, his portrayal of Clough—the startling blend of priggishness, throbbing ego, and lip-curling desperation—is mesmerizing stuff.

Inception

2010 // USA // Chistopher Nolan // July 27, 2010 // Theatrical Print (St. Louis Cinemas Moolah Theater)

[Note: This post contains spoilers.]

My second descent into Christopher Nolan's breathless heist-of-the-mind proved to be a far richer experience than I had anticipated. I settled into my seat prepared to engage in a little due diligence: putting to rest some lingering questions vis-à -vis the mechanics of the film's "shared dreaming" conceit, as well as resolving my creeping suspicions that Inception's aspirations of thematic profundity would prove to be hollow in the cold light of another viewing. On this second point, I was pleased to be proved wrong.

While the film's labyrinthine plot has been subject to endless online parsing—see Sam Adams' essential, exhaustive summary and exegesis at Salon, if you're still sorting it out—all the crunchy specifics quickly receded into the background on a second viewing. A pre-existing familiarity with the story's stacked levels of consciousness and elaborate science-fiction rules (thin on the science end though they might be) allowed me to engage with the film's other facets, which proved to be deeper than I remembered.

With hindsight, it's apparent that Cobb is not only not the hero of this story, but may actually be the villain, albeit one that is more negligent and selfish than actively malicious. His obsessive attachment to Mal and his determination to be re-united with his children (and who can fault him for the latter?) results in a horrendous lack of judgment, setting up the story's most perilous conflicts. For the other team members, there's not that much as stake in the inception of Robert Fischer. If their mission fails, all that's lost is a share of their reward from Saito. Cobb's deceptions—he conceals both his problems with Mal and the risks associated with Yusuf's custom sedative—put them all in danger, including Saito himself, who's bank-rolling the whole endeavor. Almost as quickly as she is introduced, Ariadne steps into the role of Cobb's conscience: she's having none of his taciturn, lone wolf posturing, in light of the peril he's placing them in. These aspects stand out much more starkly the second time down the rabbit hole, almost to the point where the heady action—which is so intrinsic to the film's initial wallop—becomes its least interesting aspect to dwell on.

Admittedly, there's not much spark between DiCaprio and Cotillard, and Nolan isn't willing to do the heavy lifting to justify his leads' glistening tears and howls of anguish. Still, Cobb's reluctance to let go of his wife's memory is the dynamo that generates Inception's dark energy, and on my second go-around, I was much more taken with the story of the man's profoundly damaged psyche. In this, the film shares much with Nolan's Memento, as both feature protagonists who exude confidence and street-smarts, and yet dwell inside bubbles of fantasy and denial. At least in poor Leonard's case, his delusion is entwined with his short-term memory loss; Cobb, meanwhile, has no excuses for his behavior, other than his apparent belief that his skill at extraction makes him exceptional, and therefore above his own rules. If the story of Fischer Senior and Junior is somewhat lacking in emotional vigor, it's nonetheless fascinating to witness all the ways in which Cobb's journey parallels that of the young billionaire. The film's heist is, of course, as much about Cobb's catharsis as Fischer's. While I'm not convinced that Cobb is "really" the subject of the inception, or the more baroque theory that Araidne is actually his therapist, the contours of Nolan's script suggest that Cobb's tale is the one that matters here. Everything else in the story comments upon and adds texture to that fundamental drama of one man's stubborn refusal to move on.

While my own reaction to the film has been quite positive, some of the criticisms aimed at the film are nonetheless observant and ably articulated. Dennis Cozzalio's take, particularly his trenchant pinpointing of some of Nolan's questionable storytelling choices, comes closest to the reaction of my own Dark Side, a bitter imp that hates everything brash, everything self-important, and especially everything brashly self-important (which Inception most certainly is). That said, talking about criticism itself (or, horrors, talking about criticism about criticism) makes me a little queasy, so for now I'll just point you in the direction of some of the usual suspects, some of whom are much less sanguine than I about the film's merits: Glenn Kenny, the Film Doctor, Jason Bellamy, J.D. at Radiator Heaven, and, naturally, Jim Emerson, whose antipathy for Nolan's films is well-known and always impressively elucidated.

Metropolis (The Complete Version)

1927 // Germany // Fritz Lang // July 26, 2010 // Theatrical Print (Landmark Tivoli Theater)

My first experience with Metropolis was, unfortunately, a relatively cheap DVD that was apparently released after the film's American copyright had lapsed. You can imagine the quality. I have never seen the 2002 Murnau Foundation / Kino International restoration, so the new "Complete" Metropolis now enjoying a limited theatrical release in the U.S. was akin to a brand spanking new film to my eyes. This iteration of the film seemed almost twice as long as the version I had recalled. Certainly, the narrative is more coherent, although still not without its plot holes. (As Glenn Kenny wonders, where exactly is the army that Joh Fredersen was presumably going to use to crush the workers' rebellion?) The "Argentinean footage" that was the impetus for this version of the film is in rough shape and not especially revelatory, but it does provide more connective tissue, so to speak, rounding out aspects of the story that might otherwise have seemed even more perplexing.

To contemporary sensibilities, the film's treacly message of cooperation and moderation seems like naive, feel-good moralizing, a ridiculously flimsy attempt to resolve the fundamental conflict between capitalism's grinding indifference and socialism's revolutionary flame. However, the visual achievements on display here are undeniable. And yet, for all of Metropolis' seminal design and stunning ambition—and those crowd shots do look remarkable on the big screen—the most fascinating aspect of the film for this viewer remains its curious (and under-developed) attitude towards robotics and artificial intelligence. Here we have one of the first cinematic depictions of a machine crafted to resemble a person, and yet such a marvel becomes secondary to the film's enthusiasm for sheer spectacle and its half-baked portrayal of the antagonism between management and labor.

Nonetheless, I think that the way that the Robot Maria is portrayed in the film is quite revealing. Our contemporary conception of artificial intelligence is tightly entwined with the notion of cold rationality, where even the most fearsome mechanical being (a Terminator, say), is assumed to simply be following its programming with ruthless efficiency. From the moment she attains consciousness, however, the Robot Maria displays an almost comically malevolent lust for chaos and destruction. Brigitte Helm's astonishing performance—which is grotesque even for a silent film portrayal—shrieks one message loud and clear: this woman-thing is bad, bad news. Helm conveys an automaton that visibly revels in its role as an instigator and idolatrous object. Heck, she's laughing with satanic glee even as they lash her to the stake for an old-fashioned witch-burning. The portentous use of biblical imagery simply bolds and underlines the current of moral terror that Helm establishes with her performance. One wonders whether Lang and writer Thea von Harbou thought that all artificial beings would necessarily turn out to be wicked monsters. Or perhaps Rotwang's own ambitions were so tainted by sorrow and vengeance that his creation was inevitably corrupted? Who can say? The film doesn't, so we're left to speculate. Nonetheless, the Robot Maria's almost manic need to destroy strongly suggests a deeply skeptical view of humankind's capacity for creation, well before words like "android" even existed.

Inception

Dream a Little Dream a Little Dream a Little Dream

2010 // USA // Christopher Nolan // July 22, 2010 // Theatrical Print (St. Louis Cinemas Moolah Theater)

B+ - "Ambitious" is a term frequently affixed to films solely due to the scale or complexity of their production, whether the work in question is one of the opulent, magisterial epics of old or a contemporary blockbuster that recruits battalions of computer wizards for its virtual world-building. One could say that Christopher Nolan's Batman films warrant the label, if only because of their fulsome design and dizzying scope. However, Nolan's taste for the ambitious is focused foremost on narrative, as epitomized in the disorienting, reversed chronology of his breakout art-house noir, Memento. Two years after The Dark Knight trampled everything in its path, that film's sprawling, relentless, and often preposterous plot nonetheless endures as a grueling feat of sustained anxiety and twenty-first century terror. Now we come to Inception, the first feature written solely by Nolan since his 1998 debut Following, and it is, if anything, a doubling down on the director's fascination with convoluted storytelling. Who else but Nolan could weave a tale that unfolds simultaneously in four linked dream worlds, where time dilates to varying degrees but always ticks inexorably forward? Who else would have the heedless ambition to even attempt such a thing, to convey such an elaborate scenario through the language of film? Who else but Christopher Nolan would even want to try?

Set in the unspecified but not-too-distant future, the film introduces us to Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his partner Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), a pair of "extractors": black-market mind-hackers who are skilled at ferreting out a person's most closely guarded secrets, preferably without their knowledge. To accomplish this, the sleeping victim is shunted into a dream world constructed by the extractors, who them attempt to outwit the victim and recover the secret, quite literally in their sleep. Given that this is a Christopher Nolan joint, the process is a good deal more complex than this straightforward description might suggest. Most of the first forty minutes or so of Inception are occupied with elucidating the rules of the film's central science-fiction conceits, although the exposition continues in dribbles well into the third act. One might expect this to render the film almost unbearably talky, but Nolan does a characteristically masterful job of blending together the showing and the telling, cutting across past and present and weaving in voice-over. This approach has been a essential aspect of the director's dramatic arsenal since Batman Begins, but the effect remains engrossing, propulsive, and a little cheeky, as if Nolan were daring us to keep up. The principles governing the process of extraction are bent (and often broken) as quickly as the film establishes them, providing little accommodation for viewers who stumble over the conceptual twists and turns.

During an extraction in the mind of a Japanese tycoon named Saito (Ken Wanatabe), Cobb and Arthur are stymied when their victim reveals that he is wise to the pair's tricks, which include a dream-within-a-dream ruse. They soon learn that Saito is actually auditioning them for a more challenging task: a reverse extraction known as an inception, which entails planting an idea so deeply in the victim's mind that they believe it to be their own. Saito wants Cobb to subconsciously convince Robert Fischer (Cillian Murphy), the son of a billionaire rival, to break up his family's empire following his father's death. Moreover, Saito insists on tagging along during the inception in order to protect his investment. Despite his misgivings, Cobb accepts the job, chiefly because Saito pledges to eradicate his criminal record, arrange for his legal entry into the United States, and reunite him with his children.

This sets up the rest of the story, which, when you strip away the mind-bending sci-fi trappings, is essentially a heist film. True to the form of the genre, Cobb and Arthur set off on a globe-trotting mission to recruit an international team of experts for this unlikely feat of mind-hackery. Their team includes Eames (Tom Hardy), an undercover operative who poses as one of Fischer's confidants in the dream; Yusuf (Dileep Rao), a pharmacologist who devises a specialized sedative; and Ariadne (Ellen Page), a prodigy skilled at constructing the custom dreamscapes the team utilizes for the inception. These dreamscapes are decidedly crisp affairs, more akin to virtual reality simulations than the fluid, surreal environments of real dreams. All the same, Nolan makes ingenious use of the familiar uncanniness of our sleeping world, lending credibility to the notion that the film's slick, stylish vistas are actually dominions of the mind. Confronting a man in the dreamscape, Cobb poses the question, "How did you get here?" The dreamer can't answer, because dreams don't ever seem to have real beginnings, do they? You're hailing a cab on a street corner, sitting in a hotel bar, standing on a snowy mountainside, and you're off. Moreover, time dilates in the dreamscape, such that an hour takes only five minutes in the real world, a detail that seems spookily accurate given my own dreaming experiences.

Saito arranges for the team to be alone with Fischer in the first-class cabin of a trans-oceanic flight, where they drug him and begin the mind-hack. As if their task weren't challenging enough, Cobb explains that in order to shield the team from detection, they must create three successive layers of dreams and escort Fischer through them in order to seed the notion of a corporate breakup at the "lowest" level: a dream within a dream within a dream. The events in a higher dream echo downward, such that a dreamer spattered with water in Dream A will find it begins to rain in Dream B. Moreover, this nesting of dreamscapes results in greater and greater time dilation the deeper the team goes, which is basically a clever excuse for Nolan to indulge in some phenomenally inventive, vertigo-inducing storytelling. To cite the most conspicuous example, roughly the final hour of the film takes place during the few seconds it takes a van to fall from a bridge into a river. As bewildering as it can be to keep up with the multiple storylines and different rates of time, Nolan somehow manages to continually tighten the vice, such that the entire heist essentially plays as a stacked series of action sequences, each one dependent on the outcome of the next. The story's complexity is nothing short of breathtaking, with Nolan pulling off the narrative equivalent of a plate-spinning act.

The final wrinkle comes in the form of Mal (Marion Cotillard), a spiteful hobgoblin that lurks in Cobb's subconscious and is based on memories of his wife. She—who, of course, isn't a "she" at all, but actually a fragment of Cobb's own mind—has a nasty habit of maliciously sabotaging his dreamscapes. Cobb hasn't revealed this to his team, but Ariadne quickly tumbles to the fact that he is hiding crucial details about his past and endangering them all. This aspect of the story inevitably calls to mind Shutter Island from earlier this year, in that both films feature DiCaprio in the role of a man whose guilt has psychologically mutilated him. However, the success of Scorsese's film rests to a large extent on the palpable rawness of DiCaprio's anguish, while Nolan asks little of the actor other than sheer conviction. This isn't inconsistent with Nolan's post-Memento mode: evocative and moody, often with a bitter-sour tang, but lacking a truly poignant connection between character and viewer. Such a negligent approach to character needn't be a failing, given that a convoluted action film executed with acrobatic deftness has a purity all its own. However, it does betray that Nolan himself never quite accepts the supposed emotional potency of Cobb and Mal's tragic story, which invites the question of why the viewer should care. Inception's real strength is that of an exigent science-fiction thriller that pushes the limits of storytelling, the sort of grand cinematic contraption that seduces with its sheer baroque audacity. Nolan's vision may be more polished and literal-minded than a genuine state of dreaming, but it nonetheless leaves you breathless, unsteady, and wondering what just happened.