Change Your Image
drewscorner
Reviews
Spartan (2004)
Signature Mamet movie with a good plot
This film stars Val Kilmer as a cold, calculating, bad ass black-ops U.S. Army Ranger field agent named Scott who is tasked to find and extract the President's daughter before the press catches wind of her being missing. Time is of the essence in this movie. The daughter, who's attending Harvard, but sleeping around with everyone on campus including her professor, gets mysteriously nabbed by an Arab sex-slave trade ring and is trafficked to transfer house in Dubai for prostitution. A plot twist has Kilmer's character turn into a rogue agent forcing him to gather up some latent compassion and obligingly rescue her on his own. It's a good plot altogether, but the movie seems at times contrived due to the Mamet-esque screen writing that typically emphasizes forced and deliberate dialogue over natural language flow. Think Glengarry Glen Ross. I strongly believe that Mamet is an over-talented fish who's artistic talents belong in the theatre, but somehow he manages to flop around and breath life into film, his medium of choice, and pull off worthwhile entertainment with his own stylistic flare.
The Girl Under the Waves (2001)
A surprisingly, entertaining film, or shall I say, meta-film
Because of a fluke in my cable provider, I've been hooked on the IFC (Independent Film Channel), which is not supposed to be on my low-end viewing plan. I don't even get MTV, MSNBC, ESPN, or Comedy Central. But I get IFC, which has commercial free movie gems, some of which have MA- and R- ratings. Woooweee!! Indie!!!
This movie was an interesting find, because:
(a) the film is 3 years old and has a very unusual style to it
(b) I have found absolutely no write up on this film, even on ImdB and MRQE, or even Google.
At first I was shocked by the indie atmosphere generated by the filmmaker. Like a Woody Allen movie, it's in many ways a meta-film, one that deconstructs the story and shows its audience how the film is being made. It's so raw in appearance, there's not even a real setting, you just have to imagine it being there.
The director is pretty blunt in making the audience know that the actors playing their roles are just that, actors. In the film's beginning, two actors (Jonathan and Savannah) are told by the director to put on microphones, are then given a background, and are told to improvise their characters in an apartment scene that mainly comprises of a situational conversation. It is also quite meta-filmish a la MTV, because text is used throughout the scenes like one of those reality TV dating shows. The text reveals what is going on in the minds of the characters. It's pretty clever.
Well, as any Indie film watcher can appreciate, all the characters are neurotic, and Jonathan, especially him; he is borderline insane. But all those around him seem pretty borderline too, but in different ways. Jonathan, in fact, is a shy, but bookish, witty, and disarming 30 something writer with a criminal record (age 15). He has a graduate degree from Princeton, a former taxi cab driver, and son of a wealthy family with a chalet in Switzerland as brought ought in the conversation. Everyone knows how neurotic writers can be, but this guy takes the cake.
That's how it all starts. The conversation unfolds in unexpected ways, and really starts to heat up, becomes simultaneously uncomfortable and amusing as two additional characters enter the apartment scene. There's two other scenes that steal the show, one of which is Jonathan's monologue at a theatre outlet, all of course, acted through imagination.
You have to see this movie to appreciate the cleverness of the dialogue (and monologue). I've never seen anything like it, and wound up cracking up on the floor rolling in tears, listening to Jonathan's monologue scene, which is priceless. The girl is hot in an aloof and sensitive manner(as usual in these films), and the other two estranged acquaintances are all whacko.
This movie is like a case study of people, who are all strangers to one another, yet connected by some fateful manner, and are caught up in this guy, David's New York flat. It's like an online chat room, this one being 100 times more neurotic, where words turn into fists, and back word exchanges, and narration.
I don't know if this movie is available on video at all, but I recommend that you tune into the IFC this month to catch it.
Cold Mountain (2003)
Love and War: Perfect Casting & Timing for a Great Movie
I've seen comments on this site that say that "Cold Mountain" moves too slow, it's overhyped, not enough character development, the chemistry between Nicole and Jude Law is weak, the plot is aimless and depressing, etc. To that I say hogwash.
This was an excellent film with Oscars written all over it. Directed by Anthony Minghella ("English Patient", 1996) with a sterling cast (Nicole Kidman, Jude Law, Rene Zellweger, Donald Sutherland, Natalie Portman, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, and Kathy Baker), "Cold Mountain" delivers. Packed with emotion, this film contains some of the great war and romance movie scenes that will be remembered and discussed for a long time. Filmed in the pristine countryside of Romania, the producers of "Cold Mountain" found the perfect setting for a film to re-create what life was like in rural North Carolina mountains during the American Civil War.
Spoiler Alert
It was absolutely amazing how two actors could be on the set together for so little time and bring out such a romantic intensity. The characters of Ada (Nicole Kidman) and Inman (Jude Law) give special meaning to the word 'longing'. The incipient romance between these two star-struck lovers had been stalled by the declaration of war, and Inman's inevitable conscription as was expected by any able-bodied men in his position. This almost unfulfilled romantic destiny is what made the chemistry between Ada and Inman more tantalizing than most films.
When the two reunite after years of separation caused by the war, the fires of passion ignite during their one night together in a cold mountain cabin like no scene I can remember in recent movie history. Nothing can be more passionate than subversive romance. Despite many doubters, Inman, an army deserter, and Ada, a harborer of deserters finally get their one night together, and that's all that counted in this movie. Every thing led to that moment, and the consequences thereafter, tragic or otherwise, mattered so much less. That's what was so superb about this film.
The 'longing' between these two characters was so powerful that nothing could deter their motivation to reunite. With the help from Ruby Thewes (Rene Zellweger), and stubborn determination, Ada was able to manage her deceased father's small farm, holding onto the fleeting notion that the man she barely fell in love with would eventually return home. And Inman, who was wounded in battle, and who during his convalescence acted upon the wise advice from an old blindman (the one roasting peanuts) to desert his army and follow his heart home to the woman he wish he knew more. The picture of Ada he carried on his person wherever he went reminded him daily of his purpose.
With our own war going on today in Iraq, we tend to forget how chaotic things can off the battlefield. Our minds are never straight when bad news never ceases and bodies keep coming home. What we tend to forget is that the families and loved ones of whom soldiers leave behind, lead lives of absence and are never at peace until their soldier has returned. Suitors and unscrupulous opportunists don't make their lives any easier, tempting and scheming those who are left behind in war.
This movie helps to put things in perspective once again while the war politics of our current times make us remember the sad stories of our past wars, stories that reach even the remote corners of supposedly placid places like Cold Mountain, N.C.