Oh man, I am on a movie-watching tear of late. Not only have I re-watched a few soon-to-be classics from '08 on glorious BLU-RAY disc over the last several days (WALL-E, anyone?), but I've also tried to see as many movies in the theater as humanly possible. Not to mention, I've been watching a few flicks from earlier in the year that I missed out on. So let's get to it, I've got some reviews for ya' ...
VALKYRIE Review:
- Oh, Bryan Singer ... When I first saw The Usual Suspects while in college, it was one of those life-changing movies that absolutely blew me away. Now THAT was a movie, I remember thinking. It was one of those quintissential college flicks that is passed on from dorm to dorm - "you've gotta see this one, man, it will leave your jaw on the floor." And so it did. But since The Usual Suspects, I don't know if we've really seen Singer live up to the potential that he showed with that landmark effort. Sure, X-Men was pretty decent and one of the first "serious" comic book adaptations to come along, helping to usher in the modern era of superhero films. And yeah, any geek worth his salt will be happy to extoll the relative virtues of X-Men 2 - not a perfect movie by any means, but still one heck of a superhero adventure, and a movie that raised the bar for the genre, to be sure. But then came the (shudder ...) Superman Returns, which, well, any longtime reader of my blog knows exactly how I felt about that best-left-forgotten misfire. But anyways, what I'm leading up to here is some excellent news: Valkyrie is a clear return to form for Bryan Singer. This is once again the Singer of Usual Suspects fame - the guy who could craft tension so thick it was palpable, the guy who could make leave you hanging on ever word, every twist, every cut. No, unfortunately Valkryie is not exactly the second coming of The Usual Suspects, but it is an exciting and well-crafted WWII movie that is a nice history lesson as well as an entertaining thriller.
The fact-based plot is certainly an intriguing story - detailing the last plot to kill Hitler from within the Nazi ranks towards the end of World War II - an elaborate plan led by disgruntled and frustrated German generals that involves panting a bomb in Hitler's bunker and using his assassination to trigger a hostile takeover of sorts of the German government.
The first thing I was worried about going in here was the much-talked about decision to refrain from having characters speak in German accents, instead opting to allow each actor to pretty much use his or her natural dialect. It turned out this wasn't a problem at all - in fact, I thought the movie rather eloquently introduced this conceit in its title sequence, transitioning from German to English in a very nice touch. But really, the quality of the cast here is so uniformly good that you can't complain. For one, you've got a pretty darn good turn from Tom Cruise in the leading role as Claus von Stauffenberg, an eye-patched German colonel who is convinced to lead a secret anti-Hitler conspiracy made up of various Nazi politicians and military men who can't turn a blind eye (so to speak) at all of the atrocities committed in Hitler's name. Cruise is really good, but man, he's surrounded by a boatload of top talent to boot. Kenneth Branagh, Tom Wilkinson, Bill Nighy, Terrance Stamp, and Eddie Izzard, to name a few. I mean, wow, that's some heavy duty thespian right there. All are excellent, and give the film a real feeling of class and yes, gravitas. You even have Carice van Houten, who I praised last year for her excellent work in the WWII thriller BLACK BOOK, as von Stauffenberg's wife. Carice isn't used to nearly the effect that she was in Black Book, but it's still a testament to Valkryie that even a relatively minor role is occupied by such a talented actress.
Where Valkyrie really excels is in its middle section where Stauffenberg and his co-conspirators plot out their plan of attack. At this juncture, the pacing is air-tight, and the movie takes on the intensity of a great heist flick. However, once the resistance's attempt to takeover the German government begins, the political infighting becomes the focus and the movie really begins to lose a lot of momentum. Part of the problem is that so much of the movie has that bank-robbery feel to it that there's little time to focus in on the clashing ideologies, on the inner motivations for these characters that makes them for or against Hitler and his Nazi party. At times, the lineup of characters becomes a semi-confusing array of generals and lieutenants, some of whom seem to fade away into the background and then pop up again with little explanation. The result is that the fina lact of the movie sees Singer and co. trying for a big, powerful finale, but instead creating a finish that feels somwhat tacked-on and listless. You can't go almost the whole movie without really focusing on character, and then expecting us to fully invest in these characters' ultimate fates. And in a way that's what keeps the movie from being great - because we already know from history that the characters' plans are doomed to fail, we need something extra to keep us fully-invested in the plot - we need epic drama, deep characters, a fresh perspective on story being told. To some extent we get that, but there's also that feeling of inevitabilty - we knew this wouldn't end well ... and the movie lacks the grand thematic ambition to really put that exclamation point on the story and make us realize what this was all supposed to mean. I think of Steven Spielberg's MUNICH, for example, which brilliantly tied the 1970's era events to the problems of *this* decade. In contrast, Valkyrie works incredibly well as a heist thriller, but doesn't quite hit a home run when it comes to everything else.
My Grade: B+
- I'd like to quickly mention IN BRUGES. This was a movie which I missed out on when it was released earlier in the year, but one which I recently caught on DVD. And wow, what a great little movie. It stars Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson as two hitmen assigned by their slightly-insane boss (Ralph Fiennes) to lay low in the quiet Belgian city of Bruges after a botched job, in which Farrell's character accidentally killed a young boy in addition to his assigned target. The two run into all kinds of oddball trouble while in Bruges, from drug-addicted dwarves to local femme fatales, and the result is a quirky, violent, and oftentimes hilarious crime movie that I'd compare to the likes of Reservoir Dogs, Snatch, and Boondock Saints. It has that same black humor, razorsharp dialogue, and lineup of badass badguys as those cult-favorites, although the style is a bit more laid back, picturesque, and easy-going. Definitely one to check out - perhaps one of the more overlooked gems of '08.
My Grade: A -
- I also managed to finally watch a movie I had been dyin' to see in the theaters when it received a limited release earlier in the year - and that movie is THE FALL. I was completely intrigued by the colorful and fantastic imagery and surreal look of the movie, directed by the guy who did The Cell, Tarsem Singh. This one is a movie I really want to love, but, I just don't know ... my impression is that there is some startling imagery here (that looks GREAT on blu-ray!), but not a whole lot of substance. I'd call it the MYST of movies - the imagery is striking, hypnotizing, and yet strangely static and cold. It doesn't help that the storyline is very odd and off-puttingly dark. It concerns a paralyzed Hollywood stuntman in 1920's Los Angeles, who in the early days of cinema gets in a horse-riding accident and finds himself stuck in a hospital bed. The patient, played by Lee Pace of PUSHING DAISIES fame, befriends a young girl who is also in the hospital with a broken arm, and begins to tell her a story of epic adventures and heroes and villains, which he continues piece by piece each time they meet. Of course, the girl is msotly unaware, at first, that Pace's character is depressed and suicidal. His friendship with her is actually a fairly manipulative one - and I have to admit, it's one aspect of many in the movie that I found depressingly bleak and just plain hard to watch at times. I don't know, in the end I found the movie a bit of a pretentious mess, and I just could not believe how inappropriately, self-indulgently dark it was given the fairy-tale like subject matter. Definitely a pretty big misfire, in my opinion.
My Grade: C
- Alright, next up: my picks for the BEST OF '08!
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