The Continuing Saga
by Les Phillips
40 Days and 40 Nights (Michael Lehmann). Josh Hartnett gives up sex for Lent. This is a teenage movie for twenty-somethings who haven't outgrown high school. Its characters are supposedly skilled young professionals who behave as though their workplace is still high school. Several critics reacted against the way Hartnett's supposed friends taunt him, gang up on him, send people to try to seduce him, bet money on his inability to stay celibate. They called this behavior cruel. It probably is cruel, but mostly it's just really dumb.

I don't understand a single thing about Josh Hartnett's career. It's not that he's worthless. It's that he's mostly assigned to play an impressively sexy boytoy, when other people do that much better. He has a modest talent for ironic underplaying. 40 Days and 40 Nights expects us to believe that Hartnett is some kind of sex addict, which is why we're supposed to be rolling in the aisles with his friends about his attempts at abstinence. To me he seemed rather sweet, dim, and shy. He probably has talent for comedy, but not this kind. Somebody like Patrick Dempsey would have been perfectly appropriate. I hope the dumb teenage movie isn't going to keep growing up through an older and older demographic, but I fear the worst.

The Curse of the Jade Scorpion (Woody Allen). Stanley Kauffmann has said for nearly twenty years that Woody Allen should stop acting in his own films. I've been saying it for about ten years. Woody is past sixty-five now, and nearly looks it, and romantic banter with actresses less than half his age is painful to behold. Helen Hunt has her audience, but I'm not really one of them, and she's seriously miscast here, playing a a hard-driving professional woman that Rosalind Russell might have done really well. There is occasional chemistry between Allen and Hunt, but more often not. And the Allen schtick and mannerisms, once endearing, are now almost unwatchable.

Who is Charlize Theron, where did she come from, and what does she want? She can't act. She's indistinguishable from a bunch of other model-actress-whatevers who can't act. One recent Allen film had several Charlize Theronoids in it, and it was simply confusing; I literally couldn't tell them apart.

Is this film worth any attention? Yes. I loved the plot, a bit of a whodunit with an exotic touch. Allen is a major director, with real craft. The production values are first-rate. The dialogue is not nearly as funny as it wants to be, but there are occasional zingers. The music is superb, as always. Woody Allen's supporting casts used to feature people like Michael Caine, Judy Davis, Zoe Caldwell, Tracey Ullmann, Alan Alda, Martin Landau, Gene Wilder, Edward Norton, and (especially) Dianne Wiest. Now we get Charlize Theron (more than once). I have seen every single one of his twenty-odd films; I'm really a great Allen loyalist. But despite occasional glimmers in Small Time Crooks, I'm beginning to think he's reached the end of the line.

Murder By Numbers (Barbet Schroeder). This movie features an abundance of suspense movie conventions - some would call them clichés. Neurotic police detective (Sandra Bullock) working out some kind of personal trauma/difficulty through her job. Bullock has to fight a recalcitrant DA and police chief who don't understand how things ought to be done, have to be done. Perhaps most familiar: the engine for the plot is yet another pair of Leopold & Loeb genius boys, who plan a killing just because they can, who read Nietzsche and have sexual tension between them (and between them and Bullock) - see Compulsion, Rope, Swoon, etc.

Some of these commonplaces (and there are others) are quite familiar. But they work here, because of the performances. Bullock takes her part about three levels above what's written for her. There are still stretches, particularly at the end, where it's almost impossible for her to be convincing, but in other places she projects a complicated sensuality, anger, despair warring with toughness. It's very good work. The young male actors, Ryan Gosling and Michael Pitt, are also excellent - the former sneery and bratty, the latter brooding and withdrawn, both giving their parts more depth and richness than I expected.

I haven't seen too many of Barbet Schroeder's pictures, but I loved Reversal of Fortune, a very different crime movie. The characters and atmosphere here are relatively low-key, but Schroeder doesn't find a way to make things eerie or mysterious or atmospheric, and so there are stretches that just seem enervated. One problem is Ben Chaplin, who portrays Bullock's partner as an utter dishrag (ten years ago he played very bland boytoys, but the clock is ticking...)

The film ends, and then there's another ending after it which strains credibility. I suspect it was the sixth revision, dictated and conceived by a committee of bankers. And the title makes no sense that I can discern. Still, it's very much worth seeing for those three performances.

Insomnia (Christopher Nolan). Once again we have the detective film commonplaces. Experienced cynical cop with a past, junior cop who's learning. (Before writing this I had to remind myself that the lead detective is played by Al Pacino, not Sandra Bullock.)

The picture is set in northern Alaska in summer; the sun never goes down. Pacino, a little grizzly and on-edge to begin with, gets more and more worn out day by day, because he simply can't make his room dark enough for sleep. He wears and tires masterfully. Bless Pacino for not being afraid to look old and in the way. But all his youthful fire is still there - just seasoned, modulated, tempered, but quite evident, even, or perhaps especially, when he's dead cold exhausted.

A scene where detectives are pursuing a killer in fog is beautifully done - compositionally lovely, suspenseful, and well choreographed..

Robin Williams plays a very bad guy. The performance is inventive, not cute, not vulgar, a real achievement, I think. Hilary Swank may become the next Louise Fletcher, Oscar-wise. Nice little Jonathan Jackson plays a stupid, evil, completely seductive white trash teenaged stud. He has very little screen time, and makes the most of it. I suggest he be cast in a remake of The Virgin Suicides, in the Josh Hartnett role, filming to start immediately.

©2002 Les Phillips
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