THREE MOVIE REVIEWS

1) LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA

LETTERS is Eastwood at his (paradoxically) most restrained and least subtle. For The Man With No Name But Two Oscars, that is saying an awful lot – but his latest progression of movies is following that trend: more restrained in terms of form and stylistics, and less subtle in terms of performance and nuance.

Still, LETTERS is a really good film, kind of brave at times in its insistence that the fanaticism of the Japanese was not their raison-de-etre. That the Japanese fit so neatly into the typically stoic-passionate vision quest of Eastwood’s films is a testament either to the Japanese or the filmmakers’ ability to make them something other than noble savages, Eastern voodoo archetypes, or kamikaze nutjobs.

Where the film lacks subtlety are in the typical scenes where serious looking members of the proletariat tell us the theme of the movie. There’s a very moving “We don’t know anything about the enemy” speech that is intended to be very moving. And, like PRIVATE RYAN, there’s an unnecessary framing device.

My take on Eastwood is this: He has made one masterpiece (UNFORGIVEN) and one awesome, archetypal, though mostly forgotten genre piece (HIGH PLAINS DRIFTER). His third best film is LETTERS. The rest of his catalog (and it’s expansive, because he makes a movie a year) is hit or miss: from

Wildly overrated: MYSTIC RIVER, MILLION DOLLAR BABY

Curious Misfires That Are A Classic Mismatch of Director and Material: BREEZY, MIDNIGHT IN THE GARDEN OF GOOD AND EVIL, WHITE HUNTER BLACK HEART

Wildly Underrated: A PERFECT WORLD, HIGH PLAINS DRIFTER, BRONCO BILLY

Solid, but mostly forgotten, certainly not iconic, but very entertaining genre pictures: SPACE COWBOYS, THE EIGER SANCTION, FIREFOX, THE GAUNTLET, HEARTBREAK RIDGE, TRUE CRIME, ABSOLUTE POWER

There are those who are quick to celebrate some kind of Eastwoodian Renaissance with MYSTIC RIVER, and those people were quick to dismiss him after BLOOD WORK (you didn’t see it; I’m not surprised – it was his least seen movie since THE ROOKIE). But now Eastwood, Scorsese, and Speilberg have been entered in some kind of high-falutin’ “Best Director in the World” contest. I think the person who will be hurt most by this is Eastwood, who has the capability to move toward the arty and the overly serious as opposed to the genre pieces that generally better reflect his gifts and charms. (I'm still waiting to see FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS)

2) SCIENCE OF SLEEP

I complained that the otherwise stellar ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND was not funny where it should have been. Music Video wunderkind Michel Gondry directed it with the kind of solemnity usually reserved for Hallmark movies. Gondry’s gifts, I decided, were a quirky visual flourish that doesn’t draw attention to itself (whereas everything about SUNSHINE was designed to draw attention to its elaborate artificiality). But with SCIENCE OF SLEEP, he surprised me with his humor.

The film is endlessly inventive and funny. It has both a daffy exuberance and hipster’s lazy attitude towards finishing things. Gondry’s brilliant decision is in his refusal to distinguish between reality and dreams, and it allows the movie to fit outside and inside both worlds.

Gael Garcia Bernal pisses me off. He is obviously the kind of guy who can walk into any bar where I happen to be, and pick up the girl that I have deemed the best looking and the coolest. More than any actor under forty, the camera is in love with him, and he is comfortable in front of it. Charlotte Gainsbourg is the filmic equivalent of the “girl that I have deemed the best looking and the coolest.” She ranks a close second to Zooey Deschanel on my working list of “girls who wear sweaters too big for them that I dream about ”

Chuck Klosterman has a hypothetical situation involving a wizard that makes you that much better looking for every dollar you give him. This hypo is similar to my thoughts about the Velvet Underground and movies. If a movie includes a VU song, I will like it that much better. Needless to say, SCIENCE does.

3) BABEL

BABEL is a bleak, practically hopeless meditation on people who uncomfortable with the place they are. Like 21 GRAMS, it works on three levels: in this case, global, economic, and personal. Almost Nobody in BABEL really likes themselves all that much, and yet the film finds the weirdest sort of compassion for every one of them.

I wish I credit this to Alejandro Innaritu for some reason other than “artistry,” but I cannot. Innaritu is a plain old-fashioned cliché: an artist. He has no truck for the type of cohesive realism that modern directors feel hamstrung by and allow to hamper their resources for artistic and political expression. That said, BABEL doesn’t feel overly political – the implications are all the viewers. No one comments on the surroundings, and this has caused many to say it is uneven. I think it’s the reason for its greatness.

The performances are amazing, and one of the things Oscar got right was in nominating the Mexican and Japanese actresses whose names I can’t remember.

If Babel has a flaw, it’s that oft-mentioned lack of causality. But if you can escape that, and you should, it is one of the best films of the year.

BTW, If I were going to update my top ten list after my recent viewing experiences, it would look something like this (withe everything else dropping to honorable mention):

1) BRICK 2) CHILDREN OF MEN 3) UNITED 93 4) THE DEPARTED 5) BABEL 6) THE FOUNTAIN 7) MIAMI VICE 8) NEW YORK DOLL 9) TALLADEGA NIGHTS 10) LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA