Movie Review: Third Person

Third Person
Directed by: Paul Haggis.
Written by: Paul Haggis.
Starring: Liam Neeson (Michael), Olivia Wilde (Anna), Mila Kunis (Julia), Adrien Brody (Scott), Moran Atias (Monika), James Franco (Rick), Maria Bello (Theresa), Kim Basinger (Elaine), Loan Chabanol (Sam), Oliver Crouch (Jesse), Vinicio Marchioni (Carlo).

The men in Paul Haggis’ Third Person are all stoic, depressed assholes who think they are trying to help the women in their lives, but are is reality hurting them even more. Those women are all manic, depressed and sometime out and out crazy. Children factor into their stories, but mainly as something to be ignored, forgotten or abused, even while their parents claim often that they love them. Like Crash, Third Person tells a series of interlocking stories – this time, they aren’t connected by some overreaching subject matter – like race – but share a more tenuous connection – one that Haggis doesn’t reveal until the final scenes in this overlong (2 hour, 15 minute) movie – but smart viewers will probably predict from the early stages in the film. Haggis hides the information – but drops some not so subtle hints along the way letting us know that all is not quite right here.

In Paris, Pulitzer Prize winning author Michael (Liam Neeson) is holed up in a hotel room writing his latest opus. He has just left his wife, Elaine (Kim Basinger) from his much younger mistress, Anna (Olivia Wilde) – who fancies herself a writer as well, although Michael describes both her work and her in general as “beautiful but cold”. The two basically spend their time saying horrible things to each, and then either ignoring each other or fucking. In Rome, fashion counterfeiter Scott (Adrien Brody) goes into Café Americano, feeling homesick, who meets a beautiful Roma woman, Monika (Moran Atias), who leaves her bag behind – and when she returns for it, says that 5,000 Euros are missing? She needs that money to pay to get her 8 year old daughter out of the hands of some human traffickers – who will other side start to pimp her out. Scott, of course, agrees to help – even if he suspects it all may be a scam. And in New York, Julia (Mila Kunis), a former actress, who gave up her career to have a child, is now no longer even allowed to she her son – some allegations of abuse were made, and while she insists she is innocent, her rich and famous painter ex-husband Rick (James Franco – of course) now has full custody. Julia is trying to get it back with the help of her lawyer Theresa (Mario Bello) – but keeps screwing it all up.

Haggis’ Oscar winning Crash was not a model of subtlety in filmmaking, but it is nowhere near as bad as many seem to think it is (there is a lot of revisionist history going on when it comes to Crash – no it shouldn’t have won, or even been nominated, for a Best Picture Oscar – but it’s still a decent enough film). His two films since, In the Valley of Elah (2007) and The Next Three Days (2010), were not critical or commercial hits, but were decent enough for what they were – which was nothing like Crash. It makes a certain degree of sense that he would return to a narrative whose structure resembles his greatest success. But without an overriding issue to connect the tissue, we spend much of the time wondering what these three stories have to do with each other, even while noticing that the various men and women in each of the stories have way too much in common for it to be mere coincidence – and there are some instances that are completely impossible to explain in any logical sense, that are are deliberately (and ham fistedly) placed in by Haggis.

To be fair to the film, the cast really does give it their all – with the women, Wilde, Kunis and Atias impressing the most. The film also acts as a reminder than Liam Neeson can do more than simply kick dark skinned terrorists asses if he feels like it, and also reminds us why Brody once won an Oscar – his performance anchors hat is the movies most ludicrous storyline. Franco spends pretty much his entire role stirring paint, until the last half hour when he finally has something to say. Pretty much wasted are Basinger, Bello and Loan Chabanol (who with her role here, and in John Turturro’s Fading Gigolo earlier, has been wasted twice in one year – and still makes me want to see what she can do in a better role).

There are many problems with Third Person – but the biggest has got to be its length. 135 minutes is certainly not too long for a movie – but it’s far too long for this movie. Each of the three storylines feel like they are dragged out to a ridiculous degree, and given how similar the characters (not the situations) are too each other, not only are the individual storylines repeating themselves throughout their narratives, the film is repeating itself between stories as well. Then the ending comes – and while I expected the ending from fairly early in the movie, I still didn’t quite believe that Haggis would go there – it’s such an amateurish ending – something a novice filmmaker would think profound, but someone who has been around from as long as Haggis has really should have known better. I didn’t like the first two hours of Third Person – but I downright hated the final 15 minutes.

The Films of Paul Thomas Anderson: The Master (2012)

The Master (2012)
Directed by: Paul Thomas Anderson.
Written by: Paul Thomas Anderson.
Starring: Joaquin Phoenix (Freddie Quell), Philip Seymour Hoffman (Lancaster Dodd), Amy Adams (Peggy Dodd), Jesse Plemons (Val Dodd), Ambyr Childers (Elizabeth Dodd), Rami Malek (Clark), Laura Dern (Helen Sullivan), Madisen Beaty (Doris Solstad), Amy Ferguson (Martha the Salesgirl), Christopher Evan Welch (John More).

There have been a lot of movies about the post WWII world of returning servicemen – from something like The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) which is about the trouble of adjusting to normal day-to-day life, and there have been many film noirs, about men not being able to leave the violence behind them, and getting sucked back into it. The Master is not quite like either of those films – and its starts with it’s with protagonist – Freddie Quell. When we first see him, he’s on a beach with his fellow servicemen partying – there is a lot of drinking, and sexual joking, but Freddie takes things farther than anyone else – miming sex with a woman that others have sculpted out of stand, before retreating – not to privacy, but off to the side, to masturbate. We next see him back aboard his boat – and as the end of the war is announced, he starts pouring his homemade drink concoction for everyone around him. After a stint at a VA hospital, not for any physical injury, but for a psychological one, he returns to America and gets a job working in a department store taking portraits. Even there, he cannot quite fit in – he hits on a salesgirl, then ignores her when he gets her alone (he actually falls asleep) – and gets himself fired by attacking a customer. He starts working as a migrant worker, at harvest time, and once again his weird drink concoctions get him into trouble. He runs away again – like he has done repeatedly throughout his life – and ends up on a boat. The boat is being skipped by Lancaster Dodd – who describes himself nuclear physicist and theoretical philosopher. They are going on a long trip – and the two men bond, somewhat. For Freddie, Lancaster is a man who seems supremely confident – who has all the answers, while Freddie has none. For Lancaster, Freddie is a fascinating enigma – a man who seems to be pure id, who does precisely what he wants whenever he wants to do it. Freddie is an animal – and he may be miserable – but he’s also kind of free.

Before The Master came out, there was a lot of press about it being the scientology movie – where Dodd was based on that churches controversial founder L. Ron Hubbard. That is true to a certain extent – the religion that Dodd has founded is clearly based on that church – but it’s much more than just a hit job on a cult. Anderson is a director who never really judges his characters – he allowed the sex and drugs in Boogie Nights to be fun, and the downfall is not really because of either of those things – and I don’t think he truly judges Dodd either. In an earlier scene when Dodd is being questioned by an outsider – which is one of only two times he loses his temper (he does it again late in the film, when a long-time supporter questions him) – Dodd actually has a point. The man is questioning him, but doesn’t really want Dodd to answer the questions – he just wants to attack Dodd, and point him out as a fraud. I   think the movie is clear that he is in fact a fraud – his own son at one point say “he’s making this up as he goes along. You don’t see that?” – but I don’t think Anderson really cares that Dodd is making it up. Like all religions, does it really matter if it’s true, as long as it helps?

Freddie is the one character who comes into Dodd’s orbit that Dodd cannot control, but he cannot dismiss. Everyone else bows down to Dodd, but Freddie doesn’t – he pushes back against Dodd, even as he tries to learn from him. Freddie is an ambiguous character – what precisely has happened to him. As played by Joaquin Phoenix, he is all right angles, strutting, sexuality and vulgarity. But he is searching for something, and for a while he thinks Dodd has what he’s looking for.

Dodd is a fascinating character in his own right. At first, I think he sees Freddie as a challenge – another “animal” that he wants to convert. In the several “processing” scenes, Dodd pushes the buttons on Freddie, tries to force him into something deeper than Freddie is willing, or perhaps capable, of going. He seems completely confident and in control – but as the movie goes along, it becomes clear that while he is the “master”, he isn’t fully in control. That would be his wife (Amy Adams), who controls Dodd as he controls everyone else. The one area she cannot control is Freddie – because Dodd will not let him go.

The Master is a fascinating, and an ambiguous film. I know some were frustrated with the film when it came out – Roger Ebert said that the film keep moving away from him, and every time he thought he had a grasp on it, he closed his hand on air. He initially gave the film a negative review, but then at the end of the year, he put the film on his list of runners-up for best of the year – with no explanation. That, oddly, makes sense to me. It is a film that sticks with you, that grows in your mind as you watch, re-watch it, and think about it. There are many ways you can take it – right up to the end of the movie; it seems to be suggesting new things to the audience.

It is also a great film on a technical level. Shot on 70MM film, this is one of the most distinctive visual films in recent years – the use of color is overwhelming. The unbreaking camera shots – that doesn’t quite move as much previous Anderson films. The film is really about the connection between the two main characters – who frustrated and fascinate each other. The two actors, Phoenix and Hoffman, are equally brilliant, but approach their roles in completely different ways – there scenes together are like watching two different acting styles coming together in a fascinating way. They are the two of the best performances in recent memory.

Like every other film Anderson has made, it is maturation from the previous film. If there was a problem with There Will Be Blood was that Paul Dano’s Eli Sunday was never a match for Daniel Day-Lewis’ Daniel Plainview – I think to a certain extent, that was by design, but it left the finale never in doubt. The final scene between the two characters in this movie is similar to the one in There Will Be Blood – but it doesn’t have the overtly violent bombast of There Will Be Blood, which was cathartic. There is no catharsis here – again by design – and that just makes the film even deeper, more fascinating and ambiguous. It is another masterpiece by Anderson.

Movie Review: The Case Against 8

The Case Against 8
Directed by: Ben Cotner & Ryan White.
Written by: Ben Cotner & Ryan White.

One of the bitter ironies of election night in 2008, is that while history was being made with Barack Obama’s election to the White House – something that would have been unthinkable, not all that long ago – was that while one historical prejudice was seemingly set aside (at least for one night), another prejudice was upheld. Proposition 8 in California was passed – which overturned its States’ Supreme Court ruling that allowed gay marriage to become legal – a decision that essentially annulled 18,000 marriages that had happened before it passed. A legal challenge was almost immediately launched on behalf of two couples – Jeffrey Zarrillo and Paul Katami and Kristin Perry and Sandra Stier. The two lawyers who represented the couples were surprising to many – Ted Olson and David Boies had already fought a famous Supreme Court Case – Bush v. Gore that settled the 2000 election – but on opposite sides. Boies taking the case made a lot of sense – a long time Democratic and progressive lawyer – but Olson shocked a lot of people. He was one of the most well-known Conservative lawyers in the country.

Ben Cotner and Ryan White’s The Case Against 8 sets out to tell the story of the long legal battle, which eventually made its way to the Supreme Court of America, where in a narrow 5-4 vote, Proposition 8 was overturned – essentially because the anti-marriage equality side could not prove they had standing in the case – that is, that they could not prove how they were injured or harmed by gay marriage.

The film follows the story, from the time the two lawyers take up the case right up until after the Supreme Court ruling. The filmmakers were obviously hurt by the fact that the court made a last minute decision to not allow cameras in the courtroom in the initial trial – the one where the couples themselves testified, as did the government experts – one of whom Boies seems to turn to his side right on the stand. It’s not nearly as dramatic to look at words on a page, while a disembodied voice reads it, as it would have been to see it happen live. But the filmmakers had little choice in that.

What they do very well is approach the material from two different viewpoints – when concentrating on Olson and Boies; the film is good at making the argument for marriage equality and the legal foundation for such recognition – essentially appealing to your mind. When it concentrates on the two couples, and their families, who fought hard and long, and who tell their stories, the movie is going directly for your heart – appealing to your emotions, which may not have any place in a courtroom, but is welcome in a documentary like this.

The movie doesn’t pretend to be fair or balanced – it doesn’t even detail the anti-marriage equality side of the argument – pretty much simply saying they don’t have one (which I agree with). It also makes the film less inflammatory than it otherwise may have been – it doesn’t shy away from showing the numerous protesters hold signs like “God Hates Fags” and other hateful garbage, but it doesn’t give them a platform to spout their hate speech either – not even for the purpose of mocking it. The title of the movie is, after all, The Case Against 8 – and that is what it shows. I don’t really have a problem with that.

The movie lacks suspense – obviously – since we all know how the case is going to turn out. But it’s an interesting documentary about how exactly they got to that Supreme Court case – one that affected not just the two couples in the film, but all gays and lesbians in California – and considering legal challenges across the country are using it as a basis to challenge the anti-marriage equality laws in their state – everyone in America. That change is a good thing – and this movie shows how America got that change.

The Best Films I Have Never Seen Before: Los Angeles Plays Itself (2003)

Los Angeles Plays Itself (2003)
Directed by: Thom Andersen.
Written by: Thom Andersen.
Narrated by: Encke King.

I have been hearing about Thom Andersen’s Los Angeles Plays Itself since it debuted on the festival circuit back in 2003. Unless you were lucky enough to see it then, it has pretty much been impossible to see ever since – yes, apparently it was on Youtube for years, but that isn’t the best way to experience any movie – especially a nearly 3 hour documentary about how the movies portray Andersen’s home city of Los Angeles. It took 11 years, but now the film is available on DVD – and Netflix – and it most likely took that long to get the rights clearances for all of the films shown in the movie. This is essentially 3 hours of movie clips, under narration written by Andersen, and read by Encke King, that challenges the viewer to see the films he is siting – mainly Los Angeles set crime films – in a new light. Andersen throws a lot of information at the audience during the runtime, and has a lot of controversial opinions littered through (he loves the original Gone in 60 Seconds, calling it a masterpiece, while he is not overly impressed with Chinatown or L.A. Confidential). You are not likely to agree with everything Andersen contends in the film – that isn’t necessary to make it a great movie. What he does do is challenge the audience to look a little deeper into the movies they see, and what they show us. Some will argue that he is looking too close here –that like the various commentators in Room 237, about Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, where they don’t see the forest for the trees. The difference is that Andersen isn’t looking for something that’s not there – he’s seeing things that are in plain sight that most people don’t notice.

Andersen has a lot of opinions about the way his beloved city has been portrayed in film. He doesn’t like it when the city’s name is shorten to L.A. – he finds it disrespectful to the city – and doesn’t like how the city is often portrayed as being so corrupt that there is no way to fight back – that the entire history of the city is built on vast conspiracy theories. This is where his rejection of L.A. Confidential or Chinatown comes into play – both films take a little bit truth to spin their wild conspiracy theories about the founding on the city, and how violent it is. He challenges the assertions made in both films – as well as films like Who Framed Roger Rabbit – and wishes films would be a little more truthful about Los Angeles.

He also has issues with the way the films play with geography – hating the way that a film as silly as Sylvester Stallone’s Cobra has a car chase that  goes from Venice Beach to the Los Angeles harbor in a matter of seconds, when in reality there are 30 miles apart from each other. He contends that “silly geography makes silly films”. I’m not quite sold on this assertion – Cobra is a silly film, but not because of the car chase. The original Gone in 60 Seconds, which Andersen loves, is also a silly film – even though it is scrupulously accurate in its depiction for the geography of the city. He’s on stronger ground on a film like Robert Aldrich’s Kiss Me Deadly (1955), which also is accurate to the layout of the city. That the film is grounded in reality, allows it to spin off more wildly into its conspiracy theories, while keeping the film believable. Or even a film like Robert Altman’s Short Cuts – a film I love, that Andersen clearly doesn’t, since while the film is supposedly set in different suburbs of the city, they all look the same – because Altman didn’t shoot in the different areas.

There are a lot of other points that Andersen makes in the film – the way he examines how the movies use different modern architecture is fascinating. It’s also fascinating to watch Andersen make connections to the movie industry itself, and the movies that they make. Andersen’s ultimate point, I think, is a good one. He says early in the film that while many people appreciate the dramatic qualities in documentary films, fewer appreciate the documentary qualities of dramatic movies. The movies that are shot in real locations around Los Angeles allow us a glimpse into the city’s past – a past that may not be viewable anywhere else.

As with any film like this, there are holes – or at the very least, some movies that are left out that I would have loved to see what Andersen thought of. While he delves into 1990s films like Michael Mann’s Heat (1995), he pretty much ignores the Los Angeles films of two natives who got their start in that decade – Quentin Tarantino (there is one, small clip of Jackie Brown) and Paul Thomas Anderson (who uses a variety of Los Angeles neighborhoods and people in Boogie Nights, Magnolia and Punch-Drunk Love, all made before Andersen made this film. I also would have loved to see what his take on more recent films – Michael Mann’s Collateral, Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive and Dan Gilroy’s Nightcrawler for example (that’s not a flaw in the movie in any way, just a curiosity).

Overall, Los Angeles Plays Itself is one of the best movies of its kind that I have ever seen. It’s fascinating, funny, controversial, contentious and brilliantly edited. I don’t agree with everything Andersen says in the movie – but then again, I’m not a native of Los Angeles – I’ve never even been there. I just know the city from the movies – and as Andersen contends, that I means I probably don’t know it at all.

The Films of Paul Thomas Anderson: There Will Be Blood (2007)

There Will Be Blood (2007)
Directed by: Paul Thomas Anderson.
Written by: Paul Thomas Anderson based on the novel by Upton Sinclair.
Starring: Daniel Day-Lewis (Daniel Plainview), Paul Dano (Paul Sunday / Eli Sunday), Dillon Freasier (HW), Ciarán Hinds (Fletcher), Sydney McCallister (Mary Sunday), David Willis (Abel Sunday), Kevin J. O'Connor (Henry), David Warshofsky (H.M. Tilford), Hans Howes (Bandy), Robert Hills (HW's Interpreter), Russell Harvard (Adult HW).

In many movies, a character like Daniel Plainview would be viewed as a hero – the personification of the American Dream. He comes from nothing – when we first see him, in a brilliant 15 minute opening sequence, where he doesn’t say a word (he does grunt), he is by himself in a mine trying to find silver – working by himself, non-stop until he finds what he’s looking for. Even after an accident, where he breaks his leg, he doesn’t give up. He simply drags himself to the claims office so he can ensure that the mine he found, is all his. The film then jumps forward a few years – now he has some more money, some more employees, and he is no longer mining for minerals – he’s searching for oil. They find a well, they dig in deep, there are more accidents – there are deaths – but he keeps on going. When one of his men is killed – leaving behind his infant son, Plainview takes him in and raises the child himself, as a single parent. We then jump ahead another 10 years, and Plainview is now clearly rich. He goes to places where there may be oil, and makes his pitch – using that same child as part of it. He wants people to see him as a family man, and therefore not just another greedy company. He is successful – he comes from nothing, and makes himself into a very rich man. That is what America is supposed to be about, right? If you work hard, you can make yourself into a success.

But Plainview is not the hero of Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood. He is a man driven almost purely by greed – and his hatred for other people. It’s not enough for Plainview to succeed, he needs to see other people fail. He is most comfortable when he is by himself, or with one of the few people he actually trusts (there are only two in the film he does, both of whom “betray” him in one way or another).

The film takes place over  30 year period, from the late 1800s, right up to the dawn of the Great Depression. The film is an indictment of the corruption inherent in capitalism – one of the pillars that America was founded upon – and when it introduces another character, Eli Sunday (Paul Dano), a soft spoken preacher who becomes fire and brimstone while preaching (while being as greedy as Plainview in private) and sees that as equally corrupt as capitalism – while at the same time being no match for it.

This was the most ambitious film that Anderson had made up to this point in his career. He casts the brilliant Daniel Day-Lewis as Plainview, and in an Oscar winning performance, Day-Lewis makes Plainview into one of cinemas most memorable characters – a petty, greedy man who wields his power like a hammer. When Eli challenges Plainview, it would have been easier for Plainview to simply let Eli have his little victories – but Plainview cannot bring himself to do that. He picks a useless war with him. Eli is no threat to Plainview – not a real one anyway – but it doesn’t matter. Plainview does not want anyone else to have a piece of what he has.

I do think that Plainview legitimately loves two characters in the movie – at least at one point. He does love his adopted son H.W., who literally becomes a silent witness to Plainview’s greed throughout the course of the movie, and knows him better than he knows himself. Yes, he uses H.W. as a prop – as a means to an end to make money – but there is legitimate love there, until H.W. “betrays” Plainview, through no fault of his own. Plainview also loves his long lost brother Henry (Kevin J. O’Connor), who shows up with a story, and who Plainview immediately takes into his confidence – hoping that he has found a kindred spirit (they do, after all, share the same blood). The scene by the fire, where Daniel confides in Henry exactly what he believes, and how he sees everyone else, is brilliant in misanthropy, and the only real time Plainview lays it bare. Of course, Henry will also “betray” Plainview – leaving him a lonely, bitter, violent man – which sets up the finale scene, where even though Plainview has won, he feels the need to go even farther.

There Will Be Blood has earned some comparisons to Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane – widely considered the best film ever made, and another film about the American Dream become a nightmare. But there is a difference between the two films – and its key. While Charles Foster Kane came from nothing, he inherits his fortune, that he uses and abuses. Daniel Plainview is a self-made man – the pure embodiment of what America is supposed to be – and his fall is even farther the Kane`s. This is a dark vision of America`s past – and it`s one that hasn’t much changed. It is also brilliantly well made by Anderson – with great cinematography by Robert Elswit (who won an Oscar), which portrays the oil fields as hell – the numerous fires in the film are meant to evoke this, and are brilliantly photographed as anything since Terrence Malick’s similar scenes at the climax of Days of Heaven. Jonny Greenwood’s unique score helps in this regard as well – an industrial sound that is somehow both modern, and yet appropriate for a period piece.

There Will Be Blood is a tough film – it’s a dark film from the start, and one that gets darker as it goes long, ending in bombast and blood – which is probably the only way it could end. It is a big film – Anderson does nothing halfway, and neither does Day-Lewis, who has never been better than he is – his performance gets “bigger” as it moves along, but it never feels phony. The film ends where it must. It is one of the best films ever made.

The Films of Paul Thomas Anderson: Punch-Drunk Love (2002)

Punch-Drunk Love (2002)
Directed by: Paul Thomas Anderson.
Written by: Paul Thomas Anderson.
Starring: Adam Sandler (Barry Egan), Emily Watson (Lena Leonard), Philip Seymour Hoffman (Dean Trumbell), Luis Guzmán (Lance), Mary Lynn Rajskub (Elizabeth), Lisa Spector (Susan), Nicole Gelbard (Nicole), Mia Weinberg (Gilda), Karen Hermelin (Anna), Robert Smigel (Walter the Dentist), David H. Stevens (David), Nathan Stevens (Nate), Jimmy Stevens (Jim).

I remember when I heard that Paul Thomas Anderson, who was my favorite young director at the time, was going to follow-up his twin masterpieces Boogie Nights and Magnolia with an Adam Sandler comedy, I was stunned. I was a young cinephile (some would say movie snob), who pretty much hated all of Sandler’s movies – finding an amusing moment here and there in Happy Gilmore and The Wedding Singer, but mainly thinking his films were awful. But in interviews, Anderson made it clear he was a Sandler fan – so, I was a little bit worried. Was Anderson really going to make a movie like The Waterboy. Why the hell would he want to do that.

I should have known better than to doubt Anderson. With Punch-Drunk Love he did something that at the time I would have thought impossible – and even 12 years later is something no other director has been able to do anywhere near as effectively as he did (some of this may well be because Sandler seems content with doing one lazy comedy after another, and only challenging himself once every five or six years or so). He has made a movie that took the typical Sandler protagonist – socially awkward, prone to fits of violent rage, and doesn’t see it as charming or funny like most Sandler movies do – but sees as dysfunctional. Sandler still falls in love in the movie – as he almost always did at the time – but this time it’s not with a woman who is a portrait of female perfection – but a woman who is at least a little fucked up as well (she isn’t given as much depth as Sandler – but enough to know something is not quite right there). He also structured the movie with a strange, almost dreamlike quality – with his bold use of color, and near constant use of Jon Brion’s ever strange music. Anderson did something I didn’t was possible – he made an Adam Sandler movie, that was still faithful to Sandler’s persona, and turned it into a masterpiece.

In the film, Sandler plays Barry Egan who works in an Industrial park in Los Angeles. He has his own business – selling novelty plungers, and other items – which is slowly building. He has also happened upon a loophole in a new corporate giveaway – one that will allow him to rake up tons of air miles, without spending all that much money. What it does require him to do though is buy a lot of pudding. Early in the film, we see him with his family – the lone boy in a family that has seven daughters –all of whom are loud, and domineering, and mock Barry mercilessly. He is desperately lonely, and awkward. He calls a phone sex line to have someone to talk to – and then discovers that they aren’t just satisfied with taking his money when he calls, but want to scam him out of much more.

There is also a romantic subplot – as he meets Lena Leonard (Emily Watson), a friend of one of his sisters, who finds Barry fascinating. Their relationship slowly builds, even though Barry’s awkwardness and violent tendencies (not towards her, his anger is direct inward until he snaps and destroys things). There is a scene late in the film between these two that is both touching, and creepy, as the pair talk about what they want to do to each other – which becomes a series of violent things about mashing each other faces.

From the opening scene in the movie, Anderson establishes a strange, dreamlike quality to the movie. In that first scene, a cab pulls up in front of Barry’s work, and without a world, drops off what looks to be a small piano (actually a harmonium) without a word. It’s just another of those things that happens – like the frogs in Magnolia. Anderson has several interludes throughout the movie – where strange, psychedelic colors take over the screen – that like the rest of the movie is alternately soothing, and somewhat creepy. The escalating, surreal confrontations between Barry and the phone sex operator – brilliantly played by Philip Seymour Hoffman – take on the tone of a nightmare.

Punch-Drunk Love is inarguably the strangest of Anderson’s films. It has a tone that veers between comedy, violence, romantic fever dreams, and a nightmare. It’s a film that could have gone horribly wrong – some think it did – but just like Magnolia, where a lesser director would have made a horrible movie, Anderson keeps it all under control. We go from scenes of Sandler doing a Chaplin-esque soft-shoe in a supermarket, to him violently beating the phone sex operator’s goons, to dreamy romance with Lena, and back again. It is a testament to Sandler that he saw this as an opportunity to do something different – and fully seized it, taking what could have been another of his lovable psychos, and making him more lonely, awkward, and somewhat pathetic. And Watson gives a great performance as Lena –a difficult thing to do, since the movie isn’t as interested in her as it in in Sandler. But she makes Lena more believably awkward, with only hints of darkness. Often you wonder why the women in Sandler films would fall for the psycho on the other side – but here, it makes sense.

The film is odd, but it is also endlessly watchable. I`ve seen it many times, and it never ceases to lull me under its spell. I do wonder what people who have never seen a Sandler film would make of it – you almost have to know his screen persona to know how great what Anderson, and Sandler himself, have done here. It is an odd film – but another great one from Anderson.

Movie Review: Citizenfour

Citizenfour
Directed by: Laura Poitras.

No matter what you think of Edward Snowden – I would encourage you to see Citizenfour, and do so with an open mind. This is a documentary, made my filmmaker Laura Poitras, as a paranoid thriller – in which we witness it subject as he is making history – meeting with the director and journalist Glen Greenwald from The Guardian over the course of a week in a hotel room in Hong Kong. During the course of this one week, Snowden will give Greenwald, and his colleague, all the top secret information that he stole from his job working for the NSA – information that essentially proves that the government is collecting data from pretty much everyone. Snowden worked for Booze Allen, but was loaned out to the NSA for years, and finally decided to take a moral stand for what he believes in, and got all the information to reporters that he trusted – reporters who would have access to everything Snowden took, but would be free to publish whatever they want. Poitras was contacted through secret, encrypted e-mails from Snowden – who picked her because of her previous work (two feature documentaries about the Post 9/11 World, and her work with another former NSA employee – William Binney, who explains the ins and outs of what exactly happened. Citizenfour doesn’t pretend to me a fair and balanced documentary – it is pro-Snowden all the way, and doesn’t hide that fact – Poitras even seems to be protective of Snowden.

We know the information that Snowden leaked out a year ago now – it basically showed that the NSA had the capability to collect not just “metadata” – that is information like who is talking to who – but the ability to intercept content as well – that is precisely what is written to others in e-mails, or said over the phone. We also know well what happened to Snowden after the stories came out – he didn’t try to hide his identity, which he knew would be futile, but instead gave an interview to Poitras, who gave it to the news networks, where he came forward as the leak. He then fled Hong Kong, and ended up in no man’s land in an airport in Russia, after American revoked his passport. He has now been granted residency there and lives there in an undisclosed location.

Citizenfour is fascinating as it shows this history as it happens. Much of the movie is just Poitras and her camera, Snowden and Greenwald in the hotel room, as Snowden explains the information he is revealing, his motivation for revealing it, and his desire to not try to hide. It is tempting to see Snowden as an idealist – and to some he is a hero for revealing what he did. That is also clearly how Poitras sees him – she never really pushes Snowden on any of his answers, but simply shows Snowden how he wants to be seen. I found myself questioning his motivations a little bit more than Poitras did – there is certainly a degree of self-aggrandizement to him that goes unquestioned. I’m also not ready to just call Snowden a hero, like some have. Yes, the information he revealed was disturbing in the extreme – and has led to a necessary debate about what the government should be allowed to do and monitor, especially without a court order. But do we really want individual employees of the NSA, or CIA or FBI, etc., deciding what information should be revealed to the public, and what information should be considered top secret? There needs to be a balance between what the government can monitor and civil liberties to be sure – but if everyone did what Snowden did, then the entire intelligence gathering industry by the government would fall apart. Is that what we want?

Citizenfour doesn’t really address those questions – at least not very deeply. But they are definitely in the movie just the same – and will likely inspire heated debate between viewers after the film. But there is still value in showing Snowden in the way he wants to be seen – and Greenwald how he wants to be seen as well.

Besides, that is just one element of Citizenfour, which Poitras edits like a political thriller – more than one person evokes the name John LeCarre in the film – and at times, this certainly does feel like a real life spy movie. Poitras uses her editing, her shots of various chats between the various players involved, and the great music by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross to paint a truly disturbing, terrifying, real world paranoid thriller. It almost plays alike a dystopian fantasy at times – while Snowden certainly references Obama, and Bush, as well as others as the “villains” in the movie – the reality is that villain is really some sort of huge, multinational conglomerate of government agencies and giant corporations – a nameless, faceless entity of enormous size. Some of Snowden’s precautions seem to be taking paranoia to an extreme degree – the way he unplugs his hotel phone, because he’s worried it is being used a live mic (by who, he never says), the way he jumps at a fire alarm testing, or how he covers himself with a towel while entering in some information on a computer – although the only people in the room are the ones he is revealing the information to in the first place. But hell, Snowden had good reason to be paranoid – and according to Poitras, so do the rest of us.

 
Citizenfour is a fascinating, disturbing documentary. I certainly don’t agree with all of the arguments the film makes – but then again, I don’t need to agree with a documentary to think it’s worthwhile to see. Citizenfour is a must-see documentary for everyone. No matter what you think of Snowden – whether you think he’s a hero or a villain – you may well find your view of him challenged throughout the film – and that alone makes this one of the year’s best documentaries.