Gone Baby Gone (Miramax)
In this gripping, self-assured crime drama, Ben Affleck flexes
directorial muscles that nobody knew he had (except maybe Mama Affleck). Set largely in the
working-class neighborhoods of South Boston, it begins with the
disappearance of a four-year-old girl from her Dorchester home and ends
in deeply ambivalent territory. Frustrated by law-enforcement efforts,
the girl’s aunt and uncle hire a local husband-and-wife
private-investigation team (Casey Affleck and Michelle Monaghan) to
pound the pavement for leads. Complicating matters, the girl’s mother
(Amy Ryan, teriff) is a drug addict with unpleasant entanglements of her own.
It takes a while to gel, but eventually works up a tension and
complexity that are underscored by a taut, troubled lead performance
from the director’s younger brother Casey. There’s something going on behind
that character’s eyes that’s hard to figure out, even after the film’s
richly suggestive final scene. It’s not a perfect movie, but there’s a
depth and urgency, not to mention a flotilla of generally expert
actors, that carry it over the rough spots. The elder Affleck, who doubled as
co-screenwriter, avoids pretension or high seriousness — this is highly
entertaining, pulpy stuff. But it generates a provocative atmosphere of
moral ambiguity that lingers for days. It’s a modest film, but an
excellent one. (A version of this review originally appeared in the White Plains Times.)
Buy it from Amazon.com: Gone Baby Gone
or Gone Baby Gone [Blu-ray]
We Own the Night (Sony)
With the heart of Greek tragedy and the soul of film noir, We Own the Night takes an intractable situation as its premise and then spends two hours
showing us bad things happening. Joaquin Phoenix is the devil-may-care
Bobby Green, who manages a successful-but-shady Brooklyn nightclub —
and just happens to have a brother (Mark Wahlberg) and father (Robert
Duvall) in high-profile jobs with the NYPD. They could use Bobby’s help
infiltrating the Russian mob, but his loyalties are elsewhere. Once
Bobby wakes up to the idea that he must choose sides, We Own the Night
so vividly depicts his various betrayals of trust that the sentiment
expressed in the film’s final scene feels somehow both monstrous and
hilarious. Whether you enjoy this will depend in part on how much you
mind a script that spells every little nuance of the story out in
clumsy lines of dialogue — it’s writer/director James Gray’s worst
impulse. But Gray has an appealingly old-fashioned approach to
filmmaking and, of course, a terrific cast. (Phoenix, in particular,
has never been better.) What’s more, he devises two show-stopping
action scenes that propel the film’s second half — including a stylish,
heart-pounding car chase in the rain. Good stuff. (This review originally appeared in the White Plains Times.)
Buy it from Amazon.com: We Own the Night
, We Own the Night [Blu-ray]
or We Own the Night [UMD for PSP]
Lubitsch Musicals (Eclipse)
If you want the full-on Lubitsch DVD experience, make sure you buy a copy of Criterion’s feature-rich releases of Trouble in Paradise and Heaven Can Wait. If you want more — or if you’d prefer to start with a sampler — pick up this boxed set. The price is certainly right. I found this quote, from biographer Scott Eyman, in Lubitsch’s Wikipedia entry. It’s pretty good, save the gratuitously self-congratulatory knock on the “unsophisticated eye”:
With few exceptions Lubitsch’s movies take place neither in Europe nor
America but in Lubitschland, a place of metaphor, benign grace, rueful
wisdom… What came to preoccupy this anomalous artist was the comedy
of manners and the society in which it transpired, a world of delicate
sangfroid, where a breach of sexual or social propriety and the
appropriate response are ritualized, but in unexpected ways, where the
basest things are discussed in elegant whispers; of the rapier, never
the broadsword… To the unsophisticated eye, Lubitsch’s work can
appear dated, simply because his characters belong to a world of formal
sexual protocol. But his approach to film, to comedy, and to life was
not so much ahead of its time as it was singular, and totally out of
any time.
Buy it from Amazon.com: Eclipse Series 8 - Lubitsch Musicals (The Love Parade / The Smiling Lieutenant / One Hour with You / Monte Carlo) (Criterion Collection)
The Royal Tramp Collection (Dragon Dynasty)
It’s not that I think Stephen Chow can do no wrong. But based on what I’ve seen so far — God of Cookery, Shaolin Soccer, Kung Fu Hustle — I’ll watch him try just about anything, including the new science-fiction comedy CJ7. The two R-rated action flicks from 1992 collected here — written and co-directed by the prolific Jing Wong — represent old-school Chow; I haven’t seen them yet, but they may not be as polished, idiosyncratic and/or hilarious as his recent, self-directed work. That’s OK; I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt.
Buy it from Amazon.com: The Royal Tramp Collection
No Reservations (Warner)
Oh, I have plenty of ’em.
Buy it from Amazon.com: No Reservations
or No Reservations [Blu-ray]