Whiteout: (2009. dir: Dominic Sena) It was a good idea. The personnel on a base in Antarctica are about to clear out for the winter when a body is found, and suddenly there's a murderer to be caught in the small margin before the first bad storm hits. The script, alas, is for the most part halt and lame. It's not a complete waste of space because the acting is so good: Kate Beckinsale, Tom Skerritt, Alex O'Loughlin and Columbus Short pull it up by its bootstraps into a watchable piece, but you'll be half an hour ahead of these slow-poke characters in solving the various bends of the mystery, and the climactic fight scene, fought in a blinding snowstorm, is ridiculously unsatisfying to watch. It's a pretty movie, though, with Aurora Australis and miles of glacial wasteland, not to mention both Beckinsale and O'Loughlin stripping down to their skivvies in gratuitous displays of fleshly pulchritude. One of my favorite things about it is that there are flirtations and attractions, but the usually de rigeur love story fails to manifest, which means that Beckinsale's character is allowed to be a strong, gorgeous woman and still stand alone. Bravo for that.
the Pumpkin Eater: (1964. dir: Jack Clayton) The bad thing about a Harold Pinter script, especially in those early days, is the length of time two people, usually husband and wife, spend avoiding one another's questions. It makes me long for a Lillian Hellman play, in which everyone says exactly what they mean all the time, but with no less toxin, acid and vitriol. The GREAT thing, however, about the old Pinter scripts is that random character who will show up in a single scene with a single monologue and steal the show. There's a beauty in this one, a sly, brutal speech delivered in a beauty parlor to -- or, rather, AT -- Anne Bancroft while she's trapped beneath a hair-dryer. Pinter also likes to give us a boorish brute who repeats a single, strange speech over and over (see Christopher Walken in the Comfort of Strangers and his obsession with his father's moustache): in this, it's the unredoubtable James Mason, having a great deal of vicious fun playing a weak, cuckolded bully. One of the great shots of the era has to be the crooked, extreme close-up of his face, or, rather, one eye and his snarling mouth, as he pours the acrimonious venom into our heroine's ear that he hopes will destroy her marriage.
It's a slow film. We spend a lot of time following Bancroft as she walks around in a fog of depression, revisiting the decisions which have led into her current fugue state. The intelligence of her acting makes it worth the effort. It feels a little outdated: these days it's hard to imagine a liberal, upper-middle-class, bohemian woman who's bourne seven children to three husbands, and the abortion issue, which at the time must have been shocking, inevitably feels overly-dramatic in a time when a generation of adults have grown up knowing it's a legal option. In any case, there are always the eternal problems as well (adultery, for instance, and keeping the romance in a house full of kids). These are unreservedly addressed by Pinter, a man who doesn't flinch from the squalid side of domestic bliss, and the ending has a resonance of truth to it. Family is, first and foremost and even when it seems like nothing else, a grounding influence.
Iron Man 2: (2010. dir: Jon Favreau) The joy of the first Iron Man movie was in spending time with Robert Downey Jr, an actor of such massive talent that he can speak a line which is simultaneously hilariously funny and achingly poignant, make it sound completely improvised, and do that over and over for an entire film. There are exactly two compelling characters in this sequel: the hero (Downey) and the villain (Mickey Rourke's full-blown, bigger-than-life, Russkie-talking bad-ass who we really want to get to know better and don't get the chance). Every other character in it is nothing but clutter. Strip them away, along with the subplots, the girl issues, the superhero issues, the government issues, strip it all down to just these two fellows... THEN you're talking some big possibilities for a fine action film. (And leave in the robot assistants. Although the one from the last movie was funnier.)
It's a nice ensemble that Favreau has assembled, and with one notable exception the fault for the yawner characters doesn't lie with the actors. The exception, horrifyingly, is Sam Rockwell, who seems to have stumbled past his expiration date as far as being funny is concerned and, like a teen idol doing revival shows in his fifties, become a mockery of his previous, genuinely funny self. I first was troubled by it in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, but because only Alan Rickman was consistently funny there, I figured it was a directorial problem and let it go. Now I'm worried. Rockwell still makes the grade with dramatic roles (see Moon, for God's sake, if you haven't already), but I was mortified at how badly acted AND painfully unfunny his Justin Hammer was.
If you decide to watch Iron Man 2 anyway, in all its forlorn dilapidation, make sure you stay through the credits, as there's a potentially exciting development which shows up late. Of course, that happened last time, too, and look what we got.
No comments:
Post a Comment