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Stick It

scott.sarah — Sat, 06 May 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Writer Jessica Bendinger (“Bring It On”) makes her directorial debut with “Stick It,” a spunky tweener story of a rebellious gymnast who reluctantly drags her sport into the 21st century. Haley Graham (Missy Peregrym) abandoned the sport after walking out on world championships and costing her team the gold medal. Now something of a delinquent, Haley is forced in a rather improbable plot device to go back into training or face juvenile detention.
Her new coach is Burt Vickerman (Jeff Bridges), and although Haley’s attitude and Vickerman’s slick but stern coaching style seem at first like oil and water, the two soon (predictably) develop a mutual respect for each other and form a father-daughterly bond that Haley desperately needs (she blames both her parents for different reasons for the dissolution of her family). Haley’s return to the gymnastics world is met with incredulity and resentment, especially by uptight and jealous Joanne (Vanessa Lengies), another of Vickerman’s gymnasts, and the teammates she left in the cold years before. Haley herself only agrees to compete for the purse money, and even then grudgingly—she decries the ridiculously arcane rules of gymnastics that require silly choreography and can cost an athlete a perfect score for her bra strap showing. When one judge goes too far, Haley organizes a rebellion, in which the gymnasts make up their own rules in protest, and for the first time in her life she is able to claim something as her own and feel proud of herself—she finally learns how to harness her rebellious energy and use it for something good.
Bendinger has become the go-to writer for updated versions of Disney-soft stories written in modern teen vernacular that can appeal to the more sophisticated tweeners of today. She obviously tries to accomplish the same feat with her directing, but her choppy music video style of directing hinders her story and fashions her as her own worst enemy. Sequences such as kaleidoscope visuals to Missy Elliott music make us feel we’re watching some crudely updated “Sesame Street” segment that should end with the resounding pronouncement of a number or letter. While such techniques might keep her target audience’s attention span from waning, they prohibit any real story or character development. In my experience, kids and teens respond just as strongly to a solid story and identifiable characters (see “Dirty Dancing” or “Harry Potter”) as their older counterparts do, and can see through gimmicks and bad writing just as easily, too.
Bendinger’s script might have been better served in the hands of a more capable director. Perhaps she was simply too close to her own material to realize that she lost sight of the guts of the story in the directorial process. Bendinger’s usual deft handling of syrupy sweet stories combined with sassy, modern young heroines falls apart here, and even Jeff Bridges’ pedigree can’t save it (what was he doing in this film, anyways? Seems more like Kurt Russell territory to me). Whatever the reason, “Stick It” does nothing of the kind—that elusive 10.0 remains elusive.

Marilyn Hotchkiss’ Ballroom Dancing and Charm School

scott.sarah — Tue, 18 Apr 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Based on his short 1990 film of the same title, writer-director Randall Miller’s “Marilyn Hotchkiss’ Ballroom Dancing and Charm School” is an overly-sentimental interweaving of several stories that all take place in or around a small suburban dance class. The stories range from a young boy named Steve experiencing love for the first time in the 1950s, to Frank, a widowed baker in the present who realizes that the dance class and a certain young woman in it may be the very thing he needs to lift him from his wallowing depression.
Frank meets Steve in the moments after a horrific car accident which leaves Steve barely clinging to life. Steve was on his way to meet Lisa Gobar, the girl from Marilyn Hotchkiss’ dance class over 40 years ago, because as children the two had pledged no matter what to meet each other at the dance school on the fifth day of the fifth month of the fifth year of the new millennium. Since Steve can no longer make his appointment, he sends Frank in his place, to seek out Lisa and tell her what happened. Frank has a perpetually put-upon demeanor, but his sympathy for the dying man wins him over, and he agrees.
Though Frank never finds Lisa at the dance school, he does find Meredith, and between her and the bewitching power of dance, Frank starts to snap out of the emptiness he’s inhabited ever since his wife’s suicide years before. His enthusiasm is so contagious that soon all the men from his support group become Marilyn Hotchkiss regulars, as well. Eventually all of these lonely, tortured men find solace in the class, but it is Frank’s recovery from a sad shell of a man that anchors the story.
The film boasts an impressive ensemble cast, including Robert Carlyle as the baker, Frank; Marisa Tomei as Meredith; Mary Steenburgen as the creepily poised dance instructor; Donnie Wahlberg in a particularly notable turn as a dance enthusiast with violent tendencies; and John Goodman as Steve, the grown up boy from the 1950s, who tells his story to Frank. Despite this pedigree, however, Miller’s syrupy sweet tone and apparent lack of narrative direction ultimately doom the movie to failure. Miller seems to be trying to weave his characters’ stories together in a manner somewhat akin to last year’s “Crash,” but falls short in engaging us. The constant flashbacks to the 1950s and the lack of substantial character development for Meredith in particular prevent us from getting involved with these characters, and the nicey-nice world that they seem to live in strays implausibly far from reality; when Frank is able in two minutes to convince the Donnie Wahlberg character to change his evil ways, Miller crosses the line from precious to patronizing. There are times throughout the movie where you feel it almost start to veer off into a darker terrain, but it consistently over-corrects and swerves back to the candy mountain (Frank’s eventual perplexing encounter with Lisa is a prime example). I have no problem with sweetness and sentimentality in movies in general, but “Marilyn Hotchkiss” never works hard enough to earn the “You complete me” warm fuzzies.

La Mujer de Mi Hermano

scott.sarah — Tue, 18 Apr 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Spanish-language film “La Mujer de Mi Hermano” is a study of one woman’s struggle to rejuvenate her life amidst a stale marriage. Broken-hearted over her an her husband’s inability to conceive a child, and depressed about her husband’s apparent lack of sexual interest in her, Zoe seeks solace from her wealthy but sterile lifestyle in the arms of her husband’s brother, Gonzalo. Gonzalo is everything that her husband, Ignacio, isn’t–where Ignacio is aloof and career-driven, Gonzalo is the quintessential romantic artist. He is committed to his paintings and seemingly nothing else, and his lust for Zoe seems to fill the emptiness she’s felt in her marriage. The tragedy is that Zoe hardly seems to realize (though it’s obvious to anyone watching the film) that Ignacio and Gonzalo are still enmeshed in a powerful sibling rivalry, and she is merely the latest weapon with which they duke it out.
Unfortunately for “La Mujer,” none of its three main characters has sufficient warmth or humanity to engage us in the film. Zoe (Barbara Mori) is confused about everything in her life except her desire to have a child, and her thirtysomething angst comes off more as spoiled immaturity; she justifies both staying with her husband and sleeping with his brother by stating simply, “I don’t like to sleep alone.” This lack of agency in taking a hold of her life renders her less a fully-fleshed character than a cast-adrift object, free-floating through the film. We’re provided virtually no insight into the soulless life of Ignacio (Christian Meier) until over halfway through the film, when it dawns on Zoe that perhaps her husband, who only allows sex with his beautiful wife on Saturdays, is a deeply repressed homosexual. And Gonzalo (Manolo Cardona, a Colombian Mark Ruffalo lookalike), despite appearances that he is a passionate free spirit, is the most coldly calculating and selfish of them all (though in a very strange and out-of-place scene we learn that he may have a legitimate claim to his wounded, sadistic behavior).
The direction by Ricardo de Montreuil and art direction by Wolfgang Burmann seem inclined to mimic the cold sterility of the film’s characters. Zoe and Ignacio’s modernist home has all the warmth of a doctor’s office, and the drab color palate underlines the drab lives unfolding on screen. The score by Angelo Milli is thankfully sparse, but when it does surface seems more inspired by soap operas or soft-core erotic thrillers (at least it seems Milli has a clearer understanding of the film than others involved). To be fair, the translated subtitles are atrociously riddled with typos and grammatical errors; perhaps in its native tongue the film might come off better. As it is, ultimately, with its rather dated dalliance into the effects of the mainstreaming of homosexuality and its clichéd characters, the film plays like an extended episode of “Will & Grace” taking itself too seriously. Fans of telenovelas or “Basic Instinct 2″ will get their money’s worth; everyone else would do well to stick to Debra Messing for their lessons in gaydar.

Aquamarine

scott.sarah — Wed, 08 Mar 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Directed by first-time feature helmer Elizabeth Allen, “Aquamarine” is a live action “Little Mermaid” presumably geared for the more sophisticated, Lindsay Lohan-worshiping pre-teen girls of today. The film is so technically slapdash and unabashedly fluffy, however, that there’s hardly anything for even this forgiving audience to sink their teeth into.
As the movie opens, best friends Hailey and Claire (JoJo and Julia’s niece Emma Roberts, respectively) are spending their last days of their last Florida summer together before Hailey and her mom move to Australia. During a storm, in what is the first of several odd parallels to “The Witches of Eastwick,” the two girls wish for a miracle that will keep them together in Florida. The next morning, they wake to find that a giggly mermaid named Aquamarine has been tossed from the ocean into Claire’s backyard pool. As it turns out, Aquamarine has “swum away from home” to find love, a concept which doesn’t exist in her world (mermaids think love is a myth). Per mermaid rules, she’s allowed three days of legs to seek her love on land, and if she doesn’t get someone to tell her they love her, she must return to the sea.
Aquamarine doesn’t have to look very hard–she sets her sights on the first available, studly lifeguard she sees, Raymond (Bruce Spence), and immediately decides the two of them are meant to be together. When Claire and Hailey find out that anyone who helps a mermaid gets a wish, they realize their wish for a miracle to keep them together has possibly come true–as long as they can get Raymond to fall for Aquamarine within three days. The two girls go “Clueless” on Aqua, giving her a makeover and teaching her all the knowledge they’ve amassed from their pantheon of YMs and Seventeens. As it turns out, Aqua may have chosen her man well–the two vapid young beauties hit it off, and Claire and Hailey seem well on their way to their wish. The snag comes when the local meanie, Cecilia (Arielle Kibbel), also crushing on Raymond, sets her sights on destroying Aquamarine’s new romance. Our three heroes have their work cut out for them if they want to quash the evil Cecilia and win Raymond’s heart. Ultimately, over the course of their efforts, all three girls are forced to reconcile with the concepts of home and family, and to make some tough decisions about where and with whom they belong.
Though the film takes a sentimental–and not entirely ineffective–turn in the final act, the rest of the movie’s pithy beach-party-for-beautiful-young-white-people feel ultimately undermines any sweetness or message the movie may be trying to deliver. The script is so ridiculously contrived and the dialogue is often so painfully awkward (I know I’m not hip to 12 year old lingo, but somehow I doubt that “dim-sighted” is an effective comeback) that the poor young actors wouldn’t stand a chance with or without talent. Writers John Quaintance (“Joey,” “Good Morning, Miami”) and Jessica Bendinger (“Stick It,” “Bring It On”) seem tonally at odds–if I were a betting woman I’d guess that the filmmakers brought in the tweener-hip expertise of Bendinger to counteract the sitcom tone of Quaintance. Between the two of them, they still can’t seem to figure out whose film it is–Aquamarine’s or the two best friends’–and as such there’s a constant push-pull to the storytelling that gives a scattered effect.
The technical elements of the film are equally uninspired–Allen’s directing is an unfortunate disappointment after her impressive short, “Eyeball Eddie.” The film has the look of a hurried, low-budget studio crumb. In the climactic scene at sea at the end of the film, for instance, you can just picture the jumbo fans whirring away at the studio water tank. And how is it that in the age of effects masterpieces like “King Kong” and “Narnia” that a movie mermaid looks half as realistic as Daryl Hannah did over 20 years ago in “Splash?”
“Aquamarine” mines from some worthy sources, and one does get the sense that there’s something in marrying “The Little Mermaid” to “Witches of Eastwick” for tweener girls that’s worth exploring–but it never clicked here for Quaintance and Bendinger. Rather than taking two threads and weaving them together into something whole and new, “Aquamarine” just slaps them together and hopes they’ll stick. It’s lazy filmmaking that will no doubt enjoy a long and lonely shelf life at your local DVD store.

Firewall

scott.sarah — Thu, 16 Feb 2006 00:00:00 +0000

During one of his obligatory press stops to publicize his new thriller, “Firewall,” Harrison Ford is asked by Jon Stewart of “The Daily Show,” “When will people in the movies learn not to fuck with Harrison Ford?” Mid-yawn during one of the interminable cat-and-mouse sequences in the movie, I’m asking myself the same question. We never at any point get the feeling that Harrison Ford or his held-hostage family are ever in any real danger–they’re too pure, and the bad guys are just too dumb.
The movie centers on Jack Stanfield (Ford), an IT genius who’s helped build a once small bank from the ground up. Just as his life seems to be experiencing perhaps its first speed bump in history (his bank has been taken over and before coming home to brilliant architect-wife Virginia Madsen and two flawless children he must deal with the slightly condescending execs of the takeover company), bad men show up at his home and take his wife and children hostage.
The “bad men,” we soon realize, are the minions of British mastermind Bill Cox (Paul Bettany), who is intent on using Stanfield to electronically break into his bank and make off with $100 million. While the thugs are busy securing Stanfield’s helpless family, Cox baby-sits Stanfield, and instructs him on exactly how he’s supposed to facilitate their heist.
Screenwriter Joe Forte seems to go to great lengths to convince us of the fact that Cox is a consummate professional–he’s done his homework on Stanfield and is fully prepared to execute a seamless e-heist. Once this image is shattered, however–when we realize Cox didn’t account for the takeover the bank just experienced and is therefore taken unawares by the lack of servers for him to actually hack into–all credulity of this already thin and familiar storyline is thrown out the window. If Cox went so far as to educate himself on Stanfield’s son’s peanut allergy, why in God’s name wouldn’t he be aware of the major and public information of Stanfield’s bank’s takeover? (This also soon begs the question of from where precisely the title of the film derived; my limited understanding of an electronic “firewall” has nothing to do with physically plugging into servers or scanning account numbers with a fax machine.)
Directed by Richard Loncraine–who chose to follow such highbrow works as “My House in Umbria” and “Band of Brothers” with “Wimbledon” and this fluffy thriller–”Firewall” is ultimately so generic and predictable that it’s rendered utterly forgettable. One outrageous plot turn after another deprives the film of the required crescendo of an engaging thriller–Forte apparently intended the film to grab you from the get-go and keep full speed ahead throughout, but the flimsy premise doesn’t support this device. Nothing about the film feels inspired–even the clanking, violent score of Alexandre Desplat feels recycled, not to mention obtrusive. Watching the likes of accomplished actors such as Bettany, Ford, and Madsen reduced to this drivel makes you wince at times.
It’s a rough hangover coming off of awards season (comparing this thriller to Woody Allen’s “Match Point,” for instance, is, well, difficult), and considering December seems to be about the only worthwhile month for going to the theatre, I guess I’ d better settle in for a long haul. Someone pass me the Advil and a Bloody Mary, please.

Sarah Scott’s Best & Worst Films of 2005

scott.sarah — Sat, 21 Jan 2006 00:00:00 +0000

The Best
Brokeback Mountain–I’ve seen it three times already. What can I say…quite possibly the best love story ever filmed.
Cinderella Man–Had everything going to the movies is all about: laughing, crying, cheering. I was literally on the edge of my seat and biting my nails at times…I mean, sheesh. Plus Giamatti, as always, is brilliant. Too bad only three people besides me saw it.
Walk the Line–Love me some Joaquin, and the live music sequences were electric.
Capote–Philip Seymour Hoffman finally starting to get the recognition that’s been long in coming. The writing and directing were superb and fresh, and Catherine Keener is fantastic.
Crash–Sure, it has its flaws (almost every character is so morally symmetric…they have to have a scene each that demonstrates their racism and redemption), but more films should be tackling this kind of material. Where some criticized its overly-coincidental, entwining plots, I thought it to be rather operatic in a way…a throwback to a simpler time in storytelling. This is, after all, a fiction, people…who cares if it’s a bit beyond the scope of plausibility?
Broken Flowers–Jarmusch’s & Bill Murray’s understated styles combine to delicious effect here, with great supporting performances by Jeffrey Wright, Frances Conroy, and others.
Honorable Mention
Me & You & Everyone We Know
Happy Endings
Shopgirl
Pride & Prejudice
King Kong
Harry Potter & the Goblet of Fire
The Worst
Jiminy Glick in La La Wood–Painfully bad.
The Brothers Grimm–Such a disappointment coming from Gilliam and starring Matt Damon and now-Oscar-contender, Heath Ledger. Shame.
Dark Water–Some nice cinematography but otherwise a total drip…drip…drip…
Still Hoping to See
Good Night, & Good Luck
Syriana
Transamerica
The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe
The Producers
Munich
Rumor Has It

Brokeback Mountain

scott.sarah — Mon, 12 Dec 2005 00:00:00 +0000

OK, let’s get this out of the way up front–”Brokeback Mountain” is a movie about gay cowboys in 1960s Wyoming. Though its reputation as “that gay cowboy movie” is mounting, however, the homosexuality in “Brokeback Mountain” is in fact not the focal point of the movie–it’s merely the obstacle that prevents two star-crossed lovers from being able to live happily ever after. We”ve seen this’story many times before (“Romeo & Juliet” and its later interpretation, “West “ide Story,” are the iconic examples), but “Brokeback” reminds us of why the formula works–it’s a beautiful, touching, and, above all, human love story that exquisitely captures the universal emotions of love and longing.
Directed by Academy Award-winner Ang Lee and starring Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal, “Brokeback” is based on the short story by E. Annie Proulx that appeared in The New Yorker in 1997. The film opens in 1963, as two rugged, aimless young cowboys end up spending the summer together, tending sheep on Wyoming’s desolate Brokeback Mountain. (The iconic setting serves as a constant reminder that these characters exist both literally and figuratively on a frontier.) As the summer wears on, the more gregarious of the two, Jack Twist (Gyllenhaal), is able to bring the shy, guarded Ennis Del Mar (Ledger) out of his shell. The audience of course knows where this friendship is heading, but their first sexual encounter–hardly a romantic one–catches at least one of these men a little by surprise. The ensuing, eruptive brutality of this encounter betrays the force with which these two must break through the confines of their world. Though Ennis at first resists engaging in a full-fledged affair (“I’m not no queer,” he protests, to which Jack replies, “Me neither”), they ultimately surrender to their passions and while away a blissful, idyllic summer together. A few neglected sheep are seemingly the only unfortunate casualties of their romance.
The end of the summer brings with it the sobriety of real life, however, down from the mountain. The two part ways and do their best to go through the requisite motions of their culture, each marrying and having children. Eventually, however, their intense addiction to one another overpowers them, and they embark on a secret, long-distance, life-altering romance that neither knows how to fully embrace nor walk away from.
Ang Lee is no stranger to movies about characters confined by the mores of their societies (e.g., Victorian “Sense & Sensibility,” 1970s suburbian “The Ice Storm,” and ancient Chinese “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon”), and this, his latest masterpiece, continues the trend. With that in mind, the homosexuality in the film is almost an arbitrary device; if it were not that, it would be something else keeping these two lovers apart. Lee’s direction is superbly languid. The screenplay doesn’t expand significantly on the short story, allowing for an achingly unhurried pace that perfectly underlines the frustrated romance depicted onscreen. Lee’s tempo here feels like a throwback to films of the 1970s, when directors allowed their films a certain breathing room, and didn’t shy away from long, sometimes awkward silences among their characters.
Heath Ledger (“Lords o” Dogtown,” “Monster’s Ball”) continues to impress here with his “Sling Blade”-like mumbled drawl and tight, furtive glances, and his contained performance is justifiably earning him “breakthrough” accolades and rumors of an Oscar nomination. Gyllenhaal’s performance is also consistent with his young but accomplished body of work (“Jarhead,” “The Good Girl,” “Donnie Darko”), and should put to rest his image as the poor man’s Tobey Maguire. But in the end this is Ledger’s movie. His Ennis is more mature, more complicated than Jack (though Jack’s innocence is arguably a more evolved, self-assured quality in a sense), and his journey is a somehow more tortured one.
The cast is rounded out by fine supporting actors, with not a weak link among them. Michelle Williams as Ennis’s wife and Anne Hathaway as Jack’s have certainly outgrown their “Dawson’s Creek” and “Princess Diaries” days, respectively. Linda Cardellini, Anna Faris, Kate Mara, and Randy Quaid, in a small but memorable role, also deliver fine and textured performances. Quintessential Western screenwriters Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana (“Johnson County War;” “Streets of Laredo”) deliver a beautifully understated–though profoundly expressive–look at the depths of the inexplicable emotions that true love brings about. Indeed, several of their scenes in this movie rank among the most romantic and heartbreaking in movie history, and their power resonates long after leaving the theatre.
The film brings together creative teams favored by other accomplished directors–namely, composer Gustavo Santaolalla and cinematographer Rodrigo Prieta, both from Guillermo Arriaga/Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s “21 Grams” and “Amores Perros,” and editors Dylan Tichenor and the late Geraldine Peroni, frequent Robert Altman collaborators. Their talent is exemplified and put to sublime effect here. The score, like the screenplay, is unobtrusive but memorable and concise; the cinematography represents the beautifully expansive setting and includes some breathtaking shots; and the editing complements the drifting tumbleweed pace of the direction perfectly.
Many are undoubtedly going to see this movie for its mere titillation factor–i.e., two hunky Hollywood stars getting it on. Though it certainly will not disappoint on this front, “Brokeback” is ultimately an homage to the euphoric places we escape to, whether emotionally or geographically. For Jack and Ennis, Brokeback Mountain happens to be both. The film represents the height of love’s agony and ecstasy–it presents both a profound reassurance that such deep love exists, and the debilitating tragedy of seeing it go so unfulfilled. For any of us who have a Brokeback Mountain of our own (or wish to one day), this film somehow breaks your heart and makes it whole, all at the same time.

Broken Flowers

scott.sarah — Sat, 06 Aug 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Apparently, director Jim Jarmusch came up with the idea for his latest film, Broken Flowers, by an intersecting of two agendas: one, he wanted to write something for Bill Murray; and two, he wanted to do something about the disheartening lack of great roles for women over 40. It is just such a cut-and-paste approach to filmmaking that often makes Jarmusch’s films–though well-crafted–feel more like exercises than movies unto themselves. His last film, Coffee & Cigarettes, for example, was not even a narrative film but rather a series of vignettes, all prominently featuring the two addictive substances. Though a few of the skits worked, the movie as a whole felt like an indulgent exercise from a pretentious director high on his own esotericism. Jarmusch films work best when he happens upon a formula that actually lends itself to the medium of feature filmmaking–he did it 20 years ago with Down By Law, and he does it again here with Broken Flowers, a film in which he and his current muse, Bill Murray, redefine understated, deadpan filmmaking to delightful effect.
The story is straightforward, and provides a more than serviceable framework on which to base a movie: just as he gets dumped by his girlfriend, aging bachelor and computer tycoon Don Johnston (and just in case you miss the Don Juan reference, Jarmusch points it out abundantly) receives an anonymous pink letter, informing him that he has a son from nearly 20 years ago who has now set out to find him. Don is ready to dismiss the letter as either a hoax or unsubstantiated claim, but his overly-investigative next-door neighbor, Winston, gets fixated on unraveling the mystery of the sender’s identity. Winston convinces Don to embark on an epic cross-country scavenger hunt, where he will revisit his old flames and find out which one of them is the mother of his heretofore unknown child.
The marriage of Murray and Jarmusch is a perfectly-matched one. Jarmusch’s minimalist, measured patience with the camera is the perfect complement to Murray’s achingly subtle expression–Jarmusch is not afraid to train the camera on Murray and leave it there for long periods of time in which nothing really happens. Because of this, Murray is able to hone the lonely, downtrodden persona he’s created of late to pure contained perfection. Jarmusch’s signature habit of book-ending his scenes with several moments of what any other director would deem as irrelevant excess gives us the sense that we’re really seeing this story play out in completion. In an era in which music video and commercial directors are the hot new talents, it’s refreshing to see a director take his time with his 105 minutes.
Jeffrey Wright as Winston leads an across-the-board stellar supporting cast. Following up work in “Angels in America” and The Manchurian Candidate (and an early career turn as Basquiat in the respected biopic of the artist), Wright’s chameleon-like talent continuously proves itself limitless time and again, and he and Murray share an exceptional, quirky chemistry. Sharon Stone, Francis Conroy, Jessica Lange, and Tilda Swinton play the four ex-flames, and all are entirely believable as former free-spirited, self-assured young women who would have caught young Don’s eye back in the day. (Say what you want about the man’s promiscuities, but the fact that he went for tough, sexy women over decorative ditzes is a testament to his manhood, in my book.) Conroy in particular stands out among the four, and Christopher McDonald as her husband/real estate partner is a treat, as always. Cinematography by longtime Jarmusch and David Lynch collaborator, Frederick Elmes (Kinsey; The Ice Storm), is seamlessly crafted, giving the film a look that when combined with the similar mid-life-crisis-on-the-road subject matter cannot help but remind one of last year’s sublime Sideways, but perhaps in slow-mo. Original music by Mulatu Astatke completes the package with off-kilter perfection.

Dark Water

scott.sarah — Tue, 12 Jul 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Following the tread of The Others and The Ring 1 & 2, Dark Water is the latest ghostly horror flick to deal with Mommy Issues. All four of these films are rated PG-13, in an apparent attempt to woo the increasingly-vital contingent of adolescent girls to the box office. What Dark Water sacrifices to the MPAA, however, that the others did not, are the very things that lure girls to these movies in the first place: the screaming, giggling, popcorn-tossing scares.
In Dark Water, we once again have a single mother who, when confronted with a petulant young ghost upset over her own abandonment, must protect her daughter from the ghost’s increasingly-violent manifestations of sibling rivalry. The mother, Dahlia, is newly separated from her hostile husband, Kyle, and is eager to start a new life with her young daughter, Ceci. She finds a rather unsavory apartment, run by a morally-questionable landlord (John C. Reilly), but her desperation and the building’s proximity to one of the city’s best grade schools lead her to take the place.
Things seem okay at first, but an incessant leak in Dahlia’s ceiling leads her to inspect the unit above, where she wades ankle-deep through the titular liquid. When she asks the creepy apartment manager, Veeck (Pete Postlethwaite, of The Usual Suspects – Kobayashi fame), about the unit, she finds out some unsettling things about the former tenants. To top it off, Ceci now seems to have a rather persistent imaginary friend, Natasha, who starts disrupting things at school (extra credit to anyone who can guess the name of the child that lived upstairs). Things soon start to spiral for Dahlia, and questions about her sanity – she gets migraines and has nightmares about the mother who abandoned her – begin to threaten her custody of Ceci. Is Dahlia going crazy, or is there really a ghost who has her mind set on joining the family?
Directed by Walter Salles in his English-language debut (his last film, The Motorcycle Diaries, was one of the best of 2004 and was nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Foreign Film), Dark Water is visually rich. The desaturated brown, gray, and green tones effectively give the depressed Roosevelt Island setting the appropriate sense of foreboding, and the mammoth, prison-like apartment building becomes another character in the film.
But that’s where any artistry in the film ends. Utterly lacking in emotion or suspense, watching the film starts to feel akin to watching one of the featured leak buckets fill with water, drip by annoyingly slow drip. The few jolts which are sprinkled in the film seem to be afterthoughts, as if the studio realized their movie was straying from its genre and decided to add a couple of cheap scares. With the exception of the always superb John C. Reilly, who provides a much-needed dose of mild comic relief, performances match the tone of the film: cold and austere. Time and time again in her performances, Connelly has proven herself the queen of emotional sobriety, and she doesn’t disappoint here as Dahlia. Ariel Gade’s Ceci is convincing enough, but while watching her performance one can’t help but realize why Dakota Fanning and Haley Joel Osment have the careers that they do. Dougray Scott as Kyle and Postlethwaite as Veeck give patchy performances, but to their credit the movie demanded it of them – their characters are saddled with providing several misdirects for the audience and any semblance of choices they made as actors are therefore drowned out (pun intended).
It’s impossible not to compare Dark Water to The Ring movies, not the least reasons for which being that both this and The Ring are based on Japanese books by the same author, and were helmed by the same Japanese director in their original versions. They even have the same signature imagery of children, ghost children, and water mixing in very unpleasant ways. But ultimately, Water is a less fulfilling version of its predecessors. Where The Rings have rousing (if cheesy) final acts – “I’m not your fucking mommy!,” anyone? – in which we get to see some mom-on-ghost action, Dark Water ebbs slowly back to a tranquil sea. Dahlia solves the mystery of the ghost, but we still don’t get a satisfying resolution to the movie. The fact that young Dahlia and Natasha are both played by the same actress, Perla Haney-Jardine, seems meant to convey some esoteric metaphor for the cyclical nature of abandonment, but this gets lost in execution. By its very nature, Dark Water is a less cinematic, less scary version of essentially the same horror story we’ve seen, and an unnecessary addendum to those movies.