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I am Not There movie

Plot
Biopic of legendary singer Bob Dylan through seven different stages in the artist’s life played by six different actors. The events that follow are drawn as much from Dylan’s songs as from his actual biography.

Review
A biopic where the famous white, male subject is subdivided into six personalities and played by everyone from an 11 year-old black boy to a statuesque Aussie actress, via both Batman and his forthcoming Joker, with not one of them going by the hero’s name? That’s just crazy. But wily American director Todd Haynes is on to something here. When the focus of your movie is that shapeshifting and hugely reluctant American icon Bob Dylan, how better to capture his slippery spirit than to tell six intertwined stories, each capturing one of the many personas of the great singer? And, for all the pinballing through history and psyche, Haynes, who played with the gauche moves of glam-rock with mixed results in Velvet Goldmine, manages a laid-back groove to his searching.

We start with titchy Marcus Carl Franklin, embodying the early years, when Dylan harkened to the call of his hero folk-singer Woody Guthrie and apparently rode across lush American fields in open-fronted boxcars. To add a further tickle of symbolism (and confusion), this version of Dylan is christened Woody Guthrie. Christian Bale, as Jack Rollins, encompasses the heroic early years when Dylan struck fame and radicalism, and later the ‘saved period’ where he took to the Bible as Pastor John. And Richard Gere, as craggy as a tramp with peppery beard and wire-rimmed specs, plays the modern incarnation searching for the roots of American folklore. Still with us? Okay, we’ll continue…

In the most striking and so-far lauded bit of Bob, Cate Blanchett gives an uncanny depiction of the controversial ‘electric years’ - that point when Dylan shrank away from his folk adulation and appalled the faithful with licks of what sounded like rock. It is Blanchett who most closely captures the familiar herky-jerky frame and wired truculence - the inner conflict of a man confronting a legend he can’t handle. Indeed, there is a look that Blanchett gives the camera, a long, loaded stare down the barrel of a gun, which is worth the asking price alone. You can’t see her missing out on a Supporting Actress (or should that be Actor?) nomination or two come backslapping time.
The story is fractionally chronological, but each tale wraps in and out of the others, defying narrative flow. There is little point in trying to treat each variation as the next ‘Dylan’ in a row. Two of them are, in fact, representations of an emotional event and inspirations. Heath Ledger, playing an imprint who seems to be more actor than singer, is the failed husband, and Charlotte Gainsbourg, as his forlorn wife, an amalgam of all the wounded women of his life. Then there’s Ben Whishaw, who preaches slivers of cute philosophy direct to camera, an echo of Dylan’s obsession with the poet Rimbaud.

As the leads rotate, so the style of filmmaking shifts and warps around the various ideas. For Blanchett’s taut electric years, it floats in a creamy black-and-white of mid-’60s glamour. For Gere’s autumnal years, it drifts into an elegiac landscape, directly referencing Dylan’s own presence in Sam Peckinpah’s Pat Garret And Billy The Kid. There is surrealism, madcap humour, heartbreak, poetry and pure nonsense; most of which, of course, you could equally say of the man himself.

It’s that kind of film: restless and brilliant, annoying and self-satisfied in its intimacy with the subject (who wholeheartedly approved). It will infuriate with its longeurs and frankly baffling little gimmicks, and it drifts on too long. But there’s no doubting Haynes has succeeded in capturing a real sense of the strange figure who can claim to have changed America. We learn nothing greatly significant about Dylan. He remains the fanciful enigma, but we do learn plenty about the futile effort of the press, fan and filmmaker alike to define their heroes. Which is partly the point.

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Goodfellas movie

“As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gangster.”

That’s what Henry Hill (Ray Liotta) tells the audience at the beginning of GoodFellas in a scene that will occur later in the film and will stand as the turning point of the entire Martin Scorsese masterpiece.  GoodFellas is a two tiered film based upon what happened to Henry Hill, a real wiseguy turned mafia rat.   The first half is meant as a look at how attractive the life of a gangster is — the money, the power, the respect.  But it is the second half that makes this one of the finest films of all-time.

After enticing the audience with everything that Henry and his partners have, it is the wrecking ball Scorsese throws at us that sets this apart from all its rehashes.  As we see how quickly things can go wrong, and, in fact, how nothing was really ever truly secure in the first place, we begin to see exactly where Martin Scorsese was going with this film.  This is not necessarily a propaganda film for crime, but a condemnation of everything that makes it so mesmerizing.  The flash of the guns, the unending cash flow, everything s dependent on throwing your life into an oblivion that will, almost certainly, lead to your death.

GoodFellas does not stop in telling this because things are getting rough.  In one ten minute gap of the film, nearly a dozen dead bodies are found (to the closing riff of Eric Clapton’s “Layla” of all things), and they are some of the least gruesome deaths in the film.  People are stabbed, shot, and bludgeoned to death in this film, and the aggressors, at least most of them, get their comeuppance.  One of the aspects of the wiseguy life that Scorsese pushes is just how quickly things change.  At one point in the film, a guy’s execution teeters on how well he acts around people at a bar.  Needless to say, he is met with some wire later that night.

Michael Ballhaus, who worked with Scorsese on every film between After Hours and The Age of Innocence, takes on some of the finest camera set-ups ever put in a film.  His style (which he honed with Fassbinder on 15 of the director’s 33 films in the 1970’s) serves this film perfectly, giving every scene a tension and hold that’s needed.  He and Scorsese have long been praised for their long tracking shots in the film, but little do people note the way he lit the digging scene that opens the film, using car taillights that make the characters’ skin a blood red.  As I sat in a theatre recently at a repertory reissue, the first time I had seen it in the theatre (I mistakenly missed it at the Warner Bros. anniversary bash), I noticed the way he works the camera on some of the simplest conversations.  A late talk between De Niro and Liotta, one that changes the Liotta character’s actions for the rest of the film, has the actors seemingly remain in the same part of the frame as the background slowly recedes.  Mesmerizing.

Martin Scorsese has the interesting ability to say that he has had a film top three decades worth of critics’ best of the decade lists.  Taxi Driver took the seventies; Raging Bull took the eighties; and GoodFellas took the nineties.  Notice the correlation?  Without a doubt, no director/actor pairing has been as incredible as Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro.  On top of those three, they also created the incredible Mean Streets and Casino (even though it bares a great deal of resemblance GoodFellas, it is still a fine film) and broke a few genre barriers with relatively fine films (including the comedy The King of Comedy, the musical New York, New York, and the thriller Cape Fear).  Scorsese has a weird ability to bring out the best of De Niro, and that only makes Scorsese’s work look even better.  There is a very subtle eye shift in this film — one that De Niro sells like no other actor could — that is remarkable on many levels, even though the framing is simple and the acting is little.

This film is one that gets under your skin and stays there forever.  I’ll probably never forget Uncle Paulie (Sorvino) taking control of the prison he’s sent to, or the questions of just how funny Tommy DeVito (Pesci), or Jimmy Conway (De Niro) sending Henry’s wife Karen (Bracco) to get some free dresses, or Karen’s meeting with all the other mob wives.  This is one film that relishes on heaping the audience with great quotes and memorable sequences.

Scorsese has long noted his own childhood, which often left him looking out at the streets of New York thanks to acute asthma.  He saw the Mean Streets that he brought to the screen, he knew the scum that Travis Bickle complains of in Taxi Driver, and he empathized with the GoodFellas (as in “he’s alright, he’s a good fella, he’s one of us”) that went around town with their cars and women.  He, like all of us, is a schmuck — the person that Henry Hill yearns to never be.  He never practiced the gang life but watched it, and, thanks to that, survived to tell us about it.

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Evita movie

First things first: Madonna makes a terrific Eva Peron, but don’t bet the farm on any Oscar nods.

As Andrew Lloyd Webber’s fancified rendition of Argentina’s most popular politician’s wife, the chameleon of the music industry has successfully reinvented herself yet again as heroic diva and gives a memorable performance in the title role of “Evita.”

But even with gorgeous art direction and cinematography, strong performances and a commendable directorial effort from Alan Parker, the blemishes that “Evita” brings with it from the stage weigh on the film.

I should tell you right now that I have an active loathing of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s work. I find his music uneven at best. The way he writes duets like two completely different genres of music having an argument, for example, grinds on my ear.

The rock music elements of “Evita” have all the dignity of a “Rocky Horror” production number and Tim Rice’s lyrics have very little poetry and even less rhythm. He has a tendency to cram four sylable words into one or two beats.

Having said that, this “Evita” is the best film that could have been made from the material — sumptuous, sensual and conseptual in it’s vision, it may be the single biggest boost to the Hollywood musical in a generation.

Webber’s Eva Peron starts life as poor, illegitimate peasant girl who moves to Buenos Aires to seek her fortune. She works as what those in L.A. call an MAW (model-actress-whatever), sleeping her way through Buenos Aires society until she latches on to rising politician Juan Peron (Jonathan Pryce), marries him and becomes a symbol of Argentineans’ hopes.

She is “one of the people” and as a national icon becomes so popular that when she dies of cancer at 33, the whole country mourns. Although she is portrayed as someone who used her power to improve the lives of her people, any implied dignity is based entirely on her impoverished background and not on any deeds, but the film manages to convince one of her passion and heart nonetheless.

The story is narrated by Antonio Banderas as Che. An omni-present everyman, Che is a bartender in one scene, a revolutionary in the next and is the thread that binds the story from the observer’s point of view.

With all the talk of Madonna, it is Banderas who really deserves accolades. With his seductive unwashed charm, his piercing black eyes and his enticing facial mannerisms — thoughtful frowns, knowing winks — he is the most charismatic character in the film. From the first reel, he has a grasp on the audience without being overwhelming. And he sings beautifully.

“Evita” is fantastically cinematic. It fills the theater with it’s atmosphere, especially during the trademark numbers “A New Argentina” and “Don’t Cry For Me, Argentina,” and is worth seeing for the production quality alone. The sets are awsome, the costumes as extravegant as a musical calls for and the sepia-toned quality of the lighting lends the film an old-fashioned flavor that helps settle an audience unacomstom to film musicals.

In spite of the fact that it is nearly three hours of Andrew Lloyd Webber, I was well impressed and just couldn’t bring myself to dislike it.

Director Parker accepted a huge challenge when he signed on to “Evita” — even with his experience in film musicals that includes “Bugsy Malone” and “Pink Floyd: The Wall.” He did a grand job, but let’s hope this doesn’t lead to an onslaught of films from Webber’s Broadway works. The last thing this world needs is “Starlight Express — The Motion Picture.”

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Donnie Brasco movie

Based on a true story, this is the tale of an undercover FBI man Joe Pistone who masquerades as “Donnie” in order to infiltrate the mob in 1978.

Donnie gains the trust of “Lefty” Bruggiero, who vouches for him and introduces him to Sonny Black (Michael Madsen - wonderfully threatening as always). Lefty takes Donnie under his wing and instructs him on the subtleties of mob-speak, behaviour, and even how to dress.

But as Donnie gets closer to uncovering the mob structure he becomes painfully aware that in revealing his true identity he will be responsible for the almost certain death of Lefty, who is becoming less of an adversary and more of a father-figure. As the film progresses, it becomes clear that there is little difference between the morality of the FBI and that of the Mafia. Both Joe and Lefty are constrained by organisations that will ultimately force them to kill their friends. (”Who am I? I’m a spoke in wheel. And so was he. And so are you.”)

Johnny Depp gives a good performance as Donnie , but is acted off the screen by Al Pacino’s Lefty. He’s likeable, weary, scared - almost comically transparent at times - but you never forget he’s a killer. The scene in which he removes his jewellery is heart-breaking and I can’t think of any other actor who could pull it off like he does.

The direction is unobtrusive, although there is the odd heavy-handed moment where you almost feel Mike Newell elbow you in the ribs, whispering: “The cheetah stalking the prey - see? Donnie is the cheetah! Geddit?!?” But this is a minor quibble. I may be alone in this, but I think this is the best film made about the Mafia. Less romanticised than The Godfather and with more heart than Goodfellas, this film depicts mob life as little different to straight life.

Lefty is just another guy struggling to get by and getting passed over for promotion. Apart from the fact that he’s whacked 26 guys, he could be your dad.

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Domino movie

The real Domino Harvey was born into a world of glamour, showbiz and high society. Named after the Bond girl from Thunderball, her father was the film star Laurence Harvey (of The Manchurian Candidate fame) and her mother was a wealthy English supermodel. Yet, after a brief stint at modeling, the young Domino rebelled against her privileged background, becoming a very successful gun-toting bounty hunter in Los Angeles. It is the sort of stuff that legends, and in particular Hollywood legends, are made of and it has inspired writer Richard (Donnie Darko) Kelly to fashion a twisted head spinner of a biopic, where myth is always racing hot on the heels of a fugitive reality.

“This is based on a true story - sort of”. With these opening words, Domino challenges viewers to sort out fact from fiction in a furious two-hours-plus barrage of labyrinthine scams, conflicting narratives, impossible double-crosses, crossed lines, drug-induced flights of fancy and straight-faced lies, as the eponymous heroine (Keira Knightley) tries to convince FBI psychologist Taryn Miles (Lucy Liu) of her relative innocence in the small matters of a man missing an arm, a security van missing 10 million dollars and a luxury Las Vegas hotel missing its top floor. What follows is a riotously postmodern and thoroughly unreliable trip backwards and forwards through the life of a woman always vainly in search of something more real and visceral than her roots, even if she can never stray far from the shadow cast by Hollywood.
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Domino spins a tale involving her surrogate family of kickass bail recovery agents (Mickey Rourke, Edgar Ramirez), her birth mother (Jacqueline Bisset), her manipulative boss (Delroy Lindo), mobsters, casino owners, a mixed-race family, Jerry Springer (as himself), a mad Mujhadeen driver (Rizwan Abbasi), a botched robbery, the wrong choice of patsies, a messianic child, reality television, tossed coins, dead fish, desert epiphanies, the iniquities of the American health care system and a disgruntled worker at the DMV.

As a crime caper, it is complicated enough to make even Guy Ritchie go dizzy, but the plausibility of Domino’s story is far less important than its power to seduce Special Agent Miles with its calculated mix of sex, violence, drama and that elusive “edge” that Tinseltown so loves. On her very first job as a bounty hunter, Domino ends up performing a lap dance to save her skin - in fact, her entire tale is the narrative equivalent of striptease, in which Domino bares to Miles (and the viewer) just the right amount of herself to satisfy, without ever really exposing anything more than surface flashes.

When Domino and her team are first introduced to reality TV producer Mark Heiss (Christopher Walken), his assistant Kimmie (Mena Suvari) warns them to use short sentences because “he has the attention span of a ferret on crystal meth”. Similarly, director Tony Scott has decided to match his film’s narrative complexity with a frenetic visual style that makes drugged-up rodents of us all. There seems to be at least one cut every second, the camera never stops moving, different film stocks and processes are wildly juxtaposed, titles and sub-titles explode all over the screen and entire sequences are played out only to be reversed when Domino amends the details of her story.

The effect is both to grab and to addle the attention in what is, even by comparison with the exuberance of Natural Born Killers, Spun, Kill Bill and Scott’s own Man On Fire, the busiest and most arresting aesthetic that I have ever seen, as we are never for a moment allowed to forget that Domino’s “true story” is, like any mediated reality, nothing more than an artificial construct.

There is little room for depth of character in a film as formally mercurial as this, so Scott has opted for a rogues’ gallery of stereotypes, with just enough quirks to be interesting. The cast is made up mostly of larger-than-life actors, especially Rourke, Lindo and Walken, as well as celebrities playing fictionalised versions of themselves (Springer, Ian Ziering and Brian Austin Green). The biggest treat is a bizarre (and uncredited) cameo by singer/actor Tom Waits, to the accompaniment of his own Jesus Gonna Be Here, playing precisely the mythic persona (mystic prophet to the dispossessed) that he has been cultivating through his music for years. Diminutive, posh-toned Knightley may seem an odd choice to hold all these living legends together, but her insistent implausibility fits perfectly in a film so concerned with the traffic between tall tales and true.

The real Domino Harvey, who appears briefly at the end of the film, had, in fact, been arrested for allegedly dealing methamphetamines and was facing trial and a probable decade’s worth of imprisonment when, shortly before production on the film ended, she died at home, under house arrest, of a massive drug overdose. Real life is not always quite as pretty as it seems in the movies, but then this is exactly what Domino dramatises, with the sort of vivid dynamism normally reserved for action films that are far more conventional and far less intelligent.

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Catch Me If You Can movie

Frank Abagnale Jr., the real-life subject of Steven Spielberg’s latest feature, never dreamed that he would be the subject of a movie. “How do you condense five eventful years into two hours?” he has asked. And, bearing in mind that this practical concern comes from the man who saw no great difficulty in scamming $2.5 million in forged cheques before he’d even reached his 21st birthday, it’s an interesting worry. Actually, although Spielberg allows himself a further 20 minutes’ grace in the running time, the result suffers from an unlikely dichotomy of feeling both overlong (a slight sag around its midriff) and detail-light (having sacrificed many of the book’s more intriguing nuances).

Were this not inspired by real events, but rather a fictional screenplay, Spielberg would surely have drawn a red line through certain chapters for sheer momentum’s sake. As it is, slightly hamstrung by factual accuracy, we occasionally find ourselves meandering through scenes that serve little purpose. Also, certain chronological jumps (Hanratty finds Frank in France) arrive somewhat out of the blue, as if a couple of scenes of explanatory preamble have been left on the cutting room floor.

Then again, contrary to expectation, this is not the frothy, superficial caper we’d been led to believe. Forget that trailer; what we have here is a deeply moving, quite wonderfully acted coming-of-age black comedy, packed with equal measures of pathos and plain fun. In focusing on the lovely Leo accompanied by a girdle (collective noun) of trolley-dollies, early teasers have rather missed the point: this is as sophisticated as modern moviemaking gets, Spielberg’s most deft handling of comedy to date, and a shot of pure class straight into the heart of cinema. Thought OceanЖs 11 was cool and sexy? Trust us, this is too.

While in different hands Abagnale’s adventures would have lingered far more on the hedonistic aspects of what, let’s face it, must have been one damn fine foray into manhood (picture for just a second an Oliver Stone version of the stewardess sequence), for Spielberg the focus is elsewhere. In fact, his obsession with the themes of fatherhood has arguably never been more heartbreakingly realised than in Catch Me If You Can’s telling incidentals: Frank watching Mr. and Mrs. Strong do the washing up, Franks Jr. and Sr.’s lunch meeting: these are powerful touches that will stay with you long after the end credits roll.

Considerably darker than anticipated - abortion and infidelity simmer under a deceptively glossy sheen - the film requires the highest calibre of acting talent, and in his casting Spielberg delivers an unprecedented ensemble. For DiCaprio fans, this is the best reason to go to the cinema since he went down on the Titanic - he is back at his blistering, finest-of-his-generation standard. Hanks devotees, meanwhile, will rejoice at yet another subtly distinct variation on the Everyman; and obsessives of TV series Alias will be positively cock-a-hoop at Jennifer Garner’s erotically supercharged cameo. As for Walken, well, if you make it through his performance without shedding a tear, then there’s a fiver here with your name on it.

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Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid movie

William Goldman’s elegiac script does a pretty good job of convincing us that Butch Cassidy (Paul Newman) and the Sundance Kid (Robert Redford) were the original Rock stars of the old West. After all, the Hole in the Wall Gang is at least as cool a name as the Hollies or the Crickets. Paul Newman’s Butch is the lead singer, lyricist, the brains of the outfit, and what else is Redford’s pistol savvy Kid than the original bad ass ace lead guitarist? Their lives, as portrayed here, are nothing but a romping tour of celebrity excess. Rob a bank, go to the cathouse, rob a train, go to a cathouse. God knows neither of these guys had any intention of ever getting a real job. A real job to Butch was when he was a rustler! They make up cool names for themselves like Bono and Sting did, and they sort-of share a wife, Katherine Ross’ Etta Place. As you’d expect Sundance, the body, sleeps with her while the fast talking, always plotting Butch gets to wax poetic and entertain her mind. Butch and Sundance are nothing less than the Beatles to the foreboding Rolling Stone doom of the posse that will eventually catch up to them.

“Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” is actually sort of a three-in-one serial western comedy. The first act establishes the characters. Sundance gets to show off his rapid facility with weapons, while Butch sits back and enjoys the change of heart that comes over a man when he drops the name Sundance into the equation. We get to see Butch and his gang when Lurch from the Addam’s Family steps up to challenge his authority. Butch, always thinking, kicks the poor bastard in the balls. We get some enjoyable train robbing scenes with an endlessly amusing sequence between Butch and Woodcock, the most dedicated geek security guard in the history of the world. The whole thing comes to a glittering crescendo when the “Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head” sequence pays homage to the future of both the bicycle and the music video.

Then the real world comes crashing in. Part Two: Butch and Sundance vs. the Super Posse. Apparently fed up with their nonsense, the law eventually forms their own Super Group to track our heroes down. When the duo split off from the rest of their gang, and Butch asks the stunned Sundance how many of the posse are following them, he is told all of them. For the better part of twenty minutes, when none of Butch’s tricks even remotely work, Sundance keeps an admirable faith in his partner. “You’re the brains Butch. You’ll think of something.”

When they narrowly escape, the duo decide to exploit some new territory in Part Three: Butch and the Kid Go To Bolivia. A bad idea that just gets worse and worse as Butch and the Kid struggle with Spanish, get jobs as payroll protectors (!), and walk slowly to their fate. “Bonnie and Clyde,” which came out just a couple years earlier, also focuses on some doomed outlaws, but in that movie fate was dark and certain. Here the guys aren’t even phased by the sympathetic law man who scoldingly warns them that, “Your times is over and you’re gonna die bloody and all you can do is choose where!” Why spoil the fun until we get to see the guys go up against, like, 5000 Bolivian Militia Men. The film is so sad to see its affable heroes and good times go that it can’t bear to see them shot down. The movie ends almost the same way Porgy and Bess did. It’s not likely that Porgy is going to make it across the Country on that skateboard, but if you’re a true believer you will never doubt it. After all, maybe they did somehow manage to escape, and if they didn’t it sure was fun while it lasted.

Newman and Redford seem so established as a duo it’s a wonder that they only made two films together. Can you imagine how many vehicles Danny Glover and Mel Gibson would have pumped out had they had two movies that big? Paul Newman’s Butch is probably the most genial character ever portrayed on the big screen. He’s always smiling, talking and enjoying the ride no matter where it takes them. Without the more serious overtones of one of those John Ford westerns it’s perhaps a little easier to just take in the beauty of the scenery, a taut, well-meaning script written from legend, and a movie so gorgeously photographed that almost any shot would look good up on a wall in your den. Possibly the most likable movie ever filmed.

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