Green Zone (***1/4)

One of the few Iraq features to focus on the actual reasons for the war re-teams Matt Damon with his Bourne Supremacy/Ultimatum director, Paul Greengrass. Written by L.A. Confidential’s Brian Helgeland, it’s a smart, (literally) dark action thriller, tied in to the ultimately futile search for WMDs in 2003.

As with The Hurt Locker (or the Bourne movies, for that matter)‚ Greengrass uses handheld cameras for authenticity. Helgeland’s script takes in actual events now widely assumed to be major blunders, like the dismantling of the Iraqi army, or the failed attempt to install Ahmed Chalabi as leader, and shows how they played among the Sunnis Arabs who formed much of the opposition. The Chalabi character is called something else, and Amy Ryan’s reporter character is only a fictional representative of the real ones who failed to question what turned out to be bad intelligence about WMDs. Of course, you won’t have needed to read the book that “inspired” the film, Rajiv Chandrasekaran’s Imperial Life in the Emerald City, to figure out that Damon’s character, too, is a composite, that there was no single hero who uncovered all the bad intelligence that provided the casus belli that largely sold the public on the war.

For me, watching this was to experience again the frustration of watching foolish arrogance produce unnecessary destruction. Green Zone is no exposé, though, just an action thriller with a novel backdrop. It does have other virtues, like having a few distinct Iraqi characters, and not emphasizing a high body count. But it’s only a movie, and even Matt Damon wouldn’t have been able stop all of the people for whom self-reflection represents weakness.

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viewed 3/9/10 at Ritz 5 [PFS screening] and reviewed 3/12–18/10

Leatherheads (***)

Mirageman (***)

A Chilean bodyguard whose sense of justice was honed when his parents were murdered turns himself into a self-styled savior. He’s got lots of fighting skills, but soon realizes he’s all too human. The story’s played for some gentle humor, but sincerity wins out in this original, reality-based spin on the superhero genre. The fight scenes aren’t extraordinary, but they’re as solid as star Marko Zaror’s lithe body. I don’t suppose this’ll get a non-DVD, non-film festival release in the US, but it has the elements to connect with both a mainstream and art-house audience.

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viewed 4/4/08; reviewed 4/4 and 4/6/08; screened at Philadelphia Film Festival

Zodiac (***1/2)

? In 1969 and into the early 1970s, someone began to kill people in and around San Francisco, beginning with a young couple in the suburb of Vallejo. Working from a screenplay by James Vanderbilt (The Rundown), director David Fincher (Panic Room, Fight Club) tones things down, stylistically, to portray the hunt for the killer, focusing most prominently on a wiry, alcoholic San Francisco Chronicle reporter (Robert Downey Jr.), two city police inspectors (Mark Ruffalo, Anthony Edwards), and a nerdy Chronicle cartoonist, Robert Graysmith (Jake Gyllenhaal), who would go on to write the books that inspired this movie.
+ Unlike the dozens of serial-killer movies that have come out over the past couple of decades, Zodiac is more mystery than thriller. We see the murders attributed to Zodiac shot realistically, but without sensationalism, without music. The search for the killer, not the killer himself, is the focus. Vanderbilt’s script shows the messiness of this kind of investigation, the nonlinearity, the way it can be difficult to weave everything together, and the many red herrings. Zodiac has certain particulars, notably the use of a cipher that helped him gain notoriety, but he’s not as neat and habitual as his fictional counterparts. Nor is the investigation, which involves reporters and police in multiple jurisdictions, multiple suspects, other figures like the handwriting expert played by Philip Baker Hall, and the general public. Fincher weaves all of this irregularity together in a cohesive narrative.
- It’s a function of following the facts, but the story loses a little of its edge when the time frame transitions from weeks to months and years. But, to reiterate, this is more of a detective story, even a character study, than a thriller.
= ***1/2 This detailed drama might disappoint people looking for another Se7en, Fincher’s heavily stylized, fictional serial-killer horror film. It presents Graysmith’s take on the case, never officially solved, but may also disappoint people who want a more definitive ending. At the same time, the subject matter may scare off its ideal audience, one that likes complex stories and characters with frayed edges.

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reviewed 3/8/07

Scoop (***1/2)

? The second of Woody Allen’s trilogy of London set films is a lighter, more comic affair than the previous Match Point. Just as that film harkened back to the themes of Crimes and Misdemeanors, Scoop has an element of Manhattan Murder Mystery, specifically a snooping amateur sleuth (Scarlett Johannsen) plowing over circumstantial evidence with a reluctant male accomplice. In this case, she’s an aspiring reporter who, tipped off by a dead guy, teams up with a middling magician (Allen) to investigate whether a handsome aristocrat (Hugh Jackman) might actually be a notorious serial killer.

+ Johanssen’s girlish character, in contrast to her femme fatale in Match Point, has a nice chemistry with Allen, in a father-daughter kind of way. I quite enjoyed the way she’s torn between a desire to solve the mystery and plain desire. The resolution of the mystery, while not as clever as in Match Point, is satisfying. All the while, Allen’s magician babbles comically (to me) throughout. For example, he nonsensically calls everyone he meets, “a credit to your race.” That would appear to be, in every case, the Caucasian race.

- Allen’s concept of the afterlife, a boat carrying away the recently departed with a hooded Grim Reaper as the silent skipper, is amusing, but having a dead reporter (Ian McShane) inexplicably feeding the heroine information is a mildly lame deus ex machina. Other plot points, like the way the snooping reporter coincidentally spots someone who’s supposed to be out of town, seem overfamiliar. Allen’s magician babbles (tiresomely, I’m sure, to some) throughout.

= ***1/2 If Match Point was the Woody Allen movie for people who didn’t like Woody Allen movies, Scoop is one for the fans. Allen’s magician provides a stream of nervous schtick, and the whimsical tone is not unlike his 1990s films such as Curse of the Jade Scorpion. Even the female lead has some typical Allen mannerisms/dialogue. When he says that they need to put their heads together, she replies that “you’ll hear a hollow noise.” Funny stuff.

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Superman Returns (***)

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X-Men director Bryan Singer’s long-in-the-making screen revival restores the luster of the world’s best-known superhero, loosely following the framework of the first two Christopher Reeve movies while giving the character a patina of angst.

This aptly titled fantasy comes 28 years after Superman made a star of Christopher Reeve and started the still-continuing wave of modern superhero movies. Director Bryan Singer’s revival of the series (scripted by his X2 partners Michael Dougherty and Don Harris) doesn’t retell the whole origin story, the way Batman Begins did for that series, but follows loosely on the first two Reeve films and regains the serious tone lost in the last two. Where 1987’s Superman IV showed the Kent family farm as abandoned, Returns starts with Superman (Brendan Routh) crash-landing and finding his widowed mother (Eva-Marie Saint) worried sick. Seems Krypton’s last son had left home five years earlier to check out the remains of his home planet. He never called, he never wrote. Nothing. More angry than concerned is his old flame Lois Lane, who has aged even less than him and looks just like Kate Bosworth with dark hair. Still writing for the Daily Planet, she’s gotten herself an award for an article called “Why the World Doesn’t Need Superman.” No doubt she’d seen the last two Reeve movies. A lot of this earlier part of the movie is setup. Family farm, check. Daily Planet, yep. Photographer Jimmy Olsen still worshipful, certainly. Lois Lane an unwed mother with an asthmatic kid and a boyfriend? Hmm, that’s new. Archenemy Lex Luthor (Kevin Spacey) still scheming, definitely. Some needed excitement arrives with the film’s first major action sequence, in which Superman rescues Lois from a space-shuttle accident, apparently Luthor’s doing.

Luthor is the only villain, so it’s good that Spacey is a worthy replacement for Gene Hackman, making lines that seem flat on the page sound like dryly evil wit. (Parker Posey as his bubble-headed sidekick, a new character, brings some minor comic relief.) Star Routh won’t win any awards, but he looks right in the part, particularly in the scenes where he plays nerdy Clark Kent. (Even though Kent’s returned to the Planet right at the same time as his faster-than-a-speeding-bullet alter ego, ace investigative reporter Lois still can’t tell they’re the same person.) For the most part, Singer gives the series the old-fashioned yet timeless feel superhero fans are likely to favor while utilizing convincingly updated special effects. Returns also incorporates some of John Williams’s 1978 score, an old-style credit sequence, and even a digitally resurrected Marlon Brando as Jor-El, the Man of Steel’s wise biological dad. There’s also, however, a patina of angst about this resurrected demigod of Metropolis. The film itself is frequently literally dark. It’s long and slightly ponderous, with Superman often seen looking pensive as he flies about. Is he bummed out about wasting five years checked out the destroyed Krypton? Or about the people he failed to save when he was gone? His lost innocence, as a flashback boyhood scene may suggest? Does he feel guilty for allowing Luthor to get out of prison? (He wasn’t around to testify.) Hard to tell. All the cinematic superheroes lately—Spider-Man, Batman, and certainly Singer’s X-Men—seem like they could do with a few sessions with a therapist. Surely the Man of Tomorrow could have resurrected the more optimistic brand of heroism I remember from the original series, or even a movie like the underrated Rocketeer. Luthor’s outright brutality in one scene is another thing that gives the movie a somber feel. But I quibble. The plot (involving Luthor’s use of stolen Krypton technology) is absorbing (though not more), the effects terrific, and the conclusion fairly satisfying (while leaving enough open for a sequel). Overall, a welcome Returns.

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