Movies, Lots and Lots of Movies

But first, I've been reading Richard K Morgan-and I've liked all his books. The sequel to Altered Carbon was very good, so I have high hopes for Woken Furies, the third Takeshi Kovacs book.

I went to see There Will Be Blood last week and I've been thinking about it ever since. I know there are some people who didn't like it and Daniel Day Lewis is certainly as capable of being great (A Room With A View, My Left Foot) as he is of over-acting (Gangs of New York). I thought his performance as an oilman out to get every drop of oil in the world was terrific. Daniel Plainview is a truly scary man-one who doesn't like other people, who doesn't want to see anyone else succeed, one who will destroy anyone he perceives as ANY sort of rival. If you say anything against him, in business or in his personal life, he is your enemy for life. He is very plain-you are either with him (which means doing everything he says and never having your own thoughts) or you are against him. He meets his match in Eli Sunday-the boy preacher, who for all his angelic face and fire and brimstone preaching, is just as rigid as Plainview. He wants to show Plainview who is in charge in their small town-and it's not Plainview. Once Sunday has been slighted by not being allowed to say a few words of blessing at the first drilling of the oil well in town, the battle lines have been drawn. The greatest scenes in the movie are the two big scenes between Sunday and Plainview-and that's what really sticks with me. In each scene, one of them has the power (though money or influence) to bend the other to his will-and both take full advantage of it. To watch these scenes and the play between these two actors (yes, Paul Dano was very good, even though I found Little Miss Sunshine incredibly annoying)-it was amazing. If you ever want to see someone forced to do something against their will, just so they can get something they really want-it's both fascinating and terrible. I also have to say that I found the soundtrack incredibly annoying and distracting. My companions both liked it but it took me out of the movie and that really bothered me.

The Orphanage is a Spanish movie, produced by Guillermo del Toro and directed by Juan Antonio Bayona. I liked this movie very much-and it was a welcome antidote to There Will Be Blood, with it's lack of women and its one child being badly treated. This movie is all about women-one woman in particular. Laura was in a orphanage as a child, before she was adopted (and I swear that I saw the dresses they wear in the orphanage at the Banana Republic outlet over Christmas-gray, drab and dreary and cut for children). She was adopted and has gone to live a happy life with her husband and her own adopted child, Simon. They have moved into the orphanage she lived in as a child, hoping to start their own school for special-needs children.
And then Simon disappears. What are the noises she hears? What is the odd psychic (a great Geraldine Chaplin) trying to tell her? And where is Simon? All the performances in this movies are great, but Belen Rueda as Laura is wonderful as a woman who is willing to do anything to rescue her child. It's like The Others, it's like Pan's Labyrinth but it still tells it's own story, and very well.

Next up was The Kingdom, a movie I didn't quite make it to in the theater. I did like it-Jamie Foxx was good, Chris Cooper didn't have much of a part (a waste of his talent) and Jason Bateman was quite good as a the reluctant member of the FBI group sent to investigate a bombing in Saudi Arabia. When I first saw the trailer, I wondered how he had gotten cast in this movie, but turns in the best performance in it, as a "reluctant warrior" (I can't remember which critic said this but it's the perfect description). He does it because he doesn't really have a choice-if he doesn't fight back, he'll die-and he comes awfully close as it is.
I haven't mentioned Jennifer Garner and that's because in her first scene she crying! She's an FBI agent, for God's sake! They would NEVER show Jamie Foxx crying or Chris Cooper-noooo. They get to comfort the woman while she cries. It was infuriating. However, after that she was good AND she got to stab a bad guy in the head in the action sequence where she's the star, so I guess that makes up for it.

Which bring us to this past weekend, when I saw Cloverfield in New York. It was funny though, because I thought the previews were going to be crappy but instead they were for:
A) The new Star Trek movie (Yes, I'll see it. Maybe. It depends.)
B) Iron Man-yes, I'll see that too, but I really hope Robert Downey jr is good in it-I love the preview and I usually love comic book movies.
C) Hellboy: The Golden Army. I'll see almost anything Guillermo del Toro directs, so of course I'm seeing this. I LOVED the first one.

My companion, on the other hand, thought they all looked awful. Of course, he hated the movie too. He hates science fiction and he hates action movie so I'm not sure why he wanted to see it (and I said to him three times "you know it's a monster movie set in New York, right? But it didn't help).
Yes, a big scary monster destroys New York, as viewed through a camcorder by some privileged Lower East side twenty-somethings. Was it scary? Yes. Was it insensitive to New Yorkers? Hell, yes. The scenes of buildings toppling and huge piles of rubble crashing through the streets while people hide in buildings? Of course it looks like 9-11. On the other hand, when the hero (kind of) gets cell reception down in the subway, you could hear everyone in the audience scoff at the idea of cell reception in the subway-only someone from California would think that you could get a call down there.

Did I like it? Yes, but the camcorder thing gave me a headache. Even five minutes of the jiggling camera was annoying. It was short but it packed a whole lot of scary into its 85 minutes.

All sorts of books...one for everyone's tastes...

So, over Christmas I reread Traveling With the Dead (still well-written, I still liked it a lot) and Declare (ditto). I also read Altered Carbon and Market Forces by Richard K. Morgan, , Chasing the Dime by Michael Connelly, The Two-Minute Rule by Robert Crais, The Crimewriter by Gregg Hurwitz and Dust by Martha Grimes. I read Dust most recently, but it's the most problematic, so that's where I'll start.

Who knew Martha Grimes would be THIS problematic? I've loved her books for many years-her Richard Jury series has seen me though many tough times-and i could always count on her (usually) for an engrossing, well-told story. Tall, good-looking Richard Jury, with his endlessly bad luck with women, his Sargent, Wiggins, who has never met a cup of tea, a scone or a cold remedy he didn't like, his friend Melrose Plant, who gets involved in Jury's cases whether he wants to or not...these people all seem like old friends to me. However, after the terribly unhappy ending of (I think it was) her last book, I had to give her up. I decided to stay with the series that began with Hotel Paradise (and that's a really great story line) and give up on Superintendent Jury for awhile.
Until my sister gave me Dust. Yes, it's a great book. The main characters are onstage, the bit players aren't intrusive and the storyline kept my attention. Jury is having very good luck with women in this one, but it's not particularly making him happy. But the story...a man is killed in a hotel, not far from his partment in London. Who did it? His uncaring father? His sexy stepmother? His assistant who took care of things for him? Why does his father has two very expensive paintings in his house that he claims are copies but that his son believed to be real? And what does WWII, the Kindertransport and a ship to Canada have to do with all of this? There's a part in Dust where man Jury believes is a criminal (from a past book) tells him that he needs to look at the crimes like a photograph and a negative. The two don't quite match up-and it's Jury's job to find out how they match-and when he does, he'll know who committed the crime and why and how all the other pieces fit. I'm pretty sure he does this, but the reader (okay, me) never quite figured it out. Yes, I know who killed him and i think I know why (but maybe not) and I'm still not clear on all the other pieces either. I AM sure that Jury's not-great luck with women was still fairly true at the end of this book, everything else is a bit up in the air.

I'll cover Chasing the Dime, The Crime Writer and The Two-Minute Rule all at once. I liked them all and if you like a good story, each of them is up to it. Each is fairly well-paced, good characters and a good story line. They aren't interchangeable but neither are they each author's best work. If I had to pick one as the best, I'd say it The Two-Minutes Rule-the characters were the most real, the action was believable (although I did find it a bit hard to believe that the main character who never seemed to go to school and spent his life stealing cars, robbing banks and doing drugs until he went to jail for ten years could be that bright but what do I know?) but his is the best-told of the bunch.

Richard K Morgan...my friend Y told me to read Market Forces awhile ago-I bought it but didn't read it-in fact it went on a couple of trips with me and I still didn't read it. And on this trip, I read Altered Carbon first, thinking I'd put off Market Forces again-but I'm now VERY glad I didn't put it off. The two books do have some things in common-taking place in the future (although AC takes place much further in the future than MF) and a fairly dystopian one at that. It's pretty easy to see the origins of Market Forces-some friends who work investment banking in London are out to dinner to one night and talking about how cutthroat it is the office and one says "we might have to kill the Director (or the competition) to move ahead" and from that idea, this novel was born. The corporate warriors in this future really are warriors-they issue challenges to their peers in other companies in order to win contracts and they battle on the road in specially designed cars made to kill. And they do kill-if they've wounded their opponent, they move in and "kill them and take their plastic". The hero, such as he is, starts out as not too bad a guy. He moved ahead in his old company by making a very strategic kill (although, it turns out, not to move ahead in the company). And the other person he fought, he ended up taking to the hospital himself. That won't fly at his new company-they of the "kill them" motto. And not only is he in investment banking, he's in Conflict Investment. (I thought this might have been the idea that launched this book as well but decided it had to the killing your boss and peers idea). The company backs a side in a conflict-whoever it is they think will win. They supply them with whatever it is that will help them win-food, medicine, arms...and in return, when they win and take over the country, the company gets a small percentage of the GNP. Not a bad trade off, if you don't mind dealing with crazy psychopaths. Of course, you probably ARE a crazy psychopath if you work in this version of investment banking. And if you aren't, you become one, like Chris Faulkner, the hero/antihero of MF. Does Chris really go over to the Dark Side? Permanently? It's kind of hard to tell. Yes, he does some bad things and behaves badly but he (at least to me) marginally redeems himself. This book is worth not just for the excellent premise but for everything else. Faulkner is not only a believable character but everyone around him is as well. It's very well-written and a killer (sorry) story. Altered Carbon is more of a noir story, set in the future. Takeshi Kovacs is former military who now is pretty much a hired gun. People use him, lie to him and torture him-but unlike Faulkner, he always knows right from wrong. He may make a bad decision or two but he's one of the good guys-it's easy to picture as the literary descendant of Sam Spade and Travis McGee. However, the hard science fiction setting is very cool. There is quite a bit detail describing not only the setting but the political landscape of Altered Carbon and that, ultimately makes it a deeper and richer book than just your average noir thriller. Like John D. MacDonald, Morgan comments on society as a whole and how people behave in both good and bad situations-it's that that makes this book more than just another thriller.
On a side note-I was reading this book when I heard that Benazir Bhutto had been assassinated and I thought of a poem attributed to a female leader that Kovacs had followed that said:

When they ask
How I died
Tell them
Still angry

I couldn't help but think that she would have liked it.

Sweeney Todd and Transformers

Actually, I watched Transformers first, so I need to write about it first. To start, I like Shia LaBeouf-the kid can act and he sells this movie like he's gunning for an Oscar. I found it startling that he was giving such a good performance in what (to me) was not even as good as a comic-book movie. yes, the transformers themselves were very cool and the special effects were excellent. Yes, the action sequences were good as well. So why didn't I like it very much? Because it seemed to be an ad for the US Army. The Army looked good, the people in the Army looked good-and they were very cool and modern. If I were sixteen, this movie would make me want to join the Army, so I could get my hands on the cool weapons and uniforms, so I could fly around and save people. It reminded me a bit of those WWII movies, where the stars are always heroic and glamorous and you know every kid in the audience wanted to be Clark Gable or Humphrey Bogart-and join the Armed Forces as soon as they possibly could. Am I over thinking this? Yes, it's possible, especially as this is a Michael Bay movie (I should have known better) and yes, it was very entertaining but still...

Sweeney Todd is the opposite of Transformers in almost every way-the only thing they have in common is that both leading men give terrific performances. The difference is that Sweeney Todd is a great movie and Transformers is a piece of polished and glossy dreck. Johnny Depp (who knew he could sing?) is great as the haunted Sweeney-a man who was shipped off to Australia to get him out of the way when a corrupt judge decided he wanted his wife and child (played by poor Alan Rickman-he can be a great romantic lead, like in Sense and Sensibility but he's playing villains so long, I don't know if he'll ever get to do it again). Sweeney comes back to find his wife has killed herself and the judge has taken his daughter as his ward. It wasn't clear to me if Sweeney was crazy before he came back, but he goes insane upon finding this out-told to him by Mrs Lovett, who would like Sweeney to stick around awhile. He decides to become a tenant in the room above her pie shop while he plots (I'm not sure how much plotting there was at the beginning) his revenge. And he does get his revenge, while helping not only Mrs Lovett (Helena Bonham Carter, whose voice is okay but whose acting is very good), his daughter and the sailor who became his friend on the trip from Australia. This side story was actually a little distracting to me-the sailor Anthony falls in love with Sweeney's daughter, Joanna-and strives to woo her, not knowing that the judge has decided he wants to marry her himself. He attempts to save her form the judge (and from the asylum the judge has her committed to when she spurns him). The actor who play Anthony is actually prettier than the actress who plays Joanna. He does a decent job of playing a lovestruck fool, but still-his features are so feminine that it's a little strange. And Joanna has an odd face-very delicate but prone to making odd faces and she can't act worth beans. However, the kid who plays Toby, the urchin taken in by Sweeney and Mrs Lovett (after Sweeney has killed his employer) is great. The most affecting part of the movie is his duet with Bonham-Carter-and it's a tear-jerker-made worse by what follows.This movie is quite bloody (after all, he kills a lot of people to make those meat pies) but after awhile it seemed cartoonish. However, this is isn't for the squeamish-there are parts that are violent and scary-but everything has a purpose. This movie may be long, but not a minute is wasted.