Three new movies are up for attention, with the best being a quirky thriller directed by Randall Miller, who I think is an American director to watch. His previous efforts include a variety of television work, as well as the successful independent film "Bottle Shock," the movie about the famed tasting battle between California and French winemakers, which was reviewed here in the Niagara Falls Reporter when it played the area.
Miller's latest movie is "Nobel Son," and initially, it seems to be a family drama about a son failing to live up to his Nobel Prizing-winning father's expectations. But Miller, and his co-screenwriter Jody Savin, have something darker and more foreboding in mind. I'm going to dance around what happens in the film, because this is the kind of feature that is best seen with only little bits of information about it in your brain.
Early in the picture, the character of university professor Eli Michaelson (Alan Rickman) wins the Nobel Prize for Chemistry, and just as he's about to leave for Stockholm with his wife, Sarah, a forensic psychologist (Mary Steenburgen), and his college-age son, Barkley (Bryan Greenberg), the young man is kidnapped.
It's obvious that this is a bright family, definitely blessed in the intelligence department. For the record, Barkley's thesis work is about cannibalism.
The movie opens with an unsettling scene during which a man is mugged at an ATM and, once knocked cold, he has his thumb severed. That's all you'll get from me about the thrust of the story, which, really, is for the better, because Miller and Savin pull the rug out from under you at every turn. Rickman, Steenburgen and Greenberg offer up exceptional performances.
In addition to playing a genius, Rickman is also an acting genius, and he's always superb at playing a rude, preening bastard. There's a reason Rickman's bad guy in "Die Hard" is one of the movies' greatest villains. It's as if the world revolves around Eli, while the rest of the people he knows or works with are his minions, including his wife and son, who are relentlessly belittled. When he hears that the kidnappers want $2 million for his son, his first instinct is not to pay the ransom.
As "Nobel Son" takes the audience on its series of twists and turns, we meet a number of additional characters, all of them well crafted by the writers and wonderfully acted.
There's the sociopathic kidnapper (Shawn Hatosy), an obsessive-compulsive gardener (Danny DeVito), an off-kilter police detective who thinks what's happening is also off-kilter (Bill Pullman), a cop who plays by the book (Ernie Hudson), a sexually charged wannabe poet whom Barkley will bed (Eliza Dushku), and a university official who is not fond of Michaelson (Ted Danson).
Part mystery, part marital masochism drama, the film is filled with superb little gems of action and reaction. The dialogue enhances the characters, and as the pieces of the puzzle are put together, there's a refreshing realization that the director isn't playing the audience for chumps, but will actually deliver something that makes sense.
For me, there are a lot of highlights in the ingenious "Nobel Son," but I especially liked the fact that Dushku's character is named City Hall. There's also a sequence in a shopping mall that takes place in front of a store named Heist that is one of the best on-screen crime capers I've ever seen. First you see the red Mini-Cooper, then, what, you don't? It's an exhilarating and very clever scene.
"Nobel Son" is a movie that seems to have come out of nowhere. It deserves to be seen.
Now, from the sublime to the ridiculous. In 2004, we had "The Punisher," which is based on the Marvel comic book character and is a solid action adventure. It has a terrific cast that includes Thomas Jane as Frank Castle, an FBI agent whose family is killed by the mob, compelling him to become a brutal lethal avenger. Also on board are John Travolta, Rebecca Romijn, Roy Scheider, Eddie Jemison, Ben Foster and Will Patton, who is one of my favorite unsung American actors.
The sequel is called "Punisher: War Zone," and it's everything "The Punisher" is not. Where the original is about honor and sadness, and is superbly shot and filled with realistic action, the new movie is an excuse to murder and main, drip blood and gore, and show off Hollywood's latest special effects.
Actor Jane has not returned to reprise his role as Castle. This time we've got some non-entity named Ray Stevenson, and he's not lean and muscular like Jane, or smart enough of an actor to appreciate Jane's interpretation of The Punisher character. Stevenson is blockish and doltish and an embarrassment to comic book lovers everywhere.
The original director, Jonathan Hensleigh, and his co-screenwriter, Michael France, are also not involved with the sequel. The new director, a female hack named Lexi Alexander, and her trio of failed male screenwriters have cheapened the character and played everything for laughs. If you know anything about The Punisher, you know he does not smile and never laughs at the slaughter of the mobsters that he carries out.
In "Punisher: War Zone," the focus is on a mob guy who escaped the vengeance delivered in the first film. After he's disfigured in an action sequence, and his face looks like a puzzle with suture stitches everywhere, he calls himself Jigsaw and vows to get The Punisher.
After 103 minutes of a truly dreadful attempt at entertainment, the picture ends. Mindless to the max, this nonsense ranks as one of the worst movies I've ever seen.
"Ashes of Time Redux" ("Dung Che Sai Duk Redux") is actually an alleged reworking of "Ashes of Time" from 1994.
Both films -- if there really are two -- are by legendary Chinese director Kar Wai Wong. I've never seen the original, and you shouldn't feel bad if you haven't, either. Supposedly the director felt his first version was incomplete and has spent 14 years tweaking it. He shouldn't have bothered. Beautiful to look at, the movie is incomprehensible.
All you need to know is that an ancient Chinese swordsman is disgraced and heads for the desert to find his inner self and to enlist others to do his fighting.
The names of the seasons pop up to remind you that time has passed. I was so happy when the fourth season arrived that I felt like a kid in a candy store. The film runs 93 minutes, but it felt like 93 years.
For a movie about a swordsman, there isn't a lot of sword play. But there is an alluring woman who pops in and out of either the actual action or just the hero's mind. I didn't know, and I really didn't care, because it's so obvious that the director didn't.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | December 9 2008 |