Kagemusha

The story of Akira Kurosawa's fall from grace is one of the more depressing in the annals of cinema. He never suffered half the indignities of Orson Welles or Erich von Stroheim, but following Red Beard he never had an easy time of securing funding again. Where once he produced a film almost annually, each of his features following his turbulent final collaboration with Toshiro Mifune was separated by a five-year gap, a trend that lasted until 1990's Dreams. By the late '70s, Kurosawa had not worked in Japan since Dodes'ka-den, his first color feature, at the turn of the decade. He won the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar for 1975's Dersu Uzala, set and filmed in Sibera, but the acclaim did nothing to convince Toho Studios to fund their former golden child. At last, two leading American New Hollywood directors, George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola, both deeply indebted to Kurosawa's technique and themes, learned of the master's troubles and used their clout to convince 20th Century Fox to back the film (though how Coppola, still embroiled and near-bankrupt in the tsunami that was Apocalypse Now and still teetering on a knife edge before being vindicated upon its release, helped I'll never know).

In one of life's little ironies, the film Lucas and Coppola helped make, a return to the samurai genre, even, is utterly different from the films that informed these two megafans. Kagemusha, a depiction of the key moment in Japanese history when the old daimyo system morphed into a unified Japan. Primarily, it follows the Takeda daimyo, leader of the doomed clan, as he attempts to besiege and defeat his enemies, the Oda and Tokugawa clans.

It sounds like your typical, epic Kurosawa jidaigeki, filled with battles and expressions of honor, and to a degree it is. Yet the structure is different: Kurosawa shows only briefs clips of rapidly edited action, instead focusing on the intimate details of a lord's double and how this kagemusha must reign after the true lord's death to preserve morale. However, the battles in his other films often represented their themes, and what little we see of the action here serves the same purpose. The warriors of Seven Samurai found honor in their sacrifice for peasant farmers, even as Kurosawa never stooped to celebrating their violence. The reluctant brutality of the ronin who calls himself Sanjuro presented extreme violence as a violation of this wise samurai's sense of honor. Kagemusha presents the emerging impersonality of military warfare brought about by guns, an incomprehensible slaughter that destroys any sense of value, much less honor.

Shingen, the Takeda daimyo, is himself slain by gunfire, shot by a sniper who wasn't, as we learn later, even aiming carefully. The generals who hear of their master's wound are naturally distressed, but Shingen's enemies do not seem particularly pleased, either. Oda Nobunaga and Tokugawa Ieyasu learn that he has been wounded -- but not killed -- and they display a reverence for their foe and they disparage the cowardice of the attack. As the Takeda clan had nearly made peace with Tokugawa, Shingen's brother Nobukado (Tsutomu Yamazaki) decides to use a double to fool both Shingen's enemies and allies, preserving appearances and morale until the situation can be smoothed.

They find a dead ringer in a petty thief (Tatsuya Nakadai) set to be crucified for his crimes. They recruit him to be a kagemusha, or "shadow warrior," a job that he takes to with surprising skill. With only descriptions of the lord's behavior and mannerisms from those who knew Shingen best, the kagemusha is soon so convincing that even those who knew the truth and taught him about Shingen cannot tell the difference. Yet there are still some concerns as to certain tells that might give away the ruse. One of the elite circle mentions Shingen's horse, a wild beast that only the real lord could ride. "His lordship has been ill," another instructs the men to tell those who would ask questions, "and he must refrain from riding." The matter of the lord's mistress is then put forward. "His lordship has been ill, and he must refrain from riding."

The role of the kagemusha was initially meant for Shintaro Katsu, the comic actor known for playing the blind samurai Zatoichi. But Katsu angered the director when he showed up on-set with his own camera crew seeking to document (without his permission) Kurosawa and his shooting technique. So, the director replaced him with Nakadai who, it must be said, does not excel in the role. He infuses Shingen with so little personality that when he transforms the thief into the lord it's hard to be impressed; his only achievement is looking like himself. Nakadai had proven himself in previous Kurosawa pictures, and he still had his flawless performance in Ran ahead of him, but he's one of the major flaws in this picture.

Another is the leaden pacing. Seven Samurai is perhaps the "shortest" three-and-a-half-hour movie ever made, one with far less action that many would have you believe but edited so that even its scenes of reflection and quiet worry maintain momentum. (I also suspect that he hit budget or time issues, as some shots contain uses of hand-held shots that simply jar in comparison to his formal camerawork elsewhere.) Despite Nakadai's two-dimensional performance, it is genuinely interesting that the thief is being absorbed into the late Shigen's persona, to the point that Shingen's young grandson looks upon the double as the real, albeit kinder, deal and even Shingen's embittered son turns to the man he knows is a fraud for serious tactical advice in the conflict with Tokugawa and Oda. But Kurosawa breaks the narrative in odd places, often touching upon but never fully explicating Katsuyori's anger concerning his lack of inheritance. He might as well not show Nobunaga or Ieyasu at all, apart from perhaps their initial reactions to Shingen's wound and the eventual revelation of his death, as they add little to the story and don't have enough presence between them for one character. It leaves the film a good half hour too long, and for the first time, I found a Kurosawa film to be an occasionally arduous task.

When, however, the elements click, Kagemusha can be as impressive as anything else in the master's canon. In the long interim between Dersu Uzala and this, he returned to painting, and shots here combine the deeply artistic composition he'd always displayed with a more abstract and painterly tinge. Kurosawa fills the screen with impressionistic skies, most strikingly with reds and purples during battle scenes. In one of the film's best moments, the kagemusha has a warped dream sequence as he more or less runs through a painting alternately chasing and chased by the ghost of Shingen. As the term kagemusha means "shadow warrior," Kurosawa injects numerous shots of the thief's shadow growing and growing until it fills the screen, yet he frames these shots so as to, somehow, make them flow naturally without disrupting the flow for the sake of a visual cue.

Many dismiss the film as a sort of dress rehearsal for Ran, and while that's harsh, one cannot deny that Lear was on Kurosawa's brain even here. It certainly has Shakespeare's sense of nihilism, what with the final shots of mass slaughter and of the kagemusha's bullet-ridden corpse floating down a river along with a standard now laughable in its hollow proclamation of spirit. Yet it's unfair to call it nihilism, either in Kurosawa's work or the Bard's, as it's tempered with great regret and sadness. Kagemusha's seeming wistfulness of the sword and spear warfare that preceded the cold gunfire of this new brand of killing undermines the director's clear disdain of any sort of violence, but in reality he's simply lamenting the loss of all codes of honor, even if they had no real application in battle. In fact, Kagemusha is the sole of Kurosawa's jidaigeki films to line up with his depictions of postwar Japan: the warlords used muskets and wanton destruction to unify the country, and later we dropped two bombs from 30,000 ft, leading Japan into its modern era. This film is as slow as it is because it's Kurosawa's death march for the cultural values he mourned his whole career.

Natural Born Killers

Before a young, hyperactive video clerk by the name of Quentin Tarantino became, for better or worse, the icon of American independent cinema in the '90s, he toted around a couple of scripts around Hollywood hoping to direct them but at the very least looking to sell one. He managed, of course, to hold onto Reservoir Dogs for himself, his script for True Romance was optioned and eventually given to Tony Scott. His other screenplay, though, is what set the ball rolling for QT in the first place. Tarantino shopped the screenplay for Natural Born Killers around Hollywood in '91, caused a bit of a stir that helped him secure the capital for Reservoir Dogs, then he set aside the script as an immature work full of good ideas and dialogue but bursting with unfulfilled potential -- and he's very much right; his NBK starts incredibly but it loses steam in the second half.

Again, this was before the persona known as "QT" hit big, so this display of humility did not elicit the proper amount of gravity for Warner Bros., who bought the thing anyway and gave it to Oliver Stone. Now, if Tony Scott was a fun fit for Tarantino, Oliver Stone was a sign from God that this kid was going to ride Fortune's wheel to the top. You can argue for a certain degree of subtlety in Tarantino's scripts -- the utter genius of the "Eggplant" scene in True Romance, how Inglourious Basterds, for all its "badassery," shows a group of characters consumed by their quest for revenge, not validated by it -- but even the most cynical of haters would admit that QT is Voltaire compared to Oliver Stone. Indeed, even Tarantino's script was a bit too satirical and not not direct enough, so Stone and his writers kept most of the dialogue and reworked the story around it. The original writer disowned it, but eventually he divorced himself from his personal feelings on the tampering and admitted an admiration for Stone's choices.

That seems to be the appropriate response to this movie, regardless of how you feel about it: at least some level of admiration for it. Stone was coming off the more low-profile Heaven & Earth at the time, but he was still the man who was enjoying one of the most notable runs of any director of the last 25 years: Platoon, Born on the Fourth of July, JFK. It was Stone's world, and we all just lived in it. By the time this story of sensationalized mass murderers entered post-production, the country had been positively inundated with ghastly reflections of this erstwhile piece of satire: O.J. Simpson, the Menendez brothers, hell, even Tanya Harding. That Stone could put out this damning piece of social commentary, particularly one so openly avant-garde, deserves recognition in its own right.

For my money, it deserves the attention. In some respects, no other American film of the decade was as important. Just as America's fascination with crime and violence began to openly assert itself, Stone's Killers wasn't so much a splash of cold water to the face as a sledgehammer. Its dizzying use of edits, different film stocks, color tinting and host of other tricks (including animation and flickering between images as if changing channels) reflect the stupefying disorientation of television. Much of the film's violence, so virulently debated and decried, is presented as captured footage or dramatic reenactments of Mickey (Woody Harrelson) and Mallory (Juliette Lewis) Knox's crimes, all of which are just as violent and exploitative as the moments where we witness them in real time.

The presentation of the film as television is a retooling of Tarantino's original verité-like documentary footage, which he abandoned in the second half anyway. Stone's choice is funnier and more relevant, and it allows him to inject some of the most ingenious flourishes of his career. The original screenplay, centered on media personality Wayne Gale (Robert Downey, Jr.) and gave little background to the serial killers, which Stone rectified by making the warped lovebirds the full focus; his framing of Mallory's abusive childhood as an "aw-shucks" sitcom is possibly the singly most brilliant thing he's ever done. With Rodney Dangerfield playing the physically and sexually abusive father and an accompaniment of canned laughter, its easy to fall into the rhythm of a typical sitcom, until you realize that Dangerfield's punchlines are horrific descriptions of rape and beatings, all the more frightening in how Stone juxtaposes them with the laugh track, underlining how sitcoms in general milk laughs from some form of abuse and positing that violence is so ingrained in our culture that we find it inoffensively funny (how many of all the actions films made each year feature some death played for laughs?).

Mickey has his own childhood demons, and in this way Stone presents these characters as products of a violent society that matures into freewheeling madness just as Mickey and Mallory mature into their own. As such, society venerates them, chiefly through Wayne Gale, a Geraldo Rivera with Robin Leach's accent, whose program American Maniacs has never been more popular. His appearance is broadly satiric in the first half, where Gale plays in the background of Mickey and Mallory's rampage, gently inciting the public into accepting these two as heroes of some sort.

The third act, which actually lasts half the movie, takes place in prison following Mickey and Mallory's capture -- hilariously, Stone set their shootout with the cops to the Carmina Burana, further emphasizing it as a piece of operatic television. Many point to the second half as a letdown following the impressionistic, madcap murder spree, but just as Full Metal Jacket before it, Natural Born Killers needs the sudden shift in gear to flesh out its striking opening into a concrete message. Moving the pair to prison allows a juxtaposition against two cops: Detective Jack Scagnetti (Tom Sizemore), a warped, misogynistic sadist obsessed with murderers after Charles Whitman shot his mother during his rampage at the University of Texas; and Dwight McClusky (Tommy Lee Jones), an equally brutal warden who deals with the increasing overpopulation of his prison with violent offenders by physically asserting himself over those who dare step out of line. Scagnetti attempts to force himself on Mallory, who responds to his offer of a cigarette by stomping it out with her bare foot. McClusky, unlike the showboat Scagnetti, doesn't like the publicity coming his way and wants Mickey and Mallory simply and quietly killed. Yet he clearly works on his image, and he's too busy preening his devilish look to contemplate the full truth of his statement, "This place isn't a prison; it's a time bomb."

Gale's interview with Mickey is appropriately histrionic (on the presenter's part, at least), but the killer's cold rationality for his actions sparks a riot. Suddenly, television's role as a passive propagandist becomes an active character as Gale's ever-dwindling crew is forced to follow Mickey as he rescues Mallory and navigates through the horrific bloodbath that is the direct result of television. Up until this point, Natural Born Killers does not fully qualify as satire, as Stone leaps so fervently into the heart of the beast that the film's extreme violence is largely inseparable from the sort that it seeks to condemn. At last, though, it emerges as a piece of genius, as Gale is so consumed in his own hype that he too begins to gun down prison guards in a frenzy. As TV destroys itself in rapid montage, Mickey and Mallory emerge the evolved "natural born killers," the idols of a world that has finally come to celebrate its evil side, and they re-establish the "purity" of violence by killing the representative of that which turned it into a a product.

People always like to say of performances they love, even in films they might dislike, "Oh, if so-and-so wasn't in it the movie wouldn't have been half as good." I don't know why people say this, as it is so asinine as to warrant nothing but mockery -- The Godfather wouldn't be the same without Al Pacino; is it a bad film?. However the casting of Woody Harrelson, then known (fittingly, given the context of the film) only as dopey Woody from Cheers, and Juliette Lewis as two psychotic yet perversely endearing serial killers should remain an example until the end of cinema as an example of absolutely perfect casting. Downey, Sizemore and Jones also give incredible performances, all of them wildly exaggerated yet perfectly plausible in this disgusting world. But the real star here is Stone, whose techniques are utterly distracting, yet intentionally so. By the end of the film's two hours, he's destroyed the exploitative medium of television through sheer sensory overload, and his final blow is to the audience itself, as he ends with channel surfing through the sensationalizes murder trials of the day. In a career distinguished by visual inventiveness, even mastery, Natural Born Killers stands as his finest technical achievement. Upon seeing it a second time, I'm tempted to call it his greatest film, period; has any other mainstream film so trashed our cultural acceptance, even infatuation, with violence without resorting to preaching?

The Top 10 Arrested Development Episodes

[Warning -- contains spoilers]

When it comes to TV comedy, I, like any good elitist, tend to cite British programs before American series. Hell, one of the few good American sitcoms of the decade is a remake of the infinitely more complex Office. Arrested Development, however, is the sole proof one needs to prove that the States can produce comedy just as good as our mates across the pond. It is, without question, the funniest show I have ever seen, stuffed to the rafters with pop culture, satire, callbacks and the sort of absurdity I didn't think American programs could get away with. Everything about it, from its cast to its unerring scripts to Ron Howard's dry, inviting narration, was simply perfect.

What other show could present the gag-inducing, horrendously overplayed "will-they-won't-they" conceit between two cousins, and then press the incest angle so much that eventually the writers just went full-on meta and cast Jason Bateman's real-life sister as a possible love interest? To take on the dysfunctional family and truly create the maddest, most intentionally unlikable cast of characters ever put on television? They broke the fourth wall so many times that eventually you just accept this insane world as a part of ours, no matter what terrible magic tric- excuse, me, illusion, GOB was practicing or how incessantly Tobias utterly and completely failed to comprehend his uselessness. Multiple watches are necessary, not simply to catch wonderfully subtle moments (such as Henry Winkler a.k.a. the Fonz "jumping" a dead shark or pretty much every line of dialogue and visual gag of Charlize Theron's arc, in retrospect), but because you'll be laughing so hard that you'll miss even surface-level gags.

I originally planned to review the series my usual way, then I decided to write about all three seasons with one post because I had no idea how to tackle a season by season review of this brilliant program without just listing off the jokes I liked. Of course, I soon realized that a giant review would consist of the same thing, albeit even more ridiculous as attempting to corral what I loved and loved even more about the series would devolve in Chris Farley Show-esque obsequiousness. So, I've settled on paying tribute to this masterpiece of programming by funneling my "remember how funny this was?" sentiments into their natural format: a list of my favorite episodes and the reasons why I love them. So break out the Cornballer, put on your copy of Franklin Comes Alive and join me to reminisce about the finest moments of a show that, in all honesty, has 53 best episodes.

1. Good Grief (2x04)

I don't know that any one episode of any one sitcom contain half as many laughs as "Good Grief." After Ice the bounty hunter returns from Mexico and tells the Bluths that George, Sr. is dead, the family decides to hold a wake. Naturally, GOB seeks to turn it into a magic trick, while everyone lies to Buster, fearing that the news would shatter someone who is already fractured. Meanwhile, Anne dumps George Michael, only for Michael to finally accept her enough to invite her to the wake. To try to summarize but a few of the dozens of jokes packed into its 20 minutes would only result in me searching for a copy of the script to post, but kudos must be given to Tobias' asinine "John Wayne" speech, George Sr. hiding in a spider hole like Saddam Hussein, Buster's beyond-inappropriate military outfit and Michael goading George Michael, who knows that his granddad is still alive, into giving a eulogy at the wake. It all builds to a climax that brought me to tears and a sore stomach the first five times I watched it, but somehow they keep it all together with the unifying power of Peanuts

2. Meat the Veals (2x16)

It is with some small amount of shame that I say that, in a show packed with the greatest and most supportive comedy cast and penned by writers with the greatest gift for callbacks and obscure references this side of Monty Python, my single favorite moment from Arrested Development is a suspenseful zoom-in on a puppet. But that's one of only many reasons to love "Meet the Veals" and its giant, pulsating middle finger at cheap sitcom declarations of love. George Michael decides to get "pre-engaged" to Anne, which in turn inspires George, Sr. to kidnap Lucille in order to renew their vows. "Meat the Veals" brings an end to the uproarious Mrs. Featherbottom run, as well as letting Alan Tudyk and Ione Skye (who play Anne's parents) steal a bit of the spotlight despite limited screen time. As mentioned, Franklin makes his debut here, though the majesty of his record career was still on the horizon. It all coalesces in the final 6 minutes into the biggest and wildest comedy cavalcade I have ever seen on television, American or otherwise. I will also never, ever tire of David Cross' reading of, "I guess he changed his mind when he saw you pounding that sweet piece of Veal!" as Mrs. Featherbottom.

3. Top Banana (1x02)

Oh my God, we're having a fire! ...sale. The pilot of Arrested Development was its weakest moment (relatively speaking, of course), simply because it had to at least somewhat seriously establish a world of infinite comedic possibilities and characters with no remote ties to reality. With the second episode, however, the wheels on the logic train came off and the thing somehow blasted into orbit.

Artist's representation

Various tendrils and threads of Bluth family politics were formed in the pilot, but with only the second episode nearly all of them pulled together and joined into one insane web of deceit, pettiness and suppressed memories. Tobias immediately hits the wall with his sudden desire to become an actor, Lindsay mocks him and even undercuts him at an audition for an advertisement, and all the while Michael must juggle the sudden strain of having to continue to speak to his family, much less keep them all together in the face of George's arrest. Furthermore, GOB's penchant for accidentally killing the animals he buys for his tricks is revealed, as is his bizarre desire not to help the family, but simply to be asked, and his resentment of Michael. Remember, there's always money in the banana stand.

4. Pier Pressure (1x10)

By the time Arrested Development reached its tenth episode, it had more than proved its absurdist, uncompromising tone, but "Pier Pressure" was only the first of many times the series raised its own bar, just when you thought it couldn't get any better. I don't know what's more outrageous: the idea that George, Sr. would hire an amputee (a former Bluth employee who lost his arm in a work-related accident, no less) to teach his children elaborate lessons involving a fake arm being apparently ripped from its socket for issues as mundane as writing notes or not yelling, or that, judging from the numerous flashbacks, the kids fell for it every time when at some point they must have remembered the face of ol ' J. Walter Weatherman. That's all well and good, but then it moves into the realm of the outright audacious when Buster asks George Michael to buy him pot to ease his girlfriend Lucille Austero's (Liza Minelli) vertigo. Michael misunderstands, hires GOB's male stripper pals to scare his son straight -- yep, that metallic taste in your mouth is from the irony -- and somehow it builds into George's greatest and final lesson: "Never teach your son a lesson."

5. Mr. F (3x05)

You could easily substitute "The Ocean Walker" into this spot, but honestly any episode of the Rita arc deserves a mention and any one of them could beat the best moments of 90% of every American sitcom ever made. Obviously Charlize Theron knew the full truth of her character from the start, as her performance across all of her episodes works on three levels: as a seemingly brilliant and charming woman, as a potential spy and, dear God, as an "MRF" -- mentally retarded female. We learn this shocking, gut-busting truth at the end of this episode, so perhaps I'm awarding it a spot in the top 10 in retrospect. But everything about the episode is fried gold, from Tobias being recruited by the C.I.A. to be a mole, only for the idiot to dress up as a mole, to GOB trying to connect to his emotionally and now physically disconnected father via the surrogate George hires to communicate with the outside world (then of course Buster takes over behind the scenes and the two brothers bond through Larry). It might actually be tragic and symbolic if it wasn't so hilarious.

6. S.O.B.s (3x09)

FOX treated the show like dirt -- they reduced the second season order from 22 to 18, then cut the third down to 13 including a two hour finale made up of two two-episode blocks -- but the writers responded to every clichéd last act of ratings-grabbing desperation with postmodernist brilliance and wicked snark. The dreaded "very special guest star" syndrome is the most obvious and, usually, the most damning studio suggestion that bogs down episodes entirely around name recognition for a star who's just there for the paycheck -- see the first half of 30 Rock's third season -- but Arrested Development utterly skewered the concept of guest stars as well as every other ploy in the book. The family organizes a fundraiser for themselves, titled "Save Our Bluths," and they spend the entire episode wondering what they can do to get more supporters, from inviting Nicole Kidman (a jab at their own usage of Oscar-winner Charlize Theron in several episodes), 3-D effects, a "live" ending and even outright asking the audience to get their friends watching in the narration.

The writers take a special glee, though, in referencing a host of other FOX shows that were canceled, as if resigning themselves to their fate but also reminding everyone that it might not be their fault for failing to attract ratings (as if winning Emmys, Golden Globes, various guild awards and appearing on pretty much every TV critics' year-end lists didn't let the cast and crew off the hook). As much as we all might wish that Arrested Development had never met its fate, we should be thankful that the writers took their cancellation as a cue to go down swinging.

7. Motherboy XXX (2x13)

Arrested Development ran into problems with the network over ratings long before they poured their frustrations into "S.O.B.s," and "Motherboy XXX" was the first indicator of the crew's disgust with FOX's suggestions to win over viewers. The network foisted product placement by Burger King upon them, and they responded by placing it so blatantly in the forefront to mock that no one could accuse them of selling out. The show never wanted for brilliant pop culture references, but I don't know that they ever topped the blink-and-you'll-miss-it genius of having Henry Winkler's Barry Zuckerkorn hop over a dead shark (on his way to Burger King, of course). The title comes from the unfortunately Latinized anniversary of the Motherboy pageant, normally where Lucille and Buster prove their ever-disturbing bond. Substituting Buster for a terrified George Michael, though, allows for even more laughs, culminating with Michael's desperate attempt to save his son from Buster's fate.

8. Forget-Me-Now (3x03)

I admit that I always preferred Steve Holt in small bursts, and his increased role in the final season -- funny as it was -- was one of the few aspects of the show that I did not fully love. However, the matter of his relation to GOB informs one of the series' finest episodes, centered on, of all the innately unfunny things in the world, roofies (and in the same episode that Tobias combines his experiences as an analyst and a therapist into the world's first analrapist, no less). That GOB would have a bottle of date-rape drugs on hand at all times steers the show dangerously near the edge of taste, but the idea that he would use them simply to erase people's memories to deal with major embarrassments is so insane it works. There's also the matter of George Michael, who knows Steve's connection to the family, attempting to stop Steve from getting with Maebe without burning his own bridge to her by condemning the potential incest. I don't know why, but when the characters of this show feign at genuine emotional moments they tend to be even funnier than usual.

9. Let 'Em Eat Cake (1x22)

The first season finale largely encapsulates what makes Arrested Development so great: what starts as a deceptively plot-heavy finale throws narrative out the window in favor of unrelenting insanity that somehow forms its own working narrative. What other series could posit a main character in the post-9/11 era as having built houses in Iraq, who fakes a heart attack to avoid trial for treason? The finale also introduces some wonderful new characters, such as Ann (her?) and the too-literal doctor who enrages the family with his misleading announcements every time he appears. In the show's fashion, a plot development as big as "light treason" plays second fiddle to an overarching send-up of the Atkins craze (read that title again).

10. Ready, Aim, Marry Me (2x10)

My other favorite episodes generally contain one main element that attracts me, which then builds and spirals into an avalanche of absurdity that gives each character a moment to shine. The element of "Ready, Aim, Marry Me" that I love so much, though, has almost nothing to do with anything else in the series: I don't care how over-the-top and meaningless his performance is, Martin Short's guest spot as the paraplegic "Uncle" Jack Dorso is one of the most joyously ridiculous things the show had to offer. Watching Jack try to reclaim some of his action hero past by having his deaf caretaker launch him like a human bullet brought tears to my eyes, and it figures that Lindsay would attempt to hook up with him. And let's not forget Ed Begley, Jr.'s alopecia-stricken Bluth rival Stan Sitwell, who inadvertently sets off both Buster and GOB for the hand of Lucille 2.



Well, there you have it. Agree? Disagree? What are some of your favorites?

The Brothers Bloom

It's perfectly possible that The Brothers Bloom, despite its erroneous title -- one of the brothers is named Bloom, and neither seems to have it as a surname -- is a work of top-to-bottom genius. Meticulously crafted and highly stylized, the film is a labyrinth worthy of Escher, twisting and turning until it reaches the end and refolding upon itself to start anew. If the point of a con-man movie is to keep the audience guessing, then I suppose it succeeds wildly.

With only one prior film under his belt, director Rian Johnson certainly hasn't wasted time in establishing a distinctive visual flair: his Brick -- a film I once watched but was too distracted to follow properly -- has a reputation for visual acuity, and those I know who have watched it studiously assure me that its use of pitch-black noir in a high school setting is interesting and engaging. I shall return to it someday (soon, I hope), but for now let us focus on his latest feature, the con caper The Brothers Bloom.

Bloom's titular brothers have been running scams since childhood. Stephen (played in adulthood by Mark Ruffalo), planned the schemes, invented the characters and wrote the scripts, while little brother Bloom (Adrien Brody) did what was asked of him. Before they even hit puberty, they can run advanced cons: Stephen tells their schoolmates of a fairy in a cave and collects $30 from the other kids to reveal the location. When the parents come to collect their children's money, however, the narrator informs us that the real payoff came from the local cleaners who washed all those kids' muddied clothes.

25 years later, Bloom is 35 and at last fed-up with playing second fiddle to his brother's whims. He agrees to help Stephen for, yes, one last job, though he does not do so immediately, presumably just so the crew could visit Montenegro. Stephen's mark is Penelope (Rachel Weisz), a gorgeous heiress isolated from the world due to misdiagnosed allergies in her youth and the burden of caring for dying loved ones in early adulthood.

From here the plot slowly begins to corkscrew. After they ingratiate themselves to Penelope -- albeit not entirely according to plan -- Bloom, Stephen and Stephen's girlfriend/explosives expert Bang Bang (Rinko Kikuchi, who may or may not have a "no speaking" clause in her contracts for Western films) "reveal" themselves to be art smugglers, aware that the reclusive Penelope will be intrigued enough to follow them around.

There's always a danger when you can see actors having fun with their roles; occasionally the sense of fun can add to a film's sense of whimsy, but if we're meant to take the story seriously it can break the audience's connection to the narrative. Despite the lightweight feel of The Brothers Bloom, it's trying to work as a complex caper, yet the glee evident on the actors' faces is a delight. Ruffalo is terrific as the rakish confidence man, almost always unflappable even when plans go so wrong as a miniature diversion inadvertently blows out the wall of a basilica (well, he at least places his face in his palm on that one). Brody is an underrated straight man, and he's the closest thing the film has to a believable character. By far the most interesting, however, is Weisz: Penelope comes alive with the gang, and she proves a capable companion. In the film's best scene, she infiltrates that basilica that accidentally blew up, and when the chief of police captures her on the way out with a stolen book she manages to convince him to let her go (she even keeps the prize). When she discovers the truth of her new friends' intentions, the look of confusion morphing into pain, balanced with a slight willingness to overlook this betrayal to keep her buddies, is heartbreaking.

These actors are so interesting, in fact, that they manage to keep up interest long after the plot loses all grasp on self-control. Johnson crams every twist he possibly can into two hours, yet he has a shoddy feel for pacing. The Brothers Bloom moves it fits and spurts, lingering in some areas so Johnson can waste our time with beautiful yet arbitrary and ancillary shots of the surrounding area -- admittedly, one must admire how he visited all these gorgeous locations and kept the budget at $20 million. Then, we he hits upon a section of the story that deserves closer attention, Johnson leaps ahead, preferring to move to the next batch of exposition rather than focus on any emotional impact of all the double crosses. By the time "one last job" becomes a precursor to the real farewell gig which leads to yet another con, whatever technical expertise exists in the script is wholly irrelevant to the sense of ennui even the punchiest script can create when it gives you no sure footing with anything. I'm not asking for a cut-and-dry narrative without surprises, but this gang embarked on more farewell gigs than KISS.

Roger Ebert compared the too-smug feel of the film to Wes Anderson's bloated and listless The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou, a comparison I find rather fitting: both demonstrate visually striking artists whose hip characters and exacting camerawork and set design are let loose without restraint, a soulless display of technique that deceptively flirts with greatness on a surface level but reveals its emptiness upon even a cursory inspection. I confess that I found Brody, Kikuchi, Ruffalo and Weisz so entertaining that I didn't terribly mind that my time had been wasted -- I should also mention the great Robbie Coltrane, who makes the wholly unnecessary character of "The Belgian" a welcome edition with his natural and charmingly overbearing screen presence -- but The Brothers Bloom is clearly the work of an artist who still has some growing to do. If Johnson can put his considerable talents toward a story with some degree of human connection, he might just morph into a formidable force.

Séraphine

A few months ago I heard about a theater in Columbus, GA (about 40 miles from Auburn) that dedicated one screen to showings of foreign and independent films, with a new movie every week. I am ashamed to say that I had not taken the time to attend a screening before now. "Most of the films are out on DVD already, so why take a 90-minute round trip to see them?" I reasoned. "Sure, I go to Atlanta to see the new limited releases, but I can usually knock out 2-4 pictures in one go there. I simply don't have the time to do this." Keep in mind, I worked this conclusion out to justify staying on the couch watching yet more movies. But I finally caved and, barring a frustrating mix-up over time zone differences, I'm glad I did.

And what a film to start my new gas-guzzling indulgence with: I knew absolutely nothing about Séraphine before I drove out to Columbus, only that it had been met with mass acclaim. Imagine my surprise then, to discover I'd waded willingly into a biopic -- of an artist, no less -- though that can't compare to the shock of its undeniable quality. Winner of seven César Awards -- basically the French version of the Oscars, but with some shred of artistic credibility -- Séraphine charts the life of Séraphine Louis, a Naïve painter who flirted with recognition in the post-Word War I era.

When we meet her, however, Séraphine is but a maid slaving over the floors of a high-rent apartment and receiving only a pittance and a great deal of verbal abuse in return. Played to near-perfection by Yolande Moreau, Séraphine is a devout Catholic who believes that her back-breaking housework is her spiritual duty. She slogs about the cobblestone streets of Senlis in worn-out clogs that clack on the pavement like a clod mule. She certainly totes around as much as a pack mule, and she's about as stubborn. Yet there is a childlike wonder on her face, and she often sits in fields and trees peacefully absorbing nature around her.

The landlady of the apartment Séraphine cleans rents out one of the suites to one Wilhelm Uhde (Ulrich Tukur), a German expat in France at least partially because of his homeland's intolerance of homosexuality. He regards his new maid with scarcely any more tact than the townspeople, and even his more polite conversations with Séraphine sport a whiff of condescension.Soon the landlady and her pretentious friends discover that he's the famous art critic/dealer who discovered Picasso and Rousseau, and they scramble to impress the impresario in their midst with their vacuous opinions on art.

This isn't a lot of story to fill the first 45 minutes, but Marc Abdelnour and Martin Provost's script excels in presenting us with small, seemingly arbitrary moments that slowly coalesce to advance the narrative (perhaps they understood that they selected a semi-obscure subject for a biography so they could wring some mystery out of her). Provost inserts shots of Séraphine nicking various odd substances from all the places around town where she works -- some blood from the butcher's, the melted wax from the candles in the transept -- and gently he leads up to the revelation that she uses them to improvise her own paints, which she uses for her art. Naturally, one of her paintings makes it into Uhde's hands, and he's overwhelmed. Before he can launch Séraphine, however, WWI breaks out and Ehde returns to Germany, aware that if the Germans take France and find him he'll be shot as a deserter.

The film jumps then from 1914 to 1927. Uhde returns to France to reclaim the impressive collection he left when the Germans invaded. Convinced that his impoverished, aged discovery died in the interim, Uhde has a shock when he attends an exhibition of local art and finds that Séraphine is not only alive but even better than before. He seeks her out and becomes her patron, but just as the 63-year-old finally brushes with wealth -- and the excess that befalls the nouveau riche -- the Depression hits. It's always something.

I'd never heard of "Séraphine de Senlis," so I was treated to seeing her artwork for the first time. It is genuinely beautiful, vibrant and replicating; no one knows for sure what she materials she used to paint, and they have an intensity you don't often see in paintings, particularly the reds. Yet her paintings also have a darker quality: her leaves have fuzzy fringes that look like the creepiest of crawlies, and her fruits suspiciously like eyes. They have a schizophrenic quality, underscored by Séraphine's notions of a guardian angel that guides her actions. What seems a story of divine inspiration, however, gradually mounts into a depiction of madness, aggravated by the cruel tease of fate that knocks the old housekeeper back to the bottom of Fortune's wheel just as she started to rotate to the top.

Provost films Séraphine in long takes, watching Séraphine's blank face silently as her mental illness consumes her. Yet the director and his editor, Ludo Troch, find a way to linger on these takes while still keeping a moderate pace that maintains an even keel regardless of what happens: when Séraphine at last fully loses her grip on reality and is committed, the event fits as naturally into the story as those early scenes of quiet diligence.

Séraphine is a strange and wonderful beast: a biopic that manages to be unpretentious, interesting and subtle. As with Jane Campion's recent Keats biopic, Bright Star, it leaves large elliptical gaps in the narrative that make the story more interesting, not less. Besides, it's nice to see a story that doesn't work out like all the others: when Uhde visits Séraphine at the asylum, he does not attempt to wring more paintings from her madness, to push his artist even further over the edge for his own financial or spiritual gain; instead, he takes the money he got from selling her work to buy her a room that allows her to go outside and be with the trees and flowers she loves so much.

Michael Jackson's This Is It

I must admit before I start that Michael Jackson's death didn't rattle me all that much. I knew almost nothing about the man, enjoyed his trio of classic albums (Off the Wall, Thriller, Bad) but not nearly to the extent that I could be called a "fan," and while I found his passing surprising I can't say that I was shocked. Naturally, taking stock of his career has become difficult these last few months, as supporters and detractors have done their best to portray him as either the last great music icon or an overrated, talentless hack who hasn't been relevant since before the fall of the Berlin Wall (and that's leaving out their opinions of his personal life).

This Is It clearly falls on the side of the supporters, displaying an open bias befitting something released by Jackson's estate. Yet I can't say that I mind that: given the flood of tabloid details that have already surfaced and God knows how many tell-alls on their way to the nearest bookstore, I welcome a behind-the-scenes look that comes to praise MJ, not bury him, even if it does potentially omit glimpses into the darker side of the artist's final days. Originally shot for Jackson's personal collection, This Is It offers footage of the rehearsals for his proposed 50-show residency at London's O2 Arena, from the casting auditions for backup dancers right up to the last practices Jackson performed before his passing on June 25.

What we see is often revelatory. I used to believe that Prince was the only true artist in '80s pop; Madonna and MJ just found good producers while Prince crafted the only albums that could truly stand with the underdogs of '80s rock (The Smiths, Sonic Youth, etc.). But the Michael Jackson presented to us by Kenny Ortega displays a vision and a control over his production that could only be called auteurial. He has a hand in everything: helping with stage design; instructing his musicians with perfect memory of all his songs, their keys and their tempos; even a multimedia project that will project computer-animated sequences on screens behind the performers to add to the experience. At every turn, Jackson restructures the show so that he cues everything, from instrumental breaks to his dancers to even the lighting setup.

This Is It does such a wonderful job at presenting us with the image of Michael the perfectionist, in fact, that it inadvertently exposes its own weaknesses. For the first half of the film I was absorbed by the footage of Jackson rehearsing. Conserving his voice by softly singing and even lip-synching, as well as a bit stiff from age (and, if even half of the recent reports are true, full of so many downers he was practically sweating ether), he nevertheless projects an energy befitting a much younger man, one nowhere near death. The crew of musicians, dancers, and directors speak about him reverently, and frankly it's not hard to see why: Jackson is a roadie's dream. He's there on-set at all times with the people who tend to be the ones who do the real work behind a show, and he treats them all like family.

As soon as the film moved past the first hour, though, it pushed further and further into repetitious tedium. Watching Jackson fine-tune his show is interesting, but when we see him giving useless advice to the musicians such as "let it simmer" and stick with that number for minutes until the players can finally make out what the hell it is he actually wants (points must be given to the keyboardist, who responds to Jackson's vague instructions with disarming inanities of his own like "It needs more booty!"). Jackson's age really shows when Ortega moves into the show-stopping numbers such as "Thriller" and a rendition of "Earth Song" that seems a touch hypocritical as Jackson stands on a massive stage filled with lights, pneumatics, huge projection screens, all of it sucking electricity at the rate of a small town.

Eventually I was so worn down that I tuned out for a moment in the middle of "Billie Jean." "Billie Jean"! It's blasphemy to even think of such a thing, yet I cannot say with certainty if Jackson ever did the Moonwalk because I lost interest after the first verse and only came back to Earth in time to see Jackson grabbing his crotch repeatedly as an outro -- I wonder if there's something to be read into that. The only worthwhile aspect of the second half is the opportunity to watch the musicians Jackson hired to support him, particularly guitarist Orianthi Panagaris, a spunky blonde who can recreate Eddie Van Halen's solo on "Beat It" note-for-note and who absolutely unleashes at one point in a deafening rock cascade that is one of the film's highlights. Another is a duet between Jackson and one of his singer on "They Don't Care About Us" that starts off restrained like all the other numbers before Jackson subtly starts trying to upstage his backup and the song builds into a transcendent show-stopper that has the few crew members sitting around watching this cheer as loudly as a stadium full of fans. It also offers us the most tangible glimpse into his dark and erratic side, as the smile he allows himself after going toe-to-toe in a friendly battle with this much younger woman disappears in nervosa as the singer suddenly freaks out over potentially damaging his voice. For that brief moment, though, you can see boyish joy all over his face.

Still, when you get right down to it, and as cynical as you might think me, I have a difficult time seeing This Is It as anything other than a cash-grab. My theater priced tickets for the documentary at $10 without any matinee or other discounts, up from the seven bucks I normally pay for a film before 6 pm. There is nothing about the film that warrants a surcharge, and upon walking into the auditorium I was treated to an ad for Michael Jackson commemorative coins, a tasteful gift that's sure to please this Christmas. And given the film's sloppy editing, protracted length and unnecessary use of newsreel footage, its safe to say that Jackson the perfectionist would never have allowed this in a theater. Still, there's an undeniable delight in seeing a side of Michael Jackson that I didn't know existed, and as oblivious as the film is to his impending doom, I will still give This Is It a marginal recommendation for its exciting dance sequences and its revealing look at the artistic side of a pop star -- the first thing I did when I got back in my car was put on Off the Wall, which is incidentally completely unrepresented here. Besides, cash-grab that it is, I defy you not to smile when Jackson lets out a "whee!" of delight upon being lifted by a cherry picker.

Stalker

After viewing Andrei Tarkovsky's Stalker a second time, I cannot say with any certainty that I understand it more than I did the first: even by the master's standards, its symbolism is impenetrably opaque, its pacing slow and its dialogue more concerned with subtext than telling a coherent story. Yet, this time, I accepted its density and stopped trying to figure everything out as it happened. As a result, I found this viewing infinitely more rewarding, a genuine experience.

As with Tarkovsky's earlier Solaris, Stalker is a science fiction film, and like Solaris, it's sci-fi insofar as its setting is the only aspect that plays into the typical notion of science fiction. Stalker takes place in a decrepit future where technology has seemingly degraded to crumbling communist buildings and bulky, rundown cars; an opening text scroll attributed to a fictional Nobel laureate informs us that a meteorite crashed years ago, and that a team of inspectors sent to investigate it never returned. The government cordoned off the area, known as the Zone, and placed military police around the area to prevent anyone from getting in, with deadly force if necessary.

Naturally, some of the more dedicated truth-seekers found a way. Known as stalkers, these adventurers discovered a room in the epicenter of the meteorite blast that granted one's innermost desires. So, these stalkers decided to ferry hopefuls through the mysterious, (officially) dangerous Zone in exchange for a certain fee. The caveat: a stalker must never enter the Room himself, or at least so we're told.

We meet one of these men, known only by his profession, as he prepares to return to the Zone. His wife begs him not to go: he only just got released from prison after being caught by authorities the last time, their daughter, whose deformities are all but explicitly blamed on whatever effect the Zone might have on those who traverse it, just got used to the sight of her absent father. Stalker rebuffs her pleas and heads to a tavern to meet his latest clients.

Tarkovsky introduces one of them, identified as Writer, in the middle of a rant to a young female companion about the insufferable boredom of the world. He mocks the simplicity of mankind, yet he also mourns the lack of fun and freedom of the Middle Ages. "The world is ruled by cast-iron laws, and it's insufferably boring," he gabs, as though feudalism was one big orgy. The other companion is the considerably quieter Professor. Stalker doesn't ask what these men want from the Room because he does not care; he also recognizes that what desires they might express out loud likely have little to do with what they truly want.

With sepia bronzes and the dank, broken-down buildings of the Soviet-era Estonian shooting location, Tarkovsky presents us with a sickly vision of the future. For all of the writer's incessant jawing, he's got a point when he calls this drab world boring. Even when the three board a Jeep, creep through the patrolled outskirts of the fenced-off Zone and drive through a military roadblock narrowly avoiding machine gun fire, the director's long-take structure and its color filtering prevent Stalker from morphing into a thriller.

The turning point arrives when the trio reaches a motorized draisine that will take them along railway tracks into the Zone proper. Even as machine gun rounds are still intermittently flying around them as the police lob bullets into the area they saw the trespassers last, and despite Stalker's constant warnings about the danger of the Zone, the draisine ride is filmed not with foreboding long shots of these men headed into the mist that permeates the area but with extreme close-ups on each character's face, probing their contemplative faces as they sit in silence. It signifies that, like all of Tarkovsky's work, the protagonists' journey will be spiritual, not physical.

Upon reaching the Zone, the film switches to beautiful color, though if one said, "We're not in Kansas anymore," when stepping into this world it might not be as hopeful. Presenting the Zone in color could obviously be a representation of the area's supernatural or alien power, but it also symbolizes what the Zone means to Stalker. At home he is a poor ex-convict, saddled with a nagging wife and a crippled child. Here, he is one of the chosen few who can navigate a place of hope and magic. In a world of people like Writer, here is a place that can contradict Writer's views of the rigidity of the modern world and the listlessness of mankind. The first thing he does is lay down in the grass contentedly.

The journey to the Room is arduous and lengthy, drawn out by Stalker's warnings and rules about traversing the Zone: before making any significant movements, he throws handkerchiefs tied to steel nuts ahead of the group to ensure the path is not booby-trapped. He cautions that backtracking in the Zone is suicide. And yet for the hour and a half these three wander the Zone, nothing happens to them. What suspense exists at all comes chiefly from Stalker's earnest assurances of danger and his frantic pleas to stop whenever the others grow weary of his unproven assertions (the rest can be attributed to the natural dread of the takes, which drag on so long we're programmed to expect something to happen). That nothing ever actually does happen to the men is largely inconsequential, as the subtle, disorienting nature of the Zone tests them not with adventure movie booby traps but spiritual musings.

Each of the characters suffers a crisis of faith as their philosophical conversations bring out their true feelings. Writer, so arrogant and flippant toward the Zone, wonders what will happen if the Room really does grant wishes. He came to the Zone because he was crippled by writer's block, but, in a brilliant monologue, he notes that if the Zone grants him genius, he might be even less inspired. "A man writes because he is tormented, because he doubts. He needs to constantly prove to himself and the others that he's worth something. And if I know for sure that I'm a genius? Why write then? What the hell for?" When he is sent ahead of Stalker and Professor to ensure a path is safe, he goes too far in a room filled with sand dunes and birds (the most beautiful shot of the film) and collapses, tormenting himself suddenly over how he buckled under fame and how even his most ardent fans will simply move on to the next big thing after he dies.

When the reach the area of the Room, the professor, heretofore respectful of Stalker's commands and generally contemplative, opens up the knapsack he so carefully guarded the entire time and reveals materials for a bomb. If the general population knew that this place was real and it could grant our wishes, he argues, what would stop evil men from coming there and becoming the next Hitler? Stalker pleads like a wretch, begging on hands and knees not to destroy this place, that it gives hope to the hopeless. Professor appears to ignore him, but before he can destroy the place, he has a crisis of conscience and decides that his colleagues were right and that the Zone should remain unharmed. Neither of Stalker's clients enters the Room, and instead they all sit on a dry part of the floor of a flooded chamber as fresh rain falls around them, filling the room with golden light.

When they return, Stalker has his own breakdown, lamenting how his clients had no faith and how they are representative of the rest of the world. Yet there's a certain falsity to his rant, sincere though it is. If not entering the Room constitutes a lack of faith, then Stalker is guilty of hypocrisy. He maintains that a stalker cannot enter the Zone with an ulterior motive, yet he also notes that his mentor Porcupine went into the Room and had his wish granted; Porcupine won the lottery as he wished, but the Room also granted his innermost desire, which was for his brother to die. In anguish, Porcupine hanged himself. But the moral of that story clearly isn't that a stalker cannot enter but that we have no idea what thoughts lie deep within us. If Stalker does not enter the Room it is because, he, like his two clients, is afraid of what might happen.

The question then is whether this represents a lack of faith. I believe it is quite the opposite: rather than enter the Room with materialistic desires, Writer and Professor respected the potential power of the Room by leaving it be. They leave the Zone believing in its power without experiencing it. This might explain why a dog from the Zone follows them home: we first see the black dog as Stalker whispers Biblical passages about God walking with believers without making Himself known to them, and perhaps by following the people out of the Zone the dog signifies the Zone's "approval" of their faith.

For all the stalker's dialogue about faith, however, it's the wife who offers up the most illuminating and touching reflection upon the subject. She describes to her husband the pain of being married to a stalker, how she knew beforehand about the inevitable jail time, the poverty, how it affected any offspring (revealing that the Zone is indeed responsible for Monkey's deformities and drawing disturbing parallels to the future Chernobyl incident). Yet she married him anyway, out of love. The film then ends on a coda in which Monkey sits at a table and seemingly moves glasses through telekinesis, or is it just the passing train? What this means I'm not sure; obviously, some part of the Zone has been passed onto her, but I don't know what significance this has for the world Tarkovsky's created. It's just one of many parts of the film I cannot get my head around, and that's half the joy of Stalker: whether it upholds or bitterly rejects Tarkovsky's notion of the spirituality of man is largely in the eye of the beholder, but this moving, cryptic "sci-fi" film is one of the great masterpieces of foreign cinema, and it offers new challenges and delights with each viewing.