Capsule Reviews: While the City Sleeps, Cracking Up, The Kid, Rock of Ages

While the City Sleeps (Fritz Lang, 1956)

Fritz Lang's underseen noir blends the yellowest of journalism with King Lear in a prescient, savage view of media feeding a public frenzy. A news empire is offered to three successors, with the new kingdom to be ruled by the one who can beat the cops to solving the identity of a serial killer infamous only from the organization's own salacious coverage. Lang's framing is more stripped down than some other efforts but no less immaculate: the newsroom of transparent but isolating glass and roaring presses speak to the capacity of journalism to reveal and obscure, and how a giant conglomerate can drown out the truth instead of exposing it. As much as the actual string of murders, the tension operates on simple office politics, in which the promise of a raise and a title change to move up the modern social ladder can bring out the basest, most primitive behavior. The characterization of the sexually confused killer is oh-so-standard, but Lang's ability to make high style out of even the most basic movements and mise-en-scène combines with the otherwise fantastic story for a great anti-journo noir. Grade: A-

Steven Spielberg: War of the Worlds

It's just as well that War of the Worlds was hobbled upon its initial release by the lingering effects of Tom Cruise's infamous couch-jumping whatever. If Americans were going to let a stupid thing like that distract them, who knows how they might have reacted if they realized what all the movie had to say about 9/11 and the still-raging debate over Iraq. Even the conclusion of H.G. Wells' original novel, forecast in the opening credits expanding outward from single-cell organisms to humanity and even the cosmos, reflects the pitfalls of the War on Terror. "Occupations always fail!" declares a mad character late in the film, and one gets the distinct feeling he isn't just talking about invaders from Mars.

But War of the Worlds is, for the most part, not a commentary on the War on Terror so much as snapshot of what inspired it and how the national emotions of panic, grief, rage and bewilderment contributed to it. There's no criticism here; that would come with Spielberg's other 2005 film. No, War of the Worlds' primary aim is still to function as a blockbuster, but in its finely detailed, occasionally surreal construction is an almost therapeutic attempt to recreate an event fresh in the nation's mind, all the better to study it and to (hopefully) make a more informed decision than we did when that day actually happened.

Steven Spielberg: Minority Report

Filmed from March to July 2001, Minority Report was not influenced by the September 11 attacks later that year, yet retrospectively it seems the first of Steven Spielberg's attempts to grapple with the aftermath of the tragedy. A neo-noir in which crime is committed and prosecuted in the mind, Minority Report proves disturbingly prescient in its vision of a world in which murder is punished preemptively. Though based on an even older Philip K. Dick story, the film feels like the meeting point of the Patriot Act and the impetus for the Iraq invasion, albeit the focus lies not on wars and national defense but mere law enforcement. As the PSAs encouraging support for a national PreCrime system argue to the people, "That which keeps us safe also keeps us free."

Chief John Anderton (Tom Cruise) believes that motto with all his heart. Having lost his son years ago to an unknown kidnapper/murderer, John looks at PreCrime as a way to prevent such pain from afflicting anyone else. Using a trio of genetically engineered psychics to predict when murders will occur and who the perpetrators and victims will be, Anderton and the rest of Washington D.C.'s unit have reduced the murder rate in one of America's most violent cities to zero. The resultant utopia resembles that of Demolition Man: exceedingly bright and almost eerily calm. Only where Demolition Man presented its peace as the product of nanny-state liberalism, Minority Report shows how instant detention has cleared the streets.

Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol (Brad Bird, 2011)

The trait that links all four Mission: Impossible movies, each helmed by a different director of wildly differing stylistic sensibilities, is a certain amount of incomprehensibility. De Palma's original, which has aged better than any of its successors, is a smorgasbord of that filmmaker's love of audience manipulation, leftist politics, and metacinematic pranksterism. John Woo's sequel is, if anything, even crazier, replacing the peevish joke structure of De Palma's satire with pure, free-form abandon. J.J. Abrams' installment significantly pared down the twists and turns of the franchise's plots, making for the most conventionally satisfying of the series, yet the one that leaves me the coldest.

Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol, the first live-action venture by animation superstar Brad Bird, is at once the most gargantuan, ridiculous of the movies and the most cogent entry, occasionally explained to the point of tedium. It makes for an uneven effort, one that comes alive every time Bird stages another setpiece and grinding to a halt when the holdover influence of Abrams' pedestrian hit weighs down every bit of dialogue. Happily, Bird, perhaps self-conscious about the expectations upon him, absolutely loads his movie with fantastically over-the-top sequences that make for perhaps the most popcorn-worthy of this franchise.

Brian De Palma: Mission: Impossible

Though not nearly as deconstructive as De Palma's '80s pastiche and travesty, Mission: Impossible feels like a classical, identifiably "'90s," art-for-art's-sake blockbuster, a bit of formal excess that uses the implausibility of the original TV series as an excuse to make no sense whatsoever. Unburdened from the need for logic, the film unfolds as an incessant series of double-crosses, grandiose setpieces and classical techniques. That coherent aesthetic propels the film long after its narrative becomes a mire of betrayal and intrigue.

Sent to intercept a diplomat selling U.S. secrets, the Impossible Missions Force team led by Jim Phelps (Jon Voight), stakes out an embassy with precision planning. But just as everything seems to be going perfectly, tiny cracks begin to form, and in short order sabotage leaves the entire team dead save for Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise), who looks mighty suspicious when superiors inform him that they are hunting a mole in the organization. Betrayed by the true traitor and now suspected of treason by his bosses, Ethan has no choice but to flee and clear his name. These betrayals, real and imagined, are but the first in a film where the dead return and mirrored shots always reveal different perspectives.

Collateral

The best case for Michael Mann's visual genius can be made by comparing his depictions of Los Angeles in Heat, his most well-known and best-received film, and Collateral, his first foray into digital video (indeed the first major use of digital high-definition cameras in feature filmmaking). The L.A. of Heat was gigantic and shimmering, large enough to contain the Wagnerian scope of its epic take on the cops-and-robbers genre. Music, too, informs the aesthetic of the Los Angeles of Collateral, but it exchanges the opera of Heat for jazz.

As such, Collateral is intimate, improvisational, its alternately crisp and blurry landscapes reminiscent of the smoky haze of a hip dive. It shifts tempos and keys and dynamics, as terrifying as it is seductive. Vincent (Tom Cruise), a suave hitman, loves jazz, to the point that he takes the time out from his assignments to enjoy a performance in the same club where giants like Chet Baker and Charles Mingus used to play. As a jazzophile, he loves improvisation and expresses a reverence for the unpredictability of life.

These are traits largely absent in Max (Jamie Foxx), a cab driver who finds himself Vincent's courier and hostage during a five-stop killing spree. Max is the perfect cabbie: he knows all the back routes in the city and is honest enough to take them rather than deliberately seek out traffic. He has big plans for life, and he insists to his other passengers that he's just driving part-time to save up the cash to start a limo company. Vincent, however, learns that Max has been driving for 12 years. Where the hitman appreciates the constancy of variability, Max cannot act unless has accounts for every detail.

Let's be honest: Collateral isn't revolutionary storytelling. It's blunt. It's contrived. But damn it, i works, precisely because the digital cameras add an air of immediacy and breathlessness. Mann does not strive for a feeling of cheap realism, but he does make the audience a part of the action. His ability to convey intricate details through to-the-point dialogue and fast-paced editing takes Stuart Beattle's script and streamlines it. Furthermore, the digital photography, with its low-light capability, introduces a spontaneity to the strict linearity of the narrative: as the cameras can pick up action in dimly lit conditions, Mann could film scenes without worrying about meticulous lighting, allowing for memorable moments such as the shot of a coyote running across the street in front of Max's cab.

The dramatic weight of the story naturally concerns Max's fear and moral crisis in reaction to ferrying around a killer, and the action -- as is befitting a Michael Mann thriller -- is visceral and gripping (why do people even bother putting gunfire in their movies in a year featuring that contains a Michael Mann film?). Mann and editors Jim Miller and Paul Rubell maintain a constant level of tension between its storylines -- Vincent's engagements, Max's attempts to escape, the joint investigation of Vincent's murders by LAPD detectives (led by Mark Ruffalo) and the FBI (headed by Bruce McGill) -- never quite reaching the masterful level Mann and Rubell exhibited with The Insider but never losing any momentum. Mann can even cut to completely ancillary asides without breaking the flow, such as a humorous trip to the hospital to visit Max's mother (the always funny Irma P. Hall) and an unnecessary but gripping scene in which Max must pose as Vincent to obtain replacement dossiers for the ones he destroyed from Vincent's employer (Javier Bardem).

Below the surface, however, is a battle between ideologies. The clashing outlooks of the two main characters fits each character's occupation: Max takes the shortest, best-planned route not simply because he's a nice man but because he can't accept an imperfection, while Vincent accepts the unpredictability of life because he has to know how to adapt to any situation. Beattle envisioned Robert De Niro in Foxx's role, but that smacks too much of an excuse to have De Niro play the role of a taxi driver again. For once, the producers were right to insist on someone young: by casting in Foxx's age range -- then in his late '30s -- Max can believably cling to his dream of owning a limo company. A man his age is nearing the point of no return for his dreams but, unlike someone in De Niro's age group, he can still fulfill them. Thus, Vincent's influence, vile and twisted as it might be, can actually improve his life, and Collateral is as much about Max's maturation as it is the thriller plot.

When he first gets into Max's cab, Vincent comments upon his distaste for Los Angeles, finding its disjointed structure and dense population confusing and impersonal. Collateral's jazzy style and frenetic pacing reflects the disorienting layout of the city, but Mann uses the story to disprove Vincent's assertion of L.A.'s soullessness. It may be a place that crushes dreams and barely registers its dead, but Mann finds some nugget of worth in there, just as Scorsese did with New York (that Taxi Driver connection is more revealing than it lets on). Tom Cruise, the megastar with eternally youthful looks, frosts his hair to age himself and plays the villain, albeit one who imparts wisdom and perspective onto Foxx, then still easing his way into a film career. By the next year, he'd become the first actor to receive two Oscar nominations in the same year, for this and Ray. I would not fully align Collateral with the cinema, not in the way I would Public Enemies, but it's interesting to note Mann's love for Los Angeles -- inexorably tied to Hollywood even if Collateral never comes anywhere near it or the feel it evokes -- buried beneath the thrills.

1989 Rewind: Born on the Fourth of July

Oliver Stone may be traveling down the long slope to mediocrity -- W. was a surprising success, but even then only if your expectations have been worn down by such work as Alexander -- but there was a time when he was the most promising writer-director America had to offer. By the time Born on the Fourth of July was released in December 1989, he'd won an Oscar for his writing (Midnight Express) and damn near cleaned up with Platoon, his masterful depiction of his service in Vietnam. But Stone wasn't done with 'Nam, not by a long shot. Born on the Fourth of July, the second of three films that overtly concern the war, follows the war home, chronicling the traumatic re-adjustment of our wounded veterans.

As Stone establishes in the first half hour, Ron Kovic was the sort of young man that would make any parents proud and only seemed to confirm the American ideal of the '50s and '60s. Athletic, intelligent and a devout patriot, Ronnie wants nothing more than to serve his country like his father did in WWII. When Marine recruiters come to school and speak proudly of being the first called into an engagement, Kovic is inspired. The Marines say the war won't last long, he breathlessly informs his friends, "so if we don't sign up soon, we'll miss it." His mother is thrilled when he comes home and announces he's dropping out to enlist, believing her son to be doing God's work, but the veteran father is concerned.

Ronnie's tour of duty only occupies about 12 minutes of screen time, but Stone of course knows how to make them count. In the middle of a NVA ambush, Ronnie inadvertently shoots a fellow Marine; when he tries to confess to his XO, his superior officer simply brushes him off and assures the boy it's not his fault. In another skirmish, his platoon is surrounded, and Kovic is hit.

The attack sends him to a horrific VA hospital overrun with rats, drug use and uncaring doctors. I've heard that it's best to treat wounded soldiers as if they're still on the front lines and not to pamper them, but these men are treated with callous indifference. Ronnie, once a star athlete, must now hear the news that he's paralyzed from the mid-chest down and will never walk again.

So, he returns home, ashamed. At first, he continues to support the war on the basis of his loyalty to his country. He clashes with his younger brother Tommy (Josh Evans), now an anti-war activist, and must now face a once-proud mother who cannot bear the shame of having a disabled son. Slowly, Ron comes undone, disillusioned with the war and the military that doesn't care for him or anyone else maimed in Vietnam.

Tom Cruise may be known -- in acting terms, at least -- for his looks and his smile, but I maintain that he's a criminally underrated actor. His work in Jerry Maguire, Magnolia, A Few Good Men and a number of other films ranges from quite good to excellent, but nothing can compare to his performance as Kovic. His transitions from fresh-faced youth to terrified, confused soldier to broken vet to a figurehead of the anti-war movement never miss a beat, never feel rushed and never fail to convince. The only time you can even identify him as Tom Cruise the megastar is in the first hour when he's that handsome, innocent youth and the idealistic soldier; when he returns, he's as much a changed man as Kovic was. It's telling that the real Kovic gave Cruise his Bronze Star at the end of filming.

Through Kovic we see how Vietnam forever destroyed that postwar vision of the purity of the American family. Timmy represents those who rebelled against family and friends to protest the government, while Ron shows us how even those who fit the bill of that ideal were corrupted by the senseless conflict. You forget what a naïve kid Ron really is, until he loses his virginity to a prostitute. As he tearfully screams to his mother before leaving home, he lost the use of his penis before he "even learned how to use it." For this All-American to be reduced to awkward sex with a prostitute, which he misconstrues for true love, sheds harsh light on how he and many others who served and were wounded or killed had their futures ripped from them.

Stone's never been one for subtlety, and Born on the Fourth of July suffers at time from obvious dialogue when moments like his time with the prostitute conveys more than pithy statements. But he also knows how maintain your attention, either through the actions on-screen or the masterful way that he captures them. What makes Stone's early films so captivating is how he just never let up, hitting us with a barrage of images so quickly you didn't realize how revolutionary so many of his techniques were until the film ended and you could actually take a breath. His script conveys the outrage he feels over the mishandling of our veterans, a problem that exists to this day, but there are also flashes of pitch-black humor: while relaxing in a sort of disabled vet's paradise in Mexico, he gets into an argument with another wheelchair-bound veteran (Willem Dafoe) over whether they killed babies in 'Nam.

Stone won his second Best Director Oscar for the film, and it is richly deserved. Born on the Fourth of July, heavy-handed as it can be in spots, is one of his enduring masterpieces alongside Platoon and JFK. Cruise's performance is the finest of his career, yet we must not forget superb supporting turns from Kyra Sedgwick as Ron's high school sweetie turned college demonstrator, Dafoe's initially calm and genial Charlie and Raymond J. Barry as Ron's concerned, loving father. This is the second film from 1989 I've watched about the Vietnam War, and it's by far the best. I have a long way to go, but I'll be surprised if I find many films from the year I enjoy as much or more than this.