THE MESSENGER: The Film Babble Blog Review

THE MESSENGER
(Dir. Oren Moverman, 2009)

There have been many movies in which we see Army men appear at folks' homes to give notice of the deaths of soldiers. It is usually a brief scene with little spoken, but here these men, in the form of Ben Foster as a Staff Sgt. recently deployed from Iraq, and Woody Harrelson as a Captain whose war was Desert Storm, get their own movie.

Under Harrelson's gruff mentoring, Foster learns quickly that a stint as a member of the Casualty Notification service can be as almost as wrenching and painful as front line combat. Harrelson deals with this by going by strict protocol. He sternly tells Foster to speak only to the next of kin and avoid physical contact: "In case you feel like offering a hug or something - don't". Foster replies "I'm not going to be offering any hugs, sir."

Foster's life in the downtime is pretty dire. He is love with a girl named Kelly (Jena Malone) who is marrying somebody else and he spends his time in his dark dumpy apartment drinking while blasting heavy metal music. He becomes infatuated with housewife Samantha Morton to whom he has delivered bad news.

Morton takes the news of her dead husband reasonably well, even shaking Foster and Harrelson's hands while saying: "I know this can't be easy for you". On their walk away from her, Harrelson calls this response "a first".

Foster's infatuation with Morton is initially creepy - he sits in his car watching her through the window and he follows her at the mall. Once he makes contact with her some of the creepiness dissolves but uneasiness remains as they flirt on the faint edge of a relationship.


Her eyes hint at a back story that we never hear but we don't need to - the emotional terrain of lives lost and those left behind sets the film's entire tone.

Unfortunately this semblance of a plot involving Morton is abandoned for a large chunk of THE MESSENGER. Foster and Harrelson go off and get drunk, get in a fight, and crash former flame Malone's reception in a pointless display of untamed testosterone for too much of the sloppy narrative. This is a shame because Morton's scenes are the most moving. There are some other powerful passages in this film, mostly in the first half's house calls (Steve Buscemi has an intense cameo as a heartbroken father of a fallen son), but the film is too disjointed and detached to have the searing impact it aims for.

Moverman's movie just glosses the surface of the psyche of these disturbed men. Foster has proven time and time again that he has the chops to create fully realized characters - witness Six Feet Under and his scene stealing turn in 3:10 TO YUMA - but this soldier is just a sketch and so is its story. As a supporting player, Harrelson is on more solid ground but still suffers from familiarity - the older brother feel of his character is not unlike his turn in ZOMBIELAND.

Though I wasn't feeling it, THE MESSENGER is sure to be regarded as a noble effort. Its attempt to delve into this tense territory is admirable and its sincere tone is intact throughout its running time, but I was too often distracted by its shrugging sensibility in place of a statement. Audiences of late have tended to stay away from downer Iraq war related film fare. This time out it's going to be especially hard to blame them.

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Serious Series Addiction: The Wire, Lost, & The Prisoner (1967)

Despite this being “Film Babble Blog” I do babble about TV shows every now and then. This is one of those times.

I had only 2 New Year’s resolutions this year – to exercise more and to finish all 5 seasons of The Wire. I dug my wife’s old exercise bike out of the garage and set it in front of the TV so I could do both. I had begun The Wire sometime last year but put it on the back burner, not because I didn’t like it but because of the many movies that were ahead of it on my list of priorities.

After hearing so many folks refer to it as “the greatest TV series ever” I decided it was time to fully see what all the fuss is about. Over the last few weeks I’ve been pedaling away on the bike devouring one episode of David Simon’s exemplary Baltimore crime drama.

I am now on season 5 episode 4 and have lost over 10 pounds in the process.

I learned that a friend of mine was also making his way through The Wire after he got the full series as a Christmas gift. Talking to him on IM he spoke of other friends that were catching the bug as well.

Then, just this week, Onion AV head writer Nathan Rabin posted a piece for their ongoing “Better Late Than Never” feature about finally watching the show’s first season so it seems the show is slowly but surely searing its way into our collective pop culture psyche.

If you’ve never seen The Wire – it can be a daunting undertaking because it’s very complex with a lot of characters and can be hard to follow at first. It seemingly gives equal time to the good, the bad, and the ugly from sleazy politicians to the cops on the beat right down to the lowest level druggie scum with a level of authenticity that’s astounding. It stands with The Sopranos as a novelistic epic and as one of the most engrossingly addictive shows ever.

The Wire isn’t the only show I’ve been pedaling to recently. Since I’ve had to wait for discs of it to come in the mail from Netflix I’ve been checking out what’s available now on Instant.

I noticed that J.J. Abrams’ popular FOX television show Lost was just added so since I’d never seen it I decided to give it a whirl.

Well, I’ve watched most of season 1 and while I certainly think it’s entertaining in a Gilligan's Island as if written by Stephen King way, I’m not sure if I’m going to keep on plowing through. With their 6th season starting next week, there’s no way I can catch up anytime soon and the idea of trying just tires me out thinking about it. But once I finish The Wire, who knows?

Another series that has been on my “to do” list for a long time is The Prisoner – the original 1967 BBC one not the new AMC re-imagining (though that’s recorded and waiting on my DVR).

I’ve only watched a few episodes of the new Blu ray edition (very nice looking transfer) of the series and so far it’s been a real treat.

Former spy Patrick McGoohan trapped in an idyllic seaside village in which large creepy white balls descend and suffocate those who try to escape, the show earns its cool cult status right from its snazzy swinging start. Check out its awesome opening sequence:

So those are some shows that have been keeping me from the movies lately. Don’t worry though - I’ve got some fine babble concerning actual films coming soon so please stay tuned.

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A Life Of Quiet Desperation Fashionably Rendered

A SINGLE MAN (Dir. Tom Ford, 2009)


College professor George Falconer (Colin Firth) lives his life in a neat orderly manner. Every item is his home is arranged appropriately and every piece of clothing he wears is impeccably pressed.

He is living what Thoreau called a life of "quiet desperation" (a quotation our lead is undoubtedly aware of and not just because he teaches English) ever since his lover Jim (Matthew Goode - seen in flashbacks) of 16 years died in an automobile accident 8 months previous.

It's Los Angeles 1962, in the days after the Cuban missile crisis, and the influence of beat culture is strong on Firth's students, but the fear of war and total annihilation is stronger. Firth's inner torment distances him from the communal worries of the day.

From the outset of the film we see that he has decided to get through the routine of one last day before he takes his own life. He buys bullets for his handgun and tries to figure the best way to kill himself without leaving too big a mess for his maid.


Firth's dignity and poise is intact as he flirts with a Spanish hustler (Jon Kortajaren) in a liquor store parking lot and as he converses with one of his students (Nicholas Hoult) who may be interested in more than class consultation.


However Firth does lose his well cultivated composure during a dinner visit with long-time friend and ex-lover Charly (Julianne Moore) who has had a thing for him for years. Moore ponders the relationship he had with Jim; "wasn't it really just a substitute for something else?"

Firth jumps up and exclaims: "There is no substitute for Jim anywhere!"

There is a washed out quality to the film - grey grainy tones make up most shots but color rushes in with red hues heightened when sensuality is implied. With such subtle touches abounding, it's a definitive "art film" that's an impressive debut for a Fashion Designer best known for magazine layouts.

Firth's performance is an intensely nuanced balance of grace and pain. It's some of the sharpest acting out there now and it will be shocking if he's not nominated. Maybe not an Oscar, but Ford's direction deserves notice too for it recalls the work of Julian Schnabel while showing its own promise in illustrative invention.

Although a bit slow paced, A SINGLE MAN has its indulgences in check and is a quietly absorbing work of refined beauty. It's a passionate portrait of grief that knows that there isn't a substitute for a lost lover any more than there is a substitute for life.

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THE BOOK OF ELI: The Film Babble Blog Review

THE BOOK OF ELI
(Dirs. Albert and Allen Hughes, 2010)

Here we go again with another cinematic rendering of a post apocalyptic world - apparently for those who thought THE ROAD didn't have enough action. A bearded grizzled Denzel Washington walks the ashy terrain listening to Al Green on an old beat-up iPod and avoiding Road Warrior-ish highjackers hiding in the rubble. When he is confronted by a crusty crew of them, we see that he is a machete-brandishing bad ass who leaves his attackers in a pile of their own limbs; SAMURAI ASSASSIN-style.

We only get a few hints as to what happened to the Earth. Washington mentions "the wars", "the flash" and at one point says "the sky opened up, the sun came down" so obviously they want to keep it vague. I can go along with that fine, but after hearing that it's been 30 winters since this all went down I couldn't get over wondering how he recharges that iPod battery.

On his journey west (post apocalyptic folk are always traveling to the Californian coast) Washington comes upon the supposed king of the crud covered thugs - an oily Gary Oldman (one of the only lively elements present) who chews the sleazy scenery as he seeks "the Book". The book is, of course, the Bible (The King James Version) and Washington has the last copy on his person and he ain't sharing it. He'll quote from it to Mila Kunis as one of Oldman's slaves, but he will not give it up to anybody. Suffice to say this causes some friction.


Friction in the form of gun battles with heavy artillery and yep, big explosions. Washington is determined and seemingly indestructible in his efforts to protect "the Book", but his real strengths as an actor are buried here. Though he's one of the executive producers on this project, his role as the stoical Eli is stiff and passionless. He's one of the finest actors working today, but here his charisma is literally missing in action.

Despite this the movie itself should've gone for more mindless spectacle instead of the religious pretension it tries to pull off. Its hokey thematics bring to mind another post apocalyptic anomaly - THE POSTMAN. In Kevin Costner's notorious 1997 flop, a drifter finds a mailbag and sets about delivering the letters inside which in turn helps to rebuild society. The Bible in THE BOOK OF ELI fulfills the same purpose - it's a glorified MacGuffin, but unlike most MacGuffins, it's importance grows in the last third of the film.

Washington and the Hughes Brothers are reaching here to tell the story of a righteous prophet, and there are a few times where its sepia-tinted tones are appealing, but mostly the underwritten yet overdone enterprise loudly falls flat. As a beginning of the year B-movie THE BOOK OF ELI is sure to make major bank from movie-goers looking for diversion. But stone cold boredom is what they're really going to get.

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THE LOVELY BONES: The Film Babble Blog Review

THE LOVELY BONES (Dir. Peter Jackson, 2009)

“I was fourteen years old when I was murdered on December 6th, 1973.” So says Susie Salmon (Saoirse Ronan) at the beginning of this adaptation of Alice Sebold’s 2002 best seller. Ronan’s voice-over comes not from beyond the grave, but from she calls “the blue horizon between heaven and earth.”

There’s no mystery to how she got there - a creepy neighbor (Stanley Tucci) in her family’s Norristown, Pennsylvanian suburb lured her into an underground bunker he built in a nearby field. In the months afterwards her disappearance throws her parents (Mark Wahlberg and Rachel Weisz) into domestic disarray while her sister (Rose McIver) starts to suspect Tucci.

Ronan, well cast with her ocean colored eyes, watches her family from the mythic realm, which is not unlike the vivid ultra-colorful heaven of WHAT DREAMS MAY COME, as she walks from one spectacular landscape to the next hoping to reconcile the messy end of her life and move on.


LORD OF THE RINGS visionary Peter Jackson keeps the camera moving with swooping crane shots and cuts with a good sense of juxtaposition, but the story is too drawn out to create much suspense. It’s an immaculately made movie, but it appears to be missing enough soul to really pull us in and make us care.

It also suffers from a strongly misplaced thread involving Susan Sarandon as the Mrs. Robinson-esque alcoholic grandmother with her bouffant hair, mink coats, and always present cigarette dangling from her fingers. A montage in which she attempts to help out and clean house should’ve been edited out – I understand that they felt the film needed some sort of comic relief, but this really feels forced.

Though overwrought at times, Wahlberg puts in a decent performance, at least better than in THE HAPPENING, as the obsessed father who constantly calls upon an investigating detective (Michael Imperioli from The Sopranos) to run checks on every possible suspect. It seems that they look into everybody in town before they get to Tucci, which is surprising since he lives across the street from the victim’s family.

“These were the lovely bones that had grown around my absence: the connections - sometimes tenuous, sometimes made at great cost, but often magnificent.”

Ronan’s concluding musings are apt, for there is magnificence in this film - visually speaking that is. Otherwise, the connections are too tenuous and its pace is too plodding. I haven't read the book on which it's based, but I suspect that its most stirring passages were too cerebral to be translated to the big screen. At least as far as this film adaptation goes, THE LOVELY BONES is sadly a supremely unsatisfying experience.

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DVD Review: BIG FAN

BIG FAN (Dir. Robert D. Siegel, 2009)

Paul, played by comedian Patton Oswalt, from Staten Island considers himself “the biggest New York Giants fan”. During his day job as a parking garage attendant he scribbles in a notebook a script of sorts of what he’s going to say on a sports call-in radio show that night. These rants are often interrupted by his mother (Marcia Jean Kurtz) who he still lives with. Paul regularly goes with his best friend (Kevin Corrigan) to Giant’s Stadium to sit on lawn chairs and watch the game on a old television balanced on the trunk of a car in the parking lot. From all of this you might surmise that Paul’s life is pretty pathetic.

Maybe so, but Paul doesn’t see it that way. He believes that he has a gift for opinionated gab and that his football fanaticism fulfills some purpose. This outlook gets put to the test when he and Corrigan spot Giants’ star linebacker Quantrell Bishop (Jonathan Hamm) and his entourage at a gas station. They follow him for the evening and end up at a Manhattan strip club. Paul approaches Bishop but the meeting goes down horribly resulting in our protagonist being brutally beaten by his favorite player.

Paul is hospitalized and Bishop is suspended from playing. Paul’s brother – a sleazy personal injury attorney - wants to wager a multi-million dollar suit against Bishop and a trench-coated cop (Matt Servitto) wants him to press charges, but Paul doesn’t want his favorite player out of the game.

As Paul recovers from the incident we see him going through the sad motions of his mundane existence – walking the streets, staring into the Hudson, and crying into his pillow to the strains of John Cale's “Big White Cloud”. He is soon back on the phone spouting out on the sports line, though this time it’s to defend Bishop against the taunts of his radio rival – “Philadelphia Phil” (Michael Rapaport).

Oswalt’s affecting performance is fearless. He fills nearly every frame with his puffy pathos alternating with the glow from his face when he’s most feels alive (i.e. pontificating over the airwaves). It’s a solid piece of acting that’s not without a certain comic sensibility, but stands foremost as fine dramatic work.

The same could be said of the film. As it comes from THE WRESTLER writer (and former editor of The Onion) Robert Siegel, you might expect social satire (and there is a bit here), but BIG FAN is more concerned with the inner crisis of character. When Paul paints his face the colors of the Eagles - the team he most hates - and travels to a local bar in Philadelphia to confront Rapaport, his leveling gaze and damned demeanor are a testament to misplaced passion.

Siegel and Oswalt’s film is both homage to Scorsese’s 70’s portraits of lost souls (most principally TAXI DRIVER) and its own modern anti-morality play. Whether you’re amused or disturbed at its display of delusion as life style choice, you most likely won’t look away.

Special Features: Though sadly lacking a commentary, there are some worthwhile extras on this disc. A Q & A of Oswalt and Siegel at Chicago's Music Box Theater is lively and entertaining, "Kevin Corrigan Recalls His Own 'Big Fan' Experience With Robert De Niro" is hilarious, and the over 10 minutes of outtakes are rougher and scrappier than most outtakes on DVDs but that's part of their authentic charm.

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Michael Cera Is The Putz *And* The Poseur

YOUTH IN REVOLT (Dir. Miguel Arteta, 2009)

It's funny that Michael Cera has reportedly been the lone holdout for the prospects of an Arrested Development movie since he's never quite left the character of awkward yet lovable George-Michael Bluth behind. Cera has never shown us that he has any versatility, yet his trademark hangdog nervousness coupled with his particular brand of soft spoken sarcasm, has worked nicely in several movie comedies in the last few years - SUPERBAD being the best of those.

As Nick Twisp, that same Cera persona is on display in YOUTH IN REVOLT, but here there is sort of a promise of a twist to that persona in the form of a bad boy alter ego named François Dillinger. Unfortunately apart from a pencil thin mustache and an always present dangling cigarette in his lips, François is still the same Cera. He makes taunting risque comments to Twisp and acts according to the domino-effect accident-prone nature of the script, but it's still the same Cera. Sigh. Couldn't he have even just attempted an accent?

Cera affects François for the express reason of wooing the girl of his dreams (Portia Doubleday) - a neighbor in the trailer park his family fled to. Though we are introduced to Cera's Twisp by way of a masturbation scene, he fancies himself a well read intellectual who loves Frank Sinatra and in Doubleday he feels he's met his match. He longs to break away from the white trash world of his divorced mother (Jean Smart) who's shacked up with a scuzzy trucker (Jack Galifinakis), so he plots to get his real father (Steve Buscemi) to get a job and relocate so he can be close to the girl he loves. François appears to be the key to set this in motion.


Mix in reliable character actors Fred Willard, M. Emmet Walsh, Mary Kay Place, and Ray Liotta (as yet again an asshole cop) and this all plays as quirk by the numbers - "Independent Teen Angst Movie" it could be called. To jazz up these stale elements there's jaunty animation that looks like it was pilfered from Nickolodeon and Justin Long as Doubleday's laid back hallucinogenic mushroom providing brother.

YOUTH IN REVOLT was filmed a few years ago and possibly shelved because the producers (the Weinstein Brothers) sensed there was a lack of a strong hook to this material. Its release in early January seems to support this. The film has likable people, songs, and story strands but Cera feels severely miscast to the ultimate detriment of the movie. Unless Cera's got some major character deconstruction surprises coming anytime soon, here's hoping he reconsiders reprising George-Michael Bluth in the afore mentioned Arrested Development movie. I mean, c'mon! It's the only role he seems to have really played since.

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