Say Anything...

Cameron Crowe's best movie, his most human and well-made film. Great screenplay -- not perfect, but driven by real and multi-dimensional lead characters. One of John Cusack's best performances. Classic scenes include the graduation party where Cusack's Lloyd Dobler is the "Keymaster," the phone call where Dobler offers his "English tips," and his statement on career ambition: "I'm looking for a dare to be great situation." A great movie.

Ride Down This Moonlight Mile

A film review of Moonlight Mile, originally printed in Brown University/RISD College Hill Independent


ANY FILM THAT ENDS with Van Morrison's "Sweet Thing" playing over images of a kiss and a sunset has me hook, line and sinker. Brad Silberling's film Moonlight Mile is not a perfect work of art, but its more noteworthy moments are quite touching and make the film worth seeing.
The time is the mid-seventies and the place is the fictional town of Cape Anne, Massachusetts. Diana Floss, would-be fiancé of protagonist Joe Nast (Jake Gyllenhaal), has been shot to death in a restaurant by an insane person. In preparation for the funeral, Joe has moved in with Diana's parents, Ben and Jo-Jo Floss (Dustin Hoffman and Susan Sarandon). He decides to remain in town because he feels an obligation to help Ben and Jo-Jo heal the wounds created by their loss. They welcome Joe as the son-in-law they almost had. Ben makes Joe his partner in the Floss real estate business, even though Joe has no interest in real estate. Meanwhile, Joe finds himself falling in love with Bertie, a postal worker/bar maid who is mourning the disappearance of her boyfriend in Vietnam. Holly Hunter pops up sporadically through the film, playing Mona Camp, the attorney who is bringing Diana's killer to trial.

Brad Silberling, Moonlight Mile's writer and director, has suffered a tragedy quite similar to that depicted in his film. In 1989, his girlfriend, actress Rebecca Schaeffer, was murdered by a stalker. Silberling's close connection to the material certainly gives the film a feeling of authenticity. Yet one wishes the filmmaker had chosen to tell a more biting, less sappy story. Moonlight Mile is a sentimental version of classic family dramas such as the single-parent story Kramer Vs. Kramer and the death-in-the-family saga Ordinary People. Silberling tentatively explores inter-personal dynamics within a grieving family, but shies away from a complete interpretation of the psychosis behind his characters' actions in favor of a glossy, less realistic romance and a slightly absurd trial against the man who killed Diana.

Family matters

The film is most engaging as an examination of how Ben and Jo-Jo cling to Joe. Ben treats Joe as not only a male friend-a buddy he can share a cigar and a beer with-but as a surrogate father figure. In a superbly framed scene featuring Ben and Joe on a bench perched on a high rocky cliff, Silberling and his cinematographer, Phedon Papamichael, photograph the actors in such a way that Hoffman's legs dangle off the bench, a good foot above the ground. He swings his legs like a kid and coughs on his cigar, admitting, "I've never smoked one of these before." Meanwhile, Joe is cool, reserved, and comforting. Joe also assumes control of their business, taking it upon himself to complete their planned real estate deal-an effort to completely change the layout of the town's main street-by going to the ratty-looking bar on the corner and bargaining with the bar's owners to sell out. Furthermore, it is Joe who dines at the home of real estate king Mike Mulcahey (Dabney Coleman) to discuss business negotiations. The future of Floss Real Estate is clearly in Joe's hands. The sign outside the office reads "Floss and Son," but who is really the son in this relationship?

Though free from parental symbolism, Jo-Jo and Joe's relationship is weighted with sexual tension. Jo-Jo, a sharp, caustic writer, is a bit of a rebel-she's a former alcoholic and smoker. Though happily married to Ben, there is undoubtedly something in Jo-Jo that is attracted to Joe, who emanates innocent freedom and youthful exuberance. Though a union between the two is impossible, Silberling strongly hints at Jo-Jo's jealousy of Joe and Bertie's relationship. When Joe returns one morning from a night spent with his new lover, Jo-Jo is waiting for him on his bed, a drink in her hand, wanting to know where he's been. Jo-Jo even says, "If I could make you celibate for the rest of your life, I would." The tone of the conversations between Joe and Jo-Jo, the looks exchanged between Gylenhaal and Sarandon, create an intimacy and rapport that sexualizes the relationship between a mother and her would-be son-in-law in a provocative way.


Unexamined lives

Moonlight Mile is fundamentally a film about self-deception. For most of the film, Joe attempts to hide a major lie from his would-be in-laws. He convinces himself that he owes it to the Flosses to fill the void created by the loss of their daughter. Though he doesn't much like real estate, he'll be a part of the family business if that will make Ben happy. If Ben and Jo-Jo want him to act as a surrogate child-living in their house and sleeping in Diana's room-Joe is willing to oblige. Joe resists his initial urge to spend time with Bertie, for he feels an obligation to stay true to Diana. Yet the film wants him to move on with his life and to not allow Diana's death to cripple his ability to mature as a person.

Bertie deceives herself into a similar form of chastity. She has not allowed herself to kiss another man since her boyfriend Cal went to Vietnam three years ago. He's missing-in-action and unlikely to return. Unfortunately, Bertie still works in the bar Cal owned and still cries herself to sleep at night thinking about him. Like Joe, Bertie must learn to carry on with her life, allow herself to love again, and venture out into the world in search of new experiences.

Ben, meanwhile, thinks that life can return to exactly how it was before Diana's death. He thinks that he and Joe can function as business partners (even though Joe has no interest in real estate). He thinks that jumping right into work after his daughter's death is the best medicine for his pain (even tough he admits he feels great guilt because he never felt that he had a true, heartfelt connection to his daughter-he was always too busy with work). Until Ben realizes that his supposed motivations are not satisfying his needs, he will be trapped in self-deception.

In fact, this movie bears a strong resemblance to The Graduate, the 1967 film, which also starred Dustin Hoffman as a character named Ben, and dripped with a baby-boomer generation's sense of alienation from their parents. Besides the obvious initial connection that both star Hoffman as Ben, the films feature a protagonist who escapes from a needy culture that wants to suck him in and make him one of their own. But just as Benjamin had no interest in plastics, Joe is adverse to a career in real estate: Mr. Robinson (Murray Hamilton) and the real estate agent Mike Mulcahey are both are older men who lead stiff, boring lives that make the protagonist cringe. Joe Nast and Benjamin Braddock are content only when they're on the road, leaving behind the small suburban towns where their elders reside, and venturing out into the world. The unexplored world is a place where the protagonist will find both true love and a sense of his own self-identity. While The Graduate ended with the wondering, wandering tunes of Simon and Garfunkel, Moonlight Mile closes with Van Morrison's "Sweet Thing"-a song that is an emblem of the "right" and "true" path that only an idealist would believe in. Like Joe Nast and Benjamin Braddock, each of us cannot help but search for that path ourselves.

The Flesh-Eating Doctor is Now After Your Moral Soul

A film review of Red Dragon, originally printed in Brown University/RISD College Hill Independent

HOLLYWOOD DIRECTOR Brett Ratner is a disappointment to contemporary cinema. I love the movies. I hate what Ratner does to them. He hits a new low and I hit a new high in hate with his latest film, Red Dragon. This is Ratner's version of the ongoing saga of the man-eating and occasionally man-hunting Dr. Hannibal "The Cannibal" Lecter (Anthony Hopkins), the brilliant, always hungry, and usually incarcerated former psychiatrist.

Soul Asylum

In the latest episode, FBI agent Will Graham (Edward Norton) is on the trail of a serial killer nicknamed the Tooth Fairy (Ralph Fiennes). Graham's boss, Crawford (Harvey Keitel), suggests that the investigation might benefit from the input of Lecter. Red Dragon derives pleasure from watching Lecter's manipulations of Graham in their intense one-on-one confrontations. In addition, the film attempts an exploration of the serial killer himself. The film follows the Tooth Fairy in his natural skin-he's actually lonely video lab technician Francis Dolarhyde, a victim of child abuse who currently finds himself falling for his blind co-worker Reba (Emily Watson).

Though he may have some sensitive bones in his body, the Tooth Fairy is still one of America's Most Wanted. His prime targets are picture-perfect white suburban middle-class families. Although thankfully sparing the viewer scenes that might actually show the killer at work, Ratner's film happily presents its audience with gruesome photos of the victims' dead bodies and an oral account by Graham of the Tooth Fairy's procedure that are just as nauseating.

Soul Train

Surprisingly, the true moments of bad taste do not involve the central crimes at all. Rather, they involve the subplot in which the audience is invited to examine the serial killer's "human" side. The film has the audacity to propel Reba into a sexual relationship with the Tooth Fairy in scenes that actually brought me to near nausea. The scene depicting Dolarhyde receiving oral sex from Reba is beyond sickening-it's perverted.

The film also features a journalist who is glued to a wheelchair and lit on fire, a man shot dead at point blank range, Dolarhyde running around naked sporting a massive, creepy tattoo on his back, and a blade of glass pointed at a young boy's forehead. If you emerge from this movie without feeling dirty and morally corrupted, you must have been asleep during most of it.

More frightening than the film's plot is its complete lack of artistic purpose or moral perspective. The movie cannot claim to be a serious examination of the psychotic mind because the audience is presented with a killer whose psychotic state is readily and easily attributed to the abuse he suffered at the hands of his brutal grandmother. Red Dragon has nothing original to say about the world of a psycho killer-but is this really territory that we would want to explore anyway? Whether or not Red Dragon will admit its selling point, it's obvious to the audience: we get to learn about the crimes perpetrated by a serial killer and then we get to watch this crazy bad guy go down gruesomely with a bullet to the brain.

Red Dragon shocks the audience with brutality, a goal that carries no artistic or moral weight. Rather, it is a shameful ploy to appeal to the same part of the human mind that is unfortunately turned on by watching reality television programs featuring people who stick their faces in bowls of worms in search of a hundred dollar bill.

Soul Coughing

If the gore doesn't damage your moral fiber, certainly the frightening lack of moral perspective will corrupt your character. Ratner hurls images of grotesque brutality onto the screen without a care in the world. The inclusion of the serial killer's romance with Reba may remind the viewer that psychos are humans too, but so what? Are we supposed to forgive him his violent crimes? Are they less evil than they initially seem?

The most sickening aspect of the Lecter movies in general is that this insane, flesh-eating doctor is beloved by his audience. We laugh at his jokes. We delight in seeing him outsmart the nasty prison psychiatrist. We forgive him for trying to kill the movie's hero, which he attempts to do midway through the film. In reality, Lecter is pure evil and deserving of none of our sympathies. In the movie, his is a misunderstood, mistreated rascal-the slightly crazier twin to James Dean's "rebel without a cause." The audience emerges from the film with a warped moral character as a result of the director's treatment of the repulsive Lecter.

Soul, man

Who is to blame for this mess of a movie that not only fails to entertain but actually eats away at the brain? The prime candidate is the director, Ratner, who has emerged as a hot commodity in Hollywood after the box office success of his Rush Hour films. Quoted in Variety magazine, Ratner is a man who blatantly admits to cribbing from such second-rate but profitable action pictures like 48 Hours and Midnight Run when he made the Rush Hour movies. He uses his voluminous knowledge of films as a fallback when making his own. "I am very aware of my limitations," he says. Not only does Ratner lack talent, but his every brain synapse is wired to the chime of the bells that begin day trading on Wall Street. On the topic of Manhunter, Michael Mann's stylish and highly praised adaptation of the same book on which Red Dragon is based, Ratner said, "That movie did $6 million at the box office and in terms of the marketplace right now, nobody has seen it except fans like me and you."

In truth, Ratner's films are the ones that are underwhelming. Devoid of originality and creative expression, they are factory produced, sealed, and marketed. But more importantly, a film such as Red Dragon can actually have a negative effect on its audience, desensitizing viewers to violence and corrupting their sense of morality by offering forgiving images of serial killers. The movies will continue to cannibalize any magic they still exude until someone has the guts to poke a fork in Lecter and end this torment. I'll gladly take a stab at the heart.

The Pleasure of Watching Jeff Bridges in a Bad Movie

So I was curious about the 80s movie Against All Odds, directed by Taylor Hackford, a remake of the great Robert Mitchum classic Out of the Past. Much of the movie takes place in Cozumel, Mexico. I've actually been to Cozumel w/ my family and actually, the hotel where Bridges' character stays in the movie looks nearly identical to where I stayed. So much so, that I wouldn't be surprised if it's the same place. But what can I say of the film? It's hugely flawed, to say the least. It seems like many pages have been taken from the Joe Ezterhas school of screenwriting. Characters turn from good to evil in seconds. A stalled conversation between two characters who've spent all of 5 minutes in each others' presence suddenly climaxes w/ a passionate kiss. It's ridiculous!

There is a great 80s L.A. feel caputured in the film. Bridges driving his Porsche, at one point racing James Woods on Sunset Blvd. in a truly memorable scene. The film is a mad, possibly substance-influenced Hollywood conconction that two guys hanging out w/ Hugh Hefner at the Playboy Mansion might hash out.

And Bridges in the middle of it all. With his long hair and scruffy beard. His character is a beat-up football player at the end of his career, a man who has two bum knees and a broken shoulder. But he's still a movie star. Woods is slimely to the max, and razor thin. He's a creep through and through.

I wouldn't recommend this sloppy movie. Yet somehow, when it's on cable at 2 in the morning, you might find yourself strangely compelled to see how it plays out.

Million Dollar Baby

On the hand, you have to be happy that Million Dollar Baby won this year's Best Picture Oscar. A fine motion picture from a film, dignified filmmaker (Clint!). The supposed elite group of five best picture nominees was overall fairly weak this year (where was Motorcycle Diaries? where was Hotel Rwanda? where was The Dreamers? these were interesting, exciting, political films passed over in favor of the pleasant but utterly pointless Finding Neverland and Aviator). Bringing me to the flip-side criticism of Million Dollar Baby - it was the best movie in a crowd of fluff movies. The movie flirts with pseudo-feminism and pple's right-to-die (previewing Terri Schiavo case) but ultimately it was more interested in pulling strings and making you weep than truly saying something deep and impacting about the American (or human) experience.