Category: at the movies

Phillip Seymour Hoffman perfectly impersonates the late author (as far as I can tell, based upon the clips I have seen of his later TeeVee appearances as a professional celebrity), and brings a subtle complexity to the role of Truman Capote as he uses (and abuses) everyone around him while researching and writing “In Cold Blood.”

Capote traveled to a sleepy Kansas town that was the site of a grisly quadruple murder in 1959 to write a story for “The New Yorker” but worked instead for five years on the first “non-fiction novel.” He traded on his celebrity to gain the confidence of the wives of the town’s lawmen and used his money to fund the legal appeals of the murderers in order to win their trust and keep them alive long enough to get their side of the story. Of course, he needed to have them swinging from the gallows in order to have an ending for his book. That conflict is at the heart of this movie, which handily shifts its tone as the subject matter grows darker and ratchets up the tension as it builds towards the inevitable (but still shocking) climax.

“The Aristocrats” is a disappointment. For all the talk of how the World’s Dirtiest Joke is like some great jazz improv, which improves with each new teller’s unique voice, mostly, it’s the same joke. There’s diarrhea, there’s incest, there’s Joe Franklin and the same lame punchline.

I always thought the joke was that aristocrats (like England’s royal family) actually engage in some of the child-fucking, shit-eating acts described in the joke’s set-up. In fact, the punchline is meant to contrast the genteel evocation of the “aristocracy” with the foul deeds detailed in the joke itself. For that reason, the montage of interviews with comedians laughing at the existence of a better punchline (“the sophisticates!”) around the middle of the film is one of its funniest bits.

Likewise, when comedians digress from the established joke into hilariously ribald tangents, the film finally hits its stride. George Carlin riffs on the consistency of diarrhea, Gilbert Godfried explains the preponderance of blood in the set-up, Sarah Silverman makes it personal with Joe Franklin and damn near everyone picks on the absent Gallagher.

“Tell me a joke” would have been a better motivation for the filmmakers than “tell me the same old dirty joke.”

Though I’ve long been intrigued by trailers and reviews, I’ve failed to see any of Gregg Araki’s movies until “Mysterious Skin.” What I’ve missed in the past is not likely to be as remarkable and utterly affecting as “Skin,” which is easily the best movie I’ve seen so far this year.

Centered around troubled Kansas teens Brian and Neil, who shared a life-changing experience in the summer of 1981, the film leads inevitably towards their devastating reunion ten years later.

As an eight-year-old Little Leaguer, Neil (boldly played by “Third Rock From the Sun’s” Joseph Gordon-Levitt) was lured into a sexual relationship with his coach when he was eight years old. His voiceover narration makes clear that he was always attracted to men and was happy and proud to be so liked by “Coach,” who, remembered purely in flashbacks (it seems the movie was set in the 1980’s purely to salute that golden era for mustaches) is a kindly and likable figure (it’s up the audience to feel conflicted). The experience leaves Neil with a taste in older men that leads to him turning tricks that grow increasingly dangerous.

Likewise abused, Brian (Brady Corbet) blocked out the experience and finds only one logical explanation for his missing time: alien abduction. Whereas Neil grows up to be a jaded loner with self-destructive sexual impulses, Brian becomes a lonely geek with no clear sexual desires. Brian’s efforts to document dreams and repressed memories dredge up details Little League uniforms and another little boy that lead to his encounter with Neil, which brings the film to an abrupt end.

Neil remembers everything and fills in Brian, whose own memories come back in a flood as he recoils into a fetal position on Neil’s lap (Corbet’s performance is affecting). Neil, for his part, in voiceover, expresses regret and remorse that cast his whole narrative during the previous 100 minutes in question and leaves the audience reeling as the credits roll.

“Palindromes” is unremittingly bleak and cynical. Todd Solondz’ latest begins with the funeral of Dawn Weiner, the heroine of his earlier, funnier “Welcome to the Dollhouse.” The alluded-to date rape and suicide of his beloved character signals the film’s non-stop assault on hopefulness. His next victim is a cousin of Dawn’s, 13-year-old Aviva, who wants nothing more than to have “lots and lots of babies.” That innocent desire takes her from dispassionate, cringe-inducing underage sex to a botched abortion (at her liberal mother’s insistence) to hitchhiking and even more cringe-worthy sex with a trucker. From there, Aviva finds herself in the care of Mama Sunshine, a kind and mostly harmless christian who cares for a dozen or so disabled children who live and laugh together and sing and dance boy-band style peans to Jesus and the unborn children, while local yahoos in the basement plan the assassination of an abortion provider (Aviva’s, as luck would have it). And, yes, we see the attack on the doctor’s home, while he plays charades with his children.

Aviva is portrayed by multiple actresses, of different shapes, sizes and colors (including, at one point, Jennifer Jason Leigh). Solondz’ art school distraction serves to keep the character at an emotional distance from the audience. It’s less storytelling and more a sadistic little boy pulling the wings off a butterfly. I consider it a perverse accomplishment that out of an audience of half a dozen paying moviegoers, I was the only person in the theater by the time the credits rolled. Everyone else had left, one by one, in a huff as each new assault on Aviva’s innocence and our good taste came on screen.

“The Ballad of Jack and Rose” is immediately likable, opening with the crescendo of Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “I Put A Spell On You” and a long camera pan across an idyllic island commune. The commune is home to Jack, a bombastic Scottish ex-pat played by Daniel Day-Lewis, and his teenage daughter Rose (the very lovely Camilla Belle). It is Rose who is under a spell, hopelessly devoted to her dying father, who has raised and home-schooled her alone ever since the rest of the 60’s society drop-outs who formed the commune – including the unseen mother and wife of the titular duo – left the island to rejoin normal society.

The outside world comes crashing in when Jack invites his girlfriend and her two teenage sons to live with him on the island. “She’s so normal,” hisses an emotionally betrayed Rose, who sets off to lose her virginity and chase the girlfriend from their home.

The 1980’s also come crashing in, as a developer begins building suburban houses over some wetlands on the other side of the island. Beau Bridges plays the developer as a rather likable, nice guy whose response to Jack’s violent and destructive tactics to ward off the development is a living room chat over tea. He is not the villain of the movie. Rather, he is yet another foil for Jack to come to terms with his crisis of conscience over his choices in life and his parenting of Rose.

The film’s climax is tense and unpredictable, but it’s unfortunately ruined by an utterly tacked-on thirty second epilogue. “Oldboy” shares the same dark secret as “Jack and Rose” (Hint: It’s not child molestation, genocide, abortion or assisted suicide, but I’m thinking of adding it to that list). Its ending likewise disappoints.

A stylish, fast-paced and frenetic Korean import, “Oldboy” begins with an unremarkable office worker’s night of public drunkenness and disorderly conduct, and his subsequent abduction and imprisonment. Finding himself in a windowless hotel room with a television as his only connection to the outside world, Dae-su Oh learns that his wife has been murdered and he is the main “person of interest”. He spends the next 15 years teaching himself to fight by watching action movies and boxing matches on the teevee, while plotting his escape and revenge.

When he is just-as-mysteriously let go, Dae-su Oh sets out to find out who imprisoned him, and why, and to get his revenge. At this point, the movie promises to be a slick and amusing revenge flick, akin to “Kill Bill,” with our stoic hero and his quickly acquired nubile sidekick kicking ass and taking names. Indeed, the first half of the movie is a rapid succession of delightful and inventive fights, investigations and fish-out-of-water interactions. But when the “who” of our mystery is revealed too quickly, the “why” and the motivation become increasingly bizarre and the movie runs out of steam.