The Napa Movie Marathon Part Two

Hey folks,

Welcome to the second installment in my Napa Movie Marathon. But first a slight correction. Jim Carrey’s character in Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events is named Count Olaf…not Count Orloff. Duh. That’s what I get for writing in the wee hours of the morning without checking things over…

Anyway…on to today’s reviews…

So…here are five words we should hear this year that I never in a million years ever thought (or wanted) to hear…

Academy Award Nominee Adam Sandler

Writer-Director James L. Brooks hits his fourth one out of the park (and that’s out of five…and the one he didn’t may actually be a flawed masterpiece assuming we someday get to see the original musical version of I’ll Do Anything). Terms of Endearment, Broadcast News and As Good As It Gets are all wonderful character pieces that blend drama and comedy with the same deftness that occurs in real life.

Spanglish (which I personally don’t like as a title) is about Flor (Paz Vega), a young Mexican single mother who emigrates to the United States and eventually winds up as the housekeeper to the Claskys, a rather dysfunctional family. Mother Deborah (Tea Leoni) is a manipulator who will do whatever she can to get what she wants…even if it means hurting the ones she loves (for example, she buys clothes for her daughter that are just a size too small in the hopes it’ll motivate her to lose weight). Father John (Sandler) is a top-rated chef who isn’t good at confrontation and is better suited at flying just under the radar (he doesn’t want a four star rating for his restaurant because it would mean selling out…he’s happy with less than perfection).

They have two children, Bernice (Sarah Steele), who tends to border on the cliché of lovable fat teenage girl, and Georgie (Ian Hyland), who doesn’t get enough screen time to really make himself known as a presence. And then there’s Evelyn (Cloris Leachman), Deb’s former songstress turned alcoholic, who also lives with them. Eventually Flor and her daughter Cristina (Shelbie Bruce) move in for the summer and Deb makes the bright young girl her pet project, much to the dismay of Flor…which motivates the young woman to finally learn English and speak up for herself.

This isn’t Brooks’ best work, but it’s kind of like watching a bad James Bond film…it’s still good (it’s a bad analogy, but what do you expect it’s 3am as I write this). There are plenty of subtleties even with the complete manipulation of the audience as Brooks knows how to pull heartstrings (almost in a Spielbergian kind of way…just without the lavish special effects). The acting, as one would expect from the list of previous films, is top notch and highly surprising…particularly in the case of Sandler (though if you had seen Punch Drunk Love you knew it was in him…you just didn’t expect it this soon after). Leoni plays the cold manipulative bitch to a T, yet still gives her plenty of depth without turning her into a cliché. But it is Vega in the end who carries this film and she does an amazing job.

The film is a bit long, but you shouldn’t notice that too much as it moves at a brisk pace. While it’s not quite As Good As It Gets (hey…look…a pun…of sorts), it’s much better than almost anything that’s come out this year and is definitely in my top ten of the year (you’ll be getting my annual list after New Year’s…I forgot to bring that file with me to Napa to continue working on it).

I love the work of Steven Soderbergh. I have pretty much since the beginning. But with the success of both Out of Sight and Erin Brockovich, Soderbergh now has the clout to go from slick Hollywood cash project to where he got his start Indie films with much ease. He has found a good balance of the two in Ocean’s Twelve, a sequel to a successful remake, in which the audience goes in expecting a fun and entertaining big budget popcorn flick and winds up watching a slow boil arty homage to European filmmaking. That’s not a bad thing…assuming you can open your mind to the experience a bit (although…judging from what I’ve been hearing…most people can’t).

Its three years after the first film and Danny Ocean (George Clooney) and his friends have all settled nicely into their routines after ripping off Vegas casino owner Terry Benedict (Andy Garcia). Now Benedict has found them all (in an amusing string of scenes that makes it feel like he’s in eleven places at the same time) and wants his money back plus interest. So Danny and his friends trot off to Europe to try and heist 97 million dollars in two weeks to pay Benedict back. Unfortunately, they find themselves in the middle of a game of cat and mouse between a beautiful Europol agent (Catherine Zeta-Jones) who has ties to Rusty (Brad Pitt) and one of the best burglars to ever grace the European continent and known only as the Night Fox (and played by Vincent Cassell).

From this plot we get the usually con artist trickery that tries to stay one or two steps ahead of the audience. But here, most of it fails miserably. What many will see as a weak and hollow attempt to cash in on a success, what they’re actually seeing is the greatest con of all. Much like The Hulk where Ang Lee sold an art film disguised as a comic book movie, here Soderbergh, Clooney and company trounce around Europe doing whatever they want and feeding it to us as if Francois Truffaut were pulling the strings. Some plot points go unexplained, characters get fleeting screen time with no real purpose (let’s face it…with all these people “in the gang” some are gonna get short shrift), big names make cameos in jokey roles that make little sense (if Bruce Willis needs to appear as himself, he should be in on the con…and why waste Eddie Izzard, Robbie Coltrane and Albert Finney in toss-away roles) and enough Hollywood in-jokes to make The Player blush (Julia Roberts playing Tess playing Julia Roberts comes to mind).

While I enjoyed this film, I can understand many being disappointed that it’s not as good as the original remake (there’s an odd phrase). It’s that rare sequel, like The Two Jakes and The Godfather Part III, that does its best trying to serve many masters and actually succeeding…if you can just see past the trees and look at the whole forest.

Well…that’s all for today. Next time…Finding Neverland and Sideways…

Until then…

Be seeing you.