Movies

AMORES PERROS

Amores Perros: love's a bitch; loosely translated from Spanish. Welcome to the Pulp Fiction of Mexican cinema. In the groundbreaking film Amores Perros, not only is love a bitch, life's a bitch. There are three intermingling stories at play here.

A lovesick Octavio (Gael García Bernal) lusts blindly after his asshole/thug brother Ramiro's (Marco Pérez) wife, Susana (Vanessa Bauche), and wants her to run away with him. To convince her he's on the level, he enters the family pet into dogfights on the local circuit to make some money. This is some gruesome shit. There is a disclaimer run at the beginning of the movie saying that no animals were harmed in the making of the picture, and that all of the fight scenes were closely supervised-- while it seems kind of weak at the time, it's a damn good thing. All brutality aside, however, these scenes offer a grim portal into a seedy but interesting subculture of Mexico City.

Then there is the brief story of Daniel (Alvaro Guerrero) and Valeria (Goya Toledo). Daniel is a businessman who leaves his wife and children to live with his model girlfriend. The story quickly turns to symbolic tragedy involving an annoying dog and an extremely painful-looking medical device.

Finally, there's the deep and swaggering tale of El Chivo. A family man turned revolutionary turned vagrant/ assassin, El Chivo is now a dirty dog-keeping mercenary.

This is easily the most compelling portion of the film. El Chivo is played with spit and guts by Emilio Echevarria, a heavy of Mexican stage and screen. His character is so vividly drawn out that in one scene, as he sat hulled up in his squalid dwelling drinking milk-and-vodkas and smoking cigarettes, I could smell the piss in his shorts. Beautiful stuff.

All three stories are tethered rather pulpily to a cataclysmal car-crash that takes place at the onset of the film.

While the first story sets the unrelenting tone and pace of the movie, and second adds a dark and comic lining, it's the last bit that gives the movie its real sense of resolve and meaning. This segment holds the whole meat of the story together. It raises some tried and true morality questions, and also makes a case for attempting to right past wrongs.

This movie does a lovely job of showing the passionate and immediate nature of Mexican culture. These people are deeply involved with their lives and decisions, not at all passive about circumstance. Without direct intention, the film makes Americans look lazy and detached from their lives-- or maybe that's just me. This is one of the key elements that separates this film from its partial benefactor, Pulp Fiction. The characters in Amores Perros are too wrapped up in the grim reality of their lives and in the sweeping nature of their hopes and dreams to get caught up in blithe conversations about pop culture and foot massages. Throughout this movie there are reminders that while first-time director Alejandro González Iñárritu has indeed borrowed quite liberally from Tarantino's style-book, he has made his work original by infusing it with grit and a stark sense of tragic irony. The film's cinematography also adds to the harshness of the various situations in a fashion reminiscent of the Tijuana scenes from Traffic.

Iñárritu has effectively used dogs here to loosely string his story along with a dumb and sympathetic warmth. He must have realized that people will cringe harder at the sight of a dead dog than they will at that of a human corpse. A --Josh Tyson

Movie Review

CROCODILE DUNDEE IN LOS ANGELES

Fifteen years ago I had the distinct pleasure of watching the first Crocodile Dundee movie with my family. It was really strange because usually I never saw films with my mom; rather, I'd be watching Friday the 13th films with all my pals, (I guess my mom couldn't relate to a guy with a hockey mask, but she could relate to Mick Dundee). And that's the key; that film was great for families as well as people who aren't from the United States (it has grossed more than $200 million worldwide), simply because it was goofy, but still at the core of it lies a sweet love story. This latest installment has none of the charisma the original did, and it's quite obvious if you look at Paul Hogan, who just seems tired of playing this one trick pony.

This time we find Hogan playing his usual Mick Dundee, hunting crocodiles and playing tour guide down in the outback for wealthy Americans, except this time he has a 9-year-old son and a new pal, Jacko, another croc hunter. After his girlfriend Sue (Linda Kozlowski from the original) has been asked to fill in as a reporter for her father's newspaper, Dundee decides to join her with their son in a temporary move to L. A. Once settled, Sue receives a hot tip that a movie studio is smuggling illegal goods into the United States, and that's where our hero comes in and saves the day. In between this paper thin plot, Dundee goes through the usual rehashed jokes from the first film, such as walking into a gay bar, being mugged by punks, and pulling out his giant pocket knife.

At times CD3 plays like an episode of "The Love Boat," complete with cheesy cameos from George Hamilton, Mike Tyson and Paul Rodriguez. It's just missing the much-needed laugh track. This movie is garbage. It wasn't as if Paul Hogan was writing at a desk for the last 13 years devising a plan to come up with a great sequel, finally screaming last year, "Eureka! I got it!" Rather this was put together because of the popularity of the other famous Australian, Steve Irwin-- the real crocodile hunter; Hogan was hoping he could cash in while Irwin was hot. He shouldn't' anticipate a huge check: Mummy 2 opens next week, followed by A Knight's Tale, and both should destroy Hogan at the box office. To add insult to injury, one of the subplots of this film is that Dundee hasn't grown the gonads to ask his girlfriend to marry him. As a matter of fact, he can't even mention he loves her in public. What happened to the sweet guy who was screaming to strangers in a New York subway that he loved her? Don't ask Hogan, he doesn't know either. D --Neal James

The first two Crocadile Dundee films are available on video and DVD.

Movie Review

WITH A FRIEND LIKE HARRY

As With A Friend Like Harry opens, Michel and Claire are taking a typical family vacation. Typical in that their three daughters are constantly complaining, crying, or kicking the back of Michel's seat.

Growing weary of the drive to the family's summer home, which is in the process of being renovated, Michel pulls into a rest stop so the family can have a break from the hot, cramped car. This is where he runs into Harry, an old high school friend of his whom he hasn't seen in years.

Harry seems to have made all the right decisions since high school. He has a great job, a devoted girlfriend, and he makes enough money to buy cars as gifts. Upon meeting his old friend, Harry is more than eager to join Michel's family for a few days and help out in any way he can. It isn't long, however, before Michel and Claire wonder how helpful Harry really is.

While effective as both black comedy and suspense, Harry ultimately succeeds as a character study. Harry, played by Sergi Lopez, gets what he wants by any means necessary. And what he wants in this film is to do what he thinks is best for Michel. When Michel's children complain about the heat, Harry lets them ride in his air-conditioned car. When Michel's own car breaks down, Harry buys him a new one. When Michel's parents threaten to get in the way of his happiness, Harry does what he can to prevent them from doing so.

Living by the mantra, "Excess is the only way to fulfillment," Harry serves to show Michel how his life could have been different if he had gone for material wealth instead of starting a family, while reminding him of the talent he once had as a writer.

One of the film's more interesting devices deals with the results of Harry's friendship. Although there is some question as to whether the ends justify the means, by the time the credits roll Michel feels much closer to his family and has started writing again. He even finishes filling in the well near his house, a task he had been putting off for most of the film.

While Lopez carries much of the movie, credit must also be given to Laurent Lucas, whose Michel serves as the ideal inspiration to Lopez' Harry. Also worth mentioning are director Dominik Moll, and Gilles Marchand, who co-wrote the screenplay with Moll.

My only complaint about this movie is one of trivial importance. While on the festival circuit, With A Friend Like Harry was shown under the title Harry, He's Here to Help (neither one is an exact translation from the French Harry, un ami qui vous veut du bien, but the festival title comes much closer). Apparently Harry, He's Here to Help had too much subtle irony and not enough marketability.

Harry might not become a classic suspense film, but it is an engaging piece of cinema, which has the ability to incite discussion of the characters long after leaving the theater. And unlike recent American films of the same genre, it gives its audience enough credit not to make every single plot point excruciatingly obvious. Rather, each development is given just enough time to be effective, and then isn't revisited unless something new can be drawn from it.

Maybe Moll just assumes his audience can think on its own. A--- Chris Ward

Movie Review

A KNIGHT'S TALE

It was exactly one year ago when our televisions were being bombarded with trailers of a new film called Gladiator. The ads that ran showed a newly "buffed" Russell Crowe fighting off men covered with shiny armor as well as hungry Bengal tigers, all to the music of Kid Rock's "Bawitdaba." This year, we have a similar situation as the networks are running ads for a film called A Knight's Tale, showing knights jousting and knocking each other of their horses, all to the Queen's rock anthem "We Will Rock You." So the question to ask is this-- can lightning strike twice? Is it possible we have another period picture that can win Best Picture next year? The answer is no ... hell no.

Heath Ledger (The Patriot) stars as William, the servant to a knight who happens to die unnoticed during a jousting match. Since he and his fellow mates, Mark Addy (fat boy from The Full Monty) are starving for food, the only way to get fed is to throw one of them in armor and finish the match as the knight, and pawn the prize. To no one's surprise it works, and this incident plants a seed in Ledger's head that maybe he can do this from town to town as a fake knight, earning money as well as respect; after all, this has been his dream since he was a child.

Along the way they bump into the gambling- addicted writer Geoffrey, played by Paul Bettany, who is allowed to tag along in exchange for his services (he creates fake documents claiming that Ledger belongs to a noble family). As Ledger travels to each tournament, he gains notoriety as one of the better competitors and falls for the future fiancée of the circuit's best jouster and his new enemy, Adhemar played by Rufus Sewell (Dark City).

There are so many holes in this movie I could fill the rest of this magazine with its inconsistencies. How can I tear apart thee; let me count the ways. We learn that Ledger's father sends his boy to live with a knight as a child. If a knight raised him, why does he need to be trained on the art of jousting during the first third of the film? Also if these guys are traveling city to city, make sure the arenas look different. It's quite obvious that most of these action scenes were filmed in the same arena using the same jousters, just different angles. Finally, Queen's hit, "We Will Rock You," is blaring during the first joust match. I had no problem with the song until they showed all these 14th century French people singing, clapping and dancing along to Freddie Mercury's lyrics! This isn't supposed to be a Monty Python/Mel Brooks parody, or is it?

Director Brian Helgeland is the man responsible for writing such films as L. A. Confidential and Conspiracy Theory. Although he has proven that he is great at holding a pen, behind the camera he has shown he is weak, as Mel Gibson had to take over Helgeland's duties during his first feature Payback. The icing on this pile of shit comes during a banquet, when our uneducated hero is asked to lead the group of higher-ups during a dance sequence. Everything is fine and dandy until the music changes and switches gears to '70s funk. At this point everyone follows Ledger's lead as he begins to dance in a late 1900s style. Are you kidding me? If I wanted to watch Encino Man, I would have stayed at home. D --Neal James

DVD REPORT

ONCE UPON A TIME IN CHINA

In turn-of-the-century China, folk hero Wong Fei Hung (Jet Li), a skilled martial artist and even more skilled healer, must contend with the encroachment of the West and its slow corruption of his country and its ancient ways.

Somewhere over a hundred movies have been made about Wong Fei Hung (the same character played by Jackie Chan in Legend of the Drunken Master), which is somewhat astounding considering the real Fei Hung only died in 1927! Each successive generation seems to put its own spin on the character, the heroic qualities of this historic figure speaking to each period's concerns.

Tsui Hark's highly successful version of the hero not only steadied Jet Li's stumbling career, but brought the character fully into the Hong Kong '90s, with all its uncertainties about encroaching foreigners and assimilation into another culture. Hark doesn't walk an easy path here, however; though the Westerners are evil, the truly heinous characters are the Chinese who prey on their own countrymen, and in his darkest hour, when all forces seem arrayed against him, the one person who comes to his aid is a Catholic missionary-- who surely, in a less thoughtful film, would have been a (too-obvious) villain.

No Wong Fei Hung story is complete without some dazzling martial arts, and the fight supervisors come up with some doozies, providing a prime showcase for Li's superb skills. Adding to Fei Hung's problems throughout the last third of the movie is a rival martial artist named Iron Vest Yin. Their final fight in a grain storehouse, their battlefield a series of teetering, flipping, constantly moving ladders, raised the bar considerably for all future fight scenes.

The commentary track by Ric Meyers is very good and frequently humorous. He is quite informative about HK film conventions and the Wong Fei Hung saga as it has developed in the cinema. The one shortcoming to the track is his recurring complaint about the subtitlers not translating the occasional piece of written Chinese. It is a lapse, true, but it seems a writer of Meyers' reputation would have the resources to find a native speaker or knowledgeable gwailo to translate the writings, so his track, at least, could be forthcoming with that information.

But the best bonus is the English-dubbed version of the movie. I personally prefer subtitles when I can get them; however, one of my best friends is also a big fan of HK movies, but he has dyslexia, and therefore has trouble "reading movies". And it's not merely a matter of yet another soundtrack over the original film-- the cut of the English version is different, with several of the scenes that detail the clashing language problems between characters excised.

In my opinion, Columbia/Tri-Star has come out with the perfect treatment of a foreign film, not only respectful, but with support material that informs and allows everyone to enjoy the movie. Dimension Films could certainly learn a thing or two about presenting HK films from this example. Columbia has slated the sequel (appropriately, Once Upon A Time in China 2) for release in May, and if it is a disc of the same quality, they can at least count on getting my money. A --Dr. Freex