A CHINESE GHOST STORY (1997), dir. Andrew Chen

SITE ARCHIVE! (REGULARLY UPDATED)

Overall rating: ** (out of ****)

This seems more like an attempt to compete with Walt Disney than Hayao Miyazaki, and that’s unfortunate since Miyazaki’s Studio Gibli effectively set the new gold standard for hand-drawn animation during the late 90’s.

Indeed, films like “Princess Mononoke” and “Spirited Away” sported gorgeous drawings and impressive storytelling. However, they were also characterized by ambitious, occasionally epic storylines that utilized elements of Japanese mythology, executed in a mature fashion that appealed to all audiences. And therein lies the big difference between Miyazaki’s films and this one, produced by Hong Kong action master Tsui Hark; although “A Chinese Ghost Story” does touch on some grown-up themes, it does so in a restless manner that’s heavy on the eye candy. It’s as if Hark believed success depended solely on getting children into the theater.

Based on a story that inspired a live-action film and several sequels, the main character of “A Chinese Ghost Story” is Ning, a wandering tax collector with a broken heart. He was too busy earning his way in the world to keep his lover, who is mostly shown via flashback, from marrying someone else. When night falls, Ning ends up in a ghost city, which looks normal except for all the green tentacle-bearing creatures walking around (and that the city is lit up like Los Angeles in “Blade Runner”). What also distracts him is a beautiful woman named Shine; he falls in love with her at first sight, and it’s not long before she takes an interest in Ning herself.

Little does our protagonist know that Shine, who is also a ghost, works for a powerful entity named Trunk, who needs to eat human souls to maintain her beauty. After helping Ning out of a jam, Shine starts to coax him back to her master; however, a series of events happen which thrust the pair into the wilderness and toward each other. They include appearances by rival ghost hunters: on one side, White Hair and his apprentice, who resemble traditional action heroes; versus the more grizzled-looking Red Beard, who is about 70-percent facial hair and 100-percent gristle. There is also another female ghost jealous of Shine’s prominence among their fellow spirits. Finally, Shine has to beware the daylight, which can reduce her to ash, so Ning carries her around in an umbrella.

I can’t help thinking Miyazaki would have made a charming love story out of a young man with an umbrella that turns into a woman. To its credit, the film does reveal that Shine has a boyfriend – another ghost who has been away for years – and the idea that faithfulness is a shared trait among the protagonists makes their pairing all the more appealing. But screenwriter Hark, more known for kinetic, frenetic martial arts movies like “The Blade” and the “Once Upon a Time in China” series, barely lets the characters be alone together before propelling them into another fast-paced action sequence. The film manages to end before exhausting us, but what we take away isn’t the story and characters, it’s all the gimmicks aimed at the kid set.

Like a lot of the animated American movies of the 90’s, there is a pet sidekick providing comic relief (including a timely urination joke), some forgettable musical numbers, and strange moments of anachronism, including a ghost whipping out what amounts to a cell phone. In addition, characters all seem to try solving their problems by breaking out magical weapons, shooting at one another with electric eye beams, or the coup de grace: activating a giant robot with rocket boosters on its legs, and is clearly made out of computer graphics. At best, children will ooh and aah at the tumult of stimulation, but since nothing looks particularly innovative on a design level, adults are more likely to dismiss the giant robot as an inevitable toy product tie-in, or to wish for tighter editing during the elaborate throwdowns.

Kids may get a kick out of “A Chinese Ghost Story,” but those looking for sophisticated animated fare will probably be bored.

(Note: “A Chinese Ghost Story” was directed by someone named Andrew Chen, but based on the opening credits, you’d think it was Hark. Known for using directors as vessels for his own cinematic visions, he’s gotten most of the credit for movies he’s produced. As such, it only seems fair he gets the brunt of the criticism this time.)

EVIL (2003), dir. Mikael Hafstrom

SITE ARCHIVE! (REGULARLY UPDATED)

What is “pure evil?” According to this searing Swedish drama, it’s causing pain to others simply because one is bigger, or has the protection of the authorities. It’s bullying, and it’s even worse when the bully is reasonably intelligent. Stand up to this kind and they may leave you alone temporarily, but all the while, they’ll be plotting any manner of alternative ways to get at you.

At the beginning of “Evil,” public school thug Erik Ponti (Andreas Wilson) is accused of being exactly this sort of psychopath. He scraps with his classmates, has been suspected of stealing, and despite what glimmer of academic ability he has shown, there is little chance he’ll be admitted to college. What Erik’s critics don’t know is the physical abuse he’s endured at the hands of his stepfather; only Erik’s mother knows, and in desperation, she sends him off to a private boarding school called Stjarnsberg, pleading with him to save what’s left of his future.

From the outside, Stjarnsberg looks like any other preparatory institution for sons of the rich and prominent. Despite being 17, Erik is roomed with younger, fresher-faced students, and his roommate is Pierre (Henrik Lundstrom), an affable dork who brings him up to speed on how things are run. Here the upperclassmen police the lowerclassmen, punishing infractions such as public cursing with some physical reprimand – for example, one student gets struck over the head with a spoon. But it goes further: basically, the lowerclassmen have to do the upperclassmen’s bidding, and when Erik balks, he finds himself at odds with Silverhielm (Gustaf Starsgard), who proves one heck of a sadistic senior.

Pretty much the entire Stjarnsberg upper class sets out to make Erik submit. When he won’t clean a pile of their mud-encrusted shoes, they make him dig ditches in the yard and other forms of hard labor. As for the headmaster, he generally turns a blind eye to whatever the older students do to the younger. Worse, there is a boxing square where lowerclassmen can be challenged to fight, but it’s always two-to-one in favor of upper-classmen, meaning it’s really a place for bigger students to beat smaller, weaker boys into pulp. Erik would be the exception; however, he refuses to engage in fisticuffs out of his promise to his mother to stay out of trouble.

Viewers will figure out early that Erik gets off the sidelines (note the scene where he and Pierre bond over their mutual love of “Rebel Without a Cause,” and the latter says his favorite scene is when James Dean is standing over his best friend’s dead body). To be fair, “Evil” doesn’t telegraph itself quite so cleanly, and it’s pretty good until about halfway through, when a plotline involving Erik’s swimming ability – which gives the underclassmen their first opportunity to steal some glory from the uppers – gets abandoned in favor of escalating antics (although nothing quite tops the use of a bucket containing human waste during the film’s middle).

What lesson are we supposed to take away from all this? Authority figures with absolute power can corrupt absolutely, be they favored students or step-parents? That’s all well and good, but as far as I can tell, the movie never presents or proposes any solution to this problem (and “Evil” does seem to think it’s that). If Erik is to be our example, the only real hope appears to be enduring indefinitely or getting oneself a good attorney. True, he does get a love interest for distraction, but their relationship is strangely underdeveloped, although one scene which amounts to, “You appear to have hypothermia. Let’s have sex,” is pretty funny.

The movie does try to say something about how abuse can shape us, either as individuals or as a mass: Erik was a thug because his stepfather would verbally and physically hurt him; meanwhile, Pierre points out that when Silverhielm was an underclassman himself, he probably had to endure atrocities similar to what he dishes out now. When the movie does allow Silverhielm an explanation, he says Erik’s defiance in and of itself caused him a “living Hell.” This implies the cyclical nature of bullying at Stjarnsberg breeds peer pressure; poor Silverhielm must make his charges fall in line, or else.

However, the most telling scene about the effects of abuse might be when Erik gets one of his tormentors alone, acts like he’s going to kill them, and starts explaining how he will commit the murder and get away with it. It all sounds half-baked, but the victim breaks down and starts begging for their life, at which point Erik looks at them, genuinely half-surprised. “You really thought I was going to do it, didn’t you?” he says, and the answer is: Of course they did. When a person has spent so much time around human beings at their absolute worst, what else would they expect of anyone but the same?

Overall rating: ** (out of ****)

THE JACKET (2005), dir. John Maybury

Like many supernatural-themed movies, “The Jacket” makes certain demands of its audience. In this case, it’s: one, that they’re willing to accept the idea ghosts have nothing better to do than help sullen-eyed teenagers they barely knew before expiring; and two, that the course of an entire life can be predicated by a single event 14 years in the past.

The third expectation is no one will care this movie ultimately makes no sense, so long as it makes good on the tragic romance at its center between Jack Starks (Adrien Brody), who may be crazy or may actually be traveling through time, and a young woman named Jackie (Keira Knightley). The pair first meets in 1993, when she is a little girl stranded beside a Vermont road with her mom. Jack fixes their truck for them, but Jean’s mother proves ungrateful, so he ends up hitching a ride with a mysterious stranger who kills a cop, then frames him for it.

The authorities refuse to believe Jack’s story that someone else committed the murder, since he has mental problems stemming from being shot in the head while serving in the Persian Gulf. He ends up being committed to a hospital for the criminally-insane, where the gruff head shrink (Kris Kristofferson) subjects him to an outdated form of therapy, which involves being fit into a strait jacket, then slid into a locker.

Trapped, Jack has a vision of the year 2007, where he meets a grown-up Jackie whom he doesn’t immediately recognize. She, in turn, doesn’t know who he is either, both because he has barely aged since she last saw him 14 years prior, and because it turns out Jack Starks died on January 1, 1993. From then on, the movie see-saws back-and-forth between 1993 and 2007, between Jack and Jean falling in love in the future and trying to unravel the mysterious circumstances of his death, and his using knowledge from 2007 to help people in the past, including the one kindly doctor in the whole asylum (Jennifer Jason-Leigh).

Clues and events fall into place like puzzle pieces, and the cinematography has a certain bleak consistency. Writer Massy Tadjedin and director John Maybury, however, seem less assured about the film’s overall tone, alternating between creepiness whenever Jack is in solitude and a more straightforward, dramatic mood for scenes outside the locker.

“The Jacket” also strains credibility in ways other movies about mentally-unstable individuals who think they’re time travelers – “12 Monkeys” comes to mind – manage to avoid. Granted, Adrien Brody is a good enough actor to sell every scene he’s in, but considering how crazy his story sounds, his character has a relatively easy time getting others to believe him, and the most incredulous instance may be his convincing Leigh’s medical professional to perform electro-shock therapy on a small boy who appears to have autism.

In addition, the opening footage of the Persian Gulf War left a bad taste in my mouth, mainly because the protagonist’s status as a veteran is completely incidental. He could be a truck driver and the film would more or less turn out the same; but that he was a soldier, along with some brief dialogue about how patients like Jack are treated as criminals, allow the illusion this movie has some kind of relevance today. But really, “The Jacket” is little more than New Age treacle dressed up like something considerably more important, and ends up ignoring some basic time travel-related paradoxes for the sake of a lazy, feel-good ending, where nothing is impossible except actually buying this hokum.

Overall rating: ** (out of ****)

THE ‘HUMAN’ FACTOR (1975), dir. Edward Dmytryk

Two things elevate “The ‘Human’ Factor” from B-grade pot-boiler to a thriller that’s flawed, but not terrible: one is the casting of George Kennedy, who may be better recognized nowadays as Leslie Nielson’s sidekick in “The Naked Gun” comedies; the second is the score by legendary composer Ennio Morricone, who can make otherwise routine scenes such as men typing away at a computer screen seem downright intriguing.

Kennedy plays John Kinsdale, a NATO employee living in Florence, who suffers every devoted family man’s worst nightmare after his wife and children are murdered. The police have no leads; luckily, Kinsdale works with computer systems designed to predict an enemy’s actions during wartime. Using this advanced technology, he and a trusted co-worker named Mike (John Mills) figure out the killers’ modus operandi, and that they are terrorists targeting Americans living abroad.

Mike assumes this information will be turned over to the cops in order to prevent similar tragedies. But the closer Kinsdale gets to his family’s murderers, the less interested he becomes in protecting others as opposed to exacting revenge. Soon a behavioral scientist and an Italian police inspector are also racing the clock to stop him. Kinsdale, however, shuns them all, since they want to put the thugs in jail, while he wants them dead. “You don’t understand!” he yells. “These people murdered my family!”

Director Dmytryk, along with screenwriters Thomas Hunter and Peter Powell, telegraph early on that Kinsdale will be going the vigilante route: he shoots a television set broadcasting a news report about his dead family. The question is whether this middle-aged family man will succeed against a pack of younger, heavily-armed thugs? Although a computer simulation gives Kinsdale only an eight-percent chance of success, the filmmakers argue that the titular “human factor” – in this case, his grief, rage, and despair – can alter those odds significantly.

In the tradition of exploitative cinema, there are chase sequences, some good acting (Kennedy), mediocre writing at best (the terrorists, in particular, are given as little personality as political ideology, thus making them all the easier to despise), limited production values, and lots of violence. But “The ‘Human’ Factor” is an effective character study about an ordinary man pushed past his limits, and there are flashes of the western as well: Kinsdale is the civilized man driven to uncivilized acts, who finds himself on the margins of society as a result.

The first half is the movie’s best, mainly because of just how unassuming the main protagonist appears, and how that becomes his advantage. Indeed, a middle-aged George Kennedy may not particularly intimidating, but his secret weapon, it is pointed out early, is that he’s perceptive. In one scene, he gathers valuable clues by lending a sympathetic ear to an embassy official who doesn’t know who he is, but is outraged by all the news of dead Americans.

The second half, on the other hand, features car chases, rooftop escapes, and hand-to-hand fight scenes to go with Kinsdale’s emotional fall from grace. But as good as Kennedy is at conveying the emotions and will to vengeance of a shattered man, he is no Charles Bronson, and the action sequences strain credibility too far at times. There is no way Kinsdale should be able to effortlessly evade police pursuit, but he does. He also doesn’t seem like the kind of man who’d know how to whip a chain around someone’s neck, but he does that, too.

Yet none of Kinsdale’s prior superhuman feats compare to the final scene, a ridiculously over-the-top shoot-out in a supermarket, where his family’s killers have taken hostages. Despite being armed with machine guns, they are no match for Kinsdale, who only has a handgun. Adding to the surreal tone are moments of unnecessary levity – specifically, while guns are blazing, the disembodied voice over the loudspeaker calmly announces turkey cold cuts are on sale. Interestingly, there’s little enjoyment or satisfaction to go with these long-in-wait executions, as if the “human factor” that got Kinsdale this far had, ironically, reduced him to an unfeeling killing machine.

Overall rating: ** (out of ****)

ULTRAVIOLET (2006), dir. Kurt Wimmer

Based on the opening credits, “Ultraviolet” is supposed to resemble a comic book adaptation, but frankly, it contains everything one could expect from an Asian action flick. Of course, one could argue since the turn of the century, Asian cinema has been overwhelmingly influenced by “The Matrix” series, in which the camera became progressively more innovative, and so it is no surprise finding the lens moving through solid objects here, as well as framing special effects-laden sequences of elaborate mayhem from all crazy angles.

Nor is it shocking to see the use of “bullet-time,” the process pioneered by the makers of “The Matrix,” wherein the action proceeds in slow-motion but the camera does not. In “Ultraviolet,” writer-director Kurt Wimmer does try and mix things up, partially filming the “bullet-time” scene through the point-of-view of an actual bullet, which gets fired at the movie’s central fighting machine played by Milla Jovovich.

Aside from the choreography in some of these one-versus-many scenarios, most traces of creativity are visible in the costumes and production design of Wimmer’s otherwise routine dystopia film. Give him credit, though, for conceiving of giant bowling balls transforming into ninjas; weapons that fold out of wristbands; and something called an “anti-gravity” well, which can turn reality upside-down for both the protagonists and viewers; and all that’s just in the first half-hour.

Unfortunately, once the ultra-cool Violet – get it? – gets saddled with a cute little boy (Cameron Bright), you can pretty much plot the trajectory of her character from dismemberer to nurturer. Six, as the tyke is named, may represent a threat to Violet’s genetically-engineered, vampire-like race, but he’s also a call from the past, a surrogate for the baby she lost during her labored origin. Naturally, she tries to keep Six at an emotional distance while they’re on the run from an evil corporation, but her badass-hood is no match for maternal instinct, and it isn’t very long before her would-be callousness merely resembles a single mom’s tough love.

Luckily, there isn’t too much schmaltz, as the movie, in keeping with its resemblance to Asian cinema, is heavy on action but light on characterization. Indeed, conversations between Violet and the supporting cast are kept to the necessary minimum, and although we see two sides to Violet, everyone else – the child-like Six, the evil bad guy, the good friend – more-or-less fulfill types. No, there’s not much depth to “Ultraviolet,” but at least the surface visuals look cool. Maybe Wimmer can try adapting an actual comic book for his next project.

Overall rating: ** (out of ****)

CURSE OF THE GOLDEN FLOWER (2006), dir. Zhang Yimou

Emperor Ping (Chow Yun-Fat) explains to his family how they are like a circle residing inside of a square, the latter of which represents his will. “Curse of the Golden Flower” shows that, despite a royal decree demanding obedience, trying to fit a round peg into a square hole threatens to tear both family and kingdom apart.

This Chinese-language film, directed by the celebrated Zhang Yimou, takes place around the year 928, as Emperor Ping returns to the imperial palace where Empress Liang (Gong Li) and two of his sons reside. The palace is a labyrinth of vibrant colors, which serve to reflect passions trapped by formality. At the beginning, it’s the sexual tension existing between the Empress and her stepson, the Crown Prince (Liu Ye); later, it will be rage and jealousy.

Adding to the court intrigue is the Empress’ mysterious anemia, which causes uncontrollable trembling throughout her body. We quickly learn that for the last ten days, the emperor has been adding a new ingredient to her medicinal tea – a cup of which she must drink every hour – slowly causing her to lose her mind.

But the Empress gets word of the scheme, and confides to her other son Prince Jai (Jay Chou), who has returned to the palace for the annual Chrysanthemum Festival, that she won’t be going without a fight. What follows are secret alliances, betrayals, some unexpected bloodshed, shots of the beautiful Gong Li looking progressively weaker, and ultimately, the attempted coup itself.

Yimou cast two legendary Chinese actors as his leads, and Yun-Fat and Li are appropriately authoritative and defiant, respectively. However, besides those two actors and the remarkable costumes, one gets the feeling the main draw is supposed to be the climactic battle sequences, which prove Asian cinema has come a long way to catching Hollywood with regards to computer-generated special effects.

Unfortunately, while productions like this can match the scale of big canvas epics like “Troy,” there’s also much of the fakery reputed to have dragged down that film. At one point, endless platoons of soldiers come pouring out of the imperial palace to launch a surprise counterattack. It’s impressive for a moment, but upon further review, defies all logic. How did anyone manage to fit this many soldiers inside without the other side noticing them, and within the short time frame the plot gives?

That single gripe is but a symptom of the larger problem with “Curse of the Golden Flower:” it's overproduced and fatally overdone. It wants to be a court drama as well as a martial arts film, but there are no thrills to be had in the intermittent wire fights, despite choreography by Siu-Tung Ching, who worked on Yimou's superior “Hero” and “House of Flying Daggers.” In fact, they seem downright derivative of “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” and Yimou's better movies.

Finally, “Curse of the Golden Flower” makes the mistake of leaning too heavily on special effects and bloody spectacle as it lurches towards the end. As Fat and Li recede into the background, the audience is left vulnerable to seemingly endless shots of eviscerations, dead extras encased in gold and silver armor, and images of flowers stained with blood. Maybe this movie should have been called “Slumming Actors, Slow-Motion Car Wreck.”

Overall rating: ** (out of ****)

KINGDOM OF HEAVEN (2005), dir. Ridley Scott

Like the characters depicted in this movie, I went to Jerusalem looking for God, but never found Him.

Indeed, the closest “Kingdom of Heaven” gets to religious idolatry are a few shots of a big gold cross. It looks gaudy and overly ornate, like it should be hanging on the wall of a drive-thru chapel in Las Vegas.

Removing anything resembling religious passion from a movie about the holy land is quite a gamble, and in this case, not an altogether successful one. What we are left with is a routine, albeit beautiful-looking action-adventure flick. Its saving grace is director Ridley Scott ("The Duellists," “Gladiator”), who fills the frame with his usual repertoire of exotic, painterly visuals and minimal characterization.

Orlando Bloom plays Balian, a young blacksmith who journeys to Jerusalem, becomes knighted, gains the affections of a princess, and is left to save the city from rampaging Muslims. He doesn’t really do much to end up in such a precarious position. Rather, it’s what he doesn’t do which lands him in hot water. Balian may be a character who stays true to his conscience to the very end, but that doesn’t make him the most exciting protagonist.

But if he’s a dull hero, the villains are even worse off. While the idea of Christian fanatics as opposed to Muslim ones may seem clever on paper, the script lets them down. Writer William Monahan reduces the majority of Christian characters to broad caricatures, especially Marton Csokas as Guy de Lusignan, the main heavy. The usually-reliable Brendan Gleeson is also wasted as de Lusignan’s slob sidekick. One gets the feeling that their hatred towards Muslims stems from a sense of religious superiority. However, since we get so little Christianity in this movie, it’s hard to know exactly what motivates them. To their credit, the actors don’t seem to know themselves.

A lot of the dialogue is flat. Also, scenes at court where Csokas’ knights wearing red crosses nearly come to blows with Jeremy Irons’ knights wearing blue crosses seem unnecessary. At least we have those sweeping battle sequences at the end, involving catapults, siege towers, and things getting blown up real good. Like Scott’s last war epic, the contemporary “Blackhawk Down,” most of the combat footage is shot from ground level, representing the point of view of man, not God, who wouldn’t be watching anyway.

Overall rating: ** (out of ****)

GREETINGS (1968), dir. Brian De Palma

The Cinematic Technique of De Palma, fashioning Postcard of Distrust, Sexual Deviancy

During the last twenty-something years, Brian De Palma’s films have featured themes of voyeurism and obsession, while the director himself has employed musical scores that resemble Bernard Hermann in the way they ratchet up suspense. In the service of dark, psychological thrillers, these flourishes have earned De Palma the distinction, or derision, of being an Alfred Hitchcock clone. This is an insinuation I have always felt was unfair.

Haven’t we already seen what train wreck ensues when filmmakers simply ape Hitchcock’s camera moves, which is what happened in Gus Van Sant’s restaged “Psycho?” If that disaster proved anything, it’s that cloning the technical aspects of an auteur does not alone guarantee success. The director must bring something of himself to the project; he cannot get away with simple plagiarizing.

What complicates matters is, the personal traits De Palma brings to his movies are the same ones Hitchcock brought. Both share a fear of women. They each made films featuring characters who become obsessed or paranoid. And in their heyday (the 40’s and 50’s for Hitchcock, the 80’s for De Palma), both men pushed the boundaries of permissible violence and sexuality onscreen.

But De Palma also has a pretty strange sense of humor, which precedes his reputation even moreso than Hitchcock’s did (maybe because Hitchcock’s tended to be more subtle). In a movie like “Greetings,” one of De Palma’s earlier works, the bizarreness helps locate the film in the director’s canon, despite the lack of a Hitchcock-style plot.

The movie opens with TV footage of President Lyndon B. Johnson, asking the American people during a speech, “Have you ever had it better than you do right now?” It’s meant to be ironic, as the movie depicts a group of twenty-something New Yorkers who believe they are not living in the greatest era of their country’s history. Paul (Jonathan Warden) worries about having to go to Vietnam; he has an interview at his neighborhood draft office coming up. His pals Lloyd (Gerrit Graham) and John (Robert De Niro, in his first credited movie performance) want to help him fail it, so they keep him awake for two straight days. That way, Paul can convince the Army psychologist he has insomnia, rendering him unfit to serve.

Lloyd, meanwhile, doesn’t have to worry about being sent over to the ‘Nam. Any military official who spends five minutes talking to the lanky, wild-eyed JFK assassination aficionado would seek to have him committed. As for John, he seems confident he can fail the interview by convincing the recruiter of his involvement in a white-power militia group. After exhausting that plotline fairly early, John begins exploring his voyeuristic tendencies. He even starts to stalk unsuspecting women.

While the “peeper” portion may sound like familiar territory for the director, De Palma, who co-wrote the screenplay with Charles Hirsch, mostly plays that angle for laughs. John spends a lot of time following different women, but his compulsions usually lead to wacky hi-jinks, such as pretending to be an artist putting on a show called “Peepers and the Peeped.” After convincing a shoplifter (Rutanya Alda) from the bookstore where he works that his faux show is for real, he brings her back to his apartment, and records footage of the woman performing what should be her pre-bed ritual.

The scene’s humor derives from her horrendous acting, and the way she exaggerates her routine (Do most women wrap their stockings around their necks, then preen in front of their bedroom window…?). At the same time, the first-person perspective of the camera, representing John’s p.o.v., and the sound of his voice manipulating the subject, make the sequence feel uncomfortably voyeuristic. But for the most part, De Niro, who would later achieve iconic status in “Mean Streets” and “Taxi Driver” gives a solid comedic turn.

De Niro’s gift, which has served him well in countless, more serious roles, is the emotional investment he can put in every scene. When he finally shows up to the recruiter’s office, looking and sounding the way B.D. from “Doonesbury” would in the same situation, his façade initially seems way out there. However, De Niro’s genius is not playing the situation as comedy. On the contrary, he plays this junior jingoist as seriously as George C. Scott would later undertake George Patton. He inhabits the character, and I only wish Hirsch had scripted, and De Palma had filmed, the full interview which would have followed the introduction.

Graham and Warden do good work, too, embodying the mistrust that characterized the Vietnam War era, and the confusion that accompanied sexual liberation. Lloyd is obsessed with finding out the identities of the police officers who pulled up in front of the boarding house where Lee Harvey Oswald had a room. Supposedly, the cops honked their horns twice, then drove off. What was their relationship to one of history’s most famous assassins? Will the unexpected appearance of someone claiming to be the son of the boarding house owner finally break the case “wide open…?”

Paul, meanwhile, tries to find love through computer dating. His amusing vignettes (each proceeded by a psychedelically purple title card) feature women who want to use Paul—for sex without intimacy, as surrogate father, as religious inductee—without providing him with what he really wants. What is Paul looking for? Not mere sexual release, evidently. Why else would he turn down the attractive, mildly hostile Bronx secretary, who accused him of just wanting to get into her pants, but left him a trail of bread crumbs to where she lay naked in the bedroom…?

Well, one obvious reason is to let Lloyd sleep with her instead. This allows for “Greetings’” most brilliant moment of morbid lunacy: a long, single take where Lloyd, addressing the camera directly, disputes the FBI’s official ballistics report detailing President John F. Kennedy’s assassination wounds. As Lloyd rants on and on about the discrepencies, he uses a magic marker to plot the impact of every bullet fired by Lee Harvey Oswald. However, Lloyd plots this information on the naked, sleeping body of the woman he just had sex with.

Naturally, drawing on a nude bedfellow becomes trickier when said figure lies on her back, which Lloyd needs access to. Lloyd addresses this problem with the confidence of someone who has done this sort of manipulating before. Whenever he needs her to lift an arm, or turn over onto her stomach so he can figure out the angle that the bullet exited out of the president, he simply plants kisses on a strategic location. The slumbering body inevitably moves, and Lloyd can continue with his work.

“Greetings” has an improvised, madcap energy, which sustains the movie while Hirsch and De Palma flail about for a plot. Indeed, the first half feels particularly aimless, like a collection of interesting montages and trick shots in search of genuine purpose. Granted, the filmmakers could have intentionally structured the movie that way, in order to reflect the lonely, listless, stuck-in-a-rut feeling that pervaded the country during the late 60's. But, in reflecting artfully on a quagmire, Hirsch and De Palma may have created their own morass, and one which requires patience to slog through.

Luckily, the dual appeal of De Niro and De Palma is considerable. “Greetings” gradually focuses more of its attention on John, as his penchant for falling into absurd situations make him the poster boy for his time. Perhaps De Palma was struck by the intensity De Niro brought to the peeper. Or maybe he recognized a star being born before his eyes. Cinematic history, as well as a peerless list of classic roles, certainly vindicates De Palma’s decision to spend more of the film’s second half following John. As for the director himself, there are moments when his sense of playfulness comes to the forefront. Take, for example, the scene where John chats up the shoplifter. As he describes “Peepers and the Peeped,” the camera slowly pulls back, and a woman can be seen undressing in her ground-level apartment window. It’s the perfect peepshow.

A book on Hitchcock’s films appears as a prop in Paul and Lloyd’s apartment. But I thought I recognized more of the influence of Antonioni, if anyone, in the montage sequences that occur during many of Paul’s couplings. Meanwhile, it’s fascinating to see that, back in 1968, De Palma was already proficient with cinematic sleight-of-hand. Initially, when the shoplifter performs the act which earns her her assignation, other voices distract us, and events happen so fast we can’t be sure what she did. Later on, however, when John meets her on the street, he mentions what happened. De Palma then cuts to the same clip; indeed, she shoplifted that book.

Throughout his career, De Palma has enjoyed leaving clues in plain sight. Then, as the mystery unfolds, he doubles back upon them. He encourages active audiences; he used sleight of hand in “Dressed to Kill” (1980), “Mission Impossible” (1996), as recently as “Femme Fatale” (2002). Perhaps Hitchcock also did the same trick in his time. But the thing to remember is De Palma used them in a genre Hitchcock wasn’t particularly known for.

Overall rating: **, *** if you're a De Palma fan (out of ****)

CITY OF WOMEN (CITTA DELLE DONNE, LA) (1980), dir. Federico Fellini

From the Prick to the Brain, and Back Again (Return to Main Page)

A misogynist meets his match in this ambitious, surreal, but ultimately disappointing film by the legendary Italian director.

Snaparoz (Marcello Mastroianni), a handsome, middle-aged lothario, awakens across from a beautiful woman clad in leather boots (Bernice Stegers). He tries to coax her into a bathroom quickie, but their train stops, and she abruptly leaves him hanging. Snaparoz follows her off the train, hoping she will satisfy his burning lust. Instead, she disappears into the ether, having resisted such flattering compliments as, “God, you’re one hot bitch!”

After wandering in the nearby forest, Snaparoz arrives at a secluded hotel. Apparently, a conference among feminists has been scheduled, and the hotel is stacked to the rafters. The feminists come in all shapes, sizes, and intellectual leanings. Some appear friendly toward Snaparoz’s intrusion, while others react with suspicion. Since this is a Fellini film, one must expect theatricality, and some of the angrier feminists are portrayed in a semi-comic way that brings to mind the “femi-nazi” stereotype. Is Fellini ridiculing feminism? I don’t think so. More likely, he portrays them this way on purpose, so they represent what men like Snaparoz fear most: feminist extremism.

The woman with the leather boots reappears in the auditorium. She gives a brief lecture, in which she humiliates Snaparoz with photos of him, his fly undone. Snaparoz protests, then storms out of the lecture hall, only to find everyone in the hotel turned against him. A pair of young feminists seemingly arrive to his rescue. Instead, they convince him to put on roller skates, then send him hurtling down a flight of steps.

Now events conspire to take Snaparoz out of the hotel, into even stranger territory. A husky handywoman with a motorbike (Jole Silvani) agrees to give him a lift back to the train station. But she takes an unfamiliar route—a “shortcut,” she claims—which brings them to a farmhouse. There, she tries to rape him. The handywoman’s mother intervenes, apologizes to poor Snaparoz, and offers to have her other daughter take him to the station. On the way, however, they end up with the daughter’s friends: cigarette-smoking, bottle-swigging, foul-mouthed female versions of Marlon Brando's character from “The Wild One.”

At this point, I thought I picked up on what Fellini was doing. The predator who gives the hitchhiker a lift, then feels entitled to sex; the rowdies who play chicken with their cars, and drive down to the airfield to howl at passing planes—he’s using women to parody the disgusting sexual behavior of men, their aggressiveness on the road, and the way they worship phallic-shaped objects that make thunderous, angry, male noises, I reasoned. As if that weren’t enough, then Fellini introduces Dr. Zubercock (Ettore Manni), a former lord of the land who takes machismo to ridiculous heights. Dr. Zubercock is man whose universe revolves around his penis. He collects functional male erotic art, and his basement is a vast gallery of women whose orgasms he has documented. Snaparoz spends several minutes dancing merrily about the catacombs, pushing buttons, which trigger the recordings of Zubercock’s one-time loves in the throes of ecstacy (Is this supposed to represent the male fantasy of being able to satisfy a woman with a mere button-press?).

But Dr. Zubercock’s universe is rapidly disentegrating. The new feminist rulers have decreed that his castle—the structure “erected” by the male members of his family—must be torn down. To commemorate the end of the old order, Dr. Zubercock throws a lavish party. The man of the castle will enjoy his ten-thousandth sexual conquest afterward. In the meantime, the chief delights include watching said conquest perform a trick where she vacuums up pennies and pearls beneath her dress.

Ultimately, however, none of this penis-worship can distract from the change in the air. The feminist police crash the party. They kill the host’s dog, and nearly place Snaparoz under arrest. His longtime girlfriend Elena (Anna Prucnal), who makes an unexpected appearance, manages to convince the police not to detain him. But their intrusion proves that women are taking over, and men are helpless to stop them—a nightmare for alpha males like Zubercock.

There is something genuinely compelling about this "Twilight Zone"-ish inversion of gender roles. Fellini, however, isn't content simply giving misogynists what they deserve. He wants to show the kinder, gentler side of a man who objectifies women. And so, during the second half of "The City of Women," Snaparoz falls down a rabbithole, into a wonderland that could very well represent his own subconscious.

He finds himself sliding down a roller-coaster track in an amusement park lit up by hundreds of incandescent bulbs. The trip is crosscut with scenes from Snaparoz' childhood. Later, he searches for his ideal mate in an underground labyrinth, wherein a giant praying mantis lives (Although we only see its shadow cast against a nearby wall, it's otherworldly enough to be quite memorable). Does the monstrous insect represent that aforementioned idea of extreme feminism, since female mantises consume their male counterparts after sex? Is it a projection of Snaparoz' mind?

Finally, the hapless skirt chaser finds himself in a hot-air balloon. It is shaped, not surprisingly, like a woman, and poses the possibility of salvation. Or does it? Snaparoz has been led to believe that he will find his perfect woman once he reaches the balloon. But perhaps the notion of the one ideal mate is merely a trap set up by the male mind, which leaves him vulnerable to the advances of more aggressive (and possibly machine-gun toting) females.

A better question: Does the viewer really care about this? We should. Unfortunately, the transition from reality to fantasy is clunky, and some of the latter elements are just too bizarre. Also, the ending greatly disappoints. A film with this much audacity on the screenplay and production levels should go out with a bang, not a whimper. Its momentum should build into an explosive climax, not piss itself away, leaving us thoroughly unsatisfied.

Overall rating: ** (out of ****)

INSTITUTE BENJAMENTA, OR THIS DREAM PEOPLE CALL HUMAN LIFE (1995), dir. Stephen and Timothy Quay

Visually, visually, visually, visually, life is but…

The movie is a dream about a school. In turn, the school—a place of madmen; of dull, repetitive work; of inevitable losses and disappointments—is a metaphor for life itself.

Or perhaps I am taking "Institute Benjamenta" too seriously. Or too literally. After all, if the movie is a dream, the dreamer, whom we hear speaking and see sleeping in the opening shots, is a woman who speaks a language other than English. All the characters in the dream, meanwhile, speak English. Also, the central protagonist of the dream is a man.

No, I don’t think this movie is meant to be interpreted on a literal level. It’s much easier, and much better, to treat the movie for what it is. Let the dream play itself out. Marvel at the strange sights and sounds conjured up by the Brothers Quay.

On a visual and auditory level, the filmmakers succeed in creating a world that looks, moves, and defies reality as only dreams can. The students of the titular "school" engage in inexplicable routines, choreographed like dances, wherein they do things like eat their meals after a series of ritualistic motions, and sway side-to-side while reciting informative dialogue such as, "I have rescued the cat from the tall tree, sir." These scenes feel unreal. Slow-motion editing, soft focus lenses, and the use of music in lieu of dialogue only enhance the somnambulistic effect.

At one point, characters disappear into the darkness of a chalkboard, which turns out to be a tunnel. The Institute itself is a compelling collection of oddly-angled rooms, freak exhibits, and labyrinths where giant drawings have been painted across entire walls.

Yes, the "Institute Benjamenta" is a dream. But that does not mean everything we see here has to be beautiful. Dreams can be populated with monstrosities, too, like the half-deer minotaur that appears like a feverish vision to Jakob (Mark Rylance), our hapless protagonist.

Jakob applies to the "Institute Benjamenta" because he sees no great future for himself. He wants to be of service to somebody, and the school is well-known for producing servants and other men who amount to little. Accepted into the school, Jakob endures the same lesson taught every day, over and over again (Jakob never explicitly states what the lesson is, only that they must learn it. Perhaps the lesson is a Macguffin; during a classroom scene, non-specific jargon like "Order is the first law of God" can be seen written on a chalkboard).

When Jakob breaks under the strain of monotony and harsh living conditions, the Institute’s principals, Herr Benjamenta (Gottfried John), and Frau Benjamenta (Alice Krige) house him in closer proximity to their persons. Jakob becomes their confidant, and witnesses his masters’ deteriorating relationship. The Frau’s health begins to fail as a result of her partner’s (Are they brother and sister? Husband and wife? Like the famous "one lesson," the movie never spells things out explicitly) emotional withdrawal. Since the school is inextricably tied to them, Jakob resolves to be the best possible servant to Frau Benjamenta, in a bid to keep it alive.

This probably sounds like the makings of a great movie. Unfortunately, the characters are a little too thin, and that includes Jakob, who only seems to exist in the extremes of anxiety and melancholy. Never lacking in personality, however, are "Institute Benjamenta’s" otherworldly black-and-white visuals and off-key tone. There’s a certain fittingness to that. After all, whoever woke from a fascinating dream and said, "What amazing dimension those characters in my sleep had!"

Overall rating: ** (out of ****)