TRIAD ELECTION (2006), dir. Johnnie To

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There are two types of gangsters that populate this film – angry, cocky ones and calmer guys who look like they belong in a boardroom. “Triad Election” argues the second kind is always more dangerous.

This sequel to 2005’s “Election” returns to the universe of the Triads, the brotherhood to which all organized crime gangs in Hong Kong belong. According to tradition, every two years the inner circle of elderly “boss”-types picks a new chairman, who is essentially a CEO of crime. For the past two years, Lok (Simon Yam) has held that role and the brotherhood has flourished, but with a new election around the corner, some young, hungry challengers have thrown their hats into the ring. Unfortunately, what none of them realize is Lok wants an unprecedented second term.

Of the Triads’ various up-and-comers, the most qualified for the chairmanship would be Jimmy (Louis Koo), an illegal porn-dealer turned legitimate businessman. However, during a dinner with Lok and his other “brothers,” Jimmy makes it clear he’s not interested, seemingly paving the way for Kun (Ka Tung Lan), who acts like he has chips on both shoulders, or Jet (Nick Cheung), Lok’s right-hand man, whom he promises to make chairman in exchange for his loyalty.

What starts off semi-familial – the middle-aged Lok, surrounded by his five “sons” – becomes a tightly-paced sequence of double-crosses and unsavory violence, spurred by the Chinese government’s blocking of Jimmy’s grand scheme to develop land just inside their border. Apparently, only Chinese patriots are allowed to do business in China, and the only way Jimmy can become a patriot, he is told, is to become Triad chairman. Since he doesn’t reveal his motivation to the other “brothers,” Jimmy and his loved ones are soon targeted by rivals, just as he finds his morals being increasingly challenged by the inner circle’s demands.

Having not seen “Election” beforehand (Actually, I thought “Triad Election” was “Election”; it wasn’t until the opening credits, in which it’s called “Election 2” that I realized my mistake), I wasn’t sure how many moral codes Jimmy broke in the first film to get where he is, e.g., whether he previously ordered a man’s death. Either way, he does it here, and it’s only the first of a number of transgressions. The violence gets pretty disturbing, such as the torture sequence where a man gets beaten to death with a sledge-hammer, ground up, and fed to a German shepherd. But To, who is Hong Kong’s pre-eminent filmmaker, choreographs the competition with the elegance of a chess match: each player biding their time, not giving away their respective strategies, and only shedding blood when it matters most.

To, who has made movies of all genres, employs stillness to nearly Zen-like effect. Countless shots consist of characters sitting silently or staring off into the distance, making them look about as glamorous as models in a magazine ad. However, it also serves to ratchet up the suspense, as his protagonists become like coiled snakes, always in the midst of contemplating their next move, which they act in swift, deadly fashion. This feeling of calm also gets expressed through the smooth camerawork and in the musical score, which often consists of either a faint drumming or a few notes on a stringed instrument repeated over and over again, creating a vibe of steadiness.

“Triad Election” is a crime film of surprising depth, even if most of the supporting players are thinly characterized. There is a recurring subplot, about the lengths both Jimmy and Lok are willing to go to keep their progeny away from the gangster life. When Jimmy tells his wife early on, “Our children will be doctors and lawyers,” he’s not just talking as a parent who wants his progeny to achieve great things; what he wants, we sense, is for them to have legitimate jobs, to not have to exist in the shadows, as he has had to.

Similarly, Lok has an adolescent son named Denny, and his efforts to shield him from his father’s Triad life have twisted their relationship. When he finds out Denny may be involved in gang activity, he and his henchmen confront his son and a group of youthful hoods in a restaurant. Unfortunately, violence breaks out, and the boy runs off, frightened of his own father. After Lok unsuccessfully tries to catch him on foot, he gets in a car and watches as his son speeds off. “Don’t scare him,” he tells his men, his face an unexpectedly moving mask of sadness and worry. “Just bring him home.”

One could also read into the relationship between Jimmy and mainland China as reflecting the Hong Kong film industry’s anxiety about the mother country, whether it will respect their traditions, or toss them aside if the upside is wealth and power. If the first “Election” is anywhere near as good as “Triad Election,” the series deserves its reputation as one of Hong Kong’s best in recent years. But for my money, it isn’t quite up there with “The Godfather,” despite the shared attributes of darkly-lit atmosphere and small men fighting over small corners of power.

My problem is with the epilogue and what happens to Jimmy, which I won’t give away. Suffice it to say, this movie is intended to be a tragedy, and tragedies – for me, anyway – are always more interesting if the protagonist falls through a weakness in his/her own character. In “The Godfather, Part II,” for example, Michael Corleone had the whole world in his hands, but lost it because he couldn’t forgive his brother’s betrayal. Again, I don’t want to say what happens to Jimmy, except it appears he was always up against powers far greater than his own. In the end, he never stood a chance, but maybe in the next life, he’ll be more wary of guys in suits who look like they belong in the boardroom.

Overall rating: ***1/2 (out of ****)

THE BOTHERSOME MAN (2006), dir. Jens Lien

In reviews, this film has been compared to a feature-length episode of “The Twilight Zone,” but having seen “The Bothersome Man,” I realize it’s a favorable comparison. The best science-fiction reflects real world concerns through fantasy scenarios, and in this deliberately-paced, Icelandic meander, the numbness of modern society is allegorized through a strange city that may be the after-life, and either a heaven or hell depending on one’s taste.

The film opens with its main character, Andreas (Trond Fausa Aurvaag), leaping into the path of an oncoming train. When next we see him, he is arriving via bus at a station house in what appears to be the outskirts somewhere, at which point he gets a lift to the aforementioned city, which looks at any other metropolis. Here he has a job and apartment waiting for him.

The work is relatively-unchallenging, and it isn’t long before Andreas starts staring out of windows, noticing strange things about the city, such as the lack of smells, and the fact there are never children around. He also finds that food doesn’t taste like anything, and no matter how much alcohol he imbibes, it never has any effect. One day, during a dinner party with friends, he meets a beautiful woman named Anne (Petronella Barker); they make love after a date, but the act seems rote and mechanical.

“It doesn’t always have to be good, but…” he hears another man complain one day. The stranger goes on about how much he misses hot chocolate, and it isn’t long before Andreas begins to miss it, too.

Earlier, I had described this film as taking place in a possible heaven or hell, a fact reinforced by how Andreas cannot do lasting harm to his body. He slices off a finger in a workplace machine, only to find his hand all better just a short time later. Later, he does worse, in a sequence involving subway trains that’s the most eye-opening thing in the movie, both for its unflinching goriness as well as its droll, black humor.

But notice that I spelled heaven and hell with lower-case “h’s.” Jens Lien’s film is entirely non-religious, and from an allegorical standpoint, the common man’s miraculous healing ability may just be screenwriter Per Schreiner’s way of illustrating how the average lifespan has been prolonged. Meanwhile, the inability to do self-harm also means suicide is impossible, which could reflect modern anxieties that the current miseries – icy cordiality in lieu of genuine feelings, rampant consumerism, failure of traditional means of self-medication for escape – will never end, just go on and on.

There is, however, another choice for living, which is to not conform, to actively seek out the sensations felt missing from existence. In the course of the film, that appears to mean reaching for something more idyllic, something consisting of more traditional values. Of course, when most of society is happy with the way things are, this kind of act has consequences, and it’s a shame Andreas couldn’t have fought for those simpler pleasures a little more vigorously.

Had that happened, he might have seemed like more of a tragic hero, rather than just a poor mope. In turn, “The Bothersome Man” might have left viewers feeling galvanized and angry. As it is, it’s a near-masterpiece of sustained tension, drab colors, and emotional remoteness.

Overall rating: ***1/2 (out of ****)

TROUBLE THE WATER (2008), dir. Tia Lessin and Carl Deal and Kimberly Rivers Roberts

Sometimes a great film happens by accident. According to “Trouble the Water’s” production notes, Lessin and Deal had planned a movie about soldiers serving in Iraq who returned home to New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina. However, after the National Guard cut off their access, they took a side trip to a nearby Red Cross shelter, where they encountered Kimberly Rivers Roberts and her husband Scott. The meeting ended up changing the course of the film.

One week earlier, the Roberts’ had escaped the flooded city themselves, but not without having to take the initiative for their own survival. “Trouble the Water” shows the experience of Hurricane Katrina from their perspective, the impact of which feels immediate and authentic. But the film also chronicles their attempts to build a new future afterward, and tries to examine why thousands of residents, many of whom were poor or minority, were seemingly abandoned by the state and federal government before and after the storm.

The movie could have consisted of talking heads and sound bytes, but Kimberly Roberts brought something besides her own words and memories: roughly two hours of videotape shot before, during, and after the storm. The footage allows Lessin and Deal to structure things differently from a standard documentary: the first half cuts back-and-forth between present times and the footage, and Roberts’ home movies become akin to the flashback sequences found in non-documentary narratives.

Seeing Kimberly and Scott, their low-income neighborhood, and their friends and relatives prior to Katrina's landfall makes the aftermath all the more dramatic. In total, roughly 15 minutes of Kimberly’s video before and during the storm gets used, and it’s easily the most riveting part of the film: there is palpable tension in the air as she interviews relatives and acquaintances waiting for the inevitable to arrive, while the footage shot during the storm itself consists of murky violence as the elements threaten to tear the Roberts’ world apart.

Kimberly’s video captures just how dire the situation was, but also shows people rising to the occasion. “I never thought God would have use for a man like me,” says a man named Larry who, utilizing a punching bag as a flotation device, rescues the Roberts’ and some family members who are holed up in an attic. Indeed, a recurring theme in “Trouble the Water” is redemption: most of the main characters, including Kimberly and Scott, lived life hard and fast on the mean streets. After Katrina, however, they are helping the smaller, frailer, and older get out of New Orleans alive – what the state and federal authorities failed to do, the movie can’t help pointing out.

According to characters in the film, help from either the state or National Guard did not materialize for days, and when the military did arrive, their priorities leaned more toward safeguarding property than providing relief. A confrontation between residents and armed soldiers over the use of an abandoned Navy base is told from multiple perspectives; unfortunately, the military never quite comes out looking pristine in either telling.

Occasionally, the tone gets a little too snarky, such as when a soldier’s comment that “civilians don’t know the basics of survival” is juxtaposed with Scott’s story of breaking into a high school and stealing food from vending machines. The gut reaction is to respond, “Hey, it may be vandalism, but they all survived, didn’t they?”

If “Trouble the Water” has a potential flaw, it isn’t the human dramas captured by Lessin, Deal, or Kimberly Roberts, the latter an aspiring rap artist whose impromptu performance of a song called “Amazing” provides the film its emotional catharsis. Rather, it’s the fact Lessin and Deal have a history working with documentary-maker Michael Moore, whose mention in the press notes alone raises questions about a possible liberal bias. Does it feel as if more effort could have gone into getting the Bush administration’s side of why the response supposedly went badly? Maybe, but there’s no denying the power of the Roberts’ footage, and lest we forget, they are the ones who lived through the storm.

Overall rating: ***1/2 (out of ****)

VICKY CRISTINA BARCELONA (2008), dir. Woody Allen

A character remarks to Cristina (Scarlett Johansson), who has spent the last six months directing a short film about love: “That’s a mighty big subject to handle in 12 minutes.” It’s no easier in 97, which is the running time for “Vicky Cristina Barcelona.” But that’s probably the point; despite trading in Manhattan and London for Spain’s picturesque cities and countryside, like Allen’s other relationship comedies, his latest is concerned with the elusive nature of love, how, as he himself put it once: “The heart wants what it wants.”

Vicky (Rebecca Hall) and Cristina, two Americans abroad, are best friends with very different attitudes and expectations about love. The former, who has come to Barcelona to do research for her Master’s thesis, plays it safe and as such, is engaged to a boring-but-nice yuppie back home. Cristina, on the other hand, is recently single and on the lookout for love of the fiery kind. After exchanging glances with an intense-looking artist named Juan Antonio (Javier Bardem), the trio has another change encounter, at which point he propositions them to spend the weekend with him.

Cristina readily accepts, Vicky begrudgingly to keep her friend out of trouble. Once all the dialogue regarding how Cristina could possibly find his come-on attractive dies down, what follows resembles a Merchant-Ivory production, thanks in no small part to the most adventurous cinematography in an Allen film since “Husbands and Wives” (Indeed, this could be the first time he’s ever used gauzy camera work – seemingly the tell-tale sign of adult sophistication) and the Americans abroad plot. The sights of Barcelona and Oviedo are used to particularly-romantic effect, with fountains, churches, and in one key scene, the famous Tibidabo Amusement Park practically standing-in as characters.

But at its heart, “Vicky Cristina Barcelona” is, like “Annie Hall” and “Manhattan,” a relationship movie where the plot goes hand-in-hand with the characters’ psychologies. As such, even after some unexpected hitches and emotional upheavals, Vicky and Cristina continue pursuing what they want, or believe they have always wanted. That, in turn, either takes them to the next logical step in their own respective relationships, back into orbit with one another, or into the company of new characters, such as Juan Antonio’s brilliant, but unstable wife Maria Elena (Penelope Cruz, stunningly dressed-down).

The rest of the cast does uniformly good work as well, moving comfortably with the ebb and flow of a screenplay where events don’t necessarily happen as we expect. But we always have a good idea what the characters are thinking (also due to voice-over narration by Christopher Evan Welch, which actually seems unnecessary and intrusive at times), so the movie never feels dishonest. The end result is comedy and verbal sparring, romance, personal angst, postcard settings, and an underlying message as well, that it’s human nature to long for what we cannot have, and to long for something else once we get what we want. Viewers may long for something more than that seemingly-anti-cathartic lesson, but in the end, the movie is only 97 minutes.

Overall rating: ***1/2 (out of ****)

QUITTING (2001), dir. Zhang Yang

There has been no shortage of drug movies in recent years, but this one is noteworthy, mainly because of how the material is presented. Despite a plot that sounds like standard movie-of-the-week fare – the real-life story of actor Jia Hongsheng’s struggle with heroin addiction – the end result is engrossing. Part of that immediacy comes from director Yang’s decision to take the phrase “art imitating life” at its most literal, casting Hongsheng and his family as themselves in what amounts to a re-enactment of their personal Hell.

“Quitting” chronicles the four years during which Hongsheng’s parents and sister moved in with him, provided for his needs, and tried to help him break free of drug addiction and depression, twin demons that left him disassociated from the outside world. Once a moderately-successful film actor, he had not taken a role in years, instead secluding himself in his apartment to watch television and listen to music. Starting at the protagonists’ lows before crawling toward redemption, “Quitting” shows the family contending with Hongsheng’s unpredictable mood swings, their own stability as a unit exceedingly threatened by his anti-social behavior, which includes verbal and physical violence.

But as unsettling as the movie can get at times, director Yang, who is known for his humane attitude, is less interested in the visceral aspects of conflict, concentrating more on the insides of his characters’ heads. In the case of Hongsheng, he cuts in voice-overs and interviews with his present self, ultimately humanizing the monster into a beast we can partially understand: his urge for higher levels of experience, enthusiastic embrace of western culture, and rage against his parents’ more traditional, bucolic ways turning out to be derived from something as ordinary as a yearning to be special, itself a response to personal insecurities.

Meanwhile, as Hongsheng’s parents do everything we expect of nosy parents, we are made privy to their secret conversations and de-stabilizing of their relationship, how their strictness and nagging turns out to be counterbalanced by the unthinkable: growing fear of their own blood. Given that all these actors are really playing themselves, the performances take on an eerie life of their own; the scene in which Hongsheng, drunk, starts slapping around his father feels especially traumatic. Fortunately, the director chose to frame “Quitting” as a movie about a play, which in turn, is about real-life-events, and whenever things get too intense, Yang pulls back the camera to reveal how this is all theater, which provides the necessary emotional distance.

Some may complain about using such a device at all, but stage drama does take its power from unfolding real life before the audience’s eyes, which is the same effect Yang achieves through his casting. Admittedly, it can be awkward getting used to it at first, as is attempting to empathize with Hongsheng’s self-absorbed, ungrateful young man, but one comes away respecting his willingness not to be likeable. As Hongsheng himself learns about going cold turkey, sticking with “Quitting” long-term is a good decision.

Overall rating: ***1/2 (out of ****)

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FINE, TOTALLY FINE (2008), dir. Yosuke Fujita

It’s not easy being almost 30, when society expects a person to have their career, be settled down, and to have left behind the immature trappings of youth. Two of the characters in “Fine, Totally Fine” feel the pressure to grow up from family and co-workers, while a third is almost totally adrift, primarily because she has no one who expects anything from her.

The main protagonists of this Japanese-language film include Hisanobu (Okada Yoshinori), a hospital administrator and perpetual nice guy due to his social awkwardness. However, despite looking normal enough on the outside, he leads a double life participating in low-budget horror flicks and elaborate pranks with Teruo (Yoshiyoshi Arakawa), his slacker buddy who enjoys scaring people.

Teruo, who has a round, childlike face, dreams of opening a haunted house someday and ignores accusations he is some kind of degenerate. But whether or not he should be telling little girls how real bears are much scarier than their teddies, he is clearly out of touch with reality; at one point, he expresses surprise when told he only works part-time as a park employee.

With the big “three-oh” on the horizon, Hisanobu begins questioning if they shouldn’t outgrow their anti-social behavior, a thought that offends Teruo. What else do they have to distract themselves with? The answer comes in the form of Akari (Kimura Yoshino), an attractive woman who possesses a clumsiness that makes Inspector Clouseau look like Gene Kelly. Hisanobu, perhaps recognizing a fellow square peg stuck in a round world, hires Akari to work at the hospital, then lands her another job at the bookstore owned by Teruo’s father.

Hilarity doesn’t exactly ensue once all three characters fall into each others’ orbits, but Yosuke, who also wrote the screenplay, peppers “Fine, Totally Fine” with lots of surreal comic moments that pop up when audiences least expect it. One of the best involves Teruo’s repeated attempts to tell a scary story nobody else finds scary. After two lackluster trial runs, the third time Hisanobu explodes from out of nowhere wearing bloody make-up and fangs.

There are also amusing running gags about a film-within-a-film; Akari’s obsession with fish paste sausages, which she carries in her pocket; and her proneness to accidents. Indeed, at one point, a character asks her about an injury she suffered, joking about it in ridiculous fashion, never realizing what he described is exactly what happened to her. (Speaking of Akari, her personal awakening from shy introvert was particularly well-portrayed by Kimura Yoshino, and I can't understand why the press notes singled out her co-star Yoshiyoshi for praise).

Despite the humorous bits, those who walk into “Fine, Totally Fine” expecting an “Amelie”-type film in which oddballs get with their soul mates may leave disappointed. A line of dialogue goes, “Life’s more fun when you’re an idiot,” which references and celebrates Teruo’s goofball antics; however, it also implies existence can be inherently disheartening. This proves true by film’s end, but no matter how bittersweet things get, Yosuke emphasizes the value of good friendships, an upbeat attitude, and delicious fish paste sausages.

Overall rating: ***1/2 (out of ****)

M*A*S*H (1970), dir. Robert Altman

The main characters are jerks, but Altman’s otherwise crazy-good comedy, which is about Vietnam without ever referencing it directly, stands up better if considered for the sum of its parts. Here is a movie that reflects a particular view on war; specifically, a war many of its participants don’t feel like taking part in. Under those circumstances, Altman and Ring Lardner, Jr., the screenwriter, seem to argue that mixing the willing and unwilling together only leads to conflict and chaos.

“M*A*S*H” centers around the doctors and nurses of the 4077 in Korea, which is stationed near the front and sees heavy casualties. The movie opens with the arrival of two new surgeons: Capt. Benjamin Pierce (Donald Sutherland), who goes by the nickname “Hawkeye,” and Capt. Forrest (Tom Skerritt). Although exceptional in the operating room, they don’t exactly behave like military professionals, but this is tolerated by their commanding officer Colonel Blake (Roger Bowen).

Soon Hawkeye and Forrest are joined by even more of a wild card: Dr. “Trapper John” McIntyre (Elliott Gould), who actually carries his own jar of olives on the outside chance he’ll be offered a dry martini. Together, they launch a reign of frat-boy-style terror intended to defy the restrictions of the army, or at the very least, help distract them from their present circumstances; namely, the parade of wounded they frequently operate on under less-than-ideal conditions.

The pranks threaten to go overboard at times, but the entire movie resembles an anarchic free-for-all. Characters are veritable cartoons (Does Hawkeye ever take off his hat, and how often do we see him or Trapper John without a drink in their hands?), and there’s more off-beat, wacky touches than can be kept track of. Col. Blake, for example, is practically a one-man comedy highlight reel, but the most irreverent sequence in the film involves a suicidal dentist and a visual reference to the Last Supper.

And let’s not forget the use of Johnny Mandel’s “Suicide is Painless” over the opening credits, during which a gurney containing a wounded soldier is accidentally dropped. It may seem in poor taste, but when there’s a song in the background stating that killing the self is preferable to going off to war, one gets the feeling the accompanying visuals are meant to be tongue-in-cheek.

Meanwhile, characters who are the butts of jokes almost always deserve it. That is certainly true for Major Frank Burns (Robert Duvall), a moral hypocrite and bully. The treatment of chief nurse “Hot Lips” O’Houlihan (Sally Kellerman), on the other hand, borders on cruelty – it’s not like she can just transfer to another post in the war, can she? But the character herself is a commissioned officer, and represents everything Hawkeye, McIntyre, and other draftees neither want nor need. For her, the strict disciplinarian is the ideal, and she threatens everybody’s fun with an official complaint regarding Col. Blake’s lack of leadership.

Altman and Lardner, however, make the argument that the moment General MacArthur dropped off American soldiers in Korea prior to retiring, the military had no head. In the case of the 4077, Cpl. “Radar” O’Reilly (Gary Burghoff) appears to be the man in charge, usually one step ahead of Col. Blake, who knows more about football than military leadership. But other authority figures fare no better, the most offensive being the misogynist C.O. of an army unit who challenges the 4077 to a pigskin match, whose leadership style is best described as belittling everyone around him.

Yes, there is a climactic football game, but that implies “M*A*S*H” actually builds to something, when really it’s relatively episodic. Indeed, the progress of time isn’t kept track of by obvious means, and although documentary-like sequences in the operating room ensure we never forget the specter of war, on the whole, there is no discernible “Raising of the stakes” one finds in a typical screenplay.

Quite the opposite happens, in fact; the beginning and middle are concerned with the physical and mental health of American soldiers and foreign civilians, but by the end, the 4077 somehow finds itself competing on a football field for a pot of money. For a while, the movie seems to be an entirely different film set somewhere in the mid-west, as opposed to the Korean theater where our armed forces are supposed to be defending the American way of life. But it befits the rest of the movie’s wackiness, and what’s more American than football and gambling?

Overall rating: ***1/2 (out of ****)

IRON MAN (2008), dir. Jon Favreau

It’s hardly surprising that “Iron Man” is full of neat special effects and well-edited action sequences. After all, it has been marketed as a summer blockbuster, and with the exception of the works of Michael Bay, that’s exactly what these types of movies tend to deliver.

Yet despite its pedigree, “Iron Man” will likely stand heads above its competition this summer. The reason is because the movie, like its main character, is obsessed with being sleeker, nimbler, and more cutting-edge than the rest of the playing field. Meanwhile, for the lead role, the filmmakers shrewdly suited up one of the most talented actors working today, and were rewarded with the foundation upon which they grafted the action movie of tomorrow.

Make no mistake. Although director Favreau and the screenwriters should be credited for streamlining Iron Man’s lengthy comic book history into a feature-length film with nary an ounce of fat on it, the enterprise succeeds because of Robert Downey, Jr. Entirely believable in the role of brilliant and spoiled billionaire industrialist Tony Stark, the character starts off as a charming arms dealer nicknamed “The Angel of Death,” who through harrowing events becomes an armored vigilante.

Unlike most movies based on comic books, wherein the hero has values of compassion instilled in them by the time fate intervenes, Stark is clearly no saint, but a self-centered hedonist without any sense of responsibility. But all of that changes when terrorists attack his convoy in the Middle East, critically wounding Stark and taking him prisoner. Trapped in the mountains, kept alive by a local doctor and fellow prisoner (Shaun Toub), he has a moral revelation about the effects of the weapons built by his company, Stark Industries.

Ordered to build weapons for his captors, he instead constructs an armored suit that allows their escape. From then on, Stark dedicates his life to recovering weapons sold by Stark Industries, which under the leadership of corporate honcho Obadiah Stane (Jeff Bridges), has been double-dealing to both the U.S. military and terrorist groups abroad while keeping him in the dark.

Action movie audiences can expect high-octane thrills, especially when Stark’s updated armor leads to a confrontation with his Air Force buddy (Terrence Howard). But overall, the movie tries to balance its explosions and showdowns with a sense of humor, much of it coming at the expense of Stark as he tinkers with the suit. There’s also a love interest in the form of Stark’s freckled, long-suffering assistant “Pepper” Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow). She’s no window-dressing, however, but a competent accomplice who acclimates herself well to some pretty extraordinary circumstances.

The longstanding relationship between Stark and Potts leads to some of the movie’s funniest exchanges, made even better by Downey’s terrific sense of timing and delivery. Following Iron Man’s first adventure, she walks in as he’s being removed from his costume by his laboratory robots, who are struggling mightily. Potts stops in the doorway, aghast, there’s a silence, then Stark reassures her, “This is not the worst thing you’ve ever caught me doing.”

Thanks to Downey, we are constantly reassured this won't be one of those really bad summer movies, either.

Overall rating: ***1/2 (out of ****)

THE FRENCH CONNECTION (1971), dir. William Friedkin

The most interesting elements in the movie are the chase sequences and the lead character played by then-unknown actor Gene Hackman. But there’s also tight pacing and appropriately dingy-looking shots of 60’s/70’s era New York City, all of which add up to an entertaining cop picture.

Based on actual drug smuggling lore, the plot follows the efforts of police detectives Jimmy “Popeye” Doyle (Hackman) and “Cloudy” Russo (Roy Scheider) to nail some European criminals trying to sneak in high-grade heroin with the help of local gangsters. The film cuts back-and-forth between New York City and Paris, then the perspectives of the cops and their quarry, as the two sides continuously cross paths on their way to a major drug deal.

Friedkin, who won an Oscar for directing this film, and screenwriter Ernest Tidyman spend the first hour letting the tension build to near-unbearable levels before exploding it through a series of well-executed set pieces. But first, viewers get a feel for the Doyle character, a driven policeman with practically no personal life, and the slippery French smuggler played by Alain Charnier, who dines in fancy restaurants despite being aware of the constant police surveillance around him.

“Popeye” and the smuggler appear to be polar opposites, the refined Frenchman versus the loutish, alcoholic racist and xenophobe. At one point, Friedkin, who always seemed to know how to use depth of field effectively, stages a really neat shot illustrating the contrasts between the two characters.

In the foreground, we see “Frog One,” as Doyle comes to call him, enjoying a meal in some opulent setting. Who says crime doesn't pay? Eventually, the camera switches focus to the background, revealing the detective standing in a doorway across the street, looking cold and damp and drinking coffee so bad he tosses it after one sip.

On the plus side, once the movie hits the 70-minute mark, there's a terrific game of cat-and-mouse on a Grand Central subway platform, as well as a car/subway train chase that looks appropriately dangerous. I also credit Hackman and the filmmakers for fashioning one of the more memorable obsessed cops in cinematic history. Doyle is not some frothing-at-the-mouth maniac, but someone capable of blocking out everything in the single-minded pursuit of a goal, which actually makes him seem more normal to me, and therefore scarier.

One truly chilling moment occurs when he commits a serious blunder in the pursuit of a heroin smuggler. His partner is trying to deal with what’s happened, but Doyle just keeps repeating to him, “He’s getting away! He’s getting away!”

Finally, the movie spends a lot of time on routine police work, which by the looks of things can be dull and physically-taxing. There is a feeling these men do a job and not always an enjoyable one, but this type of portrayal gives “The French Connection” an air of authenticity which lingers even after the chase sequences provide the necessary shot of adrenaline.

Overall review: ***1/2

THE SQUID AND THE WHALE (2005), dir. Noah Baumbach

This movie confirms all my worst fears about divorce, insofar as how it affects children. A very literary couple, Bernard and Joan Berkman (Jeff Daniels and Laura Linney, respectively), decide to separate, leaving their two sons to choose sides. Teenage Walt (Jesse Eisenberg) already mimics the pretentious tones of his father, a once-promising novelist, and follows him to a shabbier part of Brooklyn. As Walt navigates the rickety world of adolescence aided by the inappropriate advice of his wannabe-lothario dad, he fosters a grudge towards Joan, whom he blames for his parents' split.

His younger brother Frank (Owen Kline), meanwhile, begins acting out in ways that are both shocking and disturbing. He starts drinking alcohol, cursing at authority figures, and spreading bodily fluids across his elementary school. The downward spiral both boys undergo is very unsettling to watch, and writer/director Noah Baumbach – who based “The Squid and the Whale” on his own childhood memories – shows them with an unflinching eye. He makes directorial choices that make the story feel extremely intimate: shots representing Walt and Frank’s point of view; or by framing their faces in the foreground so that their emotions hit us hard and naked.

I really liked how the story grew out of these characters, and that I couldn’t predict exactly what direction things were heading in. Yes, this nuclear family has become a ticking time bomb, but the overall tone of the film is kind of funny. The father, in particular, coaxed a smile out of me with his emotional buffoonery, casting judgements that only reveal how bitter he is deep down. At the same time, there is something pitiable in the way Bernard takes every opportunity to cast Joan in an unfavorable light, but nurses a faint hope of one day reconciling with her.

“The Squid and the Whale” has a bright visual style which livens up Baumbach's emotional hell considerably. You can practically smell the lush green trees in Prospect Park thanks to Robert Yeoman’s colorful cinematography. To his everlasting credit, the "Life Aquatic" writer leaves a lot of questions unanswered, and we can only infer that things will get better as the characters do some growing up. Can they fix their own personal foibles and get back into each other’s good graces? Maybe there are no answers to be had so early on. The ambiguous closing shot, which implies taking shelter in the happiness of the past, might represent the best and only thing that a person can do, given what are horrific circumstances.

Overall grade: ***1/2

THE CHINESE FEAST (1995), dir. Tsui Hark

After Two Hours, You'll Be Hungry Again

“The Chinese Feast” is like a 12-course banquet dinner, which serves up a little something for every taste. Director Tsui Hark, best known for crafting elaborate wire-fu epics throughout the 1990’s, blends together slapstick comedy, martial arts, sports flick conventions, and even the “Iron Chef” TV series into one tasty fusion cuisine.

Leslie Cheung, a popular Hong Kong singer and accomplished actor (his credits include the very different “A Chinese Ghost Story,” “Farewell, My Concubine,” and “Happy Together”) plays Chui, a small-time gangster who wants to become a chef so he can travel to Canada, where his girlfriend has gone. After being disqualified from the cooking exam of a Canadian hotel chain, he takes a job at the Qing Han, the oldest local restaurant. The much put-upon owner of the restaurant, Au (Kar-Ying Law), makes Chui perform a variety of ridiculous tasks for the amusement of the kitchen staff. But the last laugh is on him, as romantic sparks begin to fly between Chui and V.V. (Anita Yuen, behaving outlandishly), the owner’s rebellious daughter.

Wacky hi-jinks involving a giant fish, followed by a Mexican standoff between Triad gangs precipitated by a gun hidden inside a straw basket, give way to a slightly more dramatic central plot: Wong Wing (stuntman/actor Xin Xin Xiong), leader of an upstart restaurant company called the Super Group, challenges the owner of the Qing Han to a battle between master chefs. The duel will take place within 30 days, as part of the third annual Qing Han Imperial Feast. While the winner will earn a sum of $60 million HK, the loser must shutter his restaurant. As an added injury, in the tradition of the martial arts flick, the losing chef must call his opponent Master.

The Qing Han’s staff convinces their boss to accept the Super Group’s challenge. Unfortunately, it turns out they have been bribed by their master’s enemies, and their subsequent betrayal causes the old man to have a heart attack. At this point, V.V., like Cordelia in Shakespeare’s King Lear, proves to be a loyal daughter after all. She pledges to prepare the Qing Han Imperial Feast, thus saving her father’s restaurant.

Unfortunately, neither she nor Chui, who wants to help her win the upcoming contest, can so much as boil water, much less prepare a complicated series of dishes featuring truly exotic ingredients. Enter Lung (Man Cheuk Chiu), a kind-hearted local chef. He relates the history behind the event, but admits he cannot help with the actual preparing. However, he knows someone who can: Kit (Kenny Bee), a onetime culinary prodigy turned lost soul.

Kit had been a contender for Hong Kong’s greatest chef until personal tragedy struck. Since then, he has retreated into a cocoon of alcohol and regret. He works a menial job at a supermarket, and ruins his once-formidible taste buds with drink. The character of Kit is in the tradition of countless movie athletes who fall from grace, and must pull themselves up again in time for the requisite happy ending. Naturally, his newfound friends put him through that familiar staple: the training montage. Only in “The Chinese Feast,” relocating one’s Eye of the Tiger means engaging in some pretty over-the-top activities, such as being forcefed a funnel full of ice cubes, acupuncture, and even a smoke-filled “death chamber.”

Can two fledgling cooking assistants, a recovering alcohol abuser with rusty kitchen skills, and a master chef confined to a wheelchair manage to upset the supremely-confident and technologically-advanced Super Group? If you’ve ever seen a sports movie, you don’t need me to tell you the answer. However, even if you’re familiar with every gridiron inspirational or “Karate Kid”-knock-off made to-date, you probably haven’t seen their conventions presented in Tsui Hark’s particularly active style.

Also, even if you’ve already watched Ang Lee’s “Eat Drink Man Woman” or Juzo Itami’s “Tampopo,” “The Chinese Feast” gives the food movie a wholly different look and feel. The camera still lingers on the texture and color of prepared dishes, but Hark places particular emphasis on how his chefs do their thing. From the very beginning, they seem to possess superhuman cooking ability, the same way Jet Li and Man Cheuk Chiu had elemental agility and speed in “Once Upon a Time in China” and “The Blade,” respectively. True, Kit and Wong Wing are culinary artists, not martial artists. But the director frames them in the same bold fashion, angling the camera upwards toward their faces. It’s a point of view that flatters them, even when the angle is slightly canted. And Hark uses slow and fast-motion to make their proficiency with fire and kitchen tools akin to a master’s skill with weapons.

(Speaking of weapons, more than one signature dish is punctuated with a shot of a trembling knife. If you decide to watch this movie, keep a tally of how many times one of the chefs completes a masterpiece, then flings his knife into the cutting board, where it vibrates with exhausted power. Talk about showmanship.)

Like “Eat Drink Man Woman” and “Tampopo,” this movie celebrates food and the way it brings people together. Food serves as the link in a variety of relationships: between burgeoning romantic partners (Chui and V.V.), former lovers (Kit and the woman he is estranged from), parent and child (Au and V.V.), and ultimately, a large group of friends (everyone who teams up against the Super Group). The cast is uniformly great, and the director juggles them well enough that everyone gets at least one good scene.

It probably helps that all the central characters are motivated by redemption. Chui must learn the chef trade honestly to make up for his early cheating. V.V. must save her father’s establishment to make up for her poor behavior in the past. And Kit must win the Qin Han Imperial Feast in order to prove to his girlfriend that he can feel again. But at the same time, the film has enough off-beat humor—the aforementioned giant fish scene, a screaming contest at a karaoke bar, a car-and-motorcycle chase set to Italian opera, and some business involving particular organs belonging to a monkey—that it never veers into schmaltz.

On the contrary, “The Chinese Feast” manages to balance itself between crowd-pleasing and whimsical. Among its possible audience are fans of Asian movie stars Leslie Cheung and Anita Yuen, not to mention martial arts aficionados (Those familiar with Hark’s even better 1995 feature, “The Blade,” might get a kick out of seeing Man Cheuk Chiu and Xin Xin Xiong in showy supporting roles). In turn, those with an appetite for MTV-style, rapid-fire filmmaking (only done right) are also in for a treat. So are those parties with a taste for the exotic. Meanwhile, the film’s universal themes of love and friendship may coax the not-so-brave into giving it a try.

Finally, foodies should be happy with this one. The highest compliment I can pay “The Chinese Feast” is to say that, after being amused, stimulated, and very much impressed by it, I also found myself hungry. A lot of the food cinematography is excellent, but the most tantalizing image occurs towards the end: a juicy piece of roasted meat, slowly dripping with honey. Despite the big meal of Thanksgiving leftovers I had just eaten two hours before, it suddenly felt like my only choices were “Feast” or famine, and I barely stopped myself from taking a bite out of the TV screen.

Overall rating: ***1/2 (out of ****)

LOOK BACK IN ANGER (1958), dir. Tony Richardson

Beginnings of a Genre that was All the Rage.

The best thing about “Look Back in Anger” is Richard Burton, whose volcanic performance as Jimmy Porter set the bar for angry young men in Great Britain.

Like Malcolm McDowell in Lindsay Anderson’s “If…” (among other films in the “angry young man” genre released during the following decade), Jimmy isn’t thuggish as much as he is disaffected. His answer to the question of what he wants in life—“Everything… nothing…”—indicates a profound confusion about his own place in the universe. Though college educated, he lives in relative squalor. Though bestowed with artistic gifts, these traits haven’t helped him achieve much in the wider world. Perhaps Jimmy is just too lazy to apply himself, and prefers hurling invectives from the sidelines at others. At any rate, Jimmy’s life is his soapbox, from which he rails against the upper-class, popular culture, and everything in between.

For the most part, Jimmy’s audience consists of his wife, Alison (Mary Ure), and close pal Cliff (Gary Raymond). Cliff occupies the spare room in the couples’ flat, and works at Jimmy’s candy stand. A close friend, he often acts as peacekeeper when tensions between the Porters flare up. Usually, it’s Jimmy who goes too far, making one too many snide remarks about Alison’s family, or Alison herself.

On the morning of a particularly ugly incident, Jimmy is seething because his wife has written a letter to her parents. They happen to be old money-types who never approved of the marriage, and it incenses Jimmy that she maintains communications, when he has abandoned all civility. Jimmy makes relentless fun of them while Alison goes about her ironing, pretending to ignore him. This only makes him try even harder to get a rise out of his wife. Cliff tries to persuade his pal to back off. But that leads to rough horseplay, which causes Alison to burn her arm.

After Jimmy retreats to the nearby pub, following harsh looks from his wife, Cliff tries to comfort Alison. He mentions that he is thinking of abandoning their crazy household. In a moment of intimacy between friends (although it is implied that Cliff thinks of Alison more strongly than that), he asks why she doesn’t just give up on the abusive marriage, and leave Jimmy.

“I’m afraid,” Alison replies. After all, she isn’t sure her parents, whom she is estranged from, will take her back. Later, however, we find out more. Alison is pregnant, has been pregnant several months, and has yet to tell Jimmy. She has vacillated on the decision of letting him know, and now feels uncertain she wants to have the baby at all, since it would cement her bond to this angry young man. In desperation, Alison seeks the counsel of Helena Charles (Claire Bloom), a childhood friend who happens to have landed a role in the local play.

Helena—a prim, raven-haired beauty—presents a fine constrast to Alison, who possesses straw-blond hair and more earthly charms. Helena also appears to be the more stronger-willed of the two women. She refuses to be brought down by Jimmy’s snide remarks, although an attempt on his part for “a little fun,” crashing one of her rehearsals, nearly pushes her over the edge of good behavior.

Having witnessed the way Jimmy treats her, Helena desperately tries to convince Alison to leave him. Her main problem, however, is that she still finds herself attracted to the fire that burns incessently inside her husband. She relates the story of how they met—Jimmy walking into the dance at her old town, covered in motor oil, seemingly burning even then. While that reminiscence doesn’t change Helena’s opinion about how bad a husband Jimmy is, she admits that such an angry man must make life exciting. At this point, a strange look comes over Helena, which implies a possible weakness to the very trap she is trying to extricate her friend from.

Will Alison run away from Jimmy? Will Jimmy change his ways after finding out that he is going to be a father? Will Cliff really jump ship, leaving his two closest pals to their domestic strife? And ultimately, is Helena to play a larger role than enabler to all this?

Director Tony Richardson and screenwriter Nigel Kneale—with John Osborne providing additional dialogue for his adapted stage work—resolve everything in a relatively unsurprising fashion. More compelling are the insights into Jimmy, what motivates his contempt for religion, culture, even education. He was once the beneficiary of university training, but now, the way he uses erudite words in his rants seems like a deliberate attempt to bring them down, to make them vulgar.

So why is Jimmy full of rage? The answer, it turns out, falls into what Orson Welles cited as “pop psychology:” Like Charles Foster Kane, Jimmy Porter suffered a childhood trauma. He lost someone dear to him. Now he resists the love of those who would willingly give it, pushing them away with insults, sometimes unconsciously. But at the same time, nothing seems to make Jimmy sadder than the thought of one more friend going away. “The child is father to the man,” sayeth the poet Gerald Manley Hopkins. In his heart, Jimmy wants everything to be the way it was back when he was a little boy, back when he was happy.

But alas, the nature of life dictates that people must move on, must leave us, must change. The realization on Jimmy’s part—that people never stay, that nothing remains the same—fuels his rage at life itself. At a relatively young age, he already learned the inevitability of death. So now, at twenty-five, he firmly says to hell with earthly ambition, and to hell with love, money, art, and other earthly trifles (Basically, he adopts the whole “angry young man” thing).

Jimmy has stared into the abyss, and having not fallen in, turned away scarred. Only the appearance of a soul mate, worn down as much as him by despair and bitterness, can bring out his long-dormant sense of empathy. That is the only way Jimmy can ever change, and while such a fate has tragic implications, it also provides a strange sense of comfort when it finally comes along, and saves him.

Overall rating: ***1/2 (out of ****)

OLDBOY (2003), dir. Chan-wook Park

South Korean "Payback" Gives Decent Payoff

The main thing that sets "Oldboy" apart from other revenge movies is that the villain goes to great lengths to keep the main character alive. He does this on purpose, of course. Death, after all, brings about immediate release from pain and suffering. The bad guy in "Oldboy" doesn’t want Dae-su Oh (Min-sik Choy), the middle-aged businessman he has kidnapped, to get off that easily.

Dae-su Oh disappears one dark and stormy night, just after he steps away from a pay phone. His abductors lock him up inside what looks like a hotel room. There is a bed, as well as a shower and television. However, the room has no windows, and the door looks like it belongs on a cell for prisoners in solitary confinement. It’s made of metal, locked from the outside, and has a slot at the bottom. Dae-su Oh’s abductors regularly slide him his food through the gap.

No one will tell Dae-su Oh why he has been imprisoned, or when he can hope for release. Left in near-total isolation, his only connection to the outside world is the television. This becomes problematic when news flashes start reporting that Dae-su Oh’s wife has been brutally murdered, and that he is the prime suspect. In a creepy tracking shot that circles around his head, we see ants emerging from underneath his skin, and swarming about his face. It seems like an apt visual metaphor—the character’s fear, rage, and creepy loneliness literally devouring him from the inside-out. Dae-su Oh is never the same from this point on. Though his thoughts continue to be expressed in lucid voiceover, we get the feeling that some part of the man has died.

Dae-su Oh continues to be caged like an animal for the next fifteen years. In the interval, his once neatly-cut hair grows long, and his face, having grown sad eyes as well as a lean and hungry look, resembles a lupine under exhibition in a zoo. This contrasting of man with animal is even more fitting after the control room of Dae-su Oh’s "prison" is revealed. From this makeshift nerve center, an office that includes a bank of television monitors, Dae-su Oh’s captors, like dedicated zookeepers, keep a watchful eye over the specimens in their menagerie.

Granted, there is something wild and uncouth about Dae-su Oh from the very beginning. In the first sequence of the movie, he fights with police officers at the station where he has been detained. He attempts to "mark his territory" in the middle of booking, and makes a rude gesture upon being released. After finally escaping his prison (Actually, he wakes up to find himself mysteriously delivered to a building rooftop), he becomes like a wild animal set free from his cage. Initially overwhelmed by his newfound freedom, Dae-su Oh soon becomes hellbent on finding those responsible for his suffering, and making them pay dearly. Since Dae-su Oh has been framed for the murder of his wife, he must act as a vigilante. Before he begins doing that, however, he visits a nearby sushi bar, where he devours a still-moving octopus to satisfy his desire to eat something alive (The act of eating live flesh can be viewed as Dae-su Oh's first step towards returning to his pre-captivity state).

After lapsing out of consciousness, Dae-su Oh awakens to Mi-do (Hye-jeong Kang), a young teenage girl who took him home from the sushi bar. She wants to read the journals he had been keeping while imprisoned, but Dae-su Oh snatches them away, hoarding them like some kind of pack rat. Having been removed from human contact for so long, women now cause him great anxiety. This doesn’t stop him from trying to rape Mi-do in the bathroom. Luckily, she accepts his explanation that these urges are simply beyond his control.

Of course, Dae-su Oh’s animal urges go beyond the primal need to fuck. He has had fifteen years to foment a craven bloodlust towards whoever had him kidnapped. Having made his body stronger during his time in captivity, Dae-su Oh’s rage has become combined with the agility and ferociousness of a jungle cat. As a result, he doesn’t just stab, bludgeon, and torture the parties who participated in his degradation, or who can provide him with clues about the enemy’s identity. Dae-su Oh relishes the prospect of violence. "Oldboy" is a movie full of carnage, much of it messy, some of it difficult to watch. Director Chan-wook Park films using only light sources in the background, which give the picture an ugly sheen that only complements the ugly behavior.

But Park also introduces a novel idea during the second half of the movie. Just when we have Dae-su Oh pegged as the baddest animal in the concrete jungle, there arrives an even deadlier specimen: the very man our anti-hero has been trying to track down. Woo-jin Lee (Ji-tae Yu), it turns out, has been nursing a grudge against Dae-su Oh that makes the latter’s fifteen years in solitary look like grains in the hourglass. A sneering ghoul of a man, hate has devoured Woo-Jin whole. All that remains is a cold smile and scheming intelligence. It's doubtful he ever met a revenge formula he would consider too elaborate.

Inevitably, Dae-su Oh meets Woo-jin Lee face-to-face. One of them turns out to have an ace up his sleeve, a revelation so shocking and twisted, his opponent is left speechless. Initially, I dismissed the twist ending as a case of a screenwriter simply piling stuff on. But upon further reflection, it's not so implausible, given how deep the character's hate for his counterpart runs. He would have had plenty of time to refine the grand strategem gestating in his brain. And since these are animals mixing it up, not men, isn’t it fitting that cunning and ruthlessness, as opposed to the righteousness of one’s cause, are what decide ultimate victory? Just like in the real jungle.

"Though I am no better than a beast, do I not have the right to be happy…?"

A line repeated more than once in the movie, it takes on a surprising poignancy, and hints at man's hope of transcending his own animal instincts.

Both Dae-su Oh and Woo-jin Lee have behaved in beastly ways to people. The former has a list of enemies long enough to fill a composition notebook, while the latter has inflicted unspeakable harm on Dae-su Oh and his loved ones. If a key difference exists between these two men, however, it’s that one of them owns up to the unspeakable acts he has committed, and in admitting his own culpability, finds forgiveness and inner peace. His counterpart does not. To the bitter end, he blames his years of suffering entirely on his nemesis. He exonerates his own bestial instincts of any role they might have played in a past tragedy.

As a result, even after the smoke clears, after he has stood victorious over his enemy, he still can find no peace. No amount of retribution can take away the pain. No amount of suffering on the part of his nemesis can bring back what was lost. Here is a man so dedicated to the destruction of his enemy that, with the enemy vanquished, he loses all purpose. Imprisoned by his own bestial instincts and behavior, he can aspire to no higher emotions. All that is left for him to do is wander off somewhere, and die in solitude, like a dog.

Overall rating: ***1/2 (out of ****)

SECRETARY (2002), dir. Steven Shainberg

Not So Naughty, Not So Nice

Life occasionally gets too stressful for Lee Holloway (Maggie Gyllenhaal). To cope, she cuts herself using any of an assortment of tools and sharp objects kept in a sewing box in her bedroom. We infer that Lee hasn’t had access to the box for a while, since, when we first meet her, she is being released from a mental institution. In voiceovers, she reflects on her time there positively (which makes us suspect that she didn’t get the help she actually needed). She had a routine, somebody else making the decisions for her. Sitting on a bench outside, waiting for her mother (Leslie Ann Warren) to pick her up, Lee seems quite ambivalent towards her newly-acquired freedom.

A quick trip home for her sister’s wedding sends her running for the sewing kit again. Her father (Stephen McHattie) is an alcoholic, the kind who promises not to drink, then quickly forgets those promises because he’s too drunk to remember them. Her mother busies herself with party guests, more or less forgetting about Lee. Only an old high school friend, Peter, keeps her company. Lee refrains from cutting herself that day, but later, she overhears her father slapping her mother around in a drunken rage. Lee runs to the kitchen, grabs a pot of boiling water off the stove. She doesn't hit her father with it. Instead, she presses the hot metal against the inside of her leg. The flesh sizzles, but Lee is so used to self-inflicted pain she doesn’t even cry out.

The next few weeks, she continues to adjust to life outside the institute. She goes to community college to learn typing. Her subsequent job search lands her in the office of E. Edward Grey (Spader), a lawyer who goes through assistants so regularly, there's a "Secretary Wanted" sign on the lawn surrounded by light bulbs. It resembles the signs motels frequently turn on and off to denote vacancies.

When Edward first meets Lee, there is a look in his eyes like a drowning man spotting a life preserver. An utter taskmaster, Edward constantly struggles to control his temper in the face of imperfect assistants. When Lee enters his life, he dumps all the red pens on his desk into the wastebasket. They have been his weapon of choice for so long. But Edward sees the chance for a clean slate in this new secretary, a chance to prove he can change his dominating ways once and for all.

During the next few weeks, Edward vacillates between ignoring Lee completely, and browbeating her mercilessly. But after a particularly stormy session, he spots her toying with the infamous sewing box. Edward asks about the box, learns its nature, then commands Lee never to cut herself again. At this point, Edward begins co-opting Lee's mind. He gives her strength through his own force of will--something Lee might not object to, given how much more comfortable she was when the institute regimented her existence.

But the taking over of Lee's mind leads to the conquest of her body, when Edward directs her to bend over his desk and begins spanking her. However, instead of enraging Lee, or shaming her the way his verbal abuse did, the act leaves her euphoric. Returning to her desk, her face takes on a look of supreme happiness. So begins the main thrust of the film, where Lee submits to an ever-increasing litany of strange acts, including wearing a saddle while holding a carrot in her mouth, or putting her arms through a stock so they are suspended level to her shoulders. In the process, her feelings for Edward blossom into genuine love.

Though it may sound like misogynist fantasy, "Secretary" is actually an emotionally-moving, well-acted drama about soul mates who find each other. What keeps it from teetering into misogyny is how Edward and Lee's relationship never feels like slavery. He never coerces her into doing anything. On the contrary, Lee chooses to engage in these activities. There’s a sweetness here; like the cliched office lovers, they struggle to focus on their work while constantly thinking about the other. The only difference with Lee and Edward is, in their case, there’s more saddle-wearing, and less penetration.

The movie is also unmisogynistic because it doesn't detail a woman falling into shame. On the contrary, Lee conquers the stigma of her urges, then tries to convince the man she loves not to be ashamed of wanting to dominate his secretary. Naturally, he is slow to respond. Edward's overwhelming shame could derive from past experiences with women who weren’t keen on, or were repulsed by, the idea of being submissive. Edward’s ex-wife, whom we meet briefly, quickly sizes up Lee as just the opposite. Was Edward married to a woman who understood too well how his mind worked, and sought to "cure" him of his "problem?" Lee is just the opposite; not only doesn’t she feel ashamed wearing a stock for Edward, she receives great pleasure from being under his power.

Lest we think all the power belongs to Edward, one should point out that, in performing these acts for the man she loves, who also happens to be her boss, Lee unwittingly diminishes Edward’s authority, and brings them both closer to the realm of equals. Conceivably, she decides on how often they canoodle, since her typing errors precipitate his having to "discipline" her. When Edward isn’t giving Lee the attention she needs, she has to fake her own incompetence in order to provide him errors to find. At one point, he still isn’t giving her the attention she needs, so she folds a worm into a memo, and stuffs it into an envelope. This is not the kind of thing an employee normally can do to a boss. We must conclude, therefore, that their relationship exists in some kind of limbo between "boss" and "employee," on a level with more equal footing.

Also, after Edward performs a particularly unspeakable act on Lee’s bare rear end, he tapes a memo to her back, which she discovers in the bathroom. While performing an unspeakable act on someone, then taping a note of their most recent typographic errors to their back, could be construed as degrading them, Lee’s heart is overwhelmed with passion by Edward's gesture. Edward, meanwhile, finds a spot on his tie, the result of their activity. He becomes disgusted. Ironically, though Lee allows Edward to satisfy his unusual sexual needs with her body, and seemingly submits herself to what many women might consider lewd acts, only one participant is becoming empowered by these entanglements, and it is Lee, not Edward.

Watching this movie, I couldn’t help thinking of the fairy tale "Beauty and the Beast," where the downy young innocent falls in love with a man whom, by all outward appearances, is a horrible monster. "Secretary" is a lot like that. Beneath the film’s edgy, almost unpleasant-sounding veneer—this Belle has an addiction to self-mutilation, and the Beast is James Spader playing the kind of role James Spader specializes in—"Secretary" is really a fuzzy-hearted love story. The monster here is more beastly in his behavior than physical appearance. But the theme of seeing the humanity within remains.

Finding the humanity inside E. Edward Gray is a lot easier, thanks to the excellent casting. Maggie Gyllenhaal has the perfect girl-next-door looks for the role of Lee. She is believable as the shy and snivelling secretary. Later, her bright face and expressive features convey the strength and resolve her character finds. Her body posture also evolves, starting out small and downcast, ending up graceful and upright.

After Steven Soderbergh’s "sex, lies, & videotape (1989)," and David Cronenberg’s "Crash (1996)," Spader is probably the first name most writers, producers, or directors think of when casting a character with odd sexual fetishes. But he is also a solid leading man, and does his best work in a while here. Also worth noting is Stephen McHattie, terrific as Mr. Holloway. He only appears in a few scenes, but his sketched-out journey from souse to sobriety reflects the distances Lee travels as well. Lee’s sewing box is her coping mechanism, just as the bottle is Mr. Holloway's. When the crutches they are used to leaning on get taken out from under them, both Holloways are forced to confront their own natures. In the process, they emerge as stronger, better people.

Overall rating: ***1/2 (out of ****)