Three for the books - a small-scale tale of slightly stupid people and a lot of bad luck, and a large-scale tale of humanity's possible exit to stage left, followed by two people immersed in grief and caught up in a whirlwind from one of their pasts.
First -
11:14 - five inter-woven tales that follow a group of coincidental events that cause the paths of a bunch of small town working class people to intersect with some gruesome, funny, and sometimes gruesomely funny consequences. Possibly the most graphic head-smashing and pedestrian-versus-mini-van bowling that I've seen lately, and some awe-inspiringly stupid decisions, made believable by the fact that you've read about somebody doing these things in real life. A good one for a Friday night at home, and hopefully you won't remember doing any of this stuff somewhere in your dimly lit past.
Second - Spielberg takes on history and wins with
War of the Worlds - Tom Cruise firmly succeeds in playing an asshole of an absentee dad who has to struggle with becoming a parent while trying to avoid be blown into an ash-filled pair of 501's by a marauding alien race. Spielberg and his team of
magicians manage to pull off some impressive sci-fi horror, convincingly portraying mankind getting its collective ass vaporized, stomped on, drowned, bled dry, and used as fertilizer for alien weeds. I have to admit I choked for a second on the whole "they buried the machines a million-years ago" plot device, and the more I think about it, the more it pisses me off. Being different for the sake of being different, especially when you are re-making a movie, is not necessary or advisable. You can't tell me that thousands of alien spacecraft buried close enough to the surface to erupt out of the earth like sunflowers wouldn't have been hit by somebody's subway tunnel or water well, especially in urban New Jersey and downtown Boston, fer Chrissakes. That stumble aside, the rest of the movie cooks along with a full-bore intensity that doesn't really let up until the closing credits. Spielberg does plenty of large scale scenes of destruction, but a lot of the time, they are a backdrop for a tight focus on Cruise's character and his children - you see a lot of it from their perspective, with the scale of the destruction implied through their faces and reactions. Spielberg loves to show people going "OHHH" just before the shit hits the fan - he's been doing that since his
first TV gig - and he has plenty of opportunities here. Very nice cinematography with some subtle use of tone to convey everything from the ominous pre-assault storms to the horror of the blood-fed fungal overgrowth, and of course a powerful soundtrack and score that will give your 5.1 system a thorough workout. Well worth a rental if you didn't see it in the theater.
Lastly -
The Interpreter - not the best movie
Syndey Pollack has every pulled off, but a well-paced thriller centered on another well-drawn
Sean Penn performance as a weary Secret Service agent saddled with the task with protecting a murderous dictator and a boatload of grief. Nicole Kidman doesn't quite pull off being shoehorned into the role of an expatriate former revolutionary from a small African nation - you keep waiting for her to burst into "Come What May". Pollack would have done well to find someone like
Emily Watson for his anti-heroine, but Kidman and Penn work together well, playing out a subdued cat and mouse game. The movie is at its best when the leads are sitting together quietly sharing their pasts, and wisely avoids the stereotypical Hollywood overkill during the denouement. Joe Bob sez check it out.
