Letters from Iwo Jima (USA) (Warner Bros/Dreamworks/Paramount) (2006) ***1/2 Year: 2006 iMDB
Director: Clint Eastwood Cast: Ken Watanabe, Kazunari Ninomiya, Tsuyoshi Ihara, Ryo Kase
Letters from Iwo Jima is Clint Eastwood's companion to Flags of our Fathers. Filmed back to back, both movies tell, in essence, the story of the battle for the island of Iwo Jima towards the end of World War II.
The movies are however, not mirroring each other. If Flags of our Fathers focused more on the political efforts to raise money for the war and on the lives of some of the war heroes after their return from battle, Letters from Iwo Jima is a war movie in the purest sense. A solid war movie, by all means, but one that would not have gotten a similar attention if it wasn't directed by an American director, and one of Eastwood's stature at that.
Eastwood dares to show the world (and perhaps American in particular) that the enemy is not just a bunch of mindless lunatics that are out for blood. The enemy soldiers are just as tri-dimensional as the American ones are, with families and children waiting at home, with dreams and hopes, with convictions - some with their own, others with what they have been indoctrinated.
Letters from Iwo Jima is a good war movie. But its importance transcends the movie qualities. It is like Ender's Speaker for the Dead - as Eastwood takes the time to understand the enemy that the Americans fought and destroyed and tell back to the world the story through the enemy's eyes.
Notes on a Scandal (UK) (BBC/Fox Searchlight) (2006) ***1/2 Year: 2006 iMDB
Director: Richard Eyre Cast: Judi Dench, Cate Blanchett, Bill Nighy, Andrew Simpson
An acting tour de force by Dench and Blanchett who befriend each other as Sheba (Blanchett) joins, as a novice art teacher, the highschool where Barbara (Dench) was teaching for over three decades. Barbara is a lonely old woman, moderately repressed lesbian, who has always searched for her soul mate in life, and hopes to have found in Sheba the answer to her quest. As Sheba lets herself stumble into an affair with one of her students, Barbara uses her knowledge of the fact to try and gain further control on her unassuming victim.
Sheba is caught between her feelings of unfulfilled life, her affair sentiments that she cannot shrug off and put behind, her duty towards her husband and kids and Barbara's manipulative friendship. In the end, the story and the denouement of the Scandal are not what stays with you after the film ends. It is rather the intensity that the characters feel, all coming from their struggle to find the life that they had dreamed of, none too fancy, yet so far from the reality that they are trapped in.
El Laberinto del Fauno (Mexico/Spain/USA) (Picturehouse/Warner Bros) (2006) ****1/2 Year: 2006 iMDB
Director: Guillermo del Toro Cast: Ivana Baquero, Ariadna Gil, Sergi Lopez, Maribel Verdu
I have to start off with a rant: Why on earth did the American distributors choose to call this movie Pan's Labyrinth? Most people I've talked to before seeing the movie thought it was a reference to Peter Pan. In fact, the title of the movie is The Faun's Labyrinth. Of course not many may know what a Faun is. But Pan is a famous faun. No, not Peter Pan. The other Pan, much older one, from the Greek mythology. So... let's make things easier for everyone by using a misleading title. But enough about this. As a marketing move it actually seems to have worked.
Pan's Labyrinth is one of the best movies of the year, in fact one of the best mixtures of historical drama and true fantasy in years, a powerful drama showing the second World War through the eyes of an innocent young girl, which finds refuge from the daily violence and horror in a fantasy world that is just as violent and disturbing, yet still retaining a certain charm that is lost to the real world.
Reminiscent on some level of Benini's La Vita e Bella (Life is Beautiful), El Laberinto del Fauno is also del Toro's continuation of his earlier The Devil's Backbone, another movie of magical realism inspiration, a ghost story backdropped against the Spanish civil war. The allegory comes full circle in the end as the real world and fantasy merge allowing Ofelia to step from one into the other.
Great movie, strongly recommended.
The Pursuit of Happyness (USA) (Columbia Pictures) (2006) ***1/2 Year: 2006 iMDB
Director: Gabriele Muccino Cast: Will Smith, Jaden Smith, Thandie Newton
Chris Gardner (Will Smith) doesn't give up hope on making something out of his life as he is struggling to cope with being broke and taking care of his son. Inspired by the true story of a self-made millionaire, The Pursuit of Happyness manages to be above the typical sappy happy-end Hollywood story, through subdued, believable acting by Smith, good chemistry with his real-life son, and inspired directing from Italian director Gabriele Muccino (Ricordati di me, L'ultimo baccio recently adapted in US as The Last Kiss).
The scenes between Smith and his son (I should probably say Gardner and his son, but...) are particularly touching and genuine, showing a true relationship. Recomended for a warm family evening.
The Painted Veil (China/USA) (Warner Independent Pictures) (2006) ***1/2 Year: 2006 iMDB
Director: John Curran Cast: Edward Norton, Naomi Watts, Toby Jones
After marrying Dr. Walter (Norton) only to escape her family, Kitty (Watts) follows her husband to Shanghai. As they move to live in a small town, struggling with cholera and nationalist insurgence, they both re-discover each other and perhaps a sense of love.
Beautiful cinematography and great performances from the two that I consider the best actors of the current generation, make justice to Somerset Maugham's novel, balancing the personal story of the main characters and the complex social background of 1920's China, without compromising realism in favor of Hollywood cliches.
Inland Empire (USA/Poland/France) (Studio Canal) (2006) **** Year: 2006 iMDB
Director: David Lynch Cast: Laura Dern, Jeremy Irons, Justin Theroux
Sitting through three hours of intense visceral, dreamlike, surreal experience is never easy. And I do understand all those that cannot make it all the way to the end in a movie which, no matter how much time you give it, doesn't become any clearer and things don't really "add up" in a revelational explanation. But if you are so inclined and in the right mood, Inland Empire delivers an experience unlike any other movie could.
Arguably, Inland Empire is Lynch's most surreal movie yet, unrelenting from beginning to end. What is the story? What does it all mean? Is it a meditation of women being treated as whores and suffering the consequences? Is it about Hollywood's malefic influence and fatal attraction? Is it the story of an actress losing track of the difference between reality and script when she lets herself immersed into a story that hits too close to home? Is she following in the footsteps of a previous actress that got trapped by the same story and paid with her life? Or maybe there is only one actress, sitting in front of the TV and letting herself think of all the things she lived and those she could live and struggling with a life-changing decision until one path wins...
The beauty of Lynch's movies is that, even if he ever gives an explanation about the "story", all the alternate interpretations, all one hundred of them, that viewers come up with, remain equally valid. It is all a dream. It is all quasi-abstract art. It is utter crap for some. And extraordinary genius for others. And they are all right.
Children of Men (UK/USA) (Universal Pictures) (2006) **1/2 Year: 2006 iMDB
Director: Alfonso Cuaron Cast: Clive Owen, Julianne Moore, Michael Caine
I have a question: what does everyone find so great in this movie? Granted, the camerawork is masterful and the whole cinematography is immersive. However, the script is about on par with Terminator 2. Without the humor. Or Total Recall. I even grew further appreciation for V for Vendetta which I was originally disappointed with.
Clive Owen ends up having to take care of a pregnant woman in a world that has not seen any childbirth in 18 years. Of course there is rioting and war all over and even those presumably protecting the woman are only interested in using the child for political benefits. The script does point in several interesting directions, but they are all unsufficiently expanded and we end up with a fairly ridiculous hide-and-seek action movie as the unwilling hero escorts the woman towards a meeting with a secret society of scientists that can study the child and mother and perhaps figure out a cure for mankind. And, of course, she gives birth in a refugee camp, escapes with the baby while buildings are blown away and tens killed around her and manages to get to the meeting with the elusive group that noone knew for sure it even existed.
Good acting, great visuals but mediocre story despite intellectual ambitions.
Dreamgirls (USA) (Paramount/DreamWorks) (2006) **** Year: 2006 iMDB
Director: Bill Condon Cast: Jamie Foxx, Beyonce Knowles, Eddie Murphy, Jennifer Hudson, Danny Glover
Glamorous and glittery, Dreamgirls does more than justice to the famous award winning Broadway original. The story is a lose semi-fictional adaptation of The Supremes real story, one of the most famous Motown groups from Detroit. But Dreamgirls is not about the story. It's all about the music.
American Idol not-quite-winner Jennifer Hudson is probably not willing to trade her Golden Globe win for playing Effie with an Idol win as she got the chance to outshine Beyonce in one of the best movie adaptations of a Broadway success.
Running with Scissors (USA) (Sony/TriStar) (2006) ** Year: 2006 iMDB
Director: Ryan Murphy Cast: Annette Bening, Brian Cox, Joseph Fiennes, Evan Rachel Wood
Movies about dysfunctional families can be supremely funny albeit outrageous to some. In Running with Scissors there are some genuinely funny moments and Annette Bening does give a brilliant performance as the wreck mother, distraught wannabe poet who ends up giving her teenage son away for adoption to her shrink. However, apart from the premise, the funniest moments are captured by the movie trailer and Running with Scissors manages the rare performance (for this class of movies) to be almost boring even when it tries to be outrageous.
Blood Diamond (Studio) (Warner Bros) (2006) *** Year: 2006 iMDB
Director: Edward Zwick Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Djimon Honsou, Jennifer Connelly
As Blood Diamond starts with gritty, brutal display of the violent reality that still exists in many African countries: women and children being massacred without reason by various factions that try to make a point that is usually forgotten by the time the gunshots quiet down. The story shows slick diamond smuggler Danny Archer (DiCaprio) catching the trail of a large diamond that Solomon (Honsou) has managed to hide in the dirt near the mine that he was forced to work in as a slave.
For a while the movie manages to thread the line between powerful drama, action adventure and romance, but semblance of balance is completely lost in an ending that simply bundles together one ridiculous cliche after another. The almost anti-hero Archer turns into a hero, and embraces a fate of sacrifice while melting the heart of the journalist that somehow fell for him in all the craziness. Oh, and of course, they manage in the end to sabotage the big bad diamond producers and prove that they were knowingly trading "conflict" diamonds... Sweet Happy Ending!.
Watch The Last King of Scotland instead.