RIP Paul Newman

1925-2008

What more can be said about Paul Newman that hasn't already been touched upon elsewhere? A screen presence not matched by many, and by all accounts a truly magnanimous human being. He will be missed by friends, family, and fans alike. Rewatching Butch Cassidy last night, I was reminded just how strong the chemistry between Redford and him was. We got two films with them together, and I had always hoped for one final reunion. While we'll never get that now, we'll still have a legacy of great work few actors can match. Cool Hand Luke, The Hustler, The Verdict, The Hudsucker Proxy, and the aforementioned Butch Cassidy were among my personal favorite performances by the man. His work will forever be cherished.

Appaloosa

For the past half decade or so we have seen a minor resurgence of the Western. Films like Open Range, 3:10 To Yuma, and The Assassination of Jesse James have revitalized the dying genre. These films (and a few others) have taken the Western in brave, exciting new directions. Now comes Appaloosa, Ed Harris' second directorial effort. To say it does not live up to those previously mentioned films would be an understatement. This film might have felt fresh back before 1992 and Unforgiven, but now it just comes across as redundant and often quite illogical. One might say that we should take any Western we can get in such sparse times, but I would argue that it is films like Appaloosa that killed the genre off in the first place.

It's only fair to start off with what works best: Viggo Mortensen and Ed Harris. Together, these two make for an interesting and sometimes fun combination. The way they portray their characters gives you the sense of a long, unspoken history. And neither plays their character as totally likable. These two are brought in to marshall a lawless town, but they have a mean streak themselves - can they be truly trusted with this town's safety? At one point Harris beats up a bar patron, nearly killing him before Viggo intervenes. A film that played off this aspect, the idea that the men the town turn to in a time of need might not be any better than the people they need protecting from could have been truly inspired. That is not this film.

Instead, we get a love story. It is here that the film completely falls off the rails so drastically that it kind of stuns the viewer. Renee Zellwegger comes into town and Harris immediately falls for her. She is portrayed as an annoying, conniving, shrill woman, and the idea that Harris would, even for a second, fall for her is never justified. It goes against the very nature of the character that has been set up to that point of the film. Zellwegger's character isn't really supposed to be likable, but when so many plot points hinge around worrying about her safety, or carrying about her relationship with our hero, it undermines everything else the film has going for it. There is a scene in which her character is kidnapped and the bad guys demand that their captured leader be turned over in exchange for her. The film gives us no reason to think these two lawmen would ever go through with it, but go through with it they do. It is undermined even further when it is revealed that she may have been in cahoots with the villains all along. That Harris learns this and does not care is the final straw that destroys the credibility of his character and this film.

The film builds to a climax that in another film would have felt powerfully devastating, but here is humdrum and unnecessary. Because it once again hinges around the Zellwegger character, the emotion that should be derived from the final showdown is drained because we don't feel the scene should have ever happened. The friendship of the two leads hinges on what happens in the end, but it shouldn't have to. Viggo's character makes a decision based in part on his belief that Zellwegger and Harris belong together. We know they don't belong together, but the film and its characters do not. It is an ending ripped straight from Unforgiven, but it lacks any of the bittersweet impact. It's a final nail in the coffin of a misguided film.

Appaloosa hits certain expected notes from any Western, and for that I do not damn this film completely. Had Zellwegger not been in the film, it could have been pretty great, actually. Viggo and Harris do some good stuff, and Jeremy Irons as the villain is pretty fun. The direction is nothing special, and the cinematography is downright bland, but the mood the film has in the opening scenes would have been enough to carry this film to a passable grade. With the genre hanging by the most tenuous threads with the general public, one can only hope that a film like Appaloosa doesn't cut those threads completely.

Burn After Reading

Burn After Reading, the new Coen Brothers movie, plays like the comedy mirror to their own No Country for Old Men, with a dash of The Big Lebowski thrown in for good measure. A group of dimwitted personal trainers (Frances McDormand, Brad Pitt, and Richard Jenkins) discover a disk in their gym with what looks to be secret CIA files on it. The disk belongs to Osborne Cox (John Malkovich), who doesn't even know that it is missing (or that the disk of information even exists), so when the personal trainers contact him in order to collect a reward of some sort, things turn sour and all hell breaks loose. What follows is mayhem, death, a few laughs, and a morally ambiguous ending. Pretty much what you'd expect from the Coens.

If you've been keeping track, you probably remember that I was not the biggest fan of their Oscar winning picture from last year. I came to appreciate it as time wore on, but it is not the classic many might have you believe. Which is a shame because I really love these guys and their offbeat filmography. On paper, Burn After Reading looks like a return to familiar territory for the brothers. Viewing the film, however, it became slowly apparent that this was not going to be the knockout that so many of their earlier films were. Indeed, by film's end I was a bit disappointed. Not overwhelmingly so, thankfully, but enough to make me a bit sad. Will the Coens ever achieve the same lofty heights they hit with Fargo, Lebowski, Barton Fink, and others?

The film starts off surprisingly slowly, introducing us to all the players. This is problem number one: there are too many characters at the outset, and too few are immediately interesting. Cox and his wife Katie (Tilda Swinton) take up a good majority of the opening scenes, yet they have very little spark to their characters. They are two bitter, angry people that you would not expect a comedy to be centered around. Thankfully just when you think you can't take any more of these two George Clooney shows up to brighten things up a bit. His Harry is a twitchy, odd duck. Cheating on his wife with Katie, he also cruises the internet looking for other woman to fool around with. He is a fun character, but for a long time we don't understand why he is even in the film. After a good twenty or thirty minutes we are finally introduced to the Hardbodies employees, and this is when the film finally takes off.

McDonrmand is a ball of energy as Linda, a woman who just wants a couple simple procedures done to make her appearance better. Discovering the secret disk may be exactly the ticket she needs in order to pay for those procedures. The true revelation is Pitt, an actor who rarely disappoints but is especially great here in what is easily his funniest role. Pitt plays Chad, a man who takes dimwittedness to rarely seen levels. His attempts to negotiate with Cox over the return of the disk fail repeatedly, yet he can never understand why. Chad feels almost like he is from a different movie, especially when he is interacting with the dry Malkovich, and as he cuts a swath through the story he leaves behind nothing but charm and laughs. Sad that he has relatively small screen time compared to the rest of the cast - a few more scenes with him would have gone a long way, especially early on.

The film has a strong climax, and the abundance of characters makes sense by the end, but that opening half is far too slow and dull. Also, I suspect many might be annoyed by the glib, offhanded way the film is concluded, making the loose ends of No Country seem like nothing. When this film does hit the right notes, it can be very funny. Yet it is not nearly funny enough, nor as interesting and insightful as most of the Coen Brother's previous films. It all adds up to a lot of nothing. I know the Coens had some purpose to this darkly misanthropic comedy, yet I can not figure out what it is. My silver lining is that a some of their films have failed to impress me upon early viewings, only to expand with passing time - even No Country. I suspect a second viewing here will illuminate some of the subtler points and make me appreciate what felt like an otherwise malformed film. But until that second viewing, all I am left with is a film that came close to being good but just missed that mark.