Machete cuts everything but his hair

The beautiful thing about Robert Rodriguez is that he’s figured out how pointless it is to grow up. “Machete” is the kind of entrails-and-bone-chips film one might storyboard with markers in a treehouse with one’s fellow chock-faced hee-haw hormonals. Markers, yes, and we might need a few extra red ones.

It may sound like I’m about to give this movie a bad review. But in truth, it was a love letter to suppressed inner pubescents everywhere, and it was much appreciated by the seventh grader who lives in me, shouldering all my dirty jokes to the surface. And it was also a love letter to a genre that Mr. Rodriguez obviously adores. “Planet Terror” was the first such love letter, but ended up as more of a spoof than an homage to the grindhouse style. “Machete” strikes a better balance.

But who is this…”Machete”? Well, you know that Hispanic guy in all those Hispanic movies who plays the giant, leather-faced, ostensibly evil enforcer? That’s him. Danny Trejo. Blossoming into a leading man and putting up a Bond-worthy sexual tally despite his face looking like it’s been rototilled. His character, as any self-respecting teenage-boy fantasy would have it, is a loner, a military-trained hero whose family has been murdered by this dirtbag trafficker Torres (hilariously, Stephen Seagal). He tends to choose his machete knife over guns when it comes to killing bad guys, but he will kill with whatever, if there is no machete around. That’s how committed he is to killing people.

Attempting to mind his own business doing roofing and septic work, Machete is selected to be framed in a political stunt to turn the people of Texas against Mexican immigrants and get a hard-liner on the issue elected. This stunt sets off a series of borderline-insane events during which Machete and his friends have to kill and maim hundreds of people. That’s just how these things go. After all is said and done, the evil men will find that they have, as is plainly spelled out for them in Machete’s first text message to anyone, “fucked with the wrong Mexican.”

The movie is almost worth seeing for the casting. Aside from Mr. Seagall’s high-comedy turn as the ex-Federale Mexican drug lord, Robert DeNiro plays an evil immigrant-shooting Texan gubernatorial candidate, Don Johnson plays “Von Johnson,” a vigilante border policeman, Cheech Marin plays Machete’s hermano who’s gone into the priesthood but retains his impressive artillery, and Lindsay Lohan plays the wayward & rarely clothed daughter of the governor’s right-hand man. Score one for the team.

[On a side note, I’m disappointed Cheech and Don Johnson didn’t interact in some kind of special Nash Bridges reunion moment. But my heart may not have been able to take it.]

While this movie won’t be getting any five-star reviews for its Intelligent Commentary on the Arizona Situation, it may at least do the favor of bringing the issue back into the American consciousness, from which it seems to have fallen ever since the Lakers knocked the Suns out of the playoffs. No, this movie is more about a different kind of Freedom–the one that allows a writer/director to have his hero swing, by another man’s unfurled large intestine, from one story of a hospital to another. It’s the freedom of the movies, and this Mexican knows more about that than you.

Step Up 3D: Popper releases balloons, gets discovered.

I actually went to an open casting call to be an extra in this movie. Unfortunately, work got in the way of my dreams, and I could never make it to any of the shoots. Upon seeing it, however, I realized I was much too clean-cut and White to be an extra in this movie. Instead, I would’ve had to have been the main character. Ah well, there’s always “Step Up 4D,” where the dancers become unstuck in Time and Space.

Yes, it’s strange to have every film in this franchise star a pair of pretty Caucasians when it’s safe to say that most great hip-hop dancers are, um, not that. But what’s that saying? “If it ain’t broke…” And we can’t exactly cry Racism, because the man at the helm of all this, John M. Chu, is also not white. So it’s obviously a strategy to sell tickets, which I’m okay with if it can keep what is probably my favorite ultra-stupid, ultra-entertaining franchise afloat.

They’re great for DVD, these movies. I don’t own very many DVDs in general, but I do own Step Up, Step Up 2, Stomp the Yard, How She Move, You Got Served, Breakin’, Breakin 2: Electric Bugaloo, Planet B-Boy, and Rize. With the exception of the last two, which are quality documentaries, they’re all what I call “chapter movies,” which means, when you pop them in, you don’t hit “Play Movie.” You hit “Chapter Selection.” Because no one who isn’t out of his gourd is watching these for plot, acting, or wit. You watch these movies for the dancing. There’s torture porn, right? We’ve all heard of that. And then there’s this: dance porn. My cup of tea.

Step Up 3D delivers exactly what any reasonable person would expect it to deliver. Moose (Adam G. Sevani), the lanky, mop-headed, logorrheic dancer from the last installment, is going through Freshman Orientation at NYU when he’s distracted by a pair of Nikes and finds himself accidentally in a dance-off with ‘Kid Darkness’ (Daniel “Cloud” Campos from this ridiculously sexy Shakira video), a member of the “evil” crew, the Samurai.

During his spasms, he inadvertently releases about a hundred helium balloons from a vendor’s cart. When the cops chase him for his blunder, he’s “rescued” by Luke (Rick Malambri), our prettycracker hero and Captain of the “good” crew, the Pirates. Luke leads him to his secret warehouse space, where a community of talented street dancers lives and rehearses together.

The rest of the <airquotes> plot revolves around this space, which his parents bought for him before they died. The bank is threatening to sell it, the rent having been neglected for months, and the only way to pay for it is by winning World Jam, which is “like, the biggest battle ever.”

In their way are the evil Samurai, led by evil Julien, another over-muscled white guy with a Cleopatra neck. But on their side is fetching newcomer Natalie (Sharni Vinson), the female lead and apple of Luke’s eye. After some cat & mouse, the two blow Slurpees out of straws atop what appears to be a giant subway vent under the Brooklyn Bridge and then make out. Romantic. Must smell great up there.

Will they be able to win the World Jam and save the Dance Lair from Richie Rich Cleopatra Bad Guy? I don’t know. Whatever. There’s going to be some impressive dancing. Everything else can go to Hell.

The talent of the movie is in the supporting cast, which includes two spindly Argentinian twins (the Lombards), a brightly bespectacled dancer/electrician (the amazing tWitch from SYTYCD), an archetypal Wise African Guy (Keith Stallworth), the tall, boneless Asian guy (Glee‘s ‘Other Asian,’ Harry Shum Jr.), the inhumanly talented popper (‘Madd Chadd’ from LXD), and even cameos from choreographer Dave Scott and former SYTYCD champion Joshua, who play evil-crew people. These are the folks who can really dance.

These guys all showcase their stuff in three main performances. (Don’t worry: there are minor ones too, to get you through.) The first round is against a dirty crew–like, literally covered in dirt. The second round is against “the champions of Asia,” and is just downright hilarious. (And we learn this: Asians can’t dance in water.) The third and final round is against the Samurai, of course, and I’ll let you watch that one. It’s a spectacle of spectacles.

Structurally, “Step Up 3D” went the way of “You Got Served.” The two previous installments centered around an Arts school in Baltimore, where hip-hop and ballet were fused into some kind of ferociousness and teenage hormones felled class barriers. This one centered around a straight-up Battle for money, territory, and pride, a la “Served.” No real classist issues or style fusion going on here. But they were expendable anyway.

Also, unlike the previous two, it takes a small time-out to pay homage to dance films of yore. Moose and his childhood friend (Alyson Stoner) launch into a Singin’ In the Rain-style ditty accompanied by music playing from an ice cream truck. That’s what I’d like to see more of: spontaneous dancing for which there is no valid context and for which all logic melts away. If there were just some way to remove the singing from musicals…

You’re going to read some bad reviews of this movie, and this is understandable. Not everyone is going to realize that reviewing John Chu for coherence and narrative makes as much sense as reviewing Von Trier for the dancing. Ever seen “The Perfect Human“? Turns out he can’t do air flares.

Good “Day” for a Cruise

I asked a couple people if they wanted to join me for “a movie” after work today. It turned out they both had plans already, so, as I often do, I went alone. It’s just as well. I didn’t want to admit to anyone that I was seeing “Knight and Day” anyway. “It had a funny preview,” I would have choked out. But that would have been disingenuous of me. The real reason I went to see “Knight and Day”—aside from having an AMC gift card to burn—was that I wanted an excuse to write about Tom Cruise.

There are very few celebrities bigger than Tom Cruise. I would wager that more people know his name than Beyonce’s. I would wager that more people know his name than Meryl Streep’s. Than Wolf Blitzer’s. Than Salman Rushdie’s. Think about that line from “Gone in 60 Seconds”: “Impound them all. I don’t give a damn if it belongs to Tom Cruise!” They could’ve chosen any L.A.-based celebrity for that line. And they chose him. There’s a reason for it.

He’s just been so big for so long. (t.w.s.s.) Find me someone who’s never seen a Tom Cruise movie and I’ll give you $10 (blind people don’t count.) And yet he’s the reason—let’s be real here—for my lack of disclosure today: “You’re going to see that Tom Cruise movie?” my friends would’ve said, “Why?! He’s nuts!”

I’m just going to say it: I enjoy Tom Cruise. I always have. I don’t think he’s the greatest actor of our time. I don’t think he’s a particularly awesome person. I don’t think I’d really want to have a coffee and scone with him. But you can’t deny that he’s made some classic-ass movies. He has an on-screen quality that one doesn’t see every day. I don’t care about all the shit people say about him—that…

a)…he’s crazy! Did you see when he was jumping up and down on Oprah’s couch shouting about how much he loved Katie Holmes!? Yeah, I did. Did you see that time Ozzie Osbourne ate the fucking head off of a bat in front of 10,000 people? Did you see Christian Bale go off on his production team? Did you see the way Dave Eicke ripped off his belt and threw it across the room at karaoke the other night? People do crazy things. Especially entertainers. Especially when they’re in love or trying to fake it. Jumping up and down on Oprah’s couch and declaring love for your lawfully wedded wife is not an offense punishable by loss of respect as a performer. It was actually refreshing to see someone not turn into The Orphan Oliver in front of Oprah.

b)…he adheres to a crazy religion! Do I even need to deal with this? Let’s say an alien landed on Earth and we all took turns explaining our belief systems and the lore involved therein. Scientology would not sound any crazier than any of the other religions (see George Carlin). Perhaps it would even sound less crazy. At least he’s not bombing anyone or holding Inquisitions.

c)…he brainwashed Katie Holmes! Bullshit. Katie Holmes did not drink any Kool-Aid. She chose to become Mrs. Cruise. She chose to be a Scientologist. She chose to towel off after Dawson’s Creek. No one brainwashed her but herself.

d)…he’s a bad actor! No he’s not. Watch him in “Magnolia.” Watch him in “Jerry Maguire.”  Christ, watch him in “Tropic Thunder”! When he wants to, the man can act.

e)…but he’s playing the same crazy character in all those movies! So is Jack Nicholson.

A friend of mine said, after seeing the preview, that it “looked like Tom Cruise playing a secret agent guy—playing Tom Cruise.” All right, I’ll give him that. Cruise didn’t really “dissolve” into this character as the great actors do. He didn’t become Roy Miller. It was more like demonic possession.

But, you know, if was fun to watch.

“Knight and Day” knows exactly what it is. The action is so hyperbolic that it would almost qualify as a send-up of the Bond Genre. What makes the movie work, I think, is the dialogue during the action scenes. (I would call it “banter,” but there’s too much screaming.) Cruise plays an action hero that also doubles as a sort of life coach, full of smiles and compliments and positive reinforcement for Cameron Diaz’s horribly incapable character, which, amid the car chases and gunfire and helicopters, is somehow hilarious.

Diaz and Paul Dano also pretty much play themselves, Diaz a spastic, goofy, leggy, and  occasionally moronic blonde named June and Dano a geeky boy-genius named Simon Feck, inventor of a Certs-pack-size battery, code-named Zephyr, that never runs out of energy.

The plot of the movie revolves around the Zephyr. Everyone wants it: Spanish arms dealers, the CIA (once again portrayed as corrupt) and of course Roy. Roy’s the only one left who wants to protect & preserve the inventor and the invented for honorable purposes, and June gets wrapped up in it all unwittingly. Action scenes ensue, along with a running gag of people getting drugged. Solid. Gotta love GHB jokes.

I love it when movies like this don’t take themselves too seriously. It embraces its physical impossibilities, its Dad jokes (“I have to be there. My little sister April is getting married. She’s April. I’m June. She’s Marching down the aisle…”) and its subtle references (Tom Cruise’s opening scene is him eating an ice cream cone–a nutty one–wink!). Sure, there’s not much chemistry between Cruise and Diaz, but how is anyone going to have chemistry with Cruise these days? It’s like having chemistry with Gary Busey. Frankly I would worry. Chemistry is overrated anyway, when there’s ridiculousness to be had. And with these reactants, plus Hall and Oates on the soundtrack, there’s perfect chemistry for that.

So this Rabbi walks into a club…

I don’t know if it’s racist, but my roommate and I sometimes refer to the Hasidic Jewish men in my neighborhood as “cowboys” because I once saw a group of them walking down the street at around sunset, and their hats and long jackets made their silhouettes look particularly Texan. Hopefully they’d take it as a compliment. Cowboys are cool, right?

It goes without saying, then, that the premise of “Holy Rollers” was especially fascinating to me; living in Crown Heights, I see Hasids every day, and yet I know very little about them.

The movie is based on the true story of a Hasidic smuggling ring, active in 1998, who imported over a million Ecstasy pills before they were caught. Basically, the ring leaders were using unassuming Orthodox Jews as “mules” to get past customs, exploiting their reputation for penitence and respect for law. How a movie was not made about these guys sooner is beyond me.

The expectation is that this movie will be funny. Orthodox Jewish drug smugglers. The kid from “Adventureland.” Justin Bartha. Q-Tip. A titular pun. All signs point to comedy. But the movie (fortunately) wasn’t straight laughs.

In the beginning there is God. That’s pretty much Sam’s (Jesse Eisenberg) life. He’s going to be a Rabbi. He’s engaged to be married, and he’s meeting with his future wife to discuss how many children they will produce. But before all that can happen, Yosef (Justin Bartha), his close friend Leon’s fractious, Nike-sporting older brother, offers Sam an opportunity to make “a bit of side cash” transporting “medicine.” Then it’s not too long before Sam is fully dissolved into the velvet-lined, strobe-lit, high-income trafficking world and lopping off his peyos, or what I, in my ignorance, call “dangle dreads.” But it means giving up everything else in the process–including his family.

This collision of two vastly different worlds had the potential to be very funny. So I respect the filmmakers  for their decision to not let this play out as a full-on comedy. There’s too much rich fodder to give it an ultra-lite treatment. In fact, in the end, I would’ve appreciated even more sobriety.

My only problem with this movie is that, with so many laughs thrown in, I wasn’t sure how seriously I could take the characters. About halfway through, we discover that this movie wasn’t really about its plot and its amusing premise, but about the pressures and tensions at work inside this very insular and enigmatic sect of Brooklynites. But it’s meant to be funny, so are these people I’m watching caricatures of the real thing? If I’m watching a cartoonified cultural study, what can I safely take from it? How much is real and how much hyperbole? Because of this film’s double identity, you never quite know. I went in to this movie knowing very little about my beardy neighbors. And unfortunately I’ve come out the same way.

Realistically, though, for this movie to have even the slightest chance to make money, it had to be what it is.

And, of course, it had to have a couple recognizable faces in it. One, Jesse Eisenberg, does an excellent job with his role of Sam. He plays the dramatic scenes with surprising believability—a feat his counterpart “name” actor, Justin Bartha, doesn’t quite carry out. Mr. Bartha is effective and funny in his rebel-Jew role, but when things get extra-sticky, he doesn’t let you forget that you’re watching a movie.

The fact that it’s based on a true story makes me want to see a documentary on it. Really, I just want to know more about these cowboys’ lives, and I don’t feel like I can rely on anything I’ve learned from “Holy Rollers.” It was a worthy appetizer though. I may have to resort to local espionage. Or maybe not.

Even Banksy is totally speechless

“All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence; then success is sure.”
—Mark Twain

I can see now why all the reviews I’ve seen of “Exit through the Gift Shop”  have been so vague.

You’ll read that this film is about a French guy who chases down the elusive, renowned British street artist, Banksy, and gets him on camera. But then Banksy cleverly turns the camera on the Frenchman, whom he regards as “more interesting” than himself.

All this is true. And this is probably the knowledge you should have when you buy a ticket for this one. No more, no less. You should be thinking, oh, a documentary on a documentarian. That’s clever, in a sort of postmodern, “meta-” way.

Then, when the movie takes a turn that, if made in fiction, would make everyone cry, “Implausable!”, you can be amused or horrified or saddened or embittered or whatever it is your heart presses you to be–with the rest of the audience.

Bansky says he directed the film the way he did because Thierry (the Frenchman) was more interesting. But really, while the obsessive, capricious Thierry is clearly lacking a chair or two from his dinette set, the most interesting thing Banksy was able to capture was the phenomenon of Thierry’s eventual “accomplishments.” (Epigraph.)

Just go see it. As I mentioned, Banksy turns the camera on the cameraman. But really, as you will find, it’s more like he turns it on us.

“The Ghost Writer”: This way to the beef.

Rejoice! There’s a new Roman Polanski film! And everyone is singing and dancing. Not without good reason, either. It’s not every day that this particular talent makes something just for us. Epileptics beware…it’s a wink-fest.

In the great director’s latest, Ewan McGregor again plays the Embroiled Straight Man  (a la “Deception,” only his character isn’t as bright here), this time as the eponymous ghost writer for Adam Lang, a handsome, charismatic, but ostensibly vacuous former British Prime Minister (Pierce Brosnan). Lang recently sold his memoirs for 10 million to a big NYC publishing house, but his original ghost writer has “drowned” in an “accident.” McGregor’s character, who remains nameless throughout the film, takes a lucrative offer to replace the dead guy and flies out to a nearby Martha’s Vineyard-esque island where Mr. Lang is staying. But thanks to some clues left behind by the original ghost writer, he finds himself knowing a little too much about Mr. Lang’s dubious past.

To further complicate things, word is getting out in the media that Lang is guilty of torture-related war crimes and is avoiding his return to England, where he would face prosecution in international courts. News cameras and protesters are now flooding the island—including one furiously vengeful old British vet brandishing a poster of his dead son.

Sounds good, right? It is.

“The Ghost Writer” is an entertaining, taut, suspenseful, well acted, and even occasionally funny thriller about international politics and corruption. The dialogue is smart, the pacing is on par, and the movie uses one of those annoying personal GPS units in a way that might be worth the ticket price by itself. Watching it was a good time. I can say that without any hesitation.

But here’s what I can’t say about it. I can’t say—and these are recycled words from one of the great dance critics of our time—that the meat was in the sandwich. No, the meat of “The Ghost Writer” was all over the kitchen. Let me explain what this means, and why it may not even be a bad thing to have let a few cold cuts escape the ciabatta.

Although I can’t claim to comprehend 100% the unfathomable depths of JC Chasez’s critical commentary on Randy Jackson Presents America’s Best Dance Crew, I took his phrase “The meat was in the sandwich” to mean this: everything this dance crew wanted us to see, they had just lain before us.

Now if you take out “dance crew” and replace it with “Polanski” this judgment would not hold up regarding this movie. Everything Polanski wanted us to see has not been lain before us. There were prerequisites.

The real clout and richness behind this movie–that is, what the critics have responded to–lies in knowing about what happened to Mr. Polanski himself in real life. Having pled guilty to unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor in Los Angeles in 1977, he went into a sort of self-imposed exile in Europe to avoid sentencing, and has pretty much been there ever since. This whole situation is obviously mirrored by Adam Lang’s reluctance to return to England to face the courts, so this movie can be viewed as Mr. Polanski’s commentary on his own situation.

And the exophoric shin-kicking does not end there. There are also obvious parallels between Adam Lang and real-life Tony Blair and subtler references to real-life scandals involving Dick Cheney’s Halliburton corporation as well.

So is this bonus material? Extra credit? Read any of the reviews of this movie and this is what they talk about—Polanski’s coy subversion. There’s something to be said for it, for sure. That same sort of subversion is what made “District 9” so well received last year. There’s art in threading your message, or your plaint, or whatever it may be, into a slick, commercially successful package and disseminating it to the public.

I don’t want to give anyone the idea that this wasn’t a good movie; it certainly was. But I think Mr. Polanski may have overdone it this time. There’s too much pointing and nudging. So much that “The Ghost Writer” starts to feel like a vessel for Mr. Polanski to discuss his politics and personal problems through allusions, and I can’t help but wonder what this movie would have been if the focus weren’t so much on the things outside of the movie’s world. It’s hard to evaluate this film without certain prior knowledge about the director, and that very fact makes me question its foundations. It could very well be hollow in there.

Personally, I prefer more of my meat in the sandwich. Whether you want to admit it or not, there’s something conceited about requiring an audience to know something about your personal life to fully appreciate your movie. But then again, there’s that old dictum: “write what you know.” And then there’s the assertion that true art makes its audience work…

I’m just saying that the work shouldn’t be “Google me.”

Gucci does Grief

Tom Ford, come to find out, is not the “Searchers” guy. That’s John Ford. Right. Yeah, I think that guy’s dead. But I knew I’d read somewhere that this Tom was famous for something. And research indeed reveals that Tom Ford had been the renowned creative director for Gucci, and now he’s made his impressive directorial debut in film. This background knowledge explains a lot.

It explains, at least, why half of “A Single Man” could be freeze-framed and repurposed as a spread in Vogue: exotic-looking faces, arresting landscapes, bodies reposeful and often naked or nearly. Bad thing? Not necessarily (especially if you’re a lady). But period-piece hounds and Mad Men-crazy moviegoers expecting that same early-60s aesthetic won’t find it. It’s a different kind of pretty.

In fact, I would hesitate to call this a period-piece at all; the Missile Crisis era is little more than a backdrop and a context here. Unfortunately, I haven’t read the Christopher Isherwood novel this movie is based on, so I can’t say what’s been sifted out of the original, but in this movie, the prevailing politics of this time are nothing but the falling axe. The movie is the story of the mess it’s made.

L.A.-based English professor George Falconer (Colin Firth) is faced with swallowing each new day like a horse pill after Jim (Matthew Goode), his lover of 16 years, dies in a car accident while visiting his family. “Get through the goddamned day” has become his meridian mantra and his world has gone gray. Due to the early sixties’ prevailing aversion to homosexuality, George has no real outlet to express his grief; no one wants to hear about it. Thus, he feels trapped in his thoughts. To illustrate, Ford frequently cuts to a shot of Mr. Firth flailing around underwater, the point being that he has no way to bail himself out of his own mind, and he’s drowning in it.

The only time George allows himself to viscerally emote in front of anyone is just after Jim’s cousin—the parents refused to notify him—calls to tell him of the death and informs him that he’s not allowed to attend the service. And the sound in that scene, as he falls sobbing into the arms of his old friend Charlotte (Julianne Moore), is rather brilliantly drowned out by the downpour of rain outside.

The movie follows George through one day—a day that, according to his morning narration, will be “different.” And we see how it will be different as he tosses his handgun into his bag, buys bullets, retrieves his insurance papers from his bank vault, gives a lecture to his students about Fear, and refuses sex from an annoyingly handsome young Spaniard whom Mr. Ford obviously plucked from his hefty male-model rolodex. This day will be his last.

Accompanied by well placed cries of weepy string instruments, Mr. Firth’s performance is close to perfection. He does such a job selling his unhappiness and his exhausted, irreconcilable  existence that we actually want him to squeeze the trigger. It’s for his own good. We can’t stand to see him live like this.

The movie, of course, is full of flashbacks, which, to many a critics’ dismay, all manifest themselves as overly wrought set pieces. One takes place, for example, on a breathtaking outcropping of desert rocks. The couple is sunning themselves and talking, but the shot is panned out far enough where you can’t help but take in the background terrain. Initially I wanted to criticize the director for making the flashbacks unrealistically beautiful. Then I realized that Mr. Ford was being Joycean, and that this is exactly how a grieving person would remember time with a loved one. The moment would be colored, magnified, and glossed, any imperfections filled in with cerebral Pulchriputty until it was torture-yourself beautiful. We’ve all been there, I think, staining the wood of our memories.

I’m looking forward to more from Tom Ford. He’s obviously a brilliant designer who knows how to make an awesome picture. That’s half the battle in film making, in my opinion. And he seems to have put a lot of thought into how to reflect the psychology of the characters with his visuals.

However, I’m afraid this film will be pigeon-holed as a “gay” movie when it’s really about grief and loss, eliciting the same emotions as, say, Joan Didion’s Year of Magical Thinking. Colin Firth’s performance is ridiculously good and should be seen by all…especially when juxtaposed with conjunctionless teleprompter performance of high-cheeked former child star Nicholas Hoult, who I’m not entirely sure isn’t a robot.

Pedro’s not in a rush.

Last time I wrote a review of an Almodovar film, I got into some shit with a hyper-intelligent friend of mine. And now I’m actually hesitant to do it again, after having my intellectual grill so thoroughly dismantled.  What happened was, I didn’t like “Volver” much, but I wasn’t thoughtful or clever or even patient enough to articulate why I didn’t like it. So instead, I fell back on evaluating Penelope Cruz’s cleavage. It’s a good thing to fall back on (literally), but it’s cheap (not literally), and it gets you in trouble when smart people read what you write.

So I am hereby swearing off the hormonal brand of adulation (if only for this round).

“Broken Embraces” (“Los abrazos rotos”) was my fourth Almodovar film and my second-favorite. “Talk to Her” (“Hable con ella”) takes it, of course, as one of my favorite movies of all time. “Volver,” as I mentioned, not so much.  But as hit-or-miss as Spain’s preeminent auteur has been for me, he’s never failed to transport me to his Almodovarland. Watching one of his movies is decidedly different from watching any other. I don’t know where he finds it all, but his films just burst with beauty: Color. Language. Sexuality. Music. Art. I go see his films because he—and forgive the cliché—stops to smell the roses.

For example, in “Talk to Her,” he didn’t need to shoot “Café Mueller,” a dance piece by Pina Bausch for several minutes. Same goes for the “Cucurrucucú Paloma” performance at the party. And “Volver,” too, takes a little break and puts its feet up while Ms. Cruz ‘s character sings for a couple minutes. Indispensible? No. Beautiful? God yes. So why not?

Much of what sets Almodovar apart from other directors—what gives him the license to flash “Un film de Almodovar” in the credits—is his exquisite taste. We don’t mind pausing with him for a little bit, just to admire whatever it is he’s unearthed for his mise en scene. We trust that whatever he puts in front of us is well worth our time. His camera lingers and we exhale and we stare at some piece of radiance. And we’re completely immersed—drowned, transported—before we even realize it.

He does it again here. There’s one scene in “Broken Embraces”—a pair of hands pressed to a television screen playing a grainy video in slow motion—during which I wasn’t even aware of my own body. The guy behind me probably could’ve set me on fire and I wouldn’t have realized it until the take was over.  The movie is worth it just for the few seconds of that image.

That said, the rest of it isn’t too bad either. The narrative is split, about half taking place in the early nineties, when Mateo Blanco was in his movie-making prime. He meets the irresistible Lena (Penelope Cruz), who, to finance her father’s medical care, has married her much older former boss, well known businessman Ernesto Martel. Lena has gotten sick of the housewife existence and has decided to audition for Mateo’s film. She has no real acting experience, but gets the part because she has that whatever-it-is that turns every straight man in her radius into a chunk of warm candle wax. It’s only a matter of time before she begins her affair with Mateo, inciting Ernesto’s ferocious, desperate, deeply painful, and hard-to-watch jealousy. So powerful is it that he decides to produce the film so he can keep a closer eye. Then he has her followed. Then he has her taped. Then things turn a little violent, because, really, how could they not?

All this is flashback from present day, as Mateo, who’s now completely blind and has adopted his writer alias Harry Caine as his actual name, tells the story of his lost love to his convalescent assistant, the likeable young Diego. He confides in the young man as a result of recent events: Ernesto Martel has just died and now his scorned gay son has returned under the alias “Ray X” and suspiciously attempted to contact Mateo (now Harry) about writing a script about a scorned gay son.

Oh, these Almo plots are so fun to summarize…

The biggest story surrounding this movie was that it was to be Penelope Cruz’s toughest role yet, playing an aspiring actress who isn’t all that great of an actress but is possessed of a magnetism that could coax small planets out of orbit. Without question, she’s lived up to her task. I could tell because I completely forgot about it. She will rake in some awards for this; I guarantee it. But she isn’t a lone rose. The movie is full of strong performances. Another that was especially good was Ruben Ochandiano as Martel’s awkward gay son who later becomes the dubious Ray X.

Still, the reason to see this movie is its writer/director. We’ve seen jealousy plots before, and stories of loss and of doomed, desperate loves. Shakespeare was all over that before I was even born! But this story is told with such meticulousness and grace that the audience can forget that they’ve seen it before and simply enjoy it. I’ll always jump in the carriage as long as Pedro’s driving.

It Is a World of Hateful Philistines, Mr. Jacobs

I don’t even want to think about what kind of problems “(Untitled)” is going to cause for film archivists, search engines, video store employees, librarians, etc. Believe me; I’ve been there. Titles like this would make my blood boil. But if the title weren’t such an obnoxious pain in the ass, it wouldn’t have been so apt.

It’s not that the movie itself was obnoxious. The movie, actually, is really good. It’s the cast of characters that’s exceptionally grating. In fact, the first thing I scribbled on my little piece of paper in the darkness of the movie theater was, “dickhead artists.”

We open with a painting by one Josh Jacobs. A crowd is gathered around it. It’s an abstract—a few dots and some colors fading into one another. Suddenly, we hear a ding, and the crowd disperses. We realize then that they weren’t looking at the painting. They were waiting for the elevator alongside which the painting had been hung. They get on, which leaves Adrian Jacobs (Adam Goldberg), Josh’s brother, staring at it by himself.

Josh is doing fairly well with his painting. They’re being sold en masse to hotels, banks, and corporations as lobby décor. Adrian, a sound artist, is not doing so well. Josh lectures him with a comical pretension, a smarmy concern for his brother’s well being. He tells Adrian that if he would just sacrifice a little bit of his vanity to get a larger audience, he could do well. Like him. Adrian, however, has no concern for others’ thoughts on his art. What matters is what people will say after he’s dead. His philosophies make themselves very evident later, when he performs his concert of atonal music, scaring off even his own parents.

One person he doesn’t scare off Is Josh’s date for the night, the pale, thin, bespectacled Madeline (Marley Shelton), who has a pension for clothing that is loud in the literal sense (squeaky leather, beaded skirts, a jacket that crinkles like a Frito bag). She’s intrigued by the quiet, brooding Adrian and asks him to perform at her Chelsea gallery (an honor Josh has never received). The event—Adrian’s documents looking more like architectural diagrams than sheet music—doesn’t go well, but afterward, Madeline asks him to her loft for a few drinks—and thus proceeds one of the funnier sex scenes I’ve seen. Mind you: Madeline wears extremely complex clothing.

So that’s the set-up. The rest of the movie spends its time trying to sort out the endless pushing and pulling between the belligerent forces of artistic ambition, money, and integrity. Everyone shows his ugly side. Adrian becomes hypocritical, Madeline becomes greedy, Josh becomes desperate, and then they all take turns backhanding each other like it’s some absurdist episode of Gossip Girl.

It would’ve been easy to make this film a straight modern-art-is-bullshit comedy. The elements are there. The funniest characters are Madeline’s other artists. Ray Barko does unorthodox taxidermy. His work includes: an angry chimp sucking on the hose of a vacuum cleaner, a distraught mini goat on a tricycle, a Ramboesque bobcat armed with a stapler gun, and three chickens which appear to have been thrown headfirst through a dartboard. Monroe, a nervous, soft-spoken man prone to weeping, does….well, not much. He’s a minimalist. One of his pieces is called “Post-It Stuck to Wall (2007)” and another is “A Light Bulb Turning On and Off (2008).” Yes. That’s what they are. Grant, the assistant curator, points out their “superficial banality—that’s both sexual and imposing” and you want to roundhouse kick him, but you’re laughing too hard.

So there’s that. There’s definitely a few jabs at (air quotes) high art and those involved in it. However, “(Untitled)” manages to distance itself from pure parody with an underlying respect of its subject matter. A few of these crazies pushing the boundaries might just have something. There’s just a lot lost in hypocrisy and inevitable subjectivity. And in fear.

Fear governs the life of one of the movie’s most interesting characters, Porter Canby—a young, naïve, and very wealthy man, deathly afraid of being bland. His philosophy is that if he doesn’t understand something, it must be worthwhile. And thus he’s taken advantage of—bullied, duped, and robbed—again and again, until his home is filled willy-nilly with all the bizarre, creepy shit he’s been told to buy. You can’t help but feel sorry for him, watching him struggle to fit into a world he’d be better off without.

But the movie in no way implies that the world would be better off without “that world.” As much of an asshole and a hypocrite as Adrian is, you want him to succeed—he cares so deeply about his work. There’s something to be said for that, something magnetic about it. Progress must be made somehow, and it’s usually a rough ride. Some suffer. Some sell out. Some even die. But not us. We can laugh at these idiots from our comfy theater seats. And kind of wish we were one of them.

Cellist prettifies dead folk

It happened again: I was very upset with the Academy’s choice of foreign film. I had seen “Waltz with Bashir” and I knew that it must win. But this other movie, “Departures,” won instead. And I was like, “Whaaaat? Bullshit.” But I’d said the same thing in 2006 about “Pan’s Labyrinth” which fell to “The Lives of Others.” I was really pissy about it. Then I saw “The Lives of Others.” And then I kind of understood. Now I’ve seen “Departures.” And I kind of understand.

I don’t know that it was better than “Waltz with Bashir,” but it was close. They were different movies entirely. One’s animated, one’s not. One deals with bulk death, one deals with one death at a time. One twists your intestines and opens your eyes, one probes for your heart. (It found mine—well, at least my tear valves. Let’s just say I’m glad I went by myself this time.)

The film begins with Daigo, its doubtful narrator, driving on a snowy road, an old man in the passenger seat. He’s wondering whether he can actually do this new job: this job of ceremoniously preparing the dead for the casket. A cellist by trade, Daigo had been recently hired by an orchestra, only to have the orchestra dissolved shortly thereafter. So he’d moved back to his hometown, where his mother had left him a house, and started looking for work. Then he stumbled upon a newspaper ad that mentioned working with “departures”—and the rest is history.

At first he does it because it pays well, but the quiet beauty of the preparation ceremony quickly grows on him. No one comes out and says it, but there is an obvious parallel between the pre-casket ceremonies and his cello performances. Both are slow, precise, and elegant solemnities. No one will be left wondering, “why a musician?” The film does a wonderful job convincing us that someone who loves the cello could not help but love jazzing up cadavers. Ludicrous, I know, but you believe it.

Before the job starts to grow on him, however, is when the film has its best comedic moments: the infomercial for his business in which he plays the dead body; the suspiciously expedient hiring process; Daigo’s inability to deal with a decaying corpse; and the dodging of a cute, effervescent, sweetly inquisitive wife. This last item eventually plays a major role when she leaves him, calling him a liar and declaring him “unclean.” Well, honestly, what did you expect? Hiding the nature of your occupation from a spouse is rarely a successful enterprise (see “Mr. and Mrs. Smith”).

However, this is not a love story. The connubial drama is a plot device—an obstacle, in a way. One of many. The movie is about Daigo finding his calling in an unexpected place, after his musical ambitions were ostensibly lost in the laundry. He knows that his new job has a certain nobility. It’s just that no one else knows. Besides us. The other characters’ inability to see this is maddening.

Toward the end, I was afraid it was losing focus. There comes a hackneyed monologue from an old man about how he thinks death is “like a gateway,” which is initially an eye-roller—until you realize that this is exactly the speech this blue-collar old-man character would give. He didn’t say anything revelatory, but he meant every word. There’s something admirable in that. Much the same, “Departures” will stick, even if you’ve heard it all before.