Noteworthy, or Just Worthy of My Note: A Review of 6 Movies

I caved into Match Point just about when everybody around me had seen it. That I would be so willing to bypass a Woody Allen movie was due in part to the disappointment I had with his later films, and also in no small part to the good folks at NOW magazine, who panned the film.

Points off for NOW, because actually watching the film was a small delight. Moving from his familiar milieu of Upper Westside Jewish intelligensia to the refinement of London's high society gave fresh impetus to the film's theme of luck and questioning of the notion of justice. The story is familiar enough: poor Irish boy from the province (Chris Wilton, played by Jonathan Rhys Myer) accidentally broke into Waspy high society and stole the heart of rich heiress Chloe Hewett(a rather insipid performance by Emily Mortimer); everybody fell in love with the young, hardworking, upwardly mobile Chris, but he himself couldn't stay settled but accidentally knocked up a drifting American actress Nola Rice(Scarlett, who else?), who, alas, was once due to marry into the Hewett family herself.

As the film itself was not shy to point out, the story had a lot to say about luck contrary to society's prevalent teachings about hard work. Luck saw to it that Chris Wilton would achieve the kind of lifestyle that, had he relied on hard work alone, he would have never attained; luck also set colliding trajectories for Nola and Chris.

The extent to which the plot stretched luck required a small suspension of belief (some are understandably unhappy about it); another charge levelled against this film--and I agree with it--is that most of the supporting characters were mere caricatures. The rich Hewett family seemed like an assembly of rich people stereotypes: the insipid, good-natured daughter Chloe, the slightly irreverrent and langourous son Tom, the measured and reserved father, and the anal-retentive bitchy snob of a mother. Well, it hardly needs to be said, but not all rich Waspy matrons have to a bitch and have names like Eleanor.

Where the film truly gets points though is Chris Wilton's character and the palpable chemistry between him and Scarlett's Nola Rice. Chris Wilton is a poser: in an early scene he was filmed reading Crime and Punishment (for self-enrichment), but gave up midway and started reading the Oxford Companion to Crime and Punishment instead. His purported love of culture was his passport into high society, which he met with a latent inferiority complex and a faint sulkiness. All this was readily understood by Nola, herself an outsider, whose attitude towards Chris's attempt was in equal measure sympathetic, amused, and slightly disdainful.

This nuanced chemistry was most evident when Chris and Nola sat in a bar after a chance meeting, bonding over their mutual outsider status. Then all of a sudden Nola lost her nuanced touch and became this psychotic and possessive bitch. Why this was the case I can't say, but I suspect it was bad acting on Scarlett Johanssan's part (gasp!!) But Chris's rags-to-riches story was sufficient to drive the story along, his evolving relationship with money, power, and his own desires closely paralleled by our identification with him, lending plausibility to his climactic actions.

It may be an old story, but it surely worked. I found myself much more satisfied in the end than at the end of Crime and Misdemeanor, a similar story but more contrived in comparison to Match Point.

I can't say much about the much-hyped London setting; that "touch" Woody Allen has with New York is conspicuously missing in this movie. Also gone are the quips and witty one-liners. I miss these two things: that spectacular opening sequence to Manhattan and his famous witticism and dissection of neurosis in Annie Hall. Match Point can't match the height of those two movies, and I find the philosophy of it a bit trite. But if only for telling a good story, Match Point still marks a sort of return to form for Woody Allen.

And finally, Scarlett Johanssan was a disappointment. Loud and annoying, she was hardly the femme fatale she was supposed to be. Seduction works when it is (or at least appears) effortless, not when she struts around wearing too much make up and uttering lines like "you are playing a very aggressive game".

And while on that subject, Woody Allen needs to go back to film school to study directing more convincing sex scenes.

---

I went into A Scanner Darkly with a free ticket, which probably explains why I liked it more than I otherwise would--instead of caving to my urge to yell "Shut the fuck up" when the characters talked too much, I just sat back and reminded myself that I wasn't paying for this.

And plenty of that I did. This Linklater film was, in the same vein as Waking Life and Before Sunset, talky, and a lot of the conversations were no more than exchanges between stoners, one of them played by Keanu Reeves, an undercover agent investigating a brain-damaging superdrug called substance D as the drug flooded the country in a functioning but dystopic near-future. As he was forced to take the drug and the damage began to take effect, he found himself gradually assuming the identity of the very person he was investigating.

This was the founding premise of the main theme of identity. It was further complicated by the availability of "scramble suits"--protective clothing that completely disguises one's identity. Agents were required to wear them for security, and of course, secrets lurked beneath these sinister looking contraptions.

The scramble suits nicely reflected the air of paranoia in the Orange County of near-future: the film's greatest success was creating muted fear within the decaying world at large and the quiet horror of one man's private hell as he was eaten away by brain damage and drug-induced hallucinations.

But the film's attempt at being thought-provoking never really took off from there but was instead undercut by its persistent attempt at not-so-subtle current commentary. The government appeared so sinister with all of its survallence activities, that you almost expected a conspiracy from the outset; and when the conspiracy was revealed, all it got from me was an indifferent shrug.

The use of rotoscope animation was useful for a) creating the kind of hallucination-ridden world seen through the eyes of drug addicts ("are those sofas moving or is it just me?") and b) disguising Keanu Reeves's bad acting skills.

Too self-conscious and bent on becoming an instant cult-classic, a Scanner Darkly is bound to become an instant cult-classic among high school art majors.

---

I've been getting my fill of CGI-ladden films lately: Superman Returns, X-men, and Pirates of the Caribean. All three were surprisingly entertaining, although regrettably none of them had enough things being blown up. I mean, that's what they are for, right? And what's with Brandon Routh's face?

Also saw Devil Wears Prada; trivial frivolous fun.