October 18, 2002

I spent the last couple of days in the past…

On Wednesday, I caught Paul Greengrass’ Bloody Sunday again.  On Thursday afternoon, I finally got to see Alex Gibney & Eugene Jarecki’s The Trials of Henry Kissinger.  And by night, it was Neil Burger’s Interview With The Assassin, which deals with a man who claims to have been the gunman on the grassy knoll.  All three films are artfully made and both have a documentary feel… though only one is actually a doc.

Bloody Sunday is a smart, carefully conceived film – literally, on film – that creates the illusion of putting you right into the middle of one of recent history’s most ugly days, the attack by English military on a mostly peaceful Irish march on Sunday, January 30, 1972.  You spend the day, primarily, with Ivan Cooper, a member of Parliament and the organizer of the march.  But Greengrass takes you into the mindset of the other side as well, offering plenty of the blind, self-important attitude that caused the tragedy of the day, but also the more thoughtful, if helpless, faces of men who know that their work is a dark cloud over their brethren. 

James Nesbitt plays Ivan Cooper and its one of those performances that simply “is.”  You don’t see him acting for a second in this film.  If this were a bigger film and didn’t have an accent, he would be a serious Oscar candidate.  But then again, no one looks like they are acting here.  It is raw, intimate tale and the connection with these people becomes quite personal. 

The only problem I have with this movie is that it feels like an incomplete story to me.  How did we get here?  Where are we going to go for the next 30 years?  How can this horror continue in what seems to be a civilized nation for all of these years?  The emotional answers come easily.  But Paul Greengrass seems to be reaching for more than that.  And his only failure is that this myopic vision does not ever feel universal… maybe that’s asking too much.  But it is also the difference between very good and truly great.

Irish people who lived through Bloody Sunday know the history by living it.  It is kind of horrifying to think that there is a generation in Ireland that is already foggy on the details.  Maybe they aren’t.  But I am sure that there is a generation of Americans for whom Vietnam is more icon than reality.  These kids need to be dragged to see The Trials of Henry Kissinger.

The Trials of Henry Kissinger is a remarkable piece of filmmaking… because you get it.  The film focuses on about 15 years of very complicated American history.  And of course, you could make a whole separate documentary, with pretty much the same group of interviewees, that offers a very different perspective on who did what to whom in Southeast Asia.  Is Christopher Hitchens a “sewer pipe sucker?”  There are a lot of people who will say “yes.”  But is Hitchens dead on target about Kissinger?  There are a lot of the same people who will say, “yes,” again. 

The thing that is so remarkable about this documentary is that as single-minded as it is, it still leaves room for the viewer to consider the many, many pieces of this puzzle.  Even more importantly, it speaks to the most basic issue of American political and military leadership in the world… something we are facing yet again with the impending invasion of Iraq.  Do the winners get to write the history?  And who are the winners?  And beyond the smokescreen of exporting Coca-Cola and McDonald’s, does America or any other military power have the right to impose their will – based on true beliefs or nothing more than hubris and cash flow – on other sovereign nations? 

I must acknowledge that The Trials of Henry Kissinger is a film made mostly of video interviews and archived film images.  It is, functionally, a great episode of Frontline.  But here is where you, as a moviegoer, have to ask yourself a question – do you want documentary to become exclusively a televised form with the exception of the brilliantly stunting Michael Moore and others, or do you want to support the exchange of ideas in large places of human gathering, where the shared experience of truth feels quite different indeed?

The smallest film of my retro travels is Interview With The Assassin.  This film is so intended to feel like a documentary that the filmmaker submitted his screenplay to producers Brian Koppleman and David Levien as “a transcript’ of the interview.  Basically, this is a two-man show.  Raymond J. Barry is Walter Ohlinger… The Assassin of the title.  Dylan Haggerty is Ron Kobeleski, his interviewer.  Their interview becomes a road trip which becomes a trip into the heart of someone’s darkness… I’m not sure that we ever quite find out whose.

This Interview is a terrific idea with a great performance by the always great and often underrated Raymond J. Barry.  That said, it comes up a bit short.  It doesn’t have the driving stylization of a JFK.  And the maze created by Barry’s character simply is not infuriating enough to get the audience’s heart beating faster… faster… faster… until we can barely breathe.  Instead, it remains interesting throughout.  I certainly can’t say that I was ever bored.  But the magic… the passion of a man trying to prove that he did something horrible before he does… the question of whether he is simply delusional, which is every bit as hard to do well…. the desperation of the wanna-be filmmaker who really needs this to be real in order to be anything more than a loser in the game of life.  Raise the stakes… for God’s sakes, raise the stakes!

I have to be honest.  The weakest link here feels like Dylan Haggerty.  Maybe it is that his role simply isn’t a flashy one.  But while a John C. Reilly would hit a role like this out of the park, Haggerty seems to be along for the ride for an awfully long part of the movie.

Neil Burger is clearly a talented guy.  And he does a good job, for the most part, behind the camera.  But Interview with the Assassin is a movie that you should be able to look away from… and you can. 

MOVIE CITY NEWS:  There’s a new site in town called Movie City News.  You should take a look.  You can find it here.

BOX OFFICE WEEKEND: The tracking on The Ring, which is opening on a relatively small number of screens, puts it in the low teens… but I don’t believe the tracking.  I think The Ring is the most anticipated movie for a hungry teen audience since XXX.  And I suspect that the low screen count will cost DreamWorks, but that they can still do more than $20 million with this film.  And the film that I think will pay the biggest price for The Ring’s success is Red Dragon.

Abandon is a movie without major opening names or a clear, quality pitch.  Yes, this could be the coming out of Katie Holmes as the next woman-in-danger starlet.  Paramount has made a lot of hay with the genre.  But, where is the classic punch line?  “Why are you doing this?” is not Ashley Judd or J-Lo fighting back.

And is Formula 51 really opening?  I love Sam Jackson and Robert Carlyle, but this is about the lowest-key major opening I can recall.  And assuming that they make the Top Nine, they are likely to have the lowest screen count going. 

Do yourself a favor… go to the art house this weekend.  Real Women Have Curves, Naqoyqatsi and The Grey Zone are new… Spirited Away, Bloody Sunday, Bowling for Columbine, Mostly Martha, Secretary and so many others are still out there.

WEEKEND GUESTIMATES

1. The Ring – 1981 venues – new - $21 million
2. Sweet Home Alabama – 3282 venues – off 40 percent - $8.6 million
3. Red Dragon – 3305 venues – off 55 percent - $7.9 million
4. Abandon – 2341 venues – new - $7.3 million
5. Brown Sugar - 1378 venues - off 35 percent - $7 million 
6. My Big Fat Greek Wedding – 2014 venues – off 20 percent - $6.8 million
7. The Transporter – 2610 venues – off 45 percent - $5 million
8. The Tuxedo – 2424 venues – off 40 percent - $4.2 million
9. Formula 51 – 1857 venues – new - $3.8 million
10. Tuck Everlasting – 1448 venues – off 29 percent - $3.7 million
11. White Oleander – 1510 venues – off 40 percent - $ 3.4 million

READER OF THE DAY:  NO PH writes:  “A couple of movies I've seen on UK region DVDs.

Dark Water - from the same Japanese director of "Ring". More sad than scary but still a good movie about a mother protecting her daughter.

My Sassy Girl - really fun, strange, sappy romantic comedy from Korea.  I hear Dreamworks owns the rights and will be making an American version.

I would love to be able to recommend these movies to friends but without a multi-region DVD player there's no way for them to view them.”

ONE WHO KNOWS writes:  “I just wanted to respond to High Hat's incorrect assessment of Dreamworks' relationship with the Hideo Nataka's version of RING.  Dreamworks does not own the original film or any of the sequels, just the remake rights.  As to who does own RING '98, I don't know (Fine Line had supposedly purchased the rights to the first two films back in '99, but nothing ever came of that), but if Dreamworks was really trying to put the kibosh on the original then why is it and its two sequels screening next week (more than once) at NYC's Walter Reade Theater at Lincoln Center as part of the "Scary Movies: 30 Years of Horror" series?  While it's true that Miramax is sitting on PULSE (which, sadly, is not the first time they've sat on a foreign original in order to remake it, like they did with NIGHTWATCH), anyone who wants to see the original RING, and who owns a multi-region DVD player, should know that the original is available on a British DVD from any number of DVD importers.  (Here's a link to the Lincoln Center horror fest: http://www.filmlinc.com/wrt/programs/10-2002/horror/horror.htm)

But the one thing that's the most important to point out is that the reason why a lot of Japanese films (and not just horror films) have trouble finding their way to the U.S. have nothing to do with U.S. distributors, but rather the Japanese rights holders.  As they did with you and BATTLE ROYALE (which many U.S. companies have tried to purchase the rights to), Japanese companies such as Toho have a long history of asking for too much money and make excessive demands on U.S. distributors.  Unless you happen to have a long standing relationship with a Japanese company, they're very reluctant to sell to new U.S. accounts, and then there's the matter of Japanese studios who could care less about there U.S. audience.  Toho is particularly notorious about giving American Godzilla fans the shaft; when both Criterion and Columbia announced plans to release Godzilla films in their original languages, Toho demanded that no Japanese language versions of these films were to be made available in the U.S. (Criterion eventually canceled their plans to do their Godzilla titles, which included the 1954 non-Raymond Burr original).

But there is hope.  All three titles that High Hat mentioned have found U.S. distribution (Tidepoint Pictures for UZUMAKI, or SPIRAL, Synapse Films for WILD ZERO and Media Blasters for ICHII THE KILLER) and many Japanese and Korean films show up on region-free DVDs distributed nationally by Tai Seng.  Certainly, I'm with High Hat that these films need to receive wider distribution beyond just film festivals, but he should know that more and more are getting out there and that in most circles it's pretty well known about the Japanese horror renaissance.”

A GUY writes:  “Akira Kurosawa wrote some two dozen screenplays for other directors, not even counting the handful of remakes made of his own originals done inside Japan.

Almost none have ever been shown outside Japan, and many aren't even widely known inside Japan anymore, deriving mostly as they did in the 1940s and 1950s. Even two of his posthumously produced scripts, AFTER THE RAIN and DORA-HEITA -- this latter made by Japan's greatest living veteran director, Kon ichikawa, who despite his advanced age has never stopped plugging away -- have failed to make it over here. True, Kurosawa's own final film MADADAYO went straight to video, and that took a while to appear as well; but if there's no theatrical market for these, there surely must be one on video.”

THE B’S NEES writes:  “US distribution of foreign films has gotten worse in the past 15 years. And with the advent of homevideo/DVD- that is inexcusable. However, we are "blessed" with plenty of American remakes of the same films...

Anyways, the movies not available in the US that I'd like to see here are mostly Korean (spent a year there, got to like their film industry)

JSA
Lost Memories 2009
Sorum
Ring (Japanese version)
My Wife is a Gangster
Public Enemy

Other I'll thinkof later of course. I'm surprised Shiri got over to the US, but it took 3 years and the Korean DVD is still better (Region 0).  I wish Criterion would get off its tail and start looking for more modern foreign films to release, or... somebody. Sony does a pretty good job but they are one in a sea of mediocrity.”

And EIGHTEEN INCHES writes:  “I have heard Disney/Miramax has been applying pressure to stop Shaolin Soccer imports from seeing the light in the U.S. with their version of S.S. being released in April (?) 2003.  I always would rather see the original, instead of (in this case) an American re-edit/polish job.  Having said that, I think that the American re-edit will play better to American audiences than the original (which has one of the worst English subtitle translations I've ever seen, and this is a HONG KONG disc I've seen it on.)

I've also seen both Japanese 'RINGU' and the American remake, 'The Ring' and I have to easily concede that the American version is the superior version. They've smoothened the narrative significantly and actually made much of the story elements more subtle.  Very surprising from a big studio remake.  What I'm saddened and sorry to hear, it that at a Canadian early screening of The Ring (not the one I was at) the audience was heckling the movie before it was over.  I don't know if that is an isolated incident or what the typical reaction to this film will be.  I think it is arguably the best AMERICAN horror film in the past 10 years, remake or otherwise (well in a tie with THE OTHERS anyway). 

I'm fascinated with the current revolution in Japanese horror films, but I have to disagree with your reader who said Ichii the Killer was a good film, while it beat you over the head with it's points, narrative-wise it was a complete mess.

A Thai/HK collaboration called the EYE (directed by the Pang Brothers) is another superior Asian horror film which really could find an audience in North America being part Sixth Sense, part RING and part David Fincher.”

E ME:  Tell me all about your weekend movie plans and then, your experiences.