Che

As the initial reviews for Che: Part One trickled out, there was an almost inevitable collective shrug of the shoulders and a seeming determination amongst the media not to be impressed. Projects like this normally go one of two ways, if history tells us anything: they get roundly pummelled with the kind of leering relish normally reserved for child murderers, or they get the whole works – Oscar, plaudits aplenty, the keys to the box office. Che was damned with indifference, grudgingly respected by most with little fanfare. It slipped under the radar to a large extent, much like Three Burials (see below).

The dust has pretty much settled and the film can now be watched on the plasma in one BIG sitting, and I’d argue that this is the only way to watch it: my local Cineworld put them on back-to-back but that’s an ask for the casual moviegoer (I was at some football game or would’ve tentatively braved it) so here’s the compromise: watch them with a little hiatus in between and you can’t go wrong. Not to say that this is a Kill Bill-type situation where the two halves were arguably pointless (one three-hour splice was the original and best idea; too much stuff in there that should’ve been left on the cutting-room floor – see Death Proof). Here, the two parts complement each other perfectly and contain nothing that you could happily excise.

Demián Bichir excellently captures Fidel Castro as a likeably intense commandant leading his band of exiles back to Cuba to topple US puppet Batista. Del Toro’s Guevara is initially a medic with rifle skills, well-liked but on the fringes, a lone Argentine amidst brothers in arms. He even voices his disquiet at being perceived as an outcast; Castro refutes this with a terse advocacy of his being an honorary Cuban, but it’s odd and intriguing watching an uncertain Guevara, pre-iconic status, dealing with issues of belonging and self-worth as Batista’s overthrow was imminent.

Soderbergh’s restlessly interrogative camera flips to black-and-white during flash-forward sequences following Guevara in New York, on television, in cars, and there is clearly an attempt to capture the almost mystical essence of the man. During these scenes the pre-Cuban-assault Che is nowhere to be seen: he is by now imbued with an enigmatic purpose that is part charismatic heft and part elusive, inexorable drive.

The Guevara of the Bolivian sequences, on an increasingly far-reaching quest to spread revolution amongst South America, becomes a tragic figure heading in one direction, and Del Toro’s subtle intensity as he heads for a bloody demise evokes a sense of stubborn, selfless grandeur that seems all too pervasive in contemporary Hollywood.

The truth, and the key to the only real flaw of Che, is the shadow cast over the film by the spectacular central performance. A key criticism of the film has been that Del Toro forces everything else into the background. Fair point, really. Soderbergh throws everything at Del Toro and it bounces; he soon becomes the mesmeric heart of the film, and is perhaps too dominant for a straight biopic. Which is thankfully far from what this is.

Benicio Del Toro not only hits this formidable, countlessly interpreted role out of the park, he knocks it beyond the clouds, dents a jumbo and catches the rebound. In terms of a portrayal of a non-fictitious protagonist, he is as good as anything out there: laughable that he didn’t sweep the board but time will be a better judge. Indeed, the last time you saw anything nearly this good was Bruno Ganz’s oft-erupting volcano in Downfall. It really is the best performance in years; nuanced, painstaking yet wearing doubtlessly arduous research lightly, reluctant to resort to fireworks and thoroughly convincing. It lends the Guevara you’ve seen emblazoned on student t-shirts forever a depth, humanity and complexity fully deserving of the man. Gael Garcia Bernal had a crack at a much earlier incarnation in The Motorcycle Diaries. He was excellent, but he had a whole lot less to do. Del Toro gives us a mammoth, immutable Che Guevara we can live with and contemplate for years. In attempting to capture this timelessly controversial icon, defeat is almost inevitable for both star and director, and both seem bound by an acceptance of this as they instead strive for, and achieve, a gloriously vivid unravelling.

He's Just Not That Into You

Things romantic comedies teach us from time to time.

If you’re a dick (Justin Long) you will be surrounded by girls that you can dismiss and summon at will, no matter what you have done, but you will change throughout the course of the film and understand that life lived in such a way is hollow and grim and spiritually defunct. And you will end up with an attractive (Ginnifer Goodwin - for the daft purposes of the film, supposedly not that great to look at) woman that talks too much in a kind of fake-neurotic splutter of inanities.

If you are a nice guy (Kevin Connolly, understandably not that into an irritatingly winsome Ginnifer Goodwin) you will eventually get the girl but only after she has had her fill of some dick. You will not understand that you are merely being used as comfort-fodder while she still pines for married loser (see below). Not to worry though - you will realise all this just in time and end up with faghag Drew Barrymore.

If you (Jennifer Connelly) are married to a dick (Bradley Cooper) that is considering having an affair with buxom siren (Scarlett Johansson, and it will obviously happen), and possibly also ‘failing to commit’ to having kids, your marriage is doomed but you will get your revenge and the adulterous husband will possibly end up looking wistfully into streets filled with happy couples that have slow-motion sun-kissed children in tow, contemplating what he coulda won and musing on the tatters that are his life. Hoho.

If you are Jennifer Aniston we will unfathomably be expected to believe that you have a disastrous love-life. Like that isn't all some publicity campaign designed to keep her wares nice and touted when her career ended with Friends. You can't fool me!

If you are a voluptuous sex-magnet homewrecker you will end up taking second-best nice guy as penance for your sins, even though we know that you would have countless affairs beyond the credit roll. You will ultimately realise that you’re Scarlett Johansson so why tie yourself down?

If you are surrounded by gay people you will be fine in the end. And you will get the funniest scene in the film. And everything will be alright again. Until next year when you have to do it all again with Seth Rogen, Lisa Kudrow and Channing Tatum.

If you are Ben Affleck you will lazily steal the film whilst watching your dented stock rise in order to do a ‘substantial’ film like Matt’s been doing, and you will flounder in it. Again.

If you are Luis Guzman you will have a small role in it just to keep up your stat of being in 13% of all films made since 1997.

95% of all romantic comedies are terrible, saccharine, smug, self-righteous, bickersome, trivial trash. But you will still watch them if the cast is half-decent. They know this.

'The Wanderers' by Richard Price

I bought The Wanderers maybe a couple of years ago, yet when a time came for me to choose a book to read, I always managed to overlook it. So I'm glad that I finally gave Richard Price a whirl. Really glad, in fact, as this book is incredible.

Price's profile has risen in recent years given the success of The Wire -- the superb HBO drama for which he wrote five episodes -- and his most recent book, Lush Life, was published to much acclaim in March of last year. This is his first novel, written back in 1974 when Price was just 24. It tells the story of the Wanderers, a teenage gang in the Bronx in the early 1960s, who fight a daily battle against violent fathers and vicious rival gangs, as well as their own raging hormones. It's a true coming-of-age tale, as each member of the gang, bar one, gradually finds a way out of his predicament and the strictures of the hard and dangerous neighbourhood he has grown up in.

Price's writing is exciting, sharp and full of life, and frequently hilarious. His obvious forté is dialogue, and his ear for the intricacies and inventive colloquialisms of teenage conversation is striking. His characters are beautifully assembled and well-rounded, and he paints a vivid, if harrowing, picture of 1960s New York life. Having put off reading this book for far too long, I'm eager now to work my way through his bibliography and trace the evolution of a clearly exceptional writer.

The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada

Some films, for one reason or another, seem destined to forever elude the attentions of the wider moviegoing audience. I hope we don't have to wait long before Three Burials, Tommy Lee Jones' first foray into directing, is given the credit it is undoubtedly due. Despite winning two awards at Cannes in 2006 -- Best Actor for Jones and Best Screenplay for writer Guillermo Arriaga (Amores Perros, 21 Grams, Babel) -- Three Burials sneaked through cinemas then disappeared into the wilderness. It really is a gem, a true masterpiece that more than deserves a place in the canon of Hollywood's finest Westerns. And it's available on DVD for the price of a couple of pints. (For Blu-Ray, it's a mere ten notes.)

The story in summary (there is a more detailed synopsis here):
Tommy Lee Jones plays Pete Perkins, a rancher in West Texas and best friend and employer of Melquiades Estrada (Julio Cedillo -- All The Pretty Horses), an illegal immigrant from Mexico. While tending to his goats, Melquiades is shot accidentally by Mike Norton of the US Border Patrol (Barry Pepper -- 25th Hour, Seven Pounds), who panics and buries the body in a shallow grave. The corpse is later found, and police from the local sheriff's office rebury it in the town's cemetery, but show no interest in investigating how the death occurred. Perkins discovers that Norton was responsible for the shooting, and so kidnaps him and forces him to exhume the body. With the decomposing corpse tied to a mule, Perkins takes Norton on a journey into Mexico to find Jimenez, Melquiades' hometown. (In one particular flashback -– the story is told out of sequence, and shifts back and forward through time in true Arriaga style -– Melquiades makes Perkins promise that, should he die, Perkins will carry him back across the border and bury him in Jimenez. (‘I don’t want to die here among all the fucking billboards’, Melquiades says.) After days of travelling through the desert on horseback with only a crudely drawn map for direction, they eventually find the place Perkins believes Melquiades’ was speaking of, and they bury the body for the third and final time.

It’s a stunning film, and everything just works. The cast is magnificent: Cedillo as Melquiades, shy, innocent but full of fear; Dwight Yoakam (Panic Room, Crank) as Sheriff Belmont, Perkins’ adversary and love rival, who struggles both with Perkins' flouting of the law, and his own erectile problems; January Jones (Mad Men) as Lou Ann, Norton's bored and neglected wife; Melissa Leo (21 Grams) as Rachel, the owner of the local diner, who befriends Lou Ann and, as a voice of experience, offers lessons in life; and Levon Helm of The Band, who has a heartbreaking cameo as an old man living out his days in a ramshackle house in the desert, blind, with only a Mexican radio station for company. However, particular mention must go to Barry Pepper, whose portrayal of Mike Norton is nigh-on perfect: tense, boorish, slightly sinister, but full of enough heart and raw emotion to gain the viewer's sympathy by the film's end. Perkins puts Norton through ordeal after ordeal -- often with great comic effect -- yet by the final scene there is no bitterness, hatred or need for revenge, only a new-found respect and concern for Perkins' own well-being. It's a wonderful performance.

Cinematographer Chris Menges expertly captures the unforgiving Texas landscape in all its searing glory. Tommy Lee Jones’ direction is assured and at ease: born and bred in San Saba, a small Texan town, he knows this environment and the people who inhabit it. The music is great too -- Marco Beltrami's stark, eerie score harks back to Wim Wenders' Paris, Texas, and Ry Cooder's haunting slide-guitar accompaniment.

To me, this film is faultless, and superior both to the excellent Westerns that followed it -- 3.10 to Yuma, Appaloosa, The Assassination of Jesse James -- and to No Country for Old Men, an ideal companion piece that, despite its greatness, lacks the emotional depth or complexity of this masterpiece. Three Burials deserves to be spoken of in the same breath as Unforgiven, the film that resuscitated an ailing genre, and we can only hope that Tommy Lee Jones someday returns to his seat behind the camera. On this evidence, there's nowhere I'd prefer him to be.

Halfway Haves and Have Nots

The theme of the hour seems to be a mid-way cinematic appraisal; a rummage through the first six months of 2009 to see what's already worth timecapsuling and what's destined for a hasty dispatch into the burgeoning void of celluloid gubbins...

1 Let The Right One In - a genuine masterpiece, LTROI combines eerie poignancy and blank dread whilst noiselessly shifting gears before the greatest finale in recent memory. It manages to render extreme weirdness not only palatable but heart-rending, and how many films that contain horrific murder and severed body parts have ever elicited wistful sobs?

2 Synecdoche, New York - the second bona-fide classic of the year was labyrinthine, bizarre and contorted with the kind of existential rage that Charlie Kaufman has become non pareil at addressing. The point is: I can't explain it. That's a good thing. Completely magnificent and heartbreaking.

3 The Wrestler - Apparently, Mickey Rourke hasn't had botox. I'm not having that. Nonetheless, he is indispensable as the burnt-out 'Ram', touring school gyms and other low-rent venues to get his head mashed and his bod punctured by staples for chump change, chasing stripper Marisa Tomei and failing to re-ignite a relationship with his estranged daughter, a superb Evan Rachel Wood. Cheesy bar scene aside, never puts a foot wrong.

4 The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button - why did they bother? Brad Pitt can't carry a film and Cate Blanchett has never been worse, hammier or seemingly ill at ease. Some magnificent cinematography can't rescue this appalling vanity project, which is airlessly and humourlessly calibrated to lightly squeeze the tear-ducts whilst making you really think about the aching beauty of life and the relentless passing of time etc etc. None more curious.

5 The Hangover – missing teeth, babies getting whacked by car doors, Mike Tyson failing to act, tigers in bathrooms, hideous sunburn, beardy weirdness from a young John Goodman-alike (the ace Zach Galifianakis), spiked Jagermeister, impromptu marriages, effete Chinamen gangters, stolen cop cars…the funniest film since a fake Kazakhstani mud-wrestled naked.

6 Seven Pounds – possibly the oddest film of the year so far, with Will Smith continuing along the ‘martyr/messiah’ schtick he seems hellbent on. The outrageously attractive Rosario Dawson is better every time and Smith does as good a job as you’d expect, but it’s a leap to buy the film’s premise. Still, it almost works, despite eschewing sanity and a vaguely believable plot. Ridiculous notions of redemption and making good on past mistakes – is that all Will is interested in anymore?

7 Valkyrie – TC is very good, as he tends to be. Admit it: he’s a fine actor. Forget his unedifying ‘real-life’ persona, the man can act, and there’s never a hint of him being out of his depth here, or resorting to Pacino-esque shouty histrionics to mask a distinct loss of mojo. He’s never overshadowed by the stellar ensemble – Branagh, Nighy, Stamp, Wilkinson, Hitler, Goebbels – and avoids channelling a 1940’s Snake Plissken. And the film, despite vacuum-packing the crucial, nerve-jangling aftermath of the botched assassination attempt into what felt like 20 minutes, works pretty well.

8 Watchmen – sporting crisply beautiful hyper-real visuals, Watchmen is an odd old experience. It really is a staggering looking thing and is largely akin to re-reading the graphic novel after munching on far too many hallucinogenics. A lustrous, slickly synthetic New York is brought to chemical, nightmarish life as a swarming alternate reality aglow with stark, dazzling colours, frazzled neon gaudiness and a kind of glum, spectral torque (Billy Crudup’s wonderfully vivid Dr Manhattan is a dissonant, radiant hum of electric blue sinew). The film lives and dies on the giddiness of the spectacle and, treated as such, is like nothing else.

9 Terminator Salvation – Terminator Salvation is far from a bad addition to the franchise, despite being a bit wonky and forgettably messy. Christian Bale is Christian Bale to the max: gloomy, obsessive, scarred and narky, he’s ten stone of righteous, gritty angst in the face of Armageddon, Skynet, McG and anyone else who wants any. Sam Worthington tries gamely to discourage you from thinking that he really belongs on Home and Away and drops the ball far too often (presumably Cameron can elicit a better performance from him in the upcoming Avatar) leaving Bale to carry the film beyond the clutches of disaster it dallies with but ultimately eludes. Common and Bryce Dallas Howard, not to mention the great Michael Ironside, are in it, as well as a Madame Tussaud’s/sex-doll version of Arnie, but you’re not likely to remember much beyond Bale shouting something ridiculous while explosions perforate your eardrums and various machines clank and plunder away unscarily.

10 Looking For Eric – strangely hilarious Ken Loach film starring the legendary French renaissance man Cantona, who appears from beyond a cloud of weed smoke as a kind of life guru to a shambling postman whose life is in freefall. Cue motivational chitchats to a goalfest montage backdrop, clumsy relationship repair-work and male-bonding winning the day. With the odd police raid and threat of dog savagery thrown in just to prove it’s a Loach film.