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Review
Even with all its variations through the 20th century – gloomy noirs, renegade cops, serial killers – the American crime film goes back to one source. With the birth of sound on film, the gangster grew from a hazy caricature of silent melodrama into an icon that would help to define cinema's golden age. Even if the chatter of Cagney and the like was destined for parody, the rattle of a tommy gun became one of the first trademarks of sound cinema, notably used in “Scarface's” machine-gun fire tearing through pages of a calendar. Even today, no image quite captures triumphant rebellion like gangsters perched on a running board, firing back at the coppers chasing them.
To look fondly on the 1930s gangster film would produce pastiche, fine for its own sake. Yet in “Public Enemies” Michael Mann, who's proven himself over and over again to be a master commentator on crime genres, at once recalls the early sound era, the revisionary gangsters of the late-60's/early 70s, and the historical source material to produce a transcendent vision of American cinema. It's almost dreamlike to see this rich cross-pollination revealed through the crisp, controlled eye of Michael Mann. He may be the only director who never forgets the world surrounding the sensational crime.
His narrative is technically a piece of history, but one so submerged in legend that it is moreso folklore. More people learned of John Dillinger's robberies from word of mouth than the headlines. Hence, his rise and fall perfectly suits a broad statement like Mann's, for it maps a path much like the classic gangster's (here, Depp as the immoral hero), while not forgetting the G-Men (enter the ever serious Christian Bale as Melvin Purvis), while eying the political machinations that dealt with organized crime (Billy Crudup in a flattering portrayal of J. Edgar Hoover).
Casting Deep as Dillinger is almost a no-brainer, and not for his near endless range alone. Consider the actor's introduction in Robert Rodriguez's b-grade jalapeno popper, “Once Upon a Time In Mexico.” Rodriguez intended to channel Leone for the final entry of his Mariachi series, while the series itself has proved forgettable save his micro-budget miracle of an opener. In “Mexico” Depp plays an FBI agent who manipulates the Mexican underworld to America's benefit. The story hardly has room for such a character to live out such a purpose – yet when Depp delivers his character's motivation as if he were equal parts politician and confidence man, we buy right in to Rodriguez's hokum, thanks to wise casting.
In “Enemies,” Depp depicts such conviction, as he sneaks into a prison to break out his gang, then leads bank jobs in little over a minute's time. He meets cute with coat checker Billie Frechette (Marion Cotillard) with just as much purpose, even if initially encountering her resistance in a nice turn on what could have been a routine moll. Mann himself admitted that the romance between she and Dillinger attracted him to this story, which itself had a long, uneasy path to the big screen. The filmmaker makes the most of the subplot, though it can hold only so much space in this epic scope. She serves as more of a motivation for Dillinger, once they are separated, than as a character driving the narrative. When authorities on the hunt apprehend and, quite shockingly, torture her, it appears that Mann eyes current U.S. policies beyond our crime tradition.
Depp gets the more human role, while Bale's Purvis operates like a machine – he's introduced when downing an almost free-and-clear Pretty Boy Floyd with a marksman's ease. I'd guess that Bale lives for such roles, ones that reflect the full-blooded commitment that he saturates into his work. The role is undoubtedly one-note, the only variations being occasional frustration and bemusement at the evidence of Billie's torture by one of his own. But complexity isn't on order: he is, after all, the man who will take down a legend outside Chicago's Biograph theater.
And what a legend it is, one that Mann and his cowriters Ronan Bennett and Ann Biderman are worthy of channeling. When the feds depart on a lead, Dillinger walks right into the unbelievably named “Dillinger Squad” headquarters and, by viewing photos, headlines, and various evidence, surveys his own legacy. Much more than a narrative recap as Act 3 nears, this moment extends out to the folkloric tradition of depression-era heroes on the wrong side of the law, while channelling the grandeur of mythical storytelling in any form – yet more threads that Mann weaves into his multitudinous masterwork. This is the purest of American narratives, and this, indeed, is one of our finest storytellers.
Review
The animated comedy Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs is the eighth movie Hollywood has released this year in 3-D. By the end of 2009, there will have been 13 films for which audiences will have worn special polarized glasses, compared with just one in 2003 — and none at all in the decade before that.
The 3-D revolution is really and truly with us, in other words — so without pretending we're going into too much depth, let's have a look at three dimensions of the latest Ice Age iteration that really matter:
Dimension One: Characters. Start with Scrat, that single-minded saber-toothed squirrel, still sniffing and snuffling in search of his beloved acorn.
As always, he finds it, and as always, something keeps him from enjoying it — in this case a squirrel-fatale who's every bit as acorn-crazed as he is. At first they have a Road Runner/Wile E. Coyote-type relationship, but her hold over him becomes progressively more domestic until he's a henpecked hubby, rearranging the furniture in their love nest while gazing longingly at the acorn from afar.
Also back for another round: woolly mammoths Manny and Ellie (voiced by Ray Romano and Queen Latifah), who have a mini-mammoth on the way. That happy expectation means their hapless little chosen family of ice-age misfits — Diego (Denis Leary), a saber-toothed tiger who's learned not to eat his buddies, and Sid (John Leguizamo), a sloth whose mental ice tray is a couple of cubes short — are feeling left out.
Which brings us to Dimension Two: Plot. When Sid falls through a hole in the ice into a warmer, center-of-the-Earth-style world, he finds three enormous eggs and decides to use them to start a family of his own. Alas, their biological parent — a T. rex — isn't pleased, and she spirits the hatchlings and Sid down to her world, whereupon adventures ensue.
Some of those scrapes involve a swashbuckling weasel, who I'm afraid I left out in Dimension One. Which is no small oversight, because he's voiced by Simon Pegg as a cross between Errol Flynn and Johnny Depp at his Jack Sparrow-est. As the lone resident mammal in the otherwise reptilian world under the ice — he apparently fell through long ago and got acclimated — he more or less takes over the second half of the picture.
And so we arrive at Dimension Three: How does the Ice Age message — basically, "Can't we all just work past our differences and get along?" — translate to 3-D?
Well, it certainly plays out with more visual depth, though the animators don't insist on shoving things into your lap every three seconds.
Don't get me wrong: When pterodactyls fly over your shoulder, it's plenty persuasive, but the effect is becoming natural enough that I actually forgot for much of the picture that I was wearing glasses. Dimensions One and Two — characters and plot — are primary here, as they should be, technical wizardry notwithstanding.
In fact, unlike say, Monsters Vs. Aliens, which would have been nothing at all without its special-effects spectacle, this is a sweet little comedy, both family-friendly and centered on a nontraditional family, and so suitable for pretty much everyone.
Everyone, that is, who can get past the not-really-minor, probably inescapable fact that come next fall, elementary-school teachers everywhere will face classes full of kids absolutely convinced that an ice age marked the dawn of the dinosaurs.
They'll have seen it at the movies, after all — and in lifelike 3-D, too.
Review
"I Hate Valentine's Day" reps a return to scrappy, low-budget filmmaking for Nia Vardalos, who scored one of the most profitable indies of all time with her screenwriting debut, "My Big Fat Greek Wedding," only to struggle with successive follow-ups. However, the off-kilter warmth of that film is nowhere to be found in this one, a plodding mediocrity with an almost mercenary adherence to formula. Reteaming of Vardalos with her "Wedding" co-star John Corbett should up the interest level in advance of pic's July 3 release, though it's doubtful that word of mouth will carry it very far.
First seen turning the world on with her smile, scripter and first-time director Vardalos stars as Genevieve, a flower shop owner who is the darling of her impossibly cuddly Brooklyn neighborhood. Working with her pair of prancing gay assistants (Stephen Guarino and Amir Arison, both playing stereotypes imported from the early '90s), she cheerfully opens up her store for the Valentine's Day rush, blessed with a preternatural gift for advising clueless men on the best ways to woo their sweethearts (among her suggestions: chocolates, flowers).
Yet despite all her wisdom, Genevieve is afflicted with a self-inflicted dating handicap: Since she loves romance and hates relationships, she refuses to go on more than five dates with any one particular man, thus summarily cutting off all affairs before the giddiness of early infatuation can begin to decline. No one in Genevieve's huge circle of colorful friends remarks on the utter preposterousness of this policy and, in fact, they all flock to her for advice on their own love lives.
Of course, Genevieve's system comes immediately under fire when studly charmer Greg (Corbett) strolls into the shop. A former lawyer who has just quit the firm and bought a neighboring restaurant space in order to start up a tapas bar, Greg is dating a flight attendant yet unsure if the relationship is going anywhere (all the preceding backstory is spilled in the course of ordering a few roses). Things quickly go sour with the flight attendant, and Greg confides in Genevieve during the first of their five circumscribed dates, immediately hitting it off. Anyone who can't see where this is going should have their driving privileges immediately revoked.
From here, "I Hate Valentine's Day" hits all the requisite beats of the romantic-comedy liturgy with precision, but does so perfunctorily, as though filling out a quota. The central premise is unbelievable without being interesting or audacious, and its late attempts to expand the emotional palette palate just simply don't come off.
Toplining her second movie of the season, after the recent "My Life in Ruins," Vardalos is a decent comedic actress, but she clearly lacks the experience to direct herself on camera: For much of the film she wears a strained beauty-queen smile, delivering her lines like a kindergarten teacher explaining the metric system. Yet the biggest problem with her perf seems to revolve around a misunderstanding of her appeal. In "Wedding," she radiated an awkward Everywoman vulnerability; here, she is effortlessly successful, smart, glamorous, beloved by friends who hang on her every word and able to pick and choose from handsome men she cruelly dismisses in accordance with her bizarre rules. Why the audience should sympathize with her plight is not a question that seems to have been raised.
Save for a few forced laughs at the expense of a heavily accented Indian man, the film is at least bereft of any ethnic caricature. Supporting characters run the gamut from Greg's law-school buddy Cal (Gary Wilmes), who is so loathsome and irritating that he ceases to be recognizably human, to Genevieve's adorably pathetic friend Tammy (the wonderful Zoe Kazan), who confuses courtship with stalking and who seems to have been beamed in from a smarter, cuter film.
