Are you an aging Hollywood star-turned-director with a burning desire to switch gears? Are you sick and tired of the English language? Foreign-language filmmaking could be for you! Hey, editing's a lot easier when you can just make the subtitles say whatever you want! Clint and Mel impress the hell out of us this week with Letters from Iwo Jima and Apocalypto. But look out for a young buck named Peter O'Toole. This guy can act.
Letters from Iwo Jima
Whereas Flags of our Fathers hopped back and forth between wartime and its aftermath so much that it disrupted the film's flow, Clint Eastwood's WWII companion piece is one smooth terrifying thrill ride toward certain death. Ready to hop aboard? You should be: Iwo Jima is the best war film since Saving Private Ryan. (Or should we say anti-war film?) It also makes Flags better in hindsight, too, filling in small narrative gaps and begging to be watched in sequence. Even more impressive is that the Libertarian-leaning Eastwood dared not to just humanize the Japanese soldiers firing away at Americans, but make them enormously sympathetic. The way Eastwood tells it, how can you not feel awful for these dudes? Not only were many forced into the military, but here they are surrounded and outnumbered five to one, with the T-1000 himself after them. And when the going gets extremely tough, the tough get blowing themselves up with hand grenades: It's all about dying "with honor" for these fellas, and the film's mass suicide scene is harrowing in ways reminiscent of Deer Hunter's nightmarish Russian Roullette rounds. Skip the popcorn for this one. Hot butter tastes just as good on Paxil.
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Apocalypto
Mel Gibson may be crazy (there, I said what I will about Mel Gibson), but his madcap Mayan adventure spun a nice chunk of cinematic gold. Honestly, I didn't want to like Apocalypto (crap, that doesn't make ME a bigot, does it?), but the spell of this film is just impossible to resist. As wildly publicized, it's excessively violent and graphic. Our Mayan heroes snack on boar 'nads in the opening minutes, and really it only gets more explicit from there. As Jaguar Paw (the imposing Rudy Youngblood) watches his village ransacked and burned, he hides his baby mama in a well before falling captive to the pillagers. Miraculously eluding decapitation in one truly fubar situation at sacrificial ceremony – Jaguar Paw sets off on an incredibly intense 45-minute chase that will leave you panting. Even if you can't stand the thought of Mad Mel, boars 'nads or beheadings, get a hold of the DVD and fast-forward it to this chase. It'll be well worth it.
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Venus
As much as you've seen Peter O'Toole do onscreen, have you ever seen the man endure an enema, slap himself silly, dance with another man, and drop f-bombs with regularity... all in a single film? That's the fun of Roger Michell's acclaimed indie Venus (well, maybe not the enema bit), which seemed to come out of nowhere last fall and thrust O'Toole right into the thick of the Oscar race. The Best Actor runner up plays an ancient but not-quite-yet retired stage and screen star (now relegated to mostly corpses) who falls for Jessie (Jodie Whittaker), young niece of his dear friend (Leslie Phillips). Their relationship is adorable, awkward and ambiguous all at once, giving the film a bit of a Harold and Maude feel, say Maude allowed Harold to cop a feel every once in a while throughout. (While the groping comes mostly courtesy of O'Toole's Maurice, it seems at one point as if Jesse's gets back at him with a titty-twister). Read the back of the DVD (Through their relationship, they'll learn valuable lessons about themselves) and you'll fear Cliché City, but Venus is anything but: It's smart, and surprisingly hilarious.
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Other New Releases (May 22)
Epic Movie
The Good German
Alex Rider: Operation Stormbreaker
The Italian
Alone With Her
Fay Grim
The Mistress of Spices
The Hard Easy
The 40-Year-Old Virgin: Double Your Pleasure Edition
Summer School: Life's a Beach Edition
Flags of Our Fathers: Special Edition
True Grit: Collector's Edition
The Ultimate Matrix Collecton - HD DVD
Is Taylor Lautner Our Next Superhero?
100 Greatest Films Beyond the Canon
'Entourage' Movie in the Works?
Spielberg Backs Out of 'Harvey'
Discuss: Should Gay Actors Stay in the Closet?
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1. After arguing and battling with the reviewers on this site who hated Apocalypto because Mel Gibson helped to create it I went to see the movie and was blown away by just how amazing the movie was. There really are very few movies that can transport you to another place and time and show you a amazing world you've never seen or ever will see and this one is certainly one of those few movies. Great depth, great detail and great artistry went into every inch of this movie. I picked up the dvd and watched it through once then turned on the commentary track to hear Mel and the other producer talk about the movie.
As they talk about the actors and the scenes and sets you hear, more clearly than in any two minute attack interview against Mel Gibson, about what real joy he had in creating the movie and about all the artists and make up people and regular people who created the movie and the characters. As they talked about tracking cranes and finding the perfect jungle to shoot in and heaping praise on the film editor they also pointed out many of the individual actors and how great they thought their scenes were. The Mayan king was a fellow they found on the docks who looked the part, the first villager who was sacrificed was a farmer in real life, the old man in the Mayan village who flung himself to the ground after imploring the gods to save them from their famine was a great Mexican actor who was actually dying and who wanted to give his last performance in such a grand movie. Everyone in the movie was an interesting character and an interesting person as well. I don't know that I've heard a movie commentary done with as much enthusiasm, joy and knowledge as this one. Very entertaining and highly recommended. And no Kevin, liking the movie doesn't make you a bigot but not wanting to like it does make you a herd follower.
Posted at 12:44AM on May 23rd 2007 by Gilbert Davis