Leaves of Grass (2009)

To call Tim Blake Nelson's Leaves of Grass a "serio-comedy" touches only the surface of a seriously funny movie. It asks Big Questions from diametrically opposed positions--passionate/impulsive and rational/controlled--and accepts the merits of both sides, resulting in what might be a third view--and I won't bore you with my vague conclusions. Instead, let me point out one of the movie's great treats: two Edward Nortons, the actor playing twins--both geniuses, one a philosophy prof, the other a hydroponic pot-growing wizard. Their lives collide following the prof's self-imposed estrangement from his family--including Susan Sarandon doing what she does so well: playing crazy, just enough to keep her distance from the real world while understanding it all too well. His rocky (and that's putting it mildly) road home makes for what can only be described as a screwball tragedy--maybe.

The writer-director behind this bifurcated plan is Tim Blake Nelson, a pitch-perfect character actor--as Delmar in O Brother, Where Art Thou?, delivering one of the great lines of the movies: "Them syreens did this to Pete. They loved him up and turned him into a horny toad"; and the enigmatically pleasant Gideon in Minority Report--among other welcome appearances. We even have the treat of his turn as Bolger, the pot-dealing twin's partner, drawing out his Oklahoma accent like a nice fishing-rod he'd like to show you--got it when he was a boy and it's still in good shape. Nelson is a gifted artist, and his direction matches the swerving tone of Leaves of Grass step by reckless step.

This Is England (2006)

Who remembers the Falklands War? They're small islands off the coast of Argentina; both Argentina and the U.K. claimed them. The Argentinians occupied them in April 1982, and about two months later the conflict was over, with the U.K. maintaining control, more or less.

The victory made Margaret Thatcher popular, but left some scars on both sides. The 2006 movie This Is England offers one boy's story--his father among the few hundred soldiers who died in the conflict, leaving the boy to navigate grief and adolescence while the punks and rude boys made way for the new skinheads who loved being white more than they did the saving sounds of Toots and Maytals and turned every town into a Ghost Town. The movie charts Shaun's sweet and sad, sometimes harrowing attempts to find his father in the New England that the hard 1980s built.

Thomas Turgoose as Shaun is as natural an actor as you could hope for. His early good times with his new, older mates--still playing in the fields, giving Shaun a sense of home, young skins and their pretty girls all the brothers and sisters he needs--are an idyll he certainly deserves, as temporary as it may be.

But an old friend of Shaun's new circle returns from prison, his head still shaved but his mind cleaned out, leaving nothing except the half-understood--but full-blown committed--politics of hatred. And sadly, Shaun finds a home here, too, and the film becomes a near-nightmare. Loss and hate and hard times is too strong a mix for Shaun, and he's left with only himself to decide what he's going to become.

Don't get me wrong: The early sequence is actually heartwarming, propelled by music and, as The Beatles put it, "that magic feeling--nowhere to go." And this makes the shift downward even more jarring: We want Shaun to mend with his friends. But he has a hard road ahead, and This Is England makes him travel far--almost like Francois Truffaut's alter ego, Antoine Doinel, in The 400 Blows, in that both boys are cut loose, and run to the sea. I'll let you decide what Shaun finds there.

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Live Clash, "This Is England": "I got my motorcycle jacket / But I'm walking all the time."

Mesrine, Part 1: Killer Instinct (2008)

Jean-François Richet—who directed the tight, tough 2005 remake/re-imagining of John Carpenter's Assault on Precinct 13—presents a big two-part film about Jacques Mesrine, a notorious French criminal (think Dillinger crossed with Joe Pesci's Tommy in Goodfellas) whose exploits (at least in this first part) span much of the globe, from Algeria in the late 1950s to France to Quebec to Arizona—then back again. Along the way, he robs, tortures, kidnaps, murders, goes to prison, gets out, abuses his wife, loves her (and others), all the while inventing himself as a celebrity/political radical, prison reformer (with automatic weapons), and Gallic Clyde Barrow. Vincent Cassel—always good, particularly in Brotherhood of the Wolf and The Crimson Rivers (in which he manages to be as cool as Jean Reno, and that's saying something)—plays Mesrine without apologies, neither sympathetic nor demonic, his violent temperament constructed without prejudice. We're left to observe Mesrine as-is.

The best thing I can write about this movie is that I was sorry it was over. When some people read a good book, they speed up, hungry for each page. Me, I slow down. But I was greedy with Mesrine, and didn't pause it to leave the rest for another day. No, I held out to myself the promise of Part 2: Public Enemy No. 1 and finished up Part 1, sorry to see it go. I haven't watched Part 2 yet, but let this review stand for both. This is about as straightforward as gangster pictures come, moving with confidence and speed, like Mesrine himself robbing two banks in one minute.

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NOTE: In my haste, I neglected to mention the supporting cast, headed by the always-charismatic Gerard Depardieu, along with two women—Elena Anaya (the abused wife) and Cécile De France (Mesrine's steel-plated Bonnie)—who effortlessly match the pace of their ferocious male co-star.

Little Fugitive (1953)

Back in 1953, when Little Fugitive was a brand-new movie, the New York Times critic Bosley Crowther (for almost thirty years writing (often-enlightening) reviews encased in quaint tut-tuts and dry observations) ended his review with "All hail to 'Little Fugitive' and to those who made it. But count it a photographer's triumph with a limited theme." And he was mostly right, especially for us watching today: the triumph is the film's preservation of early-'50s NYC, particularly Coney Island, as the little boy--tricked by his older brother into thinking the little "tad," as Crowther put it, had murdered him--makes his way through a series of mild adventures, his fears forgotten in a world of shooting galleries, pony rides, and merry-go-rounds--after he collects empties and cashes them in. His adventures are slight, but that's the point: The Little Fugitive is one of a handful of movies that lowers the camera to see kidhood without condescension or (too much ) sentiment.

Ray Ashley, Morris Engel, and Ruth Orkin wrote, photographed, directed and produced; the little boy, Joey, is played by a non-actor, Richie Andrusco (as was his brother). And aside from a few NYC stage actors, the rest of the cast plays itself: New York City, that is, and that Island that's as eager to please as Pinocchio's, but without donkeys.

The Fall (2006)

Tarsem Singh (or simply "Tarsem" over the last few years) has directed only two pictures since 2000--and that first one was The Cell, a movie whose plot matters infinitely less than the terrible beauty of its images and the astounding commitment of Vincent D'Onofrio to the persona he crafts, like some alternate-universe lead in an opera written by H.P. Lovecraft.

With The Fall, Tarsem does not flinch under the threat of his earlier picture, but decides to edge closer to Tim Burton than David Lynch as he explores the most needful thing of all: the yearning for narrative, for life to lose its messy edge and follow a straight line for once. The injured silent-era stuntman and the little girl with the broken arm collaborate on the same story--but to different ends. Of course, the story has its own ideas, and draws everyone in (and here we should turn and give a little bow to Terry Gilliam, who knows more than any of us the value of a ripping yarn-within-a-yarn-within-a-yarn-within ...)--and Tarsem follows the fairytale, building an almost-satiric Wonderland of Extraordinary Gentlemen (including Alexander the Great and Darwin) in a world that Tarsem swears is real--all actual locations, no special effects. If he's telling us the truth, then we really do live in a story, no matter how duplicitous the storyteller/Black Bandit may be, no matter how dangerous the stunts actually are.

This is not a film for everyone. Some might find it too weird, others to obvious. But if you look closely and long, and listen to one more story, you'll be reminded of the real draw of the movies--and of paintings and ballads and bedtime tales: They pretend to be windows we can look out of, but are really special mirrors for seeing ourselves and the important things still living behind us.

Restrepo (2010)

NOTE: I posted this without knowing that Restrepo's co-director, Tim Hetherington, had been killed in Libya. My Sicilian grandfather, who was sent to fight in World War I, told me he never killed anyone. "I had no argument with those men," he said, "but they wanted me to shoot. So I shot over the Germans' heads, and everybody was happy." My prayer for Mr. Hetherington and his family and friends is that we should all be so happy. In the meantime, I am sure that everyone who knew him will keep his name in their mouths, "familiar as household words," and "in their flowing cups freshly remembered."

In Restrepo, Sebastian Junger and Tim Hetherington go to Afghanistan and stick close to, as the Internet Movie Database informs with its usual completeness, "The Men of Battle Company 2nd of the 503rd Infantry Regiment, 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team." And watching them dig in, goof around, freak out, sing and cry and stare into space, I found myself caught between the reality that movies insist on and the one I'll never see--and how, as with scenes of active combat, the two of them are so often the same. That is, what I know of combat I know from the movies--but this is not a "movie" (or a TV series, like the excellent Generation Kill); it's a "documentary."

But watching Restrepo is like watching Full Metal Jacket or Jarhead or The Hurt Locker--even Saving Private Ryan or Apocalypse Now, as extravagant as those movies are. Restrepo engenders an interesting confusion: Does it look like a fictional film because I've seen so many, or is it Restrepo's actual soldiers who've seen the same films and have learned how to behave? This may simply be the most hair-raising home movie ever made--you know how you get when someone turns on the camera at the family get-together: one is "on," so one "acts"--up, usually.

But I don't think that's necessarily what happens in Restrepo--actually, I think it's the opposite: the movies have clouded our vision of the real horror and boredom of warfare, and Restrepo brings us face to face with our seen-that-even-though-I-haven't-done-that smugness. This is so much The Real Deal that even that expression sounds phony--as phony as a non-combatant's "understanding" that War Is Hell. The triumph of Restrepo is that it ignores us, chooses instead to let itself be itself. We're just along for the ride, so we better stay out of the way when the shit starts to fly.

The Devil's Backbone (2001)

Guillermo del Toro's The Devil's Backbone is an excellent addtion to a strange but compelling sub-genre: Spanish rural/isolated locale Gothic mood-pieces--with children. This goes back at least as far as The Spirit of the Beehive in 1973--although no overt supernatural elements are present in this one, unlike The Orphanage (2007) or del Toro's own Pan's Labyrinth (2006). It may be a mini-genre, but its potency hasn't waned--and The Devil's Backbone may be the best of its type.

Like Pan's Labyrinth, The Devil's Backbone is set during Spain's civil war in the late 1930s. Looming fascism in both films serves as a kind of specter haunting this corner of Europe, its brutal will always ready to exert itself even on children. But the orphanage of The Devil's Backbone withdraws for a time from the larger world and literally goes underground--and under water, to achieve effects that are at once chilling and beautiful. It's a ghost story, but one that rises to affect the political and personal worlds of the orphans, the left-wing Republicans (the side that Bogart fought with in his backstory in Casablanca--the losing side, as Louis noted) who run the orphanage, and the fascist Nationalists whose unexploded bomb in the orphanage's courtyard serves as a threat that cannot be withdrawn.

There's mystery and mysticism, politics and poetry, all of it mixed in without apologies. The Devil's Backbone may not be as aggressive as Pan's Labyrinth, but its subtleties make it the better Gothic, a world of secrets and regrets, with the strange justice ghosts so often require.