2008 Movies Roundtable Spectacular

Part VI: A few more movies viewed and more Jason Statham

Part I Part II Part III Part IV Part V

I've also caught up on a few 2008 movies since my first post. I would throw My Blueberry Nights in the Disappointing column and Gran Torino in the Highly Recommended column. My Blueberry Nights is the first English language movie from Hong Kong director Kar Wai Wong (In the Mood for Love and 2046 being two examples of his best work). My Blueberry Nights just simply disappoints. There really wasn't anything there. It's fluidly shot and well acted (Norah Jones is surprisingly undistracting but no great shakes) but the story is just so much of nothing. There was no sense of place. Perhaps that's to be expected in a movie that has interlocking stories from Manhattan, Memphis and Las Vegas as Norah Jones' Elizabeth embarks on a journey of sorts. But there was no sense that there was no sense of place either. If this was Kar Wai Wong's American journey movie it got a flat tire a few miles on the interstate.

Gran Torino, on the other hand, was a well-oiled machine, much like the eponymous car. Clint Eastwood plays Walter Kowalski, a Korean War vet now retired after 40 years at the local Ford plant. After his wife passes way, he's alone in a changing neighborhood now full of Hmong immigrants. The movies strength comes from Eastwood, both as director and actor. Most write-ups of Gran Torino I've read cite Kowalski as a mash-up of Dirty Harry and Bill Muny from Unforgiven. I see Thomas Highway from Heartbreak Ridge as the true source for Kowalski. It's as if Gunny Highway retired and moved to Detroit he behave and react just as Walt does here. At any rate, Walt begins an unlikely relationship with his Hmong neighbors. Eastwood's ease of pacing as a director carefully choreographs this relationship. What, in others hands, could easily fall prey to sentimental melodrama, exists as true organic moments under Eastwood's steady hand.

This brings to mind another unlikely friendship by another Walt - Richard Jenkin's Walter in The Visitor. Similarly, director Tom McCarthy here also avoids the pitfalls of middle-aged white guy forging new experiences with a different culture in many of the same ways that Eastwood does - rich character development and heartfelt but not corny moments of universal truths. While entirely different movies, how each Walt handles the conflicts involved with their new friends resonates as each deal with a growing sense of powerlessness against outside forces. Each is singularly heartbreaking in their own right.

Now on to some other topics...

1. Nimero has an interesting past list of Best Movies of the Year. Before the blog, these lists were dispersed via e-mail to friends, which I no longer have record of. Nimero's memory is much better than mine as I needed to scan lists of released movies for 2003 and 2004 to determine what my Best was, but to no avail. Here's what I came up with:

2007: No Country for Old Man
2006: The Fountain
2005: King Kong
2004: I have no idea. Nothing jumped out at me.
2003: Maybe Master and Commander, but I think there was something else. But nothing else jumped out at me.

2. My Jason Statham comment was more directed at The Bank Job rather than The Transporter series. But I can't deny that I have been entertained by both Transporter movies even though I yet to see the end of either. Though I know exactly how each ends, thank you very much. The Bank Job is a fun heist movie that has solid characters, is not forcibly self-serious or handcuffed to the being a peroid piece (late 60's England) though it seems to evoke that period very well. It casts Statham as a regular bloke brought in for a can't miss bank robbery when in reality he's a pawn for some rather seedy political play. Of course Statham's regular bloke gets his contractually obligated kick-ass scene. Had no idea his character could do that, but, oddly enough it didn't take away from movie one bit. Such is the screen charisma of Jason Statham. Now to move that Statham movie where he has to keep moving or die to the top of my Netflix queue.