because you can't have too much entertainment...
November 2002

Short Notes on Recent Films
A few thoughts on offerings from the autumn

Reviewed: Moonlight Mile, All or Nothing, Igby Goes Down and Spirited Away

Moonlight Mile
There are moments in Brad Silberling's most personal film that grab you. That make you say: Yes, nobody has captured this particular aspect of grief before. Nobody's even bothered to look at how grief effects relationships between people who are intimately connected by the deceased but not particularly intimate otherwise. It's a shame then that he loads so many other things onto the picture's weak back. What begins as a clear-eyed look at the fascinating and very specific relationship between in-laws and children (a relationship not often explored with sensitivity) in mourning eventually goes far astray into sentiment and widens into generic drama. The picture collapses under the weight of too many plots and a net cast far too wide.

The question begins to beat around in your head. "What does this movie want to be?" A seriocomic look at in-laws and children? An offbeat romantic drama about soulmates meeting? A courtroom drama? A coming-of-age and to honesty journey? What exactly am I watching? It's not impossible to be many things at once in a film. In fact, many of the great films straddle genres, but Moonlight Mile proves too conventional and too lacking in inspiration to hit all the disparate notes it's going for. The larger the picture gets the less of a success it becomes. C-

All or Nothing
Mike Leigh has been a fixture on the world cinema circuit for some time now and made a substantial mark in America with his well received Secrets & Lies in 1996. Unfortunately this new film offers nothing particularly new to the Leigh repertoire. It's all gritty miserabilism and it's a tough sit. The performances are uniformly good but to overcome the limited capacity audiences have for extreme sadness in entertainment, you need performances that go beyond good into deeply memorable places, like the mother daughter combo in Secrets & Lies or the towering and inspired work of Jim Broadbent in Topsy Turvy. This is a well acted downer but it's unfortunately without any aesthetic "up" to make it worth the viewer's time. C-

Igby Goes Down
Buzz Steers' first film has met with divisive critical reaction. Truth be told, I'm sort of in both camps. Though I despise "I didn't like the characters" as a mantra for why people didn't like a particular movie ---I didn't like the characters in this movie. The strange thing about the movie (other than the fact that people think Keiran Culkin can act) is that many of the performances feel revelatory despite the uneven quality of the film itself. In very limited roles, Bill Pullman and Amanda Peet make vivid impressions. And perhaps I was imagining it, but both Claire Danes and Jeff Goldblum seem to be doing their best work ever. Or at least in a very long time. I can't really recommend it as a whole as I'm not sure I got what the point was or, in fact, why I should give a damn. But I can't dismiss it out of hand either...if only for the fascinating peripheral characters on display. C

Spirited Away
Note to all foreign geniuses who wish to bring their films over to the States: Beware of Disney. Their arthouse division (Miramax) buys too many and doesn't release some of them or simply sits and waits for months or years to let them go. The Mouse House itself will release foreign animated pictures but let them flounder in a few major markets and die. I bring this up because Mizayaki's stunning Princess Mononoke opened in 1999 to dreamy reviews and little promotion or business. Spirited Away, the Japanese master's most recent picture (and one that thankfully brought him out of retirement), looked to avoid that fate when it opened with some promotion and very good business on the coasts. Strangely though as the weeks went on the film never expanded much and the marketing petered out. Sadly, most of the country missed a great family entertainment.

Mizayaki's tale of a young girl lost in a amusement town / bathhouse for the spirits is a great, wierd, and fulfilling fantasy. It's chalk full of inspired imagery, crucial to the success of animated films but in short supply of late. It's restrained message is almost blissfully foreign. The warning against over-consumption and greed is not exactly the stuff of American films; particularly multi-billion dollar corporations like Disney who want you to consume everything they're selling. Most pleasurably, Spirited Away doesn't talk down to its audiences. The theater I was in was filled with kids. The film seemed to earn their attention. Little fidgeting. No loud talking. Most surprisingly given the film's complex plot (at least in comparison to its American counterparts) it elicited very few questions to the parents. Perhaps I was imagining it but the kids and adults seemed to be watching intently, letting the film pull them towards a quiet and imaginative mental playground.

In America the traditionally animated film has run into hard times. Gone is the heyday of Beauty and The Beast and The Little Mermaid. But all hope is not lost. If Spirited Away is any indication, the artform is still alive and well across the ocean. B+

-Nathaniel

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