Cinema – Page 138 – Ghost in the Machine

Welcome to the layer cake, son.

Disgruntled supporters of mutantkind, take heart: X3 is in very good hands. I caught Matthew Vaughn’s Layer Cake this afternoon, and it’s a smart, stylish, and sublimely smooth British crime film that does Guy Ritchie’s Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch one better. Well, ok, Layer Cake isn’t as laugh-out-loud funny as Lock Stock can be at times, but it’s much cleverer than Snatch and, frankly, better-made. And, for that matter, it takes less joy in violence for its own sake than Ritchie’s oeuvre (one grisly scene set to Duran Duran’s “Ordinary World” notwithstanding.) In fact, in terms of tone, Cake is probably more akin to Jonathan Glazer’s Sexy Beast.

Layer Cake centers on cocaine dealer Daniel Craig (burnishing his possible Bond credentials), a consummate smooth operator who treats his criminal enterprise like a business and, as per the usual, is just looking forward to an early retirement around the corner. But his best-laid plans are interrupted by two ugly developments: 1) His boss Jimmy (Kenneth Cranham) enlists him to track down the junkie daughter of even bigger crime-lord Eddie Temple (Michael Gambon, relishing the dark side), and 2) a loose cannon flunky known as the Duke (Jamie Foreman of I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead and Roman Polanski’s forthcoming Oliver Twist) has just rolled in from Amsterdam trying to unload a million doses of Ecstasy (a drug haul with a nefarious history of its own.)

The rest of the movie consists of Craig trying to navigate the increasingly narrow straits between these two troubles, with the occasional aid of muscle Colm Meaney, middle-man George Harris, and a host of other ne’er-do-wells. Essentially, you know the drill — this is a puzzle film in which you’ll have to listen carefully and learn to distinguish between various delinquents with names like Tiptoes, Kinky, Slasher and Shanks. And, while the final few grifts just get a bit too big to be believable, for the most part the story holds together with intelligence and verve, in no small part to Daniel Craig, who’s a magnetic presence here, and Matthew Vaughn, who displays a crisp, confident direction that’s all the more impressive for being showy without ever seeming flashy. To him, his X-Men.

Casting Collie.

What’s that, girl? Peter O’Toole got wasted and fell down a well? Lassie returns to the big screen with O’Toole and Peter Dinklage in tow. I wouldn’t normally post this, except it means that even more people are going to shout “Lassie!” at Berk on the street every day.

We Break Easy.

The Henson Company announces a forthcoming sequel to 1982’s The Dark Crystal, entitled The Power of the Dark Crystal. Hopefully, at this point, I’ll no longer be frightened by Garthims or that weird soul-sucking Skeksis torture room.

Without chemicals he points.

So, that‘s what he’s been up to. Apparently, David Lynch has been shooting a film called Inland Empire, with Laura Dern, Justin Theroux, Harry Dean Stanton, and Jeremy Irons, for the past two years. “‘It’s about a woman in trouble, and it’s a mystery, and that’s about all I want to say about it,’ said Lynch recently.“

Drive the Wayne.

For completists out there, Coming Soon obtains the international Batman Begins trailer, which follows the domestic one but includes some previously unreleased footage.

III like a bird?

“The bottom line is that ‘Sith‘ has a discipline missing from Episodes I and II. It is just repeatedly not-embarrassing at nearly every turn. Most of the flabby expository walks to landing pads have been neatly snipped. Important things are said with images instead of words. The special effects are better, but draw less attention to themselves.” Ok, now I might be a bit enthused. Alexandra du Pont, far and away AICN‘s best reviewer and a fangirl who loathed the first two prequels, gives Episode III an enthusiastic (and spoiler-filled) endorsement. Her verdict: “Not even close” to ANH and Empire, but Sith “edges out ‘Jedi’.”

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair.

AICN‘s Moriarty checks out the early sets and pre-viz for Paul Greengrass’ The Watchmen, a project apparently still under the gun at Paramount.

E for Elrond.

From agent to revolutionary…Word is Hugo Weaving has replaced James Purefoy as the lead in V for Vendetta. I must say, that casting switch makes this project considerably more exciting.

Heaven’s Gate.

Well, I don’t think being feverish at the time helped by any means — still, Ridley Scott’s Kingdom of Heaven is, well, kinda blah. It’s got its heart in the right place, and I’d say I was mildly diverted by it for the first 75 minutes or so, but after that I was just waiting for it to be over. In terms of recent sword-and-sandal and/or historical siege pics, I’d say it’s better than King Arthur or the woeful Alexander, but probably on a par with Troy or The Alamo.

Put very bluntly, the gist is this: Legolas (Orlando Bloom) is an ornery, grieving blacksmith somewhere in France who, after a visitation from a world-weary crusader, Lord Qui-Gon (Liam Neeson, playing yet another expository mentor/dead-duck), and his hospitaler, Prof. Lupin (David Thewlis), decides to embark to the Holy Land to seek Christ’s forgiveness for the suicide of his wife. Along the way, he makes a Muslim friend in Dr. Bashir (Alexander Siddig) and a Christian enemy in Celeborn (Marton Csoskas), and discovers that zealots are generally rather unlikable people on both sides of the religious divide. Upon arriving in Jerusalem, Legolas is feted at the court of leper King Tyler Durden (a masked Edward Norton), whereupon he makes more friends (Jeremy Irons, Eva Green) and enemies (Brendan Gleeson, hamming it up like a community-theater Brian Cox), all before an interminably long siege against the forces of Saladin (a charismatic Ghassan Massoud.)

Are all those fanboy comparisons unfair? Well, not after sitting through the last hour, which basically played like Helms Deep and Minas Tirith all over again. Yes, the production values are immaculate and all the (fetishized) weaponry is used in suitably historic fashion, but, really, how many historic sieges can one be expected to sit through in a given couple of years? Frankly, Kingdom of Heaven was more interesting in the early going, when there was more acting amid the fighting.

As for the politics, well…the message of the film — religion good, religious zealots bad — is laudable and well-worth hearing these days, perhaps even brave. But, while confessing a near-total ignorance of medieval history, Kingdom of Heaven sure doesn’t seem very historical in its 21st century forward-mindedness. At one point before the siege, Legolas not only makes the case for religious tolerance but completely dismantles the feudal caste system — I was almost waiting for him to institute the ballot box and universal public education while he was at it.

In short, even though I’m in sympathy with the general pluralist worldview of Kingdom of Heaven, the movie could have definitely done with less anachronistic liberal humanism and more dramatic complexity. (In fact, I can’t think of a single character in the film who displayed more than one dimension.) And, even notwithstanding the history, there just needed to be more characterization and less CGI-battling here. As both an historical epic and a summer popcorn film, Kingdom of Heaven felt only a step or two above Purgatory.

See it Now.

The first pic from Goodnight & Good Luck, George Clooney’s forthcoming film about Edward Murrow’s televised unmasking of Joe McCarthy, is now online. The cast includes Clooney (Fred Friendly), David Strathairn (Murrow), Frank Langella (Bill Paley), Patricia Clarkson, Jeff Daniels, and Robert Downey, Jr.