150 - Pan's Labyrinth review

Here it is, the most over-hyped film of 2006. Virtually every year, film critics unite to heap praise on a pretentious piece of garbage, parroting the same hollow, prefabricated praise for whatever nonsense was lucky enough to occupy the right cinematic space at the right time. In 2005, that film was “Good Night, and Good Luck.” This year, the honor belongs to “Pan’s Labyrinth.”

The film follows Ofelia (Ivana Baquero), a girl in 1944 Spain, not quite yet over its civil war. Ofelia is supposed to be cute. Realistically, she comes off schizophrenic, as she spends her time playing with stupid looking CGI bugs and goofy monsters only she can see.

Her stepfather is Captain Vidal (Sergi López), a fascist soldier and part-time cartoon villain. Soon after his first appearance on screen, he beats a local boy to death with a bottle and shoots the father, not so much because he is evil, but because the clumsy script wants us to know that Fascism Is Bad. Did I mention that the most over-hyped film always treats everyone in the audience like a complete idiot?

Vidal would have been at home in an actual film from 1944, back when people weren’t ready to see that fascists are people, too. Here, he leads a garrison’s fight against guerillas remaining from the war. Strangely these rebels are given the attention normally assigned to the victors.

Where “Letters From Iwo Jima” was well aware of the ultimate futility of the Japanese struggle, “Pan’s Labyrinth” would give the uninformed viewer the impression that these partisans defeated the fascists. In fact, they were relegated to the scrap heap of history.

The advertising sells the film as a fantastical adventure through a magical world of special effects, though the otherworldly sequences are hardly more than 10 or 20 percent of the running time. The rest is D-grade war drama. Ofelia’s cheerless delusions have virtually no discernable connection to the parallel events.

Defenders of the film point to the visuals as a justification for ignoring the paper-thin story. Perhaps I would have been impressed by the mythical scenery if I hadn’t have seen “The Cell” six years ago. Or maybe I would have been scared by the monsters if I hadn’t have already killed them while playing Resident Evil 4 on my Gamecube. Maybe even the war film aspect would have been fascinating, if a casual glance at a paragraph of a history book didn’t contain more relevant information and insight on the Spanish Civil War.

Making matters much worse, we’re not supplied with anyone to root for. We’re given no reason to care about Ofelia, except, well, she’s a little girl! Captain Vidal is such a clumsily cardboard caricature of a jackbooted villain that even hating him becomes impossible, because that would imply he was crafted well enough to despise.

Perhaps the only feeling del Toro elicits successfully is one of repulsion. Though the story fundamentally belongs in a children’s book, the film is rife with sadistic, gory violence. Some sequences had my girlfriend clinging onto my arm like it was a winning lottery ticket, but the abominable bloodshed lacks both thrills and moral resonance, elements key to making unpleasantness something one wants to experience.

Do we really need scenes like the one in which a man graphically stitches up a bad face wound? No, we don’t, but del Toro is resorting to that lame horror substitute, the indulgence of squirm inducing pain, only layering his film so with inane pretense that he achieves the film’s one good effect, the trickery of those viewers too smart for their own good. Take it from someone who has never been accused of being too smart for his own good; avoid a trip to “Pan’s Labyrinth” at any cost.

0.5 out of 5

149 - A Scanner Darkly mini-review

A Scanner Darkly is the aesthetic (and in some ways, spiritual) sequel to Richard Linklater's 2001 entry Waking Life. This rotoscoped adaptation of Philip K. Dick's novel stars Keanu Reeves as an undercover narcotics officer who winds up spying on himself. Surpringly little of the film is dedicated to drug use, instead splitting time between philosophical conversations, secret identity intrigue, and lightweight sci-fi. As in Waking Life, not much happens, but the nifty visuals and some good dialogue make the trip worthwhile. Robert Downey Jr.'s role as a drug addict is appallingly appropriate.

3 out of 5

148

Today, I Googled my own name, and what website appeared at the very top of the list? This one. I'm moving on up in the world.

147 - Babel review + NI front page

Babel” tells the interlocked stories of people in four countries across three continents who speak four different languages. The divisions seem enormous, but language itself is among the least of man’s problems when trying to communicate effectively. Language is but a small part of a reservoir of complex causes: Culture, love, marriage, sexuality, legality, survival and distance – both emotional and physical.

Directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu and written by Guillermo Arriaga, “Babel” traces the ripple effect of an individual action throughout the globe. A rifle shot fired by the two children of a Moroccan goatherd strikes a tour bus. Susan (Cate Blanchett), an American tourist, wakes up as the potshot smashes through her shoulder. Her husband Richard (Brad Pitt), drenched in his wife’s blood and unable to maintain calm, frantically tries to secure medical attention – nigh impossible in rural Morocco.

Back in California, Richard and Susan’s two children are cared for by Amelia (Adriana Barraza), an illegal immigrant who slips across the border with the kids unwisely in tow so she can attend her son’s wedding. And in Japan, seemingly unrelated to all of this is Chieko (Rinko Kikuchi), a deaf-mute teenager whose father receives strange attention from the police.

“Babel” is among the rarest of films, one that infuses universal messages into the narrative without a lecture and enthralls without a trace of sensationalism, leaving a haunting imprint that multiplies exponentially after the credits roll. The actors are brimming with nuance, raw nerve and intimacy. Pitt abandons his blockbuster image and gives a frantic, throttling performance, his best to date.

But the film’s standout it Kikuchi’s utterly unforgettable Oscar nominated (and worthy) exhibition. The nonlinear plot weaves in and out of a shifting timeline (observant viewers can catch the resolution to one plot during the opening), but thanks to brilliant writing, ambitious directing and seamless editing, there’s no confusion. Each segment progresses fluidly, the pace never once getting tangled in the labyrinthine thematic web.

It examines the circumstances and ways that wedges are driven between people from all walks of life, whatever their background or status, impeding progress and any true understanding of one another. The bitterly empty noise of those around us and the relentless crush of events and information, as in real life, become overwhelming. Most of the characters have good intentions, but they are lost in the wave of agony that sweeps over the protagonists.

Iñárritu and Arriaga utilize the most universal feeling of all to ultimately tie everyone together: pain. The anguish infused into the characters spills off the screen, creating a palpable sensation of desperation and doom. Virtually ignored by most critics yet key to the screenplay’s structure is perhaps the most dreadful of communication deficiencies, sexual frustration. Simmering beneath the surface of every performance, coiled in the characters like a spring, it’s the worst of wounds, one that can be stifled but not healed. It bubbles to the surface in varying degrees; in one story, we have but a brief, stirring glimpse; in others, the results are shocking.

In the film’s most powerful section, Cheiko, unable to communicate effectively even in her own language and starving for human contact, is pushed to her breaking point and resorts to drastic measures to connect with another. An outsider would label her actions salacious, but we know better; they’re the result of a hopelessly sorrowful, disconnected woman. The consequences are heartbreaking, making for the most devastating scene in a film overflowing with them.

But this devastation is what makes “Babel” really shine. It’s a staggering, genius work that electrifies every part of the vast emotional spectrum, making for a distinctly humanistic experience, exactly as great cinema should. When the Oscar voters check their vote for Best Picture, lets hope that they get the message.

5 out of 5