I stumbled on this jewel thanks to TCM's month of Oscar-winning movies, back to back with another good find, The Day of the Jackal. (A 1970s thriller about the attempted assassination of then-French president Charles de Gaulle, without which the Bourne movies and likely all other quality spy thrillers since would not exist.) This one's plot is simple -- a jury of the titular individuals must deliver a unanimous verdict in a murder trial, that of an anonymous, beleaguered looking young man seen only momentarily at the beginning, who is accused of stabbing his father to death after an abusive argument. After the very brief intro in the courtroom, the remainder of the film is spent in the sweltering confines of the jury room where the 12 men collect to debate the evidence and determine the young man's fate, knowing that a guilty verdict will send him to the electric chair.
The initial vote is 11-1 for a guilty verdict -- the sole abstainee the slender, sagging-shouldered Henry Fonda. And what follows is a riveting examination of the case's key witnesses and testimony couched in the lively back and forth among the characters. The conversation, which starts cool and loose in the opening sequences, builds into a sweaty, sometimes angry, affair as the characters' tempers flare and rise alongside the temperature of the room.
It is fascinating to watch.
Sidney Lumet (of Network, Serpico, and half a million other classics), in his directorial debut, spins up the tension masterfully, using close ups and a gradually lowered camera perspective to emphasize the encroaching physical space and peer pressure as the group begins their slow, inexorable swing towards a unanimous decision. The way Lumet methodically fleshes out the characters and doles out the evidence is irresistible, with each individual gradually revealing more of themselves as they support or pokes holes in the testimony and witnesses. The cast is superb and their interpersonal dynamics -- between the hot-headed Ed Begley and Lee J. Cobb; the dispassionate Joseph Sweeney and E.G. Marshall; the loud-mouthed Jack Warden; the quietly volatile Jack Klugman -- are positively mesmerizing.
I had a million other things I needed to accomplish today, but was absolutely unable to tear myself away from the screen. Movies like this are like a new best friend or girlfriend -- you're amazed they avoided your detection for so long, but once discovered you can't talk about anything else. Netflix or rent this one and prepare to lose yourself completely for the next hour and a half -- brilliant, brilliant stuff.
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As for the bit in the headline about marking your calendars, I have only two things to say -- Radiohead, and Nails.
August 1 - 3. Lollapalooza. One of the best times I've ever had in my fair city by the lake. The prettiest city in the country, at the best time of year, with the best bands in the world. Get ready for the 2008 update.
Tickets go on sale March 25 -- check the details here and here. Fitz, Whit, and I are in. Join the coalition. You've been warned...
This is a vexing one. At turns beautiful and boring, mesmerizing and meandering, the latest feature by director Andrew Dominik will leave you scratching your head over what you just saw, trying to discern how you feel about the whole complicated encounter. Telling exactly the tale its title implies, this one charts the slow -- and brother, at two hours and forty minutes long, do I mean SLOOOooooooooooow -- demise of the notorious outlaw Jesse James, both in terms of sanity and of the circle of people around him, after his last train heist in Blue Cut, Missouri in 1881.
The movie starts with James and his gang right before the train heist in Blue Cut and spends the majority of the film's remainder with James and his sidekick wannabe, Robert Ford, as they scatter across the country on the lam. At the time the nation's most wanted man, James (played by Brad Pitt) alternates between periods of sharp intelligence and those of cracked up insanity and paranoia, swooping through certain encounters with the lethality of a hawk while strutting through others like a opulent and skittish peacock. It's a frustrating portrayal, and Pitt does his best with it, bouncing between the two extremes with increasing frequency, but it too often feels like retreads of his earlier work, and not a natural representation of the character. He borrows some of the deranged lunacy of Fight Club, the twitchy weirdness of 12 Monkeys, the grinning charm of the Ocean's movies, and the dead-eyed intensity of se7en, and mixes them all together, but they never congeal into a cohesive whole, rather remaining independently interesting pieces that fail to compel collectively. (He even channels his inner pimp/hip hop mogul in one scene, prancing around in a fluffy fur coat and hat like a coked out junkie, shooting fish through the ice of a frozen lake. All that was missing was the thumping bass music and diamond-encrusted bling.)
James is followed everywhere by his corporeal shadow Ford (played by Casey Affleck), a man who grew up idolizing James and is now desperate to become part of his crew, despite frequent ridicule and some mental deficiencies of his own. (Not to mention a complete lack of qualification.) Affleck is brilliant in the role, having mastered both the foggy pie-eyed absence and uncomfortable sycophancy required. It's a quietly disturbing performance, one that has you sympathizing with Ford one minute and wanting to throttle him for his clingy neediness and stupidity the next, but it's a portrayal that is memorable for longer than the film's gluttonous duration. (Which cannot be said about Pitt's, for example.)
Unfortunately, Affleck's efforts, plus the haunting Nick Cave score (who makes a nice cameo at the end, if you make it that far) and the absolutely BEAUTIFUL cinematography of Roger Deakins (the genius behind No Country For Old Men's brilliant landscapes) are not enough to save the film. (The movie also fritters away an over-the-top line worthy of There Will be Blood when Pitt screams rapid-fire at a kid he's beating, "WHERE'S JEEM! WHERE'S JEEM! WHERE'S JEEM! WHERE'S JEEM!")
They strive valiantly, though.
Cave's characteristically dark, moody score fits the shots perfectly, and Deakin's work is just out of this world. The film is a smörgåsbord of searing images, one of the best reasons I've seen to buy a HD setup for the house yet. From the snow-covered plains to the rustling wheat fields, the film looks absolutely breathtaking -- I went back and rewatched the scenes of the gang in the woods before the Blue Cut heist and the displaying of James' corpse at the end repeatedly for their pitch-perfect use of lighting and framing.
But the film is just too long and indulgent for its own good -- at times interminably so -- which winds up squandering its significant natural resources. (It also feels oddly like an audio book at times, with a narrator popping in and out who for whatever reason calls to mind images of the author reading his own words offscreen.) Dominik manages to tease out a number of uncomfortable silences and tense scenes over the course of the film, but the unease and betrayal of James (and these scenes) would still have resonated with a more liberal editing. Two hours and forty minutes to chronicle a relatively simple story of betrayal -- by one man, and a stranger, at that -- is just gratuitous. I know at thirty, I'm an old man, but any movie that makes me fall asleep on the floor one night, and then on the couch the next day while I'm trying to finish it, (and then one more time, for good measure, before the end) is simply too long. (Christ, even the title feels fatty and comes across like a Fiona Apple album title opus.)
A more effective trimming of the proceedings would have made the most of the film's strengths, maintaining its understated moodiness and postcard picture beauty while still avoiding it being a standard Hollywood-type movie. Instead we are treated (or subjected, depending on your perspective) to a bloated, and at times indulgent, recreation of some forgotten history, which looks brilliant on the screen, but feels emotionally washed-out and faded.
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As for the songs of the week portion of our session here -- and honestly, was I not clear about the intent of this page? Is anyone else going to start writing? I KNOW you guys have recommendations on these things -- you still email/IM them to me all the time! Cowboy up! -- despite losing a trip to Spain I'd been working on for two months, being sick, and having an utterly atrocious month at work, it looks like Stella's got her groove back because I feel strangely fine -- good, even -- in spite of everything. So the songs that have gotten stuck on my Pod are correspondingly upbeat this time around. We'll start with The Magic Numbers' "Love Me Like You" from their self-titled 2005 debut, a sunny little blast replete with handclaps, Strokes-y type guitars, and falsetto backing vocals. What's not to like? You'll be pogoing and singing along in no time... Check out the video (actually it's probably better just to listen to it -- we've got a case of radio faces sneaking out of the booth, sadly) here:
The second half of this week's sunny doubleheader is Vampire Weekend's "Oxford Comma"from their self-titled 2008 release, another dose of sonic bliss that showcases sharp, cruise ship guitars, peppy lyrics, and a great new nerdy one-liner for you to add to the collection. ("'Who gives a fuck about an Oxford Comma,' Peter -- geezus!") Enjoy it here:
I stumbled on this jewel thanks to TCM's month of Oscar-winning movies, back to back with another good find, The Day of the Jackal. (A 1970s thriller about the attempted assassination of then-French president Charles de Gaulle, without which the Bourne movies and likely all other quality spy thrillers since would not exist.) This one's plot is simple -- a jury of the titular individuals must deliver a unanimous verdict in a murder trial, that of an anonymous, beleaguered looking young man seen only momentarily at the beginning, who is accused of stabbing his father to death after an abusive argument. After the very brief intro in the courtroom, the remainder of the film is spent in the sweltering confines of the jury room where the 12 men collect to debate the evidence and determine the young man's fate, knowing that a guilty verdict will send him to the electric chair.
