Cop Land (1997, director's cut) 3 of 4

"Being white isn't a bullet-proof vest."
   - Ray Liotta, Cop Land

Sadly, the above line is more resonant given the wave of police shootings of black males in the U.S.  This film's plot is triggered by the cover-up of a police shooting of black men.  Although Cop Land is not specifically about racism, it's interesting that part of the problem here is cops who have little more faith in the system than do African-Americans, and so they immediately decide to foil any investigation.  

** moderate spoilers ahead **

Cop Land is set mostly in a small town in northern New Jersey that's become a haven for New York City police officers, most of them with Irish or Italian surnames.  (The end credits note that NYC cops are now required to live in-state, presumably to avoid just this type of situation).  The town is inhospitable to people of color, but that's arguably the least of the crimes engineered by the town's power-broker, veteran cop Ray Donlan, played by Harvey Keitel.

Keitel's eventual opponent is Sylvester Stallone as the town's nominal sheriff, Freddy Heflin, kept off the big-city force by partial deafness, the result of his saving a drowning man as a teen.  Robert DeNiro, in his nerdy mode of The King of Comedy and The Good Shepherd, plays the Internal Affairs cop who rouses Freddy's law-enforcing instincts.  As Stallone sets about rattling the skeletons, he loses friends but regains self-respect.

** end spoiler section **

The remarkable cast also includes Peter Berg, Robert Patrick, Michael Rappaport, Annabella Sciorra, and Cathy Moriarty. This is one of those movies you sit there watching and wonder how this wasn't a hit with multiple award nominations.  The content may have made people nervous, but sadly, the problem might have simply been the industry's now-notorious loss of interest in mid-budget films, which demand deft marketing for a relatively modest payday.  The top-drawer cast got the film made, but they couldn't force the suits to market the film.
Cop Land was released in August, which indicates it was dumped: this is not a summer action movie, but a classically filmed, socially aware crime drama, in fact you must pay close attention to follow the plot.  Some people find the ending too abrupt, and I admit the film isn't the all-time classic of the vaguely similar (but more mythic) The Place Beyond the Pines, itself a box-office casualty.  Still, Cop Land is a fine, involving film with a strong sense of place and a smart and clearly well-researched script, made with impressive craft in all areas.  Forget Grudge Match, if you want to see Stallone and Deniro together here's your film.
Cop Land was written and directed by James Mangold, known for directing Identity, Girl, Interrupted, and the remake of 3:10 to Yuma.  Mangold grew up in the New York area and attended Columbia University, and the quality of his resume leaves me intrigued by his other writing-directing efforts, Heavy and Kate and Leopold.  

Paranoiac (1963) 2.5 of 4

** this review contains only mild spoilers **

As much as any studio, Britain's Hammer Studios was known for their production values.  Their impressive craft in all areas of film production made their ordinary movies watchable, and made the good ones classics.  Maybe this fated them to specialize in horror, where maintaining a mood is so important.  A horror film need not be frightening if it instills a sense of dread, a diverting unease.

Paranoiac must have been better in the theatre, anno 1963, because it's very much a mood piece, a date movie where the viewer waits to be grasped by (or grasp) their partner.  And reduced to synopsis, it seems trifling: troubled rich family reacts to the return of their prodigal brother, assumed a suicide at age 15, as they also wait to inherit large sums of money.  Is he really the brother?  And which of them is really insane?  etc.  This is one of those movies where someone's willing to kill everyone else, but who's the killer?  (No one seems to be a "paranoiac," but I guess that's not the point, is it?)

Even on the home screen, the film works better than it has right to, thanks in part to the moody black-and-white photography, of cliffside locations and lots of looming close-ups, including those of Oliver Reed in the type of balls-out performance that would evoke giggles if it were almost anyone else (William Shatner, or maybe Jack Nicholson in The Shining).  If you laugh at Reed it will be in fascination at what a convincingly haunted bastard he creates as he downs one glass after another of fake alcohol (presumably fake) and rages, a spoiled brat in the body of a pugilist, whenever life dares defy him.  We don't sympathize with him, but he is the protagonist of this tale set in a world of deception and exploitation, peopled mostly by psychological cripples.

Like Dementia 13, The Cabinet of Caligari, and TV's The Outer Limits, Paranoiac dates from that post-Psycho era when filmmakers realized that the gothic need not be set in the past.  It's not the best of Hammer's contemporary shockers -- that would be Scream of Fear, with Susan Strasberg, per both the consensus and my own judgment -- but it's not bad for a rainy night.  

Lakeview Terrace (2008) 2.5 of 4

** this review contains only mild spoilers **

I'll marginally recommend this film, but I have to feel that the subject matter deserves more than a serviceable and glossy thriller.  The film did well in theatres, where it doubtless sparked some conversations that were more potent than the film itself.
Samuel L. Jackson stars, proving again he's one of the few black stars with the balls to play a racist.  Or is he the only one who gets asked?  In any case, his Abel Turner has a burr up his ass about the new interracial couple on his UMC L.A. cul-de-sac.  If that's not bad enough for the characters played by Patrick Wilson and Kerry Washington, their new hater-neighbor is LAPD.
Watching the first half of this movie I felt like it could have been written by a computer: "Suri, give me a rewrite of Unlawful Entry, making both the cop and the female lead African-American."  But then we learn some personal backstory that helps explain Abel's actions, and the film gains enough of a skeleton to carry it through to the violent and ironic ending.
This is one of many recent movies that feels Los Angeles is the perfect setting for the crumbling and cracking of America, with various perils as symbol or metaphor: car accidents (Grand Canyon, Crash), corruption (L.A. Confidential, Dark Blue), enemy attack (Right at your Door, Battle Los Angeles), paranoia (The End of Violence, the films of David Lynch), and here, wildfires.


  

Wake in Fright (1971) 2.5 of 4

** this review contains spoilers throughout **

I thought this would be a horror movie, but it's more of a melodrama.  The movie shows the Outback (the alternate title) has a negative affect on the men who live there.  Eking out their living thousands of miles from (their) civilization, the white men in this film resort to alcohol, gambling, cruelty, and violence.  It's a bit like Straw Dogs, but here the conflict is mostly internal.
I'll also compare it to The Colony: in that film, people descend to animal level from hunger and cold.  Here, it's heat and isolation that does it.
John Grant is a young schoolteacher, essentially an indentured servant until he works off his government debt for his education.  He thinks he's better than the working-class men who inhabit the Outback, but he learns he's much the same, under the right conditions.
He's on his way to Sydney for his 6-week vacation, but never gets there.  All it takes is a taste of an addictive gambling game to start him on a 6-week bender, before he limps back to the tiny community where he works.
Donald Pleasance plays an alcoholic doctor who claims to like living in the Outback because it's where he can live honestly, without pretense.  Unlike John, he seems to have retained his sexual functioning, with one of the few women we see.
The film is infamous for its scenes of kangaroos being slaughtered.  According to the extras, the filmmakers photographed one of the nightly kangaroo hunts, the meat destined for American pets.  The footage is disturbing, like the film.  
The film is striking to look at, as is almost any film photographed in the wilds of Australia.  Still, the tone is one of self-loathing: male self-loathing, Australian self-loathing, colonialist self-loathing.  It reminded me of other films that portray men as self-destructive wrecks, such as The Ice Storm, and perhaps Killer of Sheep, although that film is about an oppressed minority.
In its hopelessness and its barren views, Wake in Fright  also recalls such American films of the period as The Last Picture Show and Thunderbolt and Lightfoot.

Casino Royale (2006) 3 of 4

** no major Spoilers in this review**

The first film in the grittier, Daniel Craig-starring cycle of James Bond films.  Not being a Bond fan, I would've liked still more grit, but this film has the goods, and there's a surprising and impressive depth to the love story.  Without giving it all away for those who haven't seen it, the film shows how Bond's avoidance of commitment went from disposition to way of life.
Yes, it's the origin story: asked whether he wants his martini shaken or stirred, a testy Bond asks "Do I look like I give a damn?"  It's only toward the end that he introduces himself in the traditional fashion: "Bond.  James Bond."  And like most superheroes, this Bond is an orphan.
You have the essentials for a good Bond film: the flashy action set pieces; the brash, brassy score that evokes romantic, globe-trotting adventure (no time for the imperial guilt of a Jason Bourne film); and the colorful villains who speak with an accent and are undone by their own hubris in combination with the awesome skills of superspy Bond, a.k.a. 007.
Daniel Craig's Bond is a badass, a man determined to act as the perfect "blunt instrument" of his government.  He is the spy as machine, until he's temporarily distracted by the hypnotic, inimitable Eva Green.  You can believe this Bond in an extended foot chase, unlike Roger Moore, and he's just as believable trading punches and enduring torture as he is at the high-stakes poker game.  When his girl gives him the traditional compliment in this type of narrative -- that he's more man than anyone she's known -- it's not just a line.
We can also believe Bond falling for the sultry, velvety Green, who has the kind of eyes that are shaped less like almonds and more like -- legumes?  Papayas?  (We need a name for this.)  Her character has the kind of name that gets my brain working: Vesper Lynd.  Vespers means evening (service), so it evokes endings.  Vesper also evokes breathing (whisper, rasp, exasperate): she becomes life itself for Bond.  Lynd evokes heritage: line, lien, land.  However, Bond is also so in love, so wined and dined, that he's inclined to be blind to Lynd's flaws.
Casino Royale climaxes with an underwater sequence, so common in recent films.  Yes, submarine scenes are cinematic, but I believe there is profound cultural meaning in these matching sequences in dozens of films: Alien: Resurrection, The Butterfly Effect, Dark Water, Inception, The Grey, et.al.

My reading, in line with my article in Senses of Cinema, is that the world is in transition away from white-male domination, but rebirth requires a death, so we get scenes that (attempt to) combine drowning with a baptism.  Underwater also represents the unconscious, the part of us that must change if the world is truly going to change.  
     

The Departed (2006) 3 of 4

**this review contains only mild spoilers**

The Departed wants to be in the league of Heat, another epic-length cops-and-robbers opera with huge stars making homoerotic love through violence.  Still, every movie has to be taken in context, and The Departed suffers from arriving late, seeming like a season of an HBO series that for some reason has been cut down to feature length.
I'll enjoy this film more if I watch it again, because I'll be ready for its monotonous pacing. A fast film can be monotonous, too, and this one is all exposition and plot points, with never a chance to exhale.  As it wound up with a number of twists, I was reminded of the tongue-in-cheek neo-noir Wild Things, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, although I doubt it's what the filmmakers had in mind.

It's set in South Boston, like Mystic River, Gone Baby Gone, and the overrated Boondock Saints.  It's nice to see my distant cousins get a top-flight gangster movie, even if Scorsese is past his peak and groping to find the honor among thieves.  At this point, I think his heart is with more lovely fare like Hugo.
If cops are criminals and vice versa, as Jack Nicholson's character says "What's the difference?"
The Departed is a film of moments, for the top-notch cast of Nicholson, DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Mark Wahlberg, Alex Baldwin, and Vera Farmiga.  Scorsese assembled them in Boston to trade punches, bullets, and lines like "20 years after a fucking Irishman couldn't get a job, we had the presidency, may he rest in peace" (Nicholson), "Marriage is an important part of getting ahead ... they figure at least someone can stand the son-of-a-bitch" (Baldwin), and "Fuck you, cocksucker" (everyone).

The moment that sticks with me is when police trainee Damon responds to a rugby loss to a team of fire trainees by suggesting they "go save a kitten, ya homo's."  This kind of line is designed for the collective laughter of a theatre.  Watching the film at home, I found the line vaguely sad, a gesture from cinema guys trying to show us there are some things that TV still can't do.  
  

Law Abiding Citizen (2009) 2.5 of 4

**Spoiler section marked**

The reviews I've seen for Law Abiding Citizen focus on its implausible plot, and they're correct, but I think they miss the point.
This film is best described by noting two major deviations from what we might expect.  The first is the racial (ethnic) reversal, with a white man being the victim of the U.S. criminal justice system, and a black lawyer (Jamie Foxx) representing that imperfect system, a system based in the cutting of deals.  Although race is never mentioned (IIRC), the film can't help but reflect the unease of a transforming society.  And although he works for the NSA, Gerard Butler's character is basically a very gifted blue-collar tinkerer, and his first name, Clyde, has a Southern ring.

**moderate SPOILERS ahead**
The other twist is that this is a vigilante film that goes so far as to also be a sympathetic serial-killer movie, being even more brutal than The Brave One.  This shocked me, and I almost gave up on the film as simply a nasty piece of work.
The reason I recommend the film is that I realized it has something interesting to say amidst the far-fetched violence and vengeance.  By giving a frustrated crime victim the skills of an NSA contractor, the film asks: what if we judged domestic criminals by the same standards that we use for international terrorists?
**end SPOILERS**

Why do we treat murderers so differently, based on where and how and who they kill?  And as long as we do, should we be surprised when victims sometimes turn into perpetrators?