Curse of the Golden Flower, Volver, The Good Shepherd
A lesser work from the director of “Hero” and “House of Flying Daggers,” “Curse of the Golden Flower” (*** out of ****) lacks the fable-contraption perfection of those films. In it, the Emperor circa 900 (Chow-Yun) is slowly poisoning the Empress (Gong Li, heartstopping in a push-up bra). She drips with sweat and plays for the balcony and, wow, she’s great. The first half drags - “Hero” and “Flying Daggers” never drag - but that’s to set up the intrigue, who’s sleeping with whom, which prince is trustworthy, which corpse is still alive, so on and so forth. Watching men and women in museum costumes do passive-aggressive laps up and down their Technicolor castle is hypnotic. And then ninjas come out of the ceiling. Oh yeah. The final battle is as fatalistic as anything else put to film; I guess Zhang wants to prove that we can’t expect good people to defeat the evil by evil means. The palace is a wonder of production design - the drafty stones and shadows of the “Lord of the Rings” movies has given way to an almost Broadway rainbow of golds, pinks, and jades.
"The Good Shepherd" (*** out of ****) follows one of the first players (Matt Damon) in the CIA from his college days in Skull-and-Bones beyond the Bay of Pigs. The subtitle in the advertisements is “The Untold Story of the Birth of the CIA” but that’s not anywhere in the real movie. That makes sense - “The Good Shepherd” is more personal than political. Its first act is a delirium haze of suspicion and betrayal, full of close-ups and out-of-focus shots, criss-crossing in time; we don’t quite know what’s going on, but we know Matt Damon can’t trust anyone. Like all serious spy movies, the all-male espionage world has the aura of the love-that-dare-not-speak-its-name, especially with the Talented Mr. Ripley in the lead. Damon is intense, contained, on the verge of bubbling over, and by the end of the movie he couldn’t be more bent over. Among his gifts is the ability to always look up-to-something that he’s not going to tell you about. “The Good Shepherd” portrays a CIA man as the ultimate pent-up 1950s absentee father-husband, permanently trapped between what he genuinely wants and a bent sense of duty. The movie is flawed, to be certain, with a score having to do too much to tie it all together, but an enormous and talented cast has lined up to work with director De Niro - they do not disappoint. Written by Eric Roth of “The Insider” and “Munich.”
"Volver" (**1/2 out of ****) is My first Almodovar film, and this is hardly my final word on it - if I saw it again I bet I’d like it more. There are some ingenious turns in the course of this supernatural soap opera, as one generation echoes anohter, but for some reason I couldn’t quite find a way in. Two sisters in small-town Spain look after a troubled daughter, a dead husband, a cancer-sick friend, and their mom’s ghost, all while secrets creep from the past. The only thing I can really hold against it is how it beat me over the head with its “women sticking together” thing - yes, they help each other during times of poverty, with burying murder victims, even coming back from the dead, WE GET IT! But that hardly sinks the movie. Penelope Cruz, who was gaunt and angular when she first appeared in America, has plumped up a bit and pops a button or two - that’s more like it.
"The Good Shepherd" (*** out of ****) follows one of the first players (Matt Damon) in the CIA from his college days in Skull-and-Bones beyond the Bay of Pigs. The subtitle in the advertisements is “The Untold Story of the Birth of the CIA” but that’s not anywhere in the real movie. That makes sense - “The Good Shepherd” is more personal than political. Its first act is a delirium haze of suspicion and betrayal, full of close-ups and out-of-focus shots, criss-crossing in time; we don’t quite know what’s going on, but we know Matt Damon can’t trust anyone. Like all serious spy movies, the all-male espionage world has the aura of the love-that-dare-not-speak-its-name, especially with the Talented Mr. Ripley in the lead. Damon is intense, contained, on the verge of bubbling over, and by the end of the movie he couldn’t be more bent over. Among his gifts is the ability to always look up-to-something that he’s not going to tell you about. “The Good Shepherd” portrays a CIA man as the ultimate pent-up 1950s absentee father-husband, permanently trapped between what he genuinely wants and a bent sense of duty. The movie is flawed, to be certain, with a score having to do too much to tie it all together, but an enormous and talented cast has lined up to work with director De Niro - they do not disappoint. Written by Eric Roth of “The Insider” and “Munich.”
"Volver" (**1/2 out of ****) is My first Almodovar film, and this is hardly my final word on it - if I saw it again I bet I’d like it more. There are some ingenious turns in the course of this supernatural soap opera, as one generation echoes anohter, but for some reason I couldn’t quite find a way in. Two sisters in small-town Spain look after a troubled daughter, a dead husband, a cancer-sick friend, and their mom’s ghost, all while secrets creep from the past. The only thing I can really hold against it is how it beat me over the head with its “women sticking together” thing - yes, they help each other during times of poverty, with burying murder victims, even coming back from the dead, WE GET IT! But that hardly sinks the movie. Penelope Cruz, who was gaunt and angular when she first appeared in America, has plumped up a bit and pops a button or two - that’s more like it.