Choppah

*... which translates into American as Chopper.

Another dip into the crime genre brings us this 2000 Australian import, starring Eric Bana (before Americans had any idea what an Eric Bana was).

(Photo from Cinema Blend)

Part of Chopper's greatness is derived from the above promo pic + the film's title. Combine the two and you likely imagine a brutally violent, almost sickening film about a maniacal killer running around the streets of Melbourne* offing blokes without remorse.

*This one, not that one.

Not here.

Not with a true story behind it all and Andrew Dominik at the helm.

Like Dominik's exceptional Assassination of Jesse James before it, this is more a study of celebrity than of crime and violence. Bana plays the real-life Mark Brandon "Chopper" Read, a wisecracking, (sometimes) fearless dude who (according to the film) kidnaps a judge, spends some time in the joint, gains media attention through an in-prison attempt on his life, then decides he wants a little more.

And he gets it, killing at least one possible enemy on the outside ... then writing a best-selling book (and later, more books) saying he murdered 19 fellow criminals. He becomes a cult hero. Kind of like ... Jesse James.

In the hands of the formula slaves, this could have been a mockery. But writer-director Dominik -- who, judging by his two-movie filmography, clearly wants to make his movie and doesn't care about box office (thank God) -- stays faithful to story, not violence. Not that it doesn't have its share of blood. It's just not excessive or unrealistic.

Oh, and it helps that Bana is awesome.

*Highly NSFW*

Overlooked: Sexy Beast

More from the ex-British gangster set, it's Sexy Beast:

(Photo from allmoviephoto.com)

The plot's pretty simple here: Gal (a strong Ray Winstone) is a retired hood living it up in Spain with his wife and their two friends. Don Logan (Ben Kingsley; words cannot describe how good he is) is still active, and wants Gal for one more London job.

Gal wants nothing of it. So it's easy -- Gal just says no, right? Except ... not with Don Logan, who is scarier than about 90 percent of all movie characters, and that includes slashers and monsters and zombies. Here, the two go back and forth for a while, and ... well, then the rest of it happens.

The film got some notice back in 2001 for Kingsley's performance, which earned him an Oscar nod (he was beaten by a fave of The Film Official's, Jim Broadbent, for Iris). But it's more than just a showcase for Kingsley's considerable talents. It's slick in the hands of director Jonathan Glazer, who creates some pretty memorable images and handles the script deftly. It clocks in at an extremely manageable 89 minutes, so it's never excessive -- but it doesn't feel slight, either.

Really, if you want a crime film that's a little out of the ordinary, you can't do much better than Sexy Beast ... and wouldn't you know it -- Fancast.com is showing the whole movie for free!

*Word(s) of warning: The dialogue is, well, it's rough. As in it's tough to understand. I needed subtitles the first time I watched it, and I'm not even kidding. But once you develop an ear for it, it's fine -- and all the better and more authentic for it.

Forgot how good ...

... The Limey is.

(Entertainment Weekly with the pic)

It's a small-but-sharp entry on a long list of excellent 1999 releases, a revenge movie whose protagonist (Terence Stamp, above, who's excellent) isn't the bloodthirsty kind, just a curious, rough-talking ex-London gangster who's aiming to get sweet "satisfaction" (his word) on the guy who probably killed his daughter (a record producer played by Peter Fonda).

What separates this one is its script and its craft:

-Directed by Steven Soderbergh before his Traffic/Erin Brockovich blowup in 2000, it's as Soderbergh-minimalist as it gets, with lots of quiet and very few emotion grabs.

-The story unfolds methodically, helping justify an 89-minute runtime for a simple, solitary task: Get the guy who did it.

-The editing is creative, with lines of dialogue stretching over non-matching frames and long speeches broken by well-placed cuts.

-And that dialogue is Tarantino-esque in its cleverness, without being excessive*.

*Those last two elements are visible in this NSFW clip.

Plus ... bonus points for featuring future Soderbergh regular George Clooney in a late as-himself-on-TV interview.

Overlooked: Shattered Glass

"There are so many show-offs in journalism. So many braggarts and jerks. They are always selling, always working the room, always trying to make themselves look hotter than they actually are. The good news is, reporters like that make it easy to distinguish yourself. If you're even a little bit humble, a little self-effacing or solicitous, you stand out."

With Hollywood offering its latest Important Journalists Doing Important Things movie (State of Play, opening this weekend), it's time to focus on one of the best on-screen portrayals of the biz: The mostly overlooked 2003 release Shattered Glass.

Now, there's irony in that above quote (pulled from Script-O-Rama), which served as part of the film's opening V-O monologue. On one hand, it's pretty much true. On the other, it came from a real-life magazine "story cooker" upon which the film is based. Which is interesting, because -- as the film tells it -- this guy had to make up stories to get the sensationalism everyone (including his colleagues) wanted. That's not quite the edge-of-your-seat reporting offered in a lot of movie newsrooms.

Then again, if films strictly portrayed the day-to-day mundane nature of a lot of newspapers, that might not make for an interesting movie (unless it was meant to be funny/farcical). So this isn't meant to scold Hollywood for sexy-ing up the reporting business. More to commend a film that got it mostly right*.

*Zodiac, as I mentioned before, also nailed it -- refusing to succumb to formula as it portrayed reporters, editors and journalists almost perfectly as they tried to figure out how to handle a letter-writing serial killer in 1960s/1970s San Francisco.

Enough about that. More on Shattered Glass itself, a wonderfully understated film about an insecure man (Stephen Glass, played expertly by Hayden Christensen in his pre-stiff Anakin Skywalker days) with big talent and even bigger expectations of himself -- a fact that gets him into trouble when he becomes the star of The New Republic. With the wunderkind label firmly affixed to his forehead, he must impress his editors and fellow reporters. And when his favorite editor (played by Hank Azaria) gets ousted in favor of a perceived rival (played by major Oscar snub Peter Sarsgaard), Glass begins to think everyone's out to get him.

And that's when the, uh, fun starts.

What's best about this film is it's a talk piece, with writer/director Billy Ray letting his screenplay pack the punch. Unfortunately, the lack of attention-grabbing direction probably contributed to Shattered Glass' very, very modest success. But it's perfect here. This is a movie about ideas and characters, not chases and stalkers and ominous phone calls in the night.

Still ... maybe the trailer-makers should have thrown a few gunshots in to pull in the male 18-34 demo?

Overlooked: Albert Brooks

So I was watching Taxi Driver back in '76, and I got a look at that guy who hits on the Cybill Shepherd character in Senator Palatine's campaign office, and I was like: "Dude, you just KNOW he's a talented comic writer waiting to happen."

And you know what? I was right!

That guy, of course, was (and still is) Albert Brooks, an actor/writer/director who has lurked in the comedy background for years, surfacing occasionally as an actor -- in Finding Nemo, The Simpsons Movie (and, more memorably, a few Simpsons episodes), and James L. Brooks' Broadcast News (the Albert version of Brooks got a Best Supporting Actor nomination for that one).

As a writer-director, Brooks appears less frequently. But when he does, it's often worth paying attention -- he's something of a more-bitter Woody Allen. He hasn't made the Complete Great Film like Allen, but he's usually good for some sharp laughs and astute observations.

Sadly, the YouTube pirates couldn't quite come up with the best clips from his two best offerings -- Lost in America and Mother -- but here's a good one from his clever, low-key 1999 film The Muse:

"I write happy, ..."

Overlooked: Miller's Crossing

Always put one in the brain ...


Strangely, the Coen Brothers' 1990 neo-noir hasn't stuck in too many brains since its release, despite the Coens' rising profile. But just check its user rating on IMDB. It ain't all-time high. But 8.0 is pretty solid (and 0.1 better than the Best Picture winner -- ugh -- from '90).

There's a reason.

Anyone who's read Dashiell Hammett's Red Harvest (one of my favorites) will notice the parallels between that book and this film. In fact, Miller's Crossing is probably the closest thing to a modern, English-language adaptation of Hammett's genre-defining work* -- it's got the setting (a mob-run town; Albert Finney plays the Irish head honcho here); a cold, witty, rational but not-quite-conscience-free protagonist (Gabriel Byrne); a can-you-really-trust-her? dame (Marcia Gay Harden), and a whole lot of shady characters and angles to be played.

*Incidentally, Harvest contains the phrase "blood simple" ... which later became the title of the Coens' first film.

Maybe that Harvest-Crossing closeness is why Crossing doesn't much find itself alongside films like Fargo in the pantheon of Coen Classics. Like in Harvest, Crossing's humor is black as a Thompson's handle. There's no Jesus the Bowler (NSFW!!!!) here, nor any funny-looking kidnappers. Not to say there isn't a little relief*, just not a ton. Mostly it's a clever, tangled, violent web of crime, and you're never quite sure what the hero's up to until it all comes together in the end.

*A kid. A dog. A dead guy. A hair piece.

The only significant issue here was the casting of Jon Polito as Finney's Italian rival. Polito's a fine comic actor, but plays his Crossing role a little too cartoonishly, compared to the others. It's far from enough to ruin the film, though -- and definitely no reason to skip this overlooked Coen gem.

After all, Rusty Ryan from the Oceans' series didn't.

Overlooked: High Anxiety

How often does Mel Brooks' 1977 Hitchcock parody High Anxiety get its due?

(I'll have that for you in a moment.)

... once in a blue moon.


True, it's no Young Frankenstein or Blazing Saddles, Brooks' 1-2 comic punch from 1974 that helped place that year among the greatest in film history. And no, it's not quite on The Producers' level either, but that one's in a different world.

But Brooks' send-up of The Master of Suspense's classic thrillers is right up there, maybe a half-step below his best, firmly entrenched in his Second Tier, alongside other spoofs like Spaceballs, Silent Movie (another overlooked one) and Robin Hood: Men In Tights.

One thing clearly going against High Anxiety is modern-day relevance. In pop culture, Westerns (which Blazing Saddles parodies), horror flicks (Young Frankenstein), period adventure movies (Men in Tights) and sci-fi sagas (Spaceballs) all have stayed alive in one way or another.

Meanwhile, Hitchcock movies (Psycho excepted) fall outside the purview of most of today's non-cinephiles. Sure, the old cheesy horror movies at the core of Young Frankenstein's jabs aren't around anymore either, but one typically learns through osmosis the story of Frankenstein and his monster and all that. But North by Northwest? Vertigo? These are AFI classics, not IMDB hits.

But High Anxiety is worth it no matter how much Hitchcock you've seen. Like any Brooks vehicle, it's filled with memorable lines*, hilarious gags and ridiculous characters played by Brooks regulars (the writer/director himself, Cloris Leachman, the late great Madeline Kahn, the also late and also great Harvey Korman, Dick Van Patten, et al).

*"You're the cocker's daughter?"

Really, the whole thing's worth it just to see eventual Oscar-winning director Barry Levinson (below) as a high-strung bellboy. Sadly, I found no clip online. So you'll just have to take The Film Official's official word for it, and Netflix this one.


"That kid gets no tip."

Overlooked: The Killing

*Warning: The following post contains references to black & white images, straightforward narration and other frightening elements of pre-rating system films.

What to say about Stanley Kubrick that hasn't already been said?

My own comment: When looking at the late director's filmography, it's hard to believe the guy directed as few films as he did. Only eight after 1960. Only two after 1980.

Early on, in 1956 -- before helming legendary movies like 2001 and A Clockwork Orange and Full Metal Jacket and this unfortunate disappointment, and even before he made the I-can't-believe-Kubrick-did-that-one Spartacus and Dr. Strangelove (the best of the bunch) -- the peerless director crafted The Killing.

It doesn't carry the twisted vision later synonymous with the director. It's pretty much a straight, sinister, small-time crime film -- a group gets together to rob a horse track and make a killing (of one kind or another). The word "taut" gets thrown around a lot, but it's perfect here -- there really isn't much time wasted in the movie's 83 minutes.

Yes, like in many early films, some of the acting is wooden and the music a little excessive. There's also one character -- played by a hulking chess-crazy pro wrestler from Russia named Kola Kwariani -- whose dialogue was almost incomprehensible*.

*Seriously, listening to Kwariani in his couple of scenes, I felt like Brian Fantana talking to Ron Burgundy.

Still, those are small qualms with an otherwise slick, entertaining yarn. It's easy to see why this one often gets forgotten when talking about Kubrick's career -- it's not big/yuge/EPIC, like some of the others. But it's also easy to see why Quentin Tarantino liked it so much that he wanted to do his own quasi-version of it years later, with Reservoir Dogs.

And, in the end (literally), the film's final line belongs right there among the best ever:

"What's the difference?"

Overlooked: Zodiac

According to Box Office Mojo, Zodiac made about $33mm in American theaters. That placed it No. 81 on the list of top-grossing films in 2007. I already rolled my eyes at the meaning of gate receipts as it pertains to movie quality, so I ... don't ... need ... to ... tell* ... you ... why ... you ... can't ... trust ... the ... numbers.

*Alvin and the Chipmunks? Are you effin' serious?

Then again, to paraphrase a great song, who am I to wave my finger? I didn't see Zodiac in theaters, either. Heard good things. Was intrigued. Probably stayed home and watched Entourage instead.



Now? Since first catching Zodiac on TV about three months ago, I've watched it far more times (about 10, give or take) than any half-hour segment of Vincent Chase complaining about his life*.
*Can we get an Ari-only spin-off, please?

So why is Zodiac so infinitely watchable?

THE STORY
Serial killer flicks are as played out as the whole Obamicon thing. But Zodiac is not a serial killer flick. It's about the obsession -- namely, the obsession of those pursuing the killer, not the killer's own craze. It contains no phony suspense or chases or climaxes. You don't see the perp in some basement, showing all his sadistic glory to the camera*.

*Like, ya know, in The Silence of the Lambs. Yeah, I'll say it -- overrated.

Plus, the whole thing features straight-up, chronoligcal storytelling. It starts at the first killing (notice it only recreates the crimes that were witnessed) and navigates through the story of a cartoonist-turned-author, a drunk/drugged-up reporter, a determined cop, and several others who tried to answer the question: Who was this Zodiac Killer who terrorized the Bay Area in the 1970s (and perhaps took credit for more murders than he actually committed)?

It's not so much a whodunit as an account of the proceedings. And it absolutely grips you from the opening scene, not letting go until you see credits roll 160 minutes later.

THE SCRIPT
Part of that comes from the source material. But also credit the screenplay, a brilliantly un-Hollywood piece from James Vanderbilt (who, if Wikipedia is to be believed, had some earlier run-ins with script changes). This one certainly doesn't seem meddled-with. It sort-of, kind-of has a resolution, but nothing that resembles the Last Big Showdown/Climax/ALL HELL BREAKS LOOSE! AHHHHHH! garbage that most suspense films devolve into. As mentioned above, it just tells a story.

It also does so with sharp, witty dialogue ("I'm eating here, Bill") and exceptional attention to detail (example: the S.F. Chron newsroom, amazingly, looks and sounds like a newsroom).

THE DIRECTION
David Fincher gave us Seven, the underrated Alien3, and this one (which arouses more film students than any Cinemax After Dark special ever did). Fincher also got nominated for his solid work in Benjamin Button.

But none of it reaches the level of Zodiac. He leads a Thomson Viper digital camera through this maze of a story, making what could have been a dull, made-for-TV-type film seem wholly cinematic. From the composition of shots (they look like paintings, thanks to Fincher, that Thomson Viper and cinematographer Harris Savides) to the perfect pacing to the construction of several scenes (especially the TV show phone call ... see that one below), this is a top example of the craft.

After all, killings aside, the whole movie is a bunch of talk. So why is it so thrilling? Credit Fincher for quite a bit of it.

THE EDITING
For some reason I'm an editing junkie (which leads to a number of rants when the wrong movies get nominated for the Oscar ... no Minority Report in 2002? Ugh.) Speaking of which -- Zodiac at least belonged in the conversation in 2007 . Just check the way the morning show scene is cut. Wow.

Zodiac - Not Tracing Your Call Movies & TV SPIKE.com

THE SOUNDTRACK
Take a look at this thing. They're not all great songs by famous artists, but there's hardly a cliche on there. Unlike in some other movies.

THE CAST
If you watch a lot of movies, and then you watch Zodiac, you'll be saying a lot of "I know that guy" here. I mean, the cast features one of the one of the McPoyle Brothers from Always Sunny, the voice of Roger Rabbit, and The Actor Who Is In Every Movie (plus a Holiday Inn commercial starring a NASCAR driver).

Who could argue with that?