After hop-scotching around the eastern seaboard all summer, the 'Fesser and I found ourselves in the rare position last week of both being home at the same time. To celebrate, we went to a movie. Public Enemies, to be precise.
Because it was playing in a multiplex, the two-hour-plus existential gangster flick began a good 15 minutes later than advertised, with the following trailers [but mercifully no jingoistic Kid Rock-scored service propaganda] filling the time.
- Shutter Island: Wicked faakkin scary, dude. And that's just Leo's accent!
- Couples Retreat: Oh, good. Ken Jeong is playing a pissy Asian stereotype. That's new. When does Hollywood start saying "Get me a Ken Jeong type?" [Holy shit, though. I just looked it up, and it's directed by Ralphie.]
- Amelia: I just don't get Hilary Swank. She's so fucking horsey. There, I said it.
- Brothers: Natalie Portman back in ice skates at long last.
- The Informant!: As the 'Fesser said, "yes, please!"
By this point you may have noticed I've as yet said nothing about the feature presentation. Right you are! Here are the only notes I took: [during the first holdup] "Makes me miss that bank in Hyde Park." And, toward the end, "unearned crane shot. 'Tourists welcome.'" That's it.
Actually, it felt like there were a lot of odd crane shots in this film [not to mention all those low-angled ones looking up folks' nostrils], but the one I'm thinking of is outside the Biograph after Dillinger was shot. It seems to be reaching for some sort of Chinatown-style transcendant resignation, but it's unearned. Also, then the movie keeps going. And going.
The best part of Public Enemies came after the end credits, when the 'Fesser vented his spleen in the parking lot. Here is the difference between he and I. Before the movie, I'd read the rhapsodic Dargis review and watched all five installments of Zoller Seitz's video-essay investigation into Mann's work. The 'Fesser knew only that Depp played Dillinger. He didn't realize Mann was the director until midway through, poor thing, when he said the "ponderous portentiousness of the violence" tipped him off. He further decried Mann's ability to transform what should be a 90- to 105-minute movie into "a two-and-a-half-hour ordeal" akin to an Amway presentation. To that end, he did say, however, that he'd love to see a Mann edit of old Three Stooges reels. Imagine!
We also caught up with Twyker's The International on DVD. Again, strangely airless/passionless, with no sense of there being anything actually at stake save hitting all the expected marks in a globe-trotting action thriller. [Although I would love to write about how the corporate architecture is photographed/framed in that film. It comes off a lot better than the Guggenheim in the big action setpiece.] Otherwise, this flick did nothing to dispell my creeping suspicious that Clive Owen is determined to emulate his Children of Men costar Michael Caine's career path.
