The Spanish Prisoner

Instead of watching the Republicans debate, I found a better way to spend my time by going to see Woody Allen’s latest film. A Hollywood screenwriter, Gil Pender (Owen Wilson, who talks and even gestures like Woody Allen in this film), travels to Paris with his fiancée, Inez (Rachel McAdams), and with her uptight Republican parents (Kurt Fuller and Mimi Kennedy). There they run into Inez’s friends, Paul (Michael Sheen) and Carol (Nina Arianda). Since this is a Woody Allen movie, Paul turns out to be a pretentious pseudo-intellectual. Gil eventually gets weary of listening to Paul’s gaseous lectures, so he goes wandering off by himself and gets lost. When a clock strikes midnight, an antique car suddenly appears, and its occupants invite Gil to join them, which he does. Gil suddenly finds himself transported back to the Paris of the 1920’s, where he meets Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Gertrude Stein and other famous artists and writers from that era. Gil discovers that by going to the same spot every night at midnight, he can make these magical journeys into the past. During one trip, he meets a model, Adriana (Marion Cotillard), with whom he falls in love. Gil feels increasingly torn between his life in the present and his life in the 1920’s.

The famous people that Gil meets in the twenties all behave the way we imagine they would. Allen has the most fun with Hemingway (Corey Stoll), whose dialogue sounds like a parody of Hemingwayesque prose.

Midnight in Paris pokes fun at our tendency to romanticize the past. We try to escape the problems of our lives by imagining that the past was better. A very funny comedy.

Biutiful is the latest film by Mexican director, Alejandro González Iñárritu. It tells the story of Uxbal (Javier Bardem), a petty criminal in Barcelona. He supplies goods from a sweatshop to undocumented African immigrants to sell on the street. He also bribes police officers to look the other way while this is going on. Uxbal leads an essentially parasitical existence, and he is clearly conflicted about it. He tries to make up for it by helping other people in various ways, but his efforts are not always successful, and in one instance the results are tragic. At the same time he tries to hold together his marriage with his wife, Marambra (Maricel Álvarez), who suffers from bipolar disorder. On top of all this, Uxbal has been diagnosed with cancer.

Biutiful is a well-crafted and convincing drama. My only criticism is of the supernatural elements in the film. It appears that Uxbal has the ability to communicate with dead people. (Such an ability would clearly be financially lucrative. So why does Uxbal have to lead a meagre existence as a not very successful criminal?) This idea is never incorporated into the story in a dramatically interesting manner. For the most part it merely means that at certain moments Uxbal looks up and sees the spirits of dead people stuck to the ceiling. For me, this whole business was merely a distraction from the main story. I would have preferred it if the film had consistently maintained its gritty realism throughout. Aside from this, I found this film deeply moving. Javier Bardem’s performance is powerful; he should have won the Oscar for Best Actor.

Super, written and directed by James Gunn, is about a short order cook, Frank (Rainn Wilson), whose wife, Sarah (Liv Tyler), is stolen from him by a drug dealer, Jacques (Kevin Bacon). Frank becomes depressed, and after watching a TV show about a religious superhero, he has a religious vision in which he is told to become a superhero himself. He goes to a comic book store to do research on how to be a superhero, and there he meets Libby (Ellen Page), a store employee who helps him find appropriate comic books. Franks makes a red costume for himself and takes the moniker, “The Crimson Bolt”. He roams the streets at night, attacking criminals with a wrench. (Frank’s idea of “criminals” includes a man who cuts in line at a movie theatre.) Libby eventually finds out about what Frank is doing, and she demands that he make her his sidekick, “Boltie”. However, it soon becomes clear that Libby is less interested in fighting crime than in clobbering people. Frank’s feelings towards her become conflicted, but then he has a vision telling him he must rescue Sarah. He takes Libby with him for an attack on Jacques’s heavily guarded mansion.

I found Super mostly funny in a very dark sort of way. However, towards the end the film suddenly becomes merely mindlessly violent. (The turning point comes at about the point when Frank sets a man on fire.) I suppose that itself is intended as a sort of joke. Perhaps Gunn meant this film to be an elaborate shaggy dog story: the ending is less than what we are led to expect it to be.

Rainn Wilson and Ellen Page both give very good performances. (Page is wonderfully disturbing as Libby.) I wish I could give this film an unqualified endorsement, but I can really only recommend about four fifths of it.