THE WEIGHT OF HISTORY Saw A History of Violence at the River East on Saturday night. In attendance with me were Sniffian, and our favorite married couple, Emily and Austin.

Plot: Viggo Mortensen plays Tom Stall, the owner/manager of a diner in small town Indiana. Tom's got a beautiful wife (Maria Bello), two nice kids, a big house, and everyone just seems to like him. Life couldn't be better, right? Not so fast. Things take a turn for the worse when two "bad guys" show up at Tom's diner one night - hey, that's the name of that Suzanne Vega song, I've been to that diner! - and try to rob it. Tom springs into action like a Navy seal on crack and wastes the aforesaid good-for-nothin's. He becomes a local hero for his crime fighting, which has the unfortunate consequence of attracting the attention of Carl Fogarty (Ed Harris), a nasty piece of work with most of one eye missing. Fogarty shows up at the diner one day, claiming to know Tom and calling him "Joey." Needless to say, Tom doesn't fire back with a friendly, "How you doin'?"

So what's the deal? Has Fogarty got the wrong guy? Or does Tom know more about the mysterious "Joey" than he's letting on?

Spoiler alert! I'm now going to write about all the plot twists and turns, so if you'd rather not know, please check out now.

Okay, here we go. It turns out that Tom is, indeed, Joey Cusack, a former hitman for the Philadelphia mob. Tom admits to his previous identity to his wife while lying in a hospital bed after a deadly confrontation with Fogarty. Tired of a life of bloodshed, Cusack created the identity of Tom Stall and moved out to the heartland. (The details of this transformation are glossed over by the film.) Cusack's desire to become someone else was so strong that he eventually believed that he was Tom.

The first hour of A History of Violence is taut and suspenseful. We're never sure if Tom is telling the truth about himself and Mortensen does a good job of keeping us in the dark. He's ambiguous without seeming evasive. His confrontations with Harris have a nicely menacing cat and mouse quality. However, once we discover Tom's previous identity, the film loses direction. Tom travels to Philly, for a showdown with his brother (William Hurt), who appears to have sent Fogarty and his henchmen after Tom. (Hurt plays the brother as kind of a shrewd idiot, giving a performance that's so odd that it's either brilliant or awful, or both.) Without much preamble, Tom dispatches his brother and his goons like a Ninja assassin and goes back to his family.

Hmmm, so what's this all about? I think that Cronenberg is saying that the capacity for brutal violence lies within all of us, like a dormant virus, that we can never be rid off it, and that we are even attracted to it. Tom tries to destroy his previous identity as a hitman and almost pulls it off, but betrays himself in the diner when he kills the two would-be robbers; he just can't help offing them with stunning speed and efficiency. Once Tom's former self resurfaces everything starts to unravel. Tom's dorky son savagely beats the bully that had been tormenting him. His wife is furious with him when she learns of his previous identity, but in a very charged sex scene, we discover that she's turned on by scary, brutal Joey just as much as she is by nice, safe Tom.

Alright, so violence lurks inside all of us, so what? Is that good or bad? Forget good or bad. Does it mean anything? Is Cronenberg just saying that violence is a destructive force? That's not really news, is it? Or is it that no matter how hard we try we can never be free of violence? I think that ultimately Cronenberg may be saying that violence changes everything, that we can never go back to the way things were once an atrocity has been committed. That's more interesting than some of the other questions that I've just cited, but not by much. Of course violence changes everything, we all know that. What's interesting is how it changes things, what effects it has on people's lives. The film does document the impact that violence has on Tom and his family for its first hour, but unfortunately becomes more plot-oriented from there on. The scenes at Tom's brother's estate in Philly feel like they belong in another movie, probably one starring Steve Seagal. That's not so bad, but it's frustrating compared to what went before. What starts out as a thoughtful character study, ends as a typical Hollywood revenge flick.  ¶ 7:41 AM 1 comments

  A ROSE FOR EMILY Saw The Exorcism of Emily Rose in Evanston on Friday night.

Emily Rose is a nice, studious, young woman from a small, rural town in...well...somewhere, the film didn't specify. Anway, Emily has been offered a scholarship to attend a similarly vague "university." Almost immediately after Emily starts college, something goes wrong. She begins to hallucinate and her body contorts into strange positions. She seeks help from psychiatrists and other mental health professionals, but nothing seems to work. Eventually, she returns home and her family asks their priest, Father Moore (Tom Wilkinson), for help. Father Moore decides to perform an exorcism on Emily, during which, she dies.

The preceding is described in flashback during the trial of Father Moore for negligent homicide for his involvement in Emily's death. Emily Rose is actually two movies in one, one half supernatural horror, the other, courtroom drama. Erin Bruner (Laura Linney), a big-time, criminal defense lawyer, is hired for Father Moore's defense. She's a talented attorney, but appears troubled by her profession, particularly her role in defending a man acquitted of murder charges. She and Father Moore are up against Ethan Thomas (Campbell Scott), the public prosecutor whom we are informed is a devout Chrsitian. Soon after Bruner takes up Moore's case, strange things begin happening in her own life...

I liked Emily Rose, but left the theater feeling a bit unsatisfied. The flashbacks to Emily's predicament are the better part of the film. Jennifer Carpenter plays Emily and, with her smooth, blank, face and big, spacey eyes, there's something otherwordly about her from the beginning. She does a fantastic job acting out Emily's possession/psychosis. She's very physical and kinetic, her long limbs flailing everywhere, seemingly without concern for her own safety. These scenes have a deatched, clinical air about them that makes them all the more unsettling.

The courtroom scenes left me wanting more. They're not bad, but they're not that interesting either. The film attempts to set up the trial as a serious examination of the differences between science and faith, but while it's very even-handed, it goes nowhere, as the frequent flashbacks kill momentum. The film also doesn't deliver on several heavy-handed hints that, due to her involvement in the case, terrible things will happen to Linney's character. Some might find this low-key approach in a supernatural/horror film to be refreshing, but I thought it was something of a cop-out. I didn't think the makers of Emily Rose were any more mature for their unwillingness or failure to follow through on plot threads that they took the time to bring to our attention.  ¶ 7:21 AM 1 comments

  SOMEWHERE IN TIME Saw Wong Kar-Wai's 2046 at the Music Box last night.

Hmmm, this one is going to be hard to write about. Okay, here we go:

Tony Leung plays Chow, a journalist and fiction writer living in Hong Kong in the late sixties. Chow appears to be the same character that Leung played in In The Mood for Love, but he's a bit different here. In the previous film, Chow was achingly tentative, never making a move on Maggie Cheung; here, his character is smooth and confident, having no problem bedding attractive women. Indeed, 2046's plot - if you want to call it that - consists of Chow recounting a series of doomed love affairs with women played by the most beautiful Chinese actresses of our time. These histoires des amours tristes are framed by one of Chow's stories called 2046, a place, or time, or state of being where memories can be recalled to perfection and without pain.

The longest and most interesting section of the film concerns Chow's affair with Bai Ling (Zhang Ziyi). She's a fiery-tempered call girl that moves into Room 2046 of Chow's building. Wong expertly chronicles their brief relationship, from the initial, hostile flirtation, to the passionate sex, to the sad conclusion, when it becomes clear that Chow doesn't love Bai Ling. It's one of the best depictions of an affair that I've ever seen in a film. Zhang Ziyi is simply terrific as Bai Ling. She's all swagger and spark on the surface, fragile and sad undeneath. I had previously dismissed Ms. Zhang as just a nice, pretty girl, a mistake I'll never make again.

The tables are turned in the next section of the film, however, as Chow falls in love with his landlord's daughter (Faye Wong), only to have his feelings spurned. Then there's a flashback to the time he spent in Singapaore before returning to Hong Kong and his relationship with the mysterious gambler known as the Black Spider (Gong Li).

But why am I going on about plot anyway? Wong Kar-Wai films aren't about plots. You go for moments, for moods. So here are my favorite moments: The look on Gong Li's face when she realizes that Chow will never love her, the look on Chow's face when he learns that the landlord's daughter has married, the parting between Chow and the Black Spider. Overall, the mood is of wistful regret. There's a sense that Chow laments his affairs even as they're happening, that he's remembering these women more than he's engaging with them. After all, how can anyone compare to the perfection of memory?  ¶ 9:05 AM 0 comments

  SUMMER OF SAMURAI The Exterminating Angel was back in his home town on Long Island last week, visiting his parents, but made it in to the city over the weekend to see some friends and take in a screening of Kill! at the Film Forum as part of its Summer Samurai series.

My first night back in the city, I stopped by my old haunt, the Ginger Man, and then made my way down to DBA and met up with my friend Matt. It was a long night, so I was more than a little hung over when I scuttled on over to Houston and Varick on Saturday afternoon. Shock of all shocks, I actually had a good time seeing a movie at the Forum. The theater wasn't too crowded and the people weren't annoying at all. No one sneezed on me or ate borscht straight from a jar. Such a pleasant environment had me almost nostalgic for the less than ideal Forum screenings of years past.

Anyway, on to the movie. Well, you know, I don't think I have much to say about Kill!. It's about a ronin and a samurai-wanna-be that find employment with warring factions in a small town. Even though the two men are on opposite sides of the conflict they strike up a friendship. Yet, Kill! didn't focus exclusively on the relationship between the two men, as it had about a dozen other major characters that, honestly, I had a hard time keeping track of. The only other film that I've seen by the director, Kihachi Okamato, is Sword of Doom and I found Kill! to be somewhat similar. Both films looked fantastic, (appearing to have been shot in high-contrast black and white,) and had great action sequences. Unfortunately, they were also very talk-heavy; the characters in both films have lengthy expository discussions that seem designed to destroy pace and momentum. Kill!'s title promised non-stop action, but didn't deliver.

Well, that was it for my Samurai Summer film-going. I know, I know, I only saw one of more than a dozen films, but what're ya gonna do?  ¶ 11:26 AM 1 comments