The Man Who Wasn't There

Some things are easier said then done, like "bring back the golden ae cinema" think of the failed attempt of Clooney and Soderbergh to do their interperetation of "The Third Man" it was named "The Good German" and tanked like a torpedoed german submarine in WW2, but the Coens know the craft of film noir, and that's what made "The Man Who Wasn't there" a success.

Ed Crane (Billy Bob Thornton) is a barber in Santa Rosa, California in the fifties, he has a quiet stable life with his wife Doris (Frances Mc Dormand) and works at his in laws barbershop, one day an "entrepreneur" named Creighton Tolliver (Jon Polito) asks him to become his business partner in dry cleaning, Ed is supposed to make it big, and lack of funds leads him to blackmail his wife's boss Big Dave (James Gandolfine).

Following that greedy move, everything around Ed falls into pieces while he is the quiet observer he is "just the barber", this basic blackmail will make him cross the paths of a ruthless lawyer (Tony Shalhoub) a young virtuousou pianist (Scarlett Johansson), in the whole mood of the USSR atomic bomb, the Rosewell UFO's, and all the Pulp culture in the Fifties America.

That's a movie the new generation of filmmakers can present to HitchCock, or Welles and be proud, it has all the elements of noir used in a masterful way, with Ed Crane as a fabulous anti-hero, he is in the midst of the Horatio Alger thing, he wants to make it big, that's what America is supposed to be about, but he is stuck in his air conditioned hell, and when he tries to leave his comfort zone, destiny hits him with it's huge shovel on the head.

Straightforward cinematography from back in the day by Roger Deakins plays a big part in the success of this movie, and a minimalist score by Carter Burwell, it's insane how the Coens can be brilliant, it left me spontaneously clapping while the end credits were rolling, and indeed a special mention to the acting of BBT who channels one of the quietest anti-heroes in the coen's universe since Byrne in Miller's Crossing.

Ed lives his life as an UFO fitting nowhere, and the conens are at their best when they film misfits, this is one of their best works, and it won a big award at Cannes that year, indeed they want to win a handful of oscars years later, but that's another story for another review.

Miller's Crossing

Plot is a big word, and is an art form by itself, and that is why so many writers handle it with extreme care, but rarely a plot has been as twisted and brilliant as in Miller's Crossing, the Coen Brothers homage to gangster movies, with a plot as twisted as they come, revisiting the whole Irish Italian rivality without falling in the clichés of the genre, while observing the rules of Noir.

Tom Reagan (Gabriel Byrne) is the adviser and trust man of Leo O'Bannon (Albert Finney) who is a big Irish crime boss in a prohibition era city, a throne soon to be threatned by Johnny Casper (Jon Polito) a quick tempered Italina gangster because of a gambling debt story involving Bernie Bernbaum (John Turturro) a double faced bookie, and the brother of Verna Bernbaum (Marcia Gay Harden) who is the love interest of Leo, and because of whome, a gang war starts in the city, despite Tom's strong advices against Leo's involvment in this story, which will end him to earn the animosity of his former friends, and to face the ruthless Eddie the Dane () Casper's executioner, and a natural born killer straight out of hell.

We are in the middle of a Dashiell Hammett novel's setting, the ultra corrupt town with rotten officials, Marcia Gay Harden as a weary femme fatale with really simple motives, John Toruturo as the meanest movie character you'll ever see, and Jon Polito, who gives a performance that makes you regret that he was not in The Godfather, and Frances McDormand and Steve Buscemi in short but memorable roles.

But the true force of the movie is Gabriel Byrne, who walks through this movie as a hat blowing breeze, he is not always at the right side of events and often ends up in trouble, but this is a tale of loyalty, and of the fragility of every system based on loyalty, and how a simple event can be the direct cause of a war.

This movie is on a lots of best lists and favourite lists, but is not much celebrated, so it's a time for everybody to unbury this treasure, with a plot as thick as a warm blanket and characters you will not forget soon, and of course, the whole gangster era nostalgia, in a time where criminal ethics belong only in the realm of the silver screen.

year of realease: 1991, origin: US

Burn After Reading (2008)

What do CIA signal interception, internet dating and the fitness culture have in common, not much you would say, not in the minds in the Coens they do, and the result is comedy called "Burn After Reading".

Osbourne Cox (John Malkovich) is a CIA analyst in the Balkans Siging devision, he is married to a cutthroat bitch (Tilda Swinton) and lives in the velvet carpeted boring life of a princeton graduate in Washington DC, but his ejection from his job into a marginal position leaves him frustrated, and to make things worse Mrs Cox is not exactly a model wife, so out of frustration, he decides to write a memoir about his years in service, and to make things worse again, this memoirs fall accidently in the hands of Chad (Brad Pitt), and Lynda (Frances McDormand) fitness coaches at "hardbodies" a successful gym run by (Robert Jenkins), who see in this an oppurtunity to make some money.

Lynda who is into internet dating and "re-inventing herself" ends up meeting Harry Pfaffer (George Clooney), a treasury executive and who is inclined to filandering and buliding weird artifacts, and who is also a friends of the Cox's especially Mrs Cox.

This intricate web of characters relationships is what connects a rather impressive set of subplots, but hey these are the coens, and when it comes to multiplex plot and gourmet dialogue, they never disappoint, but what is essentialy a charcter movie populated with idiots in the big tradition of the much excellent "The Big lebowski" offers opportunitys of acting departure for it's stars, Brad Pitt is such a cartoon of himself in the perfect coenesque tradtion, miles away from the cool clever Rusty Rean from the "Ocean's Trilogy", Clooney continues his hilarious job for the coens, which he started with "O'brother", and continued with "Intolerable cruelty" as a larger then life buffoon.

And Frances McDormand is so touching as a fourtiesh woman trying to re-invent hersrlf, and getting acciedently in the world of espionnage for that, and Tilda Swinton plays her exact opposite, incredibly stuck-up and cold, and in this myriad of characters, the award goes to super John Malkovich, in the "Being John Malkovich" tradition, overworked, and over the edge, reminding everyone that when it goes wrong, it goes wrong all the way, all this set on a rythm of a beautiful paraniod soundtrack by Carter Burwell.

The Washinton DC politics , the fitness culture, the jogging buffs, the CIA bigshots mergey in this unlikely but very tasty stock, it is the Coens laughing at themselves and at everybody, who take themselves and their little stories too seriously, because if the DC people are like that, who can blame Canada.

The movie's weakness is perhaps the ending, which comes at a surprising moment, in a surprising way, it makes you wonder why, but i guess this whole movie is a "feel good movie" after the much darker "No Country For Old Men", and a near miss is also a near hit, but you will laugh your guts off when you see the artifact harry builds, it's a pure coen-clooney moment you can't affoard to miss, in the days of "40 years old virgin" type of gross comedy.

Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (2002)

Actors turned directors, are in general spoiled kids of a system, who are rewarded for making so much money, by being allowed to play with a camera and a crew for three months, and make a movie people will watch anyways, because they usually star in it too, i can name so many of them but not the one i'm talking about tonight.

Confessions of a Dangerous Mind came as a knockout punch in the early 00's, George Clooney making a movie, with a Charile Kaufman script, and everybody thinking that a handsome face can't be a director anyways that he is going to ruin the script, and to the general surprise the movie was good, some even say very good.

So you have Chuck Barris (Sam Rockwell), for those of you who don't know him (and i didn't know him before the movie neither) is the creator of such TV shows as "the dating game", or "the gong show", which means he is responsible for this downward spiral whitch the Television took resulting with such atrocities as "the obbournes" or "Laguna Beach", but it is not his total responsability, because he claims that he was giving people what they want, and you almost can't argue with that, because if nobody watches a show it will get canceled, and this egg-chicken argument can entertain you one afternoon when there is no DVD to watch.

So this movie is about his life, as depicted in his unauthorized biography, where he claims he was hired as an assassin for the CIA, killing thirty people for them, but this is not even the theme of the movie although being a good part of it, the whole theme of the movie, is alienation and schizophrenia, because it's either that Chuck Barris did invent this fictional life because he was going crazy with all these accusations of him running the whole Television, or just representing everything decadent, or it is that these stories are true, and then it makes perfect sense too, because as Jim Byrd (George Clooney), the CIA recruiter says to him "you fit the profile", and god knows that he does.

This is a brilliant first movie, and shows that clooney has been a good students of his great director friends such as the Coens, or Soderbergh, some even accused Soderbergh of ghost-directing it at the time, as rediculous as it might be as an accusation, the cast also is fitting, with Drew Barrimore as Chuck's love interest, and Julia Roberts as a Cold War Femme Fatale, while the ever great Rutger Hauer, plays a ruthless fellow assassin, all this while projecting the audience into the heart of the Cold War and it's world of double identities, and spies, and it's Berlin wall, and all the stories around the wall, and the dirty work the CIA did in South America.

It is arguable what's more disgusting, killing people for the CIA, or making shows that show how decadent everybody is, or even shows like "the gong show" made in purpouse to make fun of people, for the sake of making fun of them, but then again, people kept coming to these shows to participate, and they were aware of what it was about.

The Dating game shows that dating and relationships are just another form of gambling, because at the end of the day you can't know much about a person unless you spend months in their company, and Chuck Barris knew that, he is at the same time, the victim of this culture and also it's catalyser, because he holds deep scars going back to childhood and early teenage.

So this movie is about failure, like much of Charlie Kaufman works, and one of the most common facets failure, is failure to be accepted, especially by the other sex, this failure can trigger creativity, and it can trigger nonesense, but it can project one into this sweet illusion of an imaginary life, for better of for worse.

And that's where the movie gets away with it, because it has true persons statments about chuck berry, it has his point of view on life, and his obvious alienation shown using clever color schemes, and it deals with self despise, self worth issues, and it deals about the consequences of being a misfit.

The movie starts with Chuck Barris standing in a dirty hotel room naked, facing a TV, watching Ronald Reagen inauguration in 81 (something everybody should do more often), and this scene is revealing because when we absently watch television we are naked, because it shows us the way we are, consumers, gossipers, and cruel, at least Chuck Barris, was not afraid to face his own flaws, and failures, I wish many other people, intoxicating the TV, movie, or the music world, has the same courage to watch themselves in the mirror of reality , or of TV

This movie is a buried treasures, it deserves to be watched, as scary as it be in it's revealing what we became.

Frances McDormand as Marge Gunderson

Some characters have a short life span, who for example remembers Tommy Lee Jones' character from "Volcano", or Bruce Willis' character in that movie i forgot the name of, but i betcha that nobody will be able to forget Marge Gunderson from "Fargo".

After a series of violent and senseless murders occurs on the road around Fargo Minnesota, and the person who is investigating is police chief Marge Gunderson, and she is not what you'd expect her to be, not this wanted-to-be-a-man cop, who plays it tough, she is just a smart seven months pregnant cop, who is married to a stamp painter, she is a good chief and a good wife.

Marge starts investigating, quickly figuring out that these murders were linked to a story involving the kidnapping of a housewife, two very violent small timers who are after a lousy ransom, and sneaky son in law who is the dumb mastermind of this whole situation.

Of course i'm not giving away the plot of "Fargo" one of the best movies of the nineties, that being sad, you can't help but love marge gunderson, her modesty, her smarts and her true belief in good, Marge is supportive to her husband even if he does a lousy job, she supports an old highschool friend who is desperate in his private life to find out that he is a compulsive liar, and she is slowly able to follow the leads that will take her to find a solution to these gratuitous murders, and to the roots of the basic greed behind them.

Marge Gunderson is a hero, not one like these ones you see on TV, but she is a hero anyone can be, she is a good person, she is good at her job, supportive to her husband, and above that, smarter then everybody around her, but she doesn't feel the need to show it off, and that's what made her one of the most loved character in cinema history (she is number 33 at the AFI 100 heroes list), and let's not forget the movies signature Minnesotan accent, which is so pleasent to listen to, and so hard to forget, along with the iconic main theme which has the ryhthm of a Scandenavian chant.

This masterpiece of a character is due to two reasons, one is Frances McDormand's performance, and the second being that the script is written so good, Frances Mc Dormand (the oscar winner that year) played marge gunderson as if it was an alter ego, with honesty and wit, it is really impossible not to root for her, as she is the only character with a clear moral compass in the middle of all the others, blinded by greed and incompetence, or by selfishness, matter of fact this is a movie you should watch only to see that seven months pregnant woman saying at the end of the movie after all that blood spilled and all these people dead “And for what? For a little bit of money.... There's more to life than money,you know.... Don't you know that?... And here ya are, and it's a beautiful day...”

Barton Fink: False boring movie / True Masterpiece

I had this buddy who was an aspiring director, with whome i had a lot of interesting cinematic discussions (we had the same first name, but that's really an insignificant detail), and he was telling me about Barton Fink, the movie by Joel and Ethan Coen, and how it was a "masterpiece" and it really made me more perplexed, first of all the title was weird, and movie was set in the fourties, and it received Cannes Recgonition, i thought it was one of these "arty" movies with only ten people liking them, and it had won a Golden Palm in Cannes Festival, which is really a bad thing considering that most of these film tend to be arrogant and boring, but i ended up by getting the dvd anyways



This movie is really a "masterpiece", it's about a theaterwriter "Barton Fink" (John Turturro) who is hired to write a wrestling movie in LA, so he moves there and he checks in the "Hotel Earl" and starts to write, only to discover that he has writer's block, so he starts to seek help from: a legendary writer he meets in a public bathroom, a studio executive, or from his fat happy wierd neighbour (amazing performance by John Goodman), only to see his life getting more and more complicated and gloomy, but that's only the first layer of a very thick movie, with sublayers of reflections about movies, writing, images, illusions, snobism, while still remaining a cool enjoyable movie (believe me i was more sceptical then you at first)



This movie remains the only movie to have won the (best actor, best director, and an UNANIMOUS golden palm in Cannes Film Festival) frankly you can't affoard miss this one, would it be for the performances by Micheal Lerner, or Jon Polito, or Tony Shalhoub, and then you will have a lot of fun tracking it's "hidden meanings" on the internet, and what if "Hotel Earl" was not really a hotel, and what if Barton never made it to LA, and what about the pictures hanging on his wall but that's just one of the MANY questions which might keep you thinking a loong time.

Jebbiness : 4/5