Carnage (2011) dir. Roman Polanski
Starring: Kate Winslet, John C. Reilly, Jodie Foster, Christophe Waltz

***½

By Alan Bacchus

Recalling the power of the fiery words of the four adults in Mike Nichols’ Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf, Carnage, the latest Roman Polanski film, based on the stage play God of Carnage by Yasmina Reza, has the same kind of effect. In this film Polanski assembles two couples bickering about the restitution deserved when one child assaults the other child in a play yard spat. Carnage’s approach is more suitable and satirical than Wolf, keenly skewering the conservative elite, liberal wonkheads and in general the ineffectiveness of civilized dispute resolution – intellectual nihilism at its best.

Jodie Foster is a wound-up tight liberal writer/librarian harbouring strong feelings of inadequacy about her weak writing career. John C. Reilly, her husband, is a salt of the earth bathroom fixture salesman, partly emasculated by his current domestic status as equal caregiver to his son. Together they have a son, whom we never see, but whom was the victim of a blow from another boy in the school yard, which has left him with some facial lacerations and in need of dental work. Kate Winslet is a lawyer in a doomed marriage with a workaholic investment banker, Christophe Waltz, who spends most of his time on his Blackberry. They are the parents of the other boy committed the assault.

The film opens with the negotiation process of the formal apology letter, nitpicking every word in a passive aggressive way to exert their authority over the other. When it's time to leave, Alan and Nancy (Waltz/Winslet) can’t seem to get out of the door, or get in the elevator without being sucked back into their argument. Michael and Penelope (Reilly/Foster), likewise, just can’t let go of the damage inflicted upon their son. The rest of the day is spent in a complex and evolving dialogue between the four boobs, fueled by scotch. Their unspoken opinions of each other and themselves devolve the get-together into a satirical spat for the ages.

Polanski is certainly at home working in a cramped apartment, deftly moving his camera from character to character and around the room while escalating tension before spilling over into its angered catharsis. The film is scripted by Reza and Polanski, who are very careful not to assign full culpability to any of the characters. Foster is delightfully grating as a ball of neuroses, the turning point represented by her attachment to an art book coffee table decoration that gets puked on by Kate Winslet. Initially, Reilly appears to be the mediator but then reveals his former life as a bully, not unlike his son, who revelled in his school yard status and quiet envy of Waltz's alpha male persona. Waltz’s droll reactions to all the shenanigans makes him the audience’s point of view into the absurdity, always maintaining his composure with a straight face, but still annoyingly crass and self-absorbed. Winslet is perhaps the most normal of the bunch, but once the scotch starts flowing she unleashes her own form of verbal vengeance on Michael, Penelope and her husband, Alan.

The title of the film refers to the God of Carnage, discussed by the characters, which serves as a mythological metaphor for the effectiveness of simple school yard justice versus the inane dance of manners. For fear of indulging in too much intellectual hyperbole, Reza brilliantly has Kate Winslet puke over Penelope’s coffee table, a ridiculous absurdist act that gleefully pays homage to the surrealist king, Luis Bunuel. But Carnage stays on the side of realism. We can't help but see ourselves in each of these characters, who make the discussion thoroughly engaging, hilarious and powerful.

Chinatown (1974) dir. Roman Polanski
Starring: Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway, John Huston

****

By Alan Bacchus

Chinatown is a unique Hollywood concoction – a gumshoe thriller in the classic noir genre, but also modern and beguiling. It’s a twister that unravels to reveal a salacious melodrama motivating a big business urban conspiracy.

Jake Gittes is an L.A. private detective in the 1930s. One day a woman named Evelyn Mulray enters his office and hires him to spy on her husband, Hollis Mulray, whom she suspects of cheating. Jake is initially hesitant to take the case, as he honestly explains that she’s better off not knowing because it would cause more pain for her. Mulray is insistent that Jake take the case. Jake follows Mulray around for several days. He discovers he’s the chief engineer of the city’s water department. There’s a major drought in the city of Los Angeles, and Mulray is in the middle of a heated debate about an expensive new dam project. Despite all this, Gittes’ investigation reveals a conspiracy involving the city dumping precious water in secret overnight. Gittes performs his job and captures Mulray’s rendezvous with a young girl. But when Hollis Mulray turns up dead the next day, and a different woman shows up claiming to be the real Evelyn Mulray, Gittes realizes he’s been set up in an elaborate murderous plot.

With his pride and reputation on the line Gittes retraces his steps to uncover the conspiracy. He develops a relationship with the real Evelyn Mulray (Faye Dunaway). Evelyn, a good-looking erudite woman with an emotional detachment to the mysterious goings-on, intrigues Jake and he takes her case to find the other woman who was seeing her husband. No one seems to be telling the truth, not even Evelyn, and as Gittes moves through the city of Los Angeles, the stakes get higher and higher. When he meets Evelyn’s father, Noah Cross (John Huston), who owns the water company, we realize the conspiracy is as personally motivated as it is money-driven. Chinatown’s byzantine plot expands larger as the film moves along becoming a big business conspiracy about the creation of modern-day L.A. and a searing melodrama with operatic plot twists.

I’ve seen the film several times and it still confounds me. The mechanics of the plot, like The Big Sleep, are notoriously difficult to follow. And though I do get lost each time I watch it, I’m comforted by the intermittent expository lines Towne gives Jake to say, which always helps me catch up.

Roman Polanski directs the film to perfection. Nobody has shot Los Angeles better than Polanski and his DOP, John Alonzo. For a film noir, they chose to shoot the film as bright and sunny as possible. Film noirs are traditionally shot in shadows and are under lit to complement the secretive elements of the genre, but Alonzo and Polanski hide nothing from us. They choose to beautify Los Angeles and bathe their characters in the brightest colours. Polanski’s camera follows Gittes very closely the entire film, much of it behind his neck. With a 2.35:1 wide angle frame we are able to see everything Jake sees and still see Jake’s wandering eyes and furrowing brows up close and personal. The handheld work is subtle. It’s so close to everything it becomes part of the action, but without the jerky movements that overtly remind us a camera is there. Sometimes the camera is so close to the actors we can feel it getting in the way. Watch the very end, after the shootout in Chinatown. When Jake and the cops run up to the car and see the damage done, Nicholson actually knocks the camera. It’s unintentional but unobtrusive and natural to the film.

Chinatown never tires. It contains so many indelible characters and situations, an unravelling plot that gets bigger and bigger as it goes along, beautiful locations and a modern quality that continues to resonate today.

Chinatown is available on glorious Blu-ray from Paramount Home Entertainment, the treasure of which is an audio commentary discussion between Robert Towne and David Fincher.

Carnage (2011) dir. Roman Polanski
Starring: Jodie Foster, John C. Reilly, Kate Winslet, Christoph Waltz

****

By Greg Klymkiw

I had to see Carnage again to experience everything I missed the first time. It's the funniest movie of the year, so be prepared to laugh so hard that you too will need to see it a second time. Then, you'll probably want to see it a third time - just because it's so terrific.

The movie is also blessed with the distinction of being one of the best stage-to-screen adaptations ever committed to film. Based on Yasmina Reza's award-winning play "God of Carnage", the author could not have asked for a better director than the great Roman Polanski to guide its four characters through a mud-swamped, mustard-gas-infused battlefield of nasty sniping - not in Beirut, mind you, but within the upscale luxury of a lovely New York apartment.

So much of Reza's ferocious knee-slapping dialogue is worthy of that which pulsates through Edward Albee's "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf". Though overall the play/movie as a whole is not as dangerously devastating as Albee's classic four-hander, (nothing ever could/would be) Carnage is, as a movie, so much more honest and brilliant than, say, the fake nastiness of such overrated crap as Alan Ball's screenplay for American Beauty, directed by Sam Mendes. With American Beauty and his loathsome screen adaptation of Revolutionary Road, the marginally talented Mendes specializes, it seems, in rendering drama that purports to expose all the raw nerve endings of human existence, but does so for those who only pretend they like the lower depths of domestic bile puked up on a platter - but really don't.

Carnage, on the other hand, expunges its smorgasbord of bilious goods with Polanski's trademark aplomb and sheer delicious, vicious glee. (There's even a great moment in the movie that comes close to the shock and hilarity of the now-famous Trelkovsky-in-the-park sequence in The Tenant.) This picture is possibly even more claustrophobic than all of Polanski's previous "apartment" pictures combined - though it's brilliantly bookended with (and scored by the wonderful Alexander Desplat) by two phenomenal exterior sequences. Other than those, though, we're smack dab in the living room, kitchen and hallway of an apartment.

Two relatively affluent 40-something couples meet over coffee and cobbler to discuss, in a civilized manner, the fisticuffs which broke out between their respective pre-teen sons. The conversation zig-zags between several topics, all related in some fashion to the initial offending action. However, once the coffee and cobbler is abandoned in favour of a bottle of scotch, the relative restraint gives way to a no-holds-barred, rock-em-sock-em, to-the-death cage match of verbal assaults and, much to everyone's surprise, an uncorking of everything that's wrong with both marriages.

The hosts of this afternoon meeting of minds are clearly the odd couple of the two. Michael (John C. Reilly) is a borderline boor who runs a successful wholesale firm that specializes in fixtures. His wife Penelope (Jodie Foster) is a pinched prig with a penchant for fine art catalogues and coffee table books and labours in her not-so successful career as an author (her latest book is about the suffering of Darfur). The guests of the host couple seem, on the surface, a perfect fit. Alan (Christoph Waltz) is a sleazy lawyer who represents dubious pharmaceutical companies and Nancy (Kate Winslet) is a chicly-attired trophy wife.

As the afternoon progresses, battle lines are drawn, re-drawn and the balance of power shifts ever so deftly from one side to the other. In no time, the blades come out. The eviscerations are at first levelled from hosts to guests and vice-versa, but when each respective husband and wife begin on each other, the nasty accusations and finger pointing become far more revelatory than any of the characters bargained for that day.

When Michael, the seemingly happy-go-lucky schlub opines, "We're born alone and we die alone," he quickly adds, "Does anyone want a little scotch?" Offering booze to quell a tense situation, is frankly akin to aiming a thermonuclear device at the Hoover Dam.

The cast is uniformly fine. Reilly plays on his goofy, hangdog appeal but brings a heretofore unexplored malevolence to his bag of thespian tricks. Jodie Foster delivers another trademark slender thread performance, but reveals a terrific sense of humour. Kate Winslet beguiles us with her full-figured beauty, but eventually lets rip with her fair share of verbal daggers. Christoph Waltz (Inglourious Basterds) proves again why he is one of the best actors working today - he careens from cutthroat to pathetically needy and everything in between.

Some critics who should know better (my familiar refrain), have admired the movie grudgingly, but toss it off as a "filmed play". Nothing could be further from the truth. Polanski is a master of enclosed spaces (Repulsion, The Tenant, Rosemary's Baby, etc.). His deft camera placement and movement is pure cinema. More importantly, he adheres to what ultimately makes the best big-screen adaptations of theatre - he refuses, by and large, to "open-up" the action.

This knee-jerk attempt by filmmakers to render their work more cinematic serves - more often than not - to dilute the power of the text and thus rendering it MORE lacking in the hallmarks of cinematic storytelling. (Let's NOT forget the moronic decision on the part of director Mike Nichols and screenwriter Ernest Lehman to "open up" the otherwise GREAT film version of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf by shifting the locale briefly to a nearby roadside bar. The sequence sticks out like a sore thumb.)

Polanski refuses to take the easy way out. He throws us into the four walls of this apartment and forces us, for eighty minutes, to engage in the superb verbal jousts which, I must assert are plenty nasty and screamingly funny. Carnage is ultimately a class act all the way and once again, Roman Polanski proves he's one of the great living filmmakers.

Oh, and guess what? It's about adults.

"Carnage" is being released by Mongrel Media and will be seen in both mainstream cinemas and at the TIFF Bell Lightbox as the cherry on the sundae of a superb mini-retrospective of Polanski's claustrophobic masterworks.

Cul de Sac (1966) dir. Roman Polanski
Starring: Donald Pleasance, Lionel Stander, Françoise Dorléac

**½

By Alan Bacchus

However inspired and influential Roman Polanski’s remarkable body of work in the '60s was, there are a few duds. Cul de Sac, hot off Polanski’s two previous films (Knife in the Water and Repulsion), the story of an American gangster holding a meek faux-bourgeois couple hostage in northern Britain might suggest another psychological drama of domestic terror. Unfortunately, there’s a strong injection of swinging '60s comedy, a unique haphazard kind of rambunctious madcap tone that doesn’t really translate well to today.

Think of the silliness of say Casino Royale or It’s a Mad Mad Mad World, a comedic randomness perhaps born from the psychedelic effects of the hallucinogenic drugs at the time. Ok, Cul de Sac is not Casino Royale by any means, but the uncontrolled zaniness is cut from the same cloth, a product of its time.

Like most of his famous pictures, Polanski keeps his production contained. Although in this case the environment of Cul de Sac is more in line with the open containment of his characters in Knife in the Water than walled in claustrophobic Catherine Deneuve’s apartment in Repulsion.

Lionel Stander plays Dickie, a grossly exaggerated American gangster injured from some kind of robbery, on the lam in a car with his partner, who is also injured. When the car breaks down he holes up in a castle, which happens to be inhabited by a young couple; George, a neurotic boob (Pleasance) and his sexually alluring French wife, Teresa (Dorleac). It's not your typical home invasion, as the three engage in numerous oddball activities and discussions. There's really only a hint of a threat from Dickie - partly due to Lionel Stander's gruff but high-pitched and affable voice.

There are a number of levels of theme and humour running through Polanski's surreal and often lunatic indulgences. The placement of these characters in the obscenely antiquated 11th century castle amid a near desolate part of Northern England perhaps forces the audience to reconcile the socio-political differences between three nations - France, America and England. The French (as played by Dorleac), flighty and flirty, America (Stander, pushy opportunists and movie heavies who like to get their own way, and the English (Pleasance), drunken dithering buffoons.

Polanski's superb visual eye is impressive, as always. The castle seems to be perpetually engulfed by ominous and beautifully photographed cumulus clouds in the sky and by an expansive beach tide on the ground, which has the power to isolate the castle entirely in water for large stretches of time.

The fun of Cul de Sac is finding connections across Polanski's body of work, like his penchant for wide-angle interior handheld camerawork placed mere inches away from his actors, as in Chinatown and Rosemary's Baby. The castle setting and the visual motifs of the changing tides remind us of his spectacular and often underappreciated work in his grisly version of Macbeth (1971).

Unfortunately, other than these connections there's not much to take home from Cul de Sac except for maybe Donald Pleasance's oddball performance, another kooky role from the always curious and off-kilter actor.

Cul de Sac is one of a number of Polanski films, including Chinatown, Knife in the Water and Rosemary's Baby, screened this month at TIFF Bell Lightbox, timed with the premiere of his latest, Carnage, next week.

The Ghost Writer (2010) dir. by Roman Polanski
Starring: Ewan McGregor, Pierce Brosnan and Olivia Williams

***

By Blair Stewart

Topical and skillfully made, Roman Polanski's "The Ghost Writer" will likely be dealt the same stiff box-office opposition that "State of Play" and "Body of Lies" faced from a public enraptured with blue aborginal space-cats instead of Afganistan and Homeland Security. Regardless, the latest from the Polish master takes the post-9/11 political climate and uses the tools for a display of his ingrained caustic wit and understanding of filmic suspense.

A nameless scribe (Ewan McGregor) is hustled into a lucrative book deal to ghost-write the memoirs of recently deposed British Prime Minister Alan Lang (Pierce Brosnan, well cast with his smarmy ageing charm as a stand-in for Tony Blair). Lang's book has been on hold since his previous ghost writer became a literal one under iffy circumstances along the shores of Lang's property on Martha's Island. Brought into Lang's inner circle as a shitstorm erupts around the ex-PM's condoning of illegal rendition while in office, the Ghost Writer picks up the threads left by his deceased predecessor. He'll also find himself uncomfortably close to Lang's discarded wife played by Olivia Williams, who has had a great comeback year with her supporting role in "An Education".

One of the adult thrills is seeing McGregor and Williams strike sparks off of each other with fine banter. Another joy is watching Polanski and Robert Harris adapting from his own novel take your standard hokum thriller and wring moments of brilliance out of it, where the tension of a note being passed at a party would make Clouzot's phantom happy.

Much of the action unfolds inside the Lang compound, a post-modern cement bunker that the protagonists of "Repulsion", "The Tenant" and "Rosemary's Baby" would feel a kinship with.

I had deep reservation going into the film; any work featuring the questionable supporting cast of Jim Belushi, Kim Cattrall and Timothy Hutton will do that to me. And yet I've forgotten an old rule that I've bludgeoned film-geek friends with in the past: A great director can make lesser actors look good, and in that regard Belushi, Catrall and Hutton are well cast.

Unfortunately problems still cropped up in my first viewing. The film has the distracting air-brushed sheen of a movie that's passed through the D.I. suite too many times in post, and it also suffers from a lag in the middle when the pacing should be picking up towards the climax.

Despite these faults that kept "The Ghost Writer" from joining "Chinatown" and "The Pianist" on Polanski's top-shelf work, well-made adult suspense is still cause for celebration. Enjoy.

Chinatown (1974) dir. Roman Polanski
Starring: Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway, John Huston

****

“Chinatown” has been touted by many pundits as the best screenplay ever written. It’s a unique Hollywood concoction – a gunshoe thriller in the classic noir genre, but also modern and beguiling. It’s a twister that unravels to reveal a salacious melodrama motivating a big business urban conspiracy.

Jake Gittes is an L.A. private detective in the 1930’s. One day a woman named Evelyn Mulray enters his office and hires Jake to spy on her husband Hollis Mulray whom she suspects of cheating. Jake is initially hesitant to take the case as he honestly explains that she’s better off not knowing, it would cause more pain for her. Mulray is insistent and Jake takes the case. Jakes follows Mulray around for several days. He discovers he’s the chief engineer of the city’s water department. There’s a major drought in the city of Los Angeles and Mulray is in the middle of a heated debate about an expensive new dam project. Despite all this, Gittes’ investigation reveals a conspiracy involving the city dumping precious water in secret overnight. Gittes performs his job and captures Mulray’s rendez vous with a young girl. But when Hollis Mulray turns up dead the next day, and a different woman shows up claiming to be the real Evelyn Mulray, Gittes realizes he’s been set up in an elaborate murderous plot.

With his pride and reputation on the line Gittes retraces his steps to uncover the conspiracy. He develops a relationship with the real Evelyn Mulray (Faye Dunaway). Evelyn, a good-looking erudite woman, with an emotional detachment to the mysterious goings-on, intrigues Jake and he takes her case to find the other woman who was seeing her husband. No one seems to be telling the truth, not even Evelyn, and as Gittes moves through the city of Los Angeles, the stakes get higher and higher. When he meets Evelyn’s father Noah Cross (John Huston) who owns the water company, we realize the conspiracy is as personally motivated as it money-driven. “Chinatown’s” byzantine plot expands larger as the film moves along becoming a big business conspiracy about the creation of modern-day L.A. and a searing melodrama with operatic plot twists.

I’ve seen the film several times and it still confounds me. The mechanics of the plot, like “The Big Sleep”, are notoriously difficult to follow. And though I do get lost each time I watch it, I’m comforted by the intermittent expository lines Towne gives Jake to say which always helps me catch up.

Roman Polanski directs the film to perfection. Nobody has shot Los Angeles better than Polanski and his DOP John Alonzo. For a film noir, they chose to the shoot the film as bright and sunny as possible. Film noirs are traditionally shot in shadows and underlit to compliment the secretive elements of the genre, but Alonzo and Polanski hide nothing from us. They choose to beautify Los Angeles and bathe their characters in the brightest colours. Polanski’s camera follows Gittes very closely the entire film, much of it behind his neck. With a 2.35:1 wide angle frame we are able to see everything Jake sees and still see Jake’s wandering eyes and furrowing brows up close and personal. The handheld work is subtle. It’s so close to everything it becomes part of the action, but without the jerky movements that overtly remind us a camera is there. Sometimes the camera is so close to the actors we can feel it getting in the way. Watch the very end, after the shootout in Chinatown. When Jake and the cops run up to the car and see the damage done Nicholson actually knocks the camera. It’s unintentional but unobtrusive and natural to the film.

“Chinatown” never tires. It contains so many indelible characters and situations, an unraveling plot that gets bigger and bigger as it goes along, beautiful locations and a modern quality that continues to resonate today. In fact, it’s a good companion piece to “Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room”. Seriously. Check it out.

Knocked Up (2007) dir. Judd Apatow
Starring Seth Rogen, Katherine Heigl, Paul Rudd, Leslie Mann

***1/2

Is it too early to say Judd Apatow is the best comedic director working right now? He’s only directed two films “40 Year Old Virgin” and “Knocked Up”. But both films received resounding praise, and both films are two of the most entertaining comedies of the 00’s.

To focus on “Knocked Up”, the film is very closely docked to “Virgin”, many of the same actors appear – Seth Rogen, Paul Rudd, and Lesley Mann. Ben Stone is the prototypical party animal - male, underachieving, unemployed, pot-smoking, beer swilling and all around fuck-up. He’s lived the last 5 years off a $14,000 settlement from being run over by a bus. He and his equally inept quartet of male buddies are starting a website which tracks the nude appearances of hot female celebrities on film. One day Ben and his boys are partying at a local club when he meets Alison Scott (Katherine Heigl), a ridiculously hot blonde. The flirtations lead them back to her place, which turns into sloppy drunk sex. Two months later, when Ben has all but forgotten about his one night stand, Alison calls him up to tell him she’s pregnant.

Ben’s singular-minded world in suddenly opened up to real life and he and Alison are forced into a relationship neither thought would go beyond the morning after. Ben does the right thing and supports Alison’s decision to keep the baby, and he actually becomes a solid partner in the pregnancy. Ben quickly falls in love with Alison and decides to make it a go at a real relationship.

Ben is ingratiated into Alison’s family. He bonds with Alison’s brother-in-law, Pete, (Paul Rudd), a father of two and at the seven-year-itch stage of his marriage. Pete and Debbie’s relationship is passionless and tempestuous. The bliss doesn’t last for Alison and Ben and they too encounter relationship troubles. Are Ben and Alison are destined for a life like Pete and Debbie?

The elements of comedy in the film are simple. Dating and pregnancy are fuel for tried and tested comedy situations, but it’s the unlikely comedic talent of Seth Rogen that holds the film together. ‘Funny’ often starts with the look, and Rogen looks the part. His chubby physique and rugged curly locks lends credibility to his character – in other words, he looks like a pot-smoking beer-swilling freeloader. But he also has great comic timing and a dozens of priceless one-liner gags.

Like last year’s “The Break Up”, the film brings the comedy out of a credible real-life situation. And like “The Break Up” the film is heavily weighted to the male-centric perspective. I think it was Rogen’s impression of Doug Quaid from “Total Recall”, ‘Cohagen, give dem the air” (told with a Schwarzenegger accent) that gave it away. I guarantee not a female in the audience got that joke. But don’t count out the talents of the ladies. Kristin Wiig translates her nervous insecure character from SNL to her role as an E! executive who reluctantly gives Alison the job of on-screen host. Her scenes are a stand out. But funny is funny, laughter is universal and the film will play over broad audiences. After the opening weekend, it’ll likely be a license to print money for Universal.

Judd Apatow has the gold key right now. In addition to "40 Year Old Virgin" he’s also responsible for the hidden gem TV series “Freaks and Geeks”, an Emmy Winner from “Da Ali G Show”, producer of “Anchorman”, “Talladega Nights”, “The Cable Guy” and more. I guess to sum him up he’s mastered the ‘Cinema of Loserdom’, but other than Donald Trump, who doesn’t love a loser? Enjoy.