Dr.Teeth

I came out of watching Possession with a mixed impression. It was uneven and weak in places, but I found myself appreciating it on the whole, as though I knew it was a pretty good film but couldn't, for the LIFE of me, figure out why. Having had some time to reflect on it, though, I feel I'm able to put a few of my thoughts out more concretely, and maybe my impression of the film will shape itself through my writing.

Basic synopsis of the film, to start: Roland Mitchell (Eckhart), an American scholar living in England, comes across a pair of mysterious letters written over a hundred years previously by poet laureate Randolph Henry Ash (Northam). He enlists the help of Maud Bailey (Paltrow), a fellow scholar that specializes in the works of Christobel LaMotte (Ehle), the woman Mitchell suspects of being the secret lover. The film shows the parallel stories of the 20th century investigators and the 19th century lovers, and how the two relationships change as time passes.

Firstly, the "good": Northam and Ehle are fabulous. Their characterizations and commitment do more to convince the audience they have gone back in time than the camera tricks or the voice-overs. Both actors are totally compelling and make their scenes shine a little brighter than the rest of the film. The story is intriguing, and the camera work is clean and sharp, realizing each scene without overshadowing the acting with trickery.

On the "less good" side: it felt to me as though the modern story fell flat. Eckhart is a good actor, but in this film he's like a 1956 Cadillac El Dorado, coughing and sputtering out in the beginning, but eventually turning into a smooth ride. Paltrow isn't called on to do anything the audience hasn't seen her do before, which isn't to say that she's bad: she's good, but it's nothing new. And the story suffers a little in the modern scenes as well; the dialogue falls apart during the romantic scenes, and the chemistry is hit-and-miss. I wasn't wanting to skip through the modern scenes, or anything, but sometimes I looked forward to the past storyline a little more earnestly than I would have liked.

So, Possession is an uneven film, but definitely worth watching. The story pulled me in enough I looked past the flaws. Even when I groaned out loud. (7/10)

Strange Days has a lot of things going for it. It uses a extremely interesting plot device: virtual reality as brainwaves, recorded from one person and experienced by another. It uses great set and costume design to portray New Year's Eve 1999 (back then five years into the not-so-distant future). It uses good actors, most notably Ralph Fiennes and Angela Bassett. And it has quite the encompassing story arc, encompassing cultural unrest, social justice, political accountability, moral obligations, and redemption. It's full of interesting and important ideas.

And it tacks them together with incoherence, over-the-top dialogue and acting, and an ending that goes on almost fifteen minutes too long. I own this movie, and at one time I thought it was an overlooked sci-fi cult classic, destined to be remembered in the years to come. When I watched it today, I thought that it was a waste of potential, a waste of talent, and a waste of my time. I'm going to be very generous with my ranking, because it could have been so much better; the ranking reflects its wasted potential and its omnipresent style. 5/10

Roxanne is probably going to go down as the pinnacle of Steve Martin's career as both an actor and a writer. Granted, he's made better movies (L.A. Story, The Man With Two Brains), but this is the one movie that seems to have grabbed the public's attention and keeps bringing them back. And that's because it's deceptively simple, the story of the underdog falling for the girl who has it all. It's peripherally based on Cyrano de Bergerac, but most people haven't read it (or even seen a movie adaptation), so much of the intricacies will be lost. But everyone can identify with the main character, C.D. Bales, and the story of his doomed love.

The movie is a romantic comedy, but that's too simplistic. It's full of incredible situational and verbal humor. Whether he's playing a slapstick routine trying to leave Roxanne's apartment or trying to think up the (more than) twenty insults that would be better than `Big Nose,' Martin's pen rarely falters. He can do drama, as evidenced by the scene on the roof with the overweight kid. And he writes compelling poetry: when C.D. speaks from his heart under Roxanne's window it threatens to turn hokey at any moment, but never does. The power of the movie is in the screenplay, and Martin's written a doozy.

Of course, it also doesn't hurt that C.D. is such a sympathetic character. Actually, sympathetic is probably the wrong word. He's such a strong and dynamic character that every man would want to be him and every woman would want to have him…if it weren't for that stupid nose of his. Think about it: he's athletic, charming, well-read, witty, and handsome. And that's what makes it even worse for the viewer: knowing all these wonderful things are stuck inside this man and people can't see past his nose, pun not intended. Martin totally inhabits C.D. Bales: he knows him so well that it's second nature. He looks like he's having a blast with it, too, which helps the audience quite a bit.

It's not all Steve Martin, though (although it seems like it at times). The supporting cast does well with their roles and goes far beyond what I would have thought possible. Example: Daryl Hannah, an actress with a hit-and-miss record that's mostly miss, is surprisingly convincing as an astronomy student who knows about sub-nuclear particles and comet trajectories. Or Michael J. Pollard, who takes a role that's pretty much a series of one-liners and makes me remember him above all the other firefighters by the pure glee that he takes with every line.

It's certainly not perfect, nor is it Martin's best offering, but that's beside the point. The point is that it's the kind of movie people really enjoy but can't put their finger on just why. Well, the movie is smart, and that's why people find it refreshing. It's not simply a cookie-cutter romance with the typical leading man and the regular lines: it's got a heart and humanity that most romantic comedies disregard as unnecessary. 8/10