E-MAIL THE AUTHOR | ARCHIVES

April 16, 2004

Walkabout

13 GOING ON 30
[nota bene: The following review, by necessity, contains some spoilers! If you don't want to know the ending, don't read on!]

Several years ago SPY magazine (I think it was) published a chart that showed how Danny DeVito was at the center of almost every important movie and/or TV show being made. It was a funny - true survey, and there aren't that many other people you can claim such omnipresence for — Spielberg, Monte Hellman at one point, Harvey Keitel maybe. But it is beginning to look as if Quentin Tarantino is going to have the same impact, at least aesthetically, in a couple of current releases.

Take 13 GOING ON 30.

On the surface it is a simple fish out of water story, with the transmigration of souls sub-theme found in movies such as FREAKY FRIDAY and VICE VERSA, but more along the lines of BIG and PEGGY SUE GOT MARRIED. It concerns a teenager Jenna Rink (Christa B. Allen) who wants to fit in and is tempted to become something of what she really is.

On her birthday she invites her school's "mean girls" — or rather, they invite themselves along, ultimately because they want her to do their homework. At the party she is pressured to snub her best friend, Matt, the boy next door who is a dork with interests in things such as photography that will hold him in good balance, as we are about to find out.

Matt gives her a model house he built for her and sprinkles some "magic dust" in it. In the course of an accident, however, she gets the dust on herself and she ends up getting her "wish" which is to spring to the future and be 30.

The bulk of the film then becomes the now adult Jenna (Jennifer Garner)'s coping with these weird circumstances. It must be said that she adapts fairly quickly.

13 GOING ON 30 is one of those movies that has such a convoluted, poorly defined, and impossible basic premise — like any time travel movie — that you spend most of your time wondering how it works, how the filmmakers are going to work out key impedimenta, and how the impossible premise is going to be resolved. However, if you don't care about that stuff, the film is mildly diverting, with Garner doing a good pass at being a 13-year-old in an adult's body. She already has a little girl's voice, which is probably why director Gary Winick (TADPOLE) viewed her as ideal for the part. If you don't care about logical consistency, visual flair, or ambition in a film, then 13 GOING ON 30 is charming, even funny in its way.

The adult Jenna, it turns out, is the editor of what was her favorite magazine as a teen, POISE. Its Anna Wintour, she has become exactly what she wanted to be: a mean girl, cutthroat in business, terrorizing her underlings, and stealing other women's husbands. The "new" Jenna doesn't really know all this, of course, so most of it comes as much as a surprise to her as to us, the way that Harrison Ford's character in REGARDING HENRY stumbles into situations that show how awful he was in his pre-brain damaged life.

The resolution it must be said is both satisfying and disappointing at the same time. The adult Jenna "loses" everything — the man she loves, the magazine she edits — in an unusual twist on the predictable plot mechanics. But then she returns to the "present" and it is not clear if she ever really went anywhere, or if it were all a dream, or a movie non-dream, like the lengthy alternate universe at the end of IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE. She doesn't come up with the epithet "Bee-atch" from somewhere, but that seems thrown out just to intrigue or confuse the audience. In any case, the real happy ending is in the real world, not her "dream" world.

I'm a big fan of Jennifer Garner's, but so is Tarantino. In fact, in an alternative universe wherein Uma Thurman didn't exist it is likely that Garner would have been in KILL BILL rather than Thurman. In KB, Thurman is called upon to do exactly what Garner does every week in ALIAS: express a wide range of convincing emotions while also evincing a superb physicality. She's impressive, justly deserved her 2002 Golden Globe, and is just about the only other person who could have been The Bride. Tarantino so loves the show he has even appeared on it twice.

Working with Tarantino is the magical reality that a little fairy dust could create for Garner, and my intuition suggests that that would be a great partnership.

Best Served Cold

MAN ON FIRE
Meanwhile, Tony Scott is one of Tarantino's favorite directors — he directed TRUE ROMANCE — and Scott returns the favor with a couple of shout outs to the younger filmmaker. The script to MAN ON FIRE, credited to Brian Helgeland from a novel by A. .J. Quinnell, quotes KILL BILL VOL. 1's "old Klingon proverb," really a quote with an unknown pedigree, that "revenge is a dish best served cold." And near the end of the film someone is behead with a samurai sword, that sits brilliantly dripping blood.

In fact, that's how Scott likes to serve his movies. They can be rather chilly dishes, with their blue, gritty look and their defiance at letting the viewer into the characters' minds. And this is the sometimes-commercial director's most "commercial" like film, with its freeze-frames and use of music and unorthodox style of subtitles and titles in general.

The film tells the story of the (unfortunately named) John Creasy (Denzel Washington, in film noir mode). He is a former Marine or CIA agent or something drinking himself to death over some presumed atrocities committed in the name of America. With the help of a friend (Christopher Walken) he gets a job as a bodyguard to a financially strapped family in Mexico City. The couple (Marc Anthony and Radha Mitchell) want their daughter Pita (Dakota Fanning) protected — in a city where there are, according to the movie, four people are kidnapped a day.

Though the hard-bitten and withdrawn man finally warms up to the indomitable Pita, he fails to protect her at the crucial moment. His subsequent investigation of the kidnapping uncovers a vast conspiracy of state sanctioned kidnappings, and with the help of Walken, a surprisingly uncorrupt official (Giancarlo Giannini) and a newspaper reporter (Rachel Ticotin), exposes the conspiracy. One of the prime candidates for villainy is the family's lawyer, played by Mickey Rourke, who after what appears to be much plastic surgery, is starting to look like a flea-bitten version of Johnny Depp, the way another rhinoplasty hobbyist, Michael Jackson, seems to aspire to recreate Diana Ross on the canvas of his face.

For what it's worth, all the other reviewers at the screening I saw hated the film, but I rather enjoyed it. It's not an easy movie to like. It's too long for the amount of content in it. It's too brisk when it should be meditative, and sluggish when it should be fast. It's not convincingly cast. MAN ON FIRE has a THE PROFESSIONAL vibe about it. But the movie it reminds me of most is not the slightly similar PROOF OF LIFE but a film by Tony Scott's brother Ridley, SOMEONE TO WATCH OVER ME, another "off" film in which its lethargy is overcome by gross violence. But when MAN ON FIRE is good, it's really good. There are some good lines ("Creasey's art is death. And he's about to paint his masterpiece") and Scott does for fingers what Tarantino did for ears in RESERVOIR DOGS, and there are numerous other gratifying moments of blood-lusting revenge.

KILL BILL VOLS. 1 and 2, Volume 20

Here are some loose ends to tie up in what I assume is the last of my KILL BILL "volumes":

• Reader Paul Saadeh writes in: Well, I watched the R2 KILL BILL VOL. 1 DVD today and here are the differences I noticed:
  •The anime sequence is slightly longer and more graphic. When O-Ren kills Boss Matsumoto, there are more shots of her slicing him as well as more shots of his face as she's doing it. Also, there's a shot of Boss Matsumoto cut open that wasn't in the US version.
  • The fight with the Crazy 88s is not only in color but is longer as well. There are shots here and there that aren't in the US version such as the Bride stuffing the eyeball she plucks out into another guy's mouth and the kid she spanks later showing up during the fight. Also, the Bride doesn't blink in the Japanese version as she does in the US version when the scene goes back to color.
  

  •The Bride cuts off Sofie's other arm during the interrogation.
  

• On TV the other Sunday ago, Roger Ebert in his enthusiasm had Uma Thurman reading from a web site page about deadly snakes. It is, of course, Daryl Hannah, reading from a notebook into which she wrote some facts gleaned from a web page.
  
• I point out that error not to gloat but to set the record straight. After all, I make tons of mistakes. Last week, I wrote the wrong name for Caitlin Keats, the girl I like in the background in the chapel scene. Thanks to the flexibility of the Internet, I was able to fix it relatively fast. Caitlin Keats (great name) has also been in MURDER IN SMALL TOWN X and THE GOOD HUMOR MAN. My enthusiasm is shared by an IMDB chat board poster who wrote, "Caitlin Keats has got great eyes, a wonderful smile and a natural attitude behind the camera that makes you sit back in your seat and say WOW! Even though Caitlin had an extremely small part in Kill Bill Vol. 2, she left a huge impression on me. I'm expecting to see much more of Caitlin in the months to come. If Caitlin Keats doesn't get any offers for parts in up-coming movies or TV, something's wrong with Hollywood or everyone's blind to her potential!" The 31-year-old actress is five-foot-nine and was born in New York City.
  
• One of the more thoughtful reviews of KILL BILL VOLS. 1 and 2 was by independent poster Jessica Harbour who has some really interesting things to say about the maternal aspects of the film.
  
• Not only does KILL BILL VOL. 1 quote the music from the film ROAD TO SALINA (in the scene where Elle Driver drives to meet Budd), but the title is quoted in the dialogue (by Michael Parks near the end). This film must be really danged important to Tarantino, and I can't wait to see it. But sadly, it seems not to be available on tape or DVD.
  

• I couldn't read my notes too well last week, and so failed to mention something really interesting about the end of KILL BILL VOL. 2 (which I was reminded of when I saw the film again Sunday afternoon). The film ends with the Bride and child in bed watching a Heckle and Jeckle cartoon (apparently based on Tarantino's first memory of his mother). A character in the cartoon says that "Magpies deserve your respect," which is an interesting quote given that his critics have called the light-fingered Tarantino the magpie of directors for his raiding the nests of others.
  
• Reader "graikor" writes in: "It's funny that you quote Jules Feiffer saying, 'Remember, Kent was not Superman's true identity as Bruce Wayne was the Batman's […] Just the opposite. Clark Kent was the fiction … Superman only had to wake up in the morning to be Superman. In his case, Clark Kent was the put-on … Kent existed not for the purposes of the story but for the reader. He is Superman's opinion of the rest of us, a pointed caricature of what we, the non-criminal element, were really like.' For about the last 20 years, the writers of Superman and Batman have turned that around 180 degrees so that Superman was raised totally as Clark Kent, and aside from appearances, Superman is just a costume he puts on to fight bad guys. Batman, on the other hand, has been written over the last few years to suggest that Bruce Wayne was essentially killed alongside his parents, and that the brutal and cold Batman is who he really is on the inside. Both of these changes fit in with the idea of Superman being the 'Big Blue Boy Scout' and Batman being the 'Dark Avenger', and allow for an interesting duality in stories that use both characters."
  

• Last week Tarantino was on the Jay Leno show, where he was typically buffoonish. But this week he was on the more simpatico Jimmy Kimmel and was great: sharp, on top of it, engaged, not too egotistical. It was a relief to see him thus, but I sure don't want to see any more of my favorite personalities on TV ever again. I can't stand the anxiety over the potential for embarrassment.
  
• Reader Shawn McGuan writes in: "I just saw VOL. 2 tonight and loved it. I'm one of these people who feel Tarantino can do little wrong and I can remember where I was, when and what events surrounded my initial viewings of his films. As a result, I have had to purge relative's birthdays and important phone numbers from my noodle just to make room. It's great to see people reverse engineer these pictures and chart what makes BILL tick. When I was watching the fantastic Elle / Bride showdown (piss off, Denby!) I was amused at how it called to mind the Nick Cage / John Goodman trailer showdown in RAISING ARIZONA."
  

• A poster has pointed out that we now know the reason for the "Trix are for kids" line, given what the Bride's real name is.
  
• Reader "fincherfan" writes in: "I, too, went to a sneak preview of KILL BILL, and while I was disappointed as hell about the lack of free merchandise, the movie made up for it. I was simply blown away. I was curious if you noticed this: At the beginning of Vol. 1 the song "Bang, Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)" plays during the opening credits. In VOL. 2, when The Bride is reunited with B.B., B.B. and Bill are playing a gun game and The Bride is shot by her child. Her baby literally shot her down. B.B. even says "Bang Bang" before shooting her. Maybe it's a coincidence, but I doubt it."
  
• Reader Theron Neel writes in, "In KILL BILL VOL. 1, during the anime sequence, we meet the assassin, using a samurai sword and wearing a ring, who helps kill O-ren's family. Is this assassin a young Bill? The ring and sword resemble those that Bill has in the scene where he's talking to Elle while she's in the hospital room with The Bride. This would be a neat twist — that Bill aided in the deaths of O-ren's family, but she never found out. Maybe this was how Bill knew of O-ren's existence and was able to draft her to join DiVa." This is a question that has vexed internet chat sites for months. Frankly, I don't know, but two screen captures might help in a comparison and contrast:
  

• A reader with the handle "weaselswim" writes in to ask, "In Kill Bill Vol. 2 what were your thoughts on the death of Pai Mei? I first found his chapter to be a little short with so much more possibility to expand his character as well as the Brides' training. Also it is sad that he is done away in such a manner as poisoning. I know since he is supposedly all powerful Elle could not get her revenge any other way, yet it is depressing that such a figure head is taken down in such a meager fashion. I know it makes the Bride's taking out Elle's eye in the same manner almost like sweet justice, but still it was a sad loss for a great figure head that was seen only briefly." I think the poisoning by fish head matches two scenes, the one where the Bride is shown having difficulty using the chop sticks, and the scene with her daughter BB and Bill, when Bill talks about the dying fish. Fish seem to be associated with death in the film. Why, I don't know yet.
  

• And finally, one of my colleagues e-mailed me this link to a no-doubt illegal KILL BILL video game you can play on your desktop.