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DVD reviews
Shanghai Star. 2004-01-01
Matchstick Men
Director: Ridley Scott
Starring: Nicolas Cage, Sam Rockwell, Alison Lohman, Bruce Altman, Bruce
McGill
When it comes to movies about "confidence tricks" or about "con artists" or
"grifters", the one universally regarded as the best of all time would be "The
Sting", made 30 years ago and telling a story set 40 years earlier.
George Roy Hill's epic "long con" movie - a "sting" where the victim is kept in
play for a long time to maximise the "score" - won seven Academy Awards
and has been the benchmark against which all other "scam" films have been
assessed.
And there have been a few over the years. The better ones include "Paper
Moon", "The Grifters", "The Usual Suspects", "Confidence", "Dirty Rotten
Scoundrels", "Nine Queens" and a quartet of movies either directed or written
by David Mamet: "The Heist", "House of Games", "The Spanish Prisoner"
and "Wag the Dog". In the last, a whole nation is conned.
The intriguing convention about "con" movies is that the audience knows that
somewhere along the line while watching the film, it is being conned too. In
"Matchstick Men", the "con" inside the main "con" is too well hidden to be
detectable - unless viewers have read the book by Eric Garcia on which
brothers Nicholas and Ted Griffin based their screenplay.
Critics, almost without exception, have heaped praise on director Ridley Scott
for this movie and it joins "Alien", "Blade Runner", "Thelma and Louise",
"Gladiator" and "Blackhawk Down" as another all-round success for him.
There are three stories bound up in the movie and Nicholas Cage is the main
character in each of them. He plays Roy, a con man in partnership with Frank
(Sam Rockwell) who wants Roy to join him in a major "sting" operation.
How that evolves is one of the stories. The second story is about Roy, the
total neurotic - he's a twitching mess of tics and tremors with a terror of the
outdoors, a mania for cleanliness and a variety of obsessive compulsive
behaviour disorders. The third story is about what happens when Roy
discovers he has a 14-year-old daughter, Angela (Alison Lohman), and her
reaction when she discovers what Dad does for a living.
Alison Lohman was magnificent in "White Oleander" where she played a
young teenager battling California's foster-child system and she builds on
that success as Angela.
In his 1940 book, "The Big Con", David Maurer wrote that the con man is "the
aristocrat of the underworld who prospers only because of the fundamental
dishonesty of his victims". The truth of that observation - completely endorsed
by Roy in a scene with his psychiatrist, Dr Klein (Bruce Altman) - is the basis
of Frank's proposed "con" of the greedy but dangerous "mark" he has
identified. This is a nasty piece of work named Frechette (Bruce McGill).
To tell any more would spoil the big twist in the plot that comes near the end.
But not before one of the movie's funniest scenes set inside a pharmacy
where Roy has gone to get some pills without a prescription. The scene
allows Cage to go over the top and show something he's really good at - a
blazing but inarticulate need to communicate through barely controlled rage
and frustration.
Barry Porter
The Soong Sisters
Director: Mabel Cheung
Starring: Winston Chao, Maggie Cheung, Wu Hsin Kuo, Elaine Jin, Jiang
Wen, Vivian Wu, Michelle Yeoh, Niu Zhenhua
Mixing family drama, history and myth, "The Soong Sisters" (1997) pursues
the interconnected lives of China's most famous modern dynasty, from the
dying days of the Qing dynasty through the 1911 revolution to the late 1930s.
The film is strongest in its portrayal of character, with a range of fabulous
performances bringing all the main characters to convincing and engaging
life. Its weakest side is a tendency to stereotypic oversimplification and the
threat of unrestrained sentimentality which constantly lurks - and occasionally
pounces - given the central pre-occupation with the resilience of family
bonds, even under conditions of intense ideological divergence.
The intertwining of family conflicts with epic historical processes provides
excellent cinematic material, although sometimes the break-neck speed of
developments leads to a certain amount of narrative strain, particularly in the
final stages of the movie.
Despite the fine portrayal of Soong Ai Ling (Yeoh), the dramatic heart of the
movie is the entanglement of sibling rivalry and political estrangement played
out in the relationship between Mei Ling (Vivian Wu) and Ching Ling
(Cheung), especially after Mei Ling's marriage to Chiang Kai-shek (Wu Hsin
Kuo). While Chiang is portrayed as a brutal fascist thug, Mei Ling is treated in
a more sympathetic and nuanced fashion, with her fraught but ultimately
unbreakable sisterly bonds serving as threads of personal and political
redemption. Ching Ling, of course, the sister who "loved China", is depicted
throughout with enormous respect.
The movie's ending - on a note of reconciliation, with all three sisters united
in support of the national war effort against Japanese aggression - strikes a
less than fully convincing note, especially given the awkward truncation of the
narrative at a dramatically convenient but historically arbitrary moment.
Overall, however, "The Soong Sister" opens a fascinating and intimate
window onto some of modern China's most turbulent episodes.
Nick Land
Good Bye, Lenin
Director: Wolfgang Beckert
Starring: Daniel Bruehl, Katrin Sass, Maria Simon
With a mixture of comedy and tragedy, this film guides us through the
historical events surrounding the breakdown of the German Democratic
Republic with a special look at the destiny of one East German family.
East Berlin in October 1989: on the eve of the GDR's 40th anniversary an
anti-government demonstration wanders through the streets. In the middle of
the crowd is 20-year-old Alex (Daniel Bruehl). In the moment that he clashes
with the police, his mother Christiane (Katrin Sass), a teacher and devoted
Party functionary walks by. She is so shocked to see her son protesting that
she has a heart attack and falls into a deep coma.
While she sleeps, political events come to a head. The Berlin Wall is torn
down and the Communist era in the GDR is over. In the ensuing
"Westernization" of the country Alex becomes a salesman with a satellite-dish
company and his sister Ariane (Maria Simon) quits her studies to work at
Burger King.
Eight months later their mother Christiane emerges from her coma but her
heart is weak. The children are warned that any unexpected shock could be
fatal. And what could be more shocking than the triumph of capitalism in her
beloved country?
To save their mother, Alex and Ariane transform the family apartment into an
island of the former GDR. From now on we witness very ingenious and
inventive simulations of the Communist era to make Christiane believe that
nothing has changed. Alex spends a considerable amount of energy
repacking foodstuffs and faking newscasts to keep up appearances. He
keeps his mother convinced not only that the Communist philosophy still
exists but also that it's even improving in the direction she'd like it to improve.
Becker's film never goes over the top and manages to balance its central
conceit with touching moments of family inter-action. There are also plenty of
laughs, including one scene where Alex tries to convince his mother that
Coca-Cola is a Communist invention.
The film is more about people than politics. We see a family going through
inevitable conflicting emotions caused by having to adapt rapidly to a way of
life they have not grown up with. The movie is distinguished by good acting
and attention to detail and is a joy to watch.
Inga Noeckel
Copyright by Shanghai Star.