FilmJerk Favorites

A group of unique directors and the essential works that you've got to see.

||| Sergio Leone |||
Sergio Leone

Leone’s career is remarkable in its unrelenting attention to both American culture and the American genre film, exploring the mythic America he created with each successive film examining the established characters in greater depth.

Only his second feature (a remake of Kurosawa’s Yojimbo), Leone's landmark "spaghetti western" caused a revolution and features Clint Eastwood in his breakthrough role as "The Man With No Name". This classic brutal drama of feuding families wasn’t the first spaghetti Western, but it was far and away the most successful up to that time.

Plot is of minimal interest, but character is everything to Leone, who places immense meaning in the slightest flick of an eyelid, extensively using the extreme close-up on the eyes to reveal any feeling, as demonstrated by Clint, who squints his way through this slam-bang sequel to A Fistful of Dollars as a wandering gunslinger that must combine forces with his nemesis to track down a wanted killer.

The final chapter in the groundbreaking trilogy follows Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef, and Eli Wallach as they form an uneasy alliance to find a stash of hidden gold. Leone focuses on his central theme as they find themselves facing greed, treachery, and murder, showing that the desire for wealth and power turns men into ruthless creatures who violate land and family and believe that a man’s death is less important than how he faces it.

Recommended by CarrieSpecht

Advertisement

Management

By EdwardHavens

May 14th, 2009

To be completely honest, I was ready to walk out of the new Jennifer Aniston movie "Management" after ten minutes. I am glad I stuck with it through the end.

Management

What's amazing about playwright Stephen Belber's debut as a film director is how rare a film it truly is. Modern movie stars like Jennifer Aniston rarely allow themselves to play... well, let's face it, a loser... as she find salvation in... well, let's face it, another loser... no matter how much the odds were stacked against them ever finding each other in the first place. It helps that Aniston's co-star here is Steve Zahn, without exception the best sad sack actor working today.

Okay, maybe loser is too harsh a word to describe Aniston's character, Sue Claussen. A thirtysomething who is far too settled in to her comfort zone, Sue travels the country selling mass-produced works of art to places where the masses might finds themselves, like an office or a motel. It is on one of these trips, to Kingman Arizona, where Sue meets Mike Cranshaw (Zahn), when she checks in to the motel his parents own. Mike, who works as the night manager and lives at the motel in one of the rooms, set up exactly like what one would expect from an aimless thirtysomething guy living in a motel in the middle of nowhere. But in the pretty Sue, Mike has finally found a purpose, something to strive for. Not that he knows exactly what to do. Even when he gets himself invited in to her room, first with a lousy bottle of wine and then with a less lousy bottle of champagne, "compliments of management," Mike's no sure what he wants from Sue, even when she prompts him. Does he want to have sex? No, not really. How about touch her butt? He accepts the offer, and lays his palm on he backside, before she hustles him out of the room.

Is Sue embarrassed by this? She doesn't seem to be, although she does shun Mike the next morning when she encounters him at the breakfast buffet just before she checks out. Yet, in the first of a series of inexplicable circumstances that seem to only exist because we have no story if it doesn't happen, Sue returns to the motel after leaving, boinking Mike in the motel laundry room before taking off again. Mike, now fully in love, tracks Sue down to her workplace in Maryland, and purchases a one-way plane ticket to woo her off her feet.

Being a romantic comedy, it's just not that easy, especially considering we're barely a third into the movie at this point. So round and round we go. She spends a night and a day with Mike before sending him back to Arizona on the bus, only to confuse him more when she returns to the motel a few months later and spending more time with him, only to shun him again when he tracks her down to Aberdeen, Washington after she quits her job and moves in with her ex-boyfriend Jango (Woody Harrelson), an ex-punker who has become a successful yogurt mogul, a pas de deux that continues until the otherwise predictable ending.

Now, I know reading up to this point sounds like I really hated the film. An unsure filmmaker, Belber's constant tonal shifts and dubious story points can make for a jarring experience. So why am I so high on the film? It all comes down to the performers. Zahn, whose character seems to be living life on autopilot at first, plays Mike exactly as you would expect from him, only to slowly find subtle changes that work for the character while remaining true to the core values that make Mike himself. Margo Martindale and Fred Ward, as Mike's parents, bring much more to their characters than their screen time might normally allow. And James Liao, as Mike's new friend in Aberdeen, brings a controlled manic energy that strangely brightens up every scene he's in.

But it is Ms. Aniston (who is also one of the producers) who owns the film. More Justine from "The Good Girl" than Rachel Green or any of the Green-like clones during the late 1990s "I Wanna Be the Next Meg Ryan" phase of her career, Sue is a real person, one unsure of what the future is and doing everything to make sure whatever comes down the pike doesn't upset her balance. While the situations Sue might find herself in sometimes ring false, Aniston's measured performance keeps the film from spinning too far out of control.

Let's just hope filmmakers continue to find compelling work for her, now that she's finally becoming less of a celebrity and more of a good actress.

My rating: B+