VALENTINO: THE LAST EMPEROR: 4 STARS

The most cinematic moment of the 2008 Toronto International Film Festival didn’t happen on the big screen. After the showing of Valentino: The Last Emperor—a documentary spanning the period between the designer’s seventieth birthday and his final couture show—the man himself stood in a box seat high above the cheering crowd. A single tear ran down his face. It was a muted, stirring moment for one of the world’s greatest living couturiers—and not one famed for his restraint. (He is, after all, given to pronouncements like “an evening dress that reveals a woman’s ankles while walking is the most disgusting thing I have ever seen.”)

The film, on the other hand, is fashion fantasy on full blast. Director Matt Tyrnauer captures the air-kissing excesses of the fashion world, including Valentino’s Sunkist tan, over-the-top mega-mansions and preposterously pampered pets—one of his five pugs even wears diamond earrings! But then, just as the doc begins to resemble Project Runway gone mad, it dips into a deeper look at the ever-evolving luxury biz. This, coupled with a tender peek into Valentino’s forty-five-year relationship with life and business partner Giancarlo Giammetti, make for a humanizing look at a complicated man. By the end, you just may shed a tear or two as well.

VALKYRIE: 2 STARS

Tom Cruise is no stranger to battling evil on screen. He’s taken on angry aliens, a dangerous and sadistic arms dealer, vampires and even Jack Nicholson as an out of control army colonel. He’s back in uniform for his new film Valkyrie battling the greatest villain of the twentieth century—Adolph Hitler. He’s Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg, based on a real life Nazi who tried to kill the Führer.

The film is based on the failed July 20, 1944 coup in which Nazi officers tried to not only kill Hitler but also take control of the government and end the war. Cruise plays one of the ringleaders, a war hero who has become disillusioned with Hitler. “I'm a soldier,” he says, “but in serving my country, I have betrayed my conscience.” He concocts a plan to kill Hitler and simultaneously put Operation Valkyrie—an emergency plan to maintain law and order—into effect. Of course, this is a military operation and there is always a risk of failure.

There has been a lot of negative buzz on the internet about Valkyrie. Before seeing the film bloggers suggested Tom Cruise wasn’t the right guy for the part and later when the release date was shifted a couple of times they cried that the movie must be bad otherwise why would the studio toy with the release schedule. I don’t usually give bloggers much credit, but this time I have to admit they got it mostly right.

Cruise isn’t the right guy to play Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg, but the movie isn’t the disaster that has been reported.

Director Bryan Singer tries to build suspense throughout the film, but is thwarted by history—we all know how the story ends, and it doesn’t end well for the good guys. So essentially he’s making a movie about a hero, but one whose legacy is failure. As they say, the road to hell is paved with good intentions and while von Stauffenberg’s objectives were entirely noble he ended up getting himself and his co-conspirators killed while his beloved Germany swirled down the drain.

Flawed losers can make compelling stories but this is a Tom Cruise movie and there is no such thing as a flawed Cruise character. From the opening moments of the film von Stauffenberg is anointed as a savior. Singer subtly downplays the Colonel’s Nazi background—he doesn’t wear Nazi medals, only half heartedly Sieg Heils—and paints him as a man of extremely high moral principles. In other words he’s a standard issue Tom Cruise hero who could easily be renamed Saint von Stauffenberg. In case you miss his anointment one character actually says to him, “God promised Abraham that he would not destroy Sodom if he could find ten righteous men... I have a feeling that for Germany it may come down to one.” A flaw or two may have made the character a bit more interesting and a bit less of a caricature.

Singer does introduce some nice cinematic touches, like a bomb blast that rocks a phonograph needle to a record playing Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries and a shot of an SS soldier burning a fly with his cigarette rather than swatting it. Good visual images both, but after an exciting opening sequence Valkyrie becomes a talky account of a complicated plan to overthrow Hitler’s government. It’s all talk and very little action. Even the failed bombing meant to kill Hitler is little more than a puff of smoke and some splintered wood. This should have been the turning point of the film, but it’s very anticlimactic.

Valkyrie wants to be an important movie but doesn’t have the gravitas, and it isn’t action packed enough to be a great war movie. It falls somewhere between. It isn’t a success, but it isn’t embarrassing, just forgettable.

VICKY CRISTINA BARCELONA: 3 ½ STARS

A break from familiar surroundings can do a body good. So it is with Woody Allen who spent thirty years making films in New York City before decamping to Europe. Just as Martin Scorsese won his first Oscar when he deserted Manhattan for the Boston location of The Departed and Spike Lee made his most interesting film in years with When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts, his documentary set in New Orleans, Allen seems to have been reinvigorated by a change in scenery. Set in Spain Vicky Christina Barcelona doesn’t exactly hit Annie Hall heights, but does mark a high point for Allen after a long dry patch.

The movie begins with two girlfriends, Vicky (Rebecca Hall) and Cristina (Scarlett Johansson), on summer vacation in Spain. They’re best of friends but have very different outlooks on life. Vicky is a straight-laced New Yorker, set to marry her rich fiancée and settle in to a comfortable life in a big house in Connecticut. Cristina is a sexually audacious free spirit, still trying to find herself. “I don’t know what I want,” she says, “I only know what I don’t want.” The young Americans meet an intriguing painter (Javier Bardem) who woos them both as he tries to deal with his residual feelings for his passionate but slightly loony ex-wife (Penelope Cruz).  

Despite the sun drenched setting—the film was shot on beautiful locations in Spain—Vicky Christina Barcelona still feels like a Woody Allen film. Like many of his past movies it deals with complicated relationships and the nature of love framed by a jaunty jazz score—this time with a Spanish flair—strong situational humor and good performances by the ensemble cast.

Its clear Allen loves Scarlett Johansson. In this, their third film together, his camera lovingly strokes her face, luxuriating in close-ups that adoringly fill the screen. Her character is the catalyst of all the action, the pivot on which the movie spins and like many of his muses from the past—Mia Farrow, Diane Keaton—in Vicky Christina Barcelona he pushes her to reveal previously unseen talent. Her Cristina is a complicated character—confused and quirky, she’s searching for happiness in her surroundings and in herself. It’s Johansson’s best performance since Lost in Translation.

Another of the film’s pleasures is the pairing of Bardem and Cruz as the star crossed, but tempestuous ex-lovers. As a couple who “are meant for one another and not meant for one another” they have great chemistry and sparks fly in their scenes.

The film isn’t perfect. An annoying voice over is overused and a “Speak English” gag gets tired very quickly, but overall there is more good than bad.

For me Woody Allen’s most successful movies have frequently had women’s names in their titles and while Vicky Christina Barcelona isn’t a classic like Hannah and Her Sisters and Annie Hall it is a welcome return to form after last year’s catastrophic Cassandra's Dream. 

VANTAGE POINT: 2 ½ STARS

Imagine if there had been eight people named Zapruder in Dallas, Texas on Friday, November 22, 1963 and you get the high concept of the new thriller Vantage Point—one catastrophic event, eight different viewpoints.

In the chaotic minutes after President Ashton (William Hurt) is shot while giving a speech at a global summit on the war terror in Spain, two secret service agents, Thomas Barnes (Dennis Quaid) and Kent Taylor (Mathew Fox), try and piece together what happened. Thus begins the movie’s deep debt to Rashômon as the attempted assassination of the president is told from five different perspectives, including American tourist Howard Lewis (Forest Whitaker), who, camcorder in hand, videotaped the whole thing and television producer Rex Brooks (Sigourney Weaver) who was producing a new piece on the summit.

First the good stuff. Vantage Point does a nice job of showing the awful suddenness in which violence can happen, and the terrible consequences of terrorism. Director Pete Travis stages the ferocious opening with gusto. As shots ring out and chaos reigns his camera conveys the intensity of the mass panic that follows. Jittery camera work effectively conveys how the bad guys can take advantage of the chaos they create to follow through with their plans. The first time through it’s a thriller, too bad it loses its oomph in repeated viewings.

The story, starting form the beginning rewinds and unspools from the point of view of the major characters. It’s a cool idea but one that is flawed in its execution. The horror of the assassination and the subsequent terror attack is blunted by the constant duplication until it loses all impact and simply becomes tiresome.

This kind of fractured storytelling is very difficult to pull off without boring the audience. It would have been interesting to see what more accomplished directors like Christopher Nolan, Alfonso Cuarón or even Quentin Tarantino, all of whom have experimented with nonlinear timelines, would have been able to do with this same material.

Amid the bombast, blood and bombs Vantage Point presents itself as an anti-war manifesto, including a reporter who blames US foreign policy for the amount of terrorism in the world and a president who seems to understand that the US isn’t loved all over the world and favors showing moral strength over military strength. It would be easier to accept these ideas from a movie that didn’t eventually dissolve into a violent shoot out with a body count that rivals Rambo.

Wonky politics aside Vantage Point does have some exciting moments, and enough political intrigue to keep conspiracy theorists happy, but its awkward construction drags the whole film down.

VINCE VAUGHN’S WILD WEST COMEDY SHOW: 30 DAYS AND 30 NIGHTS: HOLLYWOOD TO THE HEARTLAND: 2 STARS

Kind of like its wordy title, Vince Vaughn’s Wild West Comedy Show: 30 Days & 30 Nights: Hollywood to the Heartland is a little too long and a little too obvious. Shot over thirty days on the road with Vaughn and his handpicked troupe of four comics and famous friends as they travel 6000 miles to bring hip LA comedy to regional audiences, it’s a road trip document of epic proportions.

Beginning with a star studded show in Los Angeles the movie follows this boy’s club—the closest thing to a female presence on the tour is Justin Long wearing a wig at one show—as they move east stopping in towns big and small. Like the title tells us, it’s thirty shows in thirty days, in places ranging from Bakersfield, California to the Hurricane Katrina ravaged South and finally in Vaughn’s home town of Chicago.

The show was probably really fun if you saw it live. Particularly if the bar was open and the drinks were cheap. Four stand-ups—Ahmed Ahmed, John Caparulo, Bret Ernst and Sebastian Mansicalco—provide the backbone of the show, and while none are the most original comic voices out there, each are enthusiastic performers. Trouble is, in its heart stand-up is a live medium, and while these guys probably rocked the clubs and soft seat theaters on the tour—there’s plenty of cut-a-ways to people laughing—it doesn’t translate well to the big screen. Blown up to big screen size the intimacy needed for this brand of observational humor to work evaporates. They raise a few genuine laughs here and there, but left me with the feeling that I’d be enjoying this more if I was sitting ringside in a club.

More effective are some of the live skits featuring Vaughn’s celebrity friends. Jon Favreau has some fun sending up Vaughn’s acting ability and former child star (and Vaughn’s best friend and co-producer of the movie) Peter A Christmas Story Billingsley, provides a highlight when he and Vaughn recreate a scene from The Fourth Man, a steroid-themed After School Special in which they co-starred in 1990.

The film cuts back and forth between the on stage antics and scenes of life on the road. It’s hardly glamorous; a broken toilet in San Diego dampens morale, cramped quarters take their toll and a bleary Billingsley tears a strip off Justin Long when a prank wakes him up.

More interesting is the insight into the performer’s craft. Caparulo, so casual and down to earth on stage, carefully studies the room each night before stepping in front of an audience. If the place is too big, he says, it’s harder to make people laugh. Low ceilings are good for comedy he adds. Ernst beats himself up after a sloppy show and Ahmed Ahmed goes to the Clark County Courthouse where he was jailed for twelve hours for the “crime” of being Middle Eastern in post 9/11 Las Vegas. The film will do little to quell people’s idea that all comics are neurotic, but the behind-the-scenes material is often more entertaining than the live show footage.  

Some of the backstage scenes are compelling; some interesting, but they don’t cover anything that Jerry Seinfeld’s documentary Comedian didn’t. Director Ari Sandel has a hard time finding the right balance between the on and off stage scenes to make this a really effective portrait of life on the road.

Like Dave Chappelle’s Block Party, Vince Vaughn’s Wild West Comedy Show: 30 Days & 30 Nights: Hollywood to the Heartland is about the joy of live performance, but unlike Chappelle’s film Wild West overstays its welcome by twenty minutes, leaving the audience almost as road weary as the performers after their thirtieth show in a row.

VACANCY
2 ½ STARS FOR THE FIRST 89 MINUTES
½ STAR FOR THE FINAL 60 SECONDS
2 STARS IN TOTAL

Vacancy is a new thriller that offers up two bits of advice for people on long road trips. First: Never get off the interstate and Second: When possible, stay at the Four Seasons.

David (Owen Wilson) and Amy (Kate Beckinsale) are a couple on the verge of a divorce, their once happy union broken apart when their only child suddenly passed away. In their final public appearance as a couple they attend a large family function. We meet them on the way home, after they have veered off the highway and their car has broken down on a desolate country road.

Tired of the road and each other they find their way to a seedy motel. The innkeeper (Frank Whaley) is a creepy dude who makes Norman Bates seem like Conrad Hilton. He puts them in the Honeymoon Suite, a dirty, cockroach infested room with no heart shaped tug but enough grime to make germophobes scream. As they try to settle in, mysterious things start to happen. It seems there's more wrong with this room that no hot water. Strange sounds come from next door and the in-room videos appear to be snuff films shot in the very room they are staying in!

Turns out they have stumbled upon the Cecil B. De Mille of snuff, a man who lures innocent travellers to his rooms, only to have them killed on camera. The quarrelling couple must plan their escape, but will they get out alive?
Vacancy is the latest in a series of hotel horror scenarios with titles like The Shining, Hotel Horror and Motel Hell, that should convince any right thinking person to just stay home, or perhaps, if they must hit the open road, to buy a Winnebago. The granddaddy of the all, Psycho, put people off showering; Vacancy should make people think twice about staying in run down, roach infested hotels that offer “killer” deals.

Vacancy is a fine, menacing thriller with a few jolts that should inspire a nightmare or two. Too bad the ominous atmosphere is shattered in the closing moments of the film when the director, newcomer Nimrod Antal, drops a Hiroshima sized cheese bomb just before the closing credits. Without giving away anything, I’ll say it’s a bad move that takes the audience out of the reality of the terrifying situation and brings an abrupt end to a movie that up until then had been a pretty good thrill ride.

VOLVER
Penelope Cruz’s lackluster performances in Hollywood movies like Gothika and Vanilla Sky left North American audiences questioning her star power. Well, question no more. Her powerhouse performance in Volver as Raimunda, a resourceful working class mother who must deal with a precocious daughter, a lazy husband and an eccentric sister, is earning her the best notices of her career. Working in her native Spanish and paired for a second time with superstar director Pedro Almodóvar, Cruz unveils a tangled web of a story that mixes humor with murder, abuse and hope—think Mildred Pierce with a hint of Arsenic and Old Lace— as three generations of women deal with the hands that life has dealt them.

VENUS
In the film Venus the almost-octogenarian Peter O’Toole rediscovers his youth by falling for a girl still in her teens. As the raggedly regal Maurice, an actor who is a “little bit” famous, and besotted with his best friend’s niece, O’Toole has found his best role in years. Sparks fly in his mostly platonic relationship with Jessie (Jodie Whittaker) as she unwittingly becomes his lifeline when he is diagnosed with prostrate cancer and must face his own mortality. Director Roger Michell draws uniformly great performances from the cast, but O’Toole owns this movie. His playful, bravura performance is bound to earn an Oscar nomination.

V FOR VENDETTA: 4 STARS

The film V for Vendetta is a vivid new version of a vintage graphic novel about the veracity of venturing acts of virtuous vengeance and violence with a view to vanquishing the victims of vile governmental vermin and emerge victorious. It’s a vessel for variations of alliteration and the veritable veneration for the Count of Monte Cristo and English folk hero Guy Fawkes.

I know that sentence is verbose and confusing, but that’s OK, because the movie is a bit like that as well, but it is also entertaining and exciting. 

The Wachowski Brothers, creators of The Matrix movies, wrote the screenplay based on an anti-Margaret Thatcher comic book by writer Alan Moore. Set in futuristic Britain—one that closely resembles not only the grim world the brothers created for The Matrix but also George Orwell's 1984—neo-fascists have gained control, keeping the public under their boot-heel by imposing a cruel reign of law and order while stripping away personal rights and freedoms.

Only one man fights back. The street fightin’ man is named V and his libertarian campaign of terror, (and his life), are based on Guy Fawkes, who in 1605 tried to blow up London's Parliament. V wears a Fawkes mask and plans to stick it to the man with a bang on November 5, on the anniversary of his predecessor’s failed attempt. Joining him in his updated one-man Gunpowder Plot is Evie (Natalie Portman) a bull-headed heroine who rebels against the norm.

V for Vendetta echoes many classic grim speculative fictions about the future—A Clockwork Orange, Brazil and Fahrenheit 451 come to mind—and is very effective in creating an atmosphere where everything from homosexuality to Islam has been declared illegal. On the downside every character seems to take the story on a different digression. Too many character tangents take away from the main focus of the piece.   
Luckily we care about the characters. Natalie Portman—bald and beautiful for part of the film—is very effective as Evie, particularly in some brutal emotional scenes that replicate the atrocities of the Holocaust. But as good as she is it is Hugo Weaving as V who steals the show, no mean feat considering that we never see his face. He is covered with a Guy Fawkes mask for the entire film and through vocal and physical inflections manages grand, operatic passion, conveying conflicting emotions from great anger to tenderness to despair. This is far more than a voice-over job.     
V for Vendetta is an interesting movie. It is a film about civil liberties in which you root for the terrorist. It’s an emotionally complex counter-culture rant about ideas and the importance of being true to your ideas. It’s an allegorical story that should resonate in the Bush era as much as Moore’s work did in Thatcher’s day.

The verdict on V for Vendetta is four stars.