Just Like Heaven (2005)

Directed by Mark Waters

I liked Just Like Heaven (2005) though I also found moments of frustration because it would lose the likeable elements sporadically with a weak moment. It’s a romantic comedy that, like The Holiday (2006), overstates its romance (at least in the third act). It also misses a few times on the comedy.

Yet overall, this is a good movie because for the most part it has a smart script, good direction and good performances. It’s just that those first two occasionally falter.

It uses a standard Hollywood movie type – the ghost story that isn’t scary but comedic as the ghost discovers to his or her alarm that they are dead and have to figure out where to go from there. The first clever little twist the movie employs is by making its ghost not a ghost.

Elizabeth (Reese Witherspoon) and David (Mark Ruffalo) in Just Like Heaven (2005).

Reese Witherspoon as Elizabeth isn’t dead. She’s in a coma following an accident. But her spirit has been shaken loose and is now wandering, rootless.

As a spirit, she goes to her old apartment where she meets Mark Ruffalo as David, a kind of gardener-landscape architect whose wife died two years earlier, a loss that has sent him into a depression that involves drinking and gloomy apathy.

Of course, the scenario is utterly unrealistic but, as Roger Ebert points out, “In a movie like this there is no logical reason for such matters. They simply are, and you accept them.”

Just Like Heaven is the same type of movie that 1937’s Topper belongs too. Where it differs is maintaining (and largely managing) the dark element implicit in the scenario, whereas Topper is indifferent to that aspect. I prefer the Topper approach but Just Like Heaven better reflects contemporary sensibility and is a kind of linchpin for its romantic element.

John Heder as Darryl, the guy with a certain psychic ability, explaining things to David (Mark Ruffalo) as Elizabeth (Reese Witherspoon) watches.

The movie works best in the first two acts where the romance between Elizabeth and David is underplayed and the jarring aspects of their situation are emphasized. I’ve seen at least one review where some scenes, such as those where Ruffalo is talking to Elizabeth but seen by other characters to be speaking to himself or an imaginary friend, as being old, clichéd scenes.

They’re correct in saying that some of those scenes don’t work well but they’re wrong in saying it is because they are old and clichéd. Those scenes can be incredibly funny – that is why they are often used (and humour is often about repetition). What is occasionally missing in those scenes is an understanding of what it is that makes them funny.

What is funny is not the character talking to seemingly nothing. The funny is in the reaction of other characters. Think of the old TV show The Beverly Hillbillies. The Clampett’s would do outrageous, absurd things that were funny but the real kicker was in the reactions of characters like Mr. and Mrs. Drysdale, which were often exaggerated, at least to a degree.

In Just Like Heaven I found such reactions generally understated by comparison and thus not nearly as funny as they could have been.

Elizabeth (Reese Witherspoon) entering her rooftop happy ending.

I also found that once the third act kicked in, while the comedy became wilder due to the situations, the movie was more interested in the romance. And when everything resolved in the manner of romantic comedies it was dragged out and over-emphasized (particularly visually).

Given the lighting, editing and camera work, the movie’s ending would have been cloyingly sweet were the actors not performing as well as they were.

So, once again we have a romantic comedy that is heavy handed with its romance and a bit frugal with its comedy, a not uncommon problem.

For the most part, though, this movie works far better than most and is worth watching.

As final note, one of the few supporting actors playing a character in the manner of characters you would find in classic romantic comedies, is Jon Heder as a kind of spacey, yet better-informed and intelligent than everyone else, psychic. His scenes are wonderful.

The Holiday (2006)

Directed by Nancy Meyers

This is one of those movies that exists in that overly populated twilight land of films that aren’t particularly good and aren’t particularly bad. The Holiday (2006) is just kind of there, inoffensive and forgettable.

It’s also one of those movies that is referred to as a romantic comedy (a rom-com) yet it isn’t all that funny and the romance is … well, treacly at best. It’s romantic only in the most superficial way.

It should be so much better given the cast it has (including Eli Wallach who, to some degree, steals the movie despite his age – or maybe because of it.)

An excited Iris (Kate Winslet) arrives in L.A. to see where she'll be living for the next two weeks.

The film’s problem appears to be that rather than have the romance develop out of the situations, the romance is imposed on the situations. The movie even has a scene where the “cute meet” of romantic comedies is referred to, yet the film’s “cute meets” (there are two, sort of) are not overly imaginative. They are simply functional.

On IMDb they provide this synopsis of the movie: “Two women troubled with guy-problems swap homes in each other’s countries, where they each meet a local guy and fall in love.”

The movie generally has a kind of paint-by-numbers approach to the rom-com formula and a pedestrian approach to characterization. Yes, the primary female characters of Amanda Woods (Cameron Diaz) and Iris Simpkins (Kate Winslet) are troubled and a good deal more comedy could have mined from this, I think.

Cameron Diaz as Amanda - possibly wondering this movie will ever get genuinely interesting.

But the film is more interested in romance of the sentimental variety. So the two women “each meet a local guy” and here is where the real trouble comes. The two guys are boring (Jude Law as Graham and Jack Black as Miles. It is worth noting that neither has a last name in the movie, possibly reflecting how undeveloped these characters are.)

In other words, the movie is not so much romantic comedy as it is romantic fantasy where it is not so much characters you get as it is caricatures.

There is little or no tension in the romantic relationships. Compare that to what you find in classic romantic comedies like The Philadelphia Story, When Harry Met Sally or The Shop Around the Corner.

With little tension, it is no surprise the comedic element is minimal. And it’s no surprise that the romance comes across as bland and predictable.

Iris and Arthur (Eli Wallach), the only interesting male character in the last two acts of the movie.

Given how the two women’s stories begin in The Holiday, the much more interesting male characters were Edward Burns’ Ethan and Rufus Sewell’s Jasper Bloom. Those two characters would have provided tension – the stuff of great romantic comedies. The colourless characters we get as the love interests (Graham and Miles) are the stuff of fantasy.

And that is where the movie goes off the rails.

As it is, The Holiday lives in the twilight land referred to above. It is watchable, thanks to the actors, but unremarkable. It’s a 21st century equivalent of a fairy tale where two princesses meet their princes and all of them live dully everafter.

A friend of mine went to visit some friends in Edmonton a few months ago. When she returned, I asked her what she had done. “Nothing,” she said.

A deliberately grizzled Cary Grant - star of Father Goose (1964).

“Did you go anywhere?”

“Nope.”

“Did you at least go to that restaurant I told you about?”

“No; there wasn’t time.”

She had been there for over a week. Yet all she had done was spend time with her friends.

That’s what some comfort movies are.

Many years ago when the marathon-like M*A*S*H was finally ending its time on television, someone made the observation that few people had watched it because they were eager to see the next episode. They weren’t wondering what would happen next. They were watching simply because they wanted to spend time with the characters they had come to know so well.

That is what some comfort movies do. Many of the John Wayne movies are like this. They may have drama or comedy but many people watch them simply to spend time with their idea of John Wayne and the characters associated with him.

This particularly comes across in his later movies, like Hatari! or Donovan’s Reef, or even an earlier movie like The Quiet Man. Their merits as films aside, people watch to see the Duke and the actors/characters associated with him, like Maureen O’Hara. There is a sense of knowing them, of a personal relationship, though we know that couldn’t possibly be true – we’ve never even met them! Yet we feel that way.

So it strikes me that a characteristic of comfort movies is familiarity. We revisit certain movies in the same way we revisit certain friends and family. Familiarity. We enjoy spending time with them. This is why they are comfort movies.

Although it’s not the movie I’d like to start off with (it’s a bit misleading as far as what I consider a comfort movie to be), my favourite movie as far as this category goes is Father Goose.

Gasp! Am I nuts? Possibly. But for me this movie is as comfortable as old slippers. And that may be a good analogy because this movie is probably just as fashionable. Besides, it stars the always familiar Cary Grant, whom many simply like to watch. In anything.

• Review: Father Goose 1964

Illegal (1955)

Directed by Lewis Allen

The first act of Illegal plays like a kind of executive summary as it quickly lays out exposition and sets up the story. It goes by so briskly and so summarily it feels like point form.

It’s brusque in the way it goes from short scene to short scene. You get the feeling director Lewis Allen had a pressing appointment he had to get to.

A district attorney (Edward G. Robinson) prosecutes a case.

He’s very good as he prosecutes cases almost like serving up templated hamburgers at a fast food restaurant. In the process, an innocent man (DeForest Kelly) is convicted and executed for murder.

That goes by so fast poor DeForest Kelly gets just one line, as I recall, a simple, “I’m innocent, you know,” as he’s led to his death.

Edward G. Robinson as besotted D.A. Victor Scott and Nina Foch as the luckless Ellen Miles.

Discovering he is responsible for a wrongful conviction, the formerly blasé D.A. quits his job and quickly becomes a drunk. Almost as quickly, he recovers and finds a new enthusiasm as a lawyer on the defense side of things.

But he is all about law and the process. It’s the game he enjoys and he remains enchained by his guilt over the case he wrongly prosecuted. So he tosses his high moral ground aside and doesn’t care about the guilt or innocence of clients, just the law.

And he finds himself “retained” by a mobster who wants him to defend his gang members when they are arrested and tried.

He does. He gets them off. They are all guilty, but he doesn’t care.

As you might guess, this is a B movie, one that goes through the story motions in almost paint by numbers fashion. The proper descriptor is brusque. Scenes come up and vanish almost like targets on a shooting range.

It does, however, manage to slow its pace enough and get into a more compelling storytelling approach once its first act is over, though it continues to move through plot points speedily. In the end, it’s not a particularly good movie, even within the context of hardboiled crime stories, but it does have one redeeming virtue.

Jayne Mansfield as Angel O'Hare in Mansfield's screen debut with Edward G. Robinson.

Edward G. Robinson makes it watchable, even enjoyable, despite all the film’s faults. (The largest fault being the story is pretty ludicrous. Perhaps DeForest Kelly lucked out by getting to exit the movie so early.) Robinson even makes the film almost credible at times with his performance.

The movie is notable for a few other things, the most interesting perhaps being the screen debut of Jayne Mansfield as a piano-playing, singing gangster’s moll. Also, IMDb tell us,

(Gangster) Frank Garland’s impressive collection of Impressionist art actually was loaned to the film by collector Edward G. Robinson. Included are works by Gaugin, Degas, Duran, and Robinson’s wife, Gladys Lloyd.

Sometimes classed as a noir, this movie really doesn’t fit the bill. It doesn’t have the feel, there is really no femme fatale and there is no strong romantic element running through it. Illegal is a crime film, a kind of a melodramatic thriller. But it is not noir.

Lastly, IMDb also indicates that Illegal is a third remake of a story/play by Frank J. Collins, the first being The Mouthpiece (1932) and the second was The Man Who Talked Too Much (1940).

Force of Arms (1951)

Directed by Michael Curtiz

Starring William Holden, 1951′s Force of Arms stands out simply because it doesn’t stand out at all. It is singularly bland, being neither a bit good nor a bit bad but just a whole lot of just okay.

In that sense it is “bad,” though I think that term should be used more judiciously. Here, we have a movie with a number of good elements but when they come together they don’t cohere into anything interesting. I suspect it is the kind of movie that was dreamt up to satisfy some studio goals but had no dramatic reason to be. So it feels uninspired.

And it didn’t help that just prior to seeing it I saw the movie’s two stars, William Holden and Nancy Olson, in another movie they made, the magnificent Sunset Boulevard.

Force of Arms is a movie that bounces between a war drama and a romance. Holden plays the hero with obstacles to overcome in both.

The war scenes (the battles) are well done though standard stuff. The romance scenes are … well, annoying at best. They don’t play well at all.

Nancy Olson as Lt. Eleanor MacKay and William Holden as Sgt. Joe 'Pete' Peterson.

They are weak primarily because Olson’s character, Lt. Eleanor MacKay, is weak and Olson is forced to play most of her scenes with a hang dog look or the look of someone on an interminable crying jag. You really just want her to shut up and go away. In the final scenes in particular her faced seemed etched in granite with the look of emotional devastation.

By contrast, in Sunset Boulevard she plays a character with both strength and determination, for the most part. Force of Arms doesn’t grant her this.

William Holden, on the other hand, is William Holden and essentially carries the movie. His presence is probably why the movie doesn’t come off as being awful; his performance tempers things making it at least somewhat palatable. Although it should also be said he, too, is forced to play a character that love turns into an emotional basket case.

Scene from Force of Arms (1951).

I think part of the movie’s intent was to show how war disrupts romance and life plans but what results is a movie that seems to be about how love makes people idiots and makes the horrors of war even worse.

As I write this and think of the movie, the more inclined I am to contradict what I began saying about the move: it is bad. It’s not bad in the unwatchable sense but it is in the wasted potential and in the fact that it ends up being nothing more than time wasted.

It is, however, visually good. The war scenes work well mixing scenes shot for the film with documentary footage and everything is well staged. It looks good in black and white with very nice cinematography by Ted McCord.

But in the end it winds up as wasted effort. It is an uninspired film rooted in a bland story.

One reason for this, I think, is because you can’t connect with his characters. They are at best irritating and are often just unpleasant, as in this movie.

The Shining (1980)

Directed by Stanley Kubrick

One of the confusions The Shining created when released was the fact there was a novel by Stephen King. People immediately thought it was a movie of the novel. It’s not. King and Stanley Kubrick could not be more opposite to one another.

While the movie uses a similar storyline as the book, and the same character names, the story is not the same. The visions are wildly different.

If King was not happy with the movie (which I’ve read he was not) it’s understandable. He probably thought he would see his book on screen.

Kubrick’s intent is to show an American family deconstructing and why it deconstructs. This is the real horror of the film, not the ghosts or the axe-wielding madman.

Jack Nicholson as Jack Torrance at the bar in the Overlook Hotel.

And, as is usually the case with Kubrick, he is clinical about it. It’s a very odd experience to see a supposed horror film, one with blood and bodies, and feel so detached from it. But Kubrick shoots and constructs The Shining almost documentary style.

For instance, in an early scene where Jack Nicholson as Jack Torrance is being interviewed for the position of caretaker of the Overlook Hotel, the scene is staged very formally.

The dialogue is largely irrelevant and the interactions a little awkward – quite like a real interview. And the camera tends to remain apart from the scene. There are few if any close-ups. Most of the shots are medium to almost wide shots intended, I think, to emphasise the distance between all the characters and their lack of real communication. It’s all very superficial.

Again, it feels like a documentary, as if you are a voyeur watching the scene through a window on a police interrogation room. You don’t get to know any of the characters here. In this scene, mind you, none but Nicholson’s is very important. But throughout the movie, you don’t ever get to really know, much less connect with any characters – a very Kubrick-like approach.

Shelley Duvall as Wendy Torrance protecting her son, Danny (Danny Lloyd).

We seldom see the three family members together (mother, father and son). And in one scene where the child, Danny (Danny Lloyd), sits on his father’s knee, although they are physically close the communication between them is all but non-existant, despite the fact they are talking.

Danny seems to lean away from his father, and the father tends to lean or look away from the son when they speak.

(Compare this to what you would likely find in a King novel – every character enunciated, every relationship paid attention to and played with. Not that the characters would have a great deal of depth, but his intent would be to provide something to distinguish each and get you involved with their stories.)

Kubrick’s dispassion and distance begins right from the film’s opening where we see the little yellow car driving through the mountains. It is utterly dwarfed by its surroundings. We see it from a god-like perspective, from afar, from a height.

Danny meets the twins who await at the end of the corridor.

The emphasis is on how diminutive it is and how impersonal the surroundings, and how imprisoning they are. This sense carries through the entire film.

There are those who complain about the aspect ratio presented on the DVD. The note on the cover reads, “This feature is presented in the full aspect ratio of the original camera negative, as Stanley Kubrick intended.” But why would he want this? Why, when you can take advantage of the breadth a widescreen ratio allows?

I think it’s because Kubrick thinks vertically rather than horizontally. His world is one of height and enclosures, and characters made small by these elements.

I think he intends this ratio because, in many of the scenes in The Shining, it is shot and framed in a way to emphasize how small the characters are and how oppressed they are within their surroundings.

When we see the child Danny riding through the halls, or when we are with the characters in the maze, or when we follow the little car on its way through the labyrinth of the mountains, the emphasis is on how within the world of those scenes the focus (the characters, the car) is dwarfed, oppressed. They are closed in by what surrounds them. How small and ineffectual the characters are is communicated not by breadth but by height, and the way the 1:33 ratio seems to compress the environment.

Jack Torrance going a bit mad.

Compression is a key element in the film. There is a sense of walls closing in, of something approaching; getting closer and closer. Again, the aspect ratio helps communicate this, the mazes as well.

But also notice how the occasional titles are compressed as well: “a month later,” then “Tuesday,” then “8AM.”

Visually, The Shining is a masterpiece. It is completely successful in terms of achieving what Kubrick is trying to do. But in the documentary on the DVD (done by Vivian Kubrick), Jack Nicholson quotes Kubrick saying something to the effect that while something may be real (a performance, say), it isn’t necessarily interesting.

For me, this is the problem with The Shining (as with most Kubrick films). It’s a fascinating, masterful piece of cinema. It’s visually arresting. But … it’s not very interesting as a drama.

I think it’s because the characters are not interesting. They never are in Kubrick films. It’s very hard to like any of them and forge any kind of emotional connection. Kubrick’s characters are chess pieces; they are moved around and say things to help him communicate his ideas on screen. But because they aren’t interesting (and more often than not, simply disagreeable), you just don’t care.

So … The Shining is a brilliant piece of filmmaking. Unfortunately, it’s a very dull story.

Mumford (1999)

Directed by Lawrence Kasdan

In 1999 writer-director Lawrence Kasdan Gave us Mumford, a quiet comedy that was erroneously called “Capraesque.” I think it has a greater relationship to the movies of John Sayles than Capra. Think of a Sayles movie done as a low key comedy (I suppose the name Sayles already suggests “low key”).

Comparisons are misleading though. It’s similarity to either Capra or Sayles is essentially the fact it is an ensemble piece. But it lacks Capra’s frenetic quality. As for the movies of John Sayles, again its ensemble and it also uses some of the same actors, but it has a bit more Hollywood gloss than his films do (but not a lot).

This is a very long-winded way of saying Mumford is a low-key ensemble comedy. What I’ve yet to say is it’s very good. But the humour is often dry and if you don’t adjust to its tone and pace you may miss out on a quiet gem.

A therapy session with Doc Mumford (Loren Dean) and Sofie Crisp (Hope Davis).

The town of Mumford has a psychologist who is also named Mumford (Loren Dean). He’s only been in town for about four months but already he has a great number of patients. He seems to have an uncanny ability to help people, primarily through his unthreatening manner. He’s easy to talk to because Doc Mumford has a knack for listening.

Doc also has a knack for seeming like a psychologist while also never quite responding like one.

With deadpan style, he questions and answers from left field, such as when one character asks what kind kind of doctor he is. He tells her he’s a psychologist and she replies something like, “So you’re not a real doctor.” He answers back, “That’s right. I’m the fake kind.”

The doctor helps the troubled Althea (Mary McDonnell).

As it turns out, almost everyone in Mumford has a secret life. There’s a pharmacist (Pruitt Taylor Vince) with detailed sexual fantasies rooted in the 1950′s pulp magazines.

There’s a housewife (Mary McDonnell), spouse of an ‘A’ personality business man (Ted Danson). She compulsively orders almost everything she sees in catalogues and magazines.

There’s a teenage girl (Zooey Deschanel) who is caught up in the world portrayed in fashion magazines. And there’s the wealthy technology savant (Jason Lee) on whom the town relies – he has trouble finding an honest companion so he tries inventing one.

They all share in common one quality: loneliness.

Then there’s the young woman who appears to suffer from chronic fatigue syndrome (Hope Davis). The doctor soon finds himself falling in love with her.

Alfre Woodard as Lily is the doctor's conscience.

The movie is warmly amusing as we’re introduced to all these characters who inhabit Mumford, the town. They all have a secret life. However, as we soon learn, the doctor has a secret life too.

In the short time he has been in Mumford, he has fashioned an idyllic life. He’s become an integral and loved part of the community. But his own secret threatens to be revealed and, with it, everything he has gained since arriving.

It probably doesn’t read as very exciting and, in some ways, it’s not. The charm of the movie isn’t in its ability to pump adrenaline — it’s not that kind of movie. It’s in the relationships of the characters and how those characters interact. It’s certainly a sentimental movie but I didn’t find it excessive in this regard. Someone more cynical might find it that way but … well, there are more than enough dark movies out there to keep them happy.

It’s also true to say nothing really happens in the film. But again, it’s not about something happening so much as it’s about characters interacting. It’s a fantasy — the town and the situation — but, as with most fantasies, it has a fable quality.

I suppose you could say the movie is about our secrets and how they get in the way of fully realizing the potential of our lives, and of how the secrets seem more large and threatening to ourselves than they do to anyone else. In other words, there really isn’t much cause to keep them secrets.

In the end, I guess the movie does have a Capra quality in that the film has a message and, like Capra, it’s a pretty simple, folk wisdom one. It also shares in common with Capra’s films an ensemble of eccentric yet lovable characters.

Done well, warm, sweet movies can achieve what they attempt — make you feel good. And Mumford does this. Kasdan is well known for his dialogue and in Mumford it’s on full display. It’s extremely well written. You get the most out of the film if, like Doc Mumford, you make an effort and listen.

Collateral (2004)

Directed by Michael Mann

The only person in Collateral that seems at home in the urban environment is the predator Vincent (Tom Cruise) and, ironically, he’s the only one who says he doesn’t like it (“too sprawled out; too disconnected”).

This is a movie about disconnection.

Director Michael Mann gives us a vision of the city that suggests it’s the natural environment of a sociopathic killer because he’s a predator. Vincent is the only one that recognizes and accepts the lack of connections.

Mann’s Collateral is remarkably quiet. And it’s pace is almost leisurely. It’s fitting, too, since the majority of the movie’s drama occurs at night. It’s nocturnal.

Tom Cruise as Vincent and Jamie Foxx as Max.

Max (Jamie Foxx) is a cab driver working the night shift. He dreams of his own limo business. But everything must be perfect for that. In the meantime, he drives a cab. He’s been driving a cab for twelve years, but it’s “temporary.”

Then he picks up a fare. It turns out that fare is a hired killer, Vincent, with five stops to make, followed by a trip to the airport. Max can drive him all night for $600 plus an additional $100 if he gets Vincent to the airport soon enough.

Max accepts. But he doesn’t know what Vincent does for a living — yet.

He very quickly, and shockingly, does. He gets the “cold water in the face” treatment. Vincent’s first target lands on his windshield.

With a theme of disconnection, the movie is inevitably about isolation. As a predator, this is how Vincent kills his victims. He isolates them. It’s only later in the film, when he goes after the fourth person on his to-do list that he’s unable to isolate his victim. The result is chaos and the beginning of the end for Vincent.

Vincent doing what he does best - killing.

How Mann manages action is worth watching. He takes a Sergio Leone approach but without the elaborate choreography. There are violent scenes but they are abrupt and quickly over, reflecting Vincent’s deadly, predator approach. He’s focused and fast. It’s only in that fourth killing, and the movie’s finale, when Vincent has lost control that the violence stretches out.

Mann’s style in the movie fits his theme perfectly and he adds touches everywhere to highlight disconnection, isolation and the ritual of predator and prey. Even at the movie’s start, when Max first gets in his cab, as he shuts the door he isolates himself from the noise and chaos of the taxicab garage. We see (or rather, “hear”) this repeatedly.

As Max drives, Mann gives us overhead shots of the cab going down a street. It’s utterly silent giving a sense of detachment. His use of sound reflects disconnection and isolation; the way scenes are set and characters are placed reflect it as well. The city we see is, as Vincent says at the start, sprawling. Despite its huge population, Mann gives us scenes where people are strikingly alone and dwarfed by the expanse of their surroundings.

We only see clusters of people when they gather in nodes, like clubs. Beyond those dens they are isolated, alone in an urban expanse of roads, parking lots and concrete buildings.

In the final scenes, when Vincent is going after the fifth person on his list, Annie (Jada Pinkett Smith), we see her in the law office library — large, sprawling and Annie isolated and trapped. Perfect prey for the predator.

Max and Annie (Jada Pinkett Smith). Even together, the city separates them (notice the line the door makes between them).

However, as we saw in the chaos of the fourth victim’s death, Vincent has lost control. He has needled Max, mocking him with reality, to the point where Max is no longer willing to be a victim. In a sense, Max is now predator as well, only his prey is Vincent. The dynamics have changed for Vincent. His target won’t be isolated long; she and Max are about to become a pack.

But before they do we see Max having to overcome barriers of disconnection (cell phone signal and battery) and reduce the physical distance that separates Annie, himself and Vincent. (Notice how many glass barriers are in the movie — the cab’s windshield, inside the cab separating back seat and front and in the law offices.)

I’m intrigued by the character of Vincent as portrayed by Tom Cruise in the movie. There are scenes, such as when Max refers to him as a sociopath, saying he’s someone missing basic elements normal people have like empathy, where he looks lost and puzzled by Max and people generally. He can’t understand them.

Vincent, Max and victim number 4, Barry Shabaka Henley as jazz man Daniel.

We also see it at the end in the subway train as he is dying. Something is missing in him and he can’t figure out why or whether it is a good or bad thing. He’s just lost.

I think he suspects there is no point to his life beyond survival. He can’t make a leap to answer the next question, what is the point of survival?

He is also lost because, though a predator, he is also a pack animal, but one without a pack and that strips his life of meaning.

At the risk of beating the point and Mann’s imagery, Vincent acts as a lone wolf or coyote. However, wolves and coyotes are both pack animals and that may be why he has those moments of looking lost or confused, sensing that lack of meaning. When Max finally takes action he is, in a sense, protecting his pack.

Coyote in Collateral.

There is a scene in the movie where we see Vincent mesmerized by a coyote that passes in front of the stopped cab. I think it’s a key scene in the movie the detail of which is easily missed.

You may think that, like Vincent, it is a lone animal out looking for prey. But if you look closely at the scene you’ll see it is two coyotes — a pack. One trots across the street quickly and the eyes of Max and Vincent follow it. Then their eyes return to the original direction they were looking in and another coyote, this one moving more slowly, crosses in front of them and their eyes follow it too.

But it is two coyotes, not one, and if Vincent identifies with it he makes the mistake of missing the significance of the pack. It is as packs coyotes (and wolves) isolate their prey; they work together. Vincent’s mistake, and downfall, is in not understanding this. By acting as a lone predator, when things go wrong he is the one isolated. (Why is his fourth victim so difficult to kill? He is in a clustered group of people and surrounded by his own pack (bodyguards) while at the same time another pack, the police, are hunting him.)

The image of the coyote doesn’t represent Vincent. The image of the coyotes (plural) represents what is wrong with him.

Maybe this is the point of Collateral and why the city is portrayed as it is with all its barriers to connection. We’re pack animals and Vincent never gets this.

By the way, they also created their own hand-cranked camera to shoot the flashback-like scenes that illustrate the telling of the legend of the gun called The Mexican.

The Mexican (2001)

Directed by Gore Verbinski

Does anyone play a blonde airhead better than Brad Pitt? Male or female, I think he’s got that one down better than anyone because he makes it seem so genuine. He certainly does that as Jerry Welbach in The Mexican.

And while many would take that as an excuse to rag on Pitt and his acting skills (he is, after all, a pretty boy and part of that famous couple — a big, big celebrity guy), he’s a much better actor than he gets credit for, at least in roles like these.

Here, the role requires a degree of nuance because the seeming airhead he starts as is not the same guy at the end.

Jerry (Brad Pitt) in Mexico with his rental car - an El Camino!

It isn’t that the character changes so much as it is that more of him is revealed as the movie progresses. It turns out Jerry, while no genius, isn’t a dummy either. He’s just a guy who suffers from what might be called attention deficit disorder (ADD). He’s off in the clouds; he does a poor job of focusing.

But the real reason for all the trouble he manages to create for himself and others is that he is a trusting innocent, despite the world he inhabits. And it gets him in really big trouble.

He also has the patience of Job given that he has hooked up with Samantha Barzel, played by Julia Roberts, and she is about as annoying a harridan as you’ll ever find. It must be love that unites them because there is no sane reason for remaining with a shrew like that.

Roberts, to give her credit as well, is about as infuriating a woman as you’ll find in her performance as Sam. Her character is also an innocent, though of another kind. She isn’t trusting, initially, the way Jerry is. Still, her first response is to believe whatever she is told — unless it comes from Jerry.

However, it is really only when they are together that the two are so deranged.

Bickering Sam (Julia Roberts) and Jerry.

Pitt’s Jerry, apparently not too bright and having a stooge-like ability to screw up (almost like a Chaplin character), is in debt to some rough characters.

He made a balls-up of what should have been his last job to work off the debt, so they give him another: go to Mexico, pick up an antique gun called The Mexican and bring it back. Simple enough.

But not for Jerry. Sam tears a strip off him because she wants to go to Vegas, seemingly indifferent to the fact that if Jerry doesn’t do the job he’ll likely be killed.

Jerry heads to Mexico and screws up at every turn.

This movie got a rough ride when it first came out though I’m not quite sure why. One complaint was that with two big stars (Pitt and Roberts), why were they not on screen together more? The movie is wrong-headed that way, it was argued. I sort of understand that argument because I argued something similar about the use of Bogart and Bacall in Dark Passage.

Jerry travels by burro.

But I think you would need to have had Pitt and Roberts in a completely different movie to make the kind of film that places them together in most scenes.

In The Mexican, they are so infuriating and irritating together, given their characters and the nature of those characters’ relationship, we all would have fled the theatre screaming.

I like the two storylines the characters follow in their separate ways. The line Pitt’s Jerry follows slowly incorporates the story of the gun, the legend of the The Mexican, and we see there is more to Jerry than we initially thought.

Robert’s Sam gets involved (unwillingly, at first) with a gay hit man (James Gandolfini) who kidnaps her because whoever “has the girl” will have the gun, the assumption being that Jerry will want her back (which he does).

Legendary gun, The Mexican.

There is also an assumption, by most of the other characters, that Jerry’s problems in bringing the gun back are because he has his own plans for it, since it is worth quite a lot. They think he plans to keep it and sell it himself.

The two storylines comment on one another because, as the stories progress, the characters refer back to one another, particularly Robert’s Sam in her conversations with Gandolfini’s character. (And Gandolfini is so good in this movie, you should at least see it for his performance.)

While there are some very funny scenes in the movie (it’s a comedy, of sorts) it is more fun than funny and you get a sense the making of it was probably a lot of fun. And Brad Pitt shows he plays comedy very well.

Sam's experience with The Mexican.

To tack a label on it, it’s a comedic adventure. It is also fantasy and fable.

Like the legend of the gun The Mexican, the movie The Mexican is a tall tale, one that knows it is a tall tale and expects the audience to realize it’s a tall tale. Characters and situations are exaggerated, less for inflating the tale as is often the case as for the humour and fun it puts in its story.

It is the quality of innocence, or purity, that pulls Jerry and Sam together and unites them with the legend of the gun, The Mexican.

I haven’t seen this movie for a few years and I’m glad I went back and watched it again. I had forgotten how much I liked it. In fact, more than ten years after its release, I like it even more.

It turns out part of the reason it is all those things is because it’s fantasy. More than that, it is a comedy and a genuinely funny one. And the capper is Reese Witherspoon.

Legally Blonde (2001)

Directed by Robert Luketic

This movie is like its main character. The look misleads you into underestimating it. It seems to be an exercise in gloss. “Seems” is a good word for it because that is really what the movie is about: seeming.

Legally Blonde takes a standard cultural trope — the dumb blonde — and turns it inside out. It’s a well established convention of comedy and that is why it works. It even works outside of comedy, such as in a movie like Forrest Gump. The dumb guy or gal turns out to be smarter than everyone.

It’s a variation of the underdog story.

The blonde-as-airhead notion is so well established culturally, there are even standardized jokes — by the thousands. (If a blonde and a brunette fell off a building, who would hit the ground first?

(The brunette because the blonde would have to stop to ask for directions.)

Elle Woods (Reese Witherspoon) attending Harvard Law School.

Reese Witherspoon plays Elle Woods, the blonde of Legally Blonde, and her performance is note perfect. It’s not just based on the cliche of the dumb blonde, it is also based (visually) on Barbie. (There is even an offhand comment by one character to that effect.)

Elle has a problem and it is that she is in love (she believes) with a jerk, Warner (Mathew David). Her larger problem, however, is that she and her friends are in love with the idea of weddings and their rituals and accoutrements.

As often happens, she hasn’t thought much about marriage and what that means.

Warner dumps Elle and suddenly she is forced to start looking at herself and her life, something her easy life has allowed her to avoid. Once she does, it turns out the dumb blonde isn’t so dumb.

Elle (middle) and her friends: Serena (Alanna Ubach) and Margot (Jessica Cauffiel).

Although it was often referred to as a “girl-empowerment” movie when it came out, that isn’t really what the movie is, except as a secondary result. It’s about, “Don’t be fooled by appearances” and the power of an individual that believes in him or herself.

In that sense, this is a message film but it’s smart enough not to give that aspect much rein. The movie knows what it is: a confection. It’s very light and accepts that, so it never tries to be heavy handed and doesn’t linger.

And it revels in its praline quality. It even celebrates it with its colour palette, its music, its editing … all the elements. It’s a movie made with a music video look. It’s a piece of candy.

Reese Witherspoon as Elle Woods.

When the movie came out I recall many reviews saying it was a nice, light comedy but completely forgettable. I would agree with that except it turns out it isn’t forgettable. It continues to linger though perhaps less for the movie itself than for Witherspoon’s wonderful performance.

Made in a different era, I could see Carole Lombard in the lead role, even Marilyn Monroe, because of the quirky, silly outer shell of the character.

With the creation of her Elle Woods, Witherspoon gave us a character that is completely memorable. There is no forgetting her.

Also see:

• Legally Blonde 2: Red, White and Blonde (2003)