Little Miss Sunshine (2006)

Starring: Abigail Breslin, Greg Kinnear, Paul Dano, Alan Arkin, Toni Collette, Steve Carell

First, the Lowdown: The youngest daughter of the world’s oddest family has a chance to compete in a beauty competition. ROAD TRIP!

Meet the Hoovers. Richard spends his days promoting his pathway to success course and dreaming of the big book deal in the sky that he’s going to get. Consequently, his wife, Sheryl, is the only income earner and it shows in every worry line on her face. Their sullen oldest son, Dwayne, is fully in the throes of teenage rebellion, but has decided to display it in the most unobtrusive way possible: by taking a vow of silence. Also living with them is their Grandpa, whose juvenile attitude makes Dwayne seem almost rosy and optimistic. The only beacon of normalcy in the family is Olive, who spends most of her time in pursuit of the only princess-like fantasy that a girl her age can engage in without peerage: beauty competitions. Adding to the mulligan stew of quirkiness is Frank: a Proust scholar who attempted suicide after being spurned by his gay lover.

When one of the contestants for the Little Miss Sunshine contests has to bow out, Olive is picked as a replacement. However, Sheryl and Richard’s finances are so strapped that they cannot afford to fly to Redondo Beach where the contest is located. Grandpa has been training Olive for competition for months and refuses to leave her side, and no one wants to leave the recovering suicidal Frank alone – so they all pile into the family VW for a road trip to California.

Since Bob Hope and Bing Crosby, the road movie has gotten rather formulaic as of late. In order to be interesting you have to put it in a really exotic location and/or have compellingly original characters (something that was executed on both points rather well in Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.) And try as it might, Little Miss Sunshine’s characters are original, but in such a fashion that it looks like the filmmakers were trying to one-up each other in the “who can make the weirdest character” contest. (“Dad’s a failed motivational speaker!” “Oh yeah? Grandpa is a heroin addict!” “Oh yeah? Oldest son Dwayne is not only a sullen teenager, but he’s taken a VOW OF SILENCE.” “Oh yeah? Uncle Frank tried committing suicide – and he’s a GAY PROUST SCHOLAR!”) The only two characters who aren’t given any weirdness factors are also the two with the least development: Sheryl and Olive.

This brings me to my major problem with the movie. The thing about road trip movies is that the more people you shove into the car, the less likely you’re going to have character development. Sheryl and Olive are practically normal in comparison with their co-stars, and while Olive’s role serves as the catalyst for the movie (she’s the one competing, after all), Sheryl’s only purpose seems to be to bitch at the other characters. A staple of all road movies is that everyone in the car (or vehicle of conveyance) has to have some moment of personal revelation in the movie. And indeed everyone has their “moment”, except for Sheryl. Personally, I think the movie would’ve been more compellingly original if they didn’t have her present at all, but I guess the makers felt it needed more women.

That isn’t to say that I didn’t enjoy the movie. There are quite a few laugh-out-loud moments to be had here, especially the hints at children’s beauty pageants being a socially accepted form of pederasty. Steve Carell is thankfully low-key here (then again, this movie did come out before he got to be typecast as a bureaucratic douchebag). And it’s great to see Alan Arkin as a foul-mouthed jackass instead of the person who has to react uncomfortably to the foul-mouthed jackass.

Line of the movie: “So, if you sleep until you're 18. Think of the suffering you're gonna miss. I mean high school? High school: those are your prime suffering years. You don't get better suffering than that.”

Three and a half stars. Keep of the grass.

La Strada (1954)

Starring: Anthony Quinn, Giulietta Masina, Richard Baseheart, Aldo Silvani, Marcella Rovere

First, The Lowdown: A poor girl is sold to a circus performer and works on the road

In the poverty-stricken countryside of postwar Italy, a traveling strongman, Zampano, arrives to the home of an aging widow with some bad news. The widow’s daughter, Rosa (who was Zampano’s assistant), met with an accident and is dead. Beyond the widow’s grief lies the fear of how she will be able to care for her children – Rosa was sending her pay to her mother to support her family. However, Gelsomina, is of the perfect age, even if she is a little slow-minded.

Life on the road isn’t all fun and games however. In line with his strongman act, Zampano is an equally brutal man who frequently belittles and abuses Gelsomina. However, he is the only family she has, and while busking from village to village is hard, it’s easier than scrounging to survive with her family in the country.

One evening, Gelsomina is awestruck by the Fool, a high-wire performer. Eventually the pair signs up with a traveling circus, where the Fool is also signed up with. However, the Fool churlishly insults Zampano, sending the strongman into a rage. Their brawl is broken up by the police, and now scandalized, the circus tells both Zampano and the Fool to leave. They offer to take Gelsomina in, but she demurs, having grown too accustomed to Zampano’s presence.

Once again drifting, Gelsomina and Zampano run into the Fool once more, changing the tire for his car off the side of a road. Zampano takes advantage of the opportunity and beats the Fool senseless. However, Zampano underestimates his strength and the Fool dies of his injuries. Horrified at the display of brute strength and saddened at the loss of one of the few people who was kind to her, Gelsomina becomes overwhelmed by sadness.

Not being very fluent in Federico Fellini’s works, I’m finding myself in an odd position. Most film critics hail La Strada as the definitive Fellini film and the best of the Italian Neorealism cinema. Not being familiar with the former of that statement, I can only say this about the latter: the best of Neorealism can be found in De Sica’s The Bicycle Thief.

The major point of contention I have for La Strada is its pacing – it seems to take a while to get anywhere, and by the time we get there the movie is almost over. Much of that time is taken up by setting the theme and then by reestablishing it over and over. By the forth or fifth iteration of seeing how harsh and abusive Zampano is to Gelsomina, I found myself hoping the director would get to the point. (Not a good sign for a film.)

On a more positive note, La Strada shows how well Fellini can present characterization. Our players are not given very much back story - in fact, any attempt at it is rebuffed: Gelsomina keeps asking Zampano about her late sister Rosa, only to be ignored. But the characters aren’t one-dimensional. If anything they appear to be both archetypal and play off each other: Zampano keeps belittling Gelsomina’s simple-mindedness, but at the same time keeps displaying a different kind of folly.

Line of the movie: “I don't know for what this pebble is useful but it must be useful. For if it’s useless, everything is useless. So are the stars!”

Three and a half stars. One size fits all

Three Extremes (2004)

(Originally released as: Saam Gaang Yi)

Starring: Bai Ling, Miriam Yeung, Lee Byung Hun, Lim Won Hee, Gang Hye Jung, Kyoko Hasegawa, Atsuro Watabe

First, The Lowdown: Three Asian directors bring their own perspective to the horror genre.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: if you want a fresh perspective on a genre that’s been ground down to cliché, look to foreign film. From China, Japan, and Korea comes a vignette of three stories, each one breathing new breath into horrific cinema.

“Oh, what price is vanity.” In Fruit Chan’s Dumplings, “Auntie" Mei is a cook with a perky Rachel Ray-esque demeanor, whose dumplings have been renown for their curative properties – especially for restoring beauty. However, the special filling she uses in her potstickers is something straight out of straight out of Hansel And Gretel. (I’m not going to tell you much more, let’s just say it is what you think it is when you see it.) Mrs. Li is an aging actress who has been trying to get the attention of her rich but philandering husband for years, and hopes that by looking as young as the mistresses he fools around with, she’ll succeed. After a initial tasting, Mrs. Li is convinced that she needs something more potent – and Auntie Mei willingly obliges. However, since the local clinic has been under investigation, Mei has to find her own source of “stock.”

In Park Chanwook’s Cut Ryu Ji-Ho, a famous director returns home from shooting his latest film (a vampire movie set in a house that looks identical to his own), only to be knocked out by an unknown assailant. He awakens to find that he has been returned to his set with his hands bound, and a leather strap tied to his waist to prevent him from straying too far. The Ryu’s wife, a pianist, is also there – and she too is elaborately bound and epoxied to the piano on the set. His captor is a former extra who has been in all of the Ryu’s movies. But when asked why the extra would do this, he expresses his displeasure at the Ryu’s wealth and status and sees kidnapping and torturing the man as an indictment on the Calvinist philosophies that the extra feels are prevalent in their society. The extra then offers the Ryu a proposition: he’ll let them go, if the Ryu kills a child the extra has brought with him.

In Takashi Miike’s Box Kyoko is a successful, but reclusive novelist who lives an a sparse apartment building. She is also haunted by visions of her dead sister, Shoko – who she danced with when they were circus performers. Their ringleader, however, always favored Shoko over Kyoko (in more ways than one). One evening, Kyoko locked Shoko in a box (a prop used in a magic routine) as a means to prove herself to their ringleader. However, the ringleader tries to free Shoko and the pair struggle and amidst the conflict a kerosene heater is knocked over – igniting the box Shoko was trapped in. One afternoon, Kyuko receives a mysterious invitation to the same carnival she fled from – only now to confront what is in Shoko’s box.

While watching the three segments, I was amazed at not only where each film’s inspiration lay, but also how it was used without seeming like imitation. Dumplings is in essence The Portrait of Dorian Gray told via the Brothers Grimm and presented by David Cronenburg. Cut is very Hitchcockian in nature, particularly Chanwook’s usage of close-ups. And where the story to Box recalls David Lynch’s Eraserhead to some degree, visually it bears more than a passing resemblance to a film from one of Miike’s forebears in Japan: Seijun Suzuki’s Tokyo Drifter.

I find it sadly ironic that Asian cinema has managed to present an original horror anthology by returning the genre back to its roots (something that we here in America rarely do). Instead of stomach churning gore, we have gut-wrenching tension. Instead of bogeymen in horrifying makeup, here we have human monsters to confront.

Line of the movie: “Just think of the results, not what it was.”

Five stars. I see my shadow.