Herzog's death-row documentary hits hard

Sadness sometimes grows in the murky shadows of American life, a bone-deep sorrow in which the smallest (and perhaps meanest) of impulses builds toward catastrophe. When these impulses find their fullest expression, the results often feel random and senseless. We're talking about crimes born of stupidity, recklessness, envy and guns, and you feel the bleak tug of all these things in almost every frame of Werner Herzog's troubling new documentary, Into the Abyss.

When I first read about Into the Abyss, I was put off. Herzog had interviewed a death row inmate for what easily could have become an anti-capital punishment diatribe. I'll register my vote against capital punishment, but I had little desire to sit through what promised to be a dreary exercise of preaching to the already converted.

Boy, was I wrong.

Into the Abyss is one of the year's most disturbing films, a documentary that peels the lid off a Texas community where trouble seems to grow like weeds. I'm usually put off by documentaries in which we hear the interviewer asking questions, but in this case, Herzog's questions (and comments) become an essential part of the movie's fabric. He can be sensitive or insistent, and he treats everyone with respect.

To make the film, Herzog conducted interviews with prisoners, family members of victims, a prison guard who presided at executions and a chaplain who still plies his trade in the bland but nonetheless grisly confines of Texas' execution chambers.

These disparate characters find themselves in the same movie because of a 2001 crime in which Sandra Stotler, her son Adam and Adam's friend Jeremy Richardson were murdered. Michael Perry and Jason Burkett were convicted of the crime: Perry received a death sentence; Burkett is serving a life term. All of this took place in Texas, where not much needs to be said about the commitment to execution.

The murders evidently were motivated by Perry and Burkett's desire to drive a red Camero that belonged to Stotler, and which now sits in a police impound yard. At one point, a tree grew through the abandoned car's floorboards. You look at that car, and you can't help but ask yourself, "So much pain, and for this?"

In Into the Abyss death feels inescapable, perhaps because Herzog interviewed Perry eight days before his scheduled execution. Like many inmates, Perry says he has found comfort in religion, but the inexorable approach of his execution infuses the film with tension.

Moments of pure heartbreak punctuate Herzog's film: We listen to the self-accusatory testimony of Burkett's father, a man who has spent most of his life behind bars. He talks about the ways in which he failed his son. Stotler's daughter discusses the torments she has endured since the murder of her mother and brother; and a Texas prison guard talks about finally reaching a point at which he no longer could participate in executions, even if it meant sacrificing his pension.

Herzog makes his position on capital punishment clear, but beats no drums of outrage. And he's certainly not trying to get either Perry or Burkett of the hook. He's just following the story where it takes him, working his way through a pain-laden narrative that springs from deeds that can't be undone.

Into the Abyss isn't just a film about a terrible crime and its dreadful punishment: It's a film about the awful and aching complexities of lives that may have been shattered beyond repair. Is there anything hopeful to be found in all of this? Not much. In the world of this film, killing and its impact can't be shaken.

'J. Edgar' lacks a compelling point of view

There's much to admire about Clint Eastwood's look at J. Edgar Hoover, but the movie eventually becomes far too laborious.

He loathed Communism, saw himself as a staunch patriot and kept secret files on anyone he thought might threaten his ascendance. J. Edgar Hoover was a world-class intimidator, who used his manipulative skills and power to build the FBI into a national crime-fighting force.

It has been widely speculated that Hoover had yet another side to him, that he was a closeted homosexual who shared a marriage-like intimacy - if not carnal pleasures - with Clyde Tolson, his second in command.

This man of stunning contradiction is the subject of J. Edgar, a new and carefully assembled biopic from director Clint Eastwood and screenwriter Dustin Lance Black. Eastwood needs no introduction: Black, you may recall, won an Oscar for his screenplay for Milk, the story of slain San Francisco board supervisor* Harvey Milk.

Eastwood and Black seem to have genuine sympathy for the torment of those who are unable to acknowledge important parts of themselves - in this case, gayness. Eastwood treats Hoover's death in 1972 with a tenderness that's almost mournful.

And then there's the performance of Leonardo DiCaprio, who creates a stark and convincing portrait of Hoover as a troubled man who seldom lost his composure. Heralded in a recent New York Times piece as an actor who welcomes risk, DiCaprio hardly seems a natural fit for the role Hoover, but he meets the challenge.

DiCaprio provides the movie with a solid center, and he receives able support from Armie Hammer, who plays Tolson. Depicted as cultured and witty, Tolson became the second most powerful figure in Hoover's FBI. He also inherited Hoover's estate after the FBI director passed away.

Overall, Eastwood and Black seem to be trying for a tempered approach to Hoover's story, telling us that if he had them, Hoover never acted on any homosexual urges, that he was an early champion of forensic evidence, that he sometimes abused his power and that, on at least one occasion, he put on his mother's clothes.

But what do we take from a movie that's beautifully crafted and earnest to a fault? Not enough, I think. I kept waiting for J. Edgar to catch fire, but it moves somewhat laboriously over its two-hour and 16-minute length, never really finding a compelling point of view.

Moreover, J. Edgar suffers from a depressingly conventional structure: An aged and embattled Hoover tells what he bills as his side of his story to various young FBI agents, dictating chapter after chapter of a self-serving autobiography. Eastwood uses flash backs to develop the story from Hoover's perspective.

This gives the movie a kind "Hoover's Greatest Hits'' quality; "J. Edgar" lacks the organic punch of a great biopic. Hoover tells the story of the kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby and of his stormy relationship with Bobby Kennedy and more. But the movie has a near reportorial tone at times when outrage over Hoover's excesses (his campaign against Martin Luther King, for example) might have been more appropriate. Two women influence the story - albeit in small doses. Judi Dench portrays Hoover's strikingly imperious mother. She bossed him around; he didn't seem to mind. Naomi Watts fares equally well as Helen Gandy, Hoover's long-time secretary.

Any review of J. Edgar must also deal with the make-up issue.

I couldn't entirely shake my awareness of the make-up under which DiCaprio and Hammer (especially Hammer) are buried and which tends to give them eerie wax-works countenances, the look of the embalmed. If a character is aged for a final scene or two of a movie, it's easier to accept, but we see DiCaprio in full make-up throughout the movie.

Look, I respect Eastwood as a filmmaker, and he deserves credit for tackling a difficult subject, but he doesn't seem to have wrested his subject to the ground. J. Edgar moves from one incident to another, sampling an awful lot of history without ever quite knowing what to make of the man who gives the picture its name.

*In an earlier copy of this review, I incorrectly referred to Milk as having held the post of mayor.

Neglected history brought to light

During the height of the Black Power movement in the U.S., a variety of Swedish journalists and filmmakers made it their business to interview many of the movement's major figures. This previously unseen footage -- at least in the U.S. -- has been assembled by Swedish director Goran Hugo Olsson into a documentary aptly titled Black Power Mixtape, 1967-1975. And, yes, there's plenty of interest here. An example: Watching Stokley Carmichael take over for a reporter to conduct a concise and pointed interview with his mother. Also on hand are Angela Davis, Eldrige Cleaver Bobby Seale and Huey Newton. Olsson tries (with mixed results) to provide context with voice-over interviews from contemporary figures such as rapper Questlove, singer Erykah Badu and others, but the footage that Olsson has unearthed makes Black Power Mixtape an invaluable addition to the cinematic canon about a volatile and perhaps neglected period in recent American history.

This 'Tower' doesn't topple

If you were looking for a biting social critique about the kind of well-heeled miscreants who commit investor fraud, you'd do well to skip Tower Heist, a new comedy starring Ben Stiller. But if you're ready for an easygoing caper comedy that doesn't spend a minute worrying about how preposterous it can get, Tower Heist fills the bill.

Director Brett Ratner, best known for the Rush Hour movies, doesn't always seem to know whether to emphasize his movie's caper elements or flex its comic muscles, but he offers just enough of both to keep Tower from toppling.

The movie centers on the employees of The Tower, an upscale Manhattan high rise. Stiller portrays Josh Kovacs, manager of the building. Kovacs plies his trade with dedicated precision until the major plot twist arrives: One the building's tenants - Alan Alda's Arthur Shaw -- has defrauded investors out of billions, a sum that also happens to include the pension fund of the Tower's employees.

Before you can say Madoff, Josh tries to convince his co-workers to take revenge by robbing Shaw of $20 million he supposedly has stashed in his penthouse apartment, the one with the roof-top swimming pool that has a giant picture of a $100 bill painted on its bottom.

Joining Stiller are Casey Affleck (as the building's concierge); Matthew Broderick (as an apartment owner who has been foreclosed); Michael Pena (as an elevator operator); and Stephen McKinley Henderson (as the building's lovable doorman).

Of course, there's an obstacle: None of the aggrieved employees know the first thing about theft. Josh decides to address this flaw by enlisting the services of a low-grade felon (Eddie Murphy) from his Queens neighborhood.

Although he doesn't arrive until the picture's well under way, Murphy proves a welcome presence, as do Gabourey Sidibe, as a maid with safe-cracking skills, and Tea Leoni, as the FBI agent who's working Shaw's case.

The script tends to over-complicate things with twist upon twist, but a toned-down Stiller plays well against an amped-up Murphy, and there's one great set piece involving a red Ferrari, which Shaw - most improbably - keeps in his living room.

I won't say more, except to note if you don't like heights (that would be me), you'll find this sequence both excruciating and funny.

Will you believe any of this? I doubt it, but credibility doesn't matter as much as Ratner's inability to find consistent laughs.

Still - and it's a big still - Tower Heist goes down easily, passing muster as a mainstream comedy with a little socially oriented frosting, a generous helping of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade and a couple of totally unlikely -- but nonetheless inspired -- moments.

She escapes a cult -- or does she?

Martha Marcy May Marlene is a study in tension, dread and carefully built anxiety.

Ever since I heard it, I've had trouble remembering the title of Martha Marcy May Marlene. The movie? That's another story. Director Sean Durkin's debut feature brims with enough quiet tension to make it one of the year's most memorable movies.

Durkin, who also wrote the screenplay, tells the story of a young woman (Elizabeth Olsen) who escapes from a rural cult in upstate New York, but can't entirely shake off the experience.

On a deeper level, Martha Marcy May Marlene is a creepy mediation on the darker corners of identity. Just as Martha seems to juggle many identities -- some of her own choosing, some not -- the film, too, comes across as a kind of mixed tape, finding its roots in both horror and psychological drama, genres that often are at their best when merged.

Olsen plays Martha, a young woman who, having fled a cult, shows up at the home of her sister Lucy (Sarah Paulson). It's immediately clear that Martha's presence will elevate tensions between Lucy and her architect husband (Hugh Dancy). Lucy feels responsible for her younger sister, even though she hasn't seen her in a couple of years.

This kind of movie -- ambiguous and haunting -- puts tremendous pressure on its lead actress, and Olsen handles it well. On one hand, we believe that she's had her fill of cult life; on the other, it's clear that Martha's life on the farm has toppled her ideas about personal boundaries and social convention. At one point, Martha pops into bed with her sister and her husband while they're making love. We eventually learn that in the cult, women are initiated by being drugged and raped by the cult's charismatic leader (John Hawkes).

Martha's constantly flashing back to her experiences in the cult. We know enough about other cults -- the Manson family, for example -- to fear that terrible violence lurks among cult members who are committed to defending their isolated way of life, which offers an indigestible mix of puritanical rigor (the man and women eat separately) and perversion (the women are offered to the cult leader as if they were sacrifices to an earthly god).

Durkin leaves plenty of blanks for us to fill in. We speculate that Martha joined this cult because she felt displaced, and that, for a time, the cult provided her with a safe heaven, as well as with a sense of power.

We also wonder whether Martha is strong enough to escape the influences of Hawkes' Patrick, who knows how to cast a wicked spell. He keeps telling Martha that she's "a teacher and a leader," someone special.

Durkin builds additional tension by forcing us to wonder when the cult members will follow Martha -- who they call Marcy May -- into her sister's suburban home, which represents a lifestyle Martha seems to find as off-putting as that of the cult.

Durkin purposefully keeps us off balance: At times, we're not sure whether we're in the present or re-living a piece of Martha's past. This approach makes sense because Martha may not be sure, either, and the movie benefits from its unhinged sense of creepiness.

Martha never tells Lucy where she's been, and it strains credibility to think that Lucy waits until the picture nearly has concluded to suggest that Martha seek professional help.

But Durkin's ability to sustain a sense of dread more than compensates for a few plot holes, and Martha Marcy May Marlene stands as one of the year's more intriguing pictures, a portrait of a self-contained world that's suffocating the spirit of a young woman who doesn't know (and maybe never will) how she fits into the general scheme of things.

'In Time' may have you clock watching

Justin Timberlake and Amanda Seyfried play for time in a monotonous, one-note thriller.

The sci-fi thriller In Time takes place in a world in which the wealthy can extend their lives indefinitely and the rest of the population is programmed to die young.

In the movie's dystopian future, time has replaced money: Workers are paid in time, and people buy, sell and trade time in order to prolong life. Of course, time (like money) isn't easily acquired -- and some people steal it.

That's an intriguing premise, but writer/director Andrew Niccol, who also wrote The Truman Show and who wrote and directed the similarly chilly Gattaca, doesn't do enough with it.

Justin Timberlake plays Will Salas, a young man who -- since turning 25 -- has been scuffling to earn one additional day at a time. The plot contrives to put Will in the company of Amanda Seyfried's Sylvia Weiss, a rich girl whose father (Vincent Kartheiser) has accumulated vast amounts of time for himself and his family. He does this by exploiting the poor.

The movie goes to some lengths to mount a class-conscious social critique. The rich live abundantly in a zone referred to as New Greenwich. The poor are walled off in a ghetto where they're always borrowing time at exorbitant interest rates.

Not surprisingly, Timberlake's Will winds up on the run with Seyfried's Sylvia. A cop (Cillian Murphy) follows in hot pursuit. Seyfried's Sylvia gradually realizes that her life of privilege has been built on intolerable exploitation of the poor: She joins Will in a Bonnie and Clyde-style rampage.

Niccol gets amusing mileage out of the fact that everyone in this world looks 25. An example: Sylvia's father, mother and grandmother all appear to be the same age.

Additional interest is generated by the way in which people give each other time. They lock arms and transfer hours. (A luminous clock -- planted in an arm -- ticks off every hour and second of a person's life.)

Timberlake and Seyfried -- who seem to be vying to see whose face can reveal the least -- aren't exactly a combustible item, the score by Craig Armstrong tends toward monotony, and -- to tell you the truth -- I can't say I believed a minute of this coolly mounted tale.

I was surprised to learn that In Time is a mere 110-minutes long. For me, the movie seemed to expand time rather than make it go faster. What went wrong? Niccol does a good job creating a time-conscious world, but doesn't have a strong enough story to keep his movie ticking.

A stale helping of gonzo weirdness

By now, debauchery modeled on Hunter S. Thompson has begun to feel old hat.

Johnny Depp seems to have taken responsibility for honing Hunter S. Thompson's legacy. Depp, who played the gonzo journalist in Terry Gilliam's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998), also helped draw attention to The Rum Diary, an autobiographical novel Thompson wrote in 1959, but which wasn't published until 1998.

Depp now stars in and serves as one of the producers of the big-screen adaptation of The Rum Diary, which tells the story of a dissolute young journalist (the Thompson surrogate) who learns to devote his life to fighting "the bastards," an all-purpose description for anyone who stands against truth, justice and the gonzo way.

Because Depp has played Thompson before, his portrayal of Paul Kemp seems like a muted preview of coming attractions for a character that would later blossom into a richer mode of bat-shit craziness. Still, the roots of big-time debauchery can be seen in Kemp, an apparently shiftless young man who lands a job on an English-language Puerto Rican newspaper called the San Juan Star.

True to Thompson's form, we meet Kemp in the midst of a ferocious hangover. We eventually learn that the aspiring journalist has prepared for his job interview at the Star by consuming large quantities of alcohol. The Star's editor (Richard Jenkins) hires Kemp to write horoscopes, and later complains about the way Kemp has abused his hotel privileges, downing something like 161 miniatures from the mini-bar in his room.

In the early going, director Bruce Robinson (Withnail and I) introduces the movie's eccentric cast of characters, which includes Sala (an excellent Michael Rispoli), the paper's photographer, and Moburg (Giovanni Ribisi), the paper's resident drunk, a surly fellow who refuses either to work or be fired and who sometimes listens to the recorded speeches of Adolf Hitler.

Much of this comes across as strained weirdness, which doesn't exactly serve Thompson or the movie well.

The screenplay - also by Robinson - throws Kemp into a plot involving commercial treachery. An American businessman (Aaron Eckhart) tries to arrange a land development deal that's bound to inflame the already simmering resentments of anti-U.S. locals.

Robinson puts Sanderson and Kemp into competition for a beautiful young woman (Amber Heard), who happens to be engaged to Sanderson. Heard's character - Chenault by name -- provides the movie with its seductive allure.

By now, Thompsonesque reprobation seems entirely too familiar to be more than mildly amusing. On top of that, Robinson keeps tossing off bits and pieces of movie: a crusade against greed, an early LSD trip, the seductive balm of an island away from the U.S. mainland and some broadly conceived comedy. A sight gag involving bizarre car ride in which Kemp winds up sitting on Sala's lap earned the biggest laughs at a preview screening.

So call Rum Diary an act of off-kilter devotion on Depp's part: Thompson devotees may enjoy it, but - to me - Rum Diary felt like a movie suffering from a hangover of its own. This may be an attempt to bring an early Thompson work to the screen, but instead of feeling fresh, Rum Diary has the dispiriting taste of residue.

A 'Big Year,' yes, but an awfully small movie

Owen Wilson, Jack Black and Steve Martin find a formula for blandness.

On the elevator leading to the parking lot after a preview screening of The Big Year, a woman asked me what I thought of the movie.

"Well, it certainly felt like a year to me," I said perhaps a bit too glibly.

My fellow passenger said she thought the birds were beautiful.

The birds? Yes, the birds.

Based on a book by journalist Mark Obmascik, The Big Year is about birders, enthusiasts who engage in a pastime that the uninitiated among us call bird watching. But some birders are more passionate than others, and the most passionate among them participate in a contest known as The Big Year. The winner: the person who sees the most species over the course of the year. The prize: The title, world's best birder.

Now, let me make something clear. I like stories about obsessive personalities. If birds are your obsession, I'm willing to listen for hours. But "The Big Year," a movie about passion and obsession, doesn't feel especially passionate or obsessive. It's a straight-ahead, mid-range production that neither annoyed nor thrilled me.

Director David Frankel (The Devil Wears Prada) builds his movie around three characters:

-- Kenny Bostick, played by Owen Wilson. Kenny is the most competitive and compulsive of the birders in The Big Year contest. He's so committed to piling up numbers that he badly neglects the wife (Rosamund Pike). She's remodeling their house and having difficulty becoming pregnant, a task made more daunting by her husband's prolonged absences.

-- Brad Harris, portrayed by Jack Black. Harris is employed but has the kind of slacker look you'd expect from a Jack Black character. Brad's at odds with his father (Brian Dennehy) over a life that's consumed by birds. His mother (Dianne Wiest) supports the preoccupation that has taken on greater importance for Brad than his occupation. She even makes his travel arrangements.

-- Stu Preissler, played by Steve Martin. Stu is a successful New York executive who goes into semi-retirement to compete in The Big Year. His wife (JoBeth Williams) has an independent life of her own, and is totally supportive of her husband's efforts.

That's the rundown. The movie spends most of its time making points: The Big Year competitors are secretive; participation involves extensive travel, including to Attu, Alaska, a hardship post that's also a birders' paradise, Of course, no one can participate in something this consuming without difficulty.

Each of the three main characters has a basic problem: Harris needs money to compete; Bostick must decide whether he's willing to sacrifice his marriage to be the world's best birder; and Preissler must determine whether he's going to give up the corporate world for good and settle into the beautiful retirement home he and his wife have built in Vail.

None of these "conflicts" leads to anything especially heavy; the movie feels light and its attempts at humor are mostly mild.

So what's missing?

As it turns out, the author of the book, Mark Obmascik, was in the audience at the preview screening I attended. In remarks before the film, Obmascik said that after a life of writing about cops, felons and politicians, it was a pleasure for him to write about people he actually liked.

And these characters are mostly likable, but on screen, they're also bland. Preissler and Harris team up in an attempt to defeat the arrogant Bostick, but this is a movie of dull edges, underdeveloped subplots and undernourished secondary characters. The main performances? They're OK, nothing more.

Despite its stabs at conflict and laughs, The Big Year qualifies as the cinematic equivalent of easy listening. It's pleasant, which - I admit -- may be damning with faint praise. And, yes, the birds are beautiful.

Never boring, but not brilliant either

George Clooney's Ides of March wallows in fashionable cynicism.

Here's some shocking news: Politics can be a dirty business -- full of betrayals, double dealing and unholy bargains. If that comes as a surprise to you, you've probably never read an American newspaper, but this widely held and fashionably jaundiced view permeates George Clooney's The Ides of March, a story about a governor who's trying to win an Ohio presidential primary.

Clooney directed, co-wrote the screenplay and plays Governor Mike Morris, an idealistic liberal who's not afraid to admit that he's not a religious man. Clooney donned many hats to make the movie, but he's not its star. Instead, he cedes the spotlight to Ryan Gosling, who portrays Stephen Myers, an ambitious but idealistic campaign worker and political hotshot who works for Morris' more-seasoned campaign manager (Philip Seymour Hoffman).

Based on Beau Willmon's play, Farragut North, The Ides of March resembles Clooney's previous directorial efforts -- particularly Good Night and Good Luck and Confessions of a Dangerous Mind -- in its snappy intelligence.

Never boring and full of intriguing moments, Ides of March gets its best work from a terrific supporting cast: - Paul Giamatti (as the campaign manager for the opposition); Hoffman (as Morris' veteran campaign manager); and Evan Rachel Wood (as a flirtatious young intern working on the Morris campaign). Gosling is at his best before the script turns the tables on his character, forcing him to decide whether he's going to wallow in the dirt along with the rest of the pols or keep his self-respect.

Clooney's Mike Morris isn't much of a character; he's a kind of walking position paper, and the script --- predictably, I think -- contrives to find ways to challenge Morris' status as a liberal icon. The central plot twist is best discovered in a theater not in a review, but I found Morris' inevitable act of hypocrisy to be less than shocking, an obvious attempt to evoke an incident with which we're all depressingly familiar.

And by the end, it seemed to me that Ryan had adopted a kind of single-minded approach to his character that might have benefited from some shading.

But what surprised me most about The Ides of March is its hermetic quality. The movie lacks the infectious bustle and noise of a campaign; it's fine when the exchanges between characters tend toward intimacy, but it misses the rambunctious excitement of politics. The movie resembles a tune that's all melody and no harmony.

That's not to say that Ides of March is a bore; it's not. The best thing about Ides of March is watching its various characters jockey to prove who's most in the know. Still, it felt to me as Clooney & company never allowed the story's cynicism to bubble urgently from its core. I enjoyed Ides of March, but couldn't entirely shake the feeling that Clooney was playing a game that had been rigged from the start.