There’s nothing quite like a week off to watch movies, sleep in, drink coffee and find a replacement for my favorite boots which are wearing out.
No luck finding the boots yet, but the rest is working well.
Tuesday was an evening for love stories.
Edward Norton is one of the finest actors about my age. I’m certain he’s done a bad movie, though I can’t think of any off the top of my head. “The Illusionist” continues this fine streak of films.
Norton plays Eisenheim the Illusionist, a popular stage magician in late 19th Century Austria. A cabinet maker’s son, Eisenheim is the childhood friend and teenage sweetheart of a Duchess whom he meets again about 15 years after leaving his home on the threat of his family being arrested if he continues his friendship with the young duchess. Things would be so much easier if the Duchess were not the intended fiancé (the engagement is not announced yet) of the fictive Leopold, heir to the Austrian throne.
I could babble about this movie all day. Edward Norton is intense and a bit creepy, Jessica Biel is radiant, Paul Giamatti as Chief Inspector Uhl is also a bit creepy but the picture of an honest but ambitious policeman, Rufus Sewell as the Crown Prince Leopold was cruel, arrogant and handsome. There’s 19th century stage magic (not camera tricks according to Neil Burger during the Q&A), beautiful city and countryscapes in and around Prague and a Phillip Glass soundtrack. What could be better? (OK, Rudy Dee in “No. 2” - but not by much)
One more thing about this movie that brought me great joy -- I love a movie that suckers me. This wasn’t quite “The Usual Suspects” on that account, but damn close. Also, how can you not love a movie with the character credit, Man who incites riot?
“One Last Dance” is the story of T, a hit man, who doesn’t drink or work Sundays whose only really friend is a cop, in Shanghai. T’s commissions show up in his mailbox, a name or in one case a question which needs answering and he does his job. The cop friend knows what he does, and doesn’t seem to mind much since most of T’s victims are scum.
T meets the sister of a rather goofy colleague and is smitten at first sight.
“One Last Dance” deals with morality in interesting ways. T and the detective play chess by mail, though they hand each other papers with the moves, and ask each other rhetorical questions. The rhetorical questions spill over into the rest of the story, and the most important one T asks is something like “Who is responsible for a murder, the man who pulls the trigger or the man who commissions the hit?”
I’ve seen Francis Ng, T, in other movies, and he generally has played a frantic goofy character, (in the Q&A director Max Makowski described him as the “Jim Carry of Hong Kong). He’s got a recognizable face, but as the restrained, perfectly dressed and coifed T he’s showing his ability to be a romantic lead.
This is a desperate, romantic, tragic, funny movie.
“One Last Dance” is neither as odd nor as funny as Makowski’s 1998 “The Pigeon Egg Strategy” but has elements of both. Makowski is a director/screenwriter worth keeping an eye on.
Well, it’s official I have a top four: “Eve and the Fires Horses”, “No. 2,” “Off the Black” and “The Illusionist” -- in no particular order.
I may head up to Park City Thursday since there are a couple of documentaries I want to see which are both playing. Wish me luck in the ticket line.
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