THE YEAR OF DECEPTION – by Tony Zaza

THE YEAR OF DECEPTION

by Tony Zaza

Personalized history can, in the wrong hands, be the most facile type of fan-worship. Thank fully this highly subjective portrait of the artist/activist treats the individual much like the subject of her own paintings, a series of mood or tonal set pieces that all add up to a manufactured persona that is stronger and has more feeling than the historical reality upon which it is partially based. Sometimes a colorful expression gets closer to the essence of a subject than a black and white impression.

SONNY

Though it lacks subtlety, Nicholas Cages’ directorial debut explores the self-deception of a young man recently separated from the Army returning to his small Southern hometown roots as a male prostitute. Overacting by the entire cast lends some awkward validity to the exasperation they all feel as each is unable to find reconciliation between what people expect of them and what they expect of themselves.

24 HOUR PEOPLE

Michael Winterbottom employs Monty Pytonesque enlightened madness to provike zany appreciation and affection for British Pop Punk culture and music of the 1970s and 1980sThis good-natured irreverent look back at the birthing of Rave rants lovingly about Manchester, England in a valiant effort to deceive the audience into thinking this self-indulgent music scene was worth celebrating.

CAT’S MEOW

The most cinematic film of the year further clouds the mystery of the death of William Randolph Hearst aboard his yacht during what was to become a kind of ‘ship of fools’ cruise celebrating curious waves of infidelity between partners whose character to begin with was historically questionable. .Bogdanovich is masterful in exposing and exploring human flaws of personality set against elegant period detailing, but his cast sails off into theatricality when his premise calls for less deceptively stock emotions. It’s as if the director is mocking his characters inability to behave like simple folk with problems.

KISSING JESSICA STEIN

A young woman follows her bliss in forming a lesbian relationship after numerous failed attempts to find true romance in the arms of any available male. The film parades an hilarious assortment of males with flaws and defects and it has a clear notion of what women want. Nevertheless, the heroine discovers that a female partner can be as troubling as any man resulting in an ongoing quest to end her own self-deception.

CITY BY THE SEA

Robert DeNiro is a career-cop who can’t believe his son could be guilty of a murderous crime. His efforts to vindicate his son reveal self-doubt and deeply hidden secrets about his own past and these carefully concealed truths well up to nearly destroy him.

MOONLIGHT MILE

Dustin Hoffman has plans for his son. That don’t take into account his son’s true aspirations and desires. His overbearing attempt to pave the way for a successful father-son enterprise is met with roadblocks in the form of his own shortcomings, weaknesses and those of his wife, (Susan Sarandon). Disappointment develops into remorse and soupy reconciliation.

FEMME FATALE

Women can be as deadly as any male assassin and twice as cunning. Inverting the expected, Brian De Palma places a different kind of sex object on the pedestal for amusement and shock.

XXX

In this stunt-fest, Vin Diesel firmly establishes himself as an archetype of a new brand of machismo. He’s multi-racial, tender to the women but vicious, relentless , man-basher. Fashionably tattooed, jeaned , leathered ,and head-skinned, Diesel’s street tough is technically competent in his Bond-like high jinks but his cynical humor adds some zip to the biker mind set that seeks daredevil thrills and near-death experiences. Nevertheless, he achieves soldier-of-fortune hero status and this character development has carried through several films on its way to Knockaround Guys.

KNOCKAROUND GUYS

Good interaction between Diesel and Pepper drives this coming-of-age tale about the ‘yout’ developing mob ties and skills in order to impress dear old semi-retired mob boss Dad. But when the test, a simple drop-off of cash in a small Western town goes haywire, accepting the consequences of failure leads to new life choices. It’s a film with a kind of pedestrian ethic, but there is a well-observed leitmotif surrounding the opportunistic town sheriff who demonstrates how easy it is to fashion life and death power out of almost nothing in the small town milieu.

WHITE OLEANDER

Seeking the truth hurts in this mother vs daughter struggle to assert values and charge each other with responsibilities real or imagined. Seeing Michelle Pfiffer as a convicted murderer encarcerated and awaiting some future redemption for her act of mercy is pure Hollywood surrealism. What is concealed is the futility of trying to justify one’s motives for retribution within the moral conventions of melodrama.

INTERVIEW WITH THE ASSASSIN

Sometimes the truth can never be ascertained. Driven at the end of his life to confess his role in the assassination of John F. Kennedy, a curious senior citizen X takes a news cameraman on a reconstructive tour of the killings fields of Dallas, Texas. Despite its obvious attempt at documentary objectivity, this film finds the tempo and overall tone that creates a rather chilling expression of the hazardous consequences of trying to solve mysteries better left unsolved and truths better left undiscovered. And it points in no uncertain terms to the impossibility of justice.

RED DRAGON

With similar creepy success, the maneater sequel also demonstrates the dire consequences of trying to unravel the truth. In this case, Anthony Hopkins’ characterization creates a palpable tension between security and catastrophe, and since his prime target becomes an entire family, the anticipatory outcome is sufficient to sustain interest.

ABOUT SCHMIDT

In yet another quest for meaning and truth, a newly-retired company man finds life on the open prairie of senior citizenship to be quite daunting if not melancholy. Structured as a crosscountry trek for identity and belonging, the shamelessly mid-American portrait of lost dreams and values reduces itself to a single final moment of extreme poignancy pointing to the profundity of simple joys.

SIMONE

Deception, personal and communal form the heart of this serio-comic drama about engineering contentment. A cyber fembot existing entirely in a computer database and programmed by a desperate film director enchants a society ripe for cliche and stereotype. The sanitized ideal woman has such great appeal in the context of a ‘star and her adoring public, that the film loses impact. But the nature of celebrity and the seemingly unending national desire to be hoodwinked raises serious questions about our national identity.

AMY’S ORGASM

While raising questions about human sexuality in and out of marriage, this romantic comedy told in a kind of confessional style engages us with the travails of a likeable, cute and too precocious writer who has made a name for herself though another kind of deception, publishing a book on sex supposedly based upon her experiences. The

fundamental defect here is an unwillingness to come to terms with the post-modern consequences of 1960s women’s liberation, a movement that drew , in some part, upon fabricated life experiences while trying to instruct women on how to behave.

ROAD TO PERDITION

As a coming-of-age saga in which a boy accidently learns of his father’s deadly trade and then seeks to follow in his footsteps, the films behaves like a warm-hearted men’s club vehicle betraying the truth of what appears to be a strong argument for fatherhood in any manifestation as long as the father-son link is celebrated.

MINORITY REPORT

Brashly asserting a pseudo-moral tapestry in which time-altering capabilities of a high-tech future homeland security division change the course of murderous events as simply as extracting teeth, the Tom Cruze vehicle travels a path of least resistance in which the hunter becomes the hunted.. Clever intellectual turns fuel a crime-stoppers textbook of operations such as human imprint data interpolation and time-warping but there is no real moral dilemma just self-deception. The critical underlying message here ,however, is that there is quite a difference between law enforcement and the criminal justice system.

MY MOTHER’S SMILE

Really a political essay about the current Italian preoccupation with national and personal identity in the efforts of many to reclaim their ancestral rights and heritage in the form of family titles and crests. This dream of a return to a class system is seen in the movement to allow the exiles (and banned) Royal Family, the House of Savoy to

return to Italy. Here, a man is coerced by Church and local politics to support his mother for canonization despite his contempt for her as both a mother and a woman. With subtle but relentless force the film demonstrates the mechanics by which a social order tries to patch and paint itself back into civility and economic stability through deception.

SIGNS

This film is wholly predicated upon a deception of belief. A narrow-minded farmer struggles with the mystery of the cornfield crop formations that tease both his and the audiences’ imagination. And there is a certain intellectual joy in deliberating the possibilities ranging from hoax to alien intervention. The film attempts to find a meaning in the phenomena by invoking feelings of a spiritual presence or metaphysical significance then uncourageously resigns itself to the more visceral and ultimately truth-less solution of alien visitation.

THE TRUTH ABOUT CHARLIE

Clever turns on the notion of false identity and identity-tampering are at the center of this subtle yet disenchanting remake of Charade, the original and most apt title. Deciphering deception from betrayal is the game and clues are temptingly within one’ grasp but can’t be reached. The resolution of the film’s mystery suggests that there is much to be worried about when identifying marks , physical and spiritual, can be easily manipulated,

BETTER HOUSEKEEPING

Establishes in a kind of over-the-top cartoon fashion exactly what many women must endure and ultimately capitulate to in a cynically-rendered

portrait of small town grunt family life – scandalous, and as scatalogical as it is farcial yet carefully observed.

PUNCH DRUNK LOVE

Celebrates the inarticulate romance of goofy manners and mannerisms that define many post-modern relationships between dysfunctional underdeveloped urban morons whose innocent social numbness is one of their chief attributes. The whole premise makes mush of the romantic love syndrome and the belief in romantic predestination.