The Ninth Gate (1999)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

The Ninth Gate (1999) – R. Polanski

Is this a guilty pleasure?  I’ve returned to it more than once -- but it isn’t exactly challenging fare and some may call it trashy.  Somehow director Roman Polanski evokes both the detective story and the devil (providing nods to two of his greatest films, Chinatown and Rosemary’s Baby); a more recent antecedent is probably Alan Parker’s Angel Heart (1987).  Frank Langella hires freelance bookdealer Johnny Depp to determine whether his copy of a rare book (“The Nine Gates…”), a book apparently used to conjure Lucifer himself, is authentic or not, as compared to two other copies in Europe.  How Langella got the book away from Lena Olin whose husband has just committed suicide isn’t really clear but she wants it back and pursues Depp for it.  So, they all run to Europe where Depp visits each of the other book owners, unravelling the mystery of the books while also being stalked by a mysterious witchy woman (Emmanuelle Seigneur, Polanski’s wife) and leaving death and destruction in his wake.  Of course, we know that Depp isn’t really pulling the strings here but what mysterious forces are driving things (whether controlled by Langella or someone/something darker) remains out of the viewer’s grasp. And the film ends at a sort of beginning (much like Rosemary’s Baby again?), leaving viewers only to imagine what comes next.  Based on Arturo Pérez-Reverte’s The Club Dumas.  

 

Star Wars: Episode I -- The Phantom Menace (1999)

 ☆ ☆ ☆

Star Wars: Episode I -- The Phantom Menace (1999) – G. Lucas

I saw this (and dismissed it) twenty years ago but Amon (aged 9) was ready to check it out (after already watching eps 4 through 9).  We are deposited very quickly into a seemingly complicated dispute between the Trade Federation (run by some lizards) and the Planet Naboo (led by Queen Amidala/Natalie Portman). Two Jedi Knights (Liam Neeson as Qui-Gon Jinn and Ewan McGregor as Obi-Wan Kenobi) are dispatched to Naboo to stop what turns out to be a plot by the Federation (in conjunction with The Sith) to take over the planet, including its underwater minority group, the Gungans. In order to escape and regroup, the jedis take the Queen and a random accident-prone Gungan (Jar Jar Binks) to Tatooine where they meet slave kid, Annakin Skywalker, who wins a pod race to earn money to get them parts to fly their ship back to uh, I forgot, back to Naboo where they have to make a last stand against the Sith (and their main fighter, Darth Maul, who we were calling Darth Small last night) and an army of robots.  Annakin is strong with the force but Yoda and Samuel L. Jackson (a jedi master, so not just good at foot massage) are worried about what they sense is the possibility of the dark side in him (no duh). In the midst of this confusing plot, there is some razzle dazzle, a lot of CGI creatures, and some obvious and not-so-obvious foreshadowing.  But really, not much suspense because we know who can die and who cannot.  Liam Neeson is rather boring. I hope we don’t have to watch Episode 2 now because I fell asleep the last time.

 

The Straight Story (1999)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

The Straight Story (1999) – D. Lynch

A change of pace for director David Lynch and perhaps the one true oddity in his oeuvre.  In 1993, Alvin Straight, then 73 years old but with failing eyes and legs, drove his riding mower 300 miles to visit his estranged brother who just had a stroke (cameo by Harry Dean Stanton). Maybe Lynch saw surrealism in the story or maybe his innate conservatism (championing family values) drew him to the material.  If you look carefully, you can see his style of filmmaking in the way that the camera simply observes everyone in a matter-of-fact style and the dialogue (which he didn’t script himself) is the same sort of non-ironic plain-speaking you get from characters in his other projects.  However, this is G-rated heart-warming material released by Disney, not a vision of the dark forces intruding on all things wholesome (although in the very beginning when we hear an ominous thud and the camera zooms up to a shuttered window, I wasn’t quite sure).  Only rarely do things turn a bit weird, almost as if Lynch felt it was obligatory. But these moments distract from the main story which is really about Straight (played touchingly by Richard Farnsworth, who died soon after at age 80) and his interactions with other people, including his autistic daughter, Rose (played by Sissy Spacek), and the unbelievably kind Midwesterners he meets along the way.