A prologue to director Christopher Nolan’s “The Dark Knight Rises” will hit theaters Dec. 21 in front of the new Tom Cruise feature “Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol.”

Nolan says the upcoming film will be set eight years following the action seen in “The Dark Knight,” according to TheWrap.com.

Nolan told the British film magazine that the prologue is “basically the first six, seven minutes of the film” and will serve as “an introduction to [the villain] Bane, and a taste of the rest of the film.”

“The Dark Knight Rises,” the third and presumably final film in Nolan’s Batman trilogy, will hit theaters July 20, 2012. The new film stars Christian Bale, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Tom Hardy, Anne Hathaway and Marion Cotillard.

Best Actress:

Will Win: Natalie Portman, “Black Swan”

Should Win: Annette Bening, “The Kids are All Right”

This is the category where I am hoping for the biggest upset. Portman has the momentum but I found both her performance and the film to be disappointing. The plot of “Black Swan” was over-the-top and over-dramatic and the film doesn’t deserve the recognition that it’s been receiving. On the other hand, Annette Bening was in complete control of her character in “The Kids are All Right” and played the part of a woman trying to hold her family together wonderfully. Let’s hope that the Academy agrees and hands Bening her first Oscar.

Best Actor:

Will Win: Colin Firth, “The King’s Speech”

Should Win: James Franco, “127 Hours”

There is no doubt that Firth delivers a strong performance in “The King’s Speech.” However, I prefer Franco’s performance as an athlete with his arm trapped underneath a boulder. In approximately an hour and a half, Franco plays a man facing death who must find a way to save his own life. “127 Hours” would have failed if it wasn’t for Franco’s strong performance and Danny Boyle’s great directing. The two of them made this movie succeed and Franco, who will be co-hosting the Oscars, deserves to walk home with an award for it.

Best Supporting Actress:

Will Win: Melissa Leo, “The Fighter”

Should Win: Melissa Leo, “The Fighter”

“The Fighter” was an actor’s movie and there are two brilliant performances in it. Leo and her onscreen son Christian Bale should both be walking out of the theater with Oscars in hand. In “The Fighter,” Leo shines as an overbearing mother who is trying to manage her son’s boxing career. It’s a wonderful role and Leo excels in it. The Academy Awards often applaud big performances and this year will be no different.

Best Supporting Actor:

Will Win: Christian Bale, “The Fighter”

Should Win: Christian Bale, “The Fighter”

Of the four main acting categories, this one is the easiest bet. As a drug-addicted former boxer trying to reclaim his glory, Bale delivered the second great performance on display in “The Fighter.” In recent years, Bale has been known for playing the straight-laced Bruce Wayne in the Batman movies. In this movie, Bale gets a chance to cut loose and go for broke in a scene-stealing supporting role. Like Heath Ledger did in “The Dark Knight,” Bale overshadows the main character in a great performance that will likely be rewarded.

Best Director:

Will Win: Tom Hooper, “The King’s Speech”

Should Win: Tom Hooper, “The King’s Speech”

Although other critics predict that David Fincher will win best director for his role behind the scenes of “The Social Network,” I think that Hooper has the momentum going for him, especially with his recent DGA award. Personally, I loved “The Social Network” more than “The King’s Speech,” but the directing stood out more in the latter picture. Hooper uses his directing to add a new element to the story. By focusing on open spaces, Hooper brought attention to the importance of the King of England being able to speak across the airwaves to his fellow countrymen and should receive an Oscar for it.

Best Picture:

Will Win: “The King’s Speech”

Should Win: “Toy Story 3”

It’s unfortunate to think that “Toy Story 3” isn’t even really contending in this category. With the assumption that “Toy Story 3” will win in the animated feature film category,  it looks like the voters will ultimately choose something else as best picture. Most of the other contenders in this category (excluding “Black Swan” and “Winter’s Bone”) deserve to be here and “The King’s Speech” is a strong choice for best picture. However, the best picture of the year was undoubtedly “Toy Story 3″ and its producers should be walking away with an award that says so at the end of the night.

In fairness to those reading this review and those involved in the creation of “The Fighter,” I’m going to confess upfront that  expectations probably diminished my enjoyment of what is arguably an impressive, quality film with a number of exceptional (and Oscar-worthy) performances.  Before moving to Los Angeles in 2003, when I had the nine-to-five life that made such things possible, I was a boxing fanatic who followed the sport religiously on HBO, Showtime, and pay-per-view; I also subscribed to all the magazines, and mourned the cancellation of  the USA Network’s Tuesday Night Fights as though a favorite Aunt had had passed on.

During the 1990’s and the early aughts, there were all kinds of memorable fighters and fights, but nothing like the storied 2002-2003 trilogy between “Irish” Micky Ward and the late, great, and legendary Arturo “Thunder” Gatti.

These two men were never the most talented boxers in their respective weight classes, they were something more. They aspired to greatness in every fight, were incapable of quitting, and had more heart than every superstar, belt-holding millionaire champion put together. We the fans adored these two and when HBO brought them together on May the 18th, 2002, for a fight with no belt or title or championship at stake, everything one loves about the always frustrating and frequently maddening sweet science came together over 10 unforgettable rounds that saw two warriors become living legends. Their second fight was just as good, the third was a rapture beyond my ability to articulate. If you saw it, you know what I mean.

“The Fighter,” unfortunately, roll its credits before any of this takes place. For whatever reason, the filmmakers weren’t interested in the making of an immortal, they were interested in the more provincial aspects of Micky’s (a very good Mark Wahlberg) relationship with his troubled, older brother Dicky (an exceptional Christian Bale) and his difficult mother Alice (an outstanding Melissa Leo). Set in the mid-90’s, when we first meet Micky he’s running out of his prime fighting years at the age of 30, considered nothing more than a stepping stone for bigger names in the fight game, a weekend father, and making ends meet in the city of Lowell, Massachusetts on a road-paving crew. This is a truly decent and gentle man who loves and is loyal to a family that also happens to be his primary problem in life.

Dicky’s an ex-fighter, Micky’s trainer (and a very good though increasingly unreliable one)  and something of a local legend. His claim to fame is going toe-to-toe with Sugar Ray Leonard in 1978 and a worsening crack addiction that’s swallowing him alive. As Micky’s manager, Alice is in over her head when dealing with a powerhouse like HBO and frequently makes bad, short-term decisions that help Dicky but damage Micky’s long-term career goals.

Buried in a working class town, suffering through a nowhere job, living in the shadow of his older brother, and all too aware he’s running out of time, Micky meets the woman who will push things with his family until they give, regardless of the consequences. Charlene (Amy Adams) is a college dropout who now tends bar at the local beer joint as she figures out her next move (if there is one). Before long, she and Micky are in love and seeing exactly what’s going on with his family, she urges him to make the kinds of decisions that can only result in one of two things: the family’s relationships will be forever destroyed or they will become healthier and productive, as they should be. Either way, Micky gets out alive with a shot at making something of his life.

Men.

Director David O. Russell does a superb job with his actors and most importantly, thanks to the wise decision to shoot on-location, in capturing the look, feel, and rhythm of life in Lowell. The characters and their relationships are suitably complicated, the story effectively simple and all of the expected plot beats are hit in the beloved genre of the boxing underdog. No complaints there. Good rousing stuff brought to you by likable, talented actors. But…

When the lights came up I felt cheated. You might as well leave the Rumble in the Jungle out of “Ali” or make a film about the Red Sox that ends before their 2004 Worlds Series win. For Micky’s sake, I’m glad he worked through his family relationships and found a good woman and blah, blah, blah. But that’s not what made Micky Ward Micky Ward, and there’s no way around the fact what we have is a working class soap opera while what’s left on the table is isn’t just the greatest story of Micky Ward’s life but also one of the greatest sports stories ever.  Furthermore, it’s a piece of sports history too few people know about that deserves to be told.

Listen, I get that it’s terribly unfair to judge a film on what you want it to be as opposed to what it is. But I simply don’t know how to write an honest review any other way. Just too close to this one.

For the record:

Trilogy against Micky Ward

In 2001, Gatti only had one fight, going up in weight to meet welterweight Oscar de la Hoya, who beat him by a technical knockout in five rounds. In 2002, Gatti returned to the junior welterweight division and defeated former world champion Terronn Millett by a knockout in round four.

He then split two ten round decisions with “Irish” Micky Ward, losing their first bout, but winning their second. Gatti-Ward I also earned “fight of the year” honors by Ring Magazine and the 9th round was called the Round of the Century by Emanuel Steward.

On June 7, 2003, he and Ward had a rubber match. Gatti broke his twice-repaired right hand on an uppercut to the hip in the fourth, and he dropped his arm. He fought nearly one-handed for several rounds afterward, using his right sparingly. In the sixth, Gatti dominated the round but got caught with an overhand right to the top of the head a second before the bell rang and went down. Gatti then recovered again and was never in trouble after that. The final scorecards read, 96–93 (twice), and 97–92, in favor of Gatti. The third fight between the two was again named “fight of the year” by Ring Magazine.

In July of 2009, at the age of 37, The Mighty Arturo Gatti was found dead in a hotel room. Initially, Gatti’s wife was charged with his murder but she was later released after the death was ruled a suicide. Truth be told, no one really knows what happened and we probably never will.

But when we look at the leading actresses of 2010, the dearth of great performances and great parts is stunning.  The Golden Globe nominees for best actress this year were Halle Berry in the anonymous flick Frankie and Alice, playing a crazy person in her usual over-the-top style; Nicole Kidman in the anonymous flick Rabbit Hole, playing a grieving mother in her usual cold and remote style; Jennifer Lawrence in Winter’s Bone, playing a teenage girl looking for her meth-making dad; Natalie Portman in Black Swan, playing a crazy person with a constipated look plastered on her mug; and Michelle Williams in Blue Valentine, playing a spoiled girl who gets knocked up, married, and presumably divorced.  Has anyone seen any of these women in any of these films?  And if the disastrous Natalie Portman – Queen Amidala masturbating, anyone? – is the frontrunner for Best Actress at the Oscars, how far have female figures fallen?

Far.  Quick, think of the ten greatest living film actors.  It’s not that tough – we have iconic male film stars all the time.  Now think of the ten greatest living film actresses.  Now take away all women over 50.  Still thinking, aren’t you?

The simple truth is that actresses were far more iconic fifty years ago than they are now.  We may want to shtup most of the actresses we see on screen today, but we don’t show up to see them because of their standout screen personas.  That isn’t because today’s actresses are less talented than their predecessors – we have many talented actresses on the scene.  It’s because screen executives have decided that truly feminine women, with both brains and looks, are no longer in keeping with the times.  Instead, film execs have cut a sharp dichotomy between “sexy” women and “smart” women – it’s either Megan Fox or Kate Winslet.  Charlize Theron can’t play a strong, graceful, beautiful woman – she’s got to be either a lesbian serial killer or a piece of eye candy.

The feminism embraced by most of today’s execs is antiquated.  They still think that women must act like men in order to promote equality of the sexes.  Make Natalie Portman’s character a man in Black Swan and take away Darren Aronofsky’s idiotic and self-centered camera movements and you’ve got an oversexed Ronald Colman in A Double Life.  There’s nothing feminine about Ellen Page in Juno – she’s more of a dude than Michael Cera in the same film.  What ever happened to Bette Davis, to Vivien Leigh, to the old-school, unmannered Meryl Streep?  They’re gone, replaced with pale imitations starring in angst-filled nonsense glorifying aberrant behavior.

Ironically enough, the feminism of today’s Hollywood has killed the female movie star.  If Hollywood wants to restore that luster, they’ll need to embrace femininity, in all of its three-dimensional glory, once again.

—–

The movie starts with a film crew videotaping an emaciated former boxer named Dicky Eklund (Bale). Dicky believes that he’s being recorded for a documentary about his long-awaited comeback. He’s a local legend in Lowell, Massachusetts who is well known for knocking Sugar Ray Leonard to the ground in a fight he lost years earlier. Dicky thinks that he’s on the way back to the ring. In truth, he isn’t heading back to the ring anytime soon and the documentary isn’t about his comeback. It’s about his addiction to crack and how that addiction is controlling his life.

One of the people most affected by Dicky’s addiction is his half-brother Micky (Wahlberg), who is pursuing a boxing career of his own. As an underdog, Micky is known as a stepping stone for other boxers.  However, Micky’s trying to become a champion himself. He’s training with his half-brother but Dicky’s drug addiction often stands in his way.

There are two groups of people supporting Micky in his quest to become a great fighter. His mother (Melissa Leo) and many of his sisters want Mickey to train solely with Dicky, in spite of the latter’s drug addiction and irresponsibility. They ignore Dicky’s poor lifestyle and his  frequent trips to a local crack house. The other group supporting Micky include his new girlfriend Charlene (Amy Adams) and an older policeman named O’ Keefe, who is played by the real police sergeant who helped train the real Micky Ward. They want Micky to train with professionals who won’t hold him back with their own personal problems. 

“The Fighter,” like “Conviction” before it, succeeds because it puts strong characters at the forefront of the story. The film is about a family first. The relatively few boxing scenes resonate because the characters are all well-developed. “Conviction,” the story of a woman who studied law to prove her brother’s innocence, was also about family first. Both stories understood that the best boxing and law movies are not simply about those subjects; they are about how both subjects affect regular people. 

Because “The Fighter” focuses on family first, its cast is given an opportunity to develop strong characters. Not all of the characters are likable but audiences can understand why they make the choices they do. It is no surprise that Bale, Leo and Adams are likely Academy Award nominees for their performances. Wahlberg, who also does a good job in the film, could also be nominated in the leading actor category in spite of the fierce competition he faces in that field. 

At one point in the movie, Charlene says “I’m trying to do something better here and so is Micky.” That line sums up what many of the characters are trying to do. “The Fighter” is ultimately about a  group of people who, despite their flaws, are trying to improve their lives and the lives of their loved ones.

It’s a story and a message that is worth supporting.

—–

That’s the kind of dilemma that Boston boxer Micky Ward (Mark Wahlberg) faces in the new biopic “The Fighter.” At heart, he is a quiet, soulful man who wants to do the right thing with his life – and yet, he has been surrounded by a family of drunken, uneducated losers who have forced him into a life of journeyman boxing and still seek to control his career moves well into his 30s. That’s because Micky is the younger half-brother of Dickie Eklund (Christian Bale), a once-promising prizefighter who got hooked on crack a decade ago and has been spiraling downward ever since.

And so it is that Micky is forced to live as a surrogate for Dickie’s dashed dreams and abject failures, taking the literal punches that Dickie avoids both in the ring, and outside it by sucking on a haze of cloudy crack smoke. But two things are about to shake up the brothers’ lives and give Micky a chance to finally pursue his own dreams on his own terms: Micky meets a bartender named Charlene (Amy Adams) who encourages him to pursue a better life and offers him unconditional love, and Dickie finally is snapped into awareness about his pathetic life by an HBO documentary he thought was about his delusional “comeback” but which in reality set him up as an example of the destructive influence of crack in America.

The resulting combination of changes in these core relationships forms the uplifting and powerful basis of one of the year’s absolute best films. And despite the fact that the film utilizes frequent profanity as an excuse to make its depiction of hardscrabble life in the poor South Side of Boston realistic, for those who can overlook the language, “The Fighter” offers a powerful portrait of Christian redemption as well, as Dickie drops to his knees in anguished prayer when he hits his rock bottom, and the brothers are shown praying quietly at key moments throughout the rest of the film.

The three leads deliver astonishing performances, as Wahlberg ranges between animal ferocity in the ring and sensitive anguish in his home life, displaying this inner conflict expertly at every moment. Adams is rock-solid as a woman who feared that she drank away her own opportunities but jumps full-force into life with Micky, forming a couple who bring out the absolute best in each other. As the brother’s mom and boxing manager, Melissa Leo – a veteran actress who has been breaking through with Oscar-caliber work for the past couple of years – provides a combination of pathetic humor and proud fury that will likely see her competing with Adams for Best Supporting Actress at the Oscars next spring.

But Bale is the true force of nature here, losing dozens of pounds to achieve the gaunt look of a junkie, then filling out with muscle as Dickie regains control of his body and his life. This team of actors – backed by some of the most realistically downtrodden actresses seen on screen as ages, playing the boxers’ sisters – has just been nominated for Best Ensemble at the Screen Actors Guild awards, meaning all four are likely to be competing for Oscars.

Director David O. Russell (“Three Kings,” “I Heart Huckabees”) brings it all together seamlessly, creating a 21st-century “Rocky” that will also stand the test of time. “The Fighter” is well worth knocking out a few bucks at the multiplex this weekend.

That question was posed to Werner Herzog a few weeks ago in an interview with the German broadsheet Die Zeit (The Time). Those of you who tuned in last week know that ecstatic truth is Herzog’s way of describing the poetic, transcendent heights of illumination to which his films aspire. “Yes, there is something of that there,” Herzog replied, “something of late medieval mysticism.”

However, he immediately provided a caveat, one that should warm the cockles of conservative hearts everywhere: “But I want to get away from the religious, from the mystical,” he stressed, “because it leads all too quickly to the cloudy waters of the New Age, which is the most horrific thing you can possibly imagine in the spiritual realm.” And then, the coup de grace: “And this is something you see in a film like Avatar, by the way.”

Whoops — guess Herzog didn’t get his marching orders this awards season!

“It is basically a New Age fairytale film,” the Die Zeit interviewer mused airily, at which point Herzog could no longer restrain himself: “What annoys me is the way the film romanticizes and idolizes nature,” the director of Grizzly Man said. “It’s celebrating a new form of paganism, and it gives me knots in my intestines just thinking about it.”

Thus Herzog rebuked the mindless praise lavished on Avatar by the tonsured acolytes of Tinseltown, aligning himself instead with those of us at Big Hollywood who understand that the luxurious three-dimensionality of Avatar’s visuals was fatally offset by the plodding one-dimensionality of its puerile eco-worship. In another interview, he once admonished that, “Nightmares and dreams do not follow the rules of political correctness.” After decades of rubbing shoulders with Hollywood’s motley array of ex-hippies, pseudo-reactionaries, and eviro-cultists, Herzog’s on record as concluding that, “I believe, among the entire scene of filmmakers here in Los Angeles, I’m the only clinically sane one. Period.”

He first encountered the rage of what he regularly dismisses as “the dogmatic Left” quite early in his career. “At the end of the Sixties,” Herzog remembers, “German film saw itself solely as an instrument of world revolution. People were also babbling on about how we should join forces with the proletariat. And I was thinking: which one of you is from the proletariat? I had actually worked as a welder in a steel factory to fund my first film. So at least I knew something about what factory work meant.”

In 1970 Herzog made Even Dwarfs Started Small, a darkly funny movie about the midgets populating a remote island institution and their failed anarchistic revolt. Meant to echo Tod Browning’s absurdist classic Freaks (1932), it was widely banned as politically incorrect, and the young maverick director was spat on by Leftists at film festivals. “I was basically accused of ridiculing the world revolution,” he remembers, then adds with wry humor, “Actually, that is probably the only thing they might have been right about. . . They insisted that when you portray a revolution you have to show a successful revolution, and as Even Dwarfs does not do this, for them it was clearly made by a fascist.” Fascism, of course, was a loaded term in postwar Germany, the equivalent of calling someone racist in today’s America — an appellation with the power to ruin a career and a life.

During the making of Fitzcarraldo (1982), activists from what Herzog teasingly calls “The Diaspora of Shattered Illusions. . . doctrinaire zealots of the failed 1968 revolution” accused him of abusing the Peruvian natives and despoiling their pristine Pandora. Some even came to the jungle and showed the Peruvians “photos of Auschwitz victims, piles of skeletons and corpses,” telling them that “this is how the Germans treat everyone.” A few months after the release of the film, Herzog was walking down a street in Munich when a Leftist protester (the same sort that throws pies at Republican speakers on university campuses and disrupts government hearings) ran at him, kicked him in the gut, and yelled, “That’s what you deserve, you pig!”

Ah, the Peace and Love emanating from the Left — I never tire of their tolerance for diversity.

In 1984 Herzog made Ballad of the Little Soldier, a short documentary on the tribulations of children conscripted into the civil wars of Nicaragua. It was the height of the Reagan era, and the socialist Sandinista movement was the current sacred cow of the Left. “For some people,” he says, “showing nine-year-old kids fighting against the Sandinistas meant I was clearly an American imperialist. . . the film does not mince its words and when it was released I was immediately labeled as being in the pay of the CIA. . . The intellectuals were simply unable to understand that politically dogmatic cinema is not something I practice, and they didn’t bother to look at what the film is really about.”

All of these things stem from the “turn on, tune in, drop out” crowd and their infatuation with revolution, socialism, and a hatred of Western Civilization. When once asked “Why were you resistant to late 1960s politics?”, Herzog’s answer was telling, and worth quoting in full:

The ideas and actions sweeping the world in 1968 were not for me because at that time, contrary to most of my peers, I had already been much further out into the world. I had traveled, I had made films, I had already taken on responsibilities that very few people my age had. For me, this rather rudimentary analysis that Germany was a fascist and repressive prison state, which had to be overpowered by a socialist Utopian revolution, seemed quite wrong. I knew the revolution would not succeed because it was rooted in such an inadequate analysis of what was really going on, so I did not participate. And because I have never been into using the medium of film as a political tool, my attitude really put me apart from most other filmmakers. As there were very few reviewers and journalists who were not wildly into revolutionary jargon at the time and who did not put ridiculous political demands on filmmakers, my films suffered at the hands of many of the critics.

He has little use for film analysis (one notable exception being Roger Ebert, an early champion of Herzog’s work — in appreciation, the director dedicated his 2007 documentary Encounters at the End of the World to the now-ailing Pulitzer-Prize winner). “The audience reactions have always been much more important,” he says. “The opinion of the public is sacred.” When critics learn that Herzog routinely throws all of his unused footage in the trash, original negatives and all, they frequently recoil in horror — all of that potential fodder for study, gone forever! The director himself remains nonplussed by their anguish. “A carpenter does not sit on his shavings,” he says with a shrug.

Over his long career, in interview after interview, Herzog has stressed his blue-collar views on his craft: “Academia is the death of cinema. It is the very opposite of passion. . . For me [filmmaking] is much more about real life than about philosophy. . . Film is not analysis, it is the agitation of the mind . . . Someone like Jean-Luc Godard is for me intellectual counterfeit money when compared to a good kung-fu film.” These thoughts frequently set him against film snobs who think that, in Herzog’s words, “If you do not make a black-and-white political statement you are on the side of the devils, a point of view that is clearly overly simplistic and stupid.”

Although he’s made many documentaries for the small screen, television has long been a bête noire of Herzog’s (among Hollywoodists, only Michael Medved is as public about his disdain for the medium). “Those who read own the world,” he states emphatically, “and those who watch television lose it.” Herzog thinks the boob tube, “ruins our vision and makes us very sad and lonesome. . . .television kills our imagination and what we end up with are worn-out images because of the inability of too many people to seek out fresh ones.”

A big part of why TV is so sterile and predictable is that its content is dominated by the left-wing, and thus by political correctness and ideological purity of all kinds. Herzog treats Big Media with grudging equanimity, answering banal questions and posing for sinister “madman director” photographs, but occasionally Life presents him with a chance to laugh at it all. When a few years ago the BBC was interviewing him outdoors in Los Angeles for Grizzly Man, a hidden assailant shot an air rifle at Herzog from some nearby woods and hit him in the stomach with a pellet, leaving a bloody wound in his abdomen. “I was not injured badly,” he says, “But the people from the BBC were shitting themselves. That was pretty funny.”

In recent years the German director has lived in LA, a city he likes although he decries its superabundance of “idiocies like hippies and New Age.” He also despises the left-dominated structures that cast endless reams of red tape between a filmmaker and his vision:

I remember one time I was shooting in New York and showed up with my rental van at the place where I wanted to rent some equipment. The man said, “You cannot pick it up yourself, a union truck has to deliver it.” I said, “But my van is ten feet from your door here.” There was an endless debate until I just picked up the cameras and carried them to my van. An absolute waste of time. In Hollywood there are too many rituals and hierarchies, and to be independent means to be free of things like this. I have always known that true independence is a state of mind, nothing more. I am self-reliant.

Seeing first-hand Hollywood’s ravenous perversions and vices has made Herzog wary of falling into all the usual traps of fame. “This life can easily turn you into a clown,” he admits. “My way of dealing with the inevitable is to step out of filmmaking whenever I can. I travel on foot, I direct operas, I raise children, I am learning to cook professionally, I write. Things that give me independence outside the world of cinema.” Unlike many Hollywood jet-setters, he is totally at home in, and appreciative of, rural America. “I truly love places like the Midwest,” he says. “For me it is the very heart of America. You still see the self-reliance and camaraderie our there, the warm open hearts, the down-to-earth people, whereas so much of America has abandoned these wonderful and basic virtues.”

When he made Little Dieter Needs to Fly (1997) — a documentary about Dieter Dengler, a German-born American fighter pilot who was shot down and tortured during the Vietnam War, only to stage an amazing escape — the Left noticed that the usual anti-American propaganda was nowhere to be found. “The film was generally very well received by American audiences,” Herzog says, but adds that “Inevitably I was asked why I did not denounce American aggression in the Vietnam War and why the film made no political statement.” Herzog’s reply to this pressure was to double down, raise more money outside of the system, and make Rescue Dawn (2007), a fictional treatment of the exact same story starring Christian Bale as Dengler.

Werner Herzog, you see, is no slave to political correctness, no lap-dog for the media, and not at all on board with the hippy-dippy attitudes of the Hollywood Left. He saw in Dieter Dengler a man who, in his words, “had all the qualities that make America so wonderful: self-reliance and courage, a kind of frontier spirit.” That was what counted, and no amount of disparagement was about to deter him from portraying Americans at their best.

This, ladies and gentlemen, was the brand of rock-solid intellectual honesty brought to bear on Grizzly Man.

Next Saturday in For Conservative Movie Lovers, we conclude our look at Werner Herzog and Timothy Treadwell by delving into how Herzog used his unique blend of deep spirituality and down-to-earth rationality to make Grizzly Man such a memorable and compelling film.

Previous posts in the series “Werner Herzog, Timothy Treadwell, and Grizzly Man“

Part 1 | Part 2

FURTHER READING and VIEWING

Werner Herzog DVD Collection: Documentaries and Shorts. At Herzog’s personal website you can purchase a 6-DVD set containing most of his non-feature directorial efforts. It will set you back a pretty penny (15o Euros, or around $230 U.S. dollars), but it’s worth it if you find yourself wanting to collect the director’s work. Many can also be found on Netflix if you’re interested.

THE INFAMOUS SNIPER INTERVIEW: Watch the now-legendary video of Herzog getting shot by a hidden sniper while doing an interview in Los Angeles. He completes the interview (it’s about Grizzly Man, so give it a listen) before condescending to show the BBC reporter the bloody hole under his beltline. “You’re bleeding!” gasps the interviewer. “Somebody shot at you and created a wound in your abdomen!” Shitting himself, just like Herzog said. But for a director who’s been kicked, spat on, and shot at during his filmmaking adventures, getting pinged by a pellet gun is just another ordinary day on the mean streets. I love how he deadpans to the interviewer: “It’s not a significant bullet.”

Natalie, whoever’s advising you … fire them. If no one’s advising you, find someone who doesn’t carry a small dog in their purse or dates someone who does. Look to the real world for help. Look to someone who’s spent a few years in a land where the zip codes don’t start with “9-0.” Someone who cares enough about you and your career to say (without any “Honey, babys”):

“Nat, past the gates of your community and away from the hills of Hollywood losing your job doesn’t fuel passion, it fuels despair, and working a job you hate is almost as bad because of the big black  permanent ball of dread it plants in your gut. I know you dig Barack, I did too before he targeted my children and health care, but you can’t flak for his recession. That’s what the mainstream media is for. You have to empathize with your audience, build goodwill. Besides, you’re closing on that castle tomorrow, so today wouldn’t be a good time to get all gushy over how exciting Barack’s recession is. And if you do, I quit.”

Now I don’t mean to pick on Natalie (much), but this goes to a larger problem facing both Hollywood and those of us who love movies: The death of the movie star.

One of the big entertainment stories this year is how well starless films like “Star Trek,” “Up,” “The Hangover,” and “District 9” did while Johnny Depp, Christian Bale, Denzel Washington, Julia Roberts, John Travolta, Jack Black, Eddie Murphy, Leonardo DiCaprio, Russell Crowe, Will Ferrell, Jamie Foxx, Steve Martin, Robert Downey Jr., etc… fizzled in blockbusters and mainstream films aimed at a wide audience.

Once upon a time stars worked as a kind of insurance. No matter how good or bad the product, a strong opening weekend or two was assured followed by home video sales that pretty much guaranteed the film would at least break even. Once upon a time people wanted to see a INSERT NAME HERE movie.

No more.

Some will float excuses like the “Twitter Effect,” but that doesn’t explain crashing DVD sales or historically low ratings for the Academy Awards’ telecast. Spin it any way you want, thanks to a decade-plus of arrogant unforced errors and self-inflicted stupidity, we are no longer enamored with … The Movie Star.

The problem isn’t each individual star – who doesn’t love them some Denzel? – the problem is those damaging the brand as a whole. Airheads and insulting big mouths like Portman, Julia Roberts, George Clooney, Alec Baldwin, Streisand, Matt Damon, Sean Penn, Susan Sarandon, Tim Robbins…

Year after year after year the bad apples have so soured so many of us that we no longer look at the name above the title. We don’t care who’s in it. Instead it’s, “What’s the concept, is it safe or familiar?”

In other words, “I’d rather have my intelligence insulted than who I am or what I believe in.”

For those of us in love with the movies, this is an awful trend. We love being in love with movie stars. And we don’t care how they vote or live their lives… There were all kinds of liberal stars during the Golden Age who supported all kinds of causes. No one cared. I don’t care now.

The difference between John Garfield and Sean Penn isn’t talent or politics … it’s a little thing called “class.”

Just shut up and be awesome.

The website Newsbusters points out the silliness behind the outrage – after all, President Bush has been depicted as far worse – he’s been portrayed as everything from a bloodsucking vampire in the Village Voice, to the Joker in Vanity Fair, to God forbid, a Republican- everywhere else. No one seemed to mind then. And while people like Bill Maher point out that Obama has been only at this job for six months (whereas Bush earned the bile over eight years) and therefore any criticism is unfair – that’s pure batpoop. Hatred for Bu$hitler began the moment he took office, and the vile lefties only knew Sarah Palin for a few weeks before they were wearing t-shirts with her face and a vulgar word (begins with ‘C’ and rhymes with bunt) beneath it.

And besides, if you ask me, this new Obama Joker face is pure street art that only elevates his hip persona. It’s no different than the Shepard Fairey ‘Hope’ poster, except it’s far more complimentary and honest. Seriously, we live in a culture where anti-heroes have replaced heroes, and we all know that Ledger’s Joker is far cooler than Bale’s Batman. (At least the Joker didn’t yell at his mom at the premiere.) The Joker scoffed at traditional values, reveled in post-modern humor and more important – was played by Heath Ledger, who’s dead! You can’t get any cooler than that, even if you add a Prince Albert and a nitrous addiction.

Finally, as so many Obamalovers point out, our President is more than a President, he’s a pop culture icon – and you can’t go more than five feet in Times Square without seeing a t-shirt, a button, or a jock strap with his face plastered on it.

At least with these new posters, the media has a message.

Also – a reminder for tonight: Mike Baker, Remi Spencer, Barret Swatek, and Ab News!

Johnny Depp is John Dillinger, a criminal before crime was organized who specializes in bank robberies and jail breaks. His dash, audacity and refusal to steal from the common folk has made him something of a folk hero to Depression-weary America, but J. Edgar Hoover (Billy Crudup) sees an opportunity to use Dillinger’s exploits as a way to firm up his fledgling national police force (the F.B.I.), but first he’ll have to prove his modern, centralized methods work.

Hoover’s initial step is to make Dillinger the first ever Public Enemy Number One. Next, he assigns straight-laced Agent Melvin Purvis (Christian Bale) to head the manhunt. Unfortunately, one disastrous attempt to apprehend Dillinger follows another, proving that Hoover’s ideal — that of the clean-cut G-Man — will only result in dead G-Men. Purvis now understands that ruthless means are necessary to catch ruthless men and convinces Hoover to even the odds and swear in a group of Western lawmen and former gunfighters.   

Dillinger has two fatal flaws. First, he’s a step behind the times. Crime, especially in Chicago, is just starting to organize and today a day’s work in the underground rackets brings in as much money as any bank robbery. With the stakes now bigger than anyone ever imagined, Dillinger’s high profile brings unwanted heat which makes his ”friends” nervous and tempted to turn on him. His second problem is loyalty. Money doesn’t jazz him, a desire to live in the moment does. Breaking friends out of jail and visiting lovers watched by the Feds takes a higher priority over what’s prudent.

Physically, Depp’s resemblance to Dillinger is downright eerie at times. The actor perfectly captures the swagger and stare of the notorious gangster, and while it’s nice to see Depp in a straight-forward role for a change, the script doesn’t give him much more to do than “look” like Dillinger. Like everything about “Enemies,” the characters are strictly surface. The film looks great to be sure, but unlike Mann’s “Heat” or “Collateral,” we’re not rummaging around anyone’s souls here. Not even close.

The film’s central relationship is the ill-fated romance between Dillinger and Billie Frechette (Marion Cotillard), but scenes that should be thick with foreboding aren’t. We don’t long for them to be together or hope against hope Mann will create his own history and have them run safely off to Costa Rica.

Bale’s Purvis is an even thinner character. He’s not given any kind of emotional life and other than a somewhat clichéd personal conflict regarding unsavory police tactics; what makes Purvis tick remains a mystery. We’re informed of his fate at the end of the film, but nothing in Mann’s characterization helps to make sense of what’s to come.

The rest of the players all seem to blend together, which is a shame when you have flamboyant personalities like Pretty Boy Floyd, Baby Face Nelson and Frank Nitti to work with. The real damage done by these flat, generic characterizations is to a narrative that can’t spark to life. While the story’s bogged down in a mundane cat-and-mouse game, the people who could spice it up with verve and surprise aren’t allowed to.  The colorful dialogue so rich during this era isn’t even put to use.

Even the action scenes lack oomph. Other than a terrific night time shoot-out set in the woods, the exhilaration that usually accompanies the pure physicality of a Michael Mann action set-piece just isn’t there. The staging of the bank robberies and personal confrontations also lack Mann’s signature style and unique energy.

What “Enemies” does do very well is create a time and place. Some great faces live under those fedoras and the muted but gorgeous digital cinematography nearly gives the film a lustrous black and white look. And give the filmmakers credit for controlling themselves politically. Hoover’s been the left’s favorite whipping-boy for years now and while he’s portrayed as coldly ambitious, his rumored sexuality is never mocked and he’s extremely reluctant to use the extra-legal means that prove necessary in bringing Dillinger down. 

There’s also one truly great scene, one of my favorites of the year and the reason I’ll see the film again. It takes place in a movie theatre, Chicago’s Biograph Theatre, to be precise, where Dillinger famously watched “Manhattan Melodrama,” starring Clark Gable, Myrna Loy and William Powell. Using only his eyes, what Depp conveys in this moment tells us more about his character than the entire two hours that came before.

It’s also at a look at what “Public Enemies” might have been.