Celluloid Conspiracy: It's not about what you like

Want a really good conspiracy, a much better cause for collusion than holes in the Pentagon or forensic speculation over dead presidents? The Da Vinci Code purports that the last living descendent of Jesus Christ is Amelie, and the path to understanding this plot involves Templar Knights, the Council of Nicea, the Holy Grail (where’s Monty Python when you really need them?) and various not-so-secret (they have websites for goodness sakes) religious orgs.
Perhaps the biggest conspiracy would be to examine how when Opie Taylor makes a kick-ass film like The Missing the best reaction you can find is widespread indifference. When Richie Cunningham goes wide, the mainstream results are less interesting. There are some cool shots in Da Vinci Code to be sure – the freeze frames when Hanks and Tautou are being shot at by Jurgen Prochnow, the History Channel style historical flashbacks, the character arcs of Jean Reno and Alfred Molina – but by and large it comes and goes with a resolute entertainment value that never exceeds the ticket price.
Through some weird divine intervention I’d seen Da Vinci Code twice before it opened. The first time was the press screening the night before it opened in North America, and the next morning when I attended the opening of restaurant theater Studio Grill (in the Jersey Village part of town) and the film showing, natch, Da Vinci Code. FYI: the luminosity of the screen projection at the Studio Grill was so absolutely brilliant it made me realize how sub-standard most cinema’s luminosity factor rates. The last time I witnessed that kind of brightness was at the IMAX version of V For Vendetta. So watching Da Vinci Code for the second time in less than a day was more about quality comparison of movie theater sight and sound, and not really the Fodor’s tour apparent the first go-round.
With all the scrutiny of entertainment media focused on films with summer agendas it’s easy to see some smaller, and really good, films miss out on their rightful share of attention. Two current films beg for intelligent and sophisticated viewers to savor their cinematic smarts.
The Proposition and Brick are the kind of movies that instantly draw you into a character’s world of pain and don’t let up for a couple of hours.
The Proposition starts in the middle of a SWAT-style shoot-out but there’s no gas bombs and television coverage, only rifle and pistol shells. The milieu is the Australian bushranger era. A lawman (Ray Winstone) captures two of three brothers wanted for brutal crimes. Winstone lets one (Guy Pearce) go telling him to kill the older uncaught brother or the younger brother will be hanged on Christmas Day. Alternately brutally violent with its story details and visually beautiful with the setting of an Outback western, The Proposition captivates entirely. Danny Huston and Emily Watson also star, and there are so many flies in every scene you have to wonder how the cast and crew weren’t eaten on location.
Brick transposes the film noir feeling of a Raymond Chandler story onto an unruly group of high school students (the film was shot at San Clemente High School in California). The dialogue compels you to listen. Imagine tough private dick talk spoken by white-boy gangster rap poseurs. If you think The Big Sleep is an awesome movie then Brick needs to be on your list of things to see. In the lobby of the Angelika are Brick booklets with the jargon spelled out for those with ADD. The characters have names like The Pin, Tugger, The Brain, and of course, Brendon the lead has a mystery to solve in a short amount of time. When you hear about true indie films (Brick was picked up on the festival route by Focus Films), the kind that come out of nowhere and overwhelm everything else with their acumen they are probably talking about Brick.