Punch-Drunk Love (2002, Paul Thomas Anderson)

There are probably better movies with seven-minute end credits than Punch-Drunk Love but I doubt there are any where those seven-minute end credits are padded to give the film a more respectable run time. Punch-Drunk Love is an approximately eighty-eight-minute marathon where writer and director Anderson hones in on his protagonist, played by Adam Sandler, and relates the chaos of his life.

Sandler’s a plumbing supply manufacturer in business with Luis Guzmán, his only friend. As close as Sandler has to a friend. Guzmán’s performance is profoundly, beautifully dry. He doesn’t have much to do, but when he gets something, he nails it. Guzmán is also the human side of Sandler. The film opens with Sandler alone at a desk in a corner—he has an office in the rest of the movie; it’s unclear why he’s using that phone—calling to confirm he’s read the fine print correctly on a Healthy Choice and American Airlines promotional deal; you get a five hundred mile credit for every ten items, but you can double it with a coupon, and there are no limits.

After that phone call, Sandler wanders out into his industrial park, looking at the early morning sky, and witnesses a bewildering car accident. Soon after, he meets a lady dropping off her car for a nearby mechanic; Emily Watson plays the lady. She’s the love interest. Sandler will change his entire life for Watson as the film progresses, conquering known and unknown fears.

The character definitely has OCD as well as some kind of anxiety disorder. He’s got seven sisters who call him at work to pester and berate him. They tell stories about how they bullied him to outbursts as a kid, joking about it as adults, all of them entirely indifferent to the turmoil it causes Sandler. Even when he acts out because of the teasing. All the sisters but one are only in the film’s first act. Mary Lynn Rajskub sticks around to antagonize Sander throughout.

So it’s never clear how the lifelong bullying has affected Sandler’s social behaviors, but the family’s not just indifferent to the effect of the teasing; they also don’t acknowledge the OCD. Sandler wants therapy but knows his sisters would mock him for seeking it, so it seems like he’s never been to see anyone for the OCD either. The party scene with the sisters is emotionally exhausting, both for the film and Sandler.

Home alone with no one to talk to–having been shut down by a brother-in-law Sandler mistakenly thought would be sympathetic—Sandler calls a phone sex line. Anderson shoots the scene continuous—lots of Punch-Drunk is long, complicated, moving scenes, sometimes with a single shot, often with multiple shots; great editing makes it seems like a single shot when it’s a dozen–and it’s exceptionally discomforting. Especially listening to the operator manipulate Sandler.

The next day, the operator calls back, demanding money. Sandler told her he had his own business, and she took it to mean he was wealthy; the phone sex operation is part of Philip Seymour Hoffman’s mattress and furniture sales store (important details later on), and Hoffman doesn’t take kindly to someone not wanting to be shook down.

Once Sandler starts getting the extortion calls, Punch-Drunk accelerates for the rest of the film. Jon Brion’s music initially ramps it up, seemingly the constant, relentless soundtrack in Sandler’s head. The music does slow down, but it’s set the pace, and Sandler soon finds reaching out for human connection is full of pitfalls. Particularly when his sisters, even off-screen, continue to mess with him.

But then there’s Watson, a calm amid all the chaos, even as it rages around her, even as she surprises Sandler. The plot with Hoffman and the extortion is tough, mean, absurd black comedy, and the romance with Watson, happening simultaneously, is a Technicolor romance. Albeit not in Technicolor. Sandler’s aloof but meticulous performance holds the two plots together, his intensity shared between them.

Also, obviously, Anderson doing a bunch of work to keep things synced, with lots of help from composer Brion, cinematographer Robert Elswit, and editor Leslie Jones. Punch-Drunk Love is fastidious to the extremis. So it stands out when they use some transition animation to get the third act done. It’s a jarring, wanting device, but Anderson manages to make up for it almost immediately. It’s probably the film’s most impressive accomplishment; to build off of literally nothing, rebounding from what ought to be a debilitating low. It’s exceptional.

And it’s not even over. As Sandler finally gets to the last stretch of his sprint, the last few minutes just get better and better, with a postscript lifting it even more.

Punch-Drunk Love is a singular success. Sandler grows his performance to greatness, and Watson’s a true enigma. The film marvels at her performance as it unfolds. Anderson directs the heck of it.

So incredibly, so unimaginably good.

Red Dragon (2002, Brett Ratner)

It’s hard to know what to think of Red Dragon. While it’s an adaptation of a novel, it’s also a remake of Manhunter, whether the film wants to acknowledge it or not. It’s got Danny Elfman doing the score, so it’s scary (though he does seem rather influenced by early 1990s Morricone) and director Ratner works in the opposite direction of what Mann accomplished in Manhunter.

It also features Edward Norton’s worst performance. I watched it wondering what he used the money on and apparently he used it to finance 25th Hour, which makes sense. It’s a bunch of Academy Award winning or nominated actors turning in lousy performances. Ralph Fiennes is goofy as a serial killer, Emily Watson barely holds her accent, Philip Seymour Hoffman is atrocious–it’s the kind of movie where if Harvey Keitel were drinking through the whole thing, it’d be funny. Instead, he’s not and it’s not. It’s depressing.

I think the worst served has got to be Mary-Louise Parker, who’s so boring as Norton’s wife, her outfits have more personality. Anthony Hopkins is crappy, but in his unspectacular way he’s crappy. He’s top-billed on a conductor-less train wreck.

There should be something to recommend Red Dragon–it’s an immensely watchable (at least once) curiosity, just because it’s so lousy and such a drab remake of Manhunter. It’s supposedly more faithful to the source novel–no surprise, Mann made some significant improvements.

Norton looks about fifteen in it, wearing his dad’s suits.

The Proposition (2005, John Hillcoat)

I was expecting something more eclectic from The Proposition, an Australian Western written by Nick Cave. I’m not sure if Australia has their own variation on the Western–I suppose something like Ned Kelly might qualify. The Proposition is an American Western set in Australia, with the Aborigines standing in for the Indians. It might be historically accurate–probably is–but it’s still a Western. Cave’s seen some Westerns too, but the most visible influence for the Western part of The Proposition are Monte Hellman’s Ride in the Whirlwind and The Shooting. The Proposition is an improvement on either of those films, because Cave’s got something going on I’ve never seen in a Western before… the bad guys are really the bad guys.

It’s not a situation where there are no good guys (like Unforgiven, though, arguably Ned is a good guy in Unforgiven)–the sheriff character is actually a good guy in The Proposition. I haven’t seen Ray Winstone in anything but Last Orders and I don’t remember him, but he’s amazing in The Proposition. His relationship with his wife, played by Emily Watson (who’s rather good, but not as good as I expected her to be), is Cave’s masterwork in this film. It’s a beautiful, complicated relationship in the middle of a hard, violent Western. It’s a touching and romantic and it’s a rare thing–not just in a Western–to have a marriage start and end a film with the couple caring for each other. There aren’t even any hiccups in it… It’s wonderful.

Unfortunately, the Western is not. The film follows around Guy Pearce, whose performance consists of being really, really skinny and maybe having a broken nose. It’s the worst work I’ve seen from him, though the film doesn’t give him much to do. The film, however, gives Danny Huston even less to do and makes him out as an outback Charles Manson, but he’s still quite good. John Hurt’s cameo is bad and the film wastes David Wenham (who would have been great in Pearce’s role) as a fop.

The director, Hillcoat, is fantastic. While he frames the shots like any good Western, the Australian Outback provides some surreal scenery. The film doesn’t take full advantage of that surrealism, which is occasionally amplified by Cave’s score, and the third act loses the directorial imagination. The style of that act doesn’t match the rest of the film and the writing fails to convince… for the first time, The Proposition becomes predictable. Still, it’s got that excellent marriage between Winstone and Watson going for it. Hopefully Cave will write his next film sooner than he did this one (there are seventeen years between his first script and The Proposition).