Kevin Spacey is back. Those who have been waiting for the acerbic, energetic performer from Swimming with Sharks and American Beauty to reappear will welcome Casino Jack with open arms. Director George Hickenlooper grabs your attention right from the start with an in-your-face but charismatic monologue by Jack in his bathroom mirror. Based on the unbelievably true story of Jack Abramoff, a superlobbyist during the Bush regime, the film tells a tale of greed that wouldn't be out of place as a companion piece to Wall Street. Casino Jack however is unhinged where that film was restrained. It goes for louder, funnier, lighter; a film whose easy Hollywood tone belies a story that is actually incredulous and shocking. This glossy exterior is occasionally overbearing but the true story at the heart of it all is already so ludicrous, it plays perfectly as a comedy of errors (albeit one with real world repercussions). While Norman Snider's dialogue doesn't quite crackle with the skewering energy of a powerhouse pen like Mamet, it is nonetheless snappy and intelligently written, material that Spacey, Barry Pepper and Jon Lovitz can sharpen their teeth on. Spacey, of course, is the centerpiece of this web, the fabricator from which lies are spun, careers are made and unmade. He's a man whose delusions of grandeur start to get out of hand even as his handle on the conspirators in his schemes starts to unravel and Spacey plays him just right, a brash player of people who is as arrogant as he is charismatic.
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After four impeccably crafted and thoughtfully paced films, two of which land in my personal list of favourite films (The Princess & the Warrior and Perfume: The Story of a Murderer), Tom Tykwer returns to the experimentation and inventive playfulness of his international breakthrough, Run Lola Run with his new sex comedy Three. About a couple who individually fall for the same man, Tykwer employs all sorts of razzle dazzle to keep the viewer invested, from split-screen layering all the way to angelic appearances. Structure of the film is simple but elegant with the film truly embodying every aspect of the titular number. While the viewer can always see where the characters are headed, the fitting final moments don't seem as important as the questions and ideas raised along the way as the film uses a loose framework to explore all sorts of notions of belonging, living in the moments, and how societal boundaries affect us as human beings. Essentially, the film is a light dissection of humankind and human relationships from an anthropological perspective. Despite being all kinds of predictable, the film is never less than entertaining and along with his usual pathos, Tykwer mixes in a great deal of humor derived from the characters and their situations.
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Kaboom is an appropriate title for a film that builds and builds in a mishmash of bizarre elements from obsessively jealous witches to masked cultists to doomsday foreshadowing to dimly aware surfers to Explosions in the Sky and dreams of dumpsters, increasingly ludicrous until it gets to its explosive third act, where everything that was already ludicrous is amped up another level and every connection is made, no matter how far-fetched. Of course, above all, this film is a sex comedy. An apocalyptic sex comedy. None of this is a criticism of Gregg Araki's work - this is all confidently made and instead of being a disaster, the film feels lean and coherent - it's a controlled mess, a piece where every bit of chaos has been precomposed and thought out to perfection all the way up to the pitch-perfect final note (in contrast to his previous film, the Anna Faris pot comedy Smiley Face which is half of a great film). After a stilted, miscast turn in this year's dull tracing exercise blunder, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Thomas Dekker finds himself more at ease in the strange wackiness of Araki's universe, where every character is a horny teenager, or else has the hormones of one. To say too much more would spoil the fun of Kaboom; half of which comes from the build-up of all its disparate elements, watching Araki stir the brew, letting one taste combine with another and then just going nuts. This is Araki at his most free and irreverent and while I hope one day he does another 'mature' film like the illuminating tour-de-force that was Mysterious Skin, I certainly won't complain if he makes another sex comedy as entertaining as this one.
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