Film Reviews

FLYBOYS During World War I, a period of significantly better Franco-American relations than we enjoy today, a few hundred Yanks volunteered for service in the Lafayette Escadrille, the French fighter-pilot squadron that defended the Allied skies against German invasion. Their story is now an independently produced $60 million epic courtesy of producer Dean Devlin (Independence Day), and if Flyboys poses little threat to Hell’s Angels or The Dawn Patrol in the pantheon of WWI aerial actioners, it’s nevertheless a highly enjoyable programmer about those brave young men and their rickety flying machines. With its schematically diverse cast of characters — the farm boy (James Franco) who lost the farm, the no-nonsense captain (Jean Reno), the revered flying ace (Martin Henderson) — and gee-whiz dialogue (“You think there’ll be any future in flying after the war?”), there’s arguably more steaming ham and cheese on display here than in your average croque monsieur. But under the sure hand of director (and veteran pilot) Tony Bill, this unashamedly old-fashioned adventure yarn is infectiously earnest and stacked sky-high with the kind of details that will be nirvana for period-aviation buffs, from the primitive training methods employed to acquaint untested pilots with real flying conditions to the loving branding of cockpits with hand-painted insignias. Realized with a combination of vintage and replica aircraft, as well as elaborate CGI effects, the airborne sequences are duly awesome, if a tad monotonous. Ironically, the movie really takes off when it’s on the ground, especially in the unhurried romance between Franco and a comely French maiden (newcomer Jennifer Decker). They speak not a word of the same language, but like so many men and women who met each other on the battlefields, they nonetheless manage to find love in the time of war. (Citywide) (Scott Foundas)

PICK  THE SCIENCE OF SLEEP  In the latest tale of amour fou from Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind director Michel Gondry, aspiring artist Stephane (Gael Garcia Bernal) returns to Paris from Mexico following the death of his father. After moving back into his childhood bedroom and landing a dead-end typesetting job, he becomes smitten with the quirky Stephanie (comely Charlotte Gainsbourg), who makes Stephane so nervous he can’t bring himself to tell her he’s her next-door neighbor, let alone that he loves her. As before, Gondry takes us deep into that dense gray matter between his protagonist’s ears, and the elaborate fantasy sequences that unfold there rival Sunshine for their freewheeling absurdist brio. Cardboard and toy-car cities spring to life; an anthropomorphic electric razor adds hair; kitchen-sink spigots unleash torrents of cellophane; and, in one ineffably lovely scene, Stephane and Stephanie go skiing down bedsheet mountains. Nobody at Lacuna Inc. is trying to vacuum out any of Stephane’s memories, mind you, but like Jim Carrey’s Joel Barish, Stephane finds it easier to express himself in his dream life, where he hosts his own TV show, than in his waking one, where his terror of grown-up romance frequently prompts a regression into ill-tempered adolescence. (In one scene, when Stephanie comments on her large hands, he responds that she must have a large penis.) At Sundance, where The Science of Sleep premiered, such antics struck more than a few critics as noxiously juvenile. As one who has himself been reduced to a puddle of pubescent ooze in the presence of many a beautiful woman, I’m more sympathetic. For the soul of Gondry’s work, it seems to me, is neither its soaring flights of visual fancy nor its sometimes crude slapstick, but rather its pained understanding of a generation hopelessly tongue-tied when it comes to matters of the heart. (Sunset 5; NuWilshire) (Scott Foundas)

Paramount Pictures

You are what you watch: Bernal and Gainsbourg in the TV station of their dreams.

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More About

• Al Franken
• Scott Foundas
• Jan Kounen
• Michel Gondry
• John Gulager

ZEN NOIR Any hopes that Marc Rosenbush’s film might transcend its unimaginative title are dashed almost immediately, as manic fade-outs, fade-ins and overlays of portentous symbols give way to mannered dialogue and bad jokes. The thin plot involves a detective (Duane Sharp) who gets a tip about a murder at a Buddhist temple and goes to investigate. Nonsensically, we’ve already seen the “murder” — a monk falling over dead, without provocation, during meditation. The script tosses us a few red herrings before morphing into a didactic (and stultifying) lesson in spiritual enlightenment. Along the way, Zen Noir commits a few crimes of its own, against noir, Buddhism and filmmaking. For one: Sharp’s detective, a sweaty jumble of nerves, lacks even a twinge of allure; the actor stammers and stutters, indicating distress rather than acting it. Debra Miller, playing a female practitioner, fares better, but the weird and remote interplay between the two is speciously sold as romance. (“What’s a lay person?” “A person who can still get laid.”) It’s a long 71 minutes. (One Colorado; Westside Pavilion) (Melissa Levine)