harlie Kaufman is undeniably one of the most brilliant screenwriters of our time.
Ghost Town, Dir: David Koepp
Cast: Ricky Gervais, Tea Leoni, and Greg Kinnear
After achieving legendary comedy status by writing, directing, and starring in The Office, Ricky Gervais has become a major figure in contemporary comedy. He’s achieved such immediate and massive success that it was inevitable that Hollywood would come knocking. When it was announced that Gervais would be starring in Ghost Town (a film about a uptight dentists who starts seeing ghosts after a botched surgery). I was concerned that he had made a massive career misstep along the lines of Steve Coogan’s disastrous Around The World In 80 Days. The concept of a comedic Sixth Sense sounded like a terrible movie on paper. Yet somehow against all odds the film works. While some of the “ghosts fixing unfinished business” moments in the final act drift a little bit into the land of sentimental cliché, the bulk of the film works surprisingly well. The tired story line is saved by a perfectly cast Gervais who is able to use all of the bitterness, awkwardness, and sarcasm that define his comedy. He works perfectly with the underrated Tea Leoni, a woman who he must seduce to appease the wishes of her dead husband (played by a surprisingly snappy Greg Kinnear). Though far from perfect, this is a delightful little comedy that should please most audiences…even if it won’t linger very long in their memory once the lights come up.—PB

Synecdoche, New York
Dir: Charlie Kaufman
Cast: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Catherine Keener, Samantha Morton
Charlie Kaufman is undeniably one of the most brilliant screenwriters of our time. His scripts for Being John Malkovich and Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind are undeniably the most brilliant pieces of cinematic writing in he recent years. But, he is also an indulgent writer (Adaptation, anyone?) who benefits from collaborating with great directors who can reign in his ideas and keep him under control. This latter point has been made abundantly clear by Kaufman’s muddled, but occasionally brilliant directorial debut, Synecdoche, New York. In Kaufman’s typical mind-fuck fashion the film is about a writer who reconstructs his entire life as theater in a soundstage replica of New York.

It’s a brilliant idea filled with wonderful visual possibilities, but Kaufman lacks the directorial skill to pull it off. His movie is visually boring and convoluted. It was rumored that the original cut of the film was over #

Charlie Kaufman is undeniably one of the most brilliant screenwriters of our time.

four hours long and it certainly seems that way as most of the scenes feel awkwardly truncated. Kaufman seems to have stretched his ambitions too far on this project, which transforms into a meditation on the meaning of life by the conclusion. It feels like Kaufman’s failed attempt at the great American novel. That said, there are enough moments of brilliance (such as Samantha Morton’s surreal perpetually burning house and the beautiful concluding speech) to make worth seeing as long as you curb your expectations accordingly. Let’s just hope that Kaufman has learned a lesson and will go back to letting ingenious directors like Spike Jonze and Michel Gondry tackle his screenplays from now on.—PB