Films Seen April 2012
Robinson in Ruins (2010,
Patrick Keiller) 
Can't really say I got much out of the Robinson Trilogy (caught up with
London and
Robinson in Space a couple of months before I
started this log; might as well address all three here), mostly because
Keiller's interests and my own so rarely coincide -- at times I felt like
I was watching a series of video blogs on the
Economist website,
despite the soothing tones of Paul Scofield or (in this case) Vanessa
Redgrave. To be perfectly honest, I think I only truly heard maybe 75% of
the voiceover narration, which is so dry and abstruse that I constantly
found myself accidentally tuning out. At first I'd quickly rewind once I
realized it had become word salad, but after doing that several times and
finding that I'd missed stuff like "On the 11th, the price of Brent Crude
peaked at just over $147 a barrel, after Iran had test-fired nine
ballistic missiles. In the journal
Nature, it was argued that
rates of species extinction had been seriously underestimated" -- those
are actually consecutive sentences, spoken over the same shot (of some
berries), with only the briefest pause between them -- I pretty much gave
up and just let my aural attention wander as it would, focusing as much
as possible on the images. Some of these, like the examination of lichen
clinging to the letters adorning an English road sign, possess a
captivating sort of anti-grandeur, but at other times Keiller just seems
to be dicking around, letting flowers sway in a light breeze for minutes
at a time as if that somehow provides lucid counterpoint to the
recitatation of socioeconomic factoids and historical anecdotes. And
while
Ruins is arguably the most visually impressive of the three
("arguably" because I watched it on much higher quality video than the
others), substituting Redgrave for the late Scofield doesn't quite work,
perhaps because it's one degree of remove too much for a project that
already had its author's thoughts being spoken by one man and attributed
to another. But I had roughly the same problem with Marker's
Sans
soleil, so don't mind me if affected essay-films are your thing.
Pee-wee's Big Adventure (1985,
Tim Burton) 
Revisiting this gloriously anarchic, ceaselessly inventive bliss machine
(which I saw bits and pieces of a gazillion times in first run, working
concessions at a multiplex where it played) made me realize how un-daffy
-- or perhaps un-Daffy -- American film comedy has since become. "Wait,"
Pee-Wee tells escaped convict Mickey as they approach a phalanx of cops,
"I have an idea"...and five seconds later Pee-Wee's in full drag while
Mickey sports a false mustache and beard along with nerd specs. It's
funny
because it's impossible, but I'm trying to think of the last
mainstream comedy that chucked realism out the window, and I'm coming up
blank. That
Big Adventure's star ("as himself") is such a singular
creation obviously helps, but Reubens still couldn't save
Big Top
Pee-wee -- he needed Burton's loopy visual sensibility (most evident
in the stunning sequence right after Pee-wee's bike is stolen, as every
cyclist in town converges on our despondent hero), plus general
indifference to the gag-killing constraints of the real world. Claymation
ghouls, Rube Goldberg cookery, biker gangs seduced by a man-child's
chicken dance, James Brolin -- nothing's too ludicrous. Only during the
climactic backlot chase scene does the energy flag a bit, and even that
has multiple inspired moments, e.g. Dee Snider dodging Santa Claus and
Godzilla, both of whom are being towed by a speedboat. Just a nonstop
delight, really. Also, checking the film's Wikipedia page, I see that it
was released on 9 August 1985. I lost my virginity, if memory serves,
sometime around September or October of 1985, to a coworker at the
multiplex where it was then playing. Why? What's the significance? I
DON'T KNOW!!
Monsieur Lazhar (2011, Philippe
Falardeau) 
With Arcand's continuing relevance at best questionable, Falardeau seems
to have become the leading French-Canadian filmmaker more or less by
default, which makes it dispiriting that each of his films has been
more conventional and less distinctive than the last. Here, of course, we
have an entry in the inspirational-teacher genre, and to the extent that
it follows that model it's without much interest; Lazhar's a nice enough
fellow, devoted to his pupils and endearingly awkward on date night with
a colleague, but his methods are fairly banal and his tragic backstory an
unnecessary distraction. (I did like that he lies about having smacked
one of the kids upside the head, however, and that nothing ever comes of
it -- just an everyday ass-covering.) What really compels is the reason
for Lazhar's presence in the first place, which I didn't know in advance
and am loath to reveal now, just in case some of you are still ignorant.
Falardeau's handling of what we'll call the prelude is a thing of beauty,
with masterful use of the school hallway; hearing the other kids noisily
enter from behind the camera as it stares impassively in the other
direction, at the empty passage where Simon ran off (and from which a
teacher now comes hauling ass to intercept them), served as a potent
reminder of the kind of effect that only cinema can truly create. And the
subsequent exploration of how something like that would affect a class of
eight-year-olds, plus the fallout of the paranoid dictum that any
physical contact whatsoever between adult and unrelated child is
inappropriate (NOTE: aforementioned spoiler isn't what you now assume), is
all quite solid. Even though it was adapted from a one-man play, however,
the film seems wholly misguided to focus so intently on Lazhar, who more
often than not comes across as if he's Bogarted an ensemble piece.
Falardeau deserves credit for expanding it, but he didn't evidently have
enough courage to just chuck the Stand and Deliver template altogether.
Little Big Man (1970, Arthur
Penn) 
Doesn't work for me as comedy or as pointed satire, and watching it now I
feel like a contemporary remake would probably star Adam Sandler (with
Will Ferrell as Custer). Jokes are mostly predicated on feeble reversals
of expectation concerning propriety: Crabb's sister plainly yearns to be
raped by Indians even as she feigns terror; Dunaway's proper lady all but
molests him while prattling about righteousness and purity; his wife's
widowed sisters demand his attentions via ostentatious coughing fits from
adjacent beds; etc. And while the film boldly identifies with the Native
Americans, depicting U.S. soldiers as villains, those good intentions are
hamstrung by the subtitle-averse era in which it was made, which forces
Chief Dan George and the others to speak in stilted Hollywood Injun
(without having the stones to also write Crabb's dialogue that way when
he's meant to be conversing in Cheyenne). Hoffman seems to be having a
good time but never quite establishes an actual character, even allowing
for the extent to which that could be construed as intentional -- too
often he just comes across as Benjamin Braddock in the Old West, anxious
and gauche. His ancient-man makeup and voiceover, on the other hand, seem
like a purposeless stunt in this context (and possibly in the novel as
well). Why set the story in the present and frame it as the recollection
of a 121-year-old if you're just gonna ignore everything that happened to
the guy in the
century between the Battle of Little Bighorn and
now (= 1970)? What does the tale gain when told by the world's oldest man,
and/or at such a great remove? (I didn't love the framing story in
Titanic, either, but at least it kind of made sense given the
expedition to the wreck and the Heart of the Ocean subplot.) Final shot of
Hoffman encased in latex and holding one gnarled hand to his forehead, as
if no longer able to bear the sins of the world ("That was some fucked-up
shit
a hundred years ago, when I was like 22"), just prompted a
derisive snort.
Las acacias (2011, Pablo
Giorgelli) 
"Okay, I know the whole
grumpy-dude-gradually-softens-when-saddled-with-adorable-kid thing died of
overexposure a decade ago, but hear me out. I have a twist. You ready?
Also: the kid's
mom. She's there too. And he warms up to her as
well,
through the adorable kid. Right? I know. Has anyone made
their grumpy dude grumpy because of some sort of failed relationship with
a child of his own? How crazy resonant would that be? I'm thinking very
short, very simple, like no more than 80 minutes long, and we spend 40 of
those minutes just establishing the grumpiness. That way we get
familiarity
and repetition. It's a movie everybody's already seen a
dozen times and it's half over before anything of interest happens. Look
at my arms, I have actual gooseflesh."
This Happy Breed (1944, David
Lean) 
Fortuitously appears on my master alphabetical list right beside
This
Is England, which could serve as an alternate title. As ever, cinema
isn't the ideal medium for a story that spans 20 years -- a problem
exacerbated here by Coward's highlight-reel structure, with the film (and
the source play, presumably) leaping from one isolated Event to the next:
General Strike, Charleston craze, wedding, sudden death, etc. Individual
scenes, however, are often quite strong, especially those involving Kay
Walsh (who I didn't realize was then Mrs. Lean) as the headstrong,
magnetically irritating Queenie. Despite his reputation as an urbane wit,
Coward excelled at frankly realistic middle-class courtship behavior;
Queenie's prolonged pseudo-romance with Billy strikes some of the same
deeply rueful notes that would make the following year's
Brief
Encounter an enduring masterpiece, while ably distinguishing between
the impetuousness of youth and the resignation of late middle age. But
every time I started getting emotionally involved, the film would fade
out and then fade in several years later, usually shifting focus to
somebody else altogether. And there really isn't much of a throughline
apart from the general resilience of the English character (explicitly
compared at one point to a garden)...which, while not propaganda
per
se, serves more or less the same reassuring function as the domestic
material in
In Which We Serve. Hollywood films made during WWII
aren't nearly as uniformly we-are-fam-i-LEE, are they? I don't feel as
much need to recalibrate based on what was happening offscreen.
Punishment Park (1971, Peter
Watkins)
Summer, 1989: "What'd you think of
Batman?" "I liked everything
except Batman." Same deal here, surprisingly, as Punishment Park itself
represents leftist outrage at its most didactic and shrill -- in stark
contrast to the tribunal sections, in which both accusers and accused
appear recognizably human (which is to say, occasionally coherent but
mostly idiotic). I gather that's because Watkins typecast everybody and
allowed them to improvise, thereby creating the live-action equivalent of
a heated combox "debate"...but whatever the method, it affords both sides
respect even as it (inadvertently?) subjects both sides to ridicule,
illuminating the practical difficulty of communicating across such a wide
ideological gulf. One of the inquisitors is even smart and savvy enough
to be
Victor Morton, quoting
Thomas Aquinas on the definition of a just war and continually insisting
on specifics rather than generalities. Out in the desert, though, it's
eye-rolling time, starting with the very concept of this alleged "training
exercise" for law enforcement -- we're told it's been implemented in part
because prisons are overcrowded, but any prisoner who doesn't win the game
ends up behind bars anyway (assuming they surrender), and it's abundantly
clear by film's end that nobody is ever allowed to win. Are we meant to
believe that the government deliberately sends dissidents out there
anticipating that they'll give the cops justifiable cause to kill them?
That's just laughably bwahahahaha given that we're in some version of the
real world and not a Verhoeven-style dystopian future. And why does the
camera crew go apeshit when prisoners are gunned down (invariably in
circumstances where they ignore -- or in one preposterous case
allegedly don't hear -- direct orders to stop), but not even blink when a
couple of cops are flat-out murdered early on? As filmmaking, this is
exciting stuff, quite formally audacious (especially for its time), but
the deck-stacking rankles even for a bleeding-heart like myself.
Dark Star (1974, John
Carpenter) 
Finally. (Another case where I waited close to 20 years for a print
to turn up near me.) Thought this was a total bust for a while, but it
gets funnier as it goes along, culminating in a glorious finale ("teach
it phenomenology") that anticipates Douglas Adams at his loopiest. Still,
it's plainly a student short that's been padded out to feature length,
and there's virtually no sign of the compositional magnificence Carpenter
would demonstrate in
Assault on Precinct 13 just two years later.
In particular, the extended sequence involving the alien beach ball
(which I gather was part of the padding) really feels like amateur hour,
the kind of prankish tedium that's thankfully restricted to YouTube
videos nowadays. Performances are shall we say "variable," with O'Bannon
both the most stilted and the most comically inspired (his video diary
kills, though that's partially just the succession of bad hair days);
production design ranges from inventive to desperate, frequently within
the same shot. By far the most distinguished element is Carpenter's
score, which isn't in the same league as
Halloween or
Big
Trouble in Little China but still suggests that he could have carved
out a career strictly as a composer had directing not worked out. (And it
no longer seems to be working out, so...) All in all, more of an amusing
footnote than a real movie, but I'm glad I finally saw it. Also, is it
just me or was Sgt. Pinback the tonsorial template for Joaquin Phoenix in
I'm Still Here? The
resemblance is uncanny.
Late Spring (1949, Yasujiro
Ozu) 
Achieves tremendous power in its final scene by abruptly shifting focus,
revealing that the film is in fact about the sacrifices parents make for
their childrens' happiness. However, Noriko's dilemma, which occupies the
vast majority of its running time, feels so alien and abstract to me that
I'm somewhat detached until those last couple of minutes. No matter how
much you love and are devoted to your dad, it's just plain weird to feel
no desire for an independent life;
Late Spring pronounces this
misguided but doesn't seem to recognize it as pathological, and whatever
exploration of Noriko's psyche may exist in the source novel doesn't come
across in Hara's performance, which at its best is productively opaque.
That specific reservation aside, Ozu's sensibility ultimately may just be
too sedate for my taste -- I've seen most of the acknowledged classics
now and have never been wowed, not even by
Tokyo Story (though it's
been a long time since my last viewing). What I do find arresting is his
unorthodox use of inserts, which imbue inanimate objects with a sense of
mystery that seems well out of proportion to their narrative context. The
midnight vase here is the most blatant example (and much remarked upon, it
seems), but even more striking to my mind is the scene in which Hattori,
who's invited Noriko to attend a concert with him and been politely
rebuffed (due to his engagement to another woman), sits at the
performance beside an empty seat. Ozu's cut to an insert of Hattori's hat
and briefcase on the seat provides no additional information -- you'd
have to be pretty dense not to have already processed that he's there
alone -- yet it somehow imparts a momentous sense of loss. At moments
like these, "transcendental" does seem appropriate...but they're fleeting
moments that don't wholly counteract the mild engagement I otherwise tend
to experience. (Exception: his silents.) Same deal as with Yang's
A
One and a Two..., basically; maybe one day I'll mature enough.
The Asphyx (1973, Peter
Newbrook) 
C'mon, at least
try to work out the implications of your
fantastical premise. Anticipate the viewer's questions/objections and
address them. It's not that hard. Like: What exactly does it mean to say
that a creature "can't die" so long as its asphyx is trapped? What if you
just plain incinerated the body until there was nothing left but ash? Is
the pile of ash still alive? What if you then scatter the ashes? Does
each individual particle still possess consciousness? Even if you can't
think of good answers, it's still smart to have the characters make a
good-faith effort to hash it out, so that we're not sitting there the
whole time thinking "but...but...but..." Likewise, the whole bit with the
guillotine is just nonsensical -- does the asphyx simply not appear if a
person isn't aware of their impending demise? (The son who smacked his
head into the tree branch didn't appear to be, still got a smudge.) Could
you just run at the person with a spear in super slo-mo? That seems like
pretty much the same idea as letting the blade fall slowly, with less
likelihood of a fatal accident. Maybe I wouldn't have fixated on this
stuff had the film's surface been more alluring, but the cheese factor is
alarmingly high, with Robert Stephens hamming it up in a deadly serious,
no-fun manner (I didn't care for him as Holmes in the Billy Wilder movie,
either) and the asphyx itself looking like rear projection of an SNL-era
Muppet withdrawing from heroin. Newbrook directs like the cinematographer
he was, with zero sense of how to build a rhythm -- even the present-day
prologue falls completely flat, since we don't yet have enough information
to comprehend its significance and Newbrook stages it as if it were the
last scene in the movie instead of the first. Line of dialogue I can't
believe somebody actually typed: "But
why pursue immortality?!"
In Which We Serve (1942, Noel
Coward & David Lean) 
Not bad for wartime propaganda -- in many respects it plays more like
postwar reflection along the lines of
The Best Years of Our Lives,
emphasizing domestic uncertainty as much as battlefield bravery. (Can you
use the word "battlefield" if it's planes vs. boats? Can't think of an
alternative.) Upper lips are at maximum stiffness throughout, to somewhat
stultifying effect, but the tone is so quietly sober that there's little
sense of being rallied; the Captain's addresses to the crew come
across more like Kevin Spacey in
Margin Call than like Henry V at
Agincourt, even as Coward proves more commanding than you'd expect. I'm a
stickler for structural integrity, though, so it bothers me (perhaps more
than it should) that the film clearly establishes the flashbacks as
personal memories and then discards that idea when it becomes
inconvenient, e.g. when it wants to show us family members killed during
the Blitz (obviously unobserved by anyone on the ship). And that
quasi-rigor can't quite disguise its essentially anecdotal nature, which
works fine in individual scenes but doesn't exactly create the sense of
urgency the subject demanded smack in the middle of WWII. It's the ol'
fish/fowl problem: As drama, it's hamstrung by patriotic fervor, but at
the same time it seems way too diffuse and low-key to reassure a battered
nation. Occasionally, though, the balance is exactly right -- I found
myself moved to tears by the drawn-out simplicity of the final scene
(barring epilogue), in which the Captain bids farewell to his reassigned
men, shaking hands with each and calling him by name. Rather than
dissolving to suggest duration, or cutting in late to give us only the
most significant characters/actors, Coward and/or Lean holds for the
entire procession, affording every sailor equal weight. Reminded me of
brushing away tears for months in 2001 reading Portraits of Grief in the
New York Times, which insisted on remembering every victim.
Bully (2011, Lee Hirsch) 
Reviewed for
Las
Vegas Weekly, and I have nothing much to add in terms of content; if
your documentary does nothing except state the blatantly obvious
("kids being mean to other kids is bad and something must be done!"),
please air it on some educational channel where it belongs. But I'm truly
curious about the focus issue, especially now that I've skimmed a bunch of
reviews and can't find another that so much as mentions it in passing. I'm
almost positive it's in the film itself and was not a projection error, as
I know what those look like. And it's
incessant. Roughly every two
or three minutes on average, I'd estimate, and often in shots that are
completely static (so it can't be auto-focus gone wild). Abrams' lens
flares are nothing compared to the number of times
Bully blurs
out for a few seconds and then resharpens. Not
shifting focus to
another element of the shot, understand -- just a brief purposeless
undulation on whoever's front and center. And it's so gauche that it's
either some kind of deeply misguided aesthetic strategy (in which case I'd
expect it to be in the press kit and hence crop up in the reviews) or
evidence that Hirsch literally did not know how to use his camera. Anyway,
if you see the movie after reading this, could you look for it and then
come back and confirm that I'm not insane? I'd appreciate it.
Dead Ringers (1988, David
Cronenberg) 
Just wanted to remind myself what a great Cronenberg film looks like
before I'm inevitably disappointed by
Cosmopolis next month. He
really brought it all together here -- hate to use that awful word
"mature" (especially since he quickly regressed), but he genuinely seems
more interested in Elliot and Beverly as complex individuals than he
does in, say, the gyn(a)ecological instruments for operating on mutant
women, which are merely a disturbing symptom of Bev's mental breakdown.
Irons' astonishing dual performance, which is so acutely realized that
you can immediately tell without any context when you're looking at
Elliot posing as Beverly or vice versa (at least until they start to
meld), functions both as an abstract portrait of curdled symbiosis
and as an intimate character study of two people with almost
nothing in common apart from a genome and mutual need; their
trajectory is legitimately tragic, and so richly imagined that not even
the standard junkie nosedive can render it generic. What's more, with the
exception of one virtuoso walk-and-talk that looks ever so slightly
composite-fuzzy, the effects work is so subtle and the compositions so
meticulous that you simply accept what you're seeing and stop looking for
the seams. That's a minor triumph in itself, as well as further testament
to Irons' magnificence. (Who beat him for the Oscar again? [Pause.]
Holy fuck he was not even nominated. Though I do remember he
thanked Cronenberg when he won two years later.) You could combine the
eight features since, from
Naked Lunch through
A Dangerous
Method, and still not amass one-tenth of the heart-rending humanity
captured in this film (and in
The Fly) -- it's as if he scared
himself and decided to double down on the trademark new-flesh queasiness,
to speedily diminishing returns in my personal opinion, and yeah I know
you all loved
History of Violence but I stand by my
underwhelmitude. More sadness: Between this film and
The Moderns,
Geneviève Bujold was maybe my favorite actress in the world that
year; I've seen her in exactly two films since, the most recent one 14
years ago. What the hell, everyone making movies featuring strong adult
women for the last two decades?
In the Family (2011, Patrick
Wang)
Feeling massively guilty about bailing on this one -- partly because Wang
himself sent me the film and asked me to look at it, partly because its
heart is so evidently in the right place. But it's nearly three hours
long and what I saw just didn't excite me. Wang deftly deflects the more
melodramatic aspects of his scenario, but he does so via methods that are
kinda indie-shopworn at this point; I thought he had me in the hospital,
when the nurse offers Joey a visitation form (relieving my fear that I
was in for an epic of casual homophobia), but then the doctor shows up to
deliver the awful news and Wang instantly cuts to a shot from outside the
building, consigning the remainder of the scene to respectful silence.
And then the first post-funeral scene is like seven minutes of
near-catatonic pseudo-naturalism, with Joey going through a giant stack
of mail (in complete silence, natch) while the kid, who's too young to
fully grasp what's happened, never once intrudes upon his sorrow. It just
looked constructed to me, while trying really hard to look unconstructed,
which is an off-putting combination. Sorry, Patrick. You have Ebert!
The Cabin in the Woods (2011,
Drew Goddard)
Suffers from exactly the same problem that
Dollhouse initially
did: intriguing ideas shoehorned into a poorly executed genre framework.
(As a bonus, it also has Fran Kranz starting out insufferable.) In this
case, the ideas are breezily meta rather than terrifyingly insidious, so
the damage isn't as pronounced...but I still wish the cabin material
wasn't quite so generic, even as I fully understand that it's meant to be
generic, indeed
must be generic on some level for the premise to
make any sense. Jules making out with the stuffed wolf head during Truth
or Dare, just for example, manages to be distinctive and memorable (and
scary! remember scary, guys?) without betraying Robin Wood or Carol
Clover. And while the scenes "downstairs" are often darkly funny, I feel
like the idea would have worked better without them. Or maybe without the
cabin, shown
only from the puppeteers' perspective (though that's
so intensely lab-rat that you've lost most of your audience). Cutting back
and forth between the two, as Whedon and Goddard opted to do, is the most
conventional and least challenging option, and also a lot less fun -- the
film isn't anywhere near as WTF? as it ideally ought to have been, and
actively squanders some of its best moments. (Why tell us at the outset
about the electrified fence, so that we're just sitting there waiting for
Hemsworth to ride into it? That's inept, frankly.) As for semiotics, only
the party downstairs, with the staff whooping it up while Dana gets
beaten to shit on monitors in the background, productively complicates
our relationship to horror films, and even that fleeting implication is
Haneke-Lite. Still amusing, with a gratifyingly bugfuck all-star monster
finale, but I prefer my genre deconstructions a little less
self-conscious and self-satisfied. And those redneck torture zombies are
dull.
eXistenZ (1999, David
Cronenberg) 
Don't mean to be glib, but who would ever play this "game"? Apart from
the film's one standout scene -- the Chinese Restaurant and its grotesque
"special" -- there's nothing even remotely fun or enticing about its
virtual reality; even if we accept the ludicrous idea of a game narrative
about a rock-star game designer (which of course is really Cronenberg's
effort to hide one layer of simulation), everything's so unpleasantly
banal that it's hard to imagine slogging your way through it. This time I
watched knowing for sure that Allegra and Ted are game characters from
scene one, but that understanding didn't make their vapidity any more
compelling. It's an empty sort of cleverness: "Ah, yes, these
performances faithfully represent the inherent limitations of an avatar."
"I see, that inelegant jump forward [from the assassination attempt in
the opening scene to Ted driving Allegra into the country] mimics the way
that video games simply proceed to the next level." It's all deftly
worked out but leaves you with nothing to connect with -- much the same
problem I had with
Inception, actually, which similarly creates
multiple "worlds" that are all equally weightless and expository (and
concludes on a similarly exasperating live-or-Memorex? note). Some of
Cronenberg's outré visual ideas are good for a laugh -- awesome
that he got Ted rimming Allegra's bioport into mainstream movie theaters
-- but without a rich, immersive context they come across as pandering,
just the biomechanical equivalent of the girl taking her shirt off. I
can't help but notice that
The Fly and
Dead Ringers, the
last two Cronenberg movies I truly loved, were both co-written by him
with others; neither of those collaborators has anything else decent to
his name, but maybe DC just needs
someone to shape a proper story.
West Side Story (1961, Robert
Wise & Jerome Robbins) 
Pointed enough that it would really have struck a nerve had they done the
unthinkable and actually cast Puerto Ricans as Maria and Bernardo.
Sondheim's wholesale rewrite of the lyrics for "America" lends the Sharks
significant stature -- amazing to think that civil-rights-era audiences
flocked to a film (and snapped up a soundtrack album) featuring couplets
like "Life is all right in America / If you're all white in America" --
and Detective Schrank, in a speech that I'm pretty sure wasn't in the
stage version, openly sides with the Jets in a fashion so ugly that you'd
have to be a dyed-in-the-wool, out-and-proud bigot not to recoil. All of
which makes its modernized recapitulation of
Romeo and Juliet seem
more urgent, less like a typical theatrical stunt. Throw in Bernstein's
majestic pseudo-jazz score, Robbins' defiantly balletic choreography,
Wise's robust New York location work, and the professional debut of the
greatest lyricist the world will likely ever know, and it's hard to go too
far wrong. However, the show does suffer from the same problem that afflicts
almost every Broadway musical: it's massively frontloaded, with Act Two
getting bogged down in obligatory plot resolution (not why we came) and
featuring all of the weaker numbers ("One Hand, One Heart"; A Boy Like That"
-- admittedly the former was in Act One onstage, but so was "Cool," so call
it a tradeoff). Plus I've never understood why you'd bother setting up the
traditional
Romeo and Juliet ending if you're gonna have Maria show
up right before Tony successfully commits suicide-by-Shark, and then let her
survive. Subverting the tragedy to some degree is fine, but to what end in
this instance? Final shot, while evocative, sees the entire cast just
slowly walk out of the frame, as if not sure what they're doing there anymore.
Shame (2011, Steve McQueen) 
Previously addressed at
TIFF '11, though I
somehow failed to mention the most eye-rolling aspect of the narrative:
that Brandon's sexual dysfunction so clearly stems from his incestuous
desire for Sissy, to the point where Fassbender actually clutches his
head in agony when Brandon overhears Sissy fucking his boss. (I love the
guy generally but can't fathom how this overripe performance got so much
love from the discerning Skandie crew.) Broad strokes are so inept that
it's not at all hard to believe that
Shame was co-written by the
same person responsible for
The Iron Lady; at the same time,
though, it works beautifully in isolated patches. Last time I singled
out the credibly awkward dinner date (and marvel again now at the
supremely awkward non-kiss as they part, which is the sort of
painfully truthful aspect of dating you almost never see in movies),
whereas the standout this time was Brandon's boss hitting on the girl at
the bar, which perfectly captures her amused exasperation at his
overbearing antics (and lets Fassbender be still and watchful, which he's
much better at than crumpling to the ground in the rain and wailing).
McQueen still seems to me a superlative filmmaker in search of something
to say; this was probably the worst subject he could have chosen.
He Got Game (1998, Spike Lee) 
Not as lame as I once thought, mostly because Spike's having such a good
time formally -- practicing moves he'd put to more stirring use a few
years later in
25th Hour -- and because Denzel gets to be kind of
a dick, which always brings out the best in him. You can tell the film
was made by someone genuinely in love with the game, which counts for a
lot. Bonus points as well for the climactic one-on-one confrontation,
which doesn't pretend there's any chance that a middle-aged amateur might
best the country's #1 high-school prospect, whatever minor psychological
advantage he might have as the kid's dad. Still, the script really is
pretty terrible, especially when it comes to women: Mom's a dead saint,
Lala's a conniving gold-digger (just thought you should know, nigga),
Jovovich's hooker exists only to provide a mercy fuck in exchange for
being saved from Generic Abusive Pimp #362, and the only other people
onscreen who have breasts are constantly shoving them in Jesus' face as a
promise of the carnal carnival awaiting him at their university. Ray
Allen doesn't embarrass himself, but neither does he have the sort of
presence that compensates for the lack of technical skill, and he's stuck
playing a character whose angry nobility, ironically enough, recalls some
of Denzel's least interesting early work (and pre-emptively echoes the
part of
Warrior I found most tiresome, viz. Tom Hardy's bottomless
filial resentment). Give Spike credit for attempting to find an original
angle on the sports movie, focusing on personal relationships and
financial chicanery rather than some threadbare underdog championship
narrative, but
He Got Game lives up to its title only on-court,
where Copland's music can transforms simple dunks into iconic assertions
of American will.
Who's Got the Action? (1962,
Daniel Mann)
Remember the
I Love Lucy episode in which Ricky started betting too
much on the horses, so Lucy concocted a typically harebrained scheme to
redirect the money back home, talking Fred into telling Ricky he'd found
a new, superior bookie and would happily place Ricky's bets through this
imaginary fellow, except wouldn't you know it Ricky's losing streak
turned into a winning streak and Lucy suddenly had to sell all the
furniture and her jewelry and whatnot to pay off massive wagers at 17:1?
It was a Very Special Episode: Dean Martin played Ricky as an amiable
non-entity, while Lucille Ball, one of the world's great comediennes, was
replaced by Lana Turner, who wouldn't recognize funny if...I dunno, if
there were a decent joke at the end of this sentence for her to
potentially recognize. Point is, this is horribly bloated sitcom fare,
rescued from complete disaster by lively supporting turns from the likes
of Eddie Albert, Nita Talbot, and the young Walter Matthau (whose
bizarrely accented mobster relies on data from one of those room-size,
beep-happy computers so prevalent in the '50s and early '60s). The
movie's dead air right from the opening scene, which takes a gag-free
eternity merely to establish that Dino's so consumed with the track that
he pays no attention to his wife, yet somehow fails to clearly establish
that Turner
is his wife, to the point where it's confusing that the
next scene finds them sharing a bedroom (but not a bed, of course).
Still, as I've noted before, there's an odd comfort in being reminded now
and then that harmless crap like
When in Rome and
The Bounty
Hunter has been clogging movie screens since before most of us were
born. When you stumble across a title like this one that you've never
heard of, you can almost always rest assured that there's a good reason.
Manhattan (1979, Woody Allen) 
I don't understand how you make a film that looks like this and then go on
to make 32 subsequent films (and counting) that look nothing like this.
But then, neither do I understand how you achieve the perfect synthesis
of your many gifts and somehow conclude that you totally whiffed, to the
point where you beg the studio to destroy the negative. Each of the
film's tricky balancing acts -- between visual beauty and verbal
dexterity, between wit and pathos, between the specific and the universal
-- couldn't be more sublimely realized; like most every masterpiece, it's
a tiny, insular story that nonetheless embodies human folly at its most
ubiquitous and grandiose. That Woody chooses to make this explicit, via
the opening and closing montages and his use of Gershwin, ranks alongside
Malick's creation flashback in the annals of justifiable artistic hubris.
(In a way, the Hayden Planetarium scene gets there first.) But his true
glory lies in getting every detail right as well, from Mariel Hemingway's
achingly unaffected performance to the pools of light emanating from
foyers along 76th St. -- to say nothing of that 7 train pulling slowly
into the station behind Yankee Stadium (in the Bronx, but oh well) as
"Rhapsody in Blue" builds to its crescendo. I watched this time looking
hard for anything I might consider a flaw, and the best I can manage is
to note that the scene between Isaac and Yale near the end (where Woody's
standing next to the early hominid skeleton) cuts back and forth so much,
atypically, in shot/reverse-shot that their conversational rhythm gets
interrupted by infinitesimal pauses creating in editing. As if anyone
can even remember that a few minutes later, when Tracy insists that we
have to have a little faith in people, inspiring the single greatest
moment of Allen's career as an actor (as opposed to comedian): a range of
emotions communicating just about every many-worlds possibility of where
these two people are likely to be in six months. Breathtaking and
heartbreaking -- some days, this is my favorite film of all time.
Madonna: Truth or Dare (1991, Alek Keshishian)
To say that I wasn't a big Madonna fan in 1991 would be an understatement
-- at the time, she seemed to me the epitome of soulless, machine-tooled
superstardom, though I now feel predictably nostalgic for the days when
chart-toppers had discernible personalities. (Plus I dislodged the stick
from my collegiate ass and realized dance music can be fun.) Back then,
Warren Beatty's amused contempt for the life-as-performance ethos echoed
my thoughts perfectly. Now, I look at this beautifully photographed doc
(more nostalgia) and see a fascinating young woman who's working her ass
off while struggling to find the most potentially rewarding balance
between candor and control, juxtaposed with impressively staged concert
footage that revels in the stunning contrast between grainy 16mm b&w and
lush 35mm color. She's playing to the camera, but that in itself is often
revealing, and it's easy to identify the moments when her guard
involuntarily goes down. (The visit to her mother's grave straddles the
line between sincerity and artifice in a truly confounding way.) Had you
asked me a month ago for my most vivid memory of the film, I would have
cited Madonna politely brushing off her childhood friend, which I'd found
utterly obnoxious and filed under Prima Donna; this time, it was
abundantly clear that the friend's motives are straight out of
Us
Weekly (think of kids you played with at age five and haven't spoken
to since -- would you ask one to be your unborn child's godmother?), and I
found myself admiring Madonna's graciousness in handling an awkward
situation. Who knows, maybe 20 years from now I'll take a look at
Justin Bieber: Never Say Never and be equally surprised. But I
really doubt it.
The English Patient (1996,
Anthony Minghella)
Movie remains frustratingly lopsided in a way the book apparently is not
-- judging from the synopsis, Kip has been neutered to the point of
near-irrelevance, functioning solely as a hirsute love interest for
Binoche's unfailingly spunky nurse. Which is particularly unfortunate
given that the North African flashbacks serve up the most
unapologetically swoony and old-fashioned eye-fuck romance of the modern
era. Some folks I know find Almásy's treason so unconscionable
that it retroactively poisons that whole relationship, but there's a
reason why his present-tense incarnation is extra-crispy -- his actions
are understood but by no means celebrated or condoned. Or maybe I'm just
inclined to be forgiving because sexual chemistry as credibly palpable as
that between Fiennes and Scott Thomas is so rare. Minghella's acute
understanding of human nature is most evident here in Almásy's
futile efforts to resist temptation, and Fiennes savvily plays the
Count's hostility toward Katherine as genuine, as if he resents the power
she has over him and hates her for embodying his inevitable betrayal. All
that stuff is smokin' (except for the too-pointed Herodotus anecdote,
which has no purpose save clumsy foreshadowing), which means it's a bit
of a drag every time the movie returns to the Italian villa and its
comparative non-entities. Strange that Minghella wound up receiving his
greatest acclaim for this very uncharacteristic picture; while he handles
the scale reasonably well, it's mostly small, intimate moments that
connect. If you've read the book: Does Almásy tell Katherine "I
just want you to know that I'm not missing you yet," and does she
tenderly reply "You will" and then immediately bonk her head into a pole?
'Cause that's handled as
dryly
and fleetingly as one could possibly hope for.
Now, Forager (2012, Jason
Cortlund & Julia Halperin)
Nothing could be dumber than that title (for a fiction feature -- might
work for a doc, which I was shocked to discover this ain't), but the film
strives mightily to live down to it all the same, contaminating its
already precious milieu -- neo-hippies who make a meager living finding
and selling wild mushrooms -- with possibly the single douchiest
character I've ever seen, predictably portrayed by co-writer/-director
Cortlund. (I knew it must be him simply because nobody else would ever
cast someone that singularly unappealing.) Quickly creates a rift between
its central couple, who seem to have nothing in common save their mutual
love for fungi, and then sticks fast to the one we cannot stand; the fact
that the movie clearly knows he's insufferable in no way helps.
The French Connection (1971,
William Friedkin) 
A first-rate procedural that also aspires to serve as a compelling
character study and never really quite gets there. Apart from the random
"pick your feet in Poughkeepsie" bit, Popeye Doyle is kept far too busy
doing actual police work to establish a personality more distinct than
generic hothead, which makes the film's last few seconds feel like a Hail
Mary bid for psychological depth -- Friedkin and Hackman just haven't
earned an ending that startlingly unresolved. (It's still kinda thrilling,
though, especially when you consider that this was a box-office smash and
Best Picture winner. Them were the days.) All of the standout sequences
function virtually without regard to the
dramatis personae: You
could put Frank Bullitt behind the wheel of that LeMans during the
high-speed chase (still the most insanely harrowing ever filmed, for my
money, and I've seen
The Burglars), or have Harry Callahan perform
the beautifully orchestrated subway-car minuet with Fernando Rey (cat and
mouse at its finest), and it wouldn't make an iota of difference. It's a
pungent portrait of a bust with delusions of grandeur. And am I the only
one utterly let down by the scene in which they tear the car apart
searching for the heroin (which oddly prefigures Hackman destroying his
apartment looking for the microphone at the end of
The
Conversation)? So much screen time is expended on this that you're
primed for the hiding place to be diabolically clever, and then the dude
just says, in effect, "I looked everywhere except the guest bathroom" --
and, sure enough, it's in the guest bathroom. WHY DID YOU NOT LOOK THERE.
