Archive for Movies & TV

Monday Post-Oscar Thoughts

March 8, 2010 / / 3 comments

Was this the dullest Oscars ever? Quite possibly. The only real drama was whether Cablevision and ABC would come to terms in time; they did, but we Cablevision subscribers missed the opening schtick. What I saw of Baldwin & Martin left me profoundly unimpressed; Martin was much funnier when he had the gig solo. Plus, most of the presenter humor was worse than in the past, and that’s going a ways.

There were no surprises among the winners. Of the four acting awards, 3 were a sure thing and one almost as sure, and none surprised. Congratulations to Kathryn Bigelow for being the first woman to win Best Director. Not that the glass ceiling is all shattered or anything.

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Monday Movie Review: (500) Days of Summer

February 15, 2010 / / 2 comments

(500) Days of Summer (2009) 4/10
Tom (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) meets Summer (Zooey Deschanel) and begins a romance that we know from the outset will end. Title cards show us which of the 500 days we are looking at in each of the scrambled-time-sequence scenes.

About half the reviews I’ve seen of (500) Days of Summer were delighted and laudatory. Most of the others suggested that the movie was too cutesy and self-satisfied with its own happy cuteness. In response to those, I thought, Wow, sounds like the movie for me! I love cute. Finally, some reviews suggested that the movie was sexist, and while I don’t love that, I love movies, and a lot of them are sexist. I survive.

Boy, was I not prepared for the hellfest that was (500) Days of Summer.

First of all, cute just doesn’t cover it. Cloyingly cute. Smugly cute. Derivatively cute. Me shouting at my TV “STFU with your cuteness you stupid cute thing!” cute. Dude, you are not Ferris Bueller, stop trying to trick me into thinking so. Your cute checklist is so obvious! Wise-beyond-her-years preteen, adorable musical moment, cute jobs (at a greeting card company, of all things), cute drunkeness, and Zooey Cute-chanel.

Now, all of this is not to say that the movie isn’t often witty. It is sometimes well-written, and its stars are six kinds of awesome. My love of Joseph Gordon-Levitt is well-established at this point. And yes, there were several times I laughed out loud. Even during greeting card scenes.

But in order to fully examine what’s wrong with this movie, we have to move on to the sexism. By which I mean, the deep-seated misogyny. The movie opens with three screens of white text on a plain black background: (1) The following is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental. (2) Especially you Jenny Beckman. (3) Bitch.

When I saw that, my stomach knotted up. Anything that followed, no matter how cute, was now tainted by this angry, gendered outburst. Later, during one of the late-relationship days (circa 280), Tom writes a greeting card that says: Roses are red, violets are blue, Fuck you, whore. Fuck you, whore. For the record, Summer has not cheated on Tom; the only thing she’s done to warrant being called a whore is to be female and hurt Tom’s feelings. There’s just this deep undercurrent of misogyny throughout the film, and again, no matter how sweetly it’s painted, how do you forget that? Even the final scene, which is obviously going to be about closure and moving on, seems pointedly designed to erase Summer as if she no longer deserves to exist.

So I dunno. Some people liked it. But if you’re reading my reviews and going by my opinion, I have to tell you, Do Not See This Movie.

Monday Movie Reviews: Quick Hits

February 8, 2010 / / Comments Off on Monday Movie Reviews: Quick Hits

Escape From Alcatraz: Clint Eastwood stars in a real-life escape story set in 1960. Directed by Don Siegel.
Everything you’d expect from a Siegel movie of the 1970s. Hard-boiled, intelligently spare, ultra-masculine, pacing that grips you like a vise. Clint Eastwood & Don Siegel were such a great collaboration. 8/10

Lady Sings the Blues: Biopic of Billie Holiday, replete with gritty drug addiction, starring Diana Ross.
I’d heard, long ago, that this was a bad movie. Recently, some folks in some film discussions praised it highly, so I decided to see for myself. Dear Gods, this is bad. 4/10

Quigley Down Under:
Tom Selleck is the sharpshooter, Alan Rickman is the bad guy, in the Wild Wild Australian West.
You know I love Westerns. You know that. But this one is just so-so. San Giacomo’s crazy lady thing is way too over the top, and everything else is serviceable and by-the-numbers, except in Australia instead of the American West. Alan Rickman is always a great bad guy, and Selleck is pleasingly macho without being a jerk; he actually has a lot of soul. 7/10.

Revolutionary Road: Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio really goddamn hate suburban life.
I got about 20-25 minutes into this horror before I gave up. Histrionic, obvious, and obnoxious, full of tell-instead-of-show, and just relentlessly loud. Unbearable. 3/10

Movies of the decade

January 6, 2010 / / 7 comments

I’ve been working on this list for over a week! It’s totally personal and utterly not comprehensive, since I’ve missed more movies than I’ve seen, hated movies everybody loved, and loved movies despite themselves. But that’s me. Original reviews are linked where available. Boy THAT took time.

The movie of the decade
Brokeback Mountain: Structurally, visually, emotionally; in every way, a perfect movie, with a wrenching romantic ache and a deep understanding of what it’s like to have no place and seek to find one. Few movies have moved me more. And really, this has got to typify the decade, doesn’t it? The great acting, the emergence of amazing young talent, including the loss of that talent, the internationalism of the production (a Chinese director and an Australian star) in a quintessentially American milieu, and of course, the importance of gay themes in this decade.

Top ten (with two cheats) favorites of the decade—here are movies that don’t need a decade-end list for me to list them as favorites; they’ve moved to my permanent favorites list (long though it is):
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Monday Movie Review: Up in the Air

January 4, 2010 / / Comments Off on Monday Movie Review: Up in the Air

Up in the Air (2009) 9/10
Ryan Bingham (George Clooney) travels over 300 days a year on business, and is most at home in airports and hotels. He considers his unattached life a virtue that he is teaching to Natalie (Anna Kendrick) a newcomer to his company. Directed by Jason Reitman.

It is obvious that Up in the Air is about connection. Hell, it’s in the tagline (The story of a man ready to make a connection. Haha, get it?) Ryan Bingham is deeply disconnected, and doesn’t see the problem with that. He has no connection to any kind of home, he is more comfortable using a suitcase than a closet, and his family relationships are as minimal as he can keep them. And surely there are dozens of movies about disconnected people finding that they need love after all, although perhaps the movies have never seen a character as committed to his disconnect as Bingham. Hell, he’s a motivational speaker on the subject! Bingham isn’t a cad or a cheat, he’s utterly honest about who and what he is, and apparently at peace with it.

I’m drawn to a comparison with Alfie, but Michael Caine’s Alfie is a scumbag and a cad from the get-go, and he lies about who and what he is as often as possible, except to the fourth wall.

At another level, Up in the Air is not just about connection but efficiency, and that has more subtlety. It’s easy, even facile to say, we all need connection, even loners like Ryan Bingham. It’s quite another to notice that the quest for efficiency; faster, easier, smarter, better-packaged, more-streamlined, and less-painful, is itself disconnected and leads to disconnection. Bingham’s life is perfectly streamlined, his suitcase is perfectly packed, its wheels do not stick. He may be racist in choosing who to stand behind at airport security, but the fact is he gets through security quite easily. And if you’ve been to an airport lately, well, that’s not nothing.

But can we have this efficiency and connection? Up in the Air sees a dotted line between them, as a life without friends and loved ones is obviously more streamlined, and the explicit way in which caring “weighs you down” is a motif. This is smarter and deeper than it sounds, because it is presented with wit and gentle humor, and also because we really want both; we really want our love but also to get the fuck through airport security. So Bingham is truly speaking to us in a way that, at first, we listen to.

This may well be George Clooney’s finest moment. He is incredibly nuanced, and every line has layers and layers of presence and personality. There’s a scene, late in the film, in which he gives a speech he’s given before, and I had no doubt that it was time for A Movie Thing to happen, but I also knew that it didn’t need to happen, because just the subtle shift in his tone of voice told the whole tale. It was exquisite.

At the beginning of the movie, Bingham meets Alex (Vera Farmiga), a woman apparently as unfettered as himself. It’s one of the film’s best scenes, as they heat each other up talking about car rental upgrades and mileage rewards. She’s absolutely perfect in this film as well, warm and real despite having very little character on which to hang her hat.

The whole cast is solid, the film looks just right, the script is a dream of humor and pathos and poignancy, flowing with enormous grace, and hey, did I mention Clooney? No really, Clooney’s performance is everything any actor can hope for. There are no big gut-wrenching moments here, no tearing your hair out for the Academy, just subtle, deep, honest work from beginning to end.

The previews sell this film as an adorable sort of thing, but it’s not The Bucket List. Up in the Air is truthful about the cost of an efficient life, and is not interested in pulling punches.

Monday Movie Review: Dogfight

December 7, 2009 / / One comment

Dogfight (1991) 8/10
It’s November 1963. A group of Marines on liberty has a “dogfight;” a contest to see who can bring the ugliest date. Corporal Eddie Birdlace (River Phoenix) brings Rose (Lili Taylor), but finds there’s more to her than he’d thought. Directed by Nancy Savoca.

This is a waaaay below-the-radar movie (the IMDb tells me it was almost but not quite direct-to-video). Hanging out on movie discussion boards, I end up hearing about, and renting, an awful lot of obscure and interesting movies, but I had never heard of this one until my sister and I were discussing Lili Taylor (we do that sometimes) and she mentioned this movie. So I added it to my Netflix, but you know how that goes, it’s a big list. Then we were discussing Lili Taylor again (we do that sometimes) and it came up again, so I moved it to the top of my list, and here we are.

Dogfight exists in the small spaces between things said. It is not interested in being demonstrative. There aren’t a lot of histrionics in this film, and opportunities to go overboard are kind of shied away from. There was one spot in particular where I felt like the movie was telling me, ‘Don’t worry, we’re not going there,’ in a way I appreciated. For example, most of the action takes place on the night of November 21, 1963. The Kennedy assassination looms, and indeed, we ultimately see a news report, and people’s faces as they watch. But the assassination is not a centerpiece of the film. It is more that, in the days before, we are breathing the last of a particular kind of air; an innocent air that Americans will never again breathe. We don’t need to see a lot of weeping and rendering of garments to know that.

When Eddie Birdlace picks up Rose because he spots her as a “dog” he’s a jerk, but warm enough that we understand why Rose says yes. Later, Rose finds out what kind of invitation it actually was, and it is in the course of his efforts at apology that the audience, Rose, and Eddie himself discover that he cares about being kind, and decent, and a gentleman.

Contrasting Eddie and Rose’s gentle and tentative evening are Birdlace’s three buddies on a more typical leave. The four of them comprise the “Four Bees;” four Marines who became friends standing in formation in alphabetical order (their names begin with B). After the dogfight, Eddie goes off on his own while the other Bees drink, get in fights, get tattooed, and get serviced by a prostitute. Eddie is one of these men after all, even if he is also the guy seeking forgiveness for insulting a nice girl.

Rose is not just a “nice girl” and the object of Eddie’s self-realization. She’s a complex and human character. Intensely awkward, she is obsessed with folk music and longs to change the world through peaceful action, but she’s tied to a family-owned coffee shop and a mother who appears strict and controlling. As the proto-hippie opposite a military man, she could easily be shrill or cliché, but she’s also observant and self-possessed. She challenges Eddie when he starts in being nasty to a snooty maitré de, and because he is being nasty, and because it won’t end well, her challenge isn’t just some peacenik versus soldier scenario, but an angry boy with no life skills being schooled by a girl with nothing on her plate that pleases people except a sweet nature and a pocketful of insight. I like that she goes along with Eddie, but doesn’t swallow bullshit for the sake of going along. I like that she finds a way to express herself in a way that is uniquely hers, and I like the way she makes her own decisions, so that ultimately it is Eddie being led by Rose, not the other way around.

I imagine there must be ten thousand ways for this movie to have ended the wrong way. I was surprised by the ending, and kind of said “wha?,” and then I was terribly, terribly pleased.

Monday Movie Review: The Omega Man

November 30, 2009 / / 2 comments

The Omega Man (1971) 8/10
Robert Neville (Charlton Heston) is the only survivor of biological war. With the world dying of plague, Neville developed a vaccine too late; and only he was treated. Everyone else is dead or mutated into vampire-like creatures lead by Matthias (Anthony Zerbe) that are blinded by daylight.

Giving a numeric rating to a cult classic is kind of a fool’s game. You know there’s a cheese factor, you know there are things that are overblown, and yet that’s part of its charm. I like to take my movies seriously, and I seriously think that Omega Man is a terrific movie, but there are definitely major flaws.

For one thing, the soundtrack is horrific. It’s a nightmare of seventies-style sweetness. At one point, Neville plays Theme from a Summer Place on the radio, and that’s pretty much the tone of the whole thing, including during the scary, horror, and action sequences. The soundtrack actively works against any tension the movie successfully builds (which is considerable). The other major flaw is the direction of the action sequences. Whether it’s a car chase or a fist fight, it’s very staged and posed and transparent; groan-worthy.

And yes, Omega Man is overblown. It sells its message too hard, and paints its metaphors with too broad a brush. But given the moody atmospherics, the intensity of the last-man-on-Earth scenario, and a powerful flow of events, I really don’t mind the broad brush.

Lots of people criticize Charlton Heston’s acting, but he holds the screen like a magnet. It requires something special to be alone on screen, babbling to your household objects, and retain audience interest. Heston’s dynamic presence makes it work. Is Neville crazy or just lonely? We are never sure, but neither is he, and that makes him sympathetic. It turns out, of course, that Neville is not the last man on Earth, and his vulnerability in the sudden presence of people after years alone is touching.

Matthias, we learn, is a former news reporter watching the plague unfold and reporting on it. Gradually, he comes to hate the technology that is destroying the world, and before succumbing, he has already turned his news broadcasts into polemics. Now, he is the cult leader of the mutant victims, called “the Family,” they celebrate the scars on their skin as cleansing them of the world’s sin. All this is very over the top, which, let’s face it, is what you want when you cast Anthony Zerbe. The Family is a mishmash that serves to criticize witch hunts, superstition, religious fervor, and anti-science bias, but the reality is that science did destroy the world. The Family is vile, monstrous, and not entirely wrong.

This is all very juicy stuff; our lone heroic survivor paints an iconic figure even before the messianic metaphors start flying. Visuals of an empty and abandoned Los Angeles are stunning, and paint a sharp contrast with Neville’s home, fully of knick-knacks, art, science, and luxury. My overall assessment is that Omega Man absolutely earns its cult status.

Monday Movie Review: I’ve Loved You So Long

November 2, 2009 / / One comment

I’ve Loved You So Long (Il y a longtemps que je t’aime) (2008) 8/10
Juliette (Kristin Scott Thomas) has just gotten out of prison after fifteen years, and moves in with her sister, brother-in-law, and young niece.

I’ve Loved You So Long is a quiet film, quietly watching a broken woman be…broken. We don’t know about Juliette’s crime at first; as an American viewer, I did not at first realize that 15 years was an incredibly long sentence in the French prison system; a French viewer would know right away that the crime must be terrible indeed. Yet it is quickly clear to anyone that the revelation of the crime will be the film’s dramatic center. Perhaps the major flaw of the film is the obviousness of this structure: We know we’re building to The Big Confession, and when it comes, there’s a certain self-consciousness to it. Don’t get me wrong: It’s a moving scene, and Thomas is amazing, it’s just that it’s been over-broadcast; nothing can live up to a whole movie building to that one scene.

Which is a shame, because I’ve Loved You So Long excels in the small scenes. Thomas’s acting is delicate, and as she struggles to interact in a normal way, as she seeks work, as she tries to joke, she reveals herself and her story without apparent effort. She is like a vision of feeling; so obviously agonized that the denouement is almost unnecessary. As we begin to know how terrible Juliette’s crime is, we also can see, through her every pore, her regret and sorrow, and we cannot condemn her.

Of course, her family and the people who know her have struggles of their own. There is, apparently, a monster in their midst, but also a sister, a lovely woman, a friend. How to manage this contradiction?

Although freed from prison, Juliette is still imprisoned by her own deep loss and pain, and in allowing herself to be so raw, Kristin Scott Thomas shows us how many of us are truly imprisoned by invisible walls.

Monday Movie Reviews: Quick hits

October 19, 2009 / / 6 comments

I may do a few of these three-at-a-time jobs until I get caught up.

The French Lieutenant’s Woman (1981) 7/10
Meryl Streep is a “fallen woman” in Victorian England, and Jeremy Irons is a man who becomes obsessed with her. At the same time, Streep and Irons are actors filming a movie about these Victorian characters.

To a great extent, I Don’t Get It. I really don’t. I didn’t feel like the juxtaposition added anything to the story. I know it has Deep Meaning, but that meaning is obtuse to me.

The Fountain (2006) 5/10
Hugh Jackman is Tomas, a conquistador serving Queen Isabella (Rachel Weisz). At the same time, he is Tommy, a research scientist, and Izzi is his dying wife. There’s also a big bubble with a tree.

Speaking of I Don’t Get It. This is not the same situation as The French Lieutenant’s Woman; this is a purposely obtuse movie so in love with its Big Ideas that it forgets there’s an audience who might like to follow along.

Hugh Jackman naked, though.

Dreamland (2006) 7/10
Audrey (Agnes Bruckner) and Callista (Kelli Garner) are best friends in a trailer park in the middle of nowhere. Audrey cares for her drunk, phobic father (John Corbett). When a cute new guy (Justin Long) moves in, the stress of longing to be more and the desire for the same boy stir things up.

This is a lovely little coming of age movie, very gentle and enjoyable. It relies a tad too much on cliché, and is perhaps not exactly fascinating, but I enjoyed it.

Monday Movie Review: Whip It

October 5, 2009 / / 3 comments

Whip It (2009) 6/10
Bliss (Ellen Page) is a beauty pageant teen from Nowheresville, Texas who finds herself, and romance, through roller derby. Directed by Drew Barrymore.

Whip It is a pleasant movie that works on a number of levels. It’s fun, it has some laughs, it has an admirable cast. But Drew Barrymore, in her film directorion debut, can’t really decide what movie she wants to make. Is it the story of the rough-and-tumble world of roller derby? Then give us more rough and more world. Is it a teen romance? Then make the backdrop less interesting than roller derby, because you’re doing it a disservice.

I do like the movie, but not as much as I want to. There are so few that pass the Bechdel Movie Test, and so few that allow women to break out of the constraints that the film industry places on us, that when one like this comes along, I wnant it to be excellent, and Whip It is not that.

It’s kind of a female awakening movie, about Bliss toughening up and finding herself, and I think it does a pretty good job of that, except that the romance, as charming as young Landon Pigg is, doesn’t serve that purpose. It’s a sweet romance, but we already knew Bliss was sweet, so we’re not moving in the direction of true transformation.

Every transformation movie has a struggle with its star, either before or after. Generally before: Is Audrey Hepburn really all that bedraggled a flower girl? I think there are actresses who could have played a young beauty queen and done the roller derby convincingly. Maybe Ellen Page is that actress, but she’s not asked to really pull it off here.

Let’s start with “before.” The look created for her mom (the extraordinary-as-always Marcia Gay Harden) suggests the filmmakers actually know what a pageant contestant looks like, but Ellen Page is not that girl. She is free of hairspray and lacquer, her custom gown doesn’t emphasize her figure, her eye makeup is underplayed. She’s a sweet, slight, pretty girl. And then there’s “after,” during which she becomes a…sweet, slight, pretty girl who’s kind of fast and somewhat tougher than before.

Her edginess is all very “Hey, I saw her in Juno!” She wears the Doc Martens and the print skirts with rock t-shirts, and she disses her small town life. But beyond that? Not terribly edgy until the end, and it’s not enough. (Besides which, how does her mother either not notice that Doc Martens do not equal beauty queen and maybe there’s a disconnect with what her daughter really wants, OR not put her foot down and make her daughter pretty up all the time?)

Did I mention the romance was sweet? I loved the romance. But it didn’t belong in this particular movie. It stole screen time from real character development for Bliss and for her roller derby compatriots, who were potentially very interesting.

As it was, it was a pleasant couple of hours spent with a movie that might have been so much more.

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