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RED: Lesser known films. PURPLE: Lee's comments |
C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America (2004) Aided by his foreign allies, Lee triumphs at Gettysburg and soon sweeps into Washington. Lincoln flees, disguised as a Negro, but is soon captured. (DW Griffith makes a movie about it, shows the cowardly Lincoln singing spirituals to prove he's really a darkie. "What kind of white man are you, suh?") Later, on film in 1905, exiled in Canada, Abe bitterly regrets he didn't take the slavery problem more seriously. ("If I could save the Union and not free a single slave, I would do it.") All this and much more is presented as a documentary by the British, seen uncensored in the CSA for the first time, as part of a new, feeble, tentative neo-abolitionist movement ...
You'd like to think the peculiar institution could not have survived into the 21st Century in any way, shape or form. This has to be a nightmare or a joke, right? Well, of course it is a nightmare, but it is no joke. Nothing in it struck me as completely implausible. The writer/director, Kevin Willmott, has given it all a lot of thought, and comes up with reasonable and logical sequences whereby it is possible to believe that the defeated North might come to embrace slavery. One thing not mentioned often in history books is that Negroes were not much liked in the North, not even after emancipation. Hell, look at the busing riots in South Boston in the 1970s if you don't believe me. In fact, many if not most abolitionists themselves considered Africans an inferior race; they just objected to chattel slavery, they didn't want them to marry their daughters, or even leave their rightful "place," which was below whites. An appeal to cupidity, that is, an economic incentive to own at least one slave in the form of a generous tax break from President Davis, would probably have gone down quite well.
We already know the outcome of the history, because the program is frequently interrupted for commercials for products like Niggerhair tobacco (a real product) and restaurants like the Coon Chicken Inn and Sambo's. Or how about little blue pills (with a zillion side effects, including death) to keep your "servants" happy and docile? Or shock bracelets to keep them from straying? It all makes you squirm, it's funny but you can't laugh. Damn it, could it have happened?
In 1999 I might have laughed it off, but we've seen a lot since then. We Americans have a stubborn streak in us, some might say boneheaded. A huge number of us practice a religious fundamentalism you'd have to go to Afghanistan to equal. These folks deny evolution, condemn homosexuality (it's in the Bible!), believe in some horseshit called "The Rapture." We are prepared to go it alone, morally, secure in the belief that we are right and all the rest of the civilized world is wrong. Capital punishment is a good example. Restrictive laws on stem cell research. I'm sure you can think of many others where only Americans seem to believe America is on the right course. Lately, it's the "War on Terror." Everybody else in the world sees we're creating many more terrorists than we're killing, but Americans can be bamboozled by bumper-sticker politics like "Stay the course!" and "Don't cut and run!"
In the face of world condemnation of American slavery, wouldn't Americans just dig in? I think they would. So, in 1935 Hitler could have been our ally, as in this movie. Our sole objection to his plans for Jewish genocide would be "Don't kill 'em; enslave 'em. They're a useful resource!"
Still don't believe me? Well, it's in the Bible, goddam it, and we know that anything that's in the Bible must be true:
Ephesians 6: 5-8
Slaves, be obedient to those who are your masters according to the
flesh, with fear and trembling, in the sincerity of your heart, as
to Christ; not by way of eyeservice, as men-pleasers, but as slaves
of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart. With good will
render service, as to the Lord, and not to men, knowing that
whatever good thing each one does, this he will receive back from
the Lord, whether slave or free.
I rest my case. IMDb.com
Caché (2005) ... means "hidden" in French. This just missed by a hair qualifying for the coveted Gerry Award, which we give out, when we are so moved, to the slowest, most obtuse and deliberately confusing movies of all time. This award never goes to Grade-Z movies, flicks that aspire to nothing. These special movies are made by internationally acclaimed directors, and more often than not, are lauded by the critics. The Gerry Award is our way of shouting out "The Emperor has no clothes!" Roger Ebert and many others gave it their highest rating. BALONEY!!!
It starts well, sort of living up to the "Hitchcockian" description on the box, though even here it is very, very slow. It is an intriguing situation: somebody is videotaping the comings and goings of a couple and sending them the tapes, along with disturbing drawings involving bleeding cut throats. The spying, and the husband's reaction to it, begins to affect their lives, badly. There is one genuinely startling scene. The suspense builds ... but around 2/3 of the way through I knew the enigma was not going to be solved. No one ever looked for the cameras, which must have been easy to find. Something existential is going on here, divorced from what we think of as reality. Then the credits start to roll.
Reading Mr. E's review, I was led to put the disk back in and go to the last scene, where some sort of revelation was supposed to be happening. (By then I was so bored I wasn't even watching, and the "revelation" happens down in the left-hand corner of a long, static shot like 40 others long, static shots in the picture.) The revelation was a bust. There was no meaning to this film, no solution, and that can be cool ... but you need a lot more going for you than this movie has to make it work. Zero Stars, Roger!!! And a solid First Runner-up for the Gerrys, which as you all know, means that if for any reason, like the seizure and burning of the negative by an angry mob, the Gerry winner cannot complete its duties as Most Awful, Caché will be asked to fill in. I liked it. IMDb.com
Calendar Girls (2003) A movie in the pattern of The Full Monty, and not all I had hoped it would be. Good fun, but it’s become a bit of a formula by now. And according to things I read, it was considerably altered from the real story to make it ... well, more formula. IMDb.com
California Split (1974) In 1970 Robert Altman came barreling out of nowhere with M*A*S*H, on my personal Top 25 Best Films Ever List. Well ... not exactly. He had actually served a 20-year apprenticeship in series television (everything from "Peter Gunn" and "Maverick" and "Bonanza" to "The Gale Storm Show" and "The Millionaire") and made a few minor movies. But nothing prior to 1970 would have hinted that he had a movie like M*A*S*H in him. It was revolutionary in more ways than I could count. It came out the same year as Catch-22, based on the best anti-war book ever written, and directed by hotshot Mike Nichols ... and completely blew it away. For the next 5 years he made a string of movies hardly ever matched by a Hollywood director before finally coming a cropper with Buffalo Bill and the Indians. Not every one of them was a box-office smash, and California Split is the most obscure of them. Until recently it wasn't even available on video. And I can't understand why, because it's as good as any film he ever made.
It is a story about two gambling addicts, played wonderfully by George Segal and Elliot Gould, but like so many Altman films, it isn't really about anything as simple as that. It's a series of episodes, and in a normal film about gamblers it would chronicle a steady descent into desperation and, at the end, either redemption or final ruin. There's really no other way to go when you're talking about compulsive gamblers, right?
Wrong. Altman isn't interested in moral lessons or tales of triumph. He simply shows us some guys who aren't alive unless they have some action. They'll bet on anything, and seeing them in their sleazy natural habitats, and the crazed characters that surround them, is the real delight of this film. Then Segal gets desperate, he owes a lot of money to a guy you don't want to cross, and decides to solve his problem by—what else?—making a big, big win in Reno. Not bloody likely, right?
Wrong. He wins very big, and we are exhilarated along with him, and agonized along with Gould, who is banished from the games by Segal because he's bringing bad luck ... and then Altman goes one step further, which is to show the emptiness after the big win, the momentary realization by both of them that it isn't about winning, for them. It's about action. You know they will blow the big score, and so do they. But who cares, as long as you have some action ... IMDb.com
(2003) A pale imitator of Fame, some of it astonishingly amateurish. Some of the worst acting and writing I’ve ever seen. IMDb.comCandide (2005) (PBS "Great Performances" DVD) So far as I know, Leonard Bernstein only had one flop, and this is it. In 1956 it ran for 73 shows, to critical disdain. But the cast album was a hit, and ever since people have been tinkering with it. What was wrong the first time? Some say it was a heavy-handed book by Lillian Hellman. Some say the story wasn't right for the time, like Bob Fosse's Chicago, which didn't catch on until the revival. Harold Prince brought Candide back in 1974 with a new book by Hugh Wheeler, who worked with Stephen Sondheim on A Little Night Music, Pacific Overtures, and Sweeney Todd. (Did you know Sweeney is currently lensing [as they say in Variety] in London, helmed by Tim Burton and starring Johnny Depp? I can hardly wait!) The story and songs in this new version had been tweaked by Sondheim and others, including Dorothy Parker. Considering she'd been dead for seven years at the time, I assume this was a project long in gestation. I'm just as glad I missed this version, as they seem to have jettisoned half of Bernstein's music! What were they thinking?
I have a soft spot in my heart for Candide. The Nederland, Texas, High School Band (2nd Chair French horn: John Varley) performed the overture, and it was one of the toughest pieces of music we ever tackled. It has become part of the standard concert repertoire, always a crowd pleaser with its pleasing themes, rollicking tempo changes, dramatic swoops and flourishes. Most people don't know the rest of the music score, but I'm familiar with most of it. But I'd never seen it staged.
... and maybe I still haven't. Depends on what you mean by "staged." Several reviewers of this performance call it "semi-staged." This is to distinguish it from "concert performances," such as I've seen on videotape of Sondheim's Follies. This format is like a dramatic reading, with songs. Actors stand before the orchestra, maybe with a script in hand, and do the play with no scenery or movements.
I'll confess to a weakness for seeing something new and experimental, especially when it comes to older works. I'm up for almost anything. Lee and I have seen The Mikado set in Texas (The Mikado, Y'all!), and the Eric Idle version set in an English seaside hotel. Loved them both. (The Mikado has absolutely nothing to do with Japan.) I liked Baz Luhrman's Romeo + Juliet almost as much as the "authentic" version by Franco Zeffirelli. Sure, I like the old-fashioned stuff with costumes, set changes, and all that jazz, like My Fair Lady, The Music Man, Guys and Dolls. Vegas is getting into the act more and more, with mega-spectacles like The Producers and, opening tomorrow at the rebuilt "Grail Theater" at the Wynn, Spamalot. But the kind of things that intrigues me more are the giant turntable in Les Miserables, or the band on stage, singers and dancers sitting in the open until called on as in Chicago, or the no-frills, bare stage of A Chorus Line.
This Candide is a mixture. It ran only 4 performances (could have gone much longer, I'm sure) at the Avery Fisher. The "pit" orchestra was the New York Philharmonic (!!), under the baton of Marin Alsop, the foremost female conductor in the US, and former musical director of the Eugene Symphony in Oregon while I lived there. But the musicians weren't in the pit, they were right out there on stage, with Alsop in the center of things (she even had a line of dialogue). At the back of the hall were five rows of chorus singers, the front rows of which doubled as actors and soloists in the small parts. They did things like hold up signs to enhance the story. And the action took place on runways between the orchestra and chorus or out in front. No scenery, no costume changes, few props, but tons of sparkle and wit.
Comparing the various versions I will have to leave to those more versed in Broadway lore than I. Some strong views were expressed ("Bernstein is rolling over in his grave!"), but the majority seem to think that all the changes wrought were improvements on a rather turgid (except for the music) original. That sounds about right to me. I try to envision this frothy material done in period costumes, and I think it would be a hard sell. I don't know if the original had a narrator who later becomes part of the action as Dr. Pangloss, as in Into the Woods, but it works for me. I do know that in the original the character of "The Old Woman" had only one song, and as played here by Broadway legend Patti LuPone she has five. Works for me. I could listen to her sing all night, and the lady can act as well, anything from Noises Off to extensive appearances in Shakespeare's plays. (In this Candide, the cast got so tired of calling her The Old Woman that they finally referred to her as Patti LuPone, to much laughter.)
There are a lot of jokes like that. When LuPone first makes her appearance, the orchestra begins and it looks like she is about to sing, but Cunegonde stops them and says, forcefully, "My song," and waits for the diva to slink offstage. "Donald Trump" is brought on to do some firing. This is in the operetta tradition of Gilbert and Sullivan, where it is standard practice to add topical verses to such songs as the Lord High Executioner's "I've Got a Little List."
The music is performed perfectly, and the singing is great, led by LuPone and 4' 11" firecracker Kristin Chenoweth, who I know mostly from her role in the last seasons of "The West Wing" as Annabeth Schott, upon whom six-footer Allison Janney as C.J. Cregg once looked down on and said "It's hard to believe we're the same species." I had no idea Chenoweth could sing, but my oh my, she can! She has a glorious soprano voice and completely owns the upper register. (I used to find operatic sopranos excruciating, but I don't anymore. I wonder if it's hearing loss?) She is terrific in Cunegonde's aria "Glitter and Be Gay," which I understand is very tough to sing. It sure sounds like it.
The man playing Candide is not someone I've ever heard of, but his voice is great, as is the fellow playing Pangloss. All in all, a wonderful evening at the operetta. IMDb.com
Capote (2005) By now the events surrounding the massacre of the Clutter family in Kansas have passed into legend, into the cultural filing cabinet along with Jack the Ripper and other horrors we know entirely too much about. This event would have been long forgotten except for Truman Capote's book and the later movie In Cold Blood. I've never read it, but I saw the movie, and have heard a lot of things from people who did read it. Who are unanimous in feeling it was a great achievement.
I have to keep reminding myself, "non-fiction novels" and movies are not history. Or, if they are, they are much less reliable than the footnoted and corroborated tomes we used to read for history. The movie of the book took liberties. Here we have a movie about the writing of the book ... and what are we to think of that? We are shown Truman Capote's gradual descent into moral bankruptcy. Already a practiced liar and self-promoter, by the end of the five-year ordeal he had very few principles left ...
... according to the movie. Truman's not around to speak up for himself. (Click here to see a picture of Varley with Capote!) We see Truman waiting desperately for Perry Smith to unburden himself as to what actually happened, not so much because he cares but because it takes him the next-to-last step toward the end of the book. We see Capote in a massive depression because the execution keeps getting stayed, which is the worst thing that could happen ... to Truman. His concerns for Smith by now seem either faked or a bit late.
But what do we know? Only Capote was in that cell when Perry told his story. If he did. Sometimes some of the lines seem a bit ... convenient. "I liked him ... right up to when I cut his throat." Great line for a movie. Hmmmmm....
But that aside, ignoring questions I might have about accuracy ... this is a fine, fine movie. The multiple layers of ambiguity work just fine. Soon we are in a moral morass that it is impossible to easily sort out, and that's the sign of a good movie. Philip Seymour Hoffman is so good he actually seems smaller than he really is. Bravo to the Academy. A richly deserved Best Actor win. IMDb.com
(2003) As good a documentary as I’ve ever seen on the elusive nature of "truth," and how unlikely it often is for things to work out as neatly as they usually do in books and on television. A high school teacher and his son are accused of child molestation. Everybody lies, there is a Crucible sort of witch hunt, and at the end you don’t know where you stand. You can be certain that the father actually molested one child because he admits it. As for the rest, it’s all up in the air. Fascinating. IMDb.comCarandirú (Brazil/Argentina, 2003) Prisons are different south of the Rio Grande. I’m not saying those in the US are a lot of fun, but I suspect most prisoners in Attica or Leavenworth would elect to spend ten years there rather than do two or three in a Mexican or Brazilian slammer. Carandiru in Sao Paolo was a particularly bad one, and this is its story. Basically, the prisoners ran it, the only function of the guards being to prevent escapes. There were places in the prison where the guards didn’t dare go at all. This is the true story of a time in that prison, shortly before a riot, witnessed by a doctor who had free run of the place, protected because the inmates respected and needed him. It’s no secret that the movie ends in a riot, that the army was called in to stop it, and that over a hundred prisoners were killed. The army said they were merely protecting themselves. No soldiers died, or were injured. You figure it out. IMDb.com
Cars (2006) First feature at the drive-in. IMDb.com
(2003) A John Sayles movie. I like his stuff and this was ... okay. Rita Moreno had a supporting role. It never quite all came together, though. IMDb.comCasablanca (1942) See Top 25 Favorite Movies. IMDb.com
The Cat in the Hat (2003) No, I didn’t see this. I don’t like the strip, I don’t like cats, and just seeing the trailer was enough to make me cough up a giant hairball. I envision that watching this movie would be like sucking shit out of Garfield’s ass. I’d rather empty a litter box with my tongue than go see it. I’m thinking of spraying all over my home, marking my territory, to be sure this raggedy-ass puss knows better than to come in and claw up my furniture. Is that enough cat jokes? Okay. Don’t like cats, huh? So, why have you been making friends with the semi-feral Himalayan tomcat that hangs out at the Ocean Breeze? IMDb.com
Catwoman (2004) Double feature with The Village. IMDb.com
Catch Me If You Can (2002) Highly overrated. Not really much going for it at all, even with the great Tom Hanks. Spielberg really ought to stick to the epic form, he’s not very good with these smaller, more personal stories. IMDb.com
Cavedweller (2004) About 12 years ago a woman fled her abusive husband in Georgia, abandoning her two daughters. She had another girl by a rock musician, they tour, have a good life, and then she leaves him and he dies in a car wreck. Their daughter blames the mom for his death. Mom decides to go back to Georgia and re-unite her family. This is an obviously hair-brained scheme, none of the children want it, the older ones barely remember her and don’t much care for her. Her abusive husband is dying of cancer. By the end things are relatively peaceful, but I’m not optimistic about the long run. Didn’t care for it except for a good performance by Kyra Sedgwick. IMDb.com
The Caveman's Valentine (2001) A classically trained pianist has suffered a mental breakdown and lives in a cave in New York City. You can't help thinking of David Helfgott in Shine. But Romulus Ledbetter is not as appealing as Helfgott, he is an in-your-face paranoid schizo who probably smells bad, and his family is aware of where he is. A friend of his is murdered, and he sets out to somehow solve the mystery while at the same time staying only marginally sane. Samuel L Jackson is very good here, as always, but it began to seem too unlikely. IMDb.com
Cellular (2004) A good thriller is hard to find in these over-the-top days. That’s why I really treasure movies like The Bourne Identity and sequel, The Italian Job (both versions), and this little gem. I’m not saying you can believe any of these films, the real world doesn’t operate like that, but they don’t insult your intelligence. But this movie skillfully alternates between pretty good action, some very funny scenes, and really harrowing stuff. It has a heroine/victim who keeps doing the right, smart thing (until one little mistake at the end, which I warned her about, but did she listen?), and two heroes who are just ordinary guys in over their heads and still managing to cope. I laughed out loud, and I rooted for these people. Highly recommended. IMDb.com
Charade (1963) Treat yourself. Ignore that abomination of a remake, The Truth About Charlie, and find this one on the classics shelf. Maybe the best comedy-thriller ever made. IMDb.com
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005) See, here’s the deal ... Neither of us had seen Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, so we decided to rent it and watch it before we saw this. Underwhelmed. The music was insipid, the SFX were primitive, even for the time. Hated the Oompa Loompahs. Wondered if the ending was the one Roald Dahl wrote. So I decided to read the book.
Maybe I’d have loved it if I’d been the right age. There were good things in it, and I can see its appeal to a child. But it ain’t gonna go on my classic shelf.
Anyway, in a few weeks I had become something of an authority on chocolate factories, so I was curious to see this new version. Verdict: WW was very thin Nestle instant cocoa, made with skim milk; Charlie is the real double-fudge sundae with a cherry on top. In every way I can think of it is better than both the book and the original movie.
Take the Oompa Loompas. In the original book they were a race of pygmies, from Africa, who lived on horrible green caterpillars and were delighted to move in with Willie at his factory and eat scrumptious chocolate. Oopsa Loompa! Politically incorrect! In 1973 there was a nasty public debate between Dahl and Eleanor Cameron, another children’s author. He was pressured to re-write a few paragraphs, a few illustrations were changed, they became little white long-haired hippies. (And now the first edition, first state of the book goes for $5000, minimum.) I’m not going to get hot under the collar about that, except to state that I don’t approve of cleaning books up for whatever reason, any more than I’d like to see The Birth of a Nation digitally re-mastered so the Klan were ... Nazis, say, or drug dealers. Who will you have to change them into next century? Non-vegetarians?
Anyway,
Tim Burton
neatly split the difference. Instead of employing 6 munchkins, he
let one little brown guy (4’ 4”) named Deep Roy play all
the Oompa Loompas. Hundreds of them. (And for once justice
prevailed; he did so much work in the picture they had to pay him a
cool million!)
Take the music.
Anthony Newley was brilliant in
Stop the World, I Want to Get Off, but other than
that he’s not to my taste. I hated his songs. Tim Burton went back
to Dahl’s original poetry, and let that crazy man,
Danny Elfman, who has done some of
the best movie scores in the last two decades, come up with the
music, in four different genres, and hired some sort of genius
Oompaographer (uncredited; Burton himself?) to make the musical
numbers the real centerpieces of this flick, even better than the
sets, which are Oompa Fabulous.
Take Willie Wonka. Gene Wilder is very good ... at certain things. Willie Wonka is not one of them. Johnny Depp seems like he can take absolutely anything and make it his own. The part of Jack Sparrow in Pirates of the Caribbean was written well enough, but it was his screwy performance that made it work. Here, I loved his every line, every twitch of his mouth. People have been creeped out by the resemblance to Michael Jackson, and it’s certainly there ... but it is so, so clear that Willie is asexual, a child-man without the pedophilia.
Take the
ending. I can hear the Wonka purists (Wonka wonks?) hollering that
it was changed. It sure was ... and I really disliked the ending of
the book. This one worked for me. They added a sub-plot flashing
back to Willie’s childhood, and it was funny and poignant and
right. Which made the ending work in this movie, where it
didn’t work in either the book or the first movie.
In short, we both loved this movie. I’d see it again in a heartbeat.
A word about Deep Roy. Probably nobody will think of this, but I’d nominate him for Best Supporting Actor. Has anybody ever worked so hard in a movie, done so many things, worn so many costumes, and done it so well? We’re probably not ready for that, the Academy is too stodgy to realize that real acting can happen in an SFX extravaganza. Andy Serkis should have been nominated for the Lord of the Rings trilogy, but you know what? He’s listed 34th in the credits. Ridiculous! IMDb.com
The Charge of the Light Brigade (1968) (La Charge de la Brigade Claire ... wait a minute. This isn't a French film ... I don't speak French ... Ah, yes, it's an English film, in English, about a war against Russia in the Crimea to free the Turks, and the French are our allies ...
The commander of the British forces, Lord Raglan (John Gielgud), is a senile old poop who keeps forgetting that the damn frogs are his allies this time round, not his enemies. Luckily, he has aides around him who can remind him of his error. Not everyone is so lucky. Lord Lucan and Lord Cardigan (the magnificent actors Harry Andrews and Trevor Howard) are so consumed with their mutual antipathy that they send a lot of cavalry into a valley surrounded on all sides by cannons in the infamous cock-up immortalized by Tennyson in the tedious poem we all had to read in high school.
War, to the Victorians, was a jolly good show. Until they actually got into it personally, when it became a bit of a rum business. This movie, by the great Tony Richardson, is about the rum business of having incompetent officers. I don't know if they were actually the total bumblers as portrayed here (with a healthy helping satire), and one review I read flatly didn't believe it. I have no trouble believing it, especially when you realize how these officers got their commissions in the first place. They did it the old fashioned way: They bought them with inherited money. When your position in the chain of command is obtained by means of your old man's wealth and influence, the degree of incompetence knows no bounds. Just look at George W Bush. Anyway, how good at generalship could Cardigan and Raglan be, when history remembers one for a sweater and the other for a type of sleeve invented to fit over his missing arm, shot off at Waterloo? (A rum business, that. But we won! Jolly good show!)
The film is very, very good at atmosphere, at recreating the look of an era, and at pointing out the stupidity of the British class system and the horrors of war. It is enhanced by some awesome and funny animated bits. But there is something missing, and I guess it's a heart. Military history buffs should love it, and I was greatly impressed the first time I saw it, when it was new, less so this time. A big screen might have helped; watching the grand movements of ten thousand Turkish Army soldiers dressed up as British troops needs a larger canvas than a 25-inch screen. IMDb.com
Le charme discret de la bourgeoisie (The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie) (France / Italy / Spain,1972) The films of Luis Buñuel are not meant to be understood, he made that clear in his very first one, the seminal masterpiece Un chien andalou (1929), which he scripted and directed with Salvador Dali. The criterion there was that any time anything at all in the "story" started to make any sense, they would immediately cut it out and go off in a random direction. Despite that, critics who demand symbolism have studied An Andalusian Dog endlessly. What's the point? There's no Andalusian in the movie, and if there was a dog, I missed it. That was the point.
More than 50 years later, it's still the point in this movie. There's nothing discreet about it, but much that is charming. Perhaps it is about the bourgeoisie—there are many places where one could see biting satire about the upper middle class, the church, the military, just about any target you want to name—but that all seems too easy to me. The "charm" of this film is in its ability to delight me for no specific reason I could name. In the delightful way Buñuel pulls the rug out from under me not once, not twice, but a dozen times. In the nonsensical behavior of everyone involved. As in Dinner at Eight, these people spend a lot of time getting ready to eat, but never get a bite. Deep philosophical meaning in that? Oh, well, maybe so. Maybe it's an existential absurdist version of "food movies," like Babette's Feast or Tampopo or Chocolat. Only people are eating off empty plates. And with that deep thought I will leave you, as I'm late I'm late I'm late I'm late for a tennis match with David Hemmings over at Mike Antonioni's house.
Trivia: The beautiful Stephane Audran was 40 when she played Alice Senechal in this film. She was 55 when she played Babette in Babette's Feast, and in my memory at least, she doesn't appear to be a day older. How odd that I'd think of that film, when I didn't recognize her while watching this one. Must have been my subconscious at work. IMDb.com
Cheaper by the Dozen (2003) What a disaster. Steve Martin can be the funniest man on the planet, but if he keeps making doo-doo like this and Bringing Down the House, people are going to forget ... IMDb.com
(Painted Fire) (2002) As far as I can remember, this is the only Korean film I’ve ever seen. I am profoundly ignorant of Korean history, culture, and art. (It seems they wore a great variety of funny hats.) This is the story of Jang Seung-ub, a peasant who lived in the last half of the 19th Century and is acknowledged to be the greatest Korean artist ever. He took the name of Ohwon and revolutionized the whole field. And I again have to admit that, if shown one of his paintings I probably couldn’t tell you even if it was Korean, Japanese, or Chinese. Many of them seem to be a blend of Japanese and Chinese, as indeed does Korean culture itself. Small wonder, as that unfortunate peninsula has been fought over by both counties many times in the past. Ohwon’s time was turbulent, but we see this only in glimpses. In fact, the whole film is glimpses, of the beauty of nature and the countryside, of the creation of wonderfully simply art with a few brush strokes, interspersed with a few actual conventional dramatic scenes. I gradually realized this was deliberate. The director was sketching the artist’s life in brush strokes of film. His life was turbulent, passionate, and eternally unsatisfied, but that’s not the focus. The art comes alive as we watch him slash at the paper with his brushes, see the forms emerging. All in all, one of the most effective films about the creation of art that I’ve ever seen. IMDb.comChicago (2002) One of my favorite musical movies of all time, made from one of my favorite stage musicals. You can’t help wondering what Bob Fosse would have done with it if he had lived, but the present director preserved the Fosse flavor, and though I hated to lose the onstage orchestra and stage format, the device of having the musical numbers occur in Roxie’s imagination was ingenious. IMDb.com
Children of Men (2006) This was a fairly frustrating experience. It's a crackerjack thriller based on a pretty stupid idea. Suddenly, globally, and without explanation, women stopped being capable of fertilization in the year 2008. Twenty years later, all is chaos, with only the UK having a semblance of civilization. (Why the UK? Why, because that's where the author of the book, PD James, lives, I guess. Stiff upper lip and all that, what?) Desperate refugees try to get in, and are rounded up and shipped back out. (I wonder if this is some sort of deep atavistic urge to get rid of all those Pakis and wogs and camel-jockeys and bloody Pathans that have overrun the island in the last century?)
Whatever ... the movie is brilliantly designed and executed on a technical level, but the story is quite muddled. I didn't know why certain people were killing others, or who did what to whom and why.
The really good stuff: Two scenes. One takes place in a crowded car in motion, and the camera does things a camera can't do! I still have no idea how it was done, though I know it involved computers and stitching, because it could not have been one long shot, as it appears to be. The second is a 9-minute action scene that is one of the most impressive bits of planning ever done for a film, because it was taken in one shot. (There's been a lot of discussion of this on the Net.) The shot took two weeks to prepare, and was completed on the third try, and it was a miracle it was done at all. In fact, about halfway through, the blood-bag of an extra aboard a burned-out bus burst at the wrong time and sprayed fake gore on the camera lens. The director, Alfonso Cuarón, said he yelled "Cut!" but no one heard him, and that was a bit of luck. Because it actually helped the scene ... until it got too distracting, at which point Cuarón hired someone to digitally fade the blood, frame by frame, until it's gone. If I hadn't been looking for it I'd never have realized it had been done. Just try to estimate the number of explosive squibs that go off during this scene, the number of blood bags bursting onto costumes, and then imagine how long it took to replace and re-wire them all after the first two tries got screwed up. There are hundreds and hundreds of extras in the scene, each having to hit the right mark at the right time, and for every extra I'll bet there were two technical people hiding in the rubble cueing up the practical SFX.
One more thing. This bothered Lee more than it did me, but it did bother me. Every single shot, no matter how static, has a bit of shakiness in it. This is a trend that has alienated a large part of the theater-going audience, and that part is old farts like me and Lee. We often wait for the video and the smaller screen, where the motion isn't so distracting. Yes, I understand the "documentary" feel that directors are going for, and I don't object to shakycams when they enhance the scene. But it is stupid to have a static shot of two people talking, and you look at the edge of the frame and see that someone is jiggling the camera. And it's a bit ironic that, for 100 years, tech people have labored to steady the camera with increasingly ingenious machines, only to arrive in the 21st century and have directors throw it all away.
I have a solution. Naturally, it involves computers. I think they should start making two versions of action movies, like they sometimes put out "Full Screen" (meaning the edges chopped off; yuck!) and letterboxed editions on DVD. With virtual sets, as in Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, and with all computer-generated animation, it is now possible to create a 3-D version of the movie simply by shifting the virtual point of view. It's done in the computer, and it's easy. Why not have a computer generate a Steady and a Shaky version of a movie? The place we went to today has 14 screens. I'll bet they could have freed up one to show a steady version, one that doesn't jump all over the place, for those of us who get slightly seasick at the movies these days. Anybody under 25 who simply cannot watch an image that isn't jiggling can buy a ticket for the shaky, "edgy" version. See? Simple. Why, they can even start marketing a third version on the DVD, for the video game generation. Casablanca as filmed by a jogger with cerebral palsy! Gone With the Wind as if screened in a theater during the San Francisco earthquake! To Kill a Mockingbird as seen through the bottom of a whiskey glass held by an alcoholic!
Why is it always up to me to think of these brilliant ideas? IMDb.com
Children of Paradise (Les enfants du paradis) (1945, French) The back story on this movie is almost as interesting as the movie itself. Briefly, it was made during the Nazi occupation of France, against daunting odds. If you want to know more, Robert Ebert provides a nice summary of the circumstances. Because the Nazis wouldn't allow any films longer than 90 minutes the director, Marcel Carné, just cut it into two pieces. It is not an entirely artificial separation—the first part is livelier, the second darker—but it is basically one long film. It was released as:
Part
1: The Boulevard of Crime. (Le boulevard du crime)
Part 2: The Man in White. (L'homme blanc)
The movie has been called the French Gone With the Wind, which is a bit misleading, as it is by no means an epic. No great historical events happen. It is a movie on a grand scale, the most expensive made in France up to that time, and there are expansive sets and thousands of extras and a huge sense of movement and life. And it was the most popular film in France until the New Wave came along and made it seem old fashioned.
It still seems old-fashioned, to me, in a way that Gone With the Wind doesn't, in that it is intentionally stagy; in fact, the best parts of it happen on stage. I quite enjoyed it, particularly the spectacle, the movement both out in the street and in the theaters, and I can see why it is a classic highly esteemed by many ... but it will never find a place in my heart. It is a story of obsessive love, never my favorite genre, and obsessive jealousy. One central theme is Othello, which is my least favorite of Shakespeare's Top Ten. Four men fall madly in love with one woman, who can't really love anybody at all. That's basically it, and for three hours we see everybody screw up their lives over this. I guess I'm not a real romantic person.
The best things in it are Arletty, as the Garbo-esque siren, and Jean-Louis Barrault as the mime Pierrot ... but not for the character he plays, who is an innocent and, basically, a love-sick idiot, but for his wonderful mime performances on the stage. IMDb.com
Chinatown (1974) See Top 25 Favorite Movies. IMDb.com
Chisholm '72: Unbought & Unbossed (2004) Remember Shirley Chisholm? She died this year, on New Years Day 2005, aged 81. In 1972 she was a two-term congresswoman from Brooklyn, the first black woman to sit in the House. So she’s black, and she’s a woman. Strike one, strike two. She’s rather homely, bucktoothed, with a wart on her chin. She is the daughter of West Indian parents. You want more? She has a speech impediment. So what does she do? She decides to run for president ...
What does she have going for her? Only three things that I can see. She is smart and articulate. She speaks her mind and doesn’t compromise. And she has more charisma than every presidential nominee from both parties since 1972 put together. She fights it right down to the convention floor, where Willie Brown robs her of her California delegates by basically throwing a tantrum. “I’m black, and you owe me!” (Whining little asshole. I never liked that weasel when I lived in San Francisco.) Black politicians don’t know how to deal with her. Will they throw in their lot with that ultra-loser McGovern, simply because he’s “electable” (HAH!!) and stands for pretty much the same things she does? After all, she’s a woman. Black men are no better than white on that issue, maybe worse.
This is a short documentary and limits itself to the ’72 campaign, the Chisholm Trail, but it does a real good job on that. It was interesting to see all those faces from the ‘70s, and to see them now, explaining their choices. Ron Dellums supported her right to the last minutes, then basically stabbed her in the back ... for which she refuses to blame him. This is worth your time. IMDb.com
Chopin: Desire for Love (Chopin: Pragnienie milosci) (Polish, 2002) I have no idea if Mozart was a supremely talented but obnoxious fellow as portrayed so well by Tom Hulce in Amadeus ... but who cares? The story was wonderful, dense, clever, and moving. It worked, dramatically.
I don’t know if Chopin was a fiery, moody, stud-muffin, as he is portrayed in this awful biopic, either, but none of it worked. All the dialogue is stilted, cornball, trite, and most of it is shouted. Lee and I debated whether or not to rent this, worried about the last part of the title. Sounds awful hokey. In the end, we did rent it, because of the first part of the title. I mean, we asked ourselves, with all that wonderful music by Chopin and Liszt and others, how bad could it be? Answer: very bad. We didn’t finish it. IMDb.com
The Chorus (Les Choristes) (French, 2004) I guess I agreed with the vast majority of critics on this one, who gave it a relentlessly average 50% on whatever meters they use. You can’t dislike it because it does its job well. It’s just that the job is so routine and totally expected, without an ounce of originality. You’ve seen it a hundred times before. But how can you really dislike a story about a teacher who cares about his students, and makes a difference? Teachers are the unsung heroes of our society, and every once in a while we should be reminded of it. I’d rather see a routine movie like this than a routine movie about an underdog sports team that ends up winning big. How many of those have you seen? IMDb.com
A Christmas Story (1983) It’s come to the point where we’re getting five or six new “Christmas” movies every year now. Most of them really, really suck. As for television specials, I don’t think anyone could even count them anymore. A few days ago I learned that none other than Kelsey Grammer was following in the footsteps of Alastair Sim, George C. Scott, and Albert Finney in the part of Ebenezer Scrooge.
Puh-leeeese!
Then we heard that the little independent theater in Arroyo Grande, the Fair Oaks, was having free showings of this movie on Saturday. Just bring a can of something for the food drive. We mined the cupboard for four cans, and went on down. We’d already seen the movie several times, but you find holiday spirit where you can in these days of the horrible Christmas Push. And it is still as fresh and funny and heartwarming as it ever was. It may be the best Christmas movie ever. It perfectly captures the magic of the season from a child’s eyes. Add in the wonderfully quirky family, the nightmare of the visit to Santa, and the horror of finally getting your Red Rider BB gun and almost shooting your eye out, just as everybody had warned you ... I can find no fault in this movie. IMDb.com
The Chumscrubber (2005) I suppose it's theoretically possible to interest me in a film about the problems of rich, spoiled, BMW-driving, pill-popping teenage sociopaths studying to be psychopaths—sort of like we used to move from being juniors to being seniors—and the empty, self-absorbed, egomaniacal suburban professionals who may or may not have molded them but certainly didn't hinder their psychoses in any way ... but this ain't it. High school was hell, is hell, and probably always will be hell, but now it's hell with video games written by psychotics. Get over it. Try Heathers if you want to see the same thing with some wit, at least until the cop-out last ten minutes. IMDb.com
The Cider House Rules (1999) I rented this again because I’d just read John Irving’s book about the making of it: My Movie Business. It was quite a saga, even longer than the process of making my own movie, Millennium, though while we went through six directors, Irving only had four. There was George Roy Hill, another I can’t recall, then Philip Borsos who, believe it or not, I worked with for a few months on Millennium before that deal fell through. Phil died of leukemia, and the project went to Lasse Hallström. Fourteen years from first draft to the theaters.
John Irving, being who he is, gets a lot more power than just about any screenwriter I can think of except maybe Woody Allen, and Woody’s a hyphenate: writer-director. By that I mean, he gets approval of the director, the casting, and the final cut! Sounds like a formula for having your book filmed very faithfully, right? Well ... no, and Irving knows there is no way thick, dense books like his can be filmed without major cutting and compromises. In the book he describes how he goes about combining characters, cutting whole characters, and compressing time. He’s good at it, too, which I find remarkable. I haven’t read the novel, but I feel like I know it pretty well now, and I know that Irving is satisfied that the movie came out about as well as any movie could. Which means he’s realistic. Oh, and I thought it was a damn good movie, too. IMDb.com
Cinderella Man (2005) As drama this is top-notch. As history ... well, I'm not a boxing historian, but a little research shows me that it's half right and half bullshit.
The correct part is that Jim Braddock was a genuinely good man. He did have early success, did go into a tailspin during the Great Depression, worked the docks when he could, got on relief when he had to. And paid the welfare money back when he was successful again. This is the part that makes the movie work. The heartbreak of not being able to provide for your family, the debasement of going to your old friends, literally hat in hand (and that may be a screenwriter's invention, but it works wonderfully) ... well, that had me choked up. Russell Crowe is very good in this part. Renee Zellweger is as good as she always is, and the "you can't keep fighting and leave me and the kids alone and destitute!" cliché is kept to a minimum. Thank God. Myself, I'd find it easier to believe she'd be solidly on Jim's side, as when he tells people warning him that Max Baer is going to kill him in the ring that "How many people do you think died on the docks today? How many froze to death in a cardboard shack in Hooverville?" Myself, I'm not a fighter, I hate boxing, but if I had the fists and the jaw and the speed for it I'd climb into that ring without a qualm, going for the money to feed my kids. We're all going to die someday. Go for it.
In the ring it's all historically accurate as to outcomes, except for something every movie from John Garfield to Rocky Balboa to Raging Bull does, which is to exaggerate the violence. I've seen a few boxing matches, and I've never seen people whale away at each other the way they do in the movies, and that's because two guys can't go at each other that hard for that long. They can't take those kinds of punches. They circle, they tap, they bob and weave and feint ... and then comes a flurry of punches and they back away to assess the damage. You know that, I know that, but I guess when you make a movie about boxing everybody expects lots of blood and lots of punches. Okay, a movie that showed boxers circling a lot would be pretty boring ...
But where the film goes seriously astray is in its need for a villain, and its appropriation of Max Baer as the one. True, he killed a man in the ring ... and had nightmares about it for decades afterward. He almost quit entirely. He liked to boast that he never had a fight outside of the ring. He was a prankster and later a movie actor, and seems to have been a decent guy all around. He was even accused of pulling his punches so as not to do anyone too serious damage. And he wore the Star of David on his trunks (he was half Jewish) when he beat the crap out of the Nazi Max Schmeling. (Who wasn't actually a Nazi, who loathed Hitler and National Socialism and was sent on suicide missions by those swine time after time ... only he kept coming back alive. He later became the biggest Coca-Cola bottler in post-war Germany.)
This strikes me as seriously wrong, and is a major flaw in an otherwise terrific entertainment. One other caveat, which is ... damn, that last match went on a long time. I know, I know, it's a boxing movie, this is a climactic moment, I didn't complain when Seabiscuit's last race was shown longer than pole-to-pole ... but Seabiscuit and War Admiral weren't beating the shit out of each other. I will never like boxing, even when it's telling an inspiring story. The parts of any boxing movie I like the best happen outside the ring. IMDb.com
Citizen Kane (1941) See Top 25 Favorite Movies. IMDb.com
Citizen X (1995) In the Soviet Union there is no prostitution. Soviet airliners do not fall from the sky. Crime is almost non-existent in the Soviet Union. Coal mines do not collapse, chemical factories do not blow up, nuclear dumps do not spontaneously spew waste over whole oblasts, and rocket ships do not explode on the pad in the Soviet Union. (All these things happened, and were covered up.) There is no such thing as a serial killer in the Soviet Union. Such things are exclusively the province of the Decadent West. And if there were such a thing as a serial killer it could not possibly be a Party member.
Such was daily life until the collapse of the USSR. There was what was actually happening, and there was "Soviet reality." The latter was vastly more important. Thus, when a madman is on the loose, killing little children, the most important thing is to not let the news get out. Don't warn the parents. Don't consult the FBI. Don't ask a psychiatrist for a profile.
This is the story of Russia's only (publicly acknowledged) serial killer, and how it took almost 20 years to catch him when any decent small-town police force in America could have nailed the sonuvabitch in a few weeks. When you think about it, the atmosphere of denial that existed before the collapse was tailor-made for such a man. I'd bet big money there were many others who were simply ignored until they died.
The movie was made for HBO, and it's a bit slow. It's fascinating to see how the ultra-ultra-ultra-bureaucratic society ruled by literal political correctness officers – "ideology" officers – responds, and how, with enough persistence, a little progress can be made here and there. But I kept comparing it to Gorky Park, which covered much the same ground with a much more interesting hero: Arkady Renko. IMDb.com
City by the Sea (2002) One of those forgettable movies. I saw it, I recall enjoying it, but I can’t remember a damn thing about it. IMDb.com
City Lights (1931) See Top 25 Favorite Movies. IMDb.com
City of God (Brazil, 2002) One of the most powerful movies I’ve ever seen. Hard to watch, the lives of these kids are brutal beyond belief, and it’s all based on a true story. IMDb.com
City of Lost Children (La cite des enfants perdus)
(French, 1995) The story is obscure and possibly a little pretentious, but this is well worth seeing just for the amazing images and sequences. By the director of one of the most charming and biting comedies I’ve ever seen, Amelie. IMDb.comThe Clearing (2004) There’s a paradox at work here, or at least a big inconsistency. People are all the time complaining that most thrillers follow a formula so rigid that you can predict, almost to the minute, where a particular tired scene will happen. So when one comes along that doesn’t follow the mold, that goes off in directions you don’t expect ... nobody goes to see it. This film pulled in less than 6 million dollars. I can barely remember any publicity for it, despite the fact that it stars Robert Redford. What the hell happened to it? It died at the box office, that’s what. Because it didn’t get any publicity? Because the same critics who complain about cookie-cutter plots gave it tepid reviews? I don’t know. All I know is, it started out as a kidnapping movie, and I figured I knew each step along the way ... and I was wrong. It explores the emotional toll more than the manufactured thrills and spills you expect, and I can’t even hint at the ending without ruining it for you. I recommend it. IMDb.com
Click (2006) VarleyYarn. IMDb.com
Close Your Eyes (2002) Also known as Doctor Sleep. Gets off to a good start, but becomes a bit hard to believe toward the end. It’s really, really tough to make a really creepy movie, one that works for me beginning to end. There was some good stuff here, but not enough to recommend it. IMDb.com
Closer (2004) With some people, the worst thing they can ask is “Tell me the truth,” and the worst thing they can say is “I love you.” They don’t want the truth, and they don’t have the foggiest notion of love, except of self, and are concerned only with possession. This movie is a very cynical view of human beings that, I’m sorry to say, is all too often accurate. It reminds me very much of Mike Nichols’ earlier movie Carnal Knowledge. It is also a lot like Raging Bull, the only difference being that these people are very smart, and wouldn’t dream of hitting each other. They know that words can hurt more. The dialogue is wonderfully sharp and all four actors eat it up and deliver it like fencers moving in for the kill. This is a very good movie, but don’t expect to like anybody in it. No kidding! IMDb.com
Cloverfield (2008) Second feature At The Drive In with The Spiderwick Chronicles. IMDb.com
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another double feature at the drive in COACH CARTER ♫ ♪ ♫ ♪ ♫ ♪♪ Let’s all go to the lobby! ♪ ♫ ♪♪ ♫ ♫♫ HIDE AND SEEK |
FIRST FEATURE: Coach Carter (2005) A fairly standard underdog sports movie. Samuel L. Jackson is always good to watch, and the young ball players are pretty good. The sports action is well done, you could actually see the plays being set up, for what that’s worth. IMDb.com
SECOND FEATURE: Hide and Seek (2005) A movie that just flat leaves a bad taste in your mouth. About halfway through I knew they were going for an M. Night Shyamalan fake-out, and the suspect was obvious. Ho-hum, what a surprise twist! Dakota Fanning was incredibly good, and it’s too bad she was wasted in this. It is very hard to make a scary movie, and almost impossible to make one about a little girl being stalked by a crazed killer, and this one didn’t pull it off. Don’t go here. IMDb.com
Coast to Coast (2004) Not a bad film, but just sort of standard, despite starring two very great actors: Judy Davis and Richard Dreyfuss. A couple who has lost a child and intends to get divorced set off cross-country in a lovely old T-Bird, visiting friends and family. It kept us watching and had some touching moments, but was really nothing special. IMDb.com
Code 46 (2003) My friend Paul sort of recommended this, said something like it was an interesting attempt at real science fiction. I agree; unfortunately, it failed. It’s like all the furniture was there, in terms of settings and atmosphere, the party was all ready, but nobody came. The characters were unsympathetic and the plot all but incomprehensible, some hugger-mugger about genetics. It used an interesting mix of language, a bit like Nadsat in A Clockwork Orange, but the movie it was most reminiscent of was THX-1138, in that odd people were doing odd things for reasons I never completely understood. But THX-1138 was visually stunning and sly, and this wasn’t. The plot also involves memory erasure, such that one lover doesn’t remember loving another. Too bad, because Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind handled the same subject matter so much better.
One interesting side note, though. Shanghai and Dubai, two of the filming locations for this movie, are both starting to look a lot like Bladerunner. Ultra-modern skyscrapers and a world of poverty on the ground level and in the ‘burbs. Reminds me again of just how quickly some parts of the world are catching up and even surpassing the United States in technology and infrastructure. I mean, the 2 tallest buildings in the world are in ... Kuala Lumpur? Shanghai, Taipei, Pyongyang, Hong Kong, Shenzhen, and Guangzhou all have buildings bigger than the Empire State (depending on how you measure them), and I don’t even know where Shenzhen is ... and a lot of the architecture is much more imaginative than anything you’ll see here. Japan and South Korea are already much more wired in to cyberspace that we are, and China is catching up fast. IMDb.com
Coffee and Cigarettes (2003) Just a series of 11 vignettes about people sitting around smoking and drinking coffee and talking. Naturally some work better than others, but the ones with Cate Blanchett playing two parts, the one with Alfred Molina, and the one with Tom Waits and Iggy Pop are little masterpieces. (All the stars are playing themselves.) Hell, I liked all the others, too. Try it some night when you aren’t in the mood for slam-bang action. IMDb.com
Cold Mountain (2003) Lee and I loved this book so much we both read it twice. So we were a bit nervous about the adaptation ... with good reason. Though there is much good about it, it did not really capture the magic of the book. The big reason, for me, was the casting of pretty-boy Jude Law as Inman. I'm beginning to think he's vastly overrated. Inman should have been more rugged. And why, ferchrissake, cast an Englishman? Nicole Kidman wasn't quite right, either. And, she's an Aussie. Then I read that Cate Blanchett was considered for the role, and thought she would have been a lot better. So she's an Aussie, too. So sue me! Only Renee Zellweger was spot on, and she deserved her Oscar ... except Patricia Clarkson was actually better in Pieces of April. IMDb.com
Collateral (2004) Double feature at the Sunset with Alien vs. Predator. IMDb.com
Coming Home (1978) Sometimes you just wonder ... why bother? People work to change things, and ten years later, twenty years later, a century later, not much is different. Civil War veterans were treated abominably. Things were so bad for WWI vets that they marched on Washington in 1932, camped in a Hooverville, and had their heads busted by Douglas MacArthur and George Patton, and later had their benefits denied by Franklin Roosevelt. Korean War vets ... who? What? We've worked pretty hard to forget about Korea entirely, and if it hadn't been for M*A*S*H we probably would have, so I don't know how those vets were treated. Viet Nam? Unpopular