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RED: Lesser known films. PURPLE: Lee's comments |
The Pacifier Second feature at the drive in. IMDb.com
The Painted Veil (2006) Shot on location in China, in that river valley in Guangxi that looks so gorgeous it might have been computer-generated for a fantasy film. The year is 1925, a turbulent time in China (though, come to think of it, has there ever been a time in China when it was not turbulent?), and a cholera epidemic is raging in the hinterlands while various political factions and warlords are beginning to have some success in expelling the western devils who have sucked the country dry for centuries.
This is a good movie, but not remarkable. You sometimes wonder why a particular movie was made, and might suspect it was because the stars fancied a vacation in China, or a tropical island. This isn’t quite like that, but still, they couldn’t have thought there was a huge audience for this. I do want to mention Toby Jones, though. We saw him in Elizabeth I, with Helen Mirren, and were impressed. He played Robert Cecil, and was outstanding. He’s a funny-looking little gnome, doomed to character parts, I suspect—though he did star as Truman Capote in Infamous, and the only reason I haven’t seen that one is that I’m dreadfully tired of Truman Capote. I mean, how many movies have they made about the little shit? But I might suck it up and see it just for Toby Jones. In The Painted Veil, he takes a part that could have been nothing and makes it memorable, quietly, sneaking up on you with his unexpected humanity. IMDb.com
Pan's Labyrinth (El Laberinto del Fauno) (Mexico, Spain 2006) A few weeks ago we were at Graumann's and saw some five coming attractions. Four of them seemed to be based on "graphic novels." Actually, one was based on Spiderman, which was still called a comic book when it debuted, before everything got all artsy-fartsy. I'll tell you what I think, my friends. Comic books are bubble gum. Now, you can chew up a piece of Bazooka (after reading the Bazooka Joe "graphic novel" inside the wrapper), put it on a plate, and cover it with the finest French gourmet sauce, and what do you have? It's still bubble gum. And these endless movies based on graphic novels are about as appetizing, and as fossilized, as the stuff you could scrape off the bottom of your theater seat, if you want to root around down there.
Which is preamble to saying most emphatically that this film is not bubble gum. It is true fantasy, with a hard base of reality. Very hard; this is a disturbingly violent film, but not a whit of it is gratuitous or unbelievable. This is not a fantasy to take your kids to, even though it's about a 10-year-old girl. Things are at stake here, real human beings are involved, there is not a heroic hobbit anywhere in sight. The director, Guillermo del Toro, describes himself as a "nerd from Guadalajara." He has been the graphic novel route with Hellboy—which I sort of liked, here and there—but this is on an entirely new level. And get this: He made it on a budget of $5,000,000! That's amazing! Five mill was chump change 20 years ago; now it's in the charge-it-on-your-credit-card range. Hell, Little Miss Sunshine cost $8,000,000! I don't know how he did it, as the SFX are first rate. See this! IMDb.com
Paris, je t’aime (France, Liechtenstein, 2006) A real oddity: 18 short films set in Paris. When I say short, consider that the screen running time, less credits, is about 115 minutes. That means that each of the 22 directors (several were co-directed) has about 6 minutes and 38 seconds to say his or her piece. You obviously don’t tell a complicated story in that length (though some, like the Coen Brothers, manage a funny anecdote), you are going for a feeling, an impression. I was dubious, I’ll admit, though I’ve liked this sort of thing in the past, most notably in the little gem Nine Lives. I was pleasantly surprised. Naturally some worked better for me than others, but I can’t say there was a dud in the bunch. They range from the poignant to the surreal. At first I wondered if they would all tie together somehow, as the stories in a movie like Crash do … but they don’t. Don’t look for resolution. Don’t even look for story, in many of them. Each exists in a moment in time, says its bit, and gets off the stage. There are some very big name actors here, and very good acting. I recommend it. IMDb.com
Paris, Texas (1984) Harry Dean Stanton, man! I don't think I've ever seen him be bad in a movie, though he's been in some bad movies, like everybody. But this is the best I've ever seen him. He's playing against type, because usually there is at least a hint of menace in his craggy face (though he played an angel in One Magic Christmas, which just goes to show you that casting against type often yields the best performances, casting directors please take note). He wanders into the picture from the desert, a lost soul in a suit and tie and baseball cap. He's just this side of catatonic. But he has a brother who comes to get him after a 4-year absence. He gradually returns to the human race, and it is a long, slow trip, done amazingly well. He has a son, and a wife, and of course we're dying to find out more about them and whatever cataclysmic event tore them apart. Wim Wenders makes you wait, and it's worth it. Fraulein Nastassja Kinski (who I learn is fluent in English, German, French, Italian and Russian) turns in a great performance as a small-town Texas girl; could have fooled me, and I grew up in Texas. Nine-year-old Hunter Carson is very good as the son. And some scenes were filmed in a peep show that never could have existed (not out in the open, anyway) in Port Arthur, Texas, back when I was going to high school 5 miles from there. What more could I ask for? IMDb.com
Party Monster (2003) We waited a long time to rent this one. I have to admit that, though I try very hard to divorce the artist from his work, every once in a while I dislike someone so much that it affects me. Adam Sandler is one example, Macauley Culkin is another. I just don’t like him. He or other members of his brood used to live in the same apartment building as my agent in New York, near Lincoln Center, and they partied so hard every night that they set the place on fire. At least one person died. Fuck him.
In spite of that, I decided to try to like this movie. So let me start off by saying it was well-made, visually interesting, the costumes were fabulously ugly, as if the designer had actually taken a field trip to the most degenerate corners of Hell to do research.
But in the end, a movie starring somebody I don’t like, about people who are way, way, way beyond loathsome, is just never going to work for me. It’s about a group that called themselves Club Kids, in New York, early '80’s to mid-'90s. Michael Alig was the star, such as he was. They aspired to be the new Andy Warhol and company but, empty and pathetic as Warhol was, he looks like Jonas Salk or Albert Schweitzer compared to these human toxic waste dumps. I’d call them superficial (a word they aspired to) but that’s an insult to superficiality. They would have to rise through four or five levels of human consciousness, an alien concept to them, to even reach superficial. Monster? Hell, I liked Aileen Wournos much more than I liked Michael Alig.
Alig and a friend eventually beat a drug dealer, left him to die in the bathtub, and didn’t even wonder about what to do with the body until about two weeks later, when the stink was getting too much even for them. Other Club Kids came and went and either didn’t notice the corpse, or didn’t care. After they finally dismembered the stiff and threw him in the river, they told everyone they knew what they had done, and no one cared. Alig is currently getting his butthole expanded in some prison somewhere, and probably enjoying it. I found a page of his diary online, where he complains of the bland menus. He’ll be getting out some day, which is the only sad part of an otherwise happy ending. Deliriously happy, to me: almost all the Club Kids are dead now, of drug overdoses. Who says the spirit of Frank Capra is gone? IMDb.com
The Passion of the Christ (2004) Since my Aramaic is a bit rusty and I don’t speak Hebrew, the following review will be in Latin. Caveat Emptor! Cave Canem!
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Passionada (Portugal, 2002) What I imagine reading one of those cookie-cutter romance paperbacks would be like. We didn’t care for the characters, everything we saw was completely predictable, and we shut it down after an hour with no curiosity about how it all came out. One thing surprised me later, looking it up on IMDb. The second female lead, Emmy Rossum, 18 years old, has landed one of the plum parts of the decade: Christine in The Phantom of the Opera, due out next month. I wonder if she can sing? IMDb.com
Pauly Shore is Dead (2003) I didn’t bother to rent this, but I had to include it simply because when I saw it sitting on the shelf I felt a surge of joy. Bite your tongue. Reading it made me happy. Bite your tongue. Writing it down makes me happy. Bite your tongue. Pauly Shore is dead. Pauly Shore is dead. Pauly Shore is dead. Bite your tongue. Bite your tongue. Bite your tongue. Cheers me right up. Bite your tongue. However, apparently it’s just a hoax, he’s not really dead, except career-wise. Well, you can’t have everything. Would that it were so easy to get rid of awful, annoying comics. Like this: Gilbert Gottfried is dead. Bite your tongue. Emo Philips is dead. Bite your tongue. Sam Kinison is dead ... hey! He is dead! God rest his soul. Maybe it works! IMDb.com
Paycheck (2003) You know what? Screw all kung-fu, karate, judo, jujitsu, knuckle-dusting, rasslin’ and calf ropin’. I cannot begin to estimate how many promising movies in the last 10 or 20 years have been totally destroyed by idiot directors (yes, I mean you, John Woo!) resorting to the line-‘em-up and knock-‘em-down school of chop-socky kick-out that could not possibly appeal to anyone over the age of three. This movie starts with an interesting premise and goes totally wacko in the last two reels ... and how many times have you seen that lately? It has no less than two of my least-favorite scene: the Mexican stand-off. You know: two guys pointing guns inches from each others’ faces. In this one, they put them down and decide to duke it out like men. I got news for you, John Woo. THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A MEXICAN STANDOFF!!!! What you do is, you fire your goddam gun and hope for the best. You do not wait for the other guy to decide whether or not to fire!!! Am I the only man on Earth who understands this? IMDb.com
Penn & Teller: Bullshit! (2003) We have been watching this in re-runs. There have been two seasons, with the third due to begin in April. The bad news is that it’s on Showtime, definitely the second-choice cable venue after HBO. It comes on right after Fat Scientologist. The good news is that it’s available on DVD, in the stores that aren’t put off by its very title.
P&T, the magicians who specialize in over-the-top bloody effects and bad taste, and then often tell you how they do the tricks, are following in the footsteps of Penn Gillette’s idol, Harry Houdini, in exposing what Houdini called “humbug.” Penn is more frank in his term, and absolutely, totally, insanely, hilariously merciless in exposing bullshitters and the bullshit they want to sell you. Here is a partial list of said bullshitters:
P.E.T.A. (a terrorist cult), The War on Drugs, Recycling, The Bible, Yoga, Tantric Sex, Profanity (those who want to stop it) , 12-Stepping, Hypnosis, Talking to the Dead, Alternative Medicine, Alien Abductions, Second Hand Smoke, Feng Shui, Bottled Water, ESP, Near Death Experiences.
Here’s how they go about it:
Feng shui: They hired 3 feng shui “scientists” (as they all termed themselves) to re-do a house in accord with the principles of chi. Naturally, they did it in 3 completely different ways. And charged a ton of money for it. The great state of Cahleefornia is trying to pass a bill that will require bullshit consultants on all public buildings! Bullshit is getting out of fucking control, friends and neighbors! These are your tax dollars! Stand up and shout at your idiot legislators!
Bottled water. They invented a “water steward” in a very tony restaurant to recommend various waters with their meals, including one with a fancy label in French that translated as “tap water.” And that’s what it was; that’s what all of them were, filled from a rubber garden house out back. Almost everyone they talked to said bottled water was healthier, tasted better, etc. P&T then set out to show how wrong they were. This is a $4.5 billion dollar industry! Coca-Cola and Pepsi are the biggest players, and their water comes straight from the tap. This is about a 7000% markup!
It’s all done with their trade-mark humor, character assassination ... and some real rage. Penn really doesn’t like these people, and he isn’t afraid to tell you. Couldn’t recommend this series more highly.
People I Know (2002) A has-been PR man with just one remaining client falls entirely by accident into the buzz saw of the real power players of the world. They are very nasty people, sort of like in Eyes Wide Shut. He witnesses a murder but is too stoned to even know he saw anything. He continues to try to put together a benefit opposing deportation of Nigerians, mostly because he just doesn’t know how to do anything else, and doesn’t know how to stop. Will his client show up? Will the billionaire and the Al Sharpton black minister tear out each other’s throats? Will he live through the day? This seems tailor-made for Al Pacino, he seems to specialize in burned out losers these days, and he drags himself through the role like a baggy-eyed bloodhound on downers. Only this time he doesn’t accomplish anything at the end. Which, I guess, is realistic, but not very entertaining. IMDb.com
Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (2006) They say that smell is the most primal of our senses, that the nose connects directly to the most primitive part of our brain. Humans have lost much of it, and still a scent can bring back memories when we least expect them. Imagine, then, a man whose sense of smell is as vivid as that of a dog. That’s what the German author Patrick Süskind did in his novel Perfume. Many directors have wanted to make a movie of it over the last 20 years. Stanley Kubrick wrestled with it for years before declaring it was unfilmable. Wrong, Stan. Tom Tykwer, the guy who directed the amazing Run Lola Run, has put it on film. I haven’t read the book and so can’t comment on the adaptation, but he’s made something very, very different here.
I’m probably not the first one to point this out, but at first glance you’d say this is a movie that cries out for that old gimmick, Smell-o-vision … but it wouldn’t work. For one thing, the scratch-n’-sniff card would have to be as big as a bedsheet, and some of the smells would be distinctly unpleasant. And the genius of this film is that you don’t need Smell-o-vision. The director has managed to convey the scents of the scenes with an overwhelming avalanche of images that make you smell them.
To this man, Jean-Baptiste Grenouille (which means frog, in French), there are no bad smells, just like a dog. He sniffs a dead, maggoty rat as eagerly as he smells a flower. Grenouille has no odor himself, and no morals, no empathy, nothing but obsession with learning the names of the scents around him, and later, finding a method to capture them. This isn’t surprising, as his upbringing would make being raised by wolves seem like an education at a Montessori school by comparison. He is taken under the wing of a has-been perfumer in Paris, played exquisitely by Dustin Hoffman, but soon needs to know things the master can’t teach him. It seems that pheromones are his undoing; once he scents a particular beautiful woman he is so determined to capture that amazing scent that he kills her in the process. He sets out to isolate the essence of beauty itself, and to this end he must murder beautiful women and bottle their scent by a technique called enfleurage. He succeeds, and the results are astonishing …
No need to get into more plot. The movie is beautiful, but the tough sell is the fact that the main character is a monster. The movie bombed big time here, though it did well in Germany. Ben Whishaw seems to be channeling Tony Perkins. He betrays very little emotion, which is appropriate, as Grenouille doesn’t really feel any emotion. But again, a hard sell.
I think some people will love this film and some will hate it. I’m still thinking about it, which is good. But whatever your reaction, I think it will cling to you, either like the stink on shit, or like Chanel No. 5 to the breasts of Sophia Loren. IMDb.com
Peter Pan (2004) I will always love the Disney animated version, as it is the very first movie I remember seeing. But in retrospect, it’s a few pints of pixiedust short of a great movie. This one is much better. It is wonderful to look at, and has much more of a dark side. There is real coming-of-age sexual tension between Wendy, whose story this is, and both Peter and Hook. Interesting trivia: the boy playing Pan grew from 5 feet to 5 foot 8 during the filming. They had to rebuild the window to the Darling’s bedroom four times so it would appear to scale. IMDb.com
The Phantom of the Opera (2004) It all boils down to whether or not you like Andrew Lloyd Webber’s music. Lee and I do, though from his television appearances he strikes me as a conceited British snot and bore of the kind I find most tiresome. Opera-lovers hate him. Most lovers of Stephen Sondheim (and I am one) hate him. The critics have complained that the story is over the top, that the movie is full of ham acting—but what sort would you expect from such a grandiose story?—and that the singing is lip-synched, though it is always synched in a movie musical. (Well, Peter Bogdanovich tried live recording, with a cast of all non-singers, in the disastrous At Long Last Love, which has never been released on video, and no one has done it since. Thank god.) Compare it to Sweeney Todd, another big, operatic musical juggernaut filled with ominous and dramatic music. Sweeney is undoubtedly the more sophisticated and challenging work, but that doesn’t mean Phantom doesn’t have its own delights. Lord Lloyd Webber is peerless at writing melodies you find yourself singing as you leave the theater. And I like grandiosity in a musical; so sue me. The sets were terrific, everything was fortissimo and colorful and awesome. I loved this movie. I’ll buy the DVD. IMDb.com
Philadelphia (1993) Tom Hanks’ first Oscar, and the one I agree with. IMDb.com
Phone Booth (2002) At 81 minutes this might have been a one-hour TV drama, and might have worked better that way, though the commercials would have cut the tension a lot. It moves at breakneck speed and I enjoyed it most of the way. Got to be a little too much there at the end, though. IMDb.com
The Pianist (France, 2002) One of the harshest tales of survival I’ve ever seen. Fascinating and horrible to watch a man degenerate from a cultured pianist to a ragged animal desperately trying to open a can of peaches. Based on fact, hard as it is to believe. This guy had more luck than any ten men. IMDb.com
The Piano (Australia, 1993) Just slightly out of tune. IMDb.com
Pickpocket (France, 1959) Alternate title: Night of the Living Dead Goes to Paris! Every once in a while all the critics steer you wrong. This movie got 100% at Rotten Tomatoes. Roger Ebert couldn't say enough good things about it. Robert Bresson, the writer/director, is a darling of all cinephiles. And guess what? They're all full of shit.
Dig this: Bresson didn't use the word "actor." He called the zombies who plod through his movies "models." I'd have preferred "ventriloquist dummies." Howdy Doody could have given a better performance than any model in this movie, in any role, including the woman. Bresson had a theory, an "auteur" theory, I guess. He thought acting had no place in cinema. To that end, he rehearsed his models endlessly, until they were so bored with the material they had no choice but to render emotionless performances.
I'm not going to bother with the plot. Fuck the plot. I'm not going to bother with the endless explanations of what was really going on, what it all symbolized, how brave it was to have actors not act. Fuck all that. I had all the emotional involvement I might have had watching an episode of "South Park." If that was Bresson's intention, fuck Bresson. No one in the movie smiles. Not once. No one frowns. Once—once!—a man raises his voice. I practically shit my pants, waking up so suddenly.
I hated this movie so much it almost pains me to say it did do one thing well. It showed the mechanics of picking pockets. I learned a dozen way to dip. Not that I'd ever do it or even want to, but I'm a student of cons and dirty dealing, so this was fascinating. Take all those scenes out and string them together and you'd have a nice 10-minute police training film. (Dick Tracy Crime Stoppers Hint: Never trust a man with a folded newspaper!) And you wouldn't even have to show the mournful faces of the models! IMDb.com
Pieces of April (2003) We enjoyed this one a lot. Concerns a black-sheep daughter trying to prepare a Thanksgiving meal for her family, including her mother who refuses to cut her any slack, and is dying of cancer. Sounds awful, but it works very well, particularly Patricia Clarkson, who was nominated for a supporting Oscar. IMDb.comThe Pink Panther (2006)VarleyYarn. IMDb.com
Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (2007) Single feature at the drive in. IMDb.com
Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003) Thinking back on it, it seems reasonable to say that this movie was rescued from mediocrity by the insane performance of Johnny Depp. Nothing else about it was in the least memorable. IMDb.com
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (2006) Read the review above. I may have been a bit too unkind. There were a few other delights besides Johnny Depp's performance, so I hereby upgrade my rating just a little bit.
I considered renting the first movie before seeing this one, but didn't get around to it. Mistake. I hadn't realized how much this one would rely on the back story, so much of what was going on here was a puzzle to me. I'm not good at remembering plots, especially of movies whose main reason for existence is action and special effects. Not that I think I'd have enjoyed this a whole lot more if I did know what was going on ... but it might have helped a little.
So all that's really of interest here is Johnny Depp, and I'm afraid that Jack Sparrow is not nearly as appealing the second time around as he was on first meeting, and the SFX, which are very well done but not exciting. The design of Davy Jones and his crew was quite good, assembled from various sea creatures and seeming to be real as any actual person, and more real than Michael Jackson. Let's hear it for motion capture suits! Davy himself is impressive, with the head of an octopus ... or more like a nonadecipentapus; there were more tentacles than I could count.
It's also too long. And that's about it. IMDb.com
Planes, Trains, and Automobiles (1987) People who worked with him say John Candy was possibly the most genuinely nice person ever to come to Hollywood. They say that about a lot of people, after they’re dead, but one anecdote is enough to make me believe it. Maureen O’Hara came out of retirement to co-star with him in Only the Lonely, but didn’t decide to take it until she could meet him. Within a few minutes they were close friends, which usually happened with John. So the production goes on location, and John finds out that he’s got a trailer, and Maureen doesn’t. A cost-cutting measure. Maureen O’Hara, the Hollywood legend, doesn’t have a trailer. You have to understand, in La-La-Land perks like Winnebagos are calculated to the inch, as a status symbol. The bigger the trailer, the bigger the star. Candy went ballistic, moved out of his trailer and moved her in. The asshole producers then somehow found the money to rent a trailer for John, knowing they’d be shunned forever in Hollywood if their star was sharing a dressing room with the extras. What a bunch of maroons, and what a classy thing for John Candy to do … you might say it was the only decent thing to do, and I’d agree, but you notice the producers didn’t do it, and you’d be surprised how often common decency seems like odd behavior in the movie biz.
We try to watch this movie every Thanksgiving, because not only is it riotously funny but it has a warm heart. You probably know the story, how John and Steve Martin are thrown together in a travel nightmare where everything that can go wrong does go wrong … and then a dozens things more go wrong. Uptight Steve Martin is the perfect foil for big, sloppy, goofy, frequently obnoxious John Candy, and the genius of his portrayal is that Del Griffith is your worst nightmare, in many ways, he has every annoying mannerism imaginable, he talks too much, doesn’t seem to have a clue that he might be annoying … and yet you quickly grow to like him. It takes Steve a little longer—we have to keep the comic tension up—but eventually he learns a lot from this big what-you-see-is-what-you-get goof.
We sure do miss John Candy.
Somebody else we miss is John Hughes. What the hell happened to him? In the ‘80s he pretty much invented the Brat Pack, with Sixteen Candles and The Breakfast Club, then did Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, which I love. But after P,T&A he vanished as a director. He’s been writing all this time (and during his heyday he wrote National Lampoon’s Vacation, and other good ones), and some of his movies were big hits, like Home Alone (vastly overrated, in my book), but he did those awful Beethoven movies, and Dennis the Menace, and Flubber. Real crap. In fact, this movie was just about the last thing of lasting quality he penned. What’s the deal? In it for the money? Too bad. You can make money and make good comedies, if you try, as he proved in the ‘80s. IMDb.com
Planet Earth (2006) A 5-disc series originally shown on the BBC. There are several odd things about this release. It was originally narrated by David Attenborough, then for some reason it was decided to have Sigourney Weaver do the American version. I have the greatest respect for Ms. Weaver, but David is the one with the real chops at this sort of thing. The only thing I missed was his often humorous presence, as in his ongoing explorations of Life on Earth which he intends to wrap up next year with Life in Cold Blood. Then, in a double reverse, his narration was restored to the DVD release. Somebody couldn’t make up his mind, but at least got it right in the end.
The other extremely odd thing is, this was the first series of its kind to be filmed in high definition. So it has been released in 3 versions: The regular one, a Blu-Ray version, and a HD-DVD version. (As of this writing, the dueling formats are still far from sorted out. Nobody knows which one will turn out to be the Betamax/8-track/LaserDisc, oops-I-got-a-lot-of-obsolete-stuff-on-my-shelf format.) Now, that’s not the odd part. Each of the episodes is about 50 minutes long, then ends with a 10-minute “Planet Earth Diaries,” which shows the incredible difficulties of getting some of this fantastic footage, and then there’s a 5th disc of extra material that discusses ecology, global warming, extinctions, stuff like that, all of which was deliberately kept out of the episodes themselves … and none of that is on either of the Hi-Def sets! Why not? I have no idea, but in the reviews at the IMDb this was the only thing that prevented this series from scoring a perfect 10.0. It pissed a lot of people off, as well it should. Even so, it rates a 9.8.
One more thing I have to mention is the odd way in which we saw this series. When it was released I immediately put it in my queue at Netflix, and found that for some reason, Disc One had a “very long wait” (their words) … while all the others were available right now. So we started on Disc Two, and went to the end. Then months went by. I probably should have made notes about the first ones we saw … but what the heck. Here’s a link to a description of all of them and I just won’t make individual comments. It would have made for quite a long review, and all you really need to know about these discs is this:
RENT THEM AT ONCE!!!!!
… unless you really hate nature documentaries, of course. Otherwise, this is the most eye-popping, gosh-wowing look at our planet I have ever seen. The producers had the biggest budget ever dedicated to something like this, and they spent years finding the perfect shot, the perfect thing to try to film that no one had ever seen.
What struck me about seeing this first disc (last night, as I’m writing this) is that this planet they are examining shows no trace of being inhabited by a large hairless primate that walks about on two legs. No trace at all. Now, you’re used to seeing documentaries focusing on the animals, they’re the stars, after all. But it begins to seem eerie—in a good way—to see these gigantic flocks, herds, swarms of animals, sometimes a million strong, with no trace of mankind. This might be how the world was before humans came on the scene, or how it might be after we’re gone. There are many, many shots from space, and none of the works of man can be seen.
Then, as sort of an antidote to all this pristine wilderness, we get the Diaries, and they are almost as good as the films themselves. Wildlife photography is a booming business, with all those Animal Planet, National Geographic, Discovery Channel hours to fill, and believe me, it is a challenging field. These people endure conditions that would be strictly banned by the Geneva Conventions. They may wait months, even years, in their blinds, for ten seconds of “money shot.” I would die of boredom in two hours. They dive into murky waters to film piranhas in a feeding frenzy, they spend weeks in caves so festering with bat guano that their health is actually endangered. Some of the things they do, and the footage they come back with, is almost impossible to believe. Hail to the wildlife photographer! Just during my lifetime they have brought to light things never imagined about this crazy planet when I was a kid. And I love every moment of it.
Disc 1: Pole to Pole; Mountains; Fresh Water
Disc 2: Caves; Deserts; Ice Worlds
Disc 3: Great Plains; Jungles; Shallow Seas
Disc 4: Seasonal Forests; Ocean Deep
Disc 5: Saving Species; Into the Wilderness; Living Together. IMDb.com
The Polar Express (2004)
IN
The minute I heard there was an IMAX version of The Polar Express, I knew that’s how I wanted to see it. Of course, it’s also available in
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3D! |
3D! |
so I wanted to see that, too. I found a list of 70 theaters showing it in that format. We made a special trip up to the nearest one, at the museum in San Jose, paid our $11 each, and took our seats.
And it wasn’t in 3-D. We weren’t the only ones hoodwinked. Damn it, it was listed as 3-D IMAX at the website. But it turns out there are two IMAX formats ... something I knew, but hadn’t taken into account. They used to have two different names for them: IMAX was the one shown on the six-story high flat screen, and the one projected on the 180-degree spherical screen, called OMNIMAX. With the goal of confusing everybody, I guess, they seem to have dropped the distinction in publicity, or they’re not being careful about it. The theater in San Jose was clearly named IMAX, but it was an OMNIMAX screen. The 3D Polar Express is only showing on the flat ones.
Oh, well. I still hope to see the 3D version, if it sticks around long enough.
So how is the film? I’m at a little disadvantage here. At times, things were entirely too close and lost a bit of definition. On the other hand, most of the time, though the faces and objects were gigantic ... the illusion was pretty good. I’m talking about the computer animation. This film shows that we really are there now; we can generate a computer character that will fool the eye, that you will be unable to distinguish from an actor shot with a camera. Not that TPE was going for that. It was meant that you should know the characters were animated. But one of these days they’re going to sneak up on us and only tell us later that a main character in a film was actually an actor in a motion-capture suit.
As a technical achievement, it is glorious. A riot of color and action, unbelievable camera angles ... easy to do, since this process doesn’t use a camera, just a virtual point-of-view. (Easy to make a 3D version, too; simply move the virtual POV over a bit and record a second version.)
So, that’s the tech stuff. How about the story? I’m not familiar with the book the movie is based on, though I doubt that it has as many roller-coaster sequences as the movie. But the story is good. It’s a bit creepy at points, which is good, and as heartwarming as it needs to be. It is an Xmas film, after all. The train is fun, the conductor has a heart of gold but won’t put up with nonsense. The North Pole is a very clean industrial town. I don’t know what the enigmatic hobo on the train was meant to be; I wouldn’t have missed him if he wasn’t there. But I enjoyed it, I’d go see it again. IMDb.com
Poseidon (2006) VarleyYarn. IMDb.com
The Poseidon Adventure (1972) The granddaddy of disaster films, and one I still remember fondly. IMDb.com
The Post-Impressionists – Klimt (2006) This is one of a series, an academic look at the great gilder and leader of the Vienna Secession, back when art was controlled by a lot of stuffy traditionalists who pretty much told you what you could paint and couldn't paint ... sort of like Rudy Giuliani vs. Robert Mapplethorpe, come to think of it. Klimt was a well-known public figure but rather mysterious. There don't appear to be many photographs of him. Lee and I love his works, and were lucky enough to see the five canvases looted by the Nazis and held hostage in Austria until last year, when they went back to their legal owner and were shown at LACMA for a few months. Right after the show closed one of them sold for over $100,000,000, making it the most valuable portable object on Earth. The documentary is workman-like, and worth seeing mainly for the examination of the paintings ... but you could do that in the library with a good book, and probably learn more, too. Answers.com
A Prairie Home Companion (2006) Garrison Keillor has one of the homeliest faces in America, and one of the most beguiling voices. He loves to sing, but he's not particularly good at it; he can carry a tune, but not elegantly. He is absolutely bursting with stories, both funny and sad, he is witty, compassionate, folksy, intellectual ... I could go on and on, but the point here is that he was certainly born to have his own radio show. The format plays to every one of his advantages, and reveals few of his shortcomings. And so what if he's not the world's best singer? It's his show, he can sing when he damn well pleases!
If you love his show (and I do) you'll probably love this movie. Robert Altman, the man to see if you want to make a movie with a large ensemble cast, has made a little gem from Keillor's script. The only thing missing is the news from Lake Wobegon, and I'm sure it's not there because Keillor, a famously shy person, didn't want to hog the stage for 20 minutes. This is as much a backstage story as a radio show on film, and every part of it works wonderfully. I know some people think the whole PHC business is gooey and sentimental, and I can only think those people haven't taken the time to listen to an entire "News" segment. Sure it's nostalgic, and gently funny (sometimes hilariously funny, in the tradition of cracker barrel tall tales), but there is always pain underneath it. These home folks suffer the same angst as city folks do ... only they're Lutherans, they don't complain about it, they take it as life's due. I've been listening for about 20 years now, and by golly, he's never failed me yet. In my book, Garrison Keillor is about as close to Mark Twain as Americans are ever likely to get again. IMDb.com
The Prestige (2006) This is based on a novel of the same name by Christopher Priest. Most unusually, though many changes were made, Priest okayed them and was pleased with the result. It's about magic ... I hate that word, it's about illusion, which I love. It is very well done. It concerns two rival magicians in 1897 (and before, in flashbacks) who hate each other, and their attempts to out-do and sabotage each other, some of which are very cruel. And I can't say a lot more without inserting a
SPOILER WARNING!
Christian Bale as Alfred Borden invents an illusion whereby he seemed to teleport across a stage faster than he could run the distance. Hugh Jackman as Robert Angier is baffled, but determined to duplicate the stunt. Michael Caine as his tech wizard says it can't be done without a double. They find a suitable man and disguise him, Angier falls through the bottom of a box and has to listen to his double get all the applause while he sits on a pile of mattresses down below. This infuriates him, and he goes to Colorado to meet with Nicola Tesla (David Bowie), who is experimenting with high-voltage power transmission. (Many plot complications omitted here, and earlier; this is a very twisty piece, but all laid out logically and fairly.)
What Tesla ends up inventing is not a matter transmitter, but a duplicator. (Larry Niven explored this idea when thinking about his teleportation booths and how they might work. Say you analyze the object to be teleported, transmit that information, and the object is assembled at the other end. Why destroy the original?) The first time Angier uses the device, he has a gun handy, and when his clone appears, he shoots him. After that, in the trick he is able to fall through a trap door in the stage, and then his duplicate appears in the balcony instantly.
Ah, but what to do with the chap who fell through the trap? Well, there's a water tank with a lid that snaps shut as soon as the magician falls through, and he drowns. He says he will perform this trick only 100 times ...
What a situation. I explored it a bit in my story "The Phantom of Kansas," where cloned human bodies could be filled with the memories of someone who has died. Something like "you" will carry on, but you are dead. The man who willingly falls into the water knows he is going to drown, but knows another "him" will appear, a man who has never drowned, since we all can only die once ... I'd call this commitment to one's art.
Incidentally, the trick behind Borden's original illusion is stunningly simple, though almost as painful as Angier's in execution. I'll leave it to you to discover how it was done. IMDb.com
Prick Up Your Ears (1987) I couldn't figure out what this title meant. Did it symbolize something? Was there deep meaning I was missing? Then it became clear. Somebody was talking it up on the phone and got misunderstood, and the new title stuck. The original title was to be Prick Up your Arse ...
Sorry about that, I just couldn't resist. This is about the darkly (apparently; we never see any of his work) comic playwright Joe Orton and his roommate/lover/emotional punching bag/toy poodle, Kenneth Halliwell. Both set out to be great artists; only Joe makes it. It's an old, old story line, and it always ends badly, though not always this badly. I'm not giving anything away when I reveal that Ken murders Joe and offs himself. The director, Stephen Frears, reveals it right off, and the story is well known. I recall something very similar in Bob Fosse's Star 80. And you know, though the film was universally acclaimed, I didn't warm to it. In fact, I didn't like it very much. It reminded me of Macaulay Culkin in Party Monster, though not quite so extreme. I am aware of just how good the acting is, but the character is so repulsive I just have to back away. The enforced lifestyle of the male homosexual in the '60s was so sordid, centering around public toilets. I remember you couldn't go into a restroom back then without being checked out from both directions. Hard to take a leak. The smell of ammonia and Lysol and urinal cakes ... No wonder so many gays picked up exotic fetishes.
The acting is very good, though, particularly Gary Oldman. It was years before I realized the man is a Brit, and frankly, sometimes I still forget, probably because he's played so many Americans and done it so convincingly. I wonder if he's ever used the same accent in any two movies? He's one of those chameleon actors I am in such awe of. He can be anybody at all, though he specializes in psychos. IMDb.com
Pride and Prejudice (2005) It's hard to believe, but not only have I never read the book, I have somehow managed to not see any of the dozen versions of this classical warhorse ... except the 2004 Bollywood musical adaptation, Bride and Prejudice. I didn't even know the plot. So I'm not competent to judge the film's accuracy, which I'm told was a little off, leaving out a lot of Jane Austen's social commentary about class and the plight of women of that time. But it all works well, it's gorgeous to look at, it's deeply romantic in the way of '40s movies starring Laurence Olivier, and it had some nice funny moments. Donald Sutherland is very good, as usual, and Keira Knightley is magnificent. She deserved her Oscar nomination. IMDb.com
Primer (2004) I loved this little science fiction movie. Not because it’s perfect. It isn’t; by the end I could hardly follow it. But, oddly enough, that was part of its charm. It took a common SF idea and followed it to its logical conclusion, which was chaos.
You need to understand a few things before you’ll understand just why and how much I admired this film.
It was made for $7000.
The director, Shane Carruth, was also the producer, writer, cinematographer, editor, composer and star. He had never made a movie before; he is an engineer. He made most of it in one take, using his friends as actors who doubled as crew. His parents catered. This is a movie literally cobbled together from found objects.
None of this shows. Aside from the inevitable graininess from shooting in Super 16mm, it all looks very professional. The lighting, the camera moves, the editing, all are sharp and well-composed.
Now to the story. Most SF films are really nothing but action-adventure-thrillers tricked out with some SF clothes. Brains are seldom in evidence. More often than not, if there is an interesting idea, they blow it big time. Here, we have some very smart guys building computer stuff in their garage, like Steve Jobs, and they end up building something they don’t really understand at first. Turns out it’s a time machine. This is all absolutely believable. The dialogue is swimming in tech jargon, I believe that guys like this would stumble on the greatest invention of all time, and understand it when they do. Sort of. I mean, at first all they want to do is use it to get rich. Find out what stock is going to go up and buy it. But then, as time travel stories always do, things get complicated ...
Most SF movies spoon-feed you the “tough” ideas. Somebody explains things to somebody else. Some sexy graphics are trotted out to put it in terms a kindergartner couldn’t miss. These guys give you nothing. You are expected to figure it out yourself. This is a brave approach, I love them for doing it that way. For the first hour (and it runs only 78 minutes), I am with them. Then ... hell, I got very confused, and I do this for a living! And when it was over, I was at sea. I admit it, I couldn’t figure it all out.
Repeated viewings would probably reveal more, but I don’t want to. A lot of people are going to dislike this movie because of this, and I understand that. But should every movie have a neat, pat resolution? Isn’t the universe full of mystery? It sure is where time travel is concerned. I think the movie could have been better, but I’m not complaining. At least these guys tried. IMDb.com
Princess Mononoke (1997) I don’t think I’ll ever be a fan of Japanese anime. I still prefer the full-motion animation of Disney at its best, or the CGI of Pixar. I find the cheap short-cuts of anime irritating. Still, when the story is this good, and when the art is this good, it is a lot more than just watchable. The very best anime artists know how to use stillness as well as motion, aren’t afraid to do small effects, and when it’s time for it, they know how to pull out all the stops. The imagination involved here is stunning, and the artistry blew me away. Though it was more than a little distracting to have one of the main characters, a scheming monk, voiced by Billy Bob Thornton, complete with Awrkinsaw accent. IMDb.com
The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio (2005) My mother was born and raised in Defiance—actually on a farm nearby—so naturally I had to see this. What a lovely little town it is! Full of 1950s Hudsons, Packards, Studebakers, tree-lined streets, small mid-western houses ... and of course it was all filmed in Ontario, Canada.
Robert A. Heinlein, in his novel Have Spacesuit, Will Travel, had his hero Kip Russell enter a contest to win a trip to the moon. All you had to do was come up with a new slogan for Skyway Soap. "Highway and byway, there's no soap like Skyway!" Reading it today, it all seems highly unlikely ... but it's true. Before "No Skill Needed!" contests like Publishers Clearing House completely took over the market, America was flooded with this sort of contest where you actually had to write something, and the entries were actually judged. And there were people who devoted themselves to this pursuit and made a fairly good living at it, picking up small consolation prizes here and there and every once in a while getting a big winner. Car, trip to Europe, major appliances, stuff like that. Naturally, you ended up with a closet full of pogo sticks and toasters, too, but you just sold those. (Kip entered about 1000 times, and won a spacesuit ...)
Evelyn Ryan did this in the '50s, and managed to support her eight children that way for years. Nine children, if you count her husband. And you must count her husband. He only earns enough, when he's working, to pay for the oceans of booze he consumes. Naturally, her winning all this stuff threatens his shaky manhood, naturally it makes him feel like a worthless, self-pitying, childish, puling, whining, piece-of-shit loser. That's probably because he is a worthless, self-pitying, childish, puling, whining, piece-of-shit loser. He is something Evelyn stepped in when she was young, and should have wiped off her shoes shortly afterward, but before you know it she had eight children ...
This is the '50s, after all, and you just don't walk out on your family. The cops are on his side, the priest advises her to suck it up and be a better wife. She is sunny and positive in the face of hardships that would make Job or Candide slit their wrists.
This is a true story, and several things made it work very well for me. For one, all the children recognize that their father is a worthless, self-pitying, childish, puling, whining, piece-of-shit loser. I'm so glad none of them defended him. For another, though Evelyn's way of coping with her life wouldn't be my way, nor the way of most women today (I hope), it was the '50s, and the production design and the whole feel of the film is spot on. That whole chrome-plated, big hair, high heels and petticoat, tail fin, inane black-and-white TV advertising jingle era is evoked flawlessly. The film is narrated by Julianne Moore as Evelyn, who pops into scenes that she herself is in to comment on the action, one of many very clever uses of special effects that enhance the movie rather than seem to be showing off. It is funny, and heartbreaking, sometimes both at the same time. Like:
She's made soup from the last scraps of stuff in the cupboard. The kids are looking at it dubiously.
"There's bugs in this soup."
"Those aren't bugs, those are spices."
"Spices don't have legs." But they eat the soup. They love their mother that much. I laughed, as I cried. IMDb.com
The Producers (2005) Many critics have been very harsh, and I don’t understand why. Sampling the killer reviews, I find that many people object to the fact that director (of stage and screen versions) Susan Stroman has basically filmed the play. Oh, sure, the absolutely brilliant number with the little old ladies dancing in their walkers has been set outdoors on Park Avenue, but the rest is firmly set on the stage. In other words, these idiots hated it for the very reason I loved it. This is a play, you jerks! It always was, there is not a realistic funnybone in its hilarious body; why do you want to “open it up?” Also, it wasn’t very “edgy.” Read: The camera didn’t jerk around like a spastic, there were no zooms, no quick cuts, no meaningless razzle-dazzle at all if it didn’t add to the movie. Most of the time you could see the dancers’ entire bodies, as Fred Astaire decreed for his movies. No celluloid salad of one-second shots designed to disguise the fact that somebody can’t dance without a big cheat from the film editor.
The only reason I can understand for not liking this movie: You hate musicals. I don’t understand why you hate them (I love them beyond all genres), but I understand that you do. So ... don’t go. Otherwise, this is the best time you’ll have in the movies in 2006. IMDb.com
Project Grizzly (1996) There are times when something happens – and it can take only a moment – that changes your life forever. It’s never happened to me, but I’ve seen it with others. Seven years before this movie was made, Troy Hurtubise, a Canadian outdoorsman, had an encounter with a grizzly bear. It’s impossible to know exactly what happened as Troy is such a chatterbox, poseur, and possibly flat-out liar, but he freely admits that he literally crapped in his pants. The griz let him live.
But it festered in his mind. He sets out to make a grizzly-proof suit out of junk from his scrap metal business. Seven years, six models, and $150,000 later, he’s ready to test the Mark VI. It is a portrait of obsession. Each model looks more ridiculous than the one before. He allows himself to by hit by trucks, huge logs, baseball bats. He can talk scientific talk, but basically he just lets people whomp on him. He is unhurt. Now it’s time to find the griz that scared the shit out of him and show the “Old Man” who is tougher. He wraps the project in high-toned talk about what a valuable tool this suit will be for studying Ursus horribilis in its natural habitat ... but this is demonstrably bullshit. Plenty of people have studied these bears. There’s even another film out there about a guy who liked to fancy he was “living with” the bears, like Jane Goodall with chimps and Dian Fossey with gorillas. He succeeded so well that he managed to capture his own screams on tape as he was slowly eaten alive by one.
Even more telling ... the suit weighs 340 pounds. He can barely waddle when he has it on. If he falls over, he can’t roll over or sit up, much less stand again. He can’t even get it off at all by himself! It needs a team of two just to tuck him into it and get him out. So they take the suit out into the bush, where they quickly discover what I could have told them: The suit is totally useless unless he’s on perfectly flat ground. They have to carry it in on three horses, and by the time they get there they’re so tired they just abandon it on a mountainside. (I have a suggestion. Go to Churchill, Manitoba. The ground around town is real flat, and there are thousands of polar bears, which are easy to find and aggressive and even larger than grizzlies. Smear yourself with seal grease and let ‘em have at you.)
SPOILER ... but not much of one. He never tangles with a bear. At the end of the film they spot a griz in the distance. They head home to work on the Mark VII.
I have two bear-proof suits myself, and I’ve had them for years. I wear them in different circumstances. The first is blue jeans and a shirt. This one has worked flawlessly, so long as I don’t go into the woods. Works damn well against alligators, lions, tigers, and sharks, too, so long as I don’t go into the woods or the ocean. The second suit is called a “pickup truck.” (Okay, I don’t actually own one, but I can buy one at any car lot in America if I feel the need to go into the woods, for a lot less than $150,000.) What’s that? You say a pickup doesn’t provide much mobility for following griz along woodsy paths? ... well, neither does the Mark VI. In fact, the Mark VI’s mobility approaches zero.
We’ve seen several of these ... what I call geek movies lately. They’re like the sideshow at the circus, where you used to go see the freaks and geeks. “My god, is he really going to bite the head off that chicken ...? Oh, yuck!” There was the likeable and determined but talentless moviemaker Mark Borchardt in American Movie. Then there was the horrible egotist and backstabber Troy Duffy in Overnight. Both were good movies, and this one has its moments, too. But all the while I’m feeling a little uncomfortable at this sort of reality cinema that records not triumphs, but failures. And it becomes so painfully clear that Hurtubise’s real quest is not to study bears but to somehow feel safe again inside his ridiculous cocoon. But failure is part of life, right? And most of us are obsessed about something. Sometimes that something is ridiculous, but at least it keeps us busy, and maybe it helps keep the bears away ... IMDb.com
{proof} (2005) Some plays can make dandy movies. Take Sleuth, for instance, one of the best ever. Or you can just film the play, which I usually prefer. See Dustin Hoffman in Death of a Salesman. But "opening it up" can be a big mistake, as in The Crucible, even with a screenplay by Arthur Miller. This film has good intentions, the cast works very hard, and the themes are intriguing, it's definitely for grown-ups (though you don't really need to know anything about math) ... but it just didn't jell for me. IMDb.com
The Proposition (Australia, 2005) If a cowboy movie made in Spain by Italians is a Spaghetti Western, what's the proper term for a western made in Australia? How about a Didjeridu Oater? The outback isn't standing in for Texas in this one, but there are no kangaroos or emus in it, and the director clearly is going for some sort of mythic frontier thing here, so it might as well be Buffalo Turd, Nebraska, as Woolygoongalong Station, South Australia. The device of using the standard furniture of the western as backdrop for Shakespearean morality plays has been around a long time now, and if you're careful not to get too solemn, it can still work. But all that is achieved here is pretentiousness, from the silly musical theme to the poetry-quoting psychopaths. See True Grit, or The Culpepper Cattle Company, or The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid instead of this dead wallaby. Or, for that matter, see The Road Warrior. IMDb.com
The Positively True Adventures of the Alleged Texas Cheerleader-Murdering Mom (1993) I'd been hearing about this one for years, and I can tell you it is all it was cracked up to be.
First, the director, Michael Ritchie. He went on a streak beginning with Downhill Racer in 1969, one of the best sports movies ever made. Then he made The Candidate, one of the best political movies, and Smile, a wonderful thing about small-town beauty pageants. After that his output was uneven, and he died in 2001, much too young. He was at the top of his game when he made this one.
Then the writer, Jane Anderson. The name wasn't ringing any bells, so I looked her up and found she had written How To Make an American Quilt and written and directed The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio, which we liked a lot. I hope she gets more directing jobs.
And the story: You've certainly heard of it. In Channelview, Texas, Wanda Holloway becomes so obsessed with getting her daughter on the cheerleading squad that she hires a hit man to kill the girl's chief rival and her mother. This could have been done as a routine movie-of-the-week (and was, shortly after this one: Willing to Kill: the Texas Cheerleader Story, on ABC). Even the title sucks, especially compared to this one. Jane Anderson handles it as a black farce. After Wanda is arrested the story becomes one of who among the many people involved will make out best selling the TV rights to the story. It's very funny, with these Texas rubes talking about agents and cuts of the profits. One writer, attempting to convince the intended victim to deal with her, mentions that she has Holly Hunter in mind to play her.
Which brings us to what makes the whole crazy thing work: Holly Hunter. This lady is so good she scares me sometimes. If you want 5 feet 2 inches of firecracker intensity with a southern accent, you could not possibly think of anyone else for the part. This film is shot on two levels. There is the story itself, told in the conventional way, and an interview with Wanda and her daughter, shot on video. In these segments she is ... so fantastically good it was like she had gotten into the crazy skin of Wanda. Her eyes are laser beams, and her mouth is capable of speaking whole paragraphs with just a small twist. She can smile in such a way that it makes your skin crawl, and hold it those few daring extra beats that make you want to turn away from her naked obsession and total lack of self-doubt. She is a monster, pure and simple, and has no idea that she is. If this had been a theatrical release, she'd have won an Oscar.
The heart of the movie is a long scene, that looks as if it was partly improvised but probably wasn't, as it was based on transcripts of tapes made by the hit man. She and Beau Bridges play off each other so wonderfully, Hunter goes though such a range of things ... it is quite simply one of the best scenes between two actors ever put on film. I would recommend the film for those 15 minutes alone, but there is so much more. Rent this at once. IMDb.com
Prozac Nation (2001) I haven’t read the memoir by Elizabeth Wurtzel that is the basis for this movie. From the book reviews I looked at, they seem to have eliminated a lot of the story. She was addicted to Ritalin, and almost everything else you can ingest. Christina Ricci does a good job with the material she is given; unfortunately, that’s just alternating between being an incredible bitch and crying and saying how sorry she is. I’m not for a moment belittling the horror of clinical depression, which here is described as happening “a few steps at a time ... then all at once.” I’ve felt myself going down a few of those steps, at times, sensed that there was a bottomless abyss I could easily fall into. But this movie misses just about everything. The title seems to imply that the 300,000,000 annual prescriptions for anti-depressants in America is a bad thing, but it’s the only thing that made Wurtzel even barely tolerable to others or to herself. As I understand it she went on to further adventures in self-absorption, and chronicled them all for us to read. I’d rather not. Especially after finding this comment she made about her reaction to watching the fall of the Twin Towers on 9/11:
“I had not the slightest emotional reaction. I thought, ‘this is a really strange art project…’ it was a most amazing sight in terms of sheer elegance. It fell like water. It just slid, like a turtleneck going over someone's head. I just felt like everyone was overreacting. People were going on about it. That part really annoyed me.”
This girl is the poster child for narcissism. No wonder the film never got a theatrical release and sat on the Miramax shelf for 4 years before finally going to STARZ and DVD. Who could possibly care what happened to this asshole? If I’d known of that quote going in, I’d never have watched. Fuck you, Wurtzel! You are too kind. IMDb.com
Psych-Out (1968) I had completely forgotten that this was directed by my old friend, Richard Rush, who began his career with cult movies like Hell's Angels on Wheels and this one, then made the superb The Stunt Man ... and seems to have spent the rest of his life lecturing on college campuses after showings of his motorsickle film. Ah, those were the days, spent lounging around his pool in Bel-Air, with his real stunt man friend recently turned TV director, Chuck Bail, listening to Richard's tall tales about Peter O'Toole and many others. We'd work on the Millennium script for an hour, order in a huge plate of sushi, work a little more, and then Richard would get itchy feet. "Let's go to Catalina!" he'd say, and we were off to Santa Monica Airport where we'd check out a little Cessna and be in the air in a trice. Two trices at most. He let me fly except for takeoffs and landings, and headed us, at first, directly to LAX. This seemed insane to me, until he pointed out that 5000 feet over a major airport was the safest place for a small plane to be, as it was the one place where the big jets never went. We'd land on top of the mountain, enjoy buffalo burgers made from the very wild bison that roam the island, and be off again (thus making me one of the few people who has ever visited Santa Catalina but never been in the only town, Avalon) for a fly-in at a little airstrip somewhere in Santa Barbara county so I could ride in Steve McQueen's old Stearman biplane. Sometimes the movie biz just takes your breath away.
Oh, yeah, the movie. It's way better than the double feature on this DVD, The Trip ... but that doesn't mean it's very good. A deaf girl (Susan Strasberg) goes looking for her whacked-out brother (Bruce Dern) in the Haight-Ashbury. I guess nobody really knew much about the deaf back then. This girl may or may not be suffering from hysterical deafness, but she sure doesn't talk like deaf people talk, which is pretty much like Marlee Matlin talks. This film at least has a story, which The Trip doesn't, but it's not much of one, and it just goes on for a while and abruptly quits. Bruce Dern is over the top. The guy who falls for the dead girl (maybe), one "Stoney," is played by Jack Nicholson, and he's by far the best thing in the movie. He's got the youthful dangerousness and presence that would soon be serving him so well in Five Easy Pieces and Carnal Knowledge. (He was actually 29, perilously close to that age beyond which no one could be trusted, according to one of the more fucked-up gurus of my generation.) He's got a band (didn't everybody in 1968?) that really, really, really sucks. Somehow they get invited to play in the Avalon Ballroom, something that would never happen, believe me ... and it all falls apart, what little of it there was. But we stuck it out to the end. IMDb.com
Psycho (1960) One of the most audacious films ever made, one of the most discussed, and one that I can’t say anything new about, except that it is one of only 3 movies that have ever actually scared me. Okay, I was only 13, but still ... IMDb.com
Psycho (1998) Possibly the stupidest idea ever to disgrace the American cinema until Adam Sandler came along and re-made Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Gus van Sant re-made Hitchcock’s masterpiece shot for shot, almost. In COLOR. Fucking stupid. IMDb.com
Pulp Fiction (1994) One of those films that changes the way we look at motion pictures. We were so pissed off when that pleasant little potboiler, Forrest Gump, won best picture. IMDb.com
The Pursuit of Happyness (2006) This is a well-done, if routine, inspirational flick that tells the true story of Chris Gardner and how he overcame incredible obstacles to become a stockbroker, while living on the streets with his young son. It’s been suitably sanitized and tweaked; Gardner was actually married but living with his girlfriend, the son was the girlfriend’s child, and younger than seen in the movie. The thing I liked about it most was that there was no villain in the piece. Everyone he meets is well-meaning, but unaware of his real circumstances. He is adept at putting up a front, talking his way out of embarrassing and potentially career-ending situations. Will Smith is quite good here … but getting an Oscar nomination as Best Actor is a bit of a travesty. He must have had one hell of a campaign in the trades: “For Your Consideration …” IMDb.com
Les Quatre cents coups (The 400 Blows) (France, 1959) Sometimes life just ain't fair. Francois Truffaut was born in 1932. In a better world he'd be 74 today, quite likely still active, probably the "Grand old man" of French cinema. But no, he died at 52 of a brain tumor. Sigh. Well, at least he was a worker, averaging one film per year. This was his first one, and one of the most influential films of all time as one of the first of the French