January 2003

• About Schmidt (1/4, Orange [2002])--Kathy Bates is the bravest woman in the business. I can't decide whether it's brilliant or only very good, but I'm sure I need to see it again. I know for certain that Jack is brilliant. And I certainly understand the problem the trailer cutter faced: slapstick sells better than despair. Really odd audience--first off, there were a couple dozen people in the theater already when I walked in, 11 minutes before showtime, so clearly, there was a lot of eagerness there. But they were all sitting so far back that, even though I sat closer than anyone else there yet, I immediately realized that I was back farther than usual--the existing crowd had apparently intimidated me out of my normal behavior. Anyway, a lot of people did indeed seem to think it was a comedy--there was a lot more laughter than I felt. Perhaps boosted by the discomfort and disorientation of not knowing what the fuck to make of most of it? Or the discomfort of seeing a little too much of themselves? 'Cause if this is Omaha and Mount Sterling, it is also East Haven. God, Payne really doesn't have a very high opinion of the race, does he? I need to see Citizen Ruth again.
• Chicago (1/5, Orange [2002])--Reports of the demise of the spirit of Bob Fosse in the film version seem to be to have been much exaggerated. I agree that it fails to maintain the giddy energy of the first 45 minutes or so, but jesus--how could it? What fun! I didn't even know Queen Latiyfah (sp?) and John C. were in it (geez, we're seeing more of him this season than of Leo!), but what wonderful contributions they make. I find it impossible to compare something like that w/ Schmidt (particularly since I'm still not altogether sure how I feel about it), but I certainly haven't had that much fun at the movies 10 times in the past year. Her lover was right, though: Renée's legs really *are* skinny--I think she looked better at her Bridget Jones weight.
• 25th Hour (1/18, Orange[?] [2002])--How can you not love a movie w/ such a wonderful dog in it as Doyle? It worked for me--it involved me, it moved me, and most of the Spikisms rang true for me. In particular, I thought the "fuck you" litany was an exciting and dangerous piece of work that few if any other filmmakers would have the bona fides even to attempt, and I almost cried when he saw those people again on the way out of town.
• The Hours (1/20, Orange [2002])--I can certainly think of nothing better last year, or most years. In an effort not to overgush, I can say that, as easy on the eyes as she is, Claire Danes just seemed like an outclassed young actress dropped in among these other people's actual lives. And I thought Jeff Daniels played it a little too fey. Otherwise, damn near perfect. But tell me: am I stupid not to have even vaguely have suspected that Richie = Richard until the scene w/Laura's wedding photo? (Frankly, I hadn't paid attention to the kid's name--and usually Laura calls him by some nickname or other, so maybe it's supposed to not be obvious.) Anyway, when Laura shows up at Clarissa's, I was ready for that to be a false note, but no--it was necessary and right. Great fucking film. And how does anyone beat Meryl for the Oscar? ("Greedy, greedy, greedy" in the GG story made me lol.)
• A Dangerous Mind (1/25, NoHa [2002])--Much more ostensibly serious than I expected, and thus not as much fun. Good performance by Rockwell, though, and an engaging Charlie Kaufman script. [5]

February 2003

• Talk to Her (2/1[?], YSC [2002])--Well, perhaps The Hours isn't the best film of the year after all. Absolutely amazing--Pedro seems to have matured. He has always liked to make us confront taboo subjects, of course, but never with the complexity of sympathy that we have to deal with here. And damn, it was good to see Geraldine Chaplin, whose presence on the posters I hadn't noticed.
• Narc (2/2[?], NoHa [2002])--The trailer did this film a real disservice, making it seem like just another unhinged-Ray Liotta-cop film. Instead, it's a gritty, generally cliché-free gut-grabber, and if the surprise ending isn't really all that big a surprise, it's nonetheless a genuine payoff.
• The Quiet American (2/8[?], YSC [2002])--Not sure Caine deserved an Oscar nomination for this, but it is another of the fine, quiet performances that have characterized his work through the years, and Fraser is well-cast as the titular naif.
• Daredevil (2/16, Cine)--Spiderman minus the engaging protagonist, minus the breathtaking webslinging special effects, plus a feminist element (albeit a lame and obvious one), plus a more interesting villain (Colin Farrell). Best in joke: Matt's father's final boxing opponent is John Romita.

March 2003

• Lost in La Mancha (3/1, Sunshine [2002])--Even more painful than it is hilarious, Murphy's Law at its most brutal. An ethical question: is it kosher to have the subject of a documentary controbute to it creatively? (Though in fact, the end credits suggest that the Gilliamesque animation sequence that illustrates his career sweep is in fact done by someone else.) [10]
• All the Real Girls (3/1, Angelika)--Quintessential indy--and I mean that in a good way. A story of young love between two people whose only intelligence is spiritual, so real it hurts. Zooey Deschanel's eyes should be a franchise unto themselves.
• Amandla! (3/1, Film Forum [2002])--Somehow I was expecting this to be all music and uplift, but in fact it focuses on the horrors of apartheid to seat-squirming effect. A remarkable film--it's possible that I saw more Oscar-nominated documentaries in one day than I did all last year. Note: Nelson Mandela is the least funky black man alive.
• Morvern Callar (3/1, Cinema Village [2002])--I seem to have lost the ability to distinguish between Irish and Scottish accents. I have noticed this also in watching Man U games on TV, where one of the announcers has an extreme Celtic accent, but I keep going back and forth between which. Anyway, this has one of the most extraordinary opening scenes I've seen, and Morton makes the title character interesting to follow (it was, though I watched at at 9:10 p.m., the only one of these 4 films I never drowsed in even for a second), but my reaction after it was over was pretty much, yeah? so?
• City of God (3/15, YSC [2002])--Astonishing, The Godfather meets Reservoir Dogs in Río. Shows children wielding guns as a perfectly logical result of slum life--and shows that, despite the guns, these are still children.
• Russian Ark (3/29, YSC [2002])--Geez, I don't know what to say about this except "ballsy": Russian history via art and an arty one-shot stream-of-consciousness filmic technique. Jennie found this nothing but boring, but I thought the interplay between the two constant characters--the unseen "stranger" (I guess) and the "European"--was an effective narrative device to hold things together as they wander through the Hermitage and through time. [15]
• Spider (3/29, YSC [2002])--Creep city, Ralph Fiennes in a tour-de-force of mumbledom as a man with ongoing issues about his childhood, Miranda Richardson in a delightfully wicked double-and-sometimes-triple role, and Gabriel Byrne as another of his weak strong men. Interesting to double-feature this with Ark, as both films feature ahistorically present narrative figures.
• Laurel Canyon (3/30, Orange [2002])--I associate this somehow with The Big Chill, though I probably didn't love this as much as that on first viewing (but then I was much younger and stupider then). It's possible that if I ever watch this as often as I've watched that, it will ring as false and contrived, but for today, I found this enormously fun. And I want Frances McDormand, want her bad.

April 2003

• Bend It Like Beckham (4/5, Madison [2002])--Completely formulaic, completely predictable, and completely irresistible. Two things are really praiseworthy about it: (1) it takes female athletes seriously, without the leering camerawork that is sometimes seen in such films, and (2) the filmmakers went to the trouble of getting women who could actually play the game for the action sequences, so the game action and especially the drills are more realistic than most sports films of either gender.
• Nowhere in Africa (4/5, Madison [2002])--Not a great film, but certainly a different perspective on the Holocaust, and the climactic scene of biblical plague is quite remarkable.
• Raising Victor Vargas (4/12, Orange [2002])--A surprisingly sweet film, and I mean that in a good way. The title character is a young Dominican in East Harlem who is, though cocky, just as inept about love as is every boy his age. With just a handful of characters we get a slice of a life we'll never see. Victor's grandmother--the custodial parent for him and a younger brother and sister--is particularly memorable, trying to hold a family together about as skillfully as Victor pursues girls.
• The Good Thief (4/20, YSC [2002])--Neil Jordan's remake of Bob le flambeur, which I've never seen but need to. Nick Nolte delivers every line as if he's double-parked, the effect being that you often don't register the humor of what he's said until a line or two of dialogue later. The film is an intentionally pulpy heist flick, and it's excellent on that level, but it's also about truth and lies--especially the lies one tells oneself. Not perfect, but pretty damned good.
• Better Luck Tomorrow (4/26, NoHa [2002])--Am I Asian-American? I dunno--I sure identified with the protagonist, and sympathized with his looniest compatriot. The films plays beautifully with Asian-American stereotypes, both endorsing them and departing from them disturbingly. I believed even the most implausible elements of the plot, including the disastrous climax. And the final line of the film is delicious in its ambiguity--is it a proclamation of amorality or Dostoevskian fatalism? [20]
• It Runs in the Family (4/27, Orange)--Note to self: never forget that just because Stephen Holden says something isn’t sentimental, it isn’t. Basically, this is On Golden Pond with Douglases instead of Fondas. Bernadette Peters is excellent as the wife-who-finds-another-woman’s-panties-in-her-husband’s-coat-pocket, and the woman and girl who play the sons’ girlfriends are both lots of fun to look at, but this was mostly a waste of time I could have spent on my proofreading project.

May 2003

• The Man Without a Past (5/2, YSC [2002])--The best Finnish film I’ve ever seen! A very Capra-esque film, and I mean that as a compliment: guy loses memory, works to create a new life, falls in love, then discovers that he’s already married. Like the best Capra films, sweet but never cloying. And here’s a wonderful string of coincidences following my screening. The protagonist’s love interest is a spinster who’s in the Salvation Army. When I left the theater and passed a record store, Frank Sinatra was singing "Luck Be a Lady," and then a couple of blocks farther along, I passed a poster for a campus production of Streetcar Named Desire.
• X2 (5/3, Cine)--The first X-Men film was delightfully surprising in its recognition of the parallels between mutants’ social problems and the problems of those much more common mutants known as adolescents. Well, you can lose your virginity only once, and the sequel, though well made, is just more of the same, and so more obviously "comic-booky" than the first, and so harder to take seriously. Alan Cumming was a promising addition to the cast--and the special effects related to his superpower are the best new thing about the flick--but he is essentially playing his typecasting for comic book effect. Sadly, Famke Janssen seems to have opted out of further sequels, though of course "death" in a comic book is not necessarily final.
• Blue Car (5/10, Angelika [2002])--Oddly, two of the films I saw on my 2d M4 shared not only the theme of a teenage girl failed and/or abused by every adult in her world but also an odd preoccupation with angels. This was the lesser of those two, but still pretty good. I take exception, though, to the Times reviewer’s remark that, unlike most films in which poetry is central, this film knows the difference between good poetry and bad--or I take exception if by that he means that Megan is writing anything like good poetry at the end. At best, she is a typical talented 16-year-old who shows some glimmer of being able to write poetry after a lot of years, a lot of reading, and a lot of work. In other words, she is portrayed realistically.
• The King of Hearts (5/10, FF [1966])--Saw this in part because it fit so nicely with my schedule (there were only two films that were musts, and a few others that were attractive): a very young, handsome Alan Bates, and a barely pubescent Geneviève Bujold (in a yellow tutu!) in a sort of Monty Pythonesque film about the insanity of war contrasted with the wisdom of lunatics. It features one of the most stunning shifts of tone I’ve ever seen in a film, but I won’t tell you what; I’ll just say rent it sometime if you’ve never seen it. [25]
• Spellbound (5/10, FF [2002])--No, not the Hitchcock film; this is a documentary about spelling bee contestants. Sounds boring, right? In fact, it’s probably the best doc I’ve seen since Hoop Dreams, and one of the most stress-inducing, exciting, and inspiring films of any sort I’ve seen in a while. Do not miss this when it goes nationwide, as it presumably will, since Film Forum seems to be selling out every screening. (I sat in the leftmost seat of the back row, and if I hadn’t bought my ticket online the night before, I wouldn’t have had a seat at all.) Oddly, though, if I’d known one more thing about the film than I did--specifically, that one of the eight spellers featured is from New Haven--I might not have gone, because then I’d have been confident it would come to town (and part of the point in the M4 is to see things that I might not get to see otherwise).
• Lilya 4-Ever (5/10, Cinema Village [2002])--This neglected teen is abandoned in her Russian hometown when her mother runs off to America with her new husband. Trying to make her way alone, she becomes a surrogate mother to a boy only a couple of years younger than she, but ultimately she admits that the only way to make a living is to sell herself, and the film goes from painful to unbearably grim. The shots from Lilya’s POV of her johns grunting over her are enough to put you off sex forever. And yet, as grim as it is, it’s not unremittingly depressing; somehow, though she’s beaten down, Lilya is never really beaten. A remarkable film, brutal but redemptive.
• Holes (5/11, NoHa)--A much different sort of film, a Disney flick aimed at the young teens for whom the book it’s based on was written. I’m told by more than one person that the book is wonderful, and the film is pretty darned good too, though not as good as the last Disney movie I went to on the basis of strong reviews, The Rookie. (Did we ever talk about that flick? If you didn’t go when it was in the theater because you thought it was a kids’ movie, go out and rent it tonight; you will thank me.) A beautifully plotted story, every apparent loose end ultimately tied together, but not in a forced way. And it’s always fun to see Sigourney Weaver and Jon Voigt--perhaps especially when they’re evil. And Eartha Kitt is in it briefly! Your nephew’s probably too young to appreciate this, and it’s not worth missing something you really want to see for, but if you go, you’ll be pleasantly surprised.
• A Mighty Wind (5/15, Orange)--I don't know how the fucker keeps making the same movie and yet keeps making it funny & fresh, but he does. Well, yes, of course I know: he creates unique, goofy, sympathetic characters. The relationship between Mitch & Mickey (Levy & O'Hara) is genuinely poignant, and that provides ballast for the general airiness of the film. Great fun.
• Bruce Almighty (5/24, NoHa)--Hint to young screenwriters: if you're going to copy some of the smartest romantic comedies in cinema history--mostly It's a Wonderful Life and Groundhog Day, but to a lesser extent Sullivan's Travels--then you'd by god (!) better write something that doesn't look pukily pathetic in comparison. I laughed . . . I don't know, maybe six times. And I smiled a few times at Morgan Freeman, who was the only one who seemed to be having ANY fun. Certainly Carrey wasn't (OK, 2 or 3 physical bits were good), and Aniston, after what was supposed to be the big breakout role in The Good Girl, is handed stuff she could phone in to a sitcom not as good as Friends. Yeah, there's mean-spirited stuff, too, but my complaint is not with that; my complaint is that even *that's* not funny. [30]
• The Dancer Upstairs (5/24, YSC [2002])--Javier Bardem is wonderful as the honest cop trying to stay a step ahead of a weirdly ill-focused revolutionary group and the corrupt military regime that wants only to stamp out the rebels, but the fact that he would fall in love w/ the ballet teacher, and that she would turn out to be a revolutionary, seems as straight out of screenwriting 101 as the fact that he has a wise-guy young partner. Worth seeing, but terribly uneven.
• Guy Maddin’s Dracula: Pages from a Virgin’s Diary (5/25, FF [2001])--Silent, black-and-white (mostly), balletic--what more do you need to say? Well, that it’s not camp, though it’s is sometimes funny because anachronistic or melodramatic, but that’s not, I think, the same thing. Production values are exuberantly cheesy, which works well. The dancing allows for a surprising suspension of disbelief in some crucial scenes, particularly at Lucy’s gravesite. An odd, not altogether successful, but worthwhile film--reminds me of things that Jennie and I would fight for in our Film Fest days.
• Gigantic: A Tale of Two Johns (5/25, Cin. Vil. [2002])--I own one They Might Be Giants LP (vinyl), which a young friend of mine bought me many years ago, so I’m by no means a huge fan, but I’m certainly more of a fan now than I was 48 hours ago. These guys are so honest and so engaging, and this documentary captures that beautifully. It is also appropriately quirky in its own right--opening, e.g., with a lecture by Paul Simon (no, not that one!) about the political career of his fellow Illinois politician Abe Lincoln, the only connection being that John Linnell and John Flansburgh met in high school at Lincoln, Maine. It’s like that.
• Cinemania (5/25, Cin. Vil. [2002])--This is exactly why I need to live at least 70 miles away from Manhattan. A documentary about five unemployed people (three on disability, one living on inheritance money, the fifth simply getting by somehow) who do every day what I did Saturday--except that four features in a day might be a fairly light day. A sad, funny examination of obsession, and I’m not sure whether it’s less sad or more than only one of the five has any insight at all into his own psyche.
• Sweet Sixteen (5/25, UA Union Sq. [2002])--Ken Loach’s latest film about how the Scottish demimonde isn’t just all fun and games. A teenage boy wants to help his mother escape her drug-dealing boyfriend and have a better life when she gets out of prison. Wonderful performance by the brand-new actor in the lead role, and a surprisingly fun film before the inevitable disaster kicks in. Special bonus in my viewing: sitting next to a beautiful young European woman on a first date w/ a nerdy and pretentious American. Naturally, they had to start discussing the film the moment the end credits started to roll. [35]
• Winged Migration (5/31, YSC [2002])--Sensational eye candy: we soar with the birds. (Did they use Predator drones to film part of this?) Unfortunately, it shares the single flaw of Microcosmos (the amazing documentary about bugs from the same filmmakers): incredibly lame-o music; in fact, I think the music here outlames that of Microcosmos. The French, as Nick Nolte’s character points out in The Good Thief, haven’t the vaguest clue about pop.

June 2003

• Finding Nemo (6/1, NoHa)--This one, too (completing my G-rated weekend), is great to look at, but it doesn’t rise to the jaw-dropping level of Toy Story, by which everything else in the Pixar genre has to be judged. The writing isn’t as good--the story is similar to, but far less sophisticated than, the best animated film I saw last year, the Oscar-winning Spirited Away, and there aren’t as many jokes for the old folks as in the two TS films. David Ansen of Newsweek, the movie reviewer I trust most other than Jennie, called this this best big-studio release of the year so far, and looking back over what I’ve seen, I’m almost ready to agree--it’s better than Daredevil, X2, or Bruce Almighty--but I enjoyed A Mighty Wind more. Oh--and Holes, meaning it’s not even the best Disney film I’ve seen this year.
• Only the Strong Survive (6/22, Orange [2002])--It’s great to see Isaac Hayes and Sam Moore (of Sam & Dave) and Rufus Thomas, etc., but the unifying theme of the documentary seems to be simply, "Look at all the old soul singers I found." The ever-present producer is consistently annoying (in part because he seems to make no qualitative distinctions between the Chi-Lites and Jerry Butler--everyone is great), and Mary Wilson, still with a terrific voice at 60-something, is just pathetic singing "Love Child," thus assuming without irony and with no apparent self-awareness, the persona of a ghetto teen resisting sex because she doesn’t want to perpetuate the cycle of illegitimacy.
• Respiro (6/22, Madison [2002])--A Sicilian slice of life featuring a wife and mother of 3 tottering on the brink of an emotional breakdown. Except that you’re never really convinced of that, because the film seems so determined not to overdramatize that it barely dramatizes at all, even when the woman deserts her family and is presumed dead. Still, it’s believable, and the characters are sympathetic. I guess it’s Thoreau’s life of quiet desperation.
• 28 Days Later (6/28, Cine [2002])--Jesus, how intense; not a great film, but the most gripping I’ve seen in ages. Owes a lot to Night of the Living Dead. Like that one--and every horror movie ever made--it raises a lot of questions better left unthought-about, but like all really good horror movies, the implausibility doesn’t matter. And it’s not just a horror flick, either--or at least not just a horror flick in the conventional sense. Some of the scariest scenes are just of the empty streets of London, shots that are reminiscent of the empty-Times Square dream sequence in Vanilla Sky, and which make you wonder how the hell they managed to get all that real estate empty to shoot it that way. [40]
• L’Homme du train/Man on the Train (6/28, YSC [2002])--A tender love story between a bank robber and the 70-ish retired schoolteacher who befriends him, each of whom envies the other’s life. Very funny and very sad and very French; one of the best things I’ve seen this year. Would make a great double feature w/ The Good Thief.
• The Hulk (6/29, NoHa)--Gotta give Ang Lee credit for fearlessness: he’s unafraid to tackle Jane Austen, ’70s Connecticut key parties, and the Western. But the comic book--or at least this one--seems not to be his thing. Actually, the opening credits were great, and the breakneck backstory establishment were very good; not until the big green guy showed up did the picture become . . . well, boring. The Hulk himself looks cartoonish, completely out of place, and the special effects are completely underwhelming, in part, I think (and I’ve thought about this a lot) because, unlike the wonderful FX in Spiderman and the first X-Men, they’re based not on grace or strangeness but on brute strength, which just ain’t all that interesting.

July 2003

• Capturing the Friedmans (7/4, YSC)--"What is truth?" asked Pilate; this documentary about long-ago allegations of sexual abuse suggests that after a while, truth is (1) uncapturable and (2) irrelevant. Which doesn’t keep us from listening to the Rashomonlike array of "truths" (except that in fact the issue here may be a lot more complex than in Rashomon) and trying to figure out whom to believe, and when. Brutal, and remarkably well done.
• Whale Rider (7/5, Orange [2002])--A surprisingly beautiful film. My one-sentence review of Bend It Like Beckham applies equally to this, but the relationship between the roadblock adult and the girl is much more complex here, and there’s a lot more metaphysically at stake.
• The Matrix Reloaded (7/5, Orange)--Best thing I can say for this is that I got my ticket free for buying the original movie on DVD. Oh, that’s not fair: there are a few good moments, like Trinity riding her motorcycle against freeway traffic, but mostly the film just takes itself way too seriously.
• The Eye (7/6, Ang. [2002])--Wow. For 85 minutes, this is a very good, beautifully atmospheric, creepy movie. Then it takes a turn I didn’t anticipate and transcends the genre. Excellent.
• The Weather Underground (7/6, FF [2002])--A documentary that both moved me and made me think. Cleverly structured, with Vietnam footage mostly familiar as stills (the Vietcong prisoner getting his brains blown out, the naked little girl running down the road to escape a napalm attack) seducing you to agree that institutionalized insanity might indeed call for an insane response, but always in the back of your head is the "Yeah, but . . . " That voice is finally articulated by a surviving Weatherman who now owns a bar (and won $10K on Jeopardy!) and acknowledges that the road of violence justified by moral certainty ends in Oklahoma City or at the World Trade Center.
• Hell’s Highway (7/6, Cin. Vil.)--A ragged documentary about ragged documentaries--the series of films made to scare teens into driving safely. The filmmakers do one of those "And then we learned something we’d had no idea of when we started" deals, but it turns out to be a red herring. Most noteworthy element of my cinematic experience was seeing the woman from Cinemania in the audience--in the very theater where I’d seen the film. (And hearing her, too: she had a bad cough throughout, but of course made no move to leave.)
• Benzina (Gasoline) (7/6, Quad [2001])--Thelma and Louise with the lesbian subtext promoted to text and the driving in circles rather than a straight line.
• Pirates of the Caribbean (7/13, NoHa)--"This is just like what the Greeks did at Troy, only they were in a horse instead of dresses. Wooden horse." The film features writing like that throughout, and a campily hilarious performance by Johnny Depp. Furthermore, regardless of Keira Knightly's acting ability (and she's barely out of her teens, if that, so the book is hardly closed), she is clearly making some savvy career decisions, wherein she is positioned to play very attractive young women with balls. Literal balls in Bend It Like Beckham, of course, and here she gets to be rescuer as well as rescued, and she even gets to do a bit of swashbucking. The film drags a bit in the final reel--and is never as much fun when Depp is offscreen--but it is a damn good summer popcorn cruncher. Oh, but if you're sitting through the end credits thinking, "These are the longest damn end credits I've ever seen; if I knew there wasn't going to be a bonus scene afterward, I'd leave," go ahead and leave. There *is* in fact a bonus scene, but it's not worth the wait. [50]
• Jet Lag (7/18, YSC [2002])--Unsurprising but sweet, and you have to appreciate seeing a cell phone flushed down the toilet as an inciting incident. Irresistible to a closet romantic who believes that love really ought to work out. One grotesquely implausible sequence, though, has Binoche’s character getting up from an airport coffee shop and, apparently about 10 minutes later, on her plane which is taxiing down the runway.
• Swimming Pool (7/19, Orange [2002])--Miss Marple type goes to France to write, meets her publisher’s wacky daughter, adventures ensue. An interesting film, but a more admirable than likable one, based on a narrative trick that isn’t really set up fairly.
• Rivers and Tides (7/20, Cine [2001])--A documentary about the Scottish artish Andy Goldsworthy, who creates art from things in nature, often intended to go back into nature, in some cases almost immediately. Never before have I had it made so clear to me that some art must be made in defiance (or, rather, defiant indifference) to any logic save that this is who the artist is and what he does, and that what he does makes him who he is. Fantastically beautiful and exciting film.
• The Housekeeper (7/26, YSC [2002])--This is what the French do well: make an ostensibly "light" comedy that has deceptive substance. A story about loneliness and bitterness and the relief of same, but with the consequence being ill-advised love. Not a great film, but a small gem.
• Seabiscuit (7/31, Beverly, Champaign)--Two gripes: David McCullough, whose voice is perfect for Ken Burns’s documentaries, doesn’t belong here (or, rather, the documentary feel is out of line here), and at the other extreme, Bill Macy, whom I love, is like fingernails on the blackboard every time he speaks. Otherwise, though, a good, effective tearjerker, if less wonderful than I had hoped.

August 2003

• Northfork (8/7, YSC)--Golly, what a weird flick, and I’m not sure it earns all its weirdness. At its best, it’s like a Faulkner or O’Connor short story, simultaneously funny and weird and wise. But too often, I miss the humor and the wisdom. Good to see Daryl Hannah again, though, even if she is bald.
• Camp (8/8, YSC)--Sweet, engaging, and completely unoriginal. I sat there watching it and thinking, "Jennifer & Drew could do this--and will do better than this if they keep at it." It’s like a ’30s musical whose "plot" is just an excuse to cobble together the musical numbers. But the musical numbers are mostly worth the cobbling.
• Dirty Pretty Things (8/9, YSC [2002])--The best film I’ve seen in a long time about illegal immigration and the black-market kidney trade. In fact, a good mystery film, though Audrey Tatou is about as convincing as a Turk as Conan O’Brien would be. I hope we see more of the lead actor, whose long African name I can’t recall.
• The Holy Land (8/10, YSC [2001])--This was barely on my list to see, but I liked it far more than I would have imagined: part familiar story, part exotic culture; sweet with an undercurrent of inevitable terror; and partly a good episode of Cheers set in Jerusalem.
• Masked and Anonymous (8/15, YSC)--Imagine a universe in which everyone talks like a Bob Dylan song. . . . Once you get past the annoyance that all the characters talk alike, it’s actually a lot of fun to visit that universe, and the soundtrack is a must. Not nearly as aimless and confusing as the critics say. A bit reminiscent of Repo Man in the postapocalyptic L.A. street scenes--and then Tracey Walters shows up as a sleazy hotel desk clerk! [60]
• Secret Lives of Dentists (8/17, Cine [2002])--Very funny, and far more heartbreaking than funny: Campbell Scott as the emotionally repressed husband, Hope Davis as his unfaithful wife, and Denis Leary as the Greek chorus. I’m in love w/ Davis, of course, and I can’t think of anything Scott has done that wasn’t just about perfect.
• Freaky Friday (8/24, NoHa)--Yes, it’s just a silly, gimmicky movie, but the performances by Lindsay Lohan and especially Jamie Lee Curtis (I’m not kidding!) make this more than just worthwhile. This is not the sort of movie the Academy pays attention to, so Curtis probably won’t get the Oscar nomination she so richly deserves.
• The Magdalene Sisters (8/30, Orange)--Or One Flew over the Crucifix. A perfectly competent film that reveals something else creepy we didn’t know about the Catholic Church, but aside from that revelation, there’s nothing new or special here--or nuanced, either. I did not love The Secret Lives of Altar Boys, but at least Jodie Foster’s terrifying nun in that film was, in the audience’s eyes, if not in the characters’, a human being with defensible reasons for her behavior; the mother superior here is simply Sister Ratched.
• Thirteen (8/30, YSC)--Is it a measure of how squirmy this film made me that I initially rendered the title as Sixteen. The film flirts with exploitativeness, but ultimately it earns everything it demands of us, and its demands are as scary as anything Ridley Scott has ever done. And weirdly, it is much the same film as Freaky Friday, albeit from a perspective 180 degrees removed: for in that film, mother accidentally becomes daughter and thus gains understanding and empathy, while in this one, mother (Holly Hunter, in yet another amazing and fearless performance) tries to be like a teenager, but in so doing forfeits any possibility of understanding and empathy. Probably the toughest film of the year (City of God having been a 2002 pic), if not one of the best.
• The Other Side of the Bed (8/31, Loew’s 34th Street)--Spanish musical sex farce--need I say more? Actually, that said, there’s nothing else fresh here--the musical numbers are a kick, but there aren’t enough of them, and ultimately the whole thing just drags.
• Autumn Spring (8/31, Quad [2001])--Utterly charming Czech film about an elderly man’s refusal to grow up. Funny, sad, irresistible.
• Venus Boyz (8/31, Quad [2001])--Amazing documentary about drag kings. I don’t claim to know much about drag queens, but my impression is that there are two ways to go: beautiful or famous, and given the sizable overlap between the two, that’s really only about 1½ ways to go. Women who perform as men, we learn, not only occupy every spot on the male-to-female continuum, they veer off into other dimensions where that continuum is irrelevant. I have never had such an education in the meaning of gender. Moreover, much of the film is hilarious. Definitely the highlight of this M4.
• Suddenly (8/31, FF [2002])--An Argentine film, reminiscent of Gasoline in its portrayal of lesbians on the run in a violent world, but infinitely less formulaic and more satisfying, and in the end, surprisingly sweet and hopeful.

September 2003

• American Splendor (9/12, YSC)--Paul Giamatti has been doing excellent work in small quirky parts for years, and it’s great to see him get the chance to carry a film as good as this one, about reality-comic book writer (but not illustrator!) Harvey Pekar. I foresee an editing Oscar nomination for the brilliant interweaving of at least three different realities.
• Robot Stories (9/19, YSC [Film Fest New Haven])--Greg Pak, the filmmaker, has contributed shorts to several other FFNHs, and this is essentially a quartet of shorts united by the theme of interaction between machines and humans. Like much of Pak’s work, it’s smart but ultimately weighed down by sentiment. [70]
• The Technical Writer (9/19, YSC [FFNH])--The film that asks the question, "Didn’t Tatum O’Neal used to be able to act?" A very hip, ostensibly dark and sexy film that offers less than meets the eye (though what meets the eye is very good--a very well shot film). This got the jury prize as best feature, and that in itself is something of a comment on FFNH.
• OT: Our Town (9/20, YSC [FFNH])--A remarkable documentary I wouldn’t have known to see but for a rave by David Ansen in Newsweek a few weeks ago. Two teachers at a school in Compton put on a play, the school’s first in more than 20 years, and they choose the Thornton Wilder chestnut, which seemingly has nothing to do with their inner-city black and Hispanic students’ lives. The film shows us the students’ initial resistance, their struggle to make the material their own, and their struggles with their images of themselves as opening night approaches and their doubts remain. Just a gripping, thrilling film.
• The Event (9/20, YSC [FFNH])--Starring Olympia Dukakis and featuring Parker Posey, this is one of the few films shown at the festival that will get fairly wide play--I saw the trailer for it at the Quad on one of my M4s. In fact, I saw the trailer twice in two hours, and the first time, I thought, "Yes, absolutely," and the second time I thought, "Could be awfully sentimental." What it actually turned out to be was a beautifully made, sinfully cynical and simplistic film. What can be worse than having the side you’re on in an argument--in this case, about the right to assisted suicide--make the argument in such a slick and dishonest way as to give the other side ammunition. Nothing at the festival made me angrier.
• Justice (9/21, YSC [FFNH])--An odd film, fairly good, certainly by standards of this festival, and unusually honest and sympathetic in its airing of impulses often unfairly linked with the right wing--admiration for "real heroes," like cops and firemen--but in the end a victim to its very open-mindedness, I think, as it leaves you wondering where it stands and seems to suggest that having a pretty woman inexplicably fall for you is the best way to get over wanting revenge for 9/11. An enlightening look inside the comic book biz.
• High School (9/21, Whitney Humanities Center [FFNH])--A special showing of Frederick Wiseman’s remarkable 1968 documentary, which would have changed my life had I seen it in high school. Wiseman uses no voiceover commentary, but what he chooses to film makes it pretty clear that he views this white, middle-class high school as a place where the goal is to cajole every bit of individuality and skepticism out of our next generation of men in the gray flannel suit. A chilling horror film.
• The Animation Show (9/21, YSC [FFNH])--This collection by Mike Judge and FFNH veteran Don Hertzfeld came straight from a run at Film Forum, and it was a strong end to a lackluster festival, though some of the pieces left me cold. The most hilarious piece was something by Hertzfeld that FFNH showed several years ago called "Rejected," in which the animator’s 2d-grade-level drawing (think early Matt Groening, but not as sophisticated) is scripted with absurdist lines like "My spoon is too big," "I’m a banana," and my personal favorite, "My anus is bleeding." Well, I guess you had to be there. In the past, shorts have been the festival’s strengths, but aside from a marathon program contributed by the Boston Underground Film Festival, I saw only a handful of memorable shorts, a lot of mediocrity, and a few genuine stinkers. Certainly the most thought-provoking was a documentary called "Nigger or Not," which explored the question of whether the word is ever acceptable, regardless of context. That was followed by a very interesting panel presentation, whose only weakness was a lack of any articulate voice to make the case for the black-on-black use of the word as a term of endearment and all-purpose epithet. Still, it was a good thing for a middle-class honky to be a part of. The best non-BUFF short I saw was the only one in a program of seven that was worth a damn. It was called "The Vest," and it was about a young girl whose prized garment is a reversible vest made by her mother--prized until a "friend" at school teases her that the garment is home-made and thus no good. The 10-minute film is warm without being sentimental, funny without shortchanging its serious issue; the young actress nails the no-win irony of the situation perfectly. A beautiful film. The funniest short I saw preceded the cynical The Event: "Cry for Bobo." Its premise is that clowns are a despised minority group--so it is working a serious issue, but it doesn’t get bogged down in it. Desperate, Bobo turns to crime--but naturally, clownish, pointless crime. Much of the humor is based on the absurdity that the clowns, who always appear in full makeup, are able to disguise themselves to avoid apprehension. And the tragic showdown ends when the police gun Bobo down after he brandishes a gun--which of course shoots only a scroll that says "bang." Several of the BUFF shorts were good, but I’m tired, and after all, those weren’t really FFNH selections anyway. Tell you what: if you have a chance to see any shorts, run some titles past me & I’ll tell you whether any sound familiar.
• Anything Else (9/27, Orange)--Here’s something I hadn’t done for a while at a new Woody Allen movie: laugh out loud. The first and biggest guffaw came when Jason Biggs’s character says to Allen’s, "Obviously, you’re not familiar with analysis." Unfortunately, Woody isn’t the star, and when he’s not on the screen, the film is far more annoying than amusing.
• Lost in Translation (9/28, Orange)--OK, once and for all let’s forgive Sofia Coppola for Godfather Part III; she’s not an actor, OK? She’s a director, and here she has directed a perfect definition of "bittersweet." Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson are perfect as the impossibly mismatched never-to-be lovers, and both do their best and most effective work with silence and their faces. A beautiful film, one of my favorites of the year.

October 2003

• Casa de los Babys (10/3, YSC)--Either the distributor shipped the theater the wrong second reel, or Sayles had run a ballsy and brilliant gambit: about a third of the speech in the film is in Spanish, but in the middle third of the film as I saw it, there are no subtitles. Which puts the nonfluent in the audience, me, for example, in the same position as the nonfluent American women in the film who have come to an unnamed Latin American country to adopt. Whether the effect was planned or an accident (I’m inclined to believe the former; otherwise there would presumably have been Spanish subtitles for the English in that reel), it doesn’t really matter in terms of understanding the film, which is about cultural imperialism, a frequent theme for Sayles, but one he never treats in a kneejerk way.
• Duplex (10/4, Milford Fourplex)--Wouldn’t have gone based on the trailer, but it got a pretty good Times review, and I’m a fan of both Stiller and Barrymore. A few good moments, but mostly predictable and unfunny, and it has that DeVito (he directed) mean-spiritedness about it that I just don’t respond to well. [80]
• School of Rock (10/5, NoHa)--Oh, my god, what fun. What I said about Bend It Like Beckham--completely formulaic, completely predictable, completely irresistible--applies here as well, only more so. My face still hurts from smiling.
• Intolerable Cruelty (10/14, NoHa)--Hilarious, brilliant in a popcorny forgettable sort of way. Not altogether a Coen brothers film, but the hybrid w/ TV-type comedy works surprisingly well, largely because Clooney has the cornfed panache to carry it off. And Catherine Zeta-Jones, never exactly plain, is in this film the most beautiful evil woman I’ve ever seen.
• Mystic River (10/18, Orange)--Critics are calling this Eastwood’s breakthrough to greatness, the film that represents an apology for the glorification of violence in much of his acting and directing career. Well, it is the latter, and it is remarkably effective in its atmospherics, but the more I think about it the less convinced I am that it comes anywhere near greatness. The exposition early in the film is extraordinarily clunky, and the implausibility and reliance on coincidence of the resolution is worthy of a bad Elizabethan revenge tragedy. Which is not to say I didn’t like it; it is only to say that the emperor, if not naked, is not as lavishly clothed as some have suggested.
• Kill Bill, Vol. 1 (10/19, NoHa)--Fantastic, and I mean that quite literally. There are many reasons not to like it, but that it is not brilliant filmmaking is not among them. The turning point for me, at which I moved from willingness to give it a fair shake to being absolutely mesmerized, is an anime sequence. It’s wonderful in its own right, but it also effectively reveals that the rest of the film is a live-action anime, and all the spurting blood is easier to take in those terms. An amazing film, maybe his best yet--I’d watch it again tonight if I had the DVD, and I’ll be ready for the special Vols. 1 & 2 DVD as soon as it hits the market.

November 2003

• Sylvia (11/1, Madison)--As a former English grad student who studied and wrote on Plath’s poetry, I had to see this despite so-so reviews. It disappointed, but less in the ways I’d been expected to than in oversimplifying her suicide to a result of her inability to hang onto her man. She had demons aplenty before she ever met Ted Hughes, and though the breakdown of the relationship surely meshed with her existing depression, it is depressing for me to see her reduced to a pathetic wronged woman concerned about noting more than whether he is "still fucking" the other woman.
• The Station Agent (11/1, Madison)--Three perfect performance carry a paper-thin slice-of-life plot and make this one of the best films I’m seen this year. It reminds me a bit of You Can Count on Me, which I saw in the same theater, just in terms of the way it tunnels in and makes you know these people, and care about them. And because, like You Can Count, it never could have been made by a major studio. Bonus: excellent score by my friend and former upstairs neighbor Stephen Trask.
• Pieces of April (11/7, YSC)--This wins the award for widest qualitative chasm between trailer (which looked jokey and obvious) and film (smart, funny, and human). The brilliant thing about this is that it hurtles you toward what seems an inevitably sentimental conclusion, then finesses that, because the point clearly was the journey, not the destination. Bonus: music by Stephin Merritt, including some things from Magnetic Fields’ wonderful 69 Love Songs.
• Elf (11/8, NoHa)--This, on the other hand, is absolutely true to its trailer, which helped persuade me, against all logic, that I’d enjoy spending 90 minutes with Will Ferrell. Even the inevitable true-meaning-of-Xmas schmaltz at the end is redeemed in part by a witty parody of Lord of the Rings’ Rangers--here, Central Park Rangers. And Zooey Deschanel can sing! Her duet with Leon Redbone on "Baby, It’s Cold Outside" should keep a few more people than usual in their seats for the end credits.
• Master and Commander: Far Side of the World (11/14, YSC)--Yes, this is what only Hollywood can do: the big pulse-pounder. There are no doubt a thousand possible factual quibbles, but bottom line: the movie gets the job done.
• The Human Stain (11/15, Orange)--The reviews had lowered my expectations considerably, but if this weren’t an adaptation of a splendid novel, it would, I suspect, be universally hailed as a splendid film. I have no problem with the casting: Hopkins’s admitted physical stretch is not beyond my ability to willingly suspend disbelief, and speaking as someone who once loved a woman very similar to Faunia Farley, I think Kidman nails "trailer trash." (There is one close-up on her--or rather, Farley’s--work-wrecked hands, though, that I confess struck me as fake.) My only complaint about the cast was Gary Sinese’s wooden performance as Zuckerman. [90]
• Bus 174 (11/16, Village East)--I kept imagining how easy it would be for Hollywood to fictionalize this story and make the confused homeless protagonist into Sonny from Dog Day Afternoon. And in fact there are many voices (one insufferable sociologist in particular) who work very hard to give meaning to Sandro’s bus hijacking. Not that it doesn’t have meaning--not that the circumstances of his pitifully short life aren’t a mortal indictment of Brazilian society. But the worst indictment is the ultimate stupidity and meaninglessness of his death, and that of the one hostage he (as well as a cop) untimately shot.
• Être et avoir (11/16, Cin. Vil.)--I miscalculated and got in several minutes late, but if I’d had a few minutes more in this one-room elementary school in rural France, with its beautiful children and its teacher, who looks like Roy Scheider but acts like Mr. Rogers, I might have had to run off to teach in a similar school myself. Charmant.
• The Revolution Will Not Be Televised (11/16, Cin. Vil.)--A wonderful accidental documentary by a Canadian film crew that happened to be doing a piece on Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez when the political and military reactionaries staged their short-lived coup in 2002. Not since All the President’s Men has the real-life triumph of the good guys be depicted so exhilaratingly on film.
• Yossi and Jagger (11/16, Quad)--An interesting premise--a gay love affair in the Israeli army--but calling attention to clichéd events (Jagger says, "It’s just like an American movie") doesn’t make them any less clichéd.
• The Matrix Revolutions (11/17, NoHa)--Had I been able to stay awake, perhaps I’d have appreciated it more, perhaps not. As it is, I appreciate only that the series is over (there were suspicious openings left at the end, but I suspect that the disappointing critical and box-office response to installments 2 & 3 this year will clinch its end). I’ll watch my DVD of the first one again when I get my good TV, but 2 & 3 were a waste of time.
• Shattered Glass (11/22, Orange)--Of course, as a former journalist, I had to see this despite lukewarm reviews. It’s entertaining and occasionally powerful, but it loses points at the very opening with scrolling text that says The New Republic staff "is comprised of" X number of reporters rather than "comprises."
• Elephant (11/28, YSC)--Like Zero Day, which showed at Film Fest New Haven in '02 and then had a well-reviewed theatrical release this year, this is based on a Columbine-like killing spree, but the films are otherwise unlike. This one follows each of several future victims and the two perpetrators in an overlapping schoolday chronology, such that we get to know, very superficially, each of these kids before the violence begins. A very powerful film, though more than once I wondered whether the emperor (Gus Van Sant) is really naked.
• Bad Santa (11/29, Orange)--Well, unlikely Xmas movies are 2 for 2 with me: this is outrageous and obscene and hilarious. One thing that really makes it work is that while the Billy Bob Thornton character is awful, he’s not cruelly awful, he’s just self-involvedly and self-destructively awful. The film is surprisingly non-mean-spirited in much the same way There’s Something About Mary is.
• My Flesh and Blood (11/30, Angelika)--A woman adopts more than a dozen children, most handicapped in some way (two have no legs, e.g.; one living and one dead suffer[ed] from a rare disease that essentially breaks down what holds the flesh together; one was horribly burned in her crib and now has no external ears, no hair, no face, really; one has cystic fibrosis and borderline psychotic desertion anger). If this all sounds Reader’s Digesty uplifting, it’s far more than that. This woman has obviously adopted so many children to deal with demons in her past, and she knows it--but she is still an extraordinary hero. An astonishing film, and an excellent start to my 7th M4.
• El Bonaerensa (11/30, FF)--A year ago, when I was still seeing 3 or 4 foreign films a year rather than sometimes seeing that many in a day, I would have found this far more gripping. As it is, this Argentine film about a locksmith who goes to police academy after being arrested in a burglary is an interesting slice of life. Its main distinction: [100]
• Hukkle (11/30, Cin. Vil.)--This Hungarian film without dialogue reminded me of nothing so much as Microcosmos and Winged Migration--only with people, too. It seems to be all about images and sounds (the title apparently comes from the insistent hiccups of a grandfatherly looking fellow we watch at the bus stop for several minutes), but in the late going we discover that there’s a narrative--a murder mystery, in fact! At first, I thought, "Well, that’s really unnecessary," but thinking about it I realized that the point is that things happen when we’re not looking for things to happen, and that it takes the right sort of eyes to sort out the meaning from apparent meaningless. But whether the murder mystery seems tacked on or not, it’s a remarkable film, and the moment at which a U.S. fighter jet is frozen in time while flying under a bridge drew audible "wow"s from more than one person in my audience.
• Die Mommie Die (11/30, Loew’s 34th)--Camp with a kapital K! A parody of soapy ’50s films, particularly those starring Bette Davis and Joan Crawford as sisters who hate each other. The dialogue and the acting are hilariously broad, but the real key is the casting of the washed-up, slutty diva: one Charles Busch, who wrote the play on which the film is based. This, like The Other Side of the Bed, is part of the Sundance series. Wide release seems unlikely, but if it happens, do not miss this.

December 2003

• Les Invasions barbares (The barbarian invasions) (12/4, LP)--My first venture above 34th on an M4, but this was really an M2x2: 2 movies, 2 museums (Natural History for the Petra exhibit, the Met for El Greco). A wonderful film, even better than I expected, very Big Chillish, but I suspect it will stand up better than that--and here the focus isn’t dead yet, but is dying of cancer. A synopsis makes it sound sentimental: his friends (including a wife and two mistresses) gather around and he reconciles with his children, but any tears are well-earned.
• In America (12/4, USq)--My name is Dan, and I’m a filmaholic. I hadn’t planned to see this, but a combination of stupidity and a sore foot from breaking in new shoes left me at Union Square with the option of heading back w/out a movie or seeing anything I had even the vaguest interest in, and you know how I had to choose. Unfortunately, the film is if anything even more syrupy than the trailer made me fear.
• Something's Gotta Give (12/13, Orange)--This is a story about Jack and Diane . . . It’s not a great film, but it’s mostly a very good one (until it goes, as Jennie put it, a little Nora Ephron at the end), and a joy to watch those two at work. What I liked most about it, I think, is that Jack so gleefully plays an obvious parody of his real self, and that his character comes, with surprising grace, to an awareness of mortality and the romantic implications thereof. One that should not be missed.
• Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (12/20; NoHa)--How can something be simultaneously great and disappointing? When greatness is expected. You can never be a Fellowship of the Ring virgin again, and that film blew me away as neither of the other two has. Still, a wonderful trilogy, and contrary to many women’s complaints (including, quite conspicuously, Caryn James in today’s Times), it is not about special effects; it’s a whole bunch of love stories. True, most are what the late critic Leslie Fiedler would call homoerotic love stories, but so what? (Hint: to make it through 200 intermissionless minutes, put lots of salt on your popcorn!)
• Stuck on You (12/24, NoHa)--Another surprise from the Farrellys, a love story between conjoined twins that just happens to function quite effectively as a metaphor for my late lamented marriage. Not uproariously funny as their best has been, but probably their sweetest film--and let’s face it: all their films are a lot sweeter than is generally recognized.
• Big Fish (12/25, Orange)--Intermittently charming and moving, but as hard as it tries to be magical, it worked at that level for me only once, during a final sequence that finally reveals that the whole film has been about passing on the ability to storytell. Unfortunately, a lot of what comes before is watertreading.
• Cold Mountain (12/26, Orange)--I did not jump on the Charles Frazier bandwagon when the novel came out: I found it too consciously, painstakingly "literary." The film suffers from a little of that, too--the lead characters seem more ideas (and ideals) than people, but Renée Zellweger’s character (and performance) perform the vital function of rooting this in reality after the battle scenes have performed that function early on. A very good film, though not, ultimately, the great film it tries so hard to be.
• 21 Grams (12/31, Mad)--I saved the best for last--the best film I’ve seen in several years, in fact. So emotionally gripping that I was on the verge of tears much of the time, even found it hard to breathe sometimes. I read a complaint that the scrambled chronology seemed designed to mask the narrative implausibility; I don’t buy that, but if so, so what? If so, it worked, and isn’t that what art is about, pulling the viewer into your idiosyncratic vision? The three leads are all brilliant, Penn in particular more affecting for me here than in what struck me as an excellent but rote performance in Mystic River. What a way to end the Year of 100 Movies! [110]