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.