November 2004

• P.S. (11/5, Criterion)--First day of the glitzy new five-screen art house downtown, and though the film had not been well reviewed, I'm enough of a sucker for Laura Linney that I thought it worth the $9.25-even-at-4:45 p.m. (!) price of admission. The place has more of a multiplex feel than an art-house feel--hard to believe you're at a movie theater in downtown New Haven--but let's face it: there's nothing inherently wrong with cleanliness and comfortable seats with cup holders. The film's pretty much a stinker, but the worst thing was that they turned up the house lights and stopped the projector just as the end credits started to roll. The best thing is that when I mentioned this at the front desk on the way out, the manager happened to be there, and he thanked me with a comp.
• Alfie (11/6, Orange)--Yes, I find Jude Law about as charming as it's possible for a heterosexual male to find him, but I just never cared enough about his character here for anything to matter. I found the film boring, which is about the worst criticism I can level.
• Being Julia (11/7, Orange)--Another whom I've come to find more and more attractive as she ages: Annette Bening. This is not a great film, but it's a lot of fun, and it's a tour de force for Bening, a wonderful, Oscarworthy performance. Jeremy Irons is brilliant, too, but generously stays out of Bening's way.
• Sideways (11/12, Criterion)--My nominee for best film of the year so far? Yeah, I think it may be. I am so glad that Paul Giamatti seems to have established that someone less attractive than I can be a leading man--and then, too, I'm glad because he is so damn good. Brilliant script, brilliant direction: Alexander Payne is four for four--in fact, think about this: About Schmidt may be my least-favorite of his films! Be on the lookout for the childhood picture of Miles (Giamatti) with his dad: it really is a photo of the actor with his famous dad. [110]
• Bridget Jones 2 (11/13, Orange)--Well, I laughed out loud a few times, but this is about as cynical a capitalization on the success of the first film as can be imagined: plausibility, not just in terms of plot but in terms of how members of the genus homo sapiens think and behave (the plausibility of which was one of the strengths of the first), goes completely out the window in the service of the three main characters, plus a red-herring fourth, behaving in ways meant to be amusing but in fact mostly just annoying. The new Times reviewer, Manohla Dargis (late of the L.A. Times), tried to warn me, but I gathered that because she just objected on inflexible feminist principle to everything Bridget, she may not really have been able to detect whether the film was any good. Oh, one gain in realism from the first film: Zellweger really is a bit of a tub this time; in the first one she looked damn near perfect to me, a lot better than her stick-legged wraith in Chicago.
• Enduring Love (11/20, Crit.)--At last, Rhys Ifans's capacity for creepiness has been unleashed. A tone-perfect film about obsession and revulsion with a soupçon of attraction.
• Undertow (11/21, Crit.)--OK, it's time to admit it: Dermott Mulrooney really can act, if only in a fairly narrow bandwidth. His character here provides a wonderful Flannery O'Connoresque grounding; once his character is killed off, it becomes a much more conventional escape-and-pursuit story--effective but nothing special.
• Ae Fond Kiss (11/26, Quad)--A devoutly Muslim Romeo, a lukewarm Catholic Juliet, wth Glasgow standing in for Verona. Nothing much to the story, but the performances make it new. The male lead is played, I believe, by the actor who played Juliette Binoche's hunky Sikh in The English Patient.
• Tarnation (11/28, Crit.)--Somehow put me in mind of Ginsberg's Howl: at the same time blatantly rough and self-consciously artistic--and I mean that in a good way. The filmmaker's video memoir (assembled on an iMac) of life with and without his mentally disturbed mother (at least part of whose disturbance seems to have resulted from her parents' decision to allow her to undergo a long regimen of electroshock therapy). Devastating.
• Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence (11/28, Crit.)--Maybe unfair to have seen this right after Tarnation. It just didn't live up to its billing for me: fun to look at, but not bearing much thought. Spirited Away remains the only Japanese animation that has really grabbed me.