Footpath to heaven

Men with Guns

(1997)

This is one of those DVDs I bought when I was buying anything I could get really cheap that I remembered liking, but this is the first time I've seen the film since it was new, more than a decade ago, so it was nearly new to me again, and oh, my--it proves to be one of my favorite Sayles films, which is tall cotton.

Dr. Fuentes, recently widowed and not far from death himself--and uncomfortably comfortable with a government that helps pay his salary and is, so far as he knows, only rumored to be oppressive in its pursuit of the rebels in this unnamed Latin American country--sets out to find the young doctors he trained to treat the indigenous people in remote areas, but ends up searching for the perhaps mythical village of Cerca del Cielo (which, I believe, translates roughly to "next door to heaven"--or you could just call it Oz). We get 100% of Sayles's humanity with only about 5% of his sometimes sticky earnestness.

Fuentes, incidentally, is played by the Mexican actor Federico Luppi, who is also a favorite of Guillermo del Toro's, starring in Cronos and El espinazo del diablo and also appearing in El laberinto del fauno.

And they lived colorfully ever after

The Fall

Crit (2006)

OK, here's the deal: when someone uses the adjective poetic, it's always meant as a compliment, right? But poetry's not just Shakespeare and Emily Dickinson. Poetry's also Colley Cibber and Rod McKuen and Burma Shave signs, right? The Fall is undeniably poetic; it's not undeniably good. One blurb I saw on rottentomatoes.com said something like "a feast for the eyes, famine for the brain," and I can't do much better than that.

The one interesting element has to do with narrative--not the story-within-a-story per se, which is pretty banal and clichéd (though nice to look at, it must be admitted), but the notion, familiar to all fiction writers, I suspect, of the tyranny of the narrative, the fact that the story assumes a momentum of its own and will go where it will go, regardless of the wishes of the storyteller or the audience. Hey, I didn't say it was a brilliant element, just that it was about the only thing to think about.

Catinca Untaru, nine years old when the film was made and an acting novice and natural, also contributes to making the film worth watching.

Trailers

Nothing new, but I feel compelled to report that, in contrast to my usual increasing impatience with trailers the 50th or 100th time I have to see 'em, the Mamma Mia trailer is growing on me; I may be up to a 3 on the film now.

Mr. Smith goes to divorce court

The Awful Truth

(1937)

Uneven and unsubtle, but the exchange between Dunne and Grant to negotiate the difference between adjoining rooms and a cozy double bed--and also to negotiate the terms of their remarriage--is worth the price of admission. Rental. Box set purchase. Whatever.

Eyrie

I Walked with a Zombie

(1943)

Like the first Val Lewton-Jacques Tourneur collaboration, Cat People, this moody pic explores the intersection of psychiatry and the supernatural, but unlike the earlier film, this one never comes down solidly on either side. Also as in Cat People, a safe, sane female alternative is available for the (rather lame) male lead. In this case, the safe alternative's role as nurse to the permanently damaged wife--and her noble self-restraint in the face of love--lends a vague Brontean air to the proceedings.

Oslo sprach Zarathustra

Memorial Day weekend M4

Reprise

Sun (2006)

Art and its relationship to madness, love, friendship (including arrested-developmental male bonding), and Being Norwegian.

I don't know anything about the conditional mood in Norwegian (or about anything in Norwegian), but if the subtitles are accurate, the conditional is used to brilliant narrative effect: at the start and at the end, and once or twice in between, we are told what "would" happen to the dual protagonists, aspiring young novelists and best friend who drop their manuscripts into a mailbox together.

The opening "would" narrative is clearly an initially optimistic shared fiction of the two that turns nightmarish--though reality (whatever that is), when we return to it, is almost as nightmarish. But the exercise creates the hint of alternate realities, alternate narratives, and brings the whole notion of narrative and creation (and manipulation?) to the fore. Moreover, it calls into question the conclusion, also told in the conditional.

It's the film Charlie Kaufman would do if he were Scandinavian--high praise from me. One sad note: the signature song by the boys' favorite punk band, Kommune, doesn't show up in a Web search, either in video or audio, so you're just going to have to see the film to hear "Fingerfucked by the Prime Minister." (Speaking of sad news or at least disturbing prospects, see the Times Cannes story last week that mentioned the difficulties Kaufman's Synecdoche, New York, is having finding a U.S. distributor--Soderbergh's Che films, too, The Argentine and Guerrilla.)

Up the Yangtze

Quad

A nonfiction companion piece to Still Life, beautiful and sad and elegiac, about two young people working in hell, aka a river cruise ship full of rich white tourists. The two are from different classes in China's classless society, one essentially sold into cooliehood by her poor family, the other, one guesses, handed over by his middle-class parents for some toughening up for his capitalist future.

But it's really about ways of life, pretended ones (equality, the happy sacrifice by the few for the many, the promise of progress) and real ones (the rapacious relentlessness of that progress, as represented by the Three Gorges Dam's displacement into economic and existential limbo of millions of Yangtze lives).

Constantine's Sword

Quad

James Carroll was raised an Illinois Catholic, like me--but really more like my brother, who, like Carroll, was born during World War II and heard a calling to the priesthood. My brother decided after a year in the seminary that he'd heard wrong, but Carroll stayed the course through ordination and five years of service, 1969-74; it was Vietnam, for the most part, that drove Carroll away from the cloth, but he remains a devout believer in a god he has come to know much better than the church ever made possible.

This remarkable film, based on Carroll's book by the same title, primarily traces the Catholic Church's complicity (well, leadership in some cases) throughout the centuries in anti-Semitism and specifically in the Holocaust, but it goes beyond that to examine Christianity's role in warmaking and ethnic hatred from before the Crusades through the recent scandal over proselytizing at the Air Force Academy. One angrymaking film.

Mister Lonely

IFC

Ah, if Harmony Korine didn't exist, we'd have to invent him. I desperately wanted to love this film--set mostly in an island commune populated by impersonators of famous people from Abraham Lincoln to the Three Stooges--and for a long time its sweetness and naïveté and innocence carried me along even as my pesky mind kept raising annoying questions (like "How come Michael Jackson dances like Michael Jackson and Charlie Chaplin does some Chaplinesque slapstick, but the impersonation by arguably the best actor in the film, Samantha Morton, of Marilyn Monroe is limited to a blond wig, big boobs, and the Seven Year Itch dress getting blown up occasionally to show her '50s undies, without any mannerisms or vocal characterization?").

But the movie ultimately is like one of those fascinating people you meet at a party who just keeps talking and talking and talking until fascinating evolves into annoying and annoying evolves into get-me-the-fuck-out-of-here. OK, that's excessive; I do recommend it, but you have my permission to leave after the lovely ensemble dance to "Cheek to Cheek."

Trailers

• Already have Recount in my Netflix futures queue, but this is the first taste I've had of it onscreen. Thanks, HBO; some of us just can't get enough agony.
• Quid Pro Quo--looks creepy; I remain a 3.
• Trumbo--Solid 4, tending toward 5ishness.
• La terza madre (Mother of tears)--Looks very DaVinci Code; 2.
• Finding Amanda--I'll stand by my 3.
• The Go-Getter--Looks potentially fun--and did I know Steve Coogan's in it? Solid 4.
• Take Out--Looks devastating, hard to watch; 3 toward 4.
• Une vieille maîtresse (The last mistress)--If I didn't know that it's Catherine Breillat, I might be a soft 4 from the trailer; as it is, I'll upgrade my 2 to 3.
• My Winnipeg--5, duh. Why weren't more people laughing uproariously at the trailer? Which I saw, incidentally, at IFC, which suggests a shift in the local platform for Maddin. Opening date is a bit awkward, 13 June; it needs to still be around for a 4th week when I M next.
• Savage Grace--I'm wrong about ever having seen the trailer, and even w/ Julianne, I can't go higher than 3.
• Operation Filmmaker--Potential, but I'm sticking at 3 for now.

Bigger boat

Jaws

(1975)

Yeah, I know: the animatronic shark is comically primitive compared with what could be done now via CGI--but sharks are primitive, and say what you will about Mr. Spielberg's first blockbuster, it shows more evidence of narrative and gut-grabbing know-how than his most recent effort.

Action!

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

Crit

Zzzzzzzzzzzz . . . huh?! What?!? Oh, right, thrill-a-minute action movie, yeah, got it. All the ingredients, but somebody must've walked heavy in the kitchen, and the cake fell. Flat.

A few giggles, mostly at familiar elements from the first one (like when storage crates in a warehouse are damaged in a Jeep chase [a vehicular chase in a warehouse? yes] and one busted open crate reveals--to us, but to none of the characters in the film--a gleaming corner of the Ark of the Covenant; or when Karen Allen's Marion delivers her first line to Indy, matching exactly, I believe, the line and intonation of her first line to him in Raiders), but mostly rote efforts (oh, they try, they try) at fun fun fun.

Two things we learn about acting limitations:

1. Cate Blanchett does in fact have one: she can't hold onto a Russian accent for an entire sentence. I think she's trying to channel Garbo's orthodox Party animal in Ninotchka, but Garbo had the advantage of having been a Russian a couple of times before (not counting the silent version of Anna Karenina)
2. Shia LaBeouf also has one: an inability to act.

Son of Rambow

Crit

OK, you know how I feel about religion in general; but a religion that forbids nonsacred music and . . . movies? What kind of stick-up-his-ass Jesus do you people envision?

So we have a young boy escaping from christofascism through secret massage of all his senses. The early scenes, before William meets bad boy Lee Carter are some of the most moving I've seen, as he turns the corners of his notebook into flipbook animation, or relishes the sounds of a water cooler or a pinecone dragged across a radiator.

Nothing's as good as that the rest of the way, but nothing's as good as that in majority of films I've ever seen. The boys' conspiracy to make a sequel to the one film William has seen is mostly pitch perfect, until things go all soggy and sentimental and predictable in the final reel. And a bonus: not only a Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers song, but an instrumental ("Egyptian Reggae") that you don't get to recognize by Jonathan's voice but actually have to know his oeuvre and thus get to feel really superior to the rest of the audience (except that I think I may have been the entire audience).

Trailers

• Traitor--Don Cheadle, so it's got that going for it, but I see nothing special otherwise.
• Australia--Baz Luhrmann directing Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman in something clearly meant to be magical. We'll see.
• Bigger, Stronger, Faster*--Director Chris Bell is clearly trying to be Morgan Spurlock in this documentary about steroids in sports. Maybe.

Dites-vous que voulez une révolution?

La Chinoise

(1967)

Quiz:
Knowing what we know about Godard, we can be confident that:

(A) The Marxist-Leninist rants of the students are to be taken at face value;

(B) The Marxist-Leninist rants of the students are to be taken as a joke;

(C) Both of the above;

(D) Neither of the above.

Correct answer: (R) Probably. Partial credit for: (V) Maybe.

Only thing I'm sure about is that I need to see a lot more Godard. Or maybe no more, and forget what I've seen.

OK, one unambiguous observation: this is the most difficult film imaginable for someone not fluent in French to watch, because so often there are multiple threads of dialogue or printed text on the screen, leaving the poor subtitler at a loss about which to translate. Learn French before seeing this film, dammit! It's worth it! (Unless it's not.)

Avuncular

Roger Dodger

(2002)

OK, I defy you to take a time machine back six years, watch this movie, and not say some equivalent of: "Dylan Kidd: gonna be huge!" But in fact, here it is 2008, more or less, and Kidd has written and directed one pretty crappy movie since. In baseball, we'd call this the sophomore jinx--but in baseball he'd have had four more seasons to give us an idea whether the Rookie of the Year was going to be a perennial All-Star or had been just a flash in the pan.

Anyway, this one is a jewel, regardless of what Kidd does or doesn't hence. Campbell Scott as the titular Roger, who poses as a misanthrope and a misogynist, when really it's just himself he hates. Jesse Eisenberg (who avoided the sophomore jinx quite nicely, thank you, with a little something called The Squid and the Whale) is Roger's virginal nephew, hoping for help getting over that, and Elizabeth Berkley and Jennifer Beals, swear to god, are excellent in small roles as the boys' libidinal targets. The film swerves toward extremes of sour and sweet but keeps its footing--the work of a remarkably assured first-time filmmaker. So what the fuck happened, Dylan?

Oh, and lest I forget (actually I did: it's Sun. a.m. now), back when I started working out to DVD extras, this was one of the first I employed, and the quality of its material spoiled me for a lot of discs since: several featurettes w/ crew members, plus a commentary track w/ Kidd and his DP, all functioning as a sort of "film school in a box," as he puts it--fascinating stuff. Then there's a wildly entertaining 2nd commentary track w/ Eisenberg being a teenager and Scott behaving like one.

Framed

Standard Operating Procedure

Crit

This can be read as a sort of précis of the career of Errol Morris, who has been criticized for framing the facts to suit his purposes. In this examination of the abuses and the aftermath of Abu Ghraib, Morris spends little time telling us what we already know--that no commissioned officer has spent a second in jail for countenancing Abu G abuses, that those who were hung out to dry were almost exclusively young and green and under fire and certain that this was what their army was asking of them.

Morris's focus, instead, is on what the photograph documents, and what it doesn't. One MP may have escaped the harsher punishment meted out to her colleagues because the version most often seen of one notorious photo cropped her from the frame. Another lost his career and--from his point of view--the honor his family had earned in three generations of service because he was present briefly in a video of abuse, even though by all accounts his presence was in the interest of ameliorating a prisoner's suffering.

Meanwhile, for all the psychological horror of the familiar images, no one died, few were physically damaged, and no one was ever in danger of serious injury. We can debate the definition of torture, but there can be little doubt that the worst of it happened away from the cameras, at the hand of the interrogators of the OGAs--the coy acronym for "other government agencies." The stories that Lynndie English and Sabrina Harman tell may be self-serving and rich in hindsight, but at least they've faced the music--because they couldn't avoid it, once their faces and names were known, perhaps, but they've stood up. The real villains in this story are as anonymous as their hooded Iraqi victims.

Trailers

• When Did You Last See Your Father?--This doesn't elevate my original 3 vote: looks like it could be unbearably sentimental.
• The Fall--Great-looking trailer (not to be confused w/ a trailer that makes the film seem great); if it comes downtown, I may have to have another look at the Times review, but my first reading made this a "no."

Things to do in Paris when you're dead

Le Feu folle (The fire within)

(1963)

Bonsoir, je m'appelle Blab, et je suis un Malleholic. This one, just out on a gorgeous Criterion Collection disc, can't but remind me of the second section of The Sound and the Fury, where Quentin Compson, in love with his sister but in love even more with death, spends his day of suicide wandering more or less aimlessly. Here Alain is in love with his estranged American wife but in love even more with death, and if his wandering has a bit more aim than Quentin's--among other lost loves, e.g., romantic and political--he's no more budgeable from his inevitable path.

The film is not without humor, though that too is tinged with bleakness. The recovering alcoholic Alain's steadfastly resists alcohol, even on this, his final day, and when he finally succumbs, all the booze does is make him sick. In my head Peggy Lee pleads, "Is that all there is?"

Oh! But in the actual soundtrack we have Erik Satie (and in a sly nod, we glimpse a program bearing Satie's name in Alain's room). Defiant lowbrow that I am, I was blissfully unfamiliar w/ Satie's work, but I can give no higher praise than to say that it's as perfect here as was Miles Davis's in Ascenseur. Clearly Malle's ear was the equal of his eye.

Saturday a.m. plate of shrimp: what do you suppose the 5-letter fill is for 31-down in the Times crossword puzzle, "'Relâche' composer"?

Iron-bat-hell-person

updated

Tradition that survived the marriage: when the Times publishes its seasonal movie previews, Jennie Tonic and I go through the capsules and rate our anticipation of each from 1 (won't go unless reviews are extraordinary) to 5 (won't miss unless reviews are abysmal). The iconic pictures for each extreme, illustrating what it takes to overcome our prejudices, are Robert Altman's Prêt-à-Porter, which sounded great until people saw it (though people seem to be reassessing it in recent years--even before he died--so I actually have it in my Netflix queue now), and Babe, which sounded like an idiotic kid pic (talking sheep? uh, right) until it was universally (and accurately) declared magical.

Anyway, the Times annoyingly isn't putting Dave Kehr's capsules online, but I'm still going to put my ratings here, as well as my occasional elaborations, in red. If you haven't recycled the Summer Movies section from Sunday's paper, just follow right along; otherwise, I've added the IMDb links. Most films get just a number, and most films get a 3--which often means simply "not enough information to lean in either direction." And I hope to get JT to add her votes, in whatever color she picks.

I'd like to say that at this point, for me, a 1 means no way in hell will I be seeing it. And since I see fewer movies these days, it takes more to get me off a 3.

May, open, thus reviewed, thus decided upon

• The Favor if (which is to say if it opens downtown) did I even read a review of this? not going
• Fugitive Pieces if no
• Hollywood Chinese if no
• Made of Honor probably not no
• Iron Man yes, possibly this wknd (but there doesn't appear to be much hurry; by my rough calculation, 10 of every 17 tickets sold last week in the U.S. & Canada were to this picture) yes
• Redbelt yes, this wknd Tim Allen??? I had missed that. Probably
• Son of Rambow probably yes
• Viva if no
• XXY if maybe
• Battle for Haditha if no

May 9

• The Babysitters 2 no, blech
• Before the Rains 3--check out Kehr's blurb on this if you get a chance; one of the most confusing sentences ever to run in the Times no
• Bloodline 1 no
• Dilemma 3--Max Roach contribution to score is a plus no
• The Fall 3 no--but it'd be nice to see Lee Pace again
• The Memory Thief 3 yes, I just saw it, and I don't recommend it
• Noise 3 no
• OSS 117: Le Caire nid d'espions initially a 3, then a 4 after reading the blurb in the regular Arts & Leisure section; sounds delightfully goofy no
• Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead from Troma; 2 no, but glad Troma's still alive
• A Previous Engagement 3 no
• Refusenik 3 no
• Speed Racer 2: trailer just looks annoying no
• Surfwise soft 4 no; trailer looked interesting, but trailer was about the right length for me
• The Tracey Fragments 3, but potentially intriguing no, but maybe Netflix someday
• Turn the River hopeful 3; always glad to see Famke Janssen no
• Unsettled 3 no
• What Happens in Vegas . . . 2: poster looks mega-smarmy no, but Cameron looks great as always Donna insists that she looks like a man

May 14

• Hamaca paraguaya (Paraguayan hammock) 3: great title; would be a good name for a rock band 3

May 16

• The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian 2: if I'm ordered to go, I'll have to rent the first one first 2, despite Dinklage & Izzard
• How the Garcia Girls Spent Their Summer 3: good to know Elizabeth Peña's still around--though in typing that, I'm reminded that I've seen her in something recently . . . IMDb check ensues . . . Transamerica? That wasn't that recent, but I guess that was it 3
• Hofshat Kaits (My father my lord) 3 2
• Quantum Hoops 4 2
• Reprise 3 3
• Padre Nuestro (Sangre de mi sangre) 3 5; saw trailer, and while I don't expect it to be outstanding, I must go
• Yella 3: not to be confused w/ that old Disney movie about the dog 3; intrigued

May 21

• Auf der anderen Seite (The edge of heaven) 4: Fatih Akin, dir. of Head On 4
• A Jihad for Love 3 3

May 22

• Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull 4: filmed in part less than a block from work; plus, they've finally brought back the series' only acceptable female lead, Karen Allen. Why am I not a 5, I wonder? 4; I call it Indiana Jones and Lux et Veritas saw a good bumper sticker yesterday: Yale lacrosse: Lax et Veritas

May 23

• Anita O'Day: The Life of a Jazz Singer 4 3+
• The Children of Huang Shi 3: trailer looks like more of what we've seen in China between the wars 3
• Postal 2, and a soft 2 at that 2; never heard of the notorious video game me neither, but it's not hard to imagine, is it?
• War, Inc. 4: the Cusacks, Aykroyd, Tomei, Kingsley . . . and Hilary Duff! 5! It's Grosse Pointe Blank II!! Co-writer Jeremy Pikser was co-writer of Bulworth--he's great.

May 28

• Mukhsin 3: final film in a trilogy, and I haven't seen either of the others, so who am I kidding? 3

May 30

• Bigger, Stronger, Faster* 2 1
• The Foot Fist Way 2 2
• Le Fils de l'épicier (The Grocer's Son) 3; oh, right: I knew Clotilde Hesme sounded familiar: the dark-haired woman of the Chansons d'amour ménage 4
• Savage Grace 3 3+; did you not notice Julianne Moore was in this? I did not--not now I have the vague recollection of having seen the trailer some time ago
• Sex and the City: The Movie 3; yeah, I Netflixed the whole series, but I'm skeptical 2, even though parts were filmed a few blocks from me
• The Strangers 3, tending toward 2 1
• Stuck 2 2; wasn't that a New Yorker story, where someone hits someone with a car and lets the person die? I know I've seen/read it somewhere recently dunno
• La sconosciuta (The unknown woman) 3 3+

June 4

• Dreams with Sharp Teeth 2 3
• Operation Filmmaker 3 3+

June 6

• La terza madre (Dario Argento's Mother of Tears) 2: another 3rd part of a trilogy I haven't seen the rest of 2
• The Go-Getter 4: doesn't sound great, except for having four of my favorite young moviewomen in the cast, Zooey Deschanel, Jena Malone, Maura Tierney, and Judy Greer; so 1 point for each 3, skeptical on this for adults perhaps, but that has nothing to do w/ me
• Kung Fu Panda 2: I predict an unusually dry summer for kids' flicks 2; when will Sexual Harassment Panda get his shot at the silver screen? I'll bet he's one saaaad motherfucking panda by now!
• Love Comes Lately 3, but . . . Rhea Perlman! 3+
• Miss Conception 3: more baby-making! 3
• Hallam Foe 3, but Ciarán Hinds, Caesar in HBO's Rome 4, I guess; isn't the title Mister Foe? yeah, but in copying and pasting from IMDb, I've added U.S. titles only when there's not an obvious cue in the orig. title
• Mongol 3--and it seems likely to come downtown, where the bar's lower; don't forget: this got an Oscar nom. for Best Foreign-Language Film 3, 4 if it's not 2.5 hrs 120m per IMDb
• On the Rumba River 3 3
• The Promotion hopeful 3 3+
• Take Out 3 5--immigrants in NYC is an automatic 5 now
• Am Limit 3 3+--title is To the Limit hey, do I insist on English translations in your blog?
• And When Did You Last See Your Father? 3, but Jim Broadbent and Colin Firth 4 what, you're not going to complain about the initial "And"?
• You Don't Mess with the Zohan 3: oh, grow up, Adam 3, generously

June 11

• Encounters at the End of the World 4: Werner Herzog doc. about McMurdo Station in Antarctica--wonder whether my author Susan Solomon will be in it? 4

June 13

• The Happening 3 4, for Marky saw trailer yest., and it's very reminiscent of Signs and Lady in the Water, neither of which I liked much
• The Incredible Hulk 4; hey, double-Marvel Comics summer for Robert Downey Jr.! strong 4 on cast--wow! Norton + Roth + Downey!
• My Winnipeg 5: one word: Guy Maddin 4+
• Quid Pro Quo 3, but Vera Farmiga's always a plus 3

June 20

• Brick Lane 3 4, I suppose
• Expired 3 3
• Get Smart 4--trailer promising, but I'll be sick of it six weeks from now, I'm sure 4--Carell is the perfect choice, plus Dwayne Johnson! no argument there, Gene
• Kit Kittredge: An American Girl 2; really? that high? 2
• The Love Guru 3: skeptical, but Myers has proved me wrong before 4, but skeptical
• Now & Later 3: a movie about a box of candy? 2; huh? http://www.oldtimecandy.com/now-later.htm

June 25

• Louise Bourgeois: The Spider, The Mistress and The Tangerine 2 3

June 27

• Elsa y Fred 3 4; saw trailer, looks like fun
• Finding Amanda 3 3
• Gunnin' for That #1 Spot 3 3
• Une vieille maîtresse (The last mistress) 2: Catherine Breillat 2; sounds hateable! true dat
• Razzle Dazzle 3 3
• Ne le dis à personne (Tell no one) 3 4, it's French yeah, and I'll bet you wouldn't have insisted on the English title for this one if I'd omitted it!
• Trumbo 4 4
• WALL·E 2: prejudiced against it in part because I'm sick of having that promotional replica at the multiplex talk to me when I walk by 2; who gives a f**k about robots? it's OK: you can say "fuck" here; I've tested it out
• Wanted 4: trailer looked 3ish, tending toward 4, but that was before I knew it was dir. by Timur Bekmambetov (the Night Watch trilogy) 3; the premise is really silly in stark contrast to the parallel universe-vampire world premise of the trilogy. Yeah, I know: you haven't seen those either; your loss.

July 2

• Hancock 4: may challenge The D. Knight for Darkest comic-book movie of the year, but then again, everybody involved with the film seems to be trying extra hard to make us think that, so this 4 comes w/ the proviso that critical evisceration would not surprise me 3

July 3

• The Wackness 3 3

July 4

• Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson 3; shameful confession: I've never read him 3; you've probably never done ether, either ether, either, nether, neither, let's call the whole thing off
• We Are Together (Thina Simunye) soft 3 3

July 9

• Full Battle Rattle oh, I see: I just figured out the Times blurb, and having done so, I almost slide up to 4, but no: 3 3; what the hell does the capsule tell us??!! you have to read, reread, study, and slowly the meaning emerges

July 11

• Giorni e nuvole (Days and clouds) 3 3
• Hellboy II: The Golden Army strong 4: liked the first one, and Guillermo Del T is El Hombre 2
• Journey to the Center of the Earth 3D 3: saw dopey (3D) trailer; if anyone can save it, Fraser can, but . . . 2, based on ad
• Kenny oh, my god! They filmed Kenny! You bastards! Actually, it's about portable toilets in Australia, which is almost as good: 4 3
• Meet Dave 4: trailer gives me hope that our decades of prayer for the redemption of Eddie Murphy's soul have been heard 3; haven't seen trailer
• Religulous 4 3

July 18

• Avant que j'oublie (Before I forget) 3 3
• The Dark Knight strong 4 4
• Diminished Capacity 3 4
• The Doorman 2 3+; you know, I have a script idea about a doorman . . .
• Lou Reed's Berlin 4, even though I don't know the album 2
• Sun taam (Mad detective) 3 3
• Mamma Mia! 2: trailer really grates 3
• Space Chimps 2 3

July 23

• Boy A 3 4

July 25

• American Teen 3: trailer sheds little light 3
• Another Gay Sequel: Gays Gone Wild no 2
• Baghead 4: I believe this was the only blurb that made me lol; by the guys who wrote & dir'd The Puffy Chair, which I need to Nf 2; I've heard Puffy Chair sucks. This sounds like ripoff of L'Orfanato español, pas italiano
• Brideshead Revisited 3 4; I've never seen the miniseries or read the book!
• Kanaria (Canary) 3 3
• The Longshots 2: omg 2
• Severed Ways: The Norse Discovery of America 2 optimistic 4 get the fuck outta hemisphere!
• Step Brothers 3, but Richard Jenkins is a plus 3, but really 2
• The X-Files: I Want to Believe if I've never watched an episode of the TV show and didn't go to the first movie, it seems unlikely I'll start in on it now 2, ditto

August 1

• Choke 3, but I do like that Kelly Macdonald 4
• Frozen River 3 4
• He's Just Not That Into You 2: jeez, two Jennifers and a Ginnifer in the cast! 2
• In Search of a Midnight Kiss 3 3
• The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor 1 2
• The Rocker 2 2
• Swing Vote 2 3

August 6

• Patti Smith: Dream of Life 3, 4ish 3

August 8

• Fly Me to the Moon 2; Buzz Aldrin as himself! 2; we're going to hell in a handcart
• Hell Ride 2; did they even have to tell us that QT is one of the producers? 2
• Pineapple Express 4: laughed my ass off at the trailer; of course, I was high 3; didn't realize it was David Gordon Green
• The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2 2? Filmed in part (stealthily) in New Haven while the Indy crew was here 2
• Towelhead 3, near 4 on the basis of Alan Ball 4
• Transsiberian 4: about fucking time Brad Anderson got off his ass; of course, this'll probably be an area exclusive in his hometown of Madison. Emily Mortimer always a plus 4

August 15

• Henry Poole Is Here soft 3, that high only for Luke Wilson 4
• Man on Wire 4 4
• Mirrors 2 3
• Star Wars: The Clone Wars animated? Are you fucking kidding me? Fuck no! 2
• Tropic Thunder 3: I'd have been a 4 before I saw the trailer 4; haven't seen trailer

August 20

• Richard Serra: Thinking on Your Feet soft 3 2

August 22

• The Accidental Husband is this about Uma's stalker? 3, but hopeful 3
• Bangkok Dangerous 2: trailer looks like another brick in the edifice of Nic's bad career decisions 3
• Chuecatown (Boystown) 3 3
• Crossing Over 4: wotta cast! 4 (immigrants)
• Hamlet 2 5: my most anticipated film of the summer, and I gotta wait almost 'til summer's over! OK, 5
• The House Bunny 3: Faris might be able to make it work, though 3
• Wild Child 2 2

August 29

• Babylon A.D. 3; what I learned from the blurbs: that Michelle Yeoh is from Malaysia. Oh! Didn't notice before that the dir. did La Haine--that pushes me toward 4 2, despite Charlotte Rampling
• College 1 also 1, despite our wildly divergent educational experiences
• Das Haus der schlafenden Schönen (House of the sleeping beauties) 2: creeparama! 2, blech
• Sukiyaki Western Django great title, but 3 2
• Traitor 4 on cast; where's Guy Pearce been? Speaking of where, are any of my Future Wives in any films this summer? (Whoa! While checking on Julianne Moore, I see that she's in a film I didn't know was being made, based on one of my favorite novels by my favorite contemporary novelist. I'll just leave it there for now.) No Moore, no Davis, no Clarkson; who am I missing? I'm not a very good Future Husband if I can't remember all my Future Wives. Anyway, I guess I'm gonna have to get my summer fantasies from the comic books. Oh! Of course! Laura Linney--also not in anything this summer. 3; interesting cast. I think that Julianne Moore movie was shot in my old neighborhood, whatever it was you don't remember what your old neighborhood was? Even I remember what your old neighborhood was.
• Year of the Fish 2 4, immigrants

Bill of right

This Divided State

(2005)

Wow, this film has everything: bullying conservatives, heroic champions of the First Amendment, Sean Hannity, Hannitized conservatives shouting down outnumbered liberals, a guy who makes Sean Hannity seem almost moderate, Michael Moore, a guy who looks like Michael Moore, a guy who talks like a lunatic but makes perfect sense, and a climactic and heartbreaking act of unspeakable treachery. Oh, and also the 2004 presidential election results, as if there hadn't been enough heartbreak.

It's clearly a shoestring project, but a painstakingly fair one: we hear about and see acts of liberal assholishness as well as acts of conservative assholishness, and if we hear about and see more of the latter, well, maybe that's just the nature of the beast.

Oh, my god, they killed Jonathan! You bastards!

There's Something About Mary

(1998)

"Neither a borrower nor a lender be," Polonius tells Laertes, "for chances are between the friend of a friend you lend your DVD to and the friend herself, it'll be a year and a half before you see it again." I exaggerate: it was only from Thanksgiving '06 until last month, but I sure was glad to get it back.

That Jonathan Richman's is the first voice we hear and the first face we see--and that he functions throughout as a Greek chorus--was a bonus for me when I first saw this, and so it remains. Jonathan changed my musical life in 1981 the first time I heard "I'm Straight," and years later my then-wife Jennie Tonic and my friend Pablo el Amante Moderno and I got to sit w/ Jonathan during a break in his show at Mabel's in Champaign, Ill., one night, Jennie trying to talk Greek with him, since he'd just come back from there. Next day I saw him walking to the Greyhound station and honked and waved, and he smiled and waved back, but I missed the opportunity of a lifetime to yell out the window, "Jonathan, you're crazy for taking that bus," a lyric he'd sung the night before from his then-current album Jonathan Goes Country. Anyway, I don't love the film only for JR, but that would be reason enough.

Since the last time I'd seen the film, I'd also met Chris Elliott, whose sister I work with--making this without a doubt the only Hollywood film with two people in the cast I've hung out with. I'd also watched Deadwood and thus gotten to know the work of W. Earl Brown, and that was a revelation because I'd always assumed, knowing that the Farrellys like to involve their friends--especially handicapped ones--in their films, that Warren was actually played by someone mentally challenged.

Bottom line, though: this remains one of the smartest of the "dumb" romcom subgenre. But don't bother with the extended version on the DVD: the theatrical version's less is more.

Improve the position

Redbelt

Crit

This reminds me a lot of one of my favorite Mamet films, The Spanish Prisoner, except that in that film, Campbell Scott's Joe Ross was believably naïve, whereas in this one, Chiwetel Ejiofor's Mike Terry is positively Christlike.

Mamet's usual suspects Ricky Jay, David Paymer, and the versatile Rebecca Pidgeon (Mrs. Mamet has a small role but picks up the slack by co-writing and singing three samba-ish songs on the soundtrack) are on hand, but it's Ejiofer, Emily Mortimer, Alice Braga (niece of Sonia), and Max Martini as a cop almost as clean as Mike who jazz this one up.

Ultimately, it turns into a sports cliché movie--but Mamet even does that better than most.

Iron Man

Post

OK, look, let me just say it up front: Gwyneth Paltrow looks terrific with red hair; why the poster and newspaper ad show her in her usual blondness is beyond me. OK, now, what else positive can I say about the flick?

Well, it's true that Robert Downey Jr. plays it right by constantly showing that he knows this is a movie, and that no lives are really on the line. But come on, really. Hint to makers of a first movie about a superhero: (1) don't have the prologue last an hour, and (2) don't have the nemesis be just a souped-up version of the hero himself. Both of those tactics are OK for sequels, as a change of pace once you've already established a pace to change from, but both are just boring at the start of the sage. And I guess the weak box office pretty much proves my point.

If you do go, by the way, don't leave until the very end. Trust me.

Trailers

• Baghead--If anything, the trailer weakened my 4.
  The Happening--Who knows? But Zooey's hair's a mistake, that's for sure.
  The Love Guru--Still skeptical, very skeptical. Yes, Mike is charming, but is charm enough?
  Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull--First time seeing the full trailer rather than just a teaser, and I'm verging on a 5. In fact, let's face it: what are the chances I'll skip it, particularly if it opens downtown, as promised?

All that glitters

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre

(1948)

My subconscious must have driven me to this as the source of much of the Bolivia section of last week's Butch Cassidy, something my conscious had never noticed before: wizened old codger taking the two greenhorns up the mountain, the dynamics of the bandit band, the sharp-eyed village boy noticing the brand on the hoofed beast.

Something else new to me this severalth screening of this magnificent film: maybe it's just having seen Joan Collins on the screen last weekend, but I decided this time around that Tim Holt is not nearly as bad an actor as I've always considered him. He's still a distant third here to Bogart and Huston père, but he's probably as good as Huston fils in front of the camera. And speaking of John, seeing him briefly in this and seeing Nicholson last week in Cuckoo's Nest makes me a little hungry for Chinatown.

Running out for a smoke

The Virgin Queen

(1955)

Let your mind drift back, back, far back . . . to a time when the queen of England spoke like a Cockney, vehicles could travel freely in central London, and Joan Collins was in her early 20s.

Gee whiz, I thought last year's Elizabeth: The Golden Age was crap--and it was, make no mistake--but with Collins (far from the accomplished actor she became by the Dallas era), the scenery-chewing Richard Todd (you remember him from . . . OK, you don't remember him at all) as Raleigh, and Bette Davis, as uncomfortable as I've ever seen her until about the last 15 minutes (starting when she rips off that silly cap and exposes her hairline to Collins's Beth Throgmorton, Lady Raleigh), this is some seriously bad cinema. I'd feel bad about saying that, since the DVD was a gift, except that I know that the gift giver got a bunch of copies for free, and I strongly suspect that she shares my assessment.

Mainly, I'm looking forward to the featurette, in which Good Wine Under $20 maven Dr. Debs appears in her non-superhero secret identity. I hope she'll tell me whether Good Queen Bess really would have said "me" for "my."

Ah, Juicy Fruit!

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

(1975)

Another one from my youth that disappoints a bit: an acting tour de force, but there's not much subtlety here, is there, not too much ambiguity--not to much that asks to be thought about rather than just expected? Still, always fun to see if only to remember how young Brad Dourif and Christopher Lloyd and Danny DeVito--and for that matter, Nicholson--used to be. And I appreciated Billy Redfield's performance as Harding more this screening, my first since learning that he was Guildenstern in the 1964 Gielgud-Burton Hamlet, and since reading his wonderful memoir of the experience.

Put me in a wheelchair, get me to the show

Young at Heart

Crit

Pretty nearly impossible not to like this documentary of youth and age, life and death, music and music and music, though director Stephen Walker does try from time to time to bollix it up with unneeded intrusions. I also would have liked to learn a lot more about the group's origins and about what drives the 53-year-old Bob Cilman to teach a bunch of Massachusetts senior citizens songs like "Life During Wartime," "Schizophrenia," and "I Wanna Be Sedated." A very good, very moving film that could have been a bit more.

Incidentally, the title is actually closed up w/ the @ sign in the middle, but I can't persuade the interface that that doesn't signify an address, so I've sacrificed art to practicality.

Trailers

No new ones, but let me just go on record as saying that after three viewings, I am officially sick of the Mamma Mia trailer.

Buddy, buddy

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

(1969)

I'm always aware of May 2 because on that date in 1970 when I rolled my father's red sporty (no, really!) Falcon on the way to my girlfriend's prom. (Yes, you're right: the relationship didn't last long after that, even though her injuries were even more minor than mine--in those seatbelts-aren't-cool days, we were both thrown from the car before its roof got squashed down onto the seats.)

Anyway, this year I noticed early enough that May 2 was coming up to boost something I already had in my Nf queue to the top slot: the movie this girl and I saw on our first date. This is a film I loved dearly for years--probably watched it a half-dozen times between 1970 and maybe about 2000 before the scene that was titillating when I was 16 just became unwatchable: you know the one: Butch's rape-fantasy scene with Etta, which she finally defuses with the punchline that reveals that she's in on the joke. (There's other stuff that was always unwatchable, of course, but for aesthetic rather than political reasons: what the fuck is that B. J. Thomas VH1 video of a lame Bacharach-David song doing in there? Ugh.)

So tonight, watching again for the first time in years, I studied that scene closely, to see whether director George Roy Hill gives us any clues that it's all good clean fun. Butch does address Etta as "teacher lady," so it's clear that he knows who she is, at least. But no: he cocks his revolver; she trembles in a convincing simulation of terror: it's an indefensible scene, ratcheting up the adolescent fantasy of me and countless other 16-year-old boys with safely-PG-suggestive glimpses of Katharine Ross flesh and the promise of power as sex, sex as power.

Still, the good is awfully good: the opening blackjack sequence, Butch's dismissal of the challenge to his leadership, the camaraderie between the boys as they wonder of their pursuers, "Who are those guys?" Oh, and Strother Martin, full stop. I guess I'll watch it again sometime. But I'll never watch it again without feeling a little dirty.

Ovarian imperative

Then She Found Me

Crit

Hmmm . . . consecutive postwork Friday flicks about women on the ticking clock side of 35 trying to get pregnant. Houston, we have a Zeitgeist.

But in fact, this has little else in common with Baby Mama. That is a pleasant enough entertainment with some yuks in it. This is a grown-up picture with grown-up problems and nastiness in it, and if you didn't think Helen Hunt had it in her, well, you were as wrong as I was. It's not only a surehanded and sure-headed directorial debut, it's a brave and unselfish one. Not only does she wear the lines of a real-live 40ish woman (a very skinny 40ish, but still), but she plays nice with others: most of the "now that's acting" scenes for to Colin Firth, Matthew Broderick, and Bette Midler (and good god, how long has it been since we enjoyed seeing Miss M up there?).

I don't know how much of this is Elinor Lipman's source novel, but I also appreciate that the romantic leads played by Hunt and Firth can be priggish and unforgiving, and that even when resolution comes, it doesn't come all gooey and uncomplicated. (The Broderick character is a bit more of a comic book character--oh, and another parallel w/ Baby Mama is a character with implausible sex appeal: c'mon straight female voters, even forgetting the character differences, would you ever go for Broderick with Firth?

Quibbles notwithstanding, a very good film by someone who may make an excellent one down the road.

Trailer

• The Children of Huang Shi--Oh, gosh, I don't know: interwar China, Reds vs. Nationalists, white Europeans getting involved. Maybe.