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.