The wrong corpse

Number 17

(1932)

Another obscure early Hitchcock. Whiplash editing makes this barely more than an hour of confusion, but the Master's signature is still visible: at least 3 McGuffins (a diamond necklace and the identities of two characters), laughable miniatures that nonetheless serve, a romance out of nowhere, and a fluent merger of comedy and suspense. The opening shot, silent for three minutes or more, establishes mood, character, and plot perfectly.

Material girl

Bright Star

Crit

Variation on being annoyed at neighboring viewers who chatter through the end-credits music: annoyance at neighboring viewers who chatter through a recital of "Ode to a Nightingale"; but here's a tribute to the power of Keats's poetry: after a couple of stanzas, they shut up!

What this film shows us is that one of the greatest poets of the past two centuries can still employ the same clichés as any other 20-something when Cupid strikes.

Trailers

• Motherhood--Looks like a waste of Uma Thurman and Minnie Driver.
• The Young Victoria--Another costumer (yawn!).
• The Burning Plain--No.
  

Think globally, wank locally

No Impact Man: The Documentary

Crit

Yeah, I admit it: I thought this guy (Colin Beavan, the titular eco-hero) was a sanctimonious little prick from everything I'd read, and I admit further that had I not been prejudiced, I might have come away from this admiring him rather than just admiring his experiment, but while I'll readily admit that there's ample (locally grown) food for thought here, the guy is still a sanctimonious little prick, who decides on a radically deprivational way of life as a topic for his next book, then coerces his wife into going along with it.

That's what's really interesting about this film: the intramural psychosocial dynamics. Beavan's wife, Michelle Conlin, unwisely ignores advice given by readers of her husbands blog (and echoed by everyone she knows), to "DTMFA" (dump the motherfucking asshole) and becomes a textbook example of Stockholm syndrome, buying into most of his loony doctrine.

Unspeakable

The Aristocrats

(2005)

Oh, there's nothing new to say about this. It still works.

Secret agent 0014

The Informant!

Crit

Even if you didn't have any other reason, you gotta love a film that gives work to both
Smothers Brothers! Or, if you used to live in east central Illinois, a film that shows you an interview on WAND-TV. Or one where Matt Damon gets to wear a roadkill toupee.

But there's more reason to love this. Like its tonal resemblance to Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, which was directed by one of the producers of this one. As in that film, the protagonist has an extremely tenuous relationship with what the rest of us consider reality, but has a fascinating life as a result. And also lots of paranoia.

One of the strangest films of the year, and maybe one of the best.

Trailers

• 2012--Holy cow! Roland Emmerich makes a serious bid for the most landmarks destroyed ever!
  
• Sherlock Holmes--Guy Ritchie directs, so look for lots of ostentatious destruction here, too.
  

Glad to be unhappy

Wonder Boys

(2000)

How fucking good is this movie? This movie is so fucking good that even Katie Holmes is good in it. And while I recognize that this is tall cotton, I believe this is the best Frances McDormand has ever been. I really need to get around to reading something by Michael Chabon one of these days.

License plate bonus: when we first see Hannah's (Holmes) car, I thought I noticed Utah plates, a significant character note in a film ostentatiously set and filmed in Pittsburgh. So then, paying attention, I confirmed my perception and also noticed a wonderful continuity error: look for it. Also, in the edenic epilogue, those are Connecticut plates! Eden is here!

This is not Spinal Tap, exactly

Anvil! The Story of Anvil

Crit

Despite the knowing winks to Rob Reiner's great mockumentary (a visit to Stonehenge, a sound-board dial that goes to 11, a drummer named Robb Reiner), it seems that Anvil really is a marginally once-popular Ontario metal band. Which makes all the hilarious self-parodic, delusional stuff here pretty sad. Which is not to say it's not a fine movie, only that your really wish it weren't quite so true.

Debunking note: reviews notwithstanding, there is no exclamation point in the title as it appears on the poster or in the opening titles. Maybe there should be, but there's not.

Goats, foxes, zombies

Just a quick roundup of the films scheduled to be released the rest of the year whose impending arrival excites me (!), interests me, with reservations (?), or appals me (0).

Opening Friday: If I were the part-of-the-solution person I'd like to believe I am, I'd be way more excited about Fuel (?), which promises to be the Inconvenient Truth of the year. As it is, I'm in, but I can't help feeling like I'm eating my vegetables. . . . Way more eager to see the new Soderbergh, The Informant! (no, really, !), with Matt Damon looking his squirrelliest.
. . . Then there's the new Diablo Cody script, a grrrl-empowered horror flick, Jennifer's Body (?).

25 September: No, haven't seen the Theo van Gogh original, and I'm not sure about the couple-mourning-dead-daughter-trying-to-renew-relationship premise, but all you have to say is Stanley Tucci and My Future Wife Patty Clarkson, and I'm in for Blind Date (!). But, geez--check out IMDb: I think that title has been used enough now, please. Just this year there are Australian and U.S.-Korean shorts, and next year there's a Polish one (not clear whether short or feature), though you probably know it until its native title, Randka w ciemno. . . . I loved and mourn David Foster Wallace, whose Infinite Jest, I've decided, has superseded The Great Gatsby as my favorite novel of the 20th c. But I hated hated hated (so much so that I'm not even providing a link) Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, and I can't believe that letting John Krasinski extract a single plot from it and direct is the way to save the film (0).

2 October: If anyone can make the premise of The Invention of Lying work, it's Ricky Gervais. If (?). . . . Ordinarily, the new Coens film would get an automatic screamer, but the trailer for A Serious Man is so insistently disorienting and annoying that I'm (?). . . . Saw Toy Story and Toy Story 2 while visiting a friend and his kids a few years ago, and I'm (!) over the prospect of a 3D double-feature rerelease. . . . Zombieland: plus: Woody Harrelson, with overacting carte blanche; minus: ditto (?).

9 October: Michael Sheen + English football (soccer to you) = hell, yes: The Damned United (!). . . . An Education gets a (?) not because of the Times focus on Carey Mulligan but because I noticed that the screenplay is by Nick Hornby.

16 October: Paris, je t'aime was less than met the eye, so I'm (?) about New York, I Love You, but it's hard to imagine missing it. Fewer directors whose work I'm excited about, but it will be interesting to see what Natalie Portman, Joshua Marston, and Mira Nair have to show us. . . . Where the Wild Things Are (!). My daughter said something very perceptive yesterday about this: that the makers of the trailer have tried very hard to make it seem all warm and fuzzy and Disneyesque, but that what Spike Jonze has given them to work with makes that impossible.

23 October: Nobody's trying to make Lars von Trier's trailer warm and fuzzy, I'll bet! Antichrist, with Cannes best actress Charlotte Gainsbourg--very nearly (!), but finally (?).

6 November: Heck, just the title of The Men Who Stare at Goats is worth (!), and then Clooney?

13 November: Wasn't hot for Fantastic Mr. Fox from the trailer, but now I see that Wes Anderson directs, so (?). Could be a hell of a season for the kids. . . . Likewise, I'm (?) on Me and Orson Welles on the basis of Richard Linklater's direction, and in spite of Zac Efron's being "me." . . . The Boat That Rocked is now being called Pirate Radio, which suggests that the studio will do everything it can to fuck it up, but the trailer is irresistible (?).

20 November: Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, a regionally reset remake? One word: Herzog (?). . . . Los abrazos rotos (Broken embraces): one word: Almodóvar (!). . . . Planet 51 sounds just goofy enough for a (?).

4 December: Up in the Air (!). Clooney again; am I just kidding myself about liking girls?

11 December: Invictus: Morgan Freeman as Mandela--what took 'em so long to figure that out (?)?

16 December: Panique au village (A town called panic). Plot summary lifted from an anonymous post on IMDb: "Animated plastic toys like Cowboy, Indian and Horse have problems, too. Cowboy and Indian's plan to surprise Horse with a homemade birthday gift backfires when they destroy his house instead. Surreal adventures take over [! after that?] as the trio travel to the center of the earth, trek across frozen tundra and discover a parallel underwater universe where pointy-headed (and dishonest!) creatures live. With panic a permanent feature of life in this papier mâché town, will Horse and his girlfriend ever be alone?" And dishonest (?)! Hey, triple feature w/ the Toy Stories?

18 December: If Did You Hear About the Morgans? is not the worst film of the season, its trailer cutter should be taken out and shot; otherwise, the same applies to everyone else concerned, including Hugh Grant and Sarah Jessica Parker (0).

Christmas: Two (?s) with double-plus casts but minus directors: It's Complicated (Streep + A. Baldwin - Nancy Meyers) and Sherlock Holmes (Downey Jr. + Law - Guy Ritchie).

What a world, what a world

The Wizard of Oz

(1939)

Foreign policy since World War II: naively we fall for lousy intelligence ("Follow the yellowcake road"), we put our fate in the hands of the brainless, the heartless (and oil-obsessed), and the politically gutless, and we ally ourselves with very bad men and very bad wizards and end up in the middle of nowhere without a clear exit strategy.

Lately fashionable

The September Issue

Crit

Another entry in the 200nine sweepstakes: also playing downtown are 9 and District 9; we saw the trailer again for Nine; and the "coming soon" roundup on the website promises the German Wolke Neun (Cloud nine).

The shock in this one? Anna Wintour may wear Prada, but she's far more human than diabolical. We are treated, in fact, to the odd spectacle of someone who is without question the best in the world at what she does yet can't help being a bit defensive about that "what," as if she were the best paper-and-comb musician in the world, or perhaps the best masturbator. Her three siblings, she says, who have respectable grownup jobs like human rights lawyer and political editor of the Guardian, are all "a bit amused, I think, by what I do. [pause] Yes, they're amused."

The pause is one key to what is brilliant about this film. Like a good psychotherapist, director R. J. Cutler, DP Bob Richman, and editor Azin Samari have conspired to give sources space after their answers, and that silence is often filled with more telling remarks or expressions than the answers themselves. The other key is the yang to Wintour's icy yin, creative director Grace Coddington, who, unlike her boss (and associate for 30-odd years), is happy to have the cameras in her face, happy to share. Much of what she shares, of course, is unhappiness with the insufficient respect she feels her contribution gets from Wintour. What the two have is exactly like a long successful marriage: a shared private language that lets them work together without words--and lets them push each other's edgiest buttons just as easily.

A vastly more fun film that I'd have thought anything that takes fashion seriously and didn't have Isaac Mizrahi in it could be.

Trailers

• Good Hair--Chris Rock hosts a documentary about the incompatibility of mainstream (i.e., white) notions of beauty with the natural product of African follicles. Retraces the steps of an indy short of several years ago (seems like "nappy" was in the title, but I can't find it on IMDb), but Rock is bound to get it more attention.
  

Might as well live

Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle

(1994)

Golly! Saw this when it first came out (a literal lifetime ago: at a movie theater that's no longer there, with a wife who's no longer here), but I'd forgotten what a lighthearted, madcap laughfest it is. Jennifer Jason Leigh, wonderful as always, is the eternally mopey wit whose typewriter ribbons are marinated in acid and whiskey, and Campbell Scott, whom I believe I'd not seen before, is Peter Benchley, and why the two, grotesquely in love, keep their carnal distance remains a mystery. Maybe she was afraid it might make her happy, or he that it wouldn't.

Alan Rudolph directed--some of his earliest work was as an assistant on The Brady Bunch, then he worked second unit three times for Robert Altman, who produced this. Two other highlights in a mostly forgettable career: Choose Me (1983) and (with Scott again) The Secret Lives of Dentists (2003), but he has completed nothing since the latter. Which may explain why the story of a brilliant talent unable to actually produce much in the way of brilliance attracted him.

Sex and guns and rock & roll

Der Baader Meinhof Komplex

Crit

We (and by "we" I mean we who lean left to begin with) are sympathetic to the late-1960s ambitions of the Red Army Faction from the opening minutes, when West Berlin police stand back as plainclothes Savak agents attack student protesters, then actually join in with deadly force. Still, the film's agenda seems mostly restricted to history and psychology: the RAF is filled with doctrinaire Marxists, but when Andreas Baader (Moritz Bleibtreu, looking a little Gael García Bernal) says "Fucking is the same as shooting," he's not altogether serious, but he's not altogether kidding, either. Driving fast and recklessly is the same, too, for members of the group as devoted to danger as to the international struggle of the people.

The narrative is strictly chronological, and as some members are killed or locked up (or kill themselves while locked up), we meet subsequent generations of true and semitrue believers. As that happens, and as current actions are credited to dead comrades, it starts to become clear that revolution is the same as religion: resurrection serves insurrection.

A word about the soundtrack: listen very closely to the Beatles' "Dizzy Miss Lizzy" and the Who's "My Generation," then pay attention to the music end credits: are those the best soundalike bands you've ever heard or what? At least "Blowin' in the Wind" is really Dylan.

Artificial inspiration

The Pope of Greenwich Village

(1984)

Weird: I have a vivid recollection of having my friend Steve Watt tell me how great this film is over the phone while I was living in Grafton, W.Va. Thing is, I lived in Grafton 1981-83, before this film was released. So I wonder what film that was. Steve?

In any case, this was a quarter of a century ago, when Mickey Rourke and Daryl Hannah were gorgeous and Rourke was a kickass young actor. But jesus, Julia's little brother
Eric Roberts is the Pope of Overacting here. How Charlie (Rourke) can love his distant cousin Paulie is as inexplicable as how he can let Diane get away.

Wonderful tiny contribution by Geraldine Page, though in the first of her two scenes the script calls for her to refer to a "4-year-old filly" (starting at age 3, a female thoroughbred is a mare) and to the content of what is clearly a Hennessy bottle as whiskey.

One thingamabob to rule them all

9

Crit

What? You're gonna take the kids to this? Are you out of your freakin' mind? It's not bad enough that the first human we see is dead within a minute, that a moment later the next two humans we see, a mother and child, are already dead, and that we get creepy, scary machines all over the screen throughout? Most of the they've-given-you-a-number-and-haven't-bothered-to-give-you-a-name good guys are creepy too, especially 8, a cross between the Stay-Puft marshmallow man and one of the mean ghosts from the Casper comic books, and 6, nattily attired in Buchenwald PJs. Come to think of it, 3 and 4 are pretty weird, too: silent identical twins whose mind-meld drifts into an undeniable eros. And then there's 2, who is not so designated for the number of eyeballs in his head.

Well, that's not my problem: I'm not getting up with 'em in the middle of the night. My gripe is that everything of substance here seems to be cribbed from other sources, mostly from The Lord of the Rings trilogy. And I thought that from the get-go, even while the titular sock puppet was mute--i.e., before I remembered that he's voiced by Elijah Wood, Frodo himself. See, you have a mysterious talisman appears to be at the center of the problem, and the key to salvation. And a quest to possess it, and to do something wild w/ it.

Fantastic to look at, but there's just really not that much there there.

Trailer

• Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant--Directed by Paul Weitz, looks silly and potentially quite fun. I mean, hell: John C. Reilly as a vampiric mentor?
  

Double infemmenity

Les Diaboliques

(1955)

A very Hitchcockian French noir, directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot--it's no surprise that the authors of the source novel, Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac, also wrote the source for Vertigo.

His wife, played by Véra Clouzot (yes, the director's wife), has a bad ticker; his mistress (Simone Signoret) has really noisy plumbing; he (Paul Meurisse) is just plain bad--so bad that wife and mistress conspire to murder him. And then things get weird.

A gripping film for about 80 minutes; problem is the third act is too long and too slow, giving you plenty of time and opportunity to figure out where it's going, which is a shame.

Like a painted boat upon a painted sea

Lifeboat

(1944)

Better than I found it the last time I saw it, which was on the big screen a few years ago. It's quite possible that a smaller screen is more appropriate to the odd mix of borderlessness and claustrophobia entailed by the trapped-on-a-boat-at-sea setting.

Fun to see (and hear) Tallulah Bankhead, in any case--this is the only film I've ever seen her in or am likely to. But you'd like to have Hitchcock be a little tougher about the central moral question of the film. Can I really have not noticed in two previous screenings that it's based on a short story by John Steinbeck?

Sanity clause

A Night at the Opera

(1935)

I have it on good authority that this is a work of comic genius, and I'll concede that the Marx Brothers (just the three funny ones here) are brilliant, but unfortunately the film also includes a romantic plot involving Kitty Carlisle and Allan Jones that's a complete snooze, and the titular night is a tad too much opera for my tastes. Best musical number is Chico's piano "All I Do Is Dream of You," even better than the dancing girls version in Singin' in the Rain.

When the truth entails ruin . . .

World's Greatest Dad

Crit

Lance Clayton (Robin Williams) is a failure as a novelist and as a high school English teacher, and his 15-year-old son Kyle (Daryl Sabara) is a dick, liked only by one friend and loved only by his father. When Kyle dies accidentally via autoerotic asphyxiation, Lance opts for damage control, rearranging the evidence to make it look like suicide and writing a suicide note. As a result of that lie, and the others to which it naturally leads, father and son become the darlings of the school en route to national acclaim.

There's nothing subtle here, but hey, do we expect subtlety from director Bobcat Goldthwait? What we get is just the right number and right sort of laughs--did I mention it's a comedy?--and the sort of warped performance, inspiring both sympathy and contempt, that has made us forgive Williams for the general direction of his career in the past . . . what? decade? two decades? There were two of us in the theater, so it's safe to say this is not going to play in Peoria, but it's worth a spot in your Netflix futures queue.

One genuine cowhide traveling bag

The More the Merrier

(1943)

Derivative (particularly heavy on It Happened One Night) and thoroughly unsurprising, but irresistible strictly on the basic of cast: Charles Coburn as an avuncular cupid pushing together Joel McCrea and Jean Arthur, who may be the best here I've ever seen her, which is saying something.