Those who cannot remember the past . . .

Groundhog Day

(1993)

Ah, what can I say about this that I haven't said after my past two annual screenings? Have I mentioned that it strikes me as the best-crafted and smartest of any romantic comedy of my lifetime? Have I mentioned that it was actually filmed mostly in Woodstock, Illinois? Have I mentioned . . . guess I'd better save something for next year.

The weight

Igby Goes Down

(2002)

Huh! Didn't occur to me 'til the end credits how indebted this is to a novel by a dead-this-week novelist that I'm thinking about rereading.

Saw it when it was new, didn't remember much except that I liked it, had had it on my DVR playlist for a year or more, and was inspired to watch it by an article in the Times about Claire Danes, whom I'd forgotten was in this (and who is, duh, terrific--as is Amanda Peet, and I did remember that).

Anyway, this is pretty much Holden if Holden smoked a lot of dope and had sex occasionally--oh, right: and if he helped kill his awful mother.

That lady that stands for liberty

Mr. Smith Goes to Washington

(1939)

Yeah, I know: it's hard to get one's mind around the fact that the filibuster could be the tool of the hero, but dammit, I just needed to be reminded that it's possible for there to be a hero in the Senate, or anywhere in American politics, for that matter. I think we're in one of those long, dark tunnels Jeff talks about--up a long, dark tunnel without a statesman (or -woman).

As ye sow . . .

Jason and the Argonauts

(1963)

This tour de sword-and-sandal force was one of the favorite movies of my childhood, and it wasn't for the script, or for the acting, or for the direction, or even for the dangerously off-the-shoulder gown Medea (Nancy Kovack, whose name is a fair indication of the "Who?" quality of the cast) gets rescued from the sea in. No, its appeal all came from the special effects of Ray Harryhausen: the angry bronze Titan, the food-thieving harpies, the hydra-headed serpent (yeah, I know: what, you're expecting mythological consistency?), and most of all, disturbing my sleep for weeks if not months afterward, the skeletal Children of the Hydra Teeth, each sprouting from the ground brandishing a sword or spear and wielding a shield with a really cool design, which frankly looks more Roman than Greek (or Colchisian).

All the special effects look cheesy now, of course, but charmingly cheesy, and looking at those martial skeletons, I'm not going to second-guess my 10-year-old self for having been thoroughly creeped out by them.

In case you're wondering, Zeus calls an end to the narrative with Jason and Medea in love on the Argo, hinting only that the hero has other adventures ahead of him. As far as I know, no sequel was ever made centering on his faithlessness and cruel abandonment, followed by Medea's murder of their children.

I want to hold your hand

WALL·E

(2008)

Ah, who among us has not fallen in love with someone beautiful, amazing, and fatally dangerous, someone so singleminded about pursuing her directive that she is uncommunicative and oblivious to our needs?

Don't recall having noticed before the debt to Cuckoo's Nest: WALL·E as McMurphy both in the repair ward for damaged bots, leading them to freedom and renewed life, and then later, heartbreaking, as lobotomized McMurphy.

Potato dust

Frenzy

(1972)

The Master's last great film was, I believe, the first I ever saw, and certainly the only one I saw in the theater as a new release; I would have been 18, barely old enough to get in, unless it took from June to December to reach the hinterlands. (I recall seeing it in Beardstown, Ill., about 20 miles east of my even dinkier hometown--though the way memory works, who knows whether that recollection is accurate?)

It is apparently far from unanimous that this is a great film, but come on: an intricately turned wrong-man plot, in which even we have a brief reason to suspect the one against whom all the evidence is piled, a cranky so-and-so who does his best to be his own worst enemy; a magnificently tense scene in which we are fully invested in the completely unsympathetic killer's success in performing the grotesquely horrible and irresistibly hilarious gymnastics necessary to retrieve a piece of incriminating evidence; a delightfully irrelevant subplot involving the chief inspector's domestic challenges; sumptuous location shooting in Hitchcock's return to London; and a rival for "Nobody's perfect" in the annals of great final lines. What more do you want?

And thus ends my roughly 15 months' frenzy of Hitchcock screening. Some revelations, some welcome reacquaintances, and only a few stinkers.

Gone with the wind

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre

(1948)

I was a little hard on John Huston's acting the last time I screened this; this time I saw clearly a young man en route to becoming Noah Cross. But Daddy still steals the show--his fits of hilarity that leave his compadres befuddled are among the best laughs in the movies.

Have you any wool?

MLK weekend M4

God help me, I loves the movies. This trip was characterized by schedule breakdowns, one of which was my fault, one of which I'm not taking the fall for. I'm certain that I got the 1:15 showtime for Sweetgrass--which would leave me time to get popcorn lunch there after the 11 Pierrot le fou (especially since that one was trailerless)--from Film Forum's website. But when I got there at 1:02, I discovered that the posted showtime was 1:00, and to compound the problem, the cashier told me that the feature was probably about to begin already. As a result, I was lunchless until the 4:15 Hausu (and then got the medium combo instead of the large--a laughably small bag of corn and Diet Coke).

I was at the 4:15 Hausu instead of the 4:20 Fish Tank only because, with plenty of time between shows, I happened to notice that I was an idiot. Specifically, I had bought a ticket for the earlier Tank and the 6:20 Hausu even though the running time for the former is 122m. Uh, I used to be good at math, particularly M4 math. Fortunately, the switch was no problem, though by the time I got into the theater for the 6:00 Tank, theater 3 was crammed and I wound up in the front row, far left. Live and learn.

Pierrot le fou

IFC (1965)

Quintessential Godard, which is to say sometimes maddening but never boring, and in this case, fun all the way. Even though the characters themselves repeatedly remind us that the director is really not much interested in narrative, it actually has a very strong narrative. Well, for a Godard film. Jean-Paul Belmondo plays Jean-Paul Belmondo, and who plays him better? Actually, his character is named Ferdinand but persistently called Pierrot (despite his equally persistent corrections) by his love interest, Marianne Renoir (the delicious Anna Karina). Vietnam and African independence movements play supporting roles.

Sweetgrass

FF

Is there anything cuter in the world than running lambs?

A Wisemanesque documentary (actually directed by Ilisa Barbash and Lucien Castaing-Taylor) about sheepherders driving their charges down from the Beartooth Mountains (complete with toothy bears) in Montana. Gorgeous throughout (though it must be said that sheep look better with their fleece on than they do naked) and captivating in its treatment of tedious routine (reminiscent in that respect of Politist Adjectiv).

Hausu (House)

IFC (1977)

Dargis raved about this, I swear, but try finding the review on the Times site. Anyway, I'm glad to have seen it, but this is about as goofy a motion picture as can be imagined. A 1977 Japanese horror movie finally getting its U.S. release, it does not get too hung up on logic or narrative coherence, nor is it at all scary. But go ahead: rent the upcoming Criterion Collection disc (I shit thee not), invite all your dope-smoking friends over, and check it out some midnight.

Fish Tank

IFC

The single sad-bastard entry on the trip, and the one I'm likeliest to revisit. First-time actor Katie Jarvis plays ballsy Essex 15-year-old Mia (within minutes of the opening titles she head-butts a bitch who's giving her grief), who falls for the first person who has ever been nice to her: unfortunately, her mother's boyfriend.

Harsh and unsentimental but not brutal, and not without redemption of a sort. The final reel gives us one of the best and truest substitutes ever for a farewell hug.

Also noteworthy is Rebecca Griffiths--a dead ringer for little Jodie Foster--as Mia's foul-mouthed little sister.

Trailers

• Off and Running--Gender and race identity focus on an adopted child of a lesbian couple.
• Still Bill--Withers, i.e.; still cool.
• La fille du RER (The girl on the train)--Based on an actual false claim of a hate crime; Catherine Deneuve plays the mother of the titular fille.
• Johnny Weir: Pop Star on Ice--That pretty much says it all; documentary.
• October Country--Another doc: family haunted by ghosts of war.
  

It's the bishop!

Family Plot

(1976)

A little more than 4 years after this was released, Hitchcock was dead; his last is better than I expected. That's not to say that it's good, exactly, but Barbara Harris has a certain ditzy charm, and Bruce Dern is always interesting. Supposedly the control freak director let his actors improvise considerably here.

Appropriately weird note given the psychic fakery that drives half the plot: after two missiles-of-October films in the past week, here I encounter William Devane, who 2 years earlier had played JFK (to Martin Sheen's Bobby) in the TV movie The Missiles of October.

Got wood?

Buffy the Vampire Slayer

(1992)

Cute. Any flick that invites Donald Sutherland, Paul Reubens, and Rutger Hauer to overact wildly has points in its favor from the get-go, Kristy Swanson is a suitably buff Buffy (she turned 40 in December, incidentally), and what fun to see Hilary Swank in her first film, showing little hint of what she would become capable of.

I've been urged to see the TV series, said to be much better. Maybe someday.

As I stood dying

A Single Man

Crit

"Tom," a good DP would have told the first-time director, "the camera is not a toy. Moreover, while your attention span may be very, very short, it's not impossible for a shot to continue to be interesting even after more than 2 seconds."

Worth seeing for a heartrending performance by Colin Firth as a brokenhearted man ready for a little auto-mortal coil shuffling off, and in order to see that My Future Wife Julianne Moore can, with heroic effort and a horrific early-'60s hairstyle, be made to look almost b- . . . almost b- . . . almost not altogether gorgeous. Except for the freckles--if she was supposed to look unattractive, she never should have been allowed to wear a sleeveless dress that exposes a zillion fantabulous freckles. But I digress.

My second film in a week set during the Cuban Missile Crisis. End credits surprise: former neighbor Stephen Trask, though he apparently didn't contribute any original music, is prominently credited as Music Consultant (but don't bother to look for it on IMDb). Oh! And I just realized: he has now worked on films with 3 of my 4 future wives. I'll let you puzzle out the specifics on your own.

All about me, 2009

In the past I've done more or less conventional annual "best of" lists, have even updated them as films from 200N finally made it to New Haven in 200N+1, but I never really enjoyed it much. Yeah, I know: it's not for my enjoyment. But still.

Anyway, I got so tired of it that last year I blew it off altogether, but this year I'm back, but what I'm doing is just highlighting some things I saw in 2009 in whatever categories seem to make sense. Call 'em DVD-rental recommendations, I guess.

Gutchecks

Entre les Murs
Gomorra
Hunger
Politist, Adjectiv
Precious
Tyson
Vals Im Bashir

Angrymakers

Capitalism: A Love Story
The Cove
Food, Inc.
The Yes Men Fix the World

Shock and/or awe

Avatar
Every Little Step
The Hurt Locker
Inglourious Basterds
La Danse
Moon
Tetro

Oddballs

Anvil: The Story of Anvil
District 9
The Informant!
In the Loop
Panique au village
Ricky
The September Issue
Where the Wild Things Are
World's Greatest Dad

Love hurts

An Education
Duplicity
(500) Days of Summer
Fantastic Mr. Fox
La Graine et le mulet
L'Heure d'été
Paris
Sita Sings the Blues
Up in the Air

Special delivery

The Last Detail

(1973)

Road movie, buddy movie, coming of age movie, and a major Hollywood watershed: part of Nicholson's sensational '70s winning streak, director Hal Ashby's job between Harold and Maude and Shampoo, and Robert Towne's last screenwriting credit before his Oscar-winning Chinatown.

I've long remembered it as the first time I ever saw Randy Quaid; that recollection turns out to be inaccurate, since he'd been in 3 Bogdanovich films already, at least 1 of which I'd already seen. Nor was it my first exposure to Carol Kane, whom I'd seen with Nicholson in Carnal Knowledge (creepily, she plays a whore in each). And I would have seen Michael Moriarty a few months before this in Bang the Drum Slowly. But who would I have seen first here? Well, Nancy Allen, but she never did anything for me. More important, though briefly, as part of a proto-New Agey meditation group, Gilda Radner, two years before SNL.

About a (cheese) souffle

Youth in Revolt

Crit

It's Fight Club for the adolescent set, only without the Big Surprise. (I know some would say Fight Club is Fight Club for the adolescent set, so to clarify: I mean that as a compliment.)

Michael Cera finally charmed me as he's supposed to, but the biggest pleasure for my generation come from three industry treasures: Mary Kay Place and M. Emmet Walsh as a fundamentalist couple with a weakness for magic mushrooms and Fred Willard in another of those roles that make sense only as a Fred Willard role. I must agree, though, with one remark in a pan by Anthony Lane, something to the effect that it should be a federal crime to waste Steve Buscemi, as this film does.

Trailers

• The Runaways--Kristen Stewart as young Joan Jett? Oh, hell yeah! (Incidentally, the next trailer, which I'd already seen, was for Kick-Ass, which [the trailer, if not the film] features "Bad Reputation.")
• Piranha 3-D--God help us.
  

The fizzles of October

Topaz

(1969)

For the first 30 to 45 minutes, I was pleasant surprised by this take on the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, and it certainly was fun to range from Moscow (stock footage) to Copenhagen to Washington to New York to Havana (sound stage) to Paris, but the last 6 or 7 hours got kinda draggy. I suspect this could still be pretty gripping if the Hitchcock estate were to hire a good editor. And any editor could get it under 2 hours and improve it significantly.

This is the antepenultimate of the zillion Hitch films I've watched over the past 14 months or so, by the way. Actually, just counted: after I've screened Family Plot and Frenzy (in that order, opposite their release order, because I already know I like the necktie-murder flick, and I want to be sure to finish on a high note), I'll have seen 42 Hitchcock features, including his last 34. Golly!

Shoot the intellectual

The Petrified Forest

(1936)

Golly! I am reminded why this was the one film in Warners' first gangster set that I didn't particularly want. Leslie Howard sets a standard for overacting that will live forever, though he's given a pretty good run for his money here by Bette Davis, Genevieve Tobin as a woman who married not wisely but too well, and the laughable Dick Foran as a potbellied ex-footballer [American rules] and would-be Romeo. The only sign of life on the planet comes from the building-toward-stardom Bogart as the desperado in chief.

Straight to hell

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus

Crit

I was ready for anything from blissful enchantment to uncharted perplexity, but the one thing I never imagined I'd get from Terry Gilliam's latest and Heath Ledger's last was sheer mind-numbing boredom. Yeesh!

Almost all the worthwhile moments are provided by watching Tom Waits (cast as the Devil) and staring at Lily Cole. But the plot's dependence on the objectifying battle for the soul of a 20-something woman playing a not-quite-16 girl whose often-scantily-clad patent past-sixteenness the camera glories in is more squirmmaking than enticing.

Trailer

• The Wolfman--Ah, yes: I'd heard about the upcoming Benicio Del Toro vehicle, but I was eager to get an eyeful. Might work, but risibility looks likelier.
  

What is the church's official positionon fornication and adultery these days?

You Can Count on Me

(2000)

So, Kenneth Lonergan, writer/director of one of the smartest, funniest, most moving indies of the turn of the millennium, with breakthrough roles for My Future Wife Laura Linney and Mark Ruffalo (not to mention the introduction of another Culkin), what have you done for us lately? I actually asked the question not realizing that the answer is bupkus: nothing directed (or acted in: he plays the priest) since this, only 3 writing credits (The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle, Analyze That, and Gangs of New York), and none since 2002.

Until now: he has written and directed something called Margaret, scheduled for release this year (no more specific date). Per IMDb:

A young woman (Anna Paquin) witnesses a bus accident, and is caught up in the aftermath, where the question of whether or not it was intentional affects many people's lives.

The excellent cast includes Count veterans Ruffalo and Matthew Broderick, as well as MATT DAMON, Jean Reno, Allison Janney, Rosemarie DeWitt, and yet another Culkin.

Red scare

Marnie

(1964)

Wow, that's one seriously weird, seriously not-very-good accumulation of psychobabble. Hitchcock apparently asks Tippi Hedren to ACT, DAMMIT! and Sean Connery to chill. Connery makes do; Hedren makes doo-doo.

The crisis of faith in the contemporary novel

The Third Man

(1949)

Golly, do you suppose Vienna really has such enormous shadows? All the streetlights must be at ankle level, I guess.

If you watch the Criterion Collection edition of this (and you should), take 5 minutes beforehand for the Bogdanovich introduction, which includes his account of Welles's definition of the "star part": essentially any role where everyone spends the first hour or so talking about an absent character who, when he finally shows up, gets credit for great acting in his absence.