Something everybody everywheredoes in the same language

Woodstock: 3 Days of Peace & Music

(1970)

Ah, regret: what's the point? Why didn't I sneak out of the house, 15 years old and living in a conservative Catholic home even farther in the middle of nowhere than Bethel, New York, and hitchhike east? How many people do you suppose regret having been there? How many regret having missed out? How many so regret having missed out that they claim to have been there? At least I'm not that pathetic.

Anyway, this is close to 4 hours of peace, music, and smiles.

Spitfire

Les Herbes folles (Wild grass)

Crit

Love as a dogfight, alternating pursuit and evasion, with predictably ugly results. Starts out looking like a sweet little Amélie-type coincidence vehicle--the atomically red-haired Marguerite Muir (Sabine Azéma) has her purse snatched, and Georges Palet (André Dussollier) finds her discarded wallet in a car park and falls in love with the photo on her pilot's license--but with Alain Resnais (Last Winter at Marienbad) at work, you know better than to fall for that.

Georges has a law-enforcement mystery in his past, and in his present he has a beautiful, loving wife of 30 years (though Anne Consigny, who plays that character, looks so young that you're surprised she's not the much younger stepmother to the grown children). He also has a bit of an unconventional way of demonstrating his desire--not sure what they call it in France, but here we call it stalking--that extends to slashing the tires of her car to keep her where he can talk to her (though he then loses his nerve and runs away).

But when the police (including the ever-welcome Mathieu Amalric) persuade him to leave her alone, that's when things really get interesting. A delightfully warped film.

Parlez-moi de la pluie (Let it rain [sic])

Crit

This one is a more standard French mix of love, infidelity, politics (electoral, feminist, and minority), and filmmaking--a perfectly serviceable film, with wonderful performances by Jamel Debbouze, whom we last saw in Indigènes, and Jean-Pierre Bacri and Agnès Jaoui (both from Comme une image--Look at Me), but after the trippy Herbes, a much milder drug.

Trailer

• Mao's Last Dancer--Oh, this looks so heartwarming.

Condition humaine

Winnebago Man

Crit

Filmmaker Ben Steinbauer doesn't have a clear idea where he wants to do with this documentary about a star of viral video avant la lettre, but he lucks into a can't-miss proposition once a private detective helps him find Jack Rebney, aka the world's angriest RV salesman. Even more, it turns into an (apparently unrequited) love story when we meet Rebney's best friend, Keith Gordon. Far from a great film, and maybe not even a particularly good one, but certainly a watchable one.

Semper fidelis

Taking Chance

(2008)

An HBO film starring Kevin Bacon that I'd never heard of until a good friend recommended it, and while I can't say I actually liked it, I'm glad to have seen it, if for no other reason than to observe the obsessive care and honor the Marine Corps (and presumably all branches of U.S. military service) extends to its fallen heroes.

The story itself is meant to be a mystery, though it's fairly clear long before the hour-in reveal that the reason Lt. Col. Mike Strobl--Bacon, strung tighter than a Steinway--has volunteered to escort the body of a PFC killed in Iraq to his family in Montana is guilt over having avoided a return to the Gulf after his service in the first Bush's war.

The film works better as a tribute to the young man who inspired the story, and by extension, to all who serve. And a few times, it is genuinely moving. But it's world is populated exclusively by good people, saintly people, even, people who, even if they have reservations about the war itself, show unabated respect to the people who fight it. The closest we see to an asshole is an officious TSA agent unimpressed by Col. Strobl's refusal to denigrate his uniform jacket by putting it on the scanner belt at airport security. But the TSA guy, after all, is simply doing his job; he might be a little more sensitive, but his behavior hardly scarcely approaches the asshole threshold, and sorry, but the America I know and love has assholes in it. Whatever the aims of the film, they would be better served by couching the argument in a recognizable universe.

You can't kill the bogeyman,but you can convict him

Cropsey

Crit

It was so hot and juicy today (just moments ago, the storm clouds broke--ahhhhhhh!) that I initially considered avoiding the film that would engage my overheated brain in favor of the one that would just involve my less sensitive viscera (Salt). Then I reviewed the rottentomatoes.com numbers for both, and just couldn't do it. Anyway, the nice thing about brainless pix long on action and sex appeal is that they're a lot likelier to be around next week.

So.

I expected this documentary about the disappearance of several Staten Island children and the weird loner declared by acclamation the perpetrator--and about the rare urban legend with a firm foundation in fact--to be about the nature of evil and the dissonance between appearance and reality, and it is about those things, but ultimately what it's about is our need for narrative structure. At one point a fairly distant relative of one of the victims, in her only appearance in the film, blurts tearfully, "We just want closure." Exactly: it's the thing we want more than anything, far more than we want anything clearly identifiable as fact. We're so hot for closure that we "print the legend" rather than settle for a narrative chockablock with ambiguity and loose ends, which is what this one very much seems to be. And so the weirdo (and he is that; the filmmakers aren't apologists for him any more than for the community's certainly) in prison for one kidnapping (but not the murder, even though the victim's body is the only one ever found) is convicted of another on evidence that mocks the name. And the triumphant citizens vow to continue to pursue justice for the families of the other victims--which is unquestionably an admirable ambition, but one at the mercy of a narrative whose end we already know, simply because we know it.

I was telling my daughter about it on the phone while I walked home, and at this point she observed, "That's almost more scary than the crimes." Again: exactly.

40-year-old virgin

The African Queen

(1951)

Ten years or more since I'd last seen this, I guess, at which point I'd finally admitted to myself that it's perhaps the most overrated John Huston film, the most overrated Bogart film, and the most overrated Hepburn film all sloshed into one. I thought it was time to give it another chance, and while I'll admit that it has its moments, I'll stand by the earlier assessment, and I suspect that this will be the last chance I give it.

Shut the front door!

The Kids Are All Right

Mad

A beautiful film that gets almost everything right, which makes it all the more disappointing that it relies on such a cliché for the big revelation of infidelity.

All is forgiven, though--by us, if not by spouse and children--when MFW Julianne Moore delivers the climactic apology. Is there anyone in the business a smart screenwriter would rather have sell an emotional speech?

The fates seemed to be conspiring against my seeing this this weekend, by the way: went to see the 5:10 screening at the Criterion yesterday after work, only to discover on arriving that, contrary to what the "information" online, the 5:10 screening had started at 4:50. Then today--on rental-car weekend--I headed to Madison in plenty of time for the 2:10, only to be waylaid on I-95 by an accident-born traffic snarl. If there's a scene before the opening titles, I still haven't seen it.

Like a ton of bricks

Panique au village

(2009)

"Hey, wait a minute!" you're saying. "Don't you have some sort of 'guideline' [read: 'rule'] about letting a year pass before watching something again? And didn't you just see this in December? What gives?"

Geez, you must be a little OCD yourself to be so hip to my OCD "guidelines." Lighten up a little. It's a fair cop, but with extenuating circumstances. See, my granddaughter's 4th birthday is coming up, and I wanted to screen this to see whether the fact that it's in French, with no English soundtrack available, would interfere with her enjoyment. In fact, I started watching with the subtitles turned off, to distance myself as much as possible from comprehension of anything but the trippy animation.

I quickly decided that wouldn't work: you have to know that it's Horse's birthday, e.g. But I think as long as there's a parent willing to read a few of the subtitles aloud, Veronica will get it just as much as--maybe even more than--a non-drug-addled adult will (which is to say that anyone who claims to make complete sense of it simply isn't paying close enough attention). And while I'm guessing she'll want to rescreen it before a year has passed, perhaps before a day has passed, and then again, and again . . . parental presence on subsequent screenings probably won't be as important: she'll know the gist of the story by then, and will start making up what she needs to spackle any cracks.

Or not. But hey, you have to take a chance now and then--I mean, where would we be if Cowboy and Indian hadn't ordered those bricks to build Horse a barbecue for his birthday?

Some of them want to use youSome of them want to get used by you

Inception

Crit

Wow. This is a mindfuck like your mind has never been fucked--and I mean that in a good way. I predict that this will be the year's #1-selling DVD, because anyone who likes it is going to watch it repeatedly to have a fighting chance of understanding the ornate and thoroughly implausible plot. This is in complexity to Christopher Nolan's earlier Memento as Dostoevsky is to O. Henry. If I had one complaint, it would be that it's more of an action movie than seems strictly necessary, but given that it's action on four nested levels of un/consciousness, I guess that's a cavil. Ellen Page may be in a tad over her head, too--but on the other hand, it's good to have someone as grounded in what we think of as the real world, so that quasi-criticism may be wrongheaded.

Trailers

• The Town--Another Boston cop story, but what a cast: Jon Hamm, Rebecca Hall, Chris Cooper, Jeremy Renner, Ben Affleck, and (also in Inception) the always welcome Pete Postlethwaite.
• Due Date--Someone apparently thought that Robert Downey Jr. and Zach Galifianakis would make a perfect pairing in one of those ridiculous-meets-sublime unwilling-buddies road movies. Perhaps so, but the trailer doesn't make a case for the proposal.
  

Lost like tears in rain

Blade Runner

(1982/1992)

Dystopia has never looked so good. Ditto Rutger Hauer, in a career-making role as an android whose doom makes us love him. Wanted to give this another look before seeing one of its descendants later this weekend.

Little Hitler

Cyrus

Crit

This was an episode of Mary Tyler Moore once: Mary met the perfect guy, except for "one little blind spot about his son." What's that? someone (probably Murray) asks. "He likes him," Mary cringes.

So Jay and Mark Duplass take that perfectly good sitcom plot and take it to the very brink of the serious and legitimate "is there any hope for this relationship?" and in fact even answer that question honestly, then lose the courage of their convictions. Moreover, they barely address the underlying question of how such a fabulous person can have raised such a sociopath.

That said, I enjoyed the film--it's hard not to enjoy watching John C. Reilly and Marisa Tomei play off of each other. But I guess I should have hated it.

Trailer

• Never Let Me Go--Maybe supernatural, certain falsely utopian setting for today's hot young Brit ingenue, Carey Mulligan, and yesterday's, Keira Knightley.
  

The only living boy in New Jersey

Garden State

(2004)

When this was new, I absolutely loved it until the shout into the infinite abyss, after which I thought it lost some direction and some power. Now I'm not quite sure why I thought that: this time I liked it a little less all the way along--which is not to say I didn't like it a lot, just not in an unguarded first-love kind of way--but I didn't experience the letdown after the abyss yelp (which itself remains one of the wonderful moments of the millennium). And I was certainly right in taking this as post-Attack of the Clones evidence that Natalie Portman could still act.

So when's Zach Branff gonna quit wasting time on this little TV show of his and write and direct his 2nd theatrical feature?

Fossil fuel

The Road Warrior

(1981)

This is one of those films that always suggests a specific time and place for me, that/those being the two-years-plus-a-summer I spent in West Virginia. After this bit of juiced dystopic lunacy, I came out of the movie theater in downtown Morgantown wanting to drive really fast over the 25 miles of winding mountain roads between me and my home in Grafton. Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on which end of the stick you grab), I had by this time plenty of experience in the consequences for a lifelong flatlander of driving really fast, or even moderately fast, or even faster-than-granny fast, on those roads, so on the short walk to the car, and the longer cruise to the outskirts of town, I was able to talk myself at least partway down from the adrenaline high.

Of course, now I watch such films in the safety of my own bunker, and I'm unlikely to hurt myself or anyone else running upstairs afterward. I rarely drive at all anymore, and almost never on a road both winding and rural, and never particularly fast, having become, after all, that granny. Which is, I suppose, why I still need the occasional nostalgic shot of adrenaline, and the reminder that life once offered other dangers than butter fat and unfiltered solar exposure.

Play it again

Flickan Som lekte med elden (The girl who played with fire)

Crit

Not as good as the first--spends an unnecessary amount of time reminding us what when on then (how many people do you suppose went to this without seeing Tattoo? I figure anyone who got all stirred up about the novels since the first film came out would either start with that one on DVD or wait for David Fincher's remake), and the obligatory hot-lesbian-sex scene seems a little . . . well, obligatory--but once Lisbeth swipes the chopper of the big ugly dude whose scrotum she has Tazed, the film picks up the momentum it needs to overcome the implausible 18th-century-novelish coincidence-driven plot. I'll follow her (and her avatar, Noomi Rapace [Carey Mulligan rumored for the remake]) anywhere, but I'm hoping the itinerary of the finale will veer farther from the road more traveled.

Trailers

• Jack Goes Boating--Philip Seymour Hoffman directs himself as the always-Oscar-friendly Damaged Guy, this one sensibly in pursuit of Amy Ryan. I have more hope than faith.
• Waiting for "Superman"--American schools suck; discuss. A documentary from Davis Guggenheim (An Inconvenient Truth).
• Oh, not new but interesting: a trailer for the now-opened-in-the-Big City The Kids Are All Right, but recut to eliminate the kiss between Mark Ruffalo (as the sperm donor) and MFW Julianne Moore (as one of the long-married lesbian mothers and sperm recipients). Wonder why?
  

Still the same old story

Casablanca

(1942)

As Rick listens to Sam playing it for him, right before the Paris flashback, he starts to say something, then doesn't. Tonight, inexplicably for the first time, I wondered what he was stifling. Was he about to demand the vocal? Or, on the contrary, was he about to admit that even though she could apparently stand it, he in fact could not?

. . . where you eat

Io sono l'amore (I am love)

Crit

There's a lot to like about this (Tilda Swinton, duh!), enough to overcome the soapiness and the big big big (John Adams) operatic music, but eventually, the Big Terrible Thing happens, and things just get out of hand from that point on.

Touched

Séraphine

(2008)

Another artist told by God (well, by her guardian angel) to paint--and moreover to paint out of her time (from just before to a couple of decades past the First World War). No surprise that her life ended in an asylum. It's a thrilling story until then, though--and a thrilling performance by the veteran character actor Yolande Moreau as the charwoman child of heaven. I'm not aware of ever having heard of Séraphine Louis, aka Séraphine de Senlis, until this film came out, and I'd never seen any of her paintings until tonight. Now I have something to put on the Christmas list I give my wealthy and tasteful friends.

Sweeps

Network

(1976)

Gee, this jeremiad about the commodification of television news shows sorta seems like a documentary nowadays.

Failure to communicate

Toy Story 3

Crit

What a beautiful film. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll enjoy the Cool Hand Luke allusions. Oh, and Gipsy Kings singing Randy Newman over the end credits.

Trailers

• Despicable Me--Wow, a kids movie with 2 fart jokes in the trailer!
• Secretariat--Interesting: title-search this in IMDb and the first thing that comes up is Secretary, which is a fine film but not exactly Disney. This one's about the horse, which is a story I'd be interested in, but the trailer looks pretty treacly.
• The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader--Is that really the title the trailer used? Oh well, who cares?
• Alpha and Omega--Wow, a kids movie with lots of wolf-sex jokes in the trailer!
• Tangled--Rapunzel w/ prehensile hair and a penchant for bondage. For kids!
  
  

Archipelago

About a Boy

(2002)

You know that convention where you say, "Yeah, it's a good movie, but it's not as good as the book"? Well, I'm a big Nick Hornby fan, and I like the book a lot, but this is better than the book, if only because, unlike the novel, it has an ending. Yes, it's a goofy, implausible ending, but it works, mate.

This film, in fact, defines for me the difference between sentiment (potentially a good thing) and sentimentality (always a bad thing). And I'm pretty sure it's not because I had a drink.

Rite or wrong

Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky

Crit

Hint to budding filmmakers: if your film begins with a title that tells us it's 1913, your lovers should probably not be listening to a recording of "You Made Me Love You" that only a few in your audience will immediately identify as a 1942 recording by Harry James and Helen Forrest but many will identify as a style of jazz that did not exist in 1913. (To be fair, and to my surprise, the song itself was published that year.)

This caveat probably applies even more to a film that revolves around another famous piece of music--in this case, Stravinsky's Rite of Spring. In the film--which, again to be fair, does not pretend to be strictly historical--Stravinsky rewrites the work, which was hooted by many at its Paris premiere (this, I know, is accurate), into an acknowledged classic under the erotic influence of Chanel, who at the same time is being inspired to bring forth a perfume that will "smell like a woman, not a flower." Actually, he puts fine to the music under the influence of cognac and sexual frustration, having been left by his tubercular wife and barred from his patron's bedroom.

A pointless envoi shows the principals with old-person makeup.

Trailers

• Flickan som lekte med elden (The girl who played with fire)--Whoa, can't believe I forgot to mention this when I saw the trailer last week. Yes, simply yes. (My daughter, who lives in a cultural backwater and also has a kid, so hasn't seen Dragon Tattoo despite my enthusiastic recommendation, is currently reading the first book.)
• Wild Grass--The latest from Alain Resnais: pourquoi non?
  

I already know how to drink

The Sting

(1973)

Seen this a zillion times so none of the twists is remotely surprising anymore, yet it still all works except for one element: it takes something away to know who Salino is from the start.

Oh, yes: we can talk

Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work

Crit

Yes, she is that. A brutally honest, or at least brutal, documentary about a very funny and very sad 75-year-old icon. The squirm meter goes to 11 when a heckler with a deaf son takes exception to a Helen Keller joke and Rivers vehemently defends comedy's lack of boundaries ("I mean, 9/11--where would we have been if we couldn't laugh?"), and then it returns there as she grimaces through vicious cosmetic surgery jokes at a Comedy Central roast.

Taxi to the dark side

Goodbye Solo

(2008)

Another small story of immigrant life and/or life on the margins from Ramin Bahrani (Man Push Cart, Chop Shop): Souleymane Sy Savane plays the title character, a Senegalese taxi driver with aspirations to be a flight attendant, and Red West plays his curmudgeonly and apparently suicidal fare who becomes his unwilling friend. An intercultural Odd Coupling that is impossible to resist, mostly because of Savane's angelic portrayal.