Ben and Andrew make a porno

Humpday

(2009)

If it's set on the West Coast and has a plot, can it still be mumblecore? Humplecore?

About that plot: it's the sort of foolishness you'd come up with drunk and stoned at a party: old college buddies, one squarely married, the other footloose and arty, both ostensibly straight, are drunk and stoned at a party with a bunch of polyamorous artists when they hit upon the perfect project: they'll make a porn film, together.

What might have been a brainless goofy romp becomes a brainy goofy romp in the hands of writer-director Lynn Shelton--no accident, I suspect, that it took a woman to confront the whys of coming up with the idea in the first place, of feeling compelled to go through with it in the calm sobriety of the morning after, and of confronting all the realities of logistics and implications. In the process, all the sublimated homoeroticism of every buddy movie ever made, not to mention most great American novels, is mined and refined hammered into gold plate. OK, the metaphor got away from me, but still: a stunningly good film; see it.

The evil men do

No Country for Old Men

(2007)

Have I just gone completely senile? OK, thanks, but that was really sort of a rhetorical question, based on the fact that even though I rated this my favorite film (or at least my favorite English-language dramatic film) of only 4 years ago, I seem to have remembered relatively little about it. Which is a good thing, as it blew me away anew, but come on: I didn't even remember that Tommy Lee Jones, Kelly Macdonald, and Woody Harrelson were in it, and two of those are always among the people I'm happiest to see in a movie, and the third is often likewise.

What (and who) I did remember, of course, was Javier Bardem's Chigurh tracking Josh Brolin's Llewelyn Moss, inscrutable, inexorable evil matched against the survival instincts of native wit. And hell, I didn't even remember how that turned out. Maybe if I'd read the novel after seeing the film the first time, I'd have a better grip on it. And since I did buy the novel then, maybe I'll read it soon.

Or maybe I'll just let more brain cells die and be amazed by it again in 4 years.

If I were a Rothschild

Sholem Aleichem: Laughing in the Darkness

Crit

Excellent documentary about the inventor of Yiddish literature, his life in the Pale of Russia and later in an America he loved that didn't seem to love him back--until his funeral in New York, attended by some 200,000 mourners, an event one of the film's talking heads calls a flashpoint in demonstrating the political force of the city's and the nation's Jews.

More important than his life, of course, has been his long literary afterlife, not just the popularization of his stories about Tevye the dairyman but the survival of a language once widely deemed too common to be literary and later turned too uncommon to be allowed to disappear.

Most bizarre fact I learned: Russian was the only language spoken in the adult Sholem Rabinovich's home; in other words, his many children could not read (or even have intelligibly read to them) his stories.

Blame it on Rio

Wild Orchid

(1990)

"Wait," you're saying, "why do you even have a copy of this to be deaccessioning?" Because a friend insisted that I take his extra copy, which is weird enough, but I think he might actually have upgraded to BluRay, which, honestly, do we even want to think about that?

You've heard that this is dreadful, but that doesn't really do it justice--it is profoundly awful, it is mega-crappy, it is rotten-flower putrid. What it really is is a porn film only with not nearly enough sex, way too much pretense, weaker dialogue, less plausible character motivations, and, at least in the case of the lead female (Carré Otis), less competent acting.

Please, someone claim this so I don't have to put it on the freebie table at work!

The best policy

Our Idiot Brother

Crit

Was content to give this a miss, but after Irene spoiled my day at the ballpark tomorrow, and after 2 positively hellish days at work, I decided that dumb hilarity was just the ticket. And it was, though it was less hilarious and more touchingly serious than I had anticipated. Paul Rudd is convincing in a role that takes some convincing, as the title character who is not in fact stupid, just stunningly unguarded and pathologically honest, as if he'd been raised by really, really sweet wolves. The film isn't stupid, either, though it hardly blazes any dramatic or comedic trails. There's one early romantic thread in particular that has you expecting the standard romcom implausibility, but no. Biggest flaw is a rushed resolution, with no more explanation than the intuition that Ned is, after all, stoner Jesus.

Can I also just say: Rashida Jones?

Trailers

• Dirty Girl--This, too, looks like a funny-becomes-serious-and-deep-and-shit effort, lots clunkier than the one I saw today.
• 50/50--A cancer comedy starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt, in his second feature w/ the numeral 5 in the title, having appeared in two TV series with 3 in the title, plus films w/ 1 and 2 (also lots of zeroes); if you care, look 'em up on IMDb. Bizarrely, the trailer ran twice consecutively; the title refers to the Levitt character's survival chance, so I guess the double play makes him 100%--though I suppose it could be 100% in either direction.
• Tower Heist--OK, I'm not sayin' for sure, but this looks as if it might be a watchable Eddie Murphy film, perhaps in part because he's not the lead. He's the con enlisted by the Madoffed white people to engineer the title event.

High stakes

Count Dracula

(1977)

I don't as a rule blog made-for-TV productions, but this has been a Grail for me for 30+ years, since I first saw it as a PBS Halloween import. And while I confess that it has a thicker rind of '70s BBC cheese than I would like--many of the visual effects, most of the music, and all the musical effects are pretty awful--I'll stick with my initial assessment that it is the best dramatization of the story I've ever seen, with the best and sexiest Dracula (Louis Jourdan), the best Van Helsing (Frank Finlay), maybe the best Mina (Judi Bowker), one of the best Lucys (Susan Penhaligon), and the only Renfield for whom the adjective "subtle" is even remotely appropriate (Jack Shepherd).

It also features the best and sexiest--damn near pornographic--feeding scenes, and a couple of brilliant sequences, one that appears in the novel (Van H defending Mina from within a circle of crumbled consecrated Communion host from the three sister vamps) and one that doesn't (the Count confronting Van H & Harker and engaging them in a brief but toothy philosophical debate in which he implies that those who would not be vampires must embrace vegetarianism) not dramatized elsewhere.

It was, in short, worth waiting what seemed like several undead lifetimes to get my hands on a video version.

Mother, hood

Daylight

Crit

Not only did this remind me of one of those film-festival submissions that you're supposed to think are good because they're gritty and hard to watch, but if you read the description on Netflix (click the title above--that's pretty much always what that link is, by the way, in case you're new to the blog), that reads like the description of one of those movies.

Granted, movies from the subgenre of pregnant-woman-menaced-by-desperate-sociopaths aren't exactly supposed to have the feel of a Fred & Ginger dancefest, but this is a particularly unpleasant entry in the field. Maybe I'm just becoming a wimp in my old age, but I found nothing positive about the offputtingness of it. Being hard to watch, I would suggest, doesn't necessarily make it worth watching.

Tallahatchee Bridge

The Guard

Crit

You hear "Don Cheadle and Brendan Gleeson in a cop/buddy movie," and you just pray the reviews come in good enough for you to risk it.This one showed strong, and why not: brilliantly funny, with a script by director John Michael McDonagh heavily influenced by Tarantino, with the most intelligent, articulate, and philosophical team of drug smugglers you're ever likely to encounter. Truth to tell, the level of intelligence and language sophistication across the board beggars credibility, but hey: it's a movie; it's entertainment. And the entertainment has a street value of half a billion.

Nature red in tooth and claw

Jaws

(1975)

The piscene progenitor of all summer blockbusters holds up well, hokey mechanical shark, uneven writing, and all. But have I even seen a blockbuster this summer? Oh, right: the latest/earliest from the X-Men franchise. But that's all--I guess I haven't been a very responsible moviegoer. Maybe next summer . . .

Atonement

Another Earth

Crit

Critics seem split over whether this is silly and implausible or surprisingly profound; I would say yes. But what I didn't know going in was that my city is one of the stars. Everything is recognizable, from the Knights of Columbus headquarters to the interior of the Gourmet Heaven on Broadway. Oh, except for this: those spacious, clean, comfortable Metro North cars, with the spacious, clean, comfortable bathrooms? Those must be from Earth 2; don't expect to see them on the New Haven Line on this planet.

Finally, a note to Anthony Lane (double-click on the paragraph to see it, but it's a spoiler): it's really quite simple: Earth 2 Rhoda has boarded that planet's equivalent exploration to the one on which Earth 1 Rhoda won passage--which implies, incidentally, that no, things went just as bad there as they did here.

Trailer

• Martha Marcy May Marlene--John Hawkes creepy.

Let's misbehave

Bande à part (Band of outsiders)

(1964)

So Godard's production company, I noticed in the opening credits, was named after his female lead and then-wife, Anna Karina, which seems rather like getting a tattoo. When Tarantino started his company, he named it after this film, meaning he'd need to change it only in the unlikely event of his breaking up w/ Godard.

I enjoyed this, and given that it took me a second screening to fall in love with À bout de souffle, I wouldn't rule this out of the pantheon permanently. One thing, though: Tarantino's crooks fail because they just can't control every element, not because they're total blithering idiots.

L'Hitch

À bout portant (Point blank)

Crit

Wow! Starts like a Tarantino, with confusing in media res, then looks like it's going to be an episode of a French remake of Prime Suspect (not that there would be anything wrong with that!), and then, incited by a familiar trope, but one that is spun in surprising ways, it settles down into Hitchcock wrongish-man territory, only with a French Connection-esque extended chase sequence. A character gets injected with adrenaline in the film, and it leeches out to us. Who needs Hollywood 3D comic book flicks for excitement?

Working on a case

The Thin Man

(1934)

Sigh . . . is there anyone who doesn't want a relationship like Nick and Nora's?

I'm reminded once again (click on the title above for my last mini-review) how unmemorable the revelation of the killer is, even though the revelation scene is magnificently memorable (and thoroughly silly). Actually, that can be said about the whole movie: magnificently memorable, and thoroughly (and magnificently) silly.

Weight of the world

Life, Above All

Crit

Not sure when I've encountered such heroism from an adolescent--Huck Finn? Anne Frank? Chadra (an absolutely stunning performance by Khomotso Manyaka) is perhaps closer to Huck, in that she hasn't the scantest clue about her own heroism, as she becomes the de facto head of the family, her mother ill and increasingly frail, her stepfather consistently drunk and missing from the township home. A well-meaning busybody neighbor challenges Chadra for care of her live-wire half-sister and half-brother, but the neighbor, shackled by superstition and fear of social stigma, can't compete with the girl's moral strength, which is also manifest in her loyalty to a friend driven to prostitution (Keaobaka Makanyane, in an equally remarkable performance).

All of this takes place in the context of a country so terrified of an endemic disease that we barely hear its name. This is a killingly painful story, which makes it all the more inspirational.

Trailer

• Restless--I seem to recall a trailer for this earlier that was all it's-great-to-be-young-even-when-you're-nuts-or-terminal, but this one is a lot more sober. Whatever, Van Sant + Wasikowska = a pretty good bet.

Recount

Election

(1999)

Not a surprise that of the actors here who hadn't yet made a career for themselves, Reese Witherspoon would be the one who would be huge, but it's a little disappointing that Chris Klein has dropped to the D list and Jessica Campbell has disappeared altogether.

I always say that Alexander Payne just doesn't like people, but there's no one here who is just an out-and-out asshole (though Dave Novotny comes close). Everybody is just a more or less well-intentioned very human being who, being that, fucks up.

Weapon of ass destruction

Le Nom des gens (The names of love)

Crit

Sweet, silly, sad, sexy, and perhaps several other S words, a charmant fable of a leftist French-Algerian beauty whose missionary position is the conne-version of "fascists."

Oh, and I almost forgot: what's the bigger surprise, that Lionel Jospin would actually appear, or that we'd see people in a French film celebrating a wedding with Freixenet?

Plenty stupid, could have been crazier

Crazy, Stupid, Love.

Bev

A rather bizarre mix of the brilliantly painfully true and the pathetically painfully trite, with a couple of key Shakespearean coincidence surprises that just feel--as is true of much of the plotting--cobbled together by summer intern. Ultimately worth seeing for the great cast and a few good moments, but equally missable for the long stretches of ugh.

Trailers

• Footloose--Even my daughter, who likes the original, says this looks Bad Idea Jeans.
• 30 Minutes or Less--I bow to no heterosexual male in my admiration for Jesse Eisenberg, but this looks astonishingly bad.
• The Help--This surprised me by how good it looks as if it might be.
• New Year's Eve--Golly, did we really need another Love Actually?
• Contagion--Great cast, great look, even if it is 28 Days Later without the zombies.