La carte de la race

La Fille du RER (The girl on the train)

(2009)

Jeanne and Franck meet Breathless cute, on rollerblades, and while we, and her mother (Catherine Deneuve) suspect there's something not quite on the up & up with him, Jeanne doesn't want to know. So when the inevitable occurs, she concocts a half-baked story about being the victim of an anti-Semitic attack (though she's not Jewish) on the Paris suburban transit. Why? For love, for attention, for control over her own narrative.

A weirdly engaging story, quintessentially French in its messily intersecting plotlines and its contempt for easy moral stances.

Night and day

The Gay Divorcee

(1934)

Have I mentioned that I didn't really like this much the first time I saw it? I'd say I was young and couldn't really be expected to know any better, but in fact I was at least 30. Though in my defense, one of my complaints was about the interminable "Continental" production number, transparently thrown in to pad the running time and postpone the obvious resolution of the plot, such as it is, and that is such a legitimate complaint that in fact I am writing this during that number.

Still . . . Just: still . . .

The mark of Xorro

Damsels in Distress

Crit

It's Whit Stillman's long-awaited science fiction movie, set on a distant planet whose inhabitants have evolved exactly like us physically but have delightfully alien notions about what college is and how the race should be preserved and perpetuated. Mumblecore goddess Greta Gerwig reaches her apotheosis (though I guess if she was already a goddess . . . well, never mind; I've been infected by the film's loopy logic) as the constitutionally philanthropic Violet, whose ambition for improving the world, naturally, is to invent an international dance craze. When she succeeds, the eponymous song is written by "Lightning Strikes Again" Lou Christie, who, it turns out, is a regular contributor to Stillman's films.

A lot of people will hate this film for reasons every bit as good as mine for loving it. That's OK: someday they'll learn their colors.

The end of Rico

Little Caesar

(1931)

Crime doesn't pay, after it does. There's not much about this that I find appealing, so it's deaccession time--let me know if you want it. Also still available: The Manchurian Candidate and Eat Drink Man Woman.

The tree and the chrysalis

Seriously? I seem to have been caught in the crossfire of the latest pissing contest between Google and Microsoft. "Your browser," I am told--that being the default browser for the vast majority of PC users--"is no longer supported by Blogger. Some parts of Blogger will not work and you may experience problems. If you are having problems, try Google Chrome." I have a better idea: why don't you try blowing me. I think maybe if I experience problems, I'll look for another blog host.

Monsieur Lazhar

Crit

Someone I saw this with commented with some heat that while it was a pleasant enough film, it was completely implausible in its presentation of a man trying to persuade a bunch of women to allow schoolchildren to confront a terrible experience. As a certified Sensitive Guy, I was a little insulted, but I uncharacteristically kept my counsel, perhaps because the speaker, far from speaking theoretically, has recent devastating experience. So I'll grant that the film may not play the emotional percentages in that respect.

Still, from my perspective, this is as beautiful a film about children and death as can be imagined: Bashir, who has immigrated from Algeria to Montreal, replaces the elementary schoolteacher who has hanged herself in her classroom. Two of her students see her, and all are traumatized by the violation of their trust and their sacred space of learning and living.

As the story proceeds, we learn that Bashir himself is motivated by a need to deal with tragedy, and even the butt of the class's jokes has his own background of ugly mortality--all, young and adult, having to deal with unjust burdens. And they all are granted some measure of grace, but no easy answers.

I want to be hurt!

Say Anything

(1989)

Well, it's not a perfect film--Ione Skye can't act a lick (though oddly, it mostly doesn't seem to matter), and that Peter Gabriel song is completely lame, and yet it remains one of the most compelling stories of young love that acknowledges that the older generation exists and matters. I guess my biggest complaint is that the first time I saw it, the rental VHS tape a friend screened included a Tracey Ullman Show-era Simpsons short--would it have killed 'em to include that on the DVD as well?

Slick hick clicks, takes licks

A Face in the Crowd

(1957)

Pre-Mayberry Andy Griffith is brilliant as a boozing, womanizing hayseed who is plucked from obscurity and makes the most of the opportunity, turning the toddling technology of television into a forum for politically conservative populism. Stunningly prescient story by Budd Schulberg includes such elements as canned laughter, the political-advertising-entertainment nexus, and, in all but the words, the sound bite as ascendant over discussion of policy. Falls down near the end with some gratuitous explanation of what we've just seen, but never for a moment seems dated.

Live your dash

Into the Abyss

(2011)

Readers as obsessive as I (so this will be a test of your level of obsessiveness: if both elements apply, seek help immediately) will (1) notice that I'm departing from my usual Friday night deaccession project, wherein I see whether I can clear from my DVD shelves or my DVR hard drive a film that has been sitting there unwatched for a long time and (2) recall that I intended to see this film but was thwarted on a Manhattan trip not long ago. The explanation for (1) is that I want to get this Netflix disc in the mail tomorrow, in hopes that it will get to Hartford on Monday and that the Very Long Wait currently on the board for the first disc of the just-released second season of Treme will magically morph into immediate availability so that I can start watching it on Tuesday. Maybe I'll deaccession later in the weekend, maybe not.

So, the film. As with every crime-and-capital punishment documentary, we meet the convicted killers, we meet the victims' survivors, we meet a law-enforcement agent involved with the investigation, we meet a man who handled 120-odd condemned prisoners in their final hours, we even meet the wife of one of the convicts, who came to know him through assisting in his legal representation and fell in love before meeting him face to face.

But because it's a Werner Herzog documentary, it's completely unlike, and maybe better than, any we've ever seen before on the subject, though I'm not sure I can really say why. In part, it's that, as always, he brings himself, with the quirkily perfect questions that an irrepressibly curious nine-year-old might ask, into the film. In part, it's that even though both convicted killers claim innocence, he doesn't really seem to care much about that angle.

He wants us to see everything we can see--including police-investigation video of the home in which one of the murders was committed, complete with poorly concealed pools of blood and spatters on the walls--and he wants you to hear the story from every possible human angle. The film is subtitled A Tale of Death, a Tale of Life, and where Joe Friday might insist on "just the facts," Herzog's interest lies in exactly the opposite direction: just the perceptions, ma'am. The result is that we're immersed in the multiangled story and we care for everyone in it, and mistrust everyone as well. An astonishing achievement.

Today's specials

Dnevnoi dozor (Day watch)

(2006)

Darn! I meant to point out my 1,000th post, but then I posted it earlier today without thinking about it. So let's raise a glass to post #1,001.

A remarkable trainwreck of an apocalyptic vampire-war movie, this. And I mean that in a good way. This was supposed to have been a trilogy (or maybe a tetralogy), but 6 years later, there's apparently still nothing happening with Sumerechniy Dozor (Twilight watch). Still, there's closure here, to the extent that anything so completely bewildering can have closure.

Sadly, the only trace of the wonderfully inventive subtitles of the theatrical version is in the dissolving opening titles.

Blood, brothers

Serbuan maut (The Raid: Redemption)

Crit

Golly, I do believe that was the best Indonesian action flick I've ever seen. After a quiet domestic scene designed to make us care about a good cop about to become a father, the plot is established in about 15 seconds: ascend the fortified high-rise headquarters of a crime lord, and bring him in. I don't do video games, but what follows is what I understand such games to be like: the first few floors (levels) are easily negotiated, and then the everything hits the everything else.

The plot then takes various twists, but really, it's all about the fight choreography, and it is pretty amazing--there must be a thousand strokes by fist and foot, and I'm sure a close analysis would show that many are identical, but they certainly seem infinitely variable. There's also plenty of machete- and gunplay, but as one wicked henchman gestures, bare skin rules.

Russian revolution

Nochnoi Dozor (Night watch)

(2006)

Wow--every bit as trippy as when I first saw it. Fiddled around with the language options for a while, because I remembered wild subtitle formatting, but in looking at my post for the sequel, I get the idea that that's where the creative titles first appeared--so I'll have a look at that tomorrow night. I guess maybe this one was dubbed even in the theater. That's how I watched it tonight--but with subtitles on, too, so I didn't have to translate the thick Russian accents.

The forces of light and the forces of dark in a cold war, officially under truce for centuries, but, well, sometimes mistakes are made. Great looking, great sounding film, with mostly dimestore special effects that are nonetheless effective. One of my favorite vampire flicks.

. . . in love with someone you shouldn't have fallen in love with

Golly, what a lot of downtown openings of well-reviewed films NH3

A gorgeous day today--as I like to say, far too nice a day to be outside. Good thing, though, that this glut of attractive prospects came on a Mets-away weekend. I couldn't have fit 5 films & a trip to Flushing.

Boy

Crit

Never have I been so happy to have lived and to have had access to MTV during the reign of the King of Pop. Michael Jackson and E.T. establish the era and contribute much of the idiom of this slice of assimilated Maori life, but for all the allusion and borrowing, this is one of the most original films I expect to see this year.

The titular Boy--actually Alamein, the third generation of males to bear the name, ostensibly appropriated by his great-grandfather, who fought in the battle--provides much of the care for his brother Rocky and assorted cousins. His mother is dead, his father in prison for a robbery--until he appears, midway through the film, to provide a warped role model and another child to parent.

If there’s any complaint to be made about the film, it’s that the story suggests much uglier turns than ever materialize, but Boy deserves gentle treatment, and so does Boy.

Rampart

Crit

How many times have we seen the good/dirty cop story? How many times have we seen the good/dirty racist, homophobic, sexist, womanizing-cop-who-nonetheless-loves-his-daughters story? How many times have we seen the good/dirty LAPD-cop-at-war-with-both-the-bad-guys-and-the-brass story? How many times have we seen the good/dirty cop-whose-two-ex-wives (sisters)-live-next-door-to-each-other, each-with-one-of-his-daughters story? OK, that, maybe not so much.

My point is, this is not virgin narrative territory, and it requires a special performance to make it special, and an amazing, mindblowing performance to make it something that will haunt you for a long time, and I fear I’ll be seeing Woody Harrelson in some very bad upcoming dreams, some of which may take place when I’m not technically asleep, though always when it’s unremittingly dark.

A beautiful ugly film.

The Deep Blue Sea

Crit

OK, in 1952, when Terence Rattigan's play premiered, it was still possible to be surprised to learn that women can be as immoderately besotted with sex as men can, but in 2012? Rachel Weisz does what she can with it, and she continues to become more beautiful with every appearance, but I just don't get this.

Liquor is quicker

The Sin of Harold Diddlebock

(1947)

Remember back in October, when I watched my first Harold Lloyd film? Well, here's my second, which includes part of a third, 1923's The Freshman, which in turn provides a key kickoff, if you will, to this story--which, did I mention, is pretty damned terrific.

His youthful football heroics having landed him a job as a bookkeeper, Harold is still at the same desk after a brilliant visual montage reveals the passage of 22 years. Even more brilliant is the all-but-monologue in which he relates his serial love for seven sisters, each more beautiful than the last. But the capstone of brilliance is not the bizarre plot twist that leaves Diddlebock seeking a buyer for the circus he has obtained, but rather what is the closest thing to a moral of the story: if you've lived to age 44 without ever sampling strong drink, it's time to change your ways.

Blessed are the geeks

Bully

Crit

Like maybe 90% of the population, I felt pretty picked-on and put-upon as a kid, but this documentary makes it clear that most of us didn't have a clue about being punching bags.

Lots of ink has been spilled about the MPAA's misguided insistence on rating this R, Harvey Weinstein's consent to trim some of the F-words to get a PG-13, and the residual dissatisfaction in both camps. The notion that Harvey may have used the controversy to generate extra buzz for the film is entirely plausible and consistent with his history, and completely beside the point. Not only should every American adolescent be able to see this film, they and their parents should be compelled to see it.

Technically, it's pretty shoddy filmmaking. But in terms of its power for good, it might as well be Citizen Kane. See it, and if it's not in town yet, go here.

Trailer

• Intouchables--Heartwarming interracial buddy story from France.

When they kick at your front door . . .

Attack the Block

(2011)

Hfs, what a great freakin' low-budget alien-invasion flick! Let me count the ways:

1. Not really an invasion: one earthling plausibly suggests that the beings were shot into space like spores, to find or not find a fertile breeding ground;
2. not only not the standard-issue superintelligent aliens, but actually very primitive ones, blind quadrupeds with glowing (and very sharp) teeth, powerful jaws, and a great sense of smell;
3. and they land in South London, where of course the police are incompetent and interested only in fucking with black kids, so . . .
4. junior Brixton gangbangers have to save the planet.

Goofy in a good way, and when the writing isn't straightforward brilliant, it's brilliantly stilted and clichéd. Not sure but what I might need this one.

Plantin' and readin'

Red River

(1948)

No, I'm not going to talk about the homoeroticism--that's clear to anybody who pays attention, and to many who don't, but that's most important as a first-act adolescent rite of passage.

Rather, what impressed itself upon me this time was just how godawful the whole Joanne Dru bit is--how inept her acting is, but also how embarrassingly bad the writing of her part is, such that no Barrymore could have rescued it--but how none of that matters, because she delivers the authorial voice that needs to be delivered when it needs to be delivered. Could it have been handled more subtly with equal effectiveness? We'll never know, but as is, it gets the job done.

Des voleurs

Le Gamin au vélo (The kid with a bike)

Crit

This engaging Belgian film is, if nothing else, an effective advertisement for bicycle locks; so much distress could have been prevented if Cyril (Thomas Doret) had had one.

Some suspension of belief is required: after Cyril's father abandons him (and sells his damn bike, which for practical purposes is worse), he lucks into an encounter with exactly the person he needs, the hair stylist Samantha (Cécile De France), who, for reasons we can't fathom, agrees to be his foster parent on weekends, and surrenders much of her existence to a child who, even apart from a potentially disastrous search for a father figure, is on a desperate quest for any element of his life her can control, even if only playing with a faucet to annoy her by wasting water.

But apart from the sanitation, medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh water system and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?

Life of Brian

(1979)

Well, I, for one, am looking on the bright side of life, home from the Mets' season-opening 1-0 win & looking forward to my first-ever seder tomorrow and another Mets game Saturday. Though I confess that I don't always look on the bright side of life.

What separates us

Temple Grandin

(2010)

Truly amazing film, centered on a truly amazing performance by Claire Danes, about the autistic pioneer in humane treatment of livestock (who got her Ph.D. in animal science at Illinois, though the film leaves her at the M.S. level). Yeah, a lot of people wish she'd come out against eating animals rather than in favor of making their time in the feedlots and slaughterhouses less stressful, but she is who she is, and the film gives at least a pretty convincing simulation of putting you in her image-flooded head. And astonishingly, given that lack of empathy is the autistic person's Achilles' heel, being put in that head is one of the most moving experiences a movie will ever give you. A beautiful film.

Winter's bow

The Hunger Games

Crit

Well, that didn't suck, as I was afraid it might, given the unenthusiastic reviews. The first two acts, in fact, do quite a good job of translating the opening book of Suzanne Collins's megaselling young-adult dystopic trilogy. My daughter gave me the first book for Christmas, and while I wasn't surprised to like it (she knows me, after all), I was surprised to like it as much as I did, and to find the quality of the writing so strong. I actually intended to see the Imax film version, but I didn't have a chance on opening weekend, and this weekend it has been bumped from the suburban bigbigbig screen by (for the love of god, please, someone: career intervention for Liam Neeson, now!) Wrath of the Titans.

That's probably just as well, because it's the third act--the action-movie act--that is the least interesting and the draggiest, perhaps inevitably, given that it's the least original part of the story. But to make matters worse, in order to squeeze the novel into 142 minutes, they have to condense somewhere, and the first two acts contain little that is sacrificeable, so the last act manages to seem both overlong and rushed.

Jennifer Lawrence is hampered a bit by being a couple of years farther removed from Catniss Everdeen's 16 years than when she played a similar character in Winter's Bone, and she's unlikely to become less womanly over the years it'll take to get the next two books in the can. On the other hand, Stanley Tucci and Woody Harrelson have been auditioning for their roles for years, and Paula Malcomson (who will always be Trixie the whore to me) sells Mother Everdeen's blank passivity yet has the vital reserve that that character also requires.

Trailers

• What to Expect When You're Expecting--Oh, golly, this looks awful.
• The Amazing Spider-Man--Franchise reboot with Andrew Garfield, Emma Stone as Gwen, and--seriously?--Sally Field as Aunt May. Oh, villain? The Lizard.
• The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn, Part 2--Whatevs.