Too much monkey business

The Circus

(1928)

Classic tightrope sequence (even before the monkeys turn up) and a noble romantic sacrifice setting up the precedent-setting solo fadeout.

J'aime un air de Gershwin

An American in Paris

(1951)

Oh, that titular ballet. I believe it was Dr. Johnson who said of it, "None ever wished it longer."

Perhaps math has little to do with art (it's a point worth debating), but look, when your film runs 113 minutes and you have a single musical number that occupies almost 17 of those minutes, that's 15 percent of your eggs in one disproportionate basket. Yes, the dance is brilliantly conceived, yes, each movement is beautiful on its own, but the whole is simple too damn long. And then, to make the ill proportion worse, the snag in the romantic plot, which sends Jerry off into the reverie that provides the excuse to dance dance dance, is blithely dismissed in 75 seconds once Jerry comes back to the real world. It's a premature ejaculation after two days of foreplay.

Killing her softly

Bernie

Crit

Jack Black is just shy of brilliant as a murderer beloved in his small East Texas town in a--you should pardon the expression--black comedy cowritten and directed by Richard Linklater. The story is based on actual events--and hews to them with remarkable fidelity, especially in the most unbelievable aspects, according to a New York Times Magazine piece by the victim's niece that, by sheer coincidence, I read on the stair machine this morning--and Linklater mixes documentary style into the narrative nicely, with colorful townspeople so devoted to the near-saintly Bernie, so lacking in sympathy for the hideously unpleasant woman he befriends before killing (played, in a no-brainer bit of casting, by Shirley MacLaine) that the district attorney (Matthew McConaughey in the sort of larger-than-life role he revels in) employs the rare prosecutorial strategy of asking for a change of venue.

To bury Caesar

All About Eve

(1950)

One thing that has always stuck in my craw about this is that an element of Eve's [spoiler alert!] villainy is the clear implication that she's a lesbian. One might argue that what's really villainous is not her sexual preference per se but the additional layer of mendacity it adds to her exploitation of her sex appeal vis-à-vis men, but I don't buy it: the presentation of her going back upstairs intertwined with her housemate after the incriminating middle-of-the-night call to Lloyd suggests lesbianism as an element of a sort of holistic wickedness. Likewise the second-generation seduction of the final scene.

Yeah, yeah, yeah--different time, different sensibilities, different expectations; I get it, and I'm not condemning the film for being a product of 1950; just saying that sticks in my craw. My craw is like that; it's sticky.

Tramp, tramp, tramp

Charlie: The Life and Art of Charles Chaplin

(2003)

A perfectly serviceable, if overlong, documentary directed by Richard Schickel and featuring great clips and some of Hollywood's best talking heads, including Scorsese, Woody Allen, Milos Forman, and Bill Irwin. I've seen it, I've enjoyed it, and it's somebody else's turn. Incidentally, a few others are still available. Let me know.

Orthographiosi

Spellbound

(2002)

The Ur-text for documentaries that introduce us to an array of appealing contestants and then take us through the contest, and still the best and most moving--and, after 3 or 4 screenings, still the most exciting and even suspenseful--of the subgenre.

And as a professional speller, I am always surprised anew by how many of the words thrown at these schoolchildren I not only have no idea how to spell, I don't even have any idea what they mean. But the bee clincher, those who know me well will be unsurprised to know, was one with which I am quite familiar: logorrhea.

The agony of the feet

First Position

Crit

Sorta like Spellbound, only with pain physical as well as emotional for these 10- to 17-year-old ballet dancers. Also, with lots more victories available--trophies, job offers, scholarships--which is a bonus, because how can you not root for Michaela, a Sierra Leone refugee who saw her teacher dismembered; or for Navy brat Aran, 11, who commutes 200 miles daily with his mother for training in Rome not available in Naples; or for his Israeli soulmate Gaya, whom his performance inspired to take dance seriously; or for Colombian teenager Joan Sebastián, whose parents see his feet as his ticket out of the dangers of Cali?

Remarkably, we see only one Tigerish parent--coincidentally (?), the Japanese-American mother of 12-year-old Miko, who seems not to need the propulsion, and her 10-year-old brother Jules, who seems unlikely to benefit from it. Even this mother is only mildly discomfiting, and balanced somewhat by a very mellow Australian spouse, and otherwise, all the parents we see are supportive, sympathetic, and invested in their children's happiness, not necessarily their success.

Because there is more than one way to win, there's not the heart-in-your-mouth emotional climax of Spellbound, but there's plenty of jangle. Question is: how many dance documentaries do I see before I decide that I'm really interested in dance and go to see some live?

Did you ever have a sister?

The Birth of a Nation

(1915)

Some 20 years ago Ms. Tonic and I watched a rental VHS of this that, as I recall, clocked in at less than half the 185 minutes I watched tonight. Perhaps one of us wondered aloud whether we had been slipped a Reader's [Viewer's?] Digest condensation of the film, but all I remember is being surprised and not a little relieved that this epic film was so short.

So yes, to answer your first question, this is the first time I've ever seen the film in its entirety. And yes, to answer your second, it is everything it has been made out to be: mind-bogglingly racist and revisionist, and at the same time a textbook example of effective filmmaking at its finest, with a narrative momentum that made it hard to find a place to stop for a pee.

Fortunately, about halfway through, the tragically-misguided-on-the-issue-of-states'-rights-but-essentially-humane-and-well-intentioned president gets shot, and that turns out to be the perfect intermission moment for more than one reason. 'Cause until then, the politics is only pro-Confederacy; it's not until the second half that it becomes pro-Nazi.

Here's the thing, you see: the southern reaction to Reconstruction--including the genesis of the Klan--was all about, not to put too fine a point on it, pussy. Specifically, Caucasian, southern pussy. Even more specifically, the hunger of negroes [sic], including mulattoes [sic] for same, and their proclivity to rape if not accorded same consensually, which, of course, they would never be, because, as we see, any unmarried, virginal (please excuse the redundancy) southern woman would rather throw herself fatally onto rocks than to surrender that which her countrymen (including, critically, her brothers) had fought valiantly but futilely to defend.

This, of course, is the same battle Quentin Compson (the first one; the male one; the one with a sister) was fighting 45 years after the war and George Wallace was still fighting a century postbellum. So why should we be surprised that the Kentucky-born Mr. Griffith was fighting it a half-century after Appomattox and almost a century ago (my god, really? the Civil War is almost 150 years in the past? but I remember so clearly when it was just a century past! I was so young and full of promise then!), and my god, he fought it as well as anyone on the wrong side possibly could. Even the score--what I listened to was a modern score, but based on the original--made me want to root for the guys in the bedsheets. Hey, Coppola showed us that we don't necessarily have to believe in what's going on to get behind action scored to the Walkürenritt.

Anyway, if you've always thought, "I suppose I should see it, but I'm sure I'll hate it and afraid I won't," you're right on all counts, and mainly the "should see it" count.

Exposed

Intolerable Cruelty

(2003)

Walking home from the Norwegian-would-be-Coen, I knew what tonight's screening would be: a real Coen, but not an upper-tier one, and one unwatched long enough to be a deaccession candidate.

But let's face it: I'm not apt to give away a film by one of my favorite filmmaking teams, unless I find that I really don't like it. And while this is no better than I remembered--and while I could really do without the Home Alone screams--how can you fail to have some affection for a romantic noirmedy that matches Clooney and Zeta-Jones?

For art's sake

Hodejegerne (Headhunters)

Crit

Norwegian director Morten Tyldum seems to have asked himself WWJ&ED? And then opted not to be so subtle, to out-Coen the Coens, with a level of ingenious overplotting to which the Minneapolis boys would not have risen/sunk, not to mention a Farrelly-esque level of scatology.

Not a bad noir, just an overcooked one, with far more ambition than finesse. You sorta feel sorry for Aksel Hennie, who looks like the lovechild of Coen regular Steve Buscemi and how-have-the-Coens-missed-him Christopher Walken, who spends much of the film covered in one effluvium or another.

With great power . . .

Super

(2011)

This deeply disturbed and deeply disturbing film is admirable on at least one count: it compromises on its distinctive vision twice at most, arguably in the scene involving Zach Gilford (which appears to have taken a reshoot to undercut its lethality) and definitely in the goofily Pollyanna-ish coda. That may sound like a lot of compromise, but trust me: most renditions of this sort of vigilante tale would bend a lot of principles to make us like Frank (Rainn Wilson), and they would have made Libby (Ellen Page) a lot less psychotic and a lot less interesting. It's a mess of a film, and one I'll never see again (and wouldn't have seen this once but for the timing of a Showtime free trial), but I'm glad to have seen it once.

The violence inherent in the system

Monty Python and the Holy Grail

(1975)

As I watched the first scene, I remembered reading somewhere that in medieval times it was thought that some birds wintered under the mud--that widespread awareness of bird migration didn't come about until centuries after AD 932. So naturally I checked Wikipedia immediately after the film ended:

Aristotle . . . suggested that swallows and other birds hibernated. This belief persisted as late as 1878, when Elliott Coues listed the titles of no less [fewer] than 182 papers dealing with the hibernation of swallows. It was not until early in the nineteenth century that migration as an explanation for the winter disappearance of birds from northern climes was accepted.

I'm sorry, but that changes--spoils--everything. How can we take anything in this film seriously when the opening scene so violates verisimilitude?

A little help from my friends

Yellow Submarine (1968)

Crit

Hey, where the heck is my copy of this? I must have lent it to someone and failed to record the loan.

This may be only the second time I've seen this on the big screen, the previous being at the Orpheum (r.i.p.) in Champaign with my then-eight-or-so-year-old daughter, and it remains one of our best bonding moments, despite the fact that she got bored with the second feature, Let It Be, which I've still never seen from beginning to end.

What can I say? Great music, great animation, and just enough goofy plot to make a yellow submarine necessary. So if you have my copy, please watch it, enjoy it, and return it.

My aim is true

Winchester '73

(1950)

Truth in advertising: the central figure in this story is a one-in-a-thousand perfectly crafted rifle, which passes from rightful hands to a string of unrightful ones before [spoiler alert!] returning to the man (played [duh] by James Stewart). In many ways a routine oater (a word I've learned from the Times crossword puzzle), but with a lot of fresh twists. My favorite example, a spin on a particularly nasty anti-Indian cliché of the form):

Lin (handing his revolver to Lola [a young, semizaftig Shelley Winters]): Here, just in case you need . . .

Lola: Thanks, I know how to use it. [Takes it, but he doesn't release it, looking at her meaningfully, but unable to say the words.] I understand about the last one.

Take this, all of you, and eat . . .

First, a moment of silence for the Criterion's premovie jazz mix--and that's the last silence we'll have, since they've gone to really loud promotional crap, just like the suburban multiplexes.

Sound of My Voice

Crit

I gotta admit: a messiah looking like Brit Marling would have a pretty good chance of getting me to do whatever she wanted, up to and including felony kidnapping. This is a brilliantly structured film, starting with the implausible (she's from the future, and she's going to take her cultists to "a safe place"), tardily rolling out the plausible (she's a small-time crook, wanted up north), but playing just enough blue notes to make the implausible if not exactly plausible at least seductive, especially for those predisposed to seduction. And then when the plot turn promises to bring us (and the wavering protagonist Peter [Christopher Denham]) to the point where we have to choose once and for all, roll end credits.

For unconscionably and ethereally beautiful Marling, this is the second oddly compelling film in a year (with Another Earth) that she has cowritten and starred in. Not just another pretty face. But certainly that, in case I haven't made it clear.

Trailers

• Få meg på, for faen (Turn me on, dammit!)--Young Norwegians in heat; I've read good things about this.
• Ruby Sparks--Oh, hells yeah: Paul Dano plays Pygmalion with a typewriter, and Zoe Kazan (who wrote the screenplay) is his Galatea. Directed by Little Miss Sunshine's Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris.

So that happened . . .

State and Main

(2000)

I don't know many, maybe any, other films that combine acrid cynicism with delightfully innocent romanticism as effectively as this does, and if there are any others, they don't have David Mamet's language going for them, or David Mamet's wife, either. I find the budding romance of Rebecca Pidgeon's Ann and Philip Seymour Hoffman's Joe to be one of the most affecting in cinema in the 2000s.

A very resilient little muscle

Hannah and Her Sisters

(1986)

Even though this is one of my four or five favorite Woody Allen films, I hadn't watched it in more than five years, the reason being that I associate it with Thanksgiving, so whenever I considered watching it at some time other than late November--and let's face it: the vast majority of the calendar is not late November--I always found something else to watch instead. And the reason I associate it with Thanksgiving is less that it begins and ends at Thanksgiving and has another Thanksgiving in between than the fact that the more recent of my wives liked to have the VCR of the film playing so that she could listen to it while cooking Thanksgiving dinner.

So I'm kinda proud of myself for breaking the calendrical shackles and letting myself watch it almost as far from Thanksgiving as the calendar gets. And golly, I had forgotten how deeply it Roto-Roots my emotional plumbing, or maybe it never did it as effectively before as it did this time. The domestic scenes were particularly moving: connubial bliss to connubial battleground, all of it, but especially the low-key connubial matter-of-factness.

Favorite cast catch: noticed that that's a young (or younger, anyway) Richard Jenkins whom Mickey (Allen) consults by phone to ask the worst-case scenario of his symptoms. Maybe next time I'll notice the appearances of J.T. Walsh or Julia Louis-Dreyfus.

Location, location, location

The Five-Year Engagement

Crit

My father used to say, quoting an uncle or an orchard employee or maybe just some equally mythical invention of his father when he passed the adage along to his son, "I can kick my dog, but nobody else had better kick my dog." Which is a terribly non-PC adage nowadays, of course, but the point isn't about animal abuse; it's about the privilege of intimacy. So, for example, as someone who lived 38 of his first 40 years in central Illinois before moving east, I can say I'd rather have a needle laced through both eardrums than ever live on the prairie again--but by god I don't want any outsiders taking cheap shots at the Midwest. In fact, I don't even much care whether writer-director Nicholas Stoller or his cowriter Jason Segel have any midwestern background (they seem not to: Stoller was born in London and raised in Miami, which is a combination I don't believe I've ever encountered before, and Segal's an Angelino; producer Judd Apatow was born in the shadow of Shea Stadium), any shots taken at my homeland should at least cost something. I've spent little time in Ann Arbor, but I know for a fact that it's not the Seventh Circle of Hell portrayed here--Third Circle, tops. Bottoms. At worst. Whatever. Now if it had been Iowa City . . .

Still, the film is admirable for tackling a theme rarely touched in romcoms, and as someone with some experience with the geographical imperative as relationship impediment, I think they got that pretty right. Except, of course, for the part--mandatory in a romcom, not so much in real life--where suddenly all the complications melt in the face of irresistible Love.

It may also be--I'll have to check my records and get back to you on this--the only romcom I've ever seen in which a lead character loses a toe.

Trailers

• Chernobyl Diaries--Well, OK, it's an original venue for a pretty-young-people-on-an-outing horror story, I'll give 'em credit for that.
• Ted--Can you say "high concept"? Boy's wish that his beloved stuffed animal could really talk to him, and so the bear is granted life; flash forward 20 years; hilarity ensues.

It ain't me, babe

Notes on a Scandal

(2006)

This was deaccessioned to me by a friend who was moving, and it's a close call, but I'm prepared to re-deaccession if someone asks for it. Saw a little bit more of the machinery in the film this time than last, but still am awed by the leads' performances. I've had this novel since it first came out in paper, and I really should just sit down and read it at some point.