Blood, lust

Cat People

(1942)

Maybe the best no-budget horror film ever, the semigreat Jacques Tourneur directing the definitive Val Lewton production, in which nothing supernatural is actually seen--only shadows and suggestions and aftermaths--but it scares the bejesus out of you nonetheless. About the only thing that could make it better would be David Bowie's great theme song from the otherwise misbegotten remake--a song whose hook gets to the thematic heart of both films.

Creatures of the night

The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975)

Crit

That was fun. I actually like the film on its own merits, think it's a smart parody with some great music, bravura performances by Tim Curry and Richard O'Brien, and, when all else fails, young Susan Sarandon in various stages of undress.

But you want to know about the crowd, and the crowd was good: probably between 50 and 75, with--judging by the lack of response from the audience at large--probably a majority of them virgins (though no one paid the price for his or her virginity). The players were few (and, stunningly, sans Frank-N-Furter or Riff-Raff) but enthusiastic, and especially well equipped with props: rice, squirt guns, toast, "Great Scott" toilet paper. One could carp that their participation consisted almost entirely of well-aged chestnuts, and that some of the best of those have been inexplicably dropped (I almost yelled "Meatloaf again?!" myself), but come on: there are some young people keeping alive a cult classic nearing its 40th birthday--and entertaining a bunch of virgins, one of whom may be thinking that wearing fishnets and a bustier in front of a crowd might be kinda fun. In other words, it's still inspiring some not just to dream it but to be it.

Planned parenthood

Rosemary's Baby

(1968)

You know what struck me most this time? What a quaint time it was when we carried around little notebooks filled with handwritten addresses and phone numbers--phone numbers we'd look up and dial (and wait for the click-click-click-click of the dial to return to home position before doing it at least six more times), sometimes right out in public, though with the semiprivacy of a plexiglass box, outside of which there were often people impatiently awaiting their turns.

Also, I thought: I don't care what Guy (John Cassavetes) or Frank thought, Rose/Mia's haircut was brilliant, and it probably didn't hurt Vidal Sassoon any, either.

Finally (but I always think this), one of my favorite lines in the movies: "He has his father's eyes."

Now I think I'll go do the time warp again.

Nights of the comet

Cloud Atlas

Crit

Golly, is there a way to review this without using the word "narrative"? I suppose I could just say "Fuck, yeah!" over and over again; that's what I said (but just once--well, twice, 'cause he didn't hear me the first time) to my buddy at the theater with whom I exchange assessments. The novel on which this is based is probably my favorite of the millennium so far, and that's always a scary proposition, but I'd read enough of David Mitchell's own comments to quell any concern that directors Tom Tykwer and Lana and Andy Wachowski had failed to "get" the book. Moreover, I could see from the trailer that the film was spectacular, though there seemed to be room for it to be spectacularly bad.

Not to worry: imperfect, yes, much of the narrative (see: just not doable) complexity is sacrificed to the recognition that it's not a 30-hour HBO series. (Yes, it's still almost 3 hours; no, it doesn't seem remotely that long.) And a few lines of dialogue creak a bit--though frankly, I had guzzled so much of the Kool-Aid by then that even some of the hoariest lines got me teary. And yes, it's a gimmick to have the same actors appear in different roles across the centuries-long sweep of the six connected-but-distinct . . . uh . . . stories (and also across racial and gender lines), but it also makes perfect sense in thematic terms, and it provides some of the most exhilarating (and sometimes hilarious) moments of recognition (some of them not fully appreciated until the end credits).

One thing did worry me: I was afraid that viewers who haven't read the novel might be so lost in the scrambled . . . uh . . . you know . . . that they'd never go all in on the ride, but my theater buddy told me that the vast majority of thumbs up he's been seeing have been from those who haven't read it.

Impossible to compare with Ruby Sparks and Moonrise Kingdom, but vying with those two for top spot on my 2012 list so far.

Prometheus burned

Frankenstein

(1931)

I forget how great this is. It's clear where lie the sympathies of director James Whale, who knew a little about being an outcast, but I think the dimwitted producers must have thought they were making a film about how humanity triumphs over its own hubris and the beast thence born. But really--with the exception of little Maria, the only person to show the "monster" any compassion, and then Maria's grieving father, is there a person born of woman who demands or receives from us anything better than superior tolerance (for Baron Frankenstein [Frederick Kerr] and maybe for Elizabeth [Mae Clarke])? The rest, especially the men of science--Henry Frankenstein (Colin Clive), his former mentor Dr. Waldman (Edward Van Sloan), and his hunchbacked assistant Fritz (Dwight Frye)--are right pricks, two of whom get what they deserve and the third much less. Henry's critics tell him that he's playing God, and in fact, that is the problem--not that he's usurping the Creator's lifegiving power, but that he's behaving like the God of most believers' experience: a sadistic, pitiless manipulator.

Karloff's mute, nameless protagonist, on the other hand, is one of the most heartrending victims in cinematic history, given by his creator only enough resources to make of life a hell on Earth.

Strange bedfellows

Coriolanus

(2011)

Ralph Fiennes directed and starred in Shakepeare's story of the worst and angriest politician ever, whose war heroics could have made him a god in Rome at the price of a little humility toward the people. Instead, his pride earns him banishment that deepens his contempt and turns him traitor. An adamantine portrayal of the adamantine general, with Vanessa Redgrave scarily intense as Volumnia, his mother and primary love interest; Gerard Butler as Aufidius, his sworn enemy and secondary love interest; and the beautiful and ubiquitous Jessica Chastain as Virginius, his wife and tertiary love interest. Filmed mostly in Serbia and Montenegro.

Don't forsake the Motor City

Detropia

Crit

Wow, that was hard, notwithstanding the couple thousand new Volt jobs for GM at the end and the influx of young (exclusively white, from what we see) artists who can, in one city in the county, spend $50K and buy a home and a studio under one roof. Those two developments are what passes for good news, but there are heroes: a video artist (homegrown, pre-influx), the owner of a tavern a couple of blocks from a GM plant, the president of UAW Local 22--even Mayor Dave Bing (yeah, I know his name 'cause he was a star guard for the Pistons many years ago), comes across as a well-meaning guy trying to look past the standard solutions, all of which have been tried and have failed. But it's people vs. rust, and rust, as we all know, never sleeps. Brutal.

Also another reason to root for the Tigers in the World Series, even if the evil Cardinals are not their opponents.

Reborn free

Born Yesterday

(1950)

Guest blogger tonight, my grad school friend Lisa . . .

The image of the "dumb blonde" has never taken on such poignancy and dignity as it does in George Cukor's Born Yesterday. Billie, played by Judy Holliday, is the kept woman of a crooked, egomaniacal, brutish "businessman" (Broderick Crawford) who is in Washington, D.C., to work a deal to the left of the law with a complicit congressman. Harry is concerned that Billie will embarrass him (and yet they are perfectly matched in their gaucheness, though even at first Billie is aware that she is clueless, and Harry has no such awareness). He asks Paul, a newspaper reporter played by a handsome William Holden, to "educate" her. Through Paul's tutelage and encouragement, Billie starts to awaken to the world around her, but more importantly, she begins to recognize that she is in a dead-end, no-win, abusive situation with Harry, and that Harry, formerly a "big man" in her eyes, is a common criminal and a loser. She helps Paul take some crooked contracts to expose Harry's dishonest dealings, and leaves Harry to go off with Paul.

We see Billie gain in confidence and attractiveness as her vacant stare becomes a focused gaze and her sense of self-worth increases. And this is a comedy, after all, so Billie never stops delivering malapropisms. But the message is loud and clear--no one is the property of another, and one's self-determination is a right and a privilege. This film, made in 1950, was definitely an oldie but a goodie.

Nicely done, Lisa, and thanks--it's good to have a night off!

Thicker than water

28 Days Later

(2002)

You forget how quiet so much of this is--how idyllic, how beautiful--when the infected aren't chasing people trying to eat them. I'm not sure I ever realized before how much that quiet contributes to this being not only my favorite zombie movie ever but one of my favorite films of the past decade, full stop. And if anything, I liked it more on this, my fourth or fifth screening, than ever before. Brilliant, in both the British and the American sense.

Wag the Persian cat

Argo

Crit

I was course grown up (technically, at least) when all this was going down, so I do remember the hostage crisis well, but what I remember more vividly came probably the last year before the revolution, when Iranian students, wearing masks to avoid identification by Savak, would regularly gather on the University of Illinois quad to chant, "Down with the fascist puppet, down with the shah!" I was there to see history happening, but all I thought was that it had a pretty good beat.

This is a smart film, and I say that not just because it avoids the obvious pitfall of mispronouncing Hamilton Jordan's surname. (And by the way, Kyle Chandler really is a dead ringer for Jordan, isn't he? It didn't occur to me until later to think, "Coach Taylor!") I'd read that director Ben Affleck is self-effacing in his treatment of star Ben Affleck, which I guess means there's just one shot of him shirtless, but what I like about his work is that he recognizes that sometimes, when you have one plot element that's completely absurd and another that's a literal matter of life and death, sometimes it's best to sequester the two. The funny parts of this are straight out of Wag the Dog (which I might just have to watch tonight), with the ominous subtext as sub as can be; then, having served as bridge between the prologue and the thriller proper, the comic elements have the good sense to go away.

What's left is a story only slightly more unbelievable than the documentary I saw Friday, and apparently only slightly more unfactual.

Trailers

• Gangster Squad--As I recall, in L.A. Confidential we only hear Mickey Cohen's name; here we get to see him played by Sean Penn.

The blood stays on the blade

Gangs of New York

(2002)

Been watching Copper on BBC America and have been mostly unimpressed by a series that seems clearly derivative of and inferior to this: same time, same place, but from the POV of the police, who are, after all, just another gang.

So watching this again confirms its superiority to the TV series (whose derivativeness--is that a word?--needs no proof), but also confirms that my initial lukewarm reaction to it when it came out was not stingy. It's an OK film, visually impressive, excessively grandiose, with what must have been a welcome opportunity for Daniel Day-Lewis to rehearse his overacting ahead of There Will Be Blood. It's one of those Marty-a-little-too-much-in-love-with-himself deals that we've seen from time to time.

Inventir amour

Jules and Jim

(1962)

I might as well admit it: I'm just never going to be French. I like the French, and I like Truffaut more than most of them, but I just don't get how love works for them. This is usually described as a love triangular, but it's really a three-dimensional love pentagonal solid. In America, we'd simply call Catherine (Jeanne Moreau) crazy and institutionalize her. But for the French, it's not fun until someone loses and eye, or something even more precious. Perhaps it would have made more sense with a bottle of Bordeaux.

Cool fact

Searching for Sugar Man

Crit

You sort of expect Rob Reiner to turn up as the interviewer, so implausible is this documentary about a guy from Detroit who cut a couple of brilliant but unbought albums in the early '70s, then disappeared, only to become a rebel icon for antiapartheid Afrikaners, who adopted his antiestablishment ethos and were crushed to learn of his on-stage suicide--either by self-immolation or by hangdun--but continued to buy the records, probably a half-million of them over the years. And then, of course, the discovery that he was still living in the same house in Detroit where he'd been for 40 years, working construction and building-preservation, close to his three daughters, and oblivious to his bigger-than-Elvis, bigger-than-the-Stones fame in South Africa.

I mean, come on.

I only wish I could report that I was blown away by Rodriguez's music. I like it--lyrically Dylanesque, vocally very Feliciano--and I may buy Cold Fact, the first album, but the story rather dwarfs the music. And like Reiner's stuff, it evokes laughter, but laughter of sheer joy, not of hilarity. Sorry for the spoilers, but you will leave the theater happy.

Trailers

• Smashed--I actually saw this before, but forgot to blog it. It seems to ask what happens when out of a couple of drunks, exactly one decides to get clean and sober. A possibility.
• Promised Land--Van Sant directs Damon; hey, worked last time.
• Hyde Park on Hudson--I'd seen a teaser for this, but the full-scale trailer makes it look even more appealing; The King's Speech on our side of the Pond.

Like you're gonna live forever

Eight Men Out

(1988)

You know, when I notice stuff like Eddie Collins (Bill Irwin) batting right-handed, and Eddie Cicotte (David Strathairn) pitching out of the windup with a runner at first, and Ray Schalk (Gordon Clapp) flashing his pitcher a sequence of signals even though there's no runner on second to steal a straight one-finger-for-the-fastball-two-for-the-curve, I have to remind myself that there's just a shitload of complexity to keep track of in this simple game, and that doesn't change the fact that this is one of the best baseball films ever, and certainly the one that best balances the game's place in American mythology with its place in the real, nitty-gritty world. And the coda, with Joe Jackson (D. B. Sweeney, who gives one of the best portrayals of tragically profound ignorance I've ever seen) playing ball under an assumed named somewhere in the swamps of Jersey, is an elegy triumphantly sad. And as it happens, elegiac is how I want my baseball right now.

I ate my twin in the womb

Pitch Perfect

Crit

Holy crap, I almost skipped this, which would have left a slot open in my list of funniest flicks of the year. And probably the best presentation of a studio's logo (Universal's), the instrumental accompaniment actually supplied a capella.

The plot is the same one we've seen in every academic competition story ever, but plot, schmott--what matters here are the tunes, and the giggles, and especially the giggles inspired by the tunes (like when you hear the intro to Lily Allen's "Fuck You" and wonder how they're gonna save the PG13 rating).

Hell, this may even inspire me to watch The Breakfast Club again, and I never thought I'd say that. Special mention, by the way, to the hilarious work by Elizabeth Banks and John Michael Higgins as the competition announcers. Oh, and speaking of hilarity, be very quiet whenever Lilly (Hana Mae Lee) speaks.

Stars in Shorts

Crit

I've admitted often (including Friday) that I'm not very good at anticipating narrative surprises, which makes me confident in saying that the surprise twists in several of these are abysmally unsurprising. A fairly weak collection altogether, though the finale sent me out smiling.

• The Procession--A mildly amusing joke, an out-of-place driver in a funeral procession distractedly stopping at a red light and thus losing--along with the half of the cars behind his--the route. Lily Tomlin fun as the overbearing mother--and always a welcome sight.
• Steve--A would-be Albee-esque playlet, with a loopy neighbor (Colin Firth) becoming increasingly impossible.
• Not Your Time--The model here is Bob Fosse, and especially All That Jazz, but if you're stealing from Tiffany, don't try to sell us costume jewerly.
• sexting--Interesting for Julia Stiles's bravura single-take delivery of a six-minute-plus monologue, but unfortunately, the speech isn't interesting, and the twist here is painfully obvious.
• Prodigal--This appears to be an X-men origin story, and the credit to Marvel in the end credits backs that guess. But seriously: was there no one involved in the making of this film who knows what the titular word means? Because it seems pretty clear that they were under the impression that it's synonymous with "prodigy."
• After School Special--Written by Neil LaBute (as was sexting), this is supposed to have not just a surprise but a transgressively shocking ending. But duh--we saw it coming, as it were.
• Friend Request Pending--Ah, but here's the jewel: Judi Dench in a beautiful tone poem about the fact that social networking makes teenagers of us all.

Trailers

• Playing for Keeps--Will this become a new favorite soccer flick? Probably not.
• Identity Thief--Melissa McCarthy in the title role, Jason Bateman as the victim, so I wouldn't rule out hilarity, but . . .

Aces and eights

Stagecoach

(1939)

America, for better or for worse: yes, there's genocidal expansionism and vigilantism (miraculous vigilantism, actually, but I don't want to spoil it for any virgins in the crowd), but there's also redemption, the overcoming of prejudice, the triumph of natural law over societal dictates, and, best of all in this particular election year, punishment of venal capitalism. "What this country needs is a businessman for president," declares the banker Gatewood, his valise swollen with embezzled greenbacks. He also calls for reduced taxes and decries regulation of his industry. Somehow this sounds familiar. Let's just hope the GOP gets its comeuppance a month from today, as Gatewood does when the stage arrives at Lordsburg.

Au revoir, Terre Haute

Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid

(1982)

Another flick with W.Va. associations--remember seeing it in the theater in downtown Fairmont, with my grad school friend Michael, visiting from Virginia Beach. Also remember finding it hilarious, and while the gimmick--footage from classic '40s & '50s noirs knitted seamlessly (well, pretty much) into the action of the parody/hommage--can never be as fresh again, it holds up remarkably well.

Toucha-toucha-toucha-touch me

The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Crit

Golly, I didn't see that coming. It's true that I usually don't, but this is one of those really smart twists that the film has been preparing you for all along, but if you're as inattentive a viewer as I, it blindsides you, in a laudably effective way.

But before I say anything else, a preflick word from my Pittsburgher friend Andrea:

The writer/director (and the writer of the book), Steve Chbosky, went to my high school. He was a senior when I was a freshman and his sister Stacy was in my class. They filmed a lot of Perks in Pittsburgh and a good amount in Upper St. Claire, where we grew up. They actually filmed the school scenes as a nearby school (Peters) because they had done a multimillion dollar renovation of our high school and it wasn't the ugly 70s building that he was thinking of when he wrote the book. The letter jackets were designed based on the jackets we had at school and there is a scene in one of our favorite after-school hangouts (Kings) so it is going to be a blast from the past when I do get to see it!

And then after she got to see it (with passes to a special New Haven premiere for Pittsburghers, I guess):

AMAZING. Steve did an incredible job translating the book into the film. Beyond the fantastic and engrossing story and actors, I loved the feeling of being in Pittsburgh and back at USCHS. I feel the desire to go have a hot fudge sundae at Kings, then drive through the Fort Pitt tunnel, and take a trip up Mt. Washington. Also, to travel back in time to a USCHS football game (preferably from our state championship year). Also, while I am a little disappointed by the absence of squids, I appreciate that someone was called a jag-off.

I wouldn't go so far as "amazing," but then I didn't go to school there. But I sure drove through that tunnel often enough when I lived in W.Va.--the tunnel through the mountain was the signal that I was nearing the only real city in a 200-mile radius, and that was exciting. Plus, it's just a pretty cool tunnel, though I confess I never went through it standing up.

What I will say is that it is a lovely, affecting film with a buttload of Rocky Horror soundtrack and footage in it--Richard O'Brien must have loved the book to let them use so much. I would have bought freshman Charlie's fitting into the group of misfits a bit more if they weren't all seniors, and the romantic connections seem pretty implausible, but I think we're to see it as the character's based-on-actual-events recollected experience, and in that context, it makes sense.

One thing I cannot forgive, however: Charlie's English teacher (Paul Rudd), his "best teacher ever," has MISSPELLED Emily Dickinson's name on a poster on the back wall of the classroom. Come on!

Trailers

• The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn--Part 2--OK, seriously, could Kristen Stewart get back to having an acting career now?
• Beautiful Creatures--Wow, could this be any more directed to the Twilight audience?
• The Impossible--Looks like it starts with the same tsunami as that Matt Damon-as-psychic flick from a couple of years ago, then gets all heartwarming.