Capital punishment

Monster's Ball

(2001)

What I remembered about this: the racial text, and the hot sex.

What I didn't remember about this: the function of the Heath Ledger character, and how universally transactional sex and even love are in the film. It's not enough that Hank (Billy Bob Thornton) is a white male and thus has two power-hierarchical legs up on the black female Leticia (Halle Berry), but his financial security and her relative poverty put him in a position to come repeatedly to her rescue. It's hard to hear dialogue like

"I want to take care of you."

"Good, 'cause I need to be taken care of."

A film more interesting than good, ultimately, and interesting in kind of skeevy ways.

The greatest trick . . .

The Usual Suspects

(1995)

Wow, I never saw that coming! No, seriously, the first time I never did! Which leaves me wondering, every time since: is this as good as I first thought? It seems so, and isn't that what matters?

Wires and lights in a box

Good Night, and Good Luck

(2005)

Hey, here's a question: why didn't this picture make David Strathairn a big star? Was it that he was so damned good portraying Edward R. Morrow than no producer or casting director could imagine him as anyone else? That's a ridiculous notion, of course, though given the absurdities of Hollywood, being ridiculous doesn't necessarily mean it's wrong. In any case, in the 8 years since this film, he hasn't had another lead role remotely comparable in visibility--and given that John Sayles, who gave Straithairn about half the work he got early in his career, seems to be making only about a film every 3 years nowadays, it has been mostly that box with the wires and lights for him lately. Sad.

Strange fascination

The Breakfast Club

(1985)

OK, I'll readily grant that even when this was new, I was way past the target audience age, but to concede that that is why I didn't like it at all then and don't like it at all now--having given it the second chance that I was sure it deserved, given that people dear to me who are by no means idiots find great value in it--would be to claim that I stopped at some point feeling like a misfit.

No, the reason I don't like it is that it is an obvious, formulaic story told mechanically, with clichés instead of characters, and zero surprises. Sorry, but this is one lazy, brainless motion picture.

Enemy of my enemy

Star Trek into Darkness

Crit

This guy is going to turn into Ricardo Montalban how? As in the series reboot of a couple summers ago, this spends a great deal of time looking "ahead" to stuff that was on TV and in movies decades ago, and the second time around, that device is not quite as amusing. The film starts with an interesting and timely premise, as the Federation flirts with assassination via long-range missile, and Spock (Zachary Quinto) has to goad Kirk (Chris Pine) into weighing the immorality of such a strategy, but ultimately this becomes a retro-introduction to Khan, and that's a big problem. The villain is supposed to be the youthful (though not young; long story) version of a guy who in 1982's Wrath of Khan was a barechested Ahab, ultimately for hate's sake spitting his last breath at Kirk, but this guy is boring and bloodless, showing considerably less emotion than Spock.

Trailers

• Elysium--Neill Blomkamp (District 9) directs a story of 22nd-century social inequality and revolution.
• Anchorman: The Legend Continues--I really need to see the original, don't I?
• World War Z--Damn, this is gonna be an apocalyptic summer, ain't it? Even Man of Steel (saw an expanded trailer, in 3D, with this generation's Brando, Russell Crowe, as Jor-El) is all Dark Knightish.

Sangrigia, house specialty

Lola Versus

(2012)

Had to have this tonight 'cause I knew Frances Ha wasn't opening locally this weekend, and I needed a Greta Gerwig fix, ideally in a film whose title consists of her character's name followed by a non-sequitur, and whose title character is concerned about being old because she is a certain late-20s age, and she takes a pratfall, and she needs to learn to love herself before she can love anyone else.

The longer I watched, in fact, the more it seemed to me that, if what I've read about Frances is accurate, Gerwig and director/writing-and-life partner Noah Baumbach intended their film as an edit of this one. Which is fine--this one, though it has some wonderfully written moments (such as the best extended Brando take by a woman since Diane Keaton's in Sleeper), depends a little too much on the perfectly reasonable expectation that spending 85 minutes with Gerwig is enough entertainment for most of us. And if it's significantly better than this--which all the buzz suggests is the case--then it's pretty damned good.

What kind of bird are you?

Moonrise Kingdom

(2012)

Some movies that I love make me get sentimentally misty, some invigorate my brain, some make me believe that maybe there's hope for humankind after all, some wickedly confirm my opposite suspicion, but I can't think offhand of any other other film that makes me giggle with delight. So glad to find that I was right about this a year ago.

Rhapsody in green

The Great Gatsby

Crit

I'm not always thrilled with Baz's work, but his William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet (I love to invoke the full title) and this seem to suggest that when he takes on a text that really matters to me, he gets it. I was in rapture for about the first 2/3 of the film, and if the final act couldn't match that, it's possible that I just ran out of smiles. Things you may have heard:

• The hiphop in the soundtrack is jarringly anachronistic. Well, no, not to me, anyway. For me, the transgressive African-American music of our era slides seamlessly into the transgressive African-American music of Fitzgerald's.
• Tobey Maguire is a weird choice for Nick. Or Leo is a mistaken choice for Gatsby. Well, I'll confess that neither choice probably would have occurred to me, but there may be a reason why "filmmaking genius" rarely appears in the same sentence as my name. Now the bemusement about Luhrmann's casting the Indian actor Amitabh Bachchan as the very Jewish Meyer Wolfsheim is a fair cop, especially puzzling when Tom Buchanan refers to him as a "kike."
• The 3D is a garish sideshow. No, in fact, Baz shows thoughtful restraint (speaking of phrases and names rarely seen in the same sentence) in employing the technology. The 3D is not necessary, but it does add a certain appealing texture to the narrative.

I haven't noticed anyone pointing out how Ozlike the Manhattan skyline appears from Luhrmann's Long Island, or how Disney-castellate Gatsby's mansion looks--both smart choices. And good god, as often as I've read the novel, and as often as I've seen Casablanca, isn't it bizarre that I've never thought of Rick Blaine's deferred, then dramatic, first appearance, and the rumor that he might have "killed a man" as allusions to Gatsby? Well Baz seems to have noticed the connection, and he made me notice it, for which I'm grateful. And that points to why Baz is a genius--an erratic one, maybe, but a genius nonetheless: for all the wild liberties he may take, he is absolutely 100% invested in the spirit of the source material, and anyone else who is likewise has got to appreciate that.

Things that "belong" and things that don't--Whitman and Charles Foster Kane and little Montenegro, on the Adriatic (the line is truncated, unfortunately), and Rhapsody in Blue (used better to evoke New York only once that I'm aware of)--it's a dizzying, dazzling swirl of timeless Jazz Age lunacy, and I liked every minute and loved the vast majority of them. Baz, your Gatsby is worth the whole damn bunch of previous film versions put together!

Trailers

• Gravity--Cuarón, Clooney, and space in 3D; hopeful.
• The Lone Ranger--Full trailer, rather the teaser I'd seen, and yes, I desperately want this to be good.

Spin-free zone

Knuckleball!

(2012)

Even if I didn't owe R. A. Dickey some of my best days at the ballpark the past couple of years, this documentary--starring Dickey, Tim Wakefield, Phil Niekro, and Charlie Hough, with a solid supporting performance by Jim Bouton--would be a delight.

If I had a complaint, it would be that the physics of the "circus pitch" gets short shrift, but the filmmakers are more interested in getting inside the heads of the keepers of the fluttering flame, and they accomplish that beautifully, following Wakefield on his agonizing quest for win number 200 and Dickey through the season that established him as a star, ahead of his Cy Young Award season, and relying on the retired knuckleballers for the long view.

The New Yorker killed my brother

Adaptation

(2002)

Friday, while watching To the Wonder, I kept thinking of the Turtles' "Happy Together" as the possible source of an ironic title for my blog post, which of course made me think of this film. Then that night, when I watched Minority Report, I thought of the other great Philip K. Dick-sourced film, Blade Runner, and I considered watching that Saturday night, and then while looking in the same part of the alphabet, I briefly weighed Big before settling on Splash, which I had on my DVR, without ever consciously thinking, oh, Tom Hanks stars in Big, and Daryl Hannah is in Blade Runner. But wait--this is voiceover--Robert McKee wouldn't approve.

National pastime

42

Crit

Been leery of this one, afraid that the schmaltz would just be too gooey. Well, the schmaltz is certainly thick--every character is, you should pardon the expression, either black or white, the shades or gray reserved for Jackie Robinson's teammates as they evolve from grudging tolerance to respect to admiration and acceptance--but it's also irresistible.

It's a joy to watch Harrison Ford as Branch Rickey and John C. McGinley as Red Barber, but the soul of the film is Nicole Beharie as Rachel Robinson--and the heart of its credibility, too: the joshing, erotic interplay Chadwick Boseman's Jackie enjoys with his wife let us see the foundation of the player's ability to go through what he has to go through to be the man and the icon he's called upon to be.

Starkist lovers

Splash

(1984)

The first film I saw in the Ur-excess-movie day, the proto-M4, still charms, though it also makes me feel like I need to watch Repo Man tomorrow night. Two other things: golly, hairstyles were awful; and golly, we miss John Candy.

For peat's sake

The Angels' Share

Crit

Ken Loach's single-malt heist film--need I say more?

OK, a little: Robbie (Paul Brannigan) meets 3 equally improbably sweet and dumb-smart recidivists on community service (or, as the Scots charmingly and apparently uniquely call it, community payback), as well as a volunteer who recognizes the depth of Robbie's intention to turn his life around. His motivation is a girlfriend and a brand new son, though between Leonie's family's contempt (her cousins beat him and threaten him against coming near mother and child; her father offers him £5,000 to get out of her life) and the murderous intent of the son of his father's blood enemy, the deck would be stacked against him in the less forgiving universe of some of Loach's earlier films.

But like a 16-year-old Lagavullin, this is meant to warm your insides in a good way. I didn't ever believe it, but I enjoyed it.

Forgive us our trespasses

Minority Report

(2002)

Yeah, I confess: the immediate trigger for watching this was the gushing piece by Taffy Brodesser-Akner in the Times Magazine recently crowning Tom Cruise our best action star. But it had been on my radar for a while, and I'm glad to confirm that it remains my second-favorite film based on a Philip K. Dick story. And seriously, Samantha Morton's performance, limited by her character's inability to move on her own? One of the best of her splendid career.

But Brodesser-Akner is right about one thing. Cruise's Chief John Anderton says "Everybody runs," but nobody runs like Cruise.

God is in the contrails

To the Wonder

Crit

Hey, wait a minute: where were Gwyneth and Bob?

OK, here's what I feel reasonably confident saying is going on here: there's love, and there's no-longer-love, and there's simultaneous love and not-love, and maybe there's even love-again-after-not-love, but the last thing we need is some connect-the-dots narrative to try to make sense of all the lovemutations. Right: without a coherent narrative, you don't have a chance of making sense of it. But maybe you're better off not trying.

But don't ask me about the priest's story. It's good to see Javier Bardem in a nonsociopathic role for a change, but how much uncompensated recitation of the text of What to Do During a Crisis of Faith can he endure before he starts to go a little Anton Chigurh on all those poor suffering parishioners?

I'm pretty sure I liked this, liked it quite a bit, but don't expect me to go back tomorrow to make certain. I do know I'm glad to have seen it, though that, of course, is not the same thing. And I encourage others to see it, too, but that might just be to ensure I'm not the only one to have spent two hours wondering where the hell Terrence Malick has taken us.