His mistress's voice

The Truth About Cats and Dogs

(1996)

Well, this isn't remotely as good as I remembered it, but it does demonstrate emphatically why Janeane Garafalo went on to become the Carole Lombard of her romcom era.

Seriously, what the fuck happened? She's barely sufficiently not-conventionally-beautiful for the critical Cyrano trope of this highly implausible plot to work, sort of, but with all due respect to Uma, who could be in a room with both their characters and not be drawn irresistibly to the real Abby? Why has Garafalo not had a huge career? She turns 50 next month, so it sure ain't happening for her now. What a Hollywood waste.

Big Twinkie

Ghostbusters (1984)

Crit

It' true, I still owe you an in-depth review of MoviePass, and I think that's coming soon, around the time I reach an important milestone with the service, but for now suffice it to say that I probably would not have gone to this 30th anniversary rerelease two months shy of my 12-month standard between screenings (as Dr. Venkman [Bill Murray] says of not having sex with possessed clients, it's more of a guideline than a rule) if I hadn't been able to do it at the cost of nothing but going to a film later in the day than I typically do on Saturday.

Which would have been too bad, because this is a film that to a surprising degree rewards a big-screen viewing again, no matter how well you know it. And having phoned my daughter on the walk to the movie theater and discussed taking her to see this when she was 8, I was particularly attuned to the scary bits and finally have to admit that while it is funnier than scary, it's a lot scarier than I've ever given it credit for.

Trailers

• Annie--Talked to my daughter about this on the walk home, and we agree: great cast,looks awful.
• Dumb and Dumber To--What's surprising about this trailer is all they were able to get away with without getting a red band.

To have loved and lost

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

(2004)

Had pretty much decided to watch this, rules be damned (see today's earlier post, plus the title of my previous post for this film, linked above, for clues to why), but was stunned to discover that it was technically eligible for Friday night screening anyway, six years having passed since I'd screened it. Stunned because I love the film so much, but maybe not so stunning, 'cause gawd, the uncompromising truth of how sick we get of those we love and how fatal that fatigue can be is so freaking painful to watch.

As for my seeming neurological symptoms earlier in the day, they seem to have gone away, at least for now.

Stepford Inn

The One I Love

Crit

Oh! It all makes sense! Director Charlie McDowell is actually Charles Malcolm McDowell, his middle name provided by his father. His mother is Mary Steenbergen, who provides the telephone voice of a character's mother, which of course makes his stepfather Ted Danson, who plays the couples therapist who refers Ethan (Mark Duplass) and Sophie (Elisabeth Moss) to the sprawling love nest where all the weird shit happens.

To wit: each encounters a Doppelgänger of the other, at first unknowingly, and then with different agendas. I would be hard-pressed to explain the precise metaphysics at work here, but it is certain that only one person from each pair of doubles can leave. It's not an unsatisfying film, but it's one of those you wish the likes of Charlie Kaufman or Spike Jonze or Michel Gondry had been involved in.

But on another topic: if this is my last post, it is because something has eaten my brain. It started nibbling about 1:30 this afternoon, and it continued to nosh during the movie. Actually, that doesn't seem the right metaphor, though it's difficult for me to describe what is happening. Maybe the best metaphor is that the TV feed of my consciousness is getting occasional blips from a program unrelated to the one I'm tuned to, though that's not quite it, either, because I'm never conscious of the blip except in retrospect, though then it is indeed as faint as a pirate TV signal. And it seems that the blips happen only when I'm concentrating on something else, so not for the past hour or so, during which time I've been obsessing on it. No, I did not knowingly ingest a psychoactive drug; I'd be having a lot more fun with this if I had. As it is, it has a perversely enjoyable element, and it is by no means terrifying (though check back with me later for an update on that).

Gethsemane

Calvary

Crit

Implausibility is piled upon implausibility, from the setup (in the confessional of a village church in coastal County Sligo, a nonpenitent tells of having been raped by a priest beginning at age 7, and of his plan to kill his confessor in a week precisely because he's a good priest) to the timing (the priest's daughter from a prevocation marriage arrives for a visit after a suicide attempt) to the setting (a breathtakingly beautiful land seemingly populated by the oddballs from a stack of Flannery O'Connor stories--thus plenty of suspects for the audience to weigh [the priest knows who his promised killer is]). It's a clockwork plot, and not much about it makes sense.

And yet: Brendan Gleeson plays the priest with a conviction and sympathy I couldn't resist, Kelly Reilly plays his daughter ditto, and an ensemble including Chris O'Dowd, Aiden Gillen, and M. Emmet Walsh creates eccentrics that are appealing if not necessarily believable. Oh, and did I mention that it's largely a very funny comedy?

A film I liked much more than I know I should.

Trailer

• Birdman--If these were the old days, when Jennie Tonic and I used to rate just-learned-about films from 1 (would take the best reviews imaginable to get us there; example of a 1 we ended up loving: Babe) to 5 (would take the worst reviews imaginable to keep us away; example of a 5 we ended up skipping: Prêt-à-porter), this would be a 5.

Grand illusion

Magic in the Moonlight

Crit

I see it clearly: a man and woman, not lovers but clearly on the heavily trod romcom road from mutual antagonism to passion. They run into an observatory to escape a rainstorm, and that interval accelerates their progress toward couplehood. Oh, wait: that's not the future I'm seeing; it's the past.

There's a good movie in here somewhere, maybe even an excellent movie, about faith and fakery and science, and given the excellent films Woody has made in recent years, I'm not about to suggest he's not the one to have found that better movie. But look, the guy is pushing 80. I'm sure he doesn't have sex as often as he did when he was 35; I doubt that he plays clarinet at Michael's Pub as often. Should he maybe think about making a film every other year rather than cranking them out as if they were coming off the GM assembly line? After all, even the GM assembly line is not as prolific as it was in the '70s.

Trailers

• Love Is Strange--Yes.

Silver watch

She Wore a Yellow Ribbon

(1949)

This will never be as good as Fort Apache--there Wayne had Fonda to play off of; here his biggest rival is an otherworldly gorgeous Monument Valley. This is also a little less complex in its treatment of the Indian wars: Fonda's Custer-like colonel in Fort Apache is noble but vainglorious; in this film, nothing suggests that the recently deceased Custer was anything but an iconic hero.

On the other hand, the love story is marginally less sappy.

All thumbs

Life Itself

Crit

I've been putting off this post because, even more than usually, I just don't know what to say. Oh, I'm not conflicted about whether I liked it (yes, very much) or about whether I recommend it (absolutely to any film junkie, and less emphatically to everyone else).

But the fact that Ebert and I lived in the same community at different times--even worked at the same newspaper--makes it personal; the fact that his and Gene Siskel's were the first voices of film review I ever heard brings it closer still; and the fact that the real subject of this film about a most vital man is mortality, a mortality advertised by the Joker's death mask the ravages of cancer left of his face, makes anything I say seem trivial. More trivial than usual, I mean.

So maybe the way to go is: things I learned. That Roger nearly killed himself with booze, then quit just like that. That he and Gene could be way more vicious to each other in outtakes than we ever got to see onscreen. That Leonard Cohen's prolixity once saved Roger's life. That finding Chaz late in life may not exactly have saved his life at the time, but it made it worth saving when the question began to arise with distressing regularity.

A beautiful, complicated portrait of a complicated, mostly beautiful life. Oh, and by the way, filmmaker Steve James asks too late for his fast-fading subject to answer, but I'm confident that this is the source of the title of the autobiography that was appropriated by the film. At least I'd be very disappointed to find out otherwise:

And that's how I discovered the secret, that elusive ingredient, that [rowdy midnight audience: "Who gives the best head on Star Trek?"] SPARK that is the breath of life . . . ["Did you just spit in your hand?"] Yes, ["Do you know how to fuck?"] I have that knowledge . . . ["What do you hold between your legs?"] I hold the secret . . . ["To life?"] to life . . . ["Itself?"] itself!

Excessive force

Get on Up

Post

Not a perfect film--too soapy at times, and stinting in its treatment of its subject's drug problems, but nonetheless one of the best biopics I've ever seen, and probably the one for which the actor most eerily channeled the subject. Chadwick Boseman impressed us last year with his take on Jackie Robinson in 42, but as much as I love baseball,  I'd never suggest that the physical demands of portraying even one of the most physical ballplayers ever is remotely comparable to the demands of convincing us that you're the Hardest Working Man in Show Business. If there's a downside to the film, it's the death of the illusion that James Brown was the only mortal who could ever do that shit; now we know there's at least one other. 

By the way, if you don't believe--or even if you do believe--that Brown really could have outshone the Stones so completely at the T.A.M.I. Show, I commend to your attention the filmic record of that television landmark. 

Guardians of the Galaxy (Imax 3D)

Post

Delightfully goofy, perhaps in no respect more than in the soundtrack of good-bad '70s hits (there's a ultrathin but sufficient plot explanation for it), from 10cc's "I'm Not in Love" to the Five Stairsteps' "O-O-H, Child." Rarely has music I'd never go out of my way to hear again enriched a moviegoing experience so much. (Well, OK: actually, I would go out of my way to hear "I'm Not in Love" again. And "Cherry Bomb," of course, but that's the song that doesn't really fit with the rest anyway. And "Escape [The Piña Colada Song]" has made a marvelous transition from lame '70s song to Immediately Recognizable Joke about the Lameness of Most '70s Songs. It is a lamememe!)

Trailers

• Elvis: That's the Way It Is--Yes, the excellent 1970 documentary on the King's Vegas comeback concert, made big and rereleased.
• Exodus: Gods and Kings--Of course! Why has it taken so long to get state-of-the-art CGI plagues of Egypt!
• The Judge--Looks like August: Osage County with a sex change (Downey and Duvall).
• Addicted--Soap from a soapy novel, looks like.
• No Good Deed--No, dammit, I don't want Idris Elba playing a family terrorizer!
• Unbroken--WWII pilot tortured by the Japs, who have returned to such clichéd villain stature that I think it must be OK to call 'em Japs again. Angelina Jolie directed, for cripes sakes!
• Big Hero 6--Does the big guy remind anyone else of Strong Sad?
• Into the Woods--I know a lot of people who are wondering whether they're going to screw this up.
• The Hobbit: The Battle of The Five Armies--Yeah, OK. I left the party early.

Hotel California

Barton Fink

(1991)

This makes me want to watch Inside Llewyn Davis again right away, though of course I haven't waited the loosely mandated 12 months since seeing it in the theater. It also reminds me of the film festival I want to host featuring my fellow Quincy College [now University] alumnus John Mahoney, who here plays the Faulkneresque W. P. Mayhew. Others on the bill would be Moonstruck, Eight Men Out, and of course Say Anything.

Newfoundland

The Station Agent

(2003)

Quiz time: match the lead actor or director of this film to the HBO series in which he or she has played a prominent role:

A. Bobby Cannavale
B. Patricia Clarkson
C. Peter Dinklage
D. Tom McCarthy

1. Boardwalk Empire
2. Game of Thrones
3. Six Feet Under
4. The Wire

Among the many things I love about this film is the score, even though I don't often notice a score. And tonight it was even better because I reprised my first, in-the-theater experience of thinking how terrific the score is and only then remembering, "Oh, right: and it's by Stephen Trask."

Quiz answers (highlight the invisible text with your mouse pointer): A/1, B/3, C/2, D/4

Life is what happens

Boyhood

Crit

Spoiler alert: no meteor or sharkstorm falls from the skies, neither gods nor demons, vampires or zombies wage war over the fate of humankind, no one is revealed as a superhero or supervillain, and no one is injected with a mysterious superdrug. In fact, there's not so much as an unexpected death or an ambulance call to rush someone to the hospital. The most immediate physical threat comes from alcoholic stepfathers.

All that happens is that a boy and a girl, over a span of 2¾ hours (which will, of course, seem like real time to all parents), grow to young adulthood while their parents try consistently and succeed intermittently to give them useful guidance on that journey. This utterly uneventful film, in which nothing happens but life, may be the most truthful "fiction" film I've ever seen; it's certainly one of the best I'll see this year.

Trailer

• The Trip to Italy--Seriously? If Michael Winterbottom makes The Trip to West Central Iowa with Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon, I'm in.