About a (cheese) souffle

Youth in Revolt

Crit

It's Fight Club for the adolescent set, only without the Big Surprise. (I know some would say Fight Club is Fight Club for the adolescent set, so to clarify: I mean that as a compliment.)

Michael Cera finally charmed me as he's supposed to, but the biggest pleasure for my generation come from three industry treasures: Mary Kay Place and M. Emmet Walsh as a fundamentalist couple with a weakness for magic mushrooms and Fred Willard in another of those roles that make sense only as a Fred Willard role. I must agree, though, with one remark in a pan by Anthony Lane, something to the effect that it should be a federal crime to waste Steve Buscemi, as this film does.

Trailers

• The Runaways--Kristen Stewart as young Joan Jett? Oh, hell yeah! (Incidentally, the next trailer, which I'd already seen, was for Kick-Ass, which [the trailer, if not the film] features "Bad Reputation.")
• Piranha 3-D--God help us.
  

The fizzles of October

Topaz

(1969)

For the first 30 to 45 minutes, I was pleasant surprised by this take on the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, and it certainly was fun to range from Moscow (stock footage) to Copenhagen to Washington to New York to Havana (sound stage) to Paris, but the last 6 or 7 hours got kinda draggy. I suspect this could still be pretty gripping if the Hitchcock estate were to hire a good editor. And any editor could get it under 2 hours and improve it significantly.

This is the antepenultimate of the zillion Hitch films I've watched over the past 14 months or so, by the way. Actually, just counted: after I've screened Family Plot and Frenzy (in that order, opposite their release order, because I already know I like the necktie-murder flick, and I want to be sure to finish on a high note), I'll have seen 42 Hitchcock features, including his last 34. Golly!

Shoot the intellectual

The Petrified Forest

(1936)

Golly! I am reminded why this was the one film in Warners' first gangster set that I didn't particularly want. Leslie Howard sets a standard for overacting that will live forever, though he's given a pretty good run for his money here by Bette Davis, Genevieve Tobin as a woman who married not wisely but too well, and the laughable Dick Foran as a potbellied ex-footballer [American rules] and would-be Romeo. The only sign of life on the planet comes from the building-toward-stardom Bogart as the desperado in chief.

Straight to hell

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus

Crit

I was ready for anything from blissful enchantment to uncharted perplexity, but the one thing I never imagined I'd get from Terry Gilliam's latest and Heath Ledger's last was sheer mind-numbing boredom. Yeesh!

Almost all the worthwhile moments are provided by watching Tom Waits (cast as the Devil) and staring at Lily Cole. But the plot's dependence on the objectifying battle for the soul of a 20-something woman playing a not-quite-16 girl whose often-scantily-clad patent past-sixteenness the camera glories in is more squirmmaking than enticing.

Trailer

• The Wolfman--Ah, yes: I'd heard about the upcoming Benicio Del Toro vehicle, but I was eager to get an eyeful. Might work, but risibility looks likelier.
  

What is the church's official positionon fornication and adultery these days?

You Can Count on Me

(2000)

So, Kenneth Lonergan, writer/director of one of the smartest, funniest, most moving indies of the turn of the millennium, with breakthrough roles for My Future Wife Laura Linney and Mark Ruffalo (not to mention the introduction of another Culkin), what have you done for us lately? I actually asked the question not realizing that the answer is bupkus: nothing directed (or acted in: he plays the priest) since this, only 3 writing credits (The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle, Analyze That, and Gangs of New York), and none since 2002.

Until now: he has written and directed something called Margaret, scheduled for release this year (no more specific date). Per IMDb:

A young woman (Anna Paquin) witnesses a bus accident, and is caught up in the aftermath, where the question of whether or not it was intentional affects many people's lives.

The excellent cast includes Count veterans Ruffalo and Matthew Broderick, as well as MATT DAMON, Jean Reno, Allison Janney, Rosemarie DeWitt, and yet another Culkin.

Red scare

Marnie

(1964)

Wow, that's one seriously weird, seriously not-very-good accumulation of psychobabble. Hitchcock apparently asks Tippi Hedren to ACT, DAMMIT! and Sean Connery to chill. Connery makes do; Hedren makes doo-doo.

The crisis of faith in the contemporary novel

The Third Man

(1949)

Golly, do you suppose Vienna really has such enormous shadows? All the streetlights must be at ankle level, I guess.

If you watch the Criterion Collection edition of this (and you should), take 5 minutes beforehand for the Bogdanovich introduction, which includes his account of Welles's definition of the "star part": essentially any role where everyone spends the first hour or so talking about an absent character who, when he finally shows up, gets credit for great acting in his absence.