Old furniture has ghosts

Please Give

Crit

So, if a character in a movie is shown reading a book by Sarah Vowell, and then later Sarah Vowell shows up in the character's antique furniture store, are we supposed to read the second Vowell as Vowell (she appears in the credits as "Shopper"), or is the real Sarah Vowell inhabiting the same universe as the character being acted by Sarah Vowell?

Another delightfully uncomfortable film from Nicole Holofcener, with perhaps the most affecting performance yet by Catherine Keener as a good person perpetually guilty for not being better. Rebecca Hall plays her perfect foil and continues to show how good acting can be without words. Fine performances too by Oliver Platt and Amanda Peet and Lois Smith (whose face I finally placed before looking her up: she played Adele Stackhouse in True Blood) and, oh, everybody.

Trailers

• Winter's Bone--Daddy has busted bond, and his family stands to lose the house; calling central casting for a bunch of ignorant rednecks!
• Holy Rollers--Jesse Eisenberg as a Hasidic drug mule. No, really!
• Touching Home--One of three sports movies opening in New York today that I want to see (never mind a lukewarm review for this one).
• Get Low--Oh, hell, yeah: Robert Duvall as an old coot who wants his funeral while he's still around, Bill Murray as the undertaker to accommodate him.
  

The clitoris has spoken

South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut

(1999)

Damn, this is good. Frankly, I watched it tonight mostly because I was looking for something very short, to get me to bed on time, but this is a damned good comedy and perhaps an even better musical comedy.

Mud, cows, and rubber boots

Frygtelig lykkelig (Terribly happy)

Crit

This is, I believe, the best Coen brothers film I've ever seen that wasn't made by the Coen brothers. Mysteriously guilty Copenhagen cop is temporarily exiled to the boondocks for whatever initially unspecified meltdown he has suffered, and there he find a dangerous woman, her dangerous husband (which of them is more dangerous is hard to say), their spookily beautiful and beautifully spooky daughter, and a bog that is literally and figuratively capable of swallowing all sins. Wonderful.

Michael Rennie was ill . . .

The Day the Earth Stood Still

(1951)

Interplanetary ages since I've seen this, and I was pretty damned impressed. Cheesy, well, yeah--but nicely structured, nicely plotted, and Gort is undeniably the coolest sci-fi robot ever--kicks the metallic asses of those dweebs from Star Wars.

But tell me: if Klatuu is so darned smart (and of course he is), and if he has come to Earth to address the leaders of all nations, not just ours (and he has), and if he knows about the United Nations (and he does), then why the heck does he land in D.C. instead of Manhattan? Just wondering.

Imam the walrus

Kasi Az Gorbehaye Irani Khabar Nadareh (No one knows about Persian cats)

Crit

No, these people are not saying they want a revolution. All they want to do is make some simulacrum of Western pop music. Most of them have no quarrel with Islamic law and custom, and with perhaps one exception, every act we see is laughably tame by U.S./U.K. standards of s & d & r&r. But the ayatollah's regime is not laughing, and the morality police seem incapable of laughter, and so it's all sadder than it is funny.

Ragged, with gaping narrative lacunae, but heartfelt, and you can dance to it. Scarcely a classic of rock cinema, but worth a look.

It's about time you weaned her--she's old enough

The Big Sleep

(1946)

OK, I've changed my mind: now I think Brody did kill the Sternwood chauffeur--I suspect he didn't mean to, but he did, and then the ran the car into the bay to cover it up.

Sins of the fleshapoids

The Exploding Girl

Crit

To the extent this works, it works on the soft, round, intelligent, vulnerable, funny-kind-of-beautiful face of Zoe Kazan, who plays an epileptic college student being dumped by her boyfriend and tentatively courted by her childhood friend. Which raises the question: To what extent does it work? Well, I cared about Ivy and, to a lesser extent, about her goofy pal Al (though I'm not at all convinced that they should try the romance thing), but I couldn't help wishing for some of the breakneck action characteristic of Mumblecore, which this resembles closely. Ultimately, this falls into the category Not a Complete Waste of My Time.

It Came from Kuchar

Crit

The funny thing about this is that the name Ed Wood is never mentioned. Such talking heads as John Waters, Buck Henry, Atom Egoyan, Guy Maddin, Cory McAbee, and Bill Griffith tell us why they love the weird, cheap, funny, troubling films of George and Mike Kuchar, but the only voices we really need to convince us are those of the twins themselves. (Identical or fraternal? That's just one of many questions about what makes them who they are that is apparently unanswerable.) A major hoot.