To love them as we love ourselves

También la lluvia (Even the rain)

Crit

You can't say this film is devious about its point of view: the first words on the screen are a dedication to Howard Zinn, whose death I'd already forgotten and whose People's History of the United States I still haven't read, but this year, I promise!

That point of view is an unsubtle polemic against imperialist exploitation, and it might have seemed like a sermon but for a structure calculated to draw in movie weenies like me: it's one of those movies about making a movie! A director (Gael García Bernal) pursues his vision: the Columbus story through the filter of the conscience-ravaged priests Antonio de Montesinos and Bartolome de las Casas, anti-imperialists avant la lettre. But of course the film crew is itself imperialist and exploitative of the indigenous Bolivians (right: that Columbus never got anywhere near there is just one of the wicked jokes about the industry that no movie about moviemaking can be without) being paid two bucks a day to work as extras.

And then there are the capitalists that don't even have the socially redeeming value of potential art: the multinational corporation granted rights to privatize the water supply by the corrupt government. Did I mention that "evenhandedness" is not among the virtues to which the film aspires? Anyway, being a guilty liberal, I liked the hell out of it, though I was a little disappointed that the twist I anticipated in the final plot element inspiring the conscientious rebirth of the producer (Luis Tosar)--even my heart can be overwarmed.

The most astonishing performance is given by Juan Carlos Aduviri, who plays the Quechua rabble-rouser Daniel, who in turn plays the Taino rabble-rouser Hatuey--a character so vital to the (nested) film that the filmmakers demand that he shelve his principles at least until all his scenes are shot. My guess is that the real-life filmmakers brought Aduviri into the biz much as the film-within-the-a-film filmmakers did Daniel, who in his capacity as water-rights activist gets the film's best speech, the one whence its title (which ultimately, of course, derives from e. e. cummings). It doesn't seem to be online, so I'll paraphrase: the powerful demand the right to take everything, even the rain; what next: our tears, our sweat? All they'll get from me is my piss.

Dude's got a future as a populist politician.

If music be the food of love . . .

Woman on Top

(2000)

Oh! That changes everything!

I was going to say that I watched this as a candidate for deaccession, but that I liked it enough--in spite of its elementary school plotting and logic in many spots--that I wasn't going to give it away but was instead going to offer it on indefinite loan to my daughter, who I suspect has not seen it but who I know would enjoy it.

But now I see it's available on Netflix for streaming, so it's the perfect DVD to give away (my daughter still getting first shot, of course), especially since I acquired it at a time when I was essentially snapping up everything I liked that Columbia House was offering cheap.

But why do I like it, even though objectively it's not very good? Well, it looks great, with Penélope Cruz moving from Bahía to San Francisco to live with her wildly gorgeous transvestite friend (Harold Perrineau Jr.) and cook even more wildly gorgeous food. It also sounds great--I listen regularly to the soundtrack on samba Sunday mornings, but I had forgotten how well the sound meshes with the look. And it has a load of heart. What it doesn't have is a suitor worthy of Cruz's Isabella, but that's a big ask.

A streetcar named Babilonia

Orfeu negro

(1959)

Ah, love, music, and death: what else is there? Of course: love and music after death. This film is a Grecian urn, speaking to us of beauty and truth, all we know on earth, and all we need to know.

I introduced this as an annual two years ago, then failed to get a chance to watch it last Carnaval time. But I mustn't look back.

The information's unavailable to the mortal man

Yes, granted, here in the cinematic wasteland that is late winter, it's far too early to be talking about Oscar® nominations, but allow me to say nonetheless that if we get 10 pictures this year better than these two, it will be a very good 2011.

The Adjustment Bureau

Crit

Free will and determinism face off, with a literally bureaucratic hierarchy representing heaven on the Calvinist side. Writer-director George Nolfi (right: who?), starting with a Philip K. Dick story (usually a pretty good place to start a mindfuck movie), steals from some hall-of-famers: It's a Wonderful Life bigtime, Heaven Can Wait, a sweet little poem name of Paradise Lost, a sizable chunk of Eternal Sunshine (golly, is it really 3 years since I've watched that?), even a hint of Casablanca, and then of course Matt Damon running from god-knows-who-or-what conjures Jason Bourne (Nolfi was a writer on Ultimatum); I'm sure you'll find your own resonances. It also has much of the look and feel of Inception, though the chronology is such that that seems likelier to be Zeitgeist than direct influence. Anyway, it's not just a mishmash; there's a compelling logic to it all, and even if the essential logic is the old amor vincit omnia, it works just fine, thank you.

Other pluses: a deep affection for New York City, including places there that rarely get movie roles, like Red Hook; lots of fun cameos by media people and pols, including the mayor; and Emily Blunt, about whom I've long been saying "huh?" finally making me get her, with some beautifully written and delivered getting-to-know-you flirtation w/ Damon's character.

A really smart, really romantic film, and how often do those come along?

Rango

Crit

Another kitchen sink of allusion, starting with Chinatown and every Western ever made. One death-from-the-sky sequence cites not only the obvious Apocalypse Now but also the monkey-harpies of The Wizard of Oz, the Death Star raid of Star Wars, the Ark chase sequence of Raiders of the Lost Ark, and one or two others I can't remember now.

There's a lot of that can't-remember-now, because the smarts and the quotes just fly by so fast; I can't imagine that young children would get more than 5% of what I loved about this, but clearly, love it they too did: one large group down front was literally dancing in the aisles during the psychedelic end credits (a couple of them doing the devil-horns hand gesture), the conclusion of which prompted one to voice his sadness and another to demand that they go to another movie right away. This film may singlehandedly birth a whole new generation of babies who love nothing more than being in a dark room with a flickering image in front of them. So by all means take your kids--but go once by yourself, too, because you need to see it with completely undivided attention (if only for the payoff of the Eastwood [voiced, it turns out, not by the man himself, as I rather expected, but by Timothy Olyphant] sequence).

Trailers

• Fast Five--First image of the trailer is of Corcovado Jesus, but the presence of Rock and Diesel make it clear that this is not what I'm watching tonight.
• Arthur--If this is not the Bad Idea that it immediately seems like, it's because of the casting: Russell Brand  in the Moore role, Greta Gerwig pinch-hitting for Minnelli, and especially Helen Mirren as Gielgud. Sadly, except for the final gag, the trailer suggests that no one can save it.
• Paul--Another guy's-first-name flick about an irresponsible dude who isn't on the same wavelength as most of us, this one 'cause he's an alien. That Simon Pegg plays one of the Earthlings who befriends him gives me some hope, but not much.
• Puss in Boots--Oh, right: you go to an animated film, you gotta sit through these, don't you? Unlikely.
• Hop--Recalcitrant Easter Bunny-apparent. Unlikely.
• Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides--Two was too many, but this actually looks like it might be OK, w/ Rob Marshall directing and Penélope Cruz and Ian McShane joining the cast.
• Rio--Completely missed the title, but it makes sense, since this one opens with (cartoon) Corcovado Jesus, too, which is a lot more noteworthy coincidence than the fact that two trailers I saw today depicted the comic sure thing of scrotal abuse.

No R.U.N.S., no hits, one error

Hanyo (The housemaid)

Crit

Firmly rooted in the tradition of East Asian horror films, this one has a difference: there's nothing supernatural. (Well, probably; a climatic event has no obvious rational explanation, but it can be explained without help from the spirit world, and I'm inclined to deem it natural.) The house is scary, some of the people are scary, one or two are even profoundly evil, but no one can spin her head in a circle.

This also seems a little Gatsby: wealthy people use and use up us lesser folk, barely feeling a breeze when we're destroyed.

Peninsula drifts into a bar . . .

La balsa de piedra (The stone raft)

(2002)

I've never much liked "magical realism" as a generic label, and I've been particularly resistant to it as applied to José Saramago--in part, I suppose, because I so love his novels that I don't want him to be tarred with a brush I disapprove of in the first place.

But having seen this plodding, unmagically unrealistic adaptation of Saramago's beautiful novel, I guess I have to give the label some props. Even Federico Luppi, some gorgeous but unspecified-on-IMDb locations, and a spectacular dog can't save this from blandness. Don't bother; but do read the book.

Oh, and for those of you who know Saramago in Portuguese who are wondering why it's not called A jangada de pedra, blame the Spanish contingent of the multinational production company. At least the Dutch didn't prevail with Het Stenen Vlot.

Sausage, bacon, and ham pizza for Passover

Cinco días sin Nora (Nora's will)

Crit

First things first: I disapproved of the U.S. distributor's English title, given the poetry of the direct translation of the original (which is, incidentally, the only title that appears in the subtitles). But in retrospect, it's a pretty clever bit of punning misdirection, for the will in question is not a legal testamentary document but the decedent's insistence on continuing to control her world from the beyond.

I don't believe that writer-director Mariana Chenillo intends this as an anti-Semitic film, but if anyone asked me how she distances herself from the provocative disrespect for Jewish ritual gleefully displayed by the protagonist, I'd be hard pressed to answer convincingly. As for representatives of the faith, we have one noxious rabbi, a quartet of silent, intimidating Orthodox pall bearers, an ineffectual aspirate to the rabbinate, and at last, in the final reel, a tolerant, humane rabbi.

The decent rabbi brings on such good feelings, in fact, that he smooths the rough edges with which Nora's survivors abrade one another, undercutting much of what has come before. A good film, finally, but one with lots of caveats.