Alla famiglia

Moonstruck

(1987)

So many perfect lines, so many over-the-top-wonderful performances (yes, Nic, I'm talking about you--though not you alone; no one is subtle here, and no one should be), and the most beautiful and engaging Cher ever, even (especially with?) with a love bite on her neck; this is a go-to film when I'm feelin' kinda blue, and I'm feelin' kinda blue tonight--but better now than a couple of hours ago.

Holocaust

Inglourious Basterds

(2009)

OK, now I know why the love interest in the upcoming Beginners, for which I've seen the trailer a gazillion times now, looks familiar: it's Mélanie Laurent, Shosanna here. Had to watch this just-purchased video right away to make sure that even though it was mailed from Quebec and packaged mostly in French (contrary to what I was told when I bought it on Amazon Marketplace), it was Region 1-able. No problem, I'm sure you'll be relieved to know.

I see that the first time I fixed on the Bowie-Theme-from-Cat People sequence, and I do so again this time. It plays when Shosanna is preparing for the incendiary assassination, and the most obvious allusion, in keeping with the Native American warrior theme that runs throughout the film, is her swipe of rouge across each cheek, which stays there undisturbed for a moment as battle paint (like so). But this time her preparation struck me more as Homeric: she's Ajax donning her armor and hefting her weapons (in this case the Derringer that just fits in her tiny clutch purse)--and I guess the anachronism of that reading balances the anachronism in the other direction of the Bowie song.

Anyway, I doubt I'll ever tire of watching Jews kicking Nazi ass.

La femme qui chant "Happy Together"

Incendies

Crit

This starts out as two mysteries: (1) we don't have any idea who Nawal Marwan was, except that she has died leaving a bizarre will for her twin children, and (2) Jeanne and Simon discover at the reading of that will that there's much they don't know about their mother, such as that the father who has been dead for all of their sentient life apparently isn't so much, and that they have a brother.

Each is assigned to track one of those surprise relatives and to deliver a letter from Nawal to him, and thus begins one of the most skillful unwindings of movie mystery I've ever encountered. In the course of which, naturally, more mysteries surface, but if I told you about them I'd have to kill your moviegoing pleasure.

And if the stakes of the mysteries weren't quite high enough, while the mother died and the children live in Montreal, Nawal came from an unnamed Middle Eastern country (I'm thinking Lebanon) where 20-odd years ago a right-wing Christian ruling class was busy oppressing and being pushed back by Palestinian refugees.

The ultimate implausibility is sizable but forgivable, all has been crafted (and acted) so beautifully.

Every picture tells a story

Scarlet Street

(1945)

This disc from a cheap Kino noir collection was up for deaccession, but I'm pulling it off the waiver wire. Fritz Lang directs Edward G. Robinson as a milquetoast (named Chris Cross, really) crushed by the women in his life. Pretty formulaic (and comical in its desperate distortion of what is essentially a pimp-whore relationship between Dan Duryea's oily Johnny Prince and Joan Bennett as Chris's other woman) until the final reel, where Lang twists it beautifully.

Like eyes upon us

Cave of Forgotten Dreams

Crit

Early on, Werner Herzog says something to the effect that the Paleolithic cave artists who are the focus of this film speak to us in a voice at the same time familiar and alien--and I thought, yes, and he has just described what makes his films, particularly his documentaries, so compelling to me. Who else would bring into the context of 30,000-plus-year-old art such pop culture references as Fred Astaire, Baywatch, and "The Star-Spangled Banner," each in perfect service of illustrating that alien familiarity?

Then there's the art, which is spectacularly moving--even in the 2D version that's the best I can do without a trip to the IFC Center. I had the good fortune to edit a book on Paleolithic cave art a couple of years ago, which I recommend as a companion to the film--or a substitute if it's not showing near you. From that experience, I suspect I know the central answer to "Why 3D?" Often the artists would exploiting the textures of the cave walls the better to shape the animals they depicted. Seeing that in 3 dimensions would be a lot cooler than Thor or the new Pirates of the Caribbean, I suspect.

Trailer

• Buck--Documentary about a real live horse whisperer; looks wonderful.

Time out

Out of Sight

(1998)

With Get Shorty, this is my #1 and 1A favorite Elmore Leonard adaptations, and this one might even have a slight edge for its revelations about Jennifer Lopez. But here's tonight's trivia question: what minor character here is played by the same actor in another film by a different director?

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Pom Wonderful Presents the Greatest Movie Ever Sold

Crit

Wise move by Morgan Spurlock not to try to make (to borrow a metaphor from Slaughterhouse-Five) an antiglacier film. In other words, he treats the phenomenon of product placement not as a problem to be solved but as a fact of life to be explored. And the result is as thought provoking as it is funny and odd. It doesn't pretend to offer any answers, and there probably aren't any, but watching him ask the questions is a good advertisement for something.

Trailers

• Midnight in Paris--How much farther can we go with Woody?
• Bride Flight--Looks terribly, terribly serious.