Inventir amour

Jules and Jim

(1962)

I might as well admit it: I'm just never going to be French. I like the French, and I like Truffaut more than most of them, but I just don't get how love works for them. This is usually described as a love triangular, but it's really a three-dimensional love pentagonal solid. In America, we'd simply call Catherine (Jeanne Moreau) crazy and institutionalize her. But for the French, it's not fun until someone loses and eye, or something even more precious. Perhaps it would have made more sense with a bottle of Bordeaux.

Cool fact

Searching for Sugar Man

Crit

You sort of expect Rob Reiner to turn up as the interviewer, so implausible is this documentary about a guy from Detroit who cut a couple of brilliant but unbought albums in the early '70s, then disappeared, only to become a rebel icon for antiapartheid Afrikaners, who adopted his antiestablishment ethos and were crushed to learn of his on-stage suicide--either by self-immolation or by hangdun--but continued to buy the records, probably a half-million of them over the years. And then, of course, the discovery that he was still living in the same house in Detroit where he'd been for 40 years, working construction and building-preservation, close to his three daughters, and oblivious to his bigger-than-Elvis, bigger-than-the-Stones fame in South Africa.

I mean, come on.

I only wish I could report that I was blown away by Rodriguez's music. I like it--lyrically Dylanesque, vocally very Feliciano--and I may buy Cold Fact, the first album, but the story rather dwarfs the music. And like Reiner's stuff, it evokes laughter, but laughter of sheer joy, not of hilarity. Sorry for the spoilers, but you will leave the theater happy.

Trailers

• Smashed--I actually saw this before, but forgot to blog it. It seems to ask what happens when out of a couple of drunks, exactly one decides to get clean and sober. A possibility.
• Promised Land--Van Sant directs Damon; hey, worked last time.
• Hyde Park on Hudson--I'd seen a teaser for this, but the full-scale trailer makes it look even more appealing; The King's Speech on our side of the Pond.

Like you're gonna live forever

Eight Men Out

(1988)

You know, when I notice stuff like Eddie Collins (Bill Irwin) batting right-handed, and Eddie Cicotte (David Strathairn) pitching out of the windup with a runner at first, and Ray Schalk (Gordon Clapp) flashing his pitcher a sequence of signals even though there's no runner on second to steal a straight one-finger-for-the-fastball-two-for-the-curve, I have to remind myself that there's just a shitload of complexity to keep track of in this simple game, and that doesn't change the fact that this is one of the best baseball films ever, and certainly the one that best balances the game's place in American mythology with its place in the real, nitty-gritty world. And the coda, with Joe Jackson (D. B. Sweeney, who gives one of the best portrayals of tragically profound ignorance I've ever seen) playing ball under an assumed named somewhere in the swamps of Jersey, is an elegy triumphantly sad. And as it happens, elegiac is how I want my baseball right now.

I ate my twin in the womb

Pitch Perfect

Crit

Holy crap, I almost skipped this, which would have left a slot open in my list of funniest flicks of the year. And probably the best presentation of a studio's logo (Universal's), the instrumental accompaniment actually supplied a capella.

The plot is the same one we've seen in every academic competition story ever, but plot, schmott--what matters here are the tunes, and the giggles, and especially the giggles inspired by the tunes (like when you hear the intro to Lily Allen's "Fuck You" and wonder how they're gonna save the PG13 rating).

Hell, this may even inspire me to watch The Breakfast Club again, and I never thought I'd say that. Special mention, by the way, to the hilarious work by Elizabeth Banks and John Michael Higgins as the competition announcers. Oh, and speaking of hilarity, be very quiet whenever Lilly (Hana Mae Lee) speaks.

Stars in Shorts

Crit

I've admitted often (including Friday) that I'm not very good at anticipating narrative surprises, which makes me confident in saying that the surprise twists in several of these are abysmally unsurprising. A fairly weak collection altogether, though the finale sent me out smiling.

• The Procession--A mildly amusing joke, an out-of-place driver in a funeral procession distractedly stopping at a red light and thus losing--along with the half of the cars behind his--the route. Lily Tomlin fun as the overbearing mother--and always a welcome sight.
• Steve--A would-be Albee-esque playlet, with a loopy neighbor (Colin Firth) becoming increasingly impossible.
• Not Your Time--The model here is Bob Fosse, and especially All That Jazz, but if you're stealing from Tiffany, don't try to sell us costume jewerly.
• sexting--Interesting for Julia Stiles's bravura single-take delivery of a six-minute-plus monologue, but unfortunately, the speech isn't interesting, and the twist here is painfully obvious.
• Prodigal--This appears to be an X-men origin story, and the credit to Marvel in the end credits backs that guess. But seriously: was there no one involved in the making of this film who knows what the titular word means? Because it seems pretty clear that they were under the impression that it's synonymous with "prodigy."
• After School Special--Written by Neil LaBute (as was sexting), this is supposed to have not just a surprise but a transgressively shocking ending. But duh--we saw it coming, as it were.
• Friend Request Pending--Ah, but here's the jewel: Judi Dench in a beautiful tone poem about the fact that social networking makes teenagers of us all.

Trailers

• Playing for Keeps--Will this become a new favorite soccer flick? Probably not.
• Identity Thief--Melissa McCarthy in the title role, Jason Bateman as the victim, so I wouldn't rule out hilarity, but . . .

Aces and eights

Stagecoach

(1939)

America, for better or for worse: yes, there's genocidal expansionism and vigilantism (miraculous vigilantism, actually, but I don't want to spoil it for any virgins in the crowd), but there's also redemption, the overcoming of prejudice, the triumph of natural law over societal dictates, and, best of all in this particular election year, punishment of venal capitalism. "What this country needs is a businessman for president," declares the banker Gatewood, his valise swollen with embezzled greenbacks. He also calls for reduced taxes and decries regulation of his industry. Somehow this sounds familiar. Let's just hope the GOP gets its comeuppance a month from today, as Gatewood does when the stage arrives at Lordsburg.

Au revoir, Terre Haute

Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid

(1982)

Another flick with W.Va. associations--remember seeing it in the theater in downtown Fairmont, with my grad school friend Michael, visiting from Virginia Beach. Also remember finding it hilarious, and while the gimmick--footage from classic '40s & '50s noirs knitted seamlessly (well, pretty much) into the action of the parody/hommage--can never be as fresh again, it holds up remarkably well.

Toucha-toucha-toucha-touch me

The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Crit

Golly, I didn't see that coming. It's true that I usually don't, but this is one of those really smart twists that the film has been preparing you for all along, but if you're as inattentive a viewer as I, it blindsides you, in a laudably effective way.

But before I say anything else, a preflick word from my Pittsburgher friend Andrea:

The writer/director (and the writer of the book), Steve Chbosky, went to my high school. He was a senior when I was a freshman and his sister Stacy was in my class. They filmed a lot of Perks in Pittsburgh and a good amount in Upper St. Claire, where we grew up. They actually filmed the school scenes as a nearby school (Peters) because they had done a multimillion dollar renovation of our high school and it wasn't the ugly 70s building that he was thinking of when he wrote the book. The letter jackets were designed based on the jackets we had at school and there is a scene in one of our favorite after-school hangouts (Kings) so it is going to be a blast from the past when I do get to see it!

And then after she got to see it (with passes to a special New Haven premiere for Pittsburghers, I guess):

AMAZING. Steve did an incredible job translating the book into the film. Beyond the fantastic and engrossing story and actors, I loved the feeling of being in Pittsburgh and back at USCHS. I feel the desire to go have a hot fudge sundae at Kings, then drive through the Fort Pitt tunnel, and take a trip up Mt. Washington. Also, to travel back in time to a USCHS football game (preferably from our state championship year). Also, while I am a little disappointed by the absence of squids, I appreciate that someone was called a jag-off.

I wouldn't go so far as "amazing," but then I didn't go to school there. But I sure drove through that tunnel often enough when I lived in W.Va.--the tunnel through the mountain was the signal that I was nearing the only real city in a 200-mile radius, and that was exciting. Plus, it's just a pretty cool tunnel, though I confess I never went through it standing up.

What I will say is that it is a lovely, affecting film with a buttload of Rocky Horror soundtrack and footage in it--Richard O'Brien must have loved the book to let them use so much. I would have bought freshman Charlie's fitting into the group of misfits a bit more if they weren't all seniors, and the romantic connections seem pretty implausible, but I think we're to see it as the character's based-on-actual-events recollected experience, and in that context, it makes sense.

One thing I cannot forgive, however: Charlie's English teacher (Paul Rudd), his "best teacher ever," has MISSPELLED Emily Dickinson's name on a poster on the back wall of the classroom. Come on!

Trailers

• The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn--Part 2--OK, seriously, could Kristen Stewart get back to having an acting career now?
• Beautiful Creatures--Wow, could this be any more directed to the Twilight audience?
• The Impossible--Looks like it starts with the same tsunami as that Matt Damon-as-psychic flick from a couple of years ago, then gets all heartwarming.