Lido shuffle

Top Hat

(1935)

Two things I was thinking while watching this for the umpteenth time:

1. the Family Values crowd must really hate this and its cousin The Gay Divorcee, neither of which treats the sacred institution of marriage very sacredly, and both of which derive fun from a few benign jokes about homosexuality;
2. these could just as easily be eighteenth-century novels with their mistaken identities and the absurd plot complications keeping the love-matched couple apart apparently permanently--only to have them rescued by a deus ex farcica.
   

Sex and drugs, etc.

The Runaways

Crit

Worth seeing for the performances of Dakota Fanning as Cherie Currie and Michael Shannon as producer Kim Fowley and especially Kristen Stewart's scary embodiment of Joan Jett (I was afraid she might be too girly to carry it off, but no), but the narrative is a familiar, surely oversimplified straight line, a story we've seen too many times before ever to be surprised.

Trailer

• And to capitalize on the presence of the Stewart audience (actually, there were only two of us there, neither apt to return for this one), the inevitable trailer for The Twilight Saga: Eclipse--yes, that's right: part 3 already, coming in June; sharpen your teeth.
  

That'll be the day

The Searchers

(1956)

Funny thing is, the first time I saw this, I didn't much like it. The second time I saw it, years later, I thought it was just OK. So why did I even bother seeing it a third time? Because the acclaim was so nearly unanimous that I thought I must be missing something. And so I was.

Moral of the story, I guess, is to get this on as big a screen as you can find. Repeatedly, if need be.

"Are you gonna let me in?"

Greenberg

Mad

Roger Greenberg (Ben Stiller) has one friend (Rhys Ifans's Ivan) and one remarkable woman 5/8 his age (Greta Gerwig's Florence) who likes him, but he works as hard as he can to reduce those numbers. Nobody can play obnoxiously engaging like Stiller, but here he concentrates on the first half of the equation, as writer-director Noah Baumbach (wife Jennifer Jason Leigh, who has a small part of Greenberg's long-ago ex-girlfriend, get co-credit for the story) cultivates his reputation of refusing concessions to happy-ending expectations.

Ifans, who has mostly played adorable goofballs to date, shows some real chops here, as does mumblecore veteran Gerwig, whose imperfect face the camera could not love more. (The opening credits shot, in fact, simply follows her face for no other reason, it would seem, than to seal our infatuation and ensure that we'll stay on her side despite her inexplicable and immediate infatuation with Greenberg.)

Trailer

• Män som hatar kvinnor (The girl with the dragon tattoo)--Zoom! Crash! Bang (and bang?)! Mmm, probably not.
  

A boy's best friend . . .

Madeo (Mother)

Crit

Yoon Do-joon's mother knows he's not the sharpest needle in the acupuncture kit, but he's not capable of having done what he's accused of doing. A mother knows these things. And a mother will do anything--absolutely anything--necessary to protect her wrongly accused son.

Aside from being damn nigh unwatchable at times because the digital cinematography (digitography?) is so dreadful, this is just one terrific damn movie: one riveting character (Hye-ja Kim in the title role), one trainwreck fascinating one (Bin Won as her dim son), and one what-the-hell-is-he-about-exactly? fascinating one (Ku Jin as D-joon's friend, sort of) plugged into a twisty guilt-riddled plot that keeps you constantly off-balance (or if it doesn't you have better balance than I).

This is the third Joon-ho Bong film I've seen (another weird and wonderful mystery, Salinui Chueok [Memories of murder], and the wacky monster flick Gwoemul [The host]), and I'm pretty much in for whatever he sends my way--including the upcoming Hollywood remake of The Host.

Tell 'em I died of the same

Destry Rides Again

(1939)

Is this film brave in combining comedy and tragedy, or is it cowardly in killing off the most engaging romantic interest to clear the path between James Stewart and the boring virgin? Yes, both, I think. But regardless, what a ripsnorting wonder of a Western from the movies' best year, and what a treat to hear Dietrich sing two of her best songs, written by her compatriot Friedrich Holländer with Frank Loesser, "You've Got That Look" and "The Boys in the Back Room."

Hey, I didn't know that. I knew there was a later Destry starring Audie Murphy, but I didn't know the story was filmed seven years earlier starring Tom Mix. Neither of those is available on DVD, though, so you'll just have to settle for this one.

An education

Un Prophète

Crit

Wow! OK, I've changed my mind about Das weiße Band probably having been the film screwed out of the Best Foreign Film Oscar. This is one amazing damned film--amazing in part because I had no idea it would be so inspirational and uplifting. No, really!

In a trajectory reminiscent of Michael Corleone's ascent, Malik (Tahar Rahim) grows up fast, learns fast, once isolationism proves untenable. Drafted by the kingpin of a Corsican prison mob (one of them named, in a half-second crowd-pleasing touch, Corleoni), Malik learns first how to hold a double-edged razor blade more or less safely in his mouth (after which you'd figure everything else would come pretty easily) to facilitate the assassination he must effect or die.

In what is probably my favorite (and certainly least expected) manifestation ever of magical realism, from then on the victim is Malik's friend, sounding board, mentor. Well, one of his mentors: there's also César (Niels Arestrup), the kingpin struggling to retain his crown after most of his gang is moved to prisons closer to home (and thus open to trusting an ethnic outsider); and Ryad (Adel Bencherif) who nudges him closer to Arab and Islamic solidarity.

As with The Godfather, this is the story of someone doing very wicked things, arguably without any choice in the matter. The choice lies in doing wicked things well or badly, and because we can sense what goes into making the "right" choice within that context, we really can't help rooting for our godson to triumph.