Cloud atlas

Groundhog Day

(1993)

Every year at this time I watch the same movie, over and over and over again, and yet every year it's different. This year, for example, with more snow on the ground than I've ever seen, suicidal-Phil's depressive maunderings about neverending winter are particularly resonant.

Homeschooled

Kynodontas (Dogtooth)

(2009)

A. O. Scott ordered me today (well, technically tomorrow, in a Sunday section that comes on Saturday) to stream this Oscar®-nominated Greek film, and you know me: I can't say no to the Times.

One very strange and probably very good film, about a couple who shelters their (teenage? older?) son and two daughters to an absurd (and absurdist) extent, providing incongruous definitions for words that might jangle their complacency and never letting them stray from the grounds of their suburban home (the title comes from an article of faith: a child is ready for the father's freedom of a car only when one or the other ["it doesn't matter"] canine teeth falls out and grows back).

This might all work, in its way, but for the need to provide a sexual outlet for the son. The security guard from the father's plant--taken blindfolded to and from the house--becomes an inadvertent snake in the garden by providing one of the daughters videos of Jaws and Rocky. And how ya gonna keep 'em down on the farm . . . ?

I'll give Scott the last word, because it's a good word: "a creepy, funny, elegantly shot allegory of something very weird in human nature (Language? Power? Sex? Family?)."

Prince of Serendip

The Bad and the Beautiful

(1952)

It's All About Eve in reverse: everybody knows Jonathan Shields (Kirk Douglas) is a selfish, manipulative bastard, but the irony is that his selfish manipulation leads to his victims' triumphs over their own weaknesses and fuels their successes. Like Eve (released 2 years earlier), this started as a play, and shows it; like Eve, it has all the subtlety of a starlet's bustline; like Eve, it's far more fun than it has any right to be.

Unlike Eve, it includes a delicious tribute to the first and best collaboration between producer Val Lewton and director Jacques Tourneur, Cat People.

Busy being born

Easy Rider

(1969)

Another film I was too young to see when it was brand new (though I'm pretty sure I saw it within a couple of years, somehow), and the strongest association I have with it is listening to the extremely groovy soundtrack, in my first car, on, yes, my 8-track tape deck. My second-strongest association was with Jack Nicholson's hilarious perfomance, and that stupid football helmet.

Last time I saw more than a few minutes of this was more than a quarter of a century ago, when, at 15 or so years old, it seemed frightfully dated and just not very good. But I was so much older then, etc.; I'm a lot less inclined now to judge its age lines harshly. Much of it remains barely watchable, but the search for America is golden. Hell, if nothing else, what a kick to recognize Phil Spector as the boys' coke connection, and to see (I wouldn't have recognized her without the credits) 25-year-old-and-cuter-than-the-legal-limit Toni Basil.

Lost in dissolution

Somewhere

Crit

Even when you're a bigtime movie star with money to burn, you get to the point where driving fast is no fun, cigs are no fun, booze is no fun, pills are no fun, and even twin blonde pole dancers are way less fun than you'd have thought. And that's when you need to get your 11-year-old--grounded and practically perfect in every way, despite the fact that her father is never around and not much when he is, and her mother has unidentified issues of her own serious enough that she needs to split for an unspecified length of time--into your life, because she is fun. And a damned good cook, to boot.

It's a film that you rather expect to be about growth, but it gets only to the point of recognizing the need for growth, without the thing itself. It reminded me of one of those New Yorker short stories that presents a slice of an unsatisfactory life and then gives way to the book reviews. Coppola (who, omg, turns 40 this year) takes her time, dwelling on static shot after static shot, and it's great to look at, but it's hard to tell whether there's some there somewhere.

And what are we to make of the fact that the bandanna-short skirts over cotton panties that the aforementioned 2blonde wear in their 2nd (!) appearance are essentially the same as the standard figure-skating getup that daughter Cleo (Elle Fanning, really 11 when shooting began, and luminescent) wears just a few film minutes later? Aside from the assumption (think back to the unforgettable opening shot of Coppola's best film) that the director, sensibly enough, has a thing for cotton panties?

Trailers

• Hanna--Speaking of luminescent young actors, Saoirse Ronan is trained and dispatched by her father (Eric Bana) to settle a score with his old boss (Cate Blanchett), by which I do not mean suing for back pay. Could be chilling or just comically awful.

The longest and saddest death speechanyone had ever heard

Synecdoche, New York

(2008)

Yes, it remains brilliant, and yes, it remains enormous in every sense, and yes, it remains painful. But what the hell has Charlie Kaufman been doing for the past 3 years?

Biggest end-credits surprise: that's Robin Weigart (Calamity Jane in Deadwood) as adult Olive.

People like us

Another Year

Crit

In the latest from Mike Leigh, Tom and Gerri, and eventually their son Joe and his girlfriend Katie, selfishly hog all the love and happiness, leaving none for anyone else, particularly sad-sack friends Mary and Ken. Jim Broadbent and Ruth Sheen are brilliant as one of the happiest middle-aged couples in recent memory, and Lesley Manville and Peter Wight are excruciating to watch as the mismatched matched pair of train wrecks.

Trailers

• Barney's Version--Reviews have been mixed, but it's been so long since I've seen Minnie Driver that I'm in.
• Of Gods and Men--Goats! And Trappist monks in Algeria, 1995. Looks good.