Too much monkey business

The Circus

(1928)

Classic tightrope sequence (even before the monkeys turn up) and a noble romantic sacrifice setting up the precedent-setting solo fadeout.

J'aime un air de Gershwin

An American in Paris

(1951)

Oh, that titular ballet. I believe it was Dr. Johnson who said of it, "None ever wished it longer."

Perhaps math has little to do with art (it's a point worth debating), but look, when your film runs 113 minutes and you have a single musical number that occupies almost 17 of those minutes, that's 15 percent of your eggs in one disproportionate basket. Yes, the dance is brilliantly conceived, yes, each movement is beautiful on its own, but the whole is simple too damn long. And then, to make the ill proportion worse, the snag in the romantic plot, which sends Jerry off into the reverie that provides the excuse to dance dance dance, is blithely dismissed in 75 seconds once Jerry comes back to the real world. It's a premature ejaculation after two days of foreplay.

Killing her softly

Bernie

Crit

Jack Black is just shy of brilliant as a murderer beloved in his small East Texas town in a--you should pardon the expression--black comedy cowritten and directed by Richard Linklater. The story is based on actual events--and hews to them with remarkable fidelity, especially in the most unbelievable aspects, according to a New York Times Magazine piece by the victim's niece that, by sheer coincidence, I read on the stair machine this morning--and Linklater mixes documentary style into the narrative nicely, with colorful townspeople so devoted to the near-saintly Bernie, so lacking in sympathy for the hideously unpleasant woman he befriends before killing (played, in a no-brainer bit of casting, by Shirley MacLaine) that the district attorney (Matthew McConaughey in the sort of larger-than-life role he revels in) employs the rare prosecutorial strategy of asking for a change of venue.

To bury Caesar

All About Eve

(1950)

One thing that has always stuck in my craw about this is that an element of Eve's [spoiler alert!] villainy is the clear implication that she's a lesbian. One might argue that what's really villainous is not her sexual preference per se but the additional layer of mendacity it adds to her exploitation of her sex appeal vis-à-vis men, but I don't buy it: the presentation of her going back upstairs intertwined with her housemate after the incriminating middle-of-the-night call to Lloyd suggests lesbianism as an element of a sort of holistic wickedness. Likewise the second-generation seduction of the final scene.

Yeah, yeah, yeah--different time, different sensibilities, different expectations; I get it, and I'm not condemning the film for being a product of 1950; just saying that sticks in my craw. My craw is like that; it's sticky.

Tramp, tramp, tramp

Charlie: The Life and Art of Charles Chaplin

(2003)

A perfectly serviceable, if overlong, documentary directed by Richard Schickel and featuring great clips and some of Hollywood's best talking heads, including Scorsese, Woody Allen, Milos Forman, and Bill Irwin. I've seen it, I've enjoyed it, and it's somebody else's turn. Incidentally, a few others are still available. Let me know.

Orthographiosi

Spellbound

(2002)

The Ur-text for documentaries that introduce us to an array of appealing contestants and then take us through the contest, and still the best and most moving--and, after 3 or 4 screenings, still the most exciting and even suspenseful--of the subgenre.

And as a professional speller, I am always surprised anew by how many of the words thrown at these schoolchildren I not only have no idea how to spell, I don't even have any idea what they mean. But the bee clincher, those who know me well will be unsurprised to know, was one with which I am quite familiar: logorrhea.

The agony of the feet

First Position

Crit

Sorta like Spellbound, only with pain physical as well as emotional for these 10- to 17-year-old ballet dancers. Also, with lots more victories available--trophies, job offers, scholarships--which is a bonus, because how can you not root for Michaela, a Sierra Leone refugee who saw her teacher dismembered; or for Navy brat Aran, 11, who commutes 200 miles daily with his mother for training in Rome not available in Naples; or for his Israeli soulmate Gaya, whom his performance inspired to take dance seriously; or for Colombian teenager Joan Sebastián, whose parents see his feet as his ticket out of the dangers of Cali?

Remarkably, we see only one Tigerish parent--coincidentally (?), the Japanese-American mother of 12-year-old Miko, who seems not to need the propulsion, and her 10-year-old brother Jules, who seems unlikely to benefit from it. Even this mother is only mildly discomfiting, and balanced somewhat by a very mellow Australian spouse, and otherwise, all the parents we see are supportive, sympathetic, and invested in their children's happiness, not necessarily their success.

Because there is more than one way to win, there's not the heart-in-your-mouth emotional climax of Spellbound, but there's plenty of jangle. Question is: how many dance documentaries do I see before I decide that I'm really interested in dance and go to see some live?