December 2003

• Les Invasions barbares (The barbarian invasions) (12/4, LP)--My first venture above 34th on an M4, but this was really an M2x2: 2 movies, 2 museums (Natural History for the Petra exhibit, the Met for El Greco). A wonderful film, even better than I expected, very Big Chillish, but I suspect it will stand up better than that--and here the focus isn’t dead yet, but is dying of cancer. A synopsis makes it sound sentimental: his friends (including a wife and two mistresses) gather around and he reconciles with his children, but any tears are well-earned.
• In America (12/4, USq)--My name is Dan, and I’m a filmaholic. I hadn’t planned to see this, but a combination of stupidity and a sore foot from breaking in new shoes left me at Union Square with the option of heading back w/out a movie or seeing anything I had even the vaguest interest in, and you know how I had to choose. Unfortunately, the film is if anything even more syrupy than the trailer made me fear.
• Something's Gotta Give (12/13, Orange)--This is a story about Jack and Diane . . . It’s not a great film, but it’s mostly a very good one (until it goes, as Jennie put it, a little Nora Ephron at the end), and a joy to watch those two at work. What I liked most about it, I think, is that Jack so gleefully plays an obvious parody of his real self, and that his character comes, with surprising grace, to an awareness of mortality and the romantic implications thereof. One that should not be missed.
• Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (12/20; NoHa)--How can something be simultaneously great and disappointing? When greatness is expected. You can never be a Fellowship of the Ring virgin again, and that film blew me away as neither of the other two has. Still, a wonderful trilogy, and contrary to many women’s complaints (including, quite conspicuously, Caryn James in today’s Times), it is not about special effects; it’s a whole bunch of love stories. True, most are what the late critic Leslie Fiedler would call homoerotic love stories, but so what? (Hint: to make it through 200 intermissionless minutes, put lots of salt on your popcorn!)
• Stuck on You (12/24, NoHa)--Another surprise from the Farrellys, a love story between conjoined twins that just happens to function quite effectively as a metaphor for my late lamented marriage. Not uproariously funny as their best has been, but probably their sweetest film--and let’s face it: all their films are a lot sweeter than is generally recognized.
• Big Fish (12/25, Orange)--Intermittently charming and moving, but as hard as it tries to be magical, it worked at that level for me only once, during a final sequence that finally reveals that the whole film has been about passing on the ability to storytell. Unfortunately, a lot of what comes before is watertreading.
• Cold Mountain (12/26, Orange)--I did not jump on the Charles Frazier bandwagon when the novel came out: I found it too consciously, painstakingly "literary." The film suffers from a little of that, too--the lead characters seem more ideas (and ideals) than people, but Renée Zellweger’s character (and performance) perform the vital function of rooting this in reality after the battle scenes have performed that function early on. A very good film, though not, ultimately, the great film it tries so hard to be.
• 21 Grams (12/31, Mad)--I saved the best for last--the best film I’ve seen in several years, in fact. So emotionally gripping that I was on the verge of tears much of the time, even found it hard to breathe sometimes. I read a complaint that the scrambled chronology seemed designed to mask the narrative implausibility; I don’t buy that, but if so, so what? If so, it worked, and isn’t that what art is about, pulling the viewer into your idiosyncratic vision? The three leads are all brilliant, Penn in particular more affecting for me here than in what struck me as an excellent but rote performance in Mystic River. What a way to end the Year of 100 Movies! [110]