Brave Sir Robin

Monty Python and the Holy Grail

(1975)

Happy birthday, Eric Idle, 66 today.

The favorite Python movie of some, but to me, uneven even by Pythonic standards. Which is not to say it's not pretty damned wonderful at its best.

A boy's best friend

Spanking the Monkey

(1994)

Huh: didn't realize when I queued this up that I was watching my second David O. Russell in a week. This is perhaps less risky (or at least risky in a more conventional way) than Huckabees, but it's also more successful. A sort of Gen X Graduate, only here the anxiety is whether graduation is even a possibility, and the older woman is not merely a friend of the family.

Some people call it hell

Sling Blade

(1996)

Golly! Saw this when it was new; didn't remember how syrupy-sentimental and painfully predictable it was. Distinguished by a few performances: especially Thornton's unique take in pursuit of the Afflicted Guy Oscar®, but also John Ritter as a gay man in small-town Arkansas and J. T. Walsh as the creepy crazy guy to balance Thornton's calm Karl.

Notable cameos by indy deity Jim Jarmusch as the Frostee Cream boy and, as Karl's father, the guy who as a rookie actor played his cinematic forebear Boo Radley, Robert Duvall.

Yes, we scan

Scanners

(1980)

I'm not ready to prostrate myself at the Cronenberg altar on the basis of this, but I am intrigued to wonder what he might do with this material today, with a budget and the ability to hire as his lead actor someone other than the aptly named Stephen Lack, who is certainly the worst actor in the history of cinema, and maybe the worst since Sophocles thought of that weird story of murder and incest.

Beware: Horses may kick or bite!

Duplicity

Crit

Or triplicity, or quadruplicity, or quintiplicity. A beautifully made scamflick in the tradition of The Sting and Nueve reinas: when you think you've got it sussed, think again.

Interesting New Yorker story recently, describing the thought processes behind some directing and editing choices by Tony Gilroy, including the decision to begin the film not in media res but five years earlier in Dubai, when Claire (Julia Roberts) seduces Ray in order to get access to the secrets he's carrying. Bad choice, in my opinion, but you can see why he does it. There is so much available here to confuse the inattentive viewer that it makes sense to ground us in something unambiguous at the start. What's lost, though, is any ambiguity in the scene that originally stood first: Ray finding Claire and trying to force her to admit that she recognizes him. The writing and performances of the verbal parrying are beautiful (and we get a couple of slightly different reprises later), but what would make the scene a really terrific mindfuck would be not knowing whether (1) Claire is gaming Ray, (2) Ray is confusing her w/ someone else, (3) Ray is, for reasons of his own, trying to play her, or (4) who knows what? Fortunately, [see second sentence of previous paragraph]: there's plenty of ambiguity and fun left in the sequence to serve.

Someday I'll see Tom McCarthy in a film and I'll think, "There's Tom McCarthy, the wonderful director of The Station Agent and The Visitor," instead of "There's that character actor who always inspires a visceral negative response in me."

Trailers

So many that I'll be lucky to remember them all (including a much more detailed version for X-Men Origins: Wolverine). Let's see, there was . . .

• Away We Go, filmed partly in my neighborhood, so that's easy, and pretty much a must. Then there was . . .
• Ghosts of Girlfriends Past, which is, as the title suggests, a riff on Dickens's Christmas Carol, so I'm interested, but the trailer appears equal parts charm (Matthew McConaughey and Jennifer Garner as destiny's couple, Michael Douglas in the Marley's-ghost role) and cheese. Next . . .
• The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3, the original of which I saw not long ago for the first time, and a remake of which would seem entirely pointless except for Denzel in the dweebish transit cop role played by Walter Matthau in the original. OK, have to do a little IMDb research to prompt myself for the last one . . . oh, right, how could I forget:
• Public Enemies--Depp as Dillinger; need I say more?

No manure, no magic

I ♥ Huckabees

(2004)

Oh, right, that was my initial reaction to this: I desperately wanted to like it more than I did. I'm still checking that box.

That said, it scores 100 for balls, for not really caring whether we like it or not. Anything that tries this hard deserves credit; unfortunately, how hard it is trying shows in every frame.

A rare English-language (sort of) role for The Sexiest Woman Alive Isabelle Huppert, early appearances by Jonah Hill and Isla Fisher, late ones by Tippi Hedren and Talia Shire, and an inexplicably uncredited bit by Richard Jenkins. I still wouldn't rule out ♥ing this eventually, but not yet.

Back to the garden

Bab'Aziz: The Prince Who Contemplated His Soul

(2006)

A little bit Canterbury Tales, a little bit Wizard of Oz, ultimately a pilgrimage to a sort of Sufi Woodstock (and to the grave, which is every bit as much a trip). Gorgeously filmed in the gorgeous deserts of Tunisia and Iran, with an equally gorgeous cast. As beautiful a film as you'll see.

Also my last Netflix rental for 3 months. No, not because of the recession, though there's that too. I've just neglected my own library so much of late, plus I've filled more than 80% of my DVR's capacity--time to cultivate my own garden.

Who's next

Summer of Sam

(1999)

The best and worst of Spike. The best: the narrative web, the invocation of time and place, the understanding of the group dynamic of paranoia, and oh, my, the music. The worst: the lack of subtlety and the encouragement (particularly here in John Leguizamo and Mira Sorvino) of performance instead of acting.

E negozio solamente

Gomorra

Crit

OK, look, I love The Godfather and The Godfather: Part II, but the critics who are calling this the best film ever about organized crime have this point: Coppola's films are, among many other things, romances, but there isn't anything romanticized in this gritty, naturalistic masterpiece. The four or five intertwined stories of these people play no González Iñárritu-esque narrative games. Instead, we simply see people in the grip--some more willingly than others--of the Neapolitan Camorra, and how they cope. (Spoiler alert: not well, mostly.)

What makes this even more compelling and hard to watch in early 2009 (though I'm sure this won't be the case a year from now) is the clarity with which the film portrays everything as an economic choice. And when your economy is in the shitter, the other choices are limited, and the dangerous choices become more attractive. Not that that could happen here.

Clothes make the man

The Man in the White Suit

(1951)

More delightfully silly fun with a young Alec Guinness, again as a genius whose success would raise certain rooting-interest issues, but whose failure we really can't bear.

A long time ago, on a coast far, far away

Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession

(2004)

Documentary about the conversion of an independent pay-cable station--pre-HBO, pre-Showtime--into a cinephile's addiction and a source of CPR for old movies long forgotten newer ones shot down by critics.

Unfortunately, it's also about the madman-genius programming director Jerry Harvey, whose eclectic tastes made the Z Channel what it was, but whose demons eventually led him to kill his wife and himself at age 38.

One thing, though: it made me want to see Heaven's Gate; who'da thought that was possible.

La tour d'or

The Lavender Hill Mob

(1951)

Fabulously fluffy heist flick starring Alec Guinness and Stanley Holloway and flashing a five-second cameo in the first four minutes of a dazzling young face, but I'm not gonna tell you whose.

It's an ultratight 81 minutes, but in the end you rather wish they'd given you another 10 or so and at least addressed one element of the plot (the film's and the heist's) that gets dropped altogether. And the surprise ending isn't really.

Grande ilusão

Orfeu negro (Black Orpheus)

(1959)

The latest addition to my liturgical calendar, slotted in around Carnival. Had the soundtrack for years before finally seeing the film for the first time a couple of years ago; loved it, bought it, put it on the calendar. So filmmakers, if you want me to watch your film annually, start by filling it with irresistible music (getting Jobim to contribute isn't a bad idea), then make it gorgeous to look at too, with wild swirls of color and sea and mountain and sky and preferably beautiful people from a sunny land. And of course, it's always a good idea to make it an Oz movie, even if a tragic one.

To die for

Two Lovers

Crit

Who among us has not been one or more of the following:

• A, needily in love with B;
• B, needily in love with C, but stringing along A with a simulacrum of romantic interest;
• C, needily in love with D, but stringing along B with the old "my new best friend" shtick;
• D, possibly in love with C, but in any case married to and parent of other unspecified letters, and unlikely to leave them.

This is about the saddest of what my daughter and son-in-law call Sad Bastard Movies: it begins with the protagonist, B (Joaquin Phoenix, in his ostensibly final film role), making at least his second inept suicide attempt and ends with him contemplating suicide but opting instead for something even more self-abnegating.