The hairy ape

Human Nature

(2001)

Manohla and Tony wrote this weekend about revisiting films, well timed for me, as I had chosen to try again with the first Michel Gondry-Charlie Kaufman project, predating Spotless Mind. I didn't love this one when I saw it in the theater, and I guess I have to blame the person I saw it with for that gross misjudgment. It seems like I may have thought it too overtly didactic at the time, but anyone who takes the didacticism more than a hair seriously must have been raised in the wild. It is a brilliant satire--and by now I guess it's safe to call it an underrated one. But not by me anymore.

The night of the jackal

Carlos

(2010)

I've spent far too many hours watching this tonight to devote more than a few minutes writing about it, but I have to say that while I enjoyed it, while I found it a very good film (or series of films), I'm not really clear how it made best-of-the-year lists.

In the narrative arc--a man who lives by violence drifts increasingly from his early oddly idealistic value system--Carlos is clearly meant to put us in mind of Michael Corleone, but if Michael's enterprises had gone as consistently awry as these, he'd have come home from that dinner at the Italian restaurant in a doggie bag.

A better iconic analogue might be Elvis Presley--addicted to notoriety, loose in his judgment of the best uses of his talent, and forever fighting the battle of the bulge. At his puffiest, Édgar Ramírez even resembles the King a bit. I guess the sequel should be a remake of Jailhouse Rock.

I won't say any more than I have to, if that

Get Shorty

(1995)

This is one of those movies I love so much that I have to stop myself from watching it too often--and yet tonight I discovered that it had been nearly 5 years since the last time. Wonderful Elmore Leonard dialogue, perfect performances from top to bottom. Just plain fun. I don't know what the hell happened with the sequel.

The best defense

The Lincoln Lawyer

Crit

I don't remember much about T. S. Eliot's play Murder in the Cathedral (hey, it was high school; I was 15), but one couplet has always stuck with me, when Thomas à Becket counts it "the greatest treason / To do the right deed for the wrong reason." This film flips that, as Matthew McConaughey's defense lawyer Mick Haller--who frankly doesn't seem to lose a lot of sleep over ethics--finds himself in a trap that compels him to do the wrong thing for the right reason.

Not a great film--until the big twist that establishes the cetral dilemma, we have little reason to be involved beyond the slickness of the production values and the prettiness of the people, but that hook sets deep, so we forgive the because-the-plot-needs-it implausibilities of his divorce from Marisa Tomei's assistant D.A. despite the fact that they remain deeply in love, hot for each other, and mutually devoted to their daughter (yeah, yeah, "My job is keeping scumbags off the street, yours is to keep putting them out there," but still . . . ) and Josh Lucas's asst. DA's violating the rule that anyone who's ever seen a courtroom drama knows: never ask a question in court that you don't already know the answer to.

The film's greatest treason? Not enough Bill Macy.

Trailers

• Water for Elephants--A radically different trailer from the one I've seen repeatedly before, which must not have been working. This one is more plot-, backstory-, and Robert Pattinson-centric.
• Conan the Barbarian--No, seriously! Looks barbaric.

57 channels and nothing on

The Cable Guy

(1996)

I've been hearing for years that this is one of the most misunderstood and underrated films of the past couple of decades, and now I have proven it. Because, good god, it can't be as bad as I think it is; it can't be as unfunny and unrewarding in its squirm inducement as it seemed. Its advocates credit it with creating discomfort that somehow equals artistic achievement by demanding intellectual engagement, so my perception must just be wrong that what it elicits is the vicarious embarrassment that any jackass behaving idiotically in public can induce in us. I readily admit it: I have failed to understand it; I have failed to appreciate it properly; hell, I'll say it's better than Citizen Kane as long as you promise I'll never have to see it again.

Maintenant, et à l'heure de notre mort

Des hommes et des dieux (Of gods and men)

Crit

Is there anything harder in narrative than portraying the angelically good as human? This remarkable film, based on the real-life abduction and beheading of seven Trappist monks in Algeria in 1996, does the job brilliantly. That the monks are doomed is clear from the start, the only question being whether they'll be killed by the corrupt government or the Islamist revolutionaries, a question that apparently remains unanswered in fact.

In any case, what matters is what the men, each of whom essentially has to reenact Jesus' suffering in Gethsemane, do with their doom. A sad, beautiful, inspiring film, with a climactic sequence involving red wine and music from Swan Lake that is as stunningly joyful as any I've seen lately.

The Last Lions

Crit

Wow--nature seriously red in tooth and claw. Reminded me (in a good way) of the classic Disney nature documentaries (this is from National Geographic) that do a little anthropomorphizing, but not enough to alienate us. It's a simple survival story, a lioness and 3 cubs, with many gripping twists.

Cute as lace pants

Murder, My Sweet

(1944)

This was a Friday-night candidate for deaccession, and it didn't clinch staying in my library until the final reel, with the untangling of the plot and the comic/romantic denouement. It's still true that Dick Powell is a pale imitation of a Philip Marlowe, but the brilliant Ukrainian character actor Mike Mazurki makes up for that as the moose-brained, moose-brawned Moose Malloy.

Lovers and other strangers

Copie confirme (Certified copy)

Crit

A very nearly brilliant disquisition from writer-director Abbas Kiarostami about appearance, reality, and the art that inhabits and informs the interstices between.

I've seen it likened to L'Année dernière à Marienbad, and that's a fair comparison, for its have-they-or-haven't-they ambiguity, but its walky-talky-yet-never-getting-dull philosophizing put me in mind of Before Sunrise and especially Before Sunset, and by the way, if you're the one who has my copy of each, I'd really like 'em back now, please.

Smile

Modern Times

(1936)

If Hemingway was right that Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is the source of all American literature to follow (and I sorta think he is), then this is the Huck Finn of cinematic and TV comedy. From Dick Van Dyke's ottoman pratfall to the precarious ledge dancing (rollerskating here) of It's a Wonderful Life to the cocaine gag in Annie Hall (well, actually a funnier and cleverer cocaine gag, but certainly a source for that more obvious one) to the tea-fueled gastric noises of African Queen to everything funny Lucille Ball ever did, it's all here.

It's also a terrific piece of moderately lefty proselytizing, and god, it must have made people smile in the teeth of Depression. We need something this good right now, dammit!

Brush up your Shakespeare

The Maltese Falcon

(1941)

Fun with numbers: long before I started blogging flicks I watch at home (you know: back when I considered that too obsessive and self-involved even for me), I adopted a simple scheme involving colored labels to let me see to the nearest month when I last watched a film I own. Because of that system, I could be astonished tonight to discover that it had been nearly 4 years since I last screened this. Part of the astonishment, I guess, was probably because I watched the 1931 version six months ago, so the action was even more vivid in my memory than it always is, but most of it was just because how could I go that long?

Fun with numbers, part 2: 27 minutes. That's how long the final scene continues, and except for some nosing into the other rooms by Gutman after Wilmer's disappearance, and the final exit to the hallway, that's all in a single room, with little going on but talk, talk, talk. But do you ever hear anybody refer to this as a talky movie? Do you ever think of it as a talky movie? Me neither.

To love them as we love ourselves

También la lluvia (Even the rain)

Crit

You can't say this film is devious about its point of view: the first words on the screen are a dedication to Howard Zinn, whose death I'd already forgotten and whose People's History of the United States I still haven't read, but this year, I promise!

That point of view is an unsubtle polemic against imperialist exploitation, and it might have seemed like a sermon but for a structure calculated to draw in movie weenies like me: it's one of those movies about making a movie! A director (Gael García Bernal) pursues his vision: the Columbus story through the filter of the conscience-ravaged priests Antonio de Montesinos and Bartolome de las Casas, anti-imperialists avant la lettre. But of course the film crew is itself imperialist and exploitative of the indigenous Bolivians (right: that Columbus never got anywhere near there is just one of the wicked jokes about the industry that no movie about moviemaking can be without) being paid two bucks a day to work as extras.

And then there are the capitalists that don't even have the socially redeeming value of potential art: the multinational corporation granted rights to privatize the water supply by the corrupt government. Did I mention that "evenhandedness" is not among the virtues to which the film aspires? Anyway, being a guilty liberal, I liked the hell out of it, though I was a little disappointed that the twist I anticipated in the final plot element inspiring the conscientious rebirth of the producer (Luis Tosar)--even my heart can be overwarmed.

The most astonishing performance is given by Juan Carlos Aduviri, who plays the Quechua rabble-rouser Daniel, who in turn plays the Taino rabble-rouser Hatuey--a character so vital to the (nested) film that the filmmakers demand that he shelve his principles at least until all his scenes are shot. My guess is that the real-life filmmakers brought Aduviri into the biz much as the film-within-the-a-film filmmakers did Daniel, who in his capacity as water-rights activist gets the film's best speech, the one whence its title (which ultimately, of course, derives from e. e. cummings). It doesn't seem to be online, so I'll paraphrase: the powerful demand the right to take everything, even the rain; what next: our tears, our sweat? All they'll get from me is my piss.

Dude's got a future as a populist politician.

If music be the food of love . . .

Woman on Top

(2000)

Oh! That changes everything!

I was going to say that I watched this as a candidate for deaccession, but that I liked it enough--in spite of its elementary school plotting and logic in many spots--that I wasn't going to give it away but was instead going to offer it on indefinite loan to my daughter, who I suspect has not seen it but who I know would enjoy it.

But now I see it's available on Netflix for streaming, so it's the perfect DVD to give away (my daughter still getting first shot, of course), especially since I acquired it at a time when I was essentially snapping up everything I liked that Columbia House was offering cheap.

But why do I like it, even though objectively it's not very good? Well, it looks great, with Penélope Cruz moving from Bahía to San Francisco to live with her wildly gorgeous transvestite friend (Harold Perrineau Jr.) and cook even more wildly gorgeous food. It also sounds great--I listen regularly to the soundtrack on samba Sunday mornings, but I had forgotten how well the sound meshes with the look. And it has a load of heart. What it doesn't have is a suitor worthy of Cruz's Isabella, but that's a big ask.

A streetcar named Babilonia

Orfeu negro

(1959)

Ah, love, music, and death: what else is there? Of course: love and music after death. This film is a Grecian urn, speaking to us of beauty and truth, all we know on earth, and all we need to know.

I introduced this as an annual two years ago, then failed to get a chance to watch it last Carnaval time. But I mustn't look back.

The information's unavailable to the mortal man

Yes, granted, here in the cinematic wasteland that is late winter, it's far too early to be talking about Oscar® nominations, but allow me to say nonetheless that if we get 10 pictures this year better than these two, it will be a very good 2011.

The Adjustment Bureau

Crit

Free will and determinism face off, with a literally bureaucratic hierarchy representing heaven on the Calvinist side. Writer-director George Nolfi (right: who?), starting with a Philip K. Dick story (usually a pretty good place to start a mindfuck movie), steals from some hall-of-famers: It's a Wonderful Life bigtime, Heaven Can Wait, a sweet little poem name of Paradise Lost, a sizable chunk of Eternal Sunshine (golly, is it really 3 years since I've watched that?), even a hint of Casablanca, and then of course Matt Damon running from god-knows-who-or-what conjures Jason Bourne (Nolfi was a writer on Ultimatum); I'm sure you'll find your own resonances. It also has much of the look and feel of Inception, though the chronology is such that that seems likelier to be Zeitgeist than direct influence. Anyway, it's not just a mishmash; there's a compelling logic to it all, and even if the essential logic is the old amor vincit omnia, it works just fine, thank you.

Other pluses: a deep affection for New York City, including places there that rarely get movie roles, like Red Hook; lots of fun cameos by media people and pols, including the mayor; and Emily Blunt, about whom I've long been saying "huh?" finally making me get her, with some beautifully written and delivered getting-to-know-you flirtation w/ Damon's character.

A really smart, really romantic film, and how often do those come along?

Rango

Crit

Another kitchen sink of allusion, starting with Chinatown and every Western ever made. One death-from-the-sky sequence cites not only the obvious Apocalypse Now but also the monkey-harpies of The Wizard of Oz, the Death Star raid of Star Wars, the Ark chase sequence of Raiders of the Lost Ark, and one or two others I can't remember now.

There's a lot of that can't-remember-now, because the smarts and the quotes just fly by so fast; I can't imagine that young children would get more than 5% of what I loved about this, but clearly, love it they too did: one large group down front was literally dancing in the aisles during the psychedelic end credits (a couple of them doing the devil-horns hand gesture), the conclusion of which prompted one to voice his sadness and another to demand that they go to another movie right away. This film may singlehandedly birth a whole new generation of babies who love nothing more than being in a dark room with a flickering image in front of them. So by all means take your kids--but go once by yourself, too, because you need to see it with completely undivided attention (if only for the payoff of the Eastwood [voiced, it turns out, not by the man himself, as I rather expected, but by Timothy Olyphant] sequence).

Trailers

• Fast Five--First image of the trailer is of Corcovado Jesus, but the presence of Rock and Diesel make it clear that this is not what I'm watching tonight.
• Arthur--If this is not the Bad Idea that it immediately seems like, it's because of the casting: Russell Brand  in the Moore role, Greta Gerwig pinch-hitting for Minnelli, and especially Helen Mirren as Gielgud. Sadly, except for the final gag, the trailer suggests that no one can save it.
• Paul--Another guy's-first-name flick about an irresponsible dude who isn't on the same wavelength as most of us, this one 'cause he's an alien. That Simon Pegg plays one of the Earthlings who befriends him gives me some hope, but not much.
• Puss in Boots--Oh, right: you go to an animated film, you gotta sit through these, don't you? Unlikely.
• Hop--Recalcitrant Easter Bunny-apparent. Unlikely.
• Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides--Two was too many, but this actually looks like it might be OK, w/ Rob Marshall directing and Penélope Cruz and Ian McShane joining the cast.
• Rio--Completely missed the title, but it makes sense, since this one opens with (cartoon) Corcovado Jesus, too, which is a lot more noteworthy coincidence than the fact that two trailers I saw today depicted the comic sure thing of scrotal abuse.

No R.U.N.S., no hits, one error

Hanyo (The housemaid)

Crit

Firmly rooted in the tradition of East Asian horror films, this one has a difference: there's nothing supernatural. (Well, probably; a climatic event has no obvious rational explanation, but it can be explained without help from the spirit world, and I'm inclined to deem it natural.) The house is scary, some of the people are scary, one or two are even profoundly evil, but no one can spin her head in a circle.

This also seems a little Gatsby: wealthy people use and use up us lesser folk, barely feeling a breeze when we're destroyed.

Peninsula drifts into a bar . . .

La balsa de piedra (The stone raft)

(2002)

I've never much liked "magical realism" as a generic label, and I've been particularly resistant to it as applied to José Saramago--in part, I suppose, because I so love his novels that I don't want him to be tarred with a brush I disapprove of in the first place.

But having seen this plodding, unmagically unrealistic adaptation of Saramago's beautiful novel, I guess I have to give the label some props. Even Federico Luppi, some gorgeous but unspecified-on-IMDb locations, and a spectacular dog can't save this from blandness. Don't bother; but do read the book.

Oh, and for those of you who know Saramago in Portuguese who are wondering why it's not called A jangada de pedra, blame the Spanish contingent of the multinational production company. At least the Dutch didn't prevail with Het Stenen Vlot.

Sausage, bacon, and ham pizza for Passover

Cinco días sin Nora (Nora's will)

Crit

First things first: I disapproved of the U.S. distributor's English title, given the poetry of the direct translation of the original (which is, incidentally, the only title that appears in the subtitles). But in retrospect, it's a pretty clever bit of punning misdirection, for the will in question is not a legal testamentary document but the decedent's insistence on continuing to control her world from the beyond.

I don't believe that writer-director Mariana Chenillo intends this as an anti-Semitic film, but if anyone asked me how she distances herself from the provocative disrespect for Jewish ritual gleefully displayed by the protagonist, I'd be hard pressed to answer convincingly. As for representatives of the faith, we have one noxious rabbi, a quartet of silent, intimidating Orthodox pall bearers, an ineffectual aspirate to the rabbinate, and at last, in the final reel, a tolerant, humane rabbi.

The decent rabbi brings on such good feelings, in fact, that he smooths the rough edges with which Nora's survivors abrade one another, undercutting much of what has come before. A good film, finally, but one with lots of caveats.