A bigger boat

Titanic

(1997)

Somebody with some nautical expertise explain this to me:

• Iceberg is spotted, belatedly, dead ahead;
• Order goes out clearly: "Hard to starboard" (at which point I think: I know what that means; that means to the right);
• Pilot (or whatever you call the dude at the tiller [or whatever you call the steering wheel]) cranks the wheel counterclockwise, or to the left (at which point I think: maybe on a ship, turning the wheel one way steers it in the opposite direction, but no . . . );
• Ship (as predicted in an earlier bit of exposition) responds slowly to the redirection, but ultimately moves . . . to the left, to what I've always thought was port.

So who will dispel my ignorance?

And who will take this leaky 194-minute behemoth off my hands? The perfect candidate for deaccession on a night when I have nothing to get up early for but a soccer match (coincidentally, from the same city that was Titanic's home port, and one that produced better damn musicians than theme-song-vocalist Celine Dion), and anyway, through the magic of DVR, it will wait if need be.

It's hard to believe I actually liked this in the theater, though I know I did (though even then, the Celine D. song made me want to violate policy and run screaming from the theater while the end credits were still rolling). This is the 3rd time I've seen it, and on each subsequent viewing the pie-chart wedge of "likes" has become narrower and less sustaining. Those are a pretty couple of kids, I'll admit that, but god, what lame writing, and has there ever been starker testimony to the metastasis of sentimentality in Hollywood than the Oscar nomination given to the woodenly arch Gloria Stuart, whose only actual accomplishment was continuing to draw breath throughout the shoot?

OK, perhaps that's excessive, but I have now given a total of 10 hours of my life to this waterlogged turkey, and I'm a little bitter. Never again.

The big C

50/50

Crit

I really wanted to like this--Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Seth Rogen, and Anna Kendrick are among my favorite youngsters in the movies, and Anjelica Huston is one of my favorites in the dwindling demographic of Older Than I--and it was a pleaser of a larger-than-usual 5 p.m. crowd, so I felt really curmudgeonly, but from the stacked deck (I'm using that expression a lot of late, aren't I?) of the Doctor with the Bedside Manner from Hell to the blithe tolerance of behavior from the Rogen character ranging from grossly insensitive to reprehensible right down to the childish destruction of a piece of art produced by a former loved one now a hated one, I just failed to find my place.

Coincidentally (no, I swear: it's a coincidence; there's nothing to be read into it), I've just started watching The Big C, and while yeah, sure, I admit that the mere presence of Laura Linney carries weight that no one in this film can approach, it's just a lot smarter and subtler and, well, more grown-up, and that's not just to do with the ages of the patients.

Trailers

• The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn, Part 1--Bellamary's baby! "He has his father's teeth . . . "
• Like Crazy--Young, pretty people in love, with visa problems.
• Man on a Ledge--Misdirection heist.

Until you use me up

Never Let Me Go

(2010)

Another one I ignored when it was in the theater because critical response seemed lukewarm, but which gained ground among the critics in the rear-view mirror. And indeed it was worth seeing, sci-fi with a deliciously creepy concept--clones reared as medical parts farms--played out by a trio of fine young actors.

Losing my religion

Higher Ground

Crit

At least one review I read congratulates first-time director Vera Farmiga for refusing to condescend to the Christian subjects of her film, but that very assessment is condescending, and while I'm as capable as any nonbeliever of condescending to belief, I would say that what Farmiga deserves congratulations for is simply not stacking the deck, in either direction; how many films about faith can you say that about?

We meet a few Christians who are selfsure to the point of smugness, but such people occur naturally in the general population, not excluding in, say, my own liberal atheist cohort. Most of the Christians we meet are decent, some are lovely and funny and wise, and all are, at bottom, human. And Corinne, Farmiga's character, wants faith desperately but can't find it. Her quest is the heart of a beautiful, moving, and occasionally surreal film.

A most unusual day

North by Northwest

(1959)

Apart from all the other ways this is nearly perfect, its treatment of sex is remarkably frank for an American studio film in 1959. My favorite Hitch, and one of my favorite films.

Mistakes were made

Meet the Parents

(2000)

Another DVD I acquired during that phase when I was buying everything I remembered liking that was available cheap. But I remember thinking this Job-as-aspiring-son-in-law tale was really hilarious when I saw it in the theater. Watching a few years later, I found it funny; now I find it mildly amusing. So who wants it?

Fearful symmetry

The Hangover

(2009)

Yeah, this is a pleasant enough evening's entertainment, but I'm damned if I can imagine how it made anyone's "Best of" list. Are we really so desperate for bromance? Or maybe we're just so happy to see Heather Graham again. And it's true that Tyson's tiger is pretty cool. But still . . .

Who's afraid of the French shewolf?

The Lion in Winter

(1968)

What a genuinely bizarre film, whose conceit is that people in 1183 are blessed/cursed with a thoroughly modern awareness that they're savages living in a dark age. It's mostly a vehicle (excuse might be a more accurate term) for O'Toole and Hepburn to play Albee's George and Martha in medieval drag, and they seem to have lots of fun doing it.

But can she cook?

Nannerl, la soeur de Mozart (Mozart's sister)

Crit

The title character has genius. As much as her kid brother? Who knows? No one can ever know, and no one could ever have known, with the possible exception of their impresario father, who exploits Nanerl's harpsichord skills as a sort of a dog-standing-on-its-hind-legs sideshow to the headliner. (The narrative is fictionalized, but that Papa Mozart was a money-grubbing fame-hound is well documented; in the film he fudges both children's ages by a year, the better to emphasize their precocity, particularly Wolfy's.)

Repressed by her father (who forbids her to pursue her aptitudes for violin and composition--pursuits that obviously require possession of a penis) and by her culture, she muddles along as best she can for as long as she can, with a boost from accidental friendships with two children of Louis XV. One of those friendships, with the Dauphin Louis, becomes a romance that promises better results than it delivers. The historical overtitles of the final shot are manifestly depressing.

Picaresque

Saturday Night and Sunday Morning

(1961)

A very young Albert Finney plays a good-hearted but sexually irresponsible young man who turns out to be the natural heir of his protector Squire Alworthy . . . oh, wait, no: wrong flick. This one is set in modern times, and Finney's Arthur is an assembly-line worker in a dreary factory in Nottingham. But apart from being a tad less naïve--and discounting the fact that his competitive consumption scene is much less sexy--Arthur is pretty much Tom Jones updated.

, he bled

Drive

Crit

Holy red-dyed Karo syrup, Batman! I'm not particularly squeamish, and I suppose one reason I don't read many reviews carefully is that I don't want to be told whether a film is a bloodbath or not, I only want to be told whether it's worth my seeing it or not, and lead and last grafs of the reviews took care of me there: it is definitely worth seeing. But holy cow--I would have thought at least this would be primarily an adrenaline-pumping fast-driving movie, with maybe some violence and blood in it. I think it's fair to say, though, that this is a violent bloody film with some exciting fast driving and a little bit of character development in it, so I'm just telling you: if spurting blood and bone-stomping are dealbreakers for you, stay the hell away. And at least one other member of my viewing party would say the same.

On the other hand, if you want to see (again) how good Ryan Gosling and Carey Mulligan can be with about 15 lines of dialogue each, if you want to see whether AMC stars like Bryan Cranston and Christina Hendricks can make it work on the big screen (yes, they can--and Hendricks shows herself to be completely without vanity), if you want to see whether Ron Perlman's head is becoming ever more rectilinear, or if you're committed to screening the entire oeuvre of Jet-all-the-way Russ Tamblyn (look fast--he's the doctor!), then go for it.

Trailers

• Dream House--Looks pretty much like a creepout waste of newlyweds (which I just learned--thanks, Nancy) Daniel Craig and Rachel Weisz.
• Paranormal Activity 3--Supernaturally unnecessary.
• The Rum Diary--Depp as Gonzo, redux; Fear and Loathing in Old San Juan?

Stepping out

Leading Ladies

(2010)

Still very proud of the cowriter I spawned, and still very impressed by the production as a whole, now available on DVD. One of my favorite sequences is the lovers' first dance, which blends eros and sweetness about as well as they can be blended. Smart, fun.

Take two aspirin . . .

Contagion

Crit

So, this is the guy who gave us Ocean's Eleven, Twelve, and Thirteen, right? This is scary in lots of the same ways that 28 Days Later is, except that instead of a threat that none of us has ever seen in real life, it's something that all of us are familiar with in a much less virulent state--and so it's that much scarier.

Another odd and admirable feature of the film: it features several of the sexiest women in the movies in some of their least sexy roles, especially Kate Winslet, in one of her best performances, but one guaranteed to yield no awards.

Trailers

• Abduction--Trailer starts with Taylor Lautner (and I'm embarrassed to say that I recognized him and know his name) musing about his mysterious background, and for a full minute I thought it was the next Twilight flick. No, in this one he's not a werewolf (as far as I could tell), but he does have some secret; didn't really pay enough attention to know what.
• Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows--Didn't like the first in this franchise, but good reviews and Noomi Rapace might get me there.

Charm your way across the Khyber Pass

The Man Who Would Be King

(1975)

Ah, Connery, Caine, Kipling, and Kamp. Fun.

Groundhog matrix

Source Code

(2011)

OK, come on: that's just completely implausible: a six-car double-decker Chicago commuter train? There's at least one reader out there more familiar with Chicago commuter trains than I, but I'm thinking that's as big a figment of someone's imagination as is the notion that an almost-dead guy can piggyback repeatedly on a dead guy's brain for 8 minutes to try to learn who was responsible for the terrorist activity that ended said dead's guy's life, along with lots of other lives.

Good fun dumb-science dumb fun.

Love in chain

Tabloid

Crit

Who but Errol Morris could present us with a completely loony protagonist and make us love her? Apart from being a sympathetic treatment of the woman who became notorious in the English tabs in 1977 for the alleged kidnapping and rape of the "manacled Morman," this is as thorough an evisceration of Latter Day Saints doctrine as there has been since Mark Twain's exegesis of the Book of Mormon.

Love in vein

Låt den rätte komma in (Let the right one in)

(2008)

What a beautiful, bloody adolescent love story. Holds up perfectly and renders those Twilight flicks sooooo unnecessary.

Veni, vidi, vici

Rise of the Planet of the Apes

NoHa

The opening scene draws an unsubtle parallel between the capture of chimpanzees for medical research and the capture of humans for the slave trade (yes, either a very reckless or a very brave brave parallel, but bear with me), and soon the research apes are subjected to genocide, and later the one survivor finds himself in a prison movie, and finally he gets to lead a full-fledged revolution of his oppressed comrades.

In other words, even though big-time movie star James Franco plays a well-intentioned human, there is never a moment's confusion about which species deserves our sympathy. Fortunately, there aren't enough well-intentioned humans to cloud that issue, so when one of the nastiest homo less-sapiens-than-he-oughta-be's quotes Charlton Heston's "Take your stinking paws off me, you damn dirty ape!" from the 1968 film we're kinda stoked to know that things aren't going to go well for him.

Much has been made of the smart and sensitive use of special effects, including those that translate Andy Serkis into Caesar. In the inevitable sequel (hell, the epilogue essentially reveals the plot of it), the apes will presumably have learned to drive Hummers and fly planes and tweet, but it is way cool to see them bound in huge numbers--and to see them negotiate the Golden Gate Bridge high and low. One gripe: when Caesar finally speaks to his estranged stepfather, was it really necessary to have him refer to himself in the 3rd person, like Tarzan or Deion Sanders?

Trailers

• In Time--I came in late (yeah, I know--but this whole trip was a last-minute decision), so I really shouldn't judge, but it looks like an excuse for Justin Timberlake and Amanda Seyfried to look terrific. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
• John Carter--Similarly, there seems no reason for this to exist other than to tell us Friday Night Lights fans what Taylor Kitsch (Riggins) is going to do now. Go to Mars, apparently.
• The Sitter--Jonah Hill seems to be determined to become the Olivier of dumb.

Auntie, Christ

Dogma

(1999)

It has its moments, and it's impossible not to admire the ambition, but soooo preachy, so long-winded, so often draggy. So it's on the giveaway market: takers?

Success will tear us apart

Beats, Rhymes & Life: The Travels of A Tribe Called Quest

Crit

Middle-aged, middle-class white guy walks into a documentary about an influential hip-hop crew . . . The reviews made me believe that I'd now be telling you that the film changed my life, but no: the versification was strong but hardly revelatory, and there was nothing--well, apart from diabetes--in the dynamics of the group's demise that we haven't seen many times before. But it did remind me that I still have never seen Let It Be from start to finish. Why? Oh, let's save that for when that becomes available on DVD, if ever.