Song of herself

Paper Towns

Crit

Golly! Not good golly, distinctly bad golly. I would not have believed that I could be left so unmoved, so thoroughly uninvolved, by a film with a screenplay by the guys who wrote (500) Days of Summer, The Spectacular Now, and The Fault in Our Stars and based on a book by the YA novelist responsible for the last of those.

I would like to claim that the problem is a generational one, that having reached my seventh decade, I can no longer relate to infatuation that conflates beauty with depth of intellect and/or character, but that's just silly: I know I'm still capable of convincing myself that a beautiful woman is more interesting and more worthy of admiration than she really is.

Maybe the problem is simply that I don't find Cara Delevingne, who is, I gather, generally considered to be the most beautiful woman in the universe, to be all that. Her Margo I found just selfish and spoiled and annoying--and one moment when the film gave me some hope of connection came when other characters suggest the same. But protagonist Quentin (Nat Wolff) never really gets that, and thus I don't get him or the film. His ostensibly charming sidekicks failed to charm me, either. It was simply 109 minutes plus blogtime that I'll never get back.

Trailers

• Goosebumps--How bad can a flick starring Jack Black and Amy Ryan be? This may be the test.
• The Fantastic Four--Reboot with a brand-new (excellent) cast, and I desperately want it to be good, but geez, I don't think there was a line of dialogue in the trailer that wasn't clichéd.
• The Visit--Tip to grandparents: don't let your kids see this.

Everybody comes to Rick's

Casablanca

(1942)

Vacation and the women's World Cup final and introducing my kids to Orphan Black and (on Bastille Day itself!) tattooing and the All-Star Game pushed back my annual screening past its usual target week, and then an 18-inning Mets game (a rare victory!) knocked it off last Sunday's agenda. But hey, know what? Even in late July, it works.

Since last year's screening, a good friend got hold of the long-hard-to-find play on which Julius and Philip Epstein based one of the best screenplays ever. In reading it, I discovered, unsurprisingly, that the screenplay improved in significant ways on the play: an infinitely more satisfying ending, for example, and a critical demotion of the subplot involving the Bulgarian couple, which in the play nearly overwhelms the main plot; most significant, in the play Ilsa [Lois] is selfishly amoral and sexually promiscuous, making the stakes for her decision--and thus the stakes of the whole damn story--much lower. There are also sacrifices to the Hays Office--especially details of the sexual predations of Rinaldo (right: the Vichy officer who will be Renault in the film has an inexplicably Italian name), who lacks any trace of Claude Rains charm.

Most surprising, however, was to find that many of my favorite lines and elements were introduced not by the brothers Epstein but by the playwrights, Murray Burnett and Joan Alison. E.g.:

• For a price, Ugarte, for a price.
• Gestapo spank, eh?
• I don't have time to spend what I make here. [though rendered in unfortunate "Negro dialect"--the play is far less interested in Sam {the Rabbit}'s dignity and humanity. Well, hell, let's just say the treatment of the Rabbit is appallingly racist throughout.]
• the Marseillaise-drowning-out-the-German-patriotic-song (though a different German song) scene 
• and yes, the iconic value of "As Time Goes By"

One of the few unfortunate changes: the suggestion that DeGaulle's signature on the letters of transit would carry any weight with Vichy has always struck me as one of the film's few false notes. Presumably the Epsteins were just looking for a name Americans would recognize; the signature in the play is Marshall Weygand, whom I'd never heard of but who makes a lot more sense.

Anyway, if you love this film a tenth as much and know it a tenth as well as I do, you'll get a kick out of clicking on that link above and comparing a promising but deficient source with the masterpiece it became. In writing and staging, as in love, the fundamental things apply.

Clewless

Mr. Holmes

Crit

So many films about memory these days, and now at least two of our best actors (thinking also of My Future Wife Julianne Moore in Still Alice; I may be forgetting others [rimshot]) have starred in films about the desperate battle against Alzheimer's. Talkin' about my g-g-g-generation.

Here it's Sir Ian McKellen as a real-life version of literature's most famous detective (the tales here the work of Watson, not Conan Doyle), working out mysteries left hanging in two backstories (the more central and the more interesting very Vertiginous) as well as in his ever-more-tenuous present. Less "there" there than intended, but always rewarding to watch the work of McKellen, Laura Linney (improbably frumpy as his housekeeper), and bees.

No, no, no

Irresistible interchangeable-titles double feature

Amy

Crit

I think you know that I like a good vampire movie, but the bloodsucking in this one is so unrelenting and so brutal and comes from so many directions as to be nearly unwatchable.

Fact is, long before I knew Amy Winehouse as an astonishingly talented singer bringing a blues sensibility to 21st-century pop, I knew her as a world-class drugs-and-booze fuckup, and I felt perfectly justified in dismissing her as a joke. Thought experiment: had she been as untalented as I long assumed, would she have been a joke then? 

So among the many good films this is (e.g., a forceful demonstration that I am not and have never been the world's worst father; confirmation that unimagined and essentially unwanted fame is even more toxic than the kind actively sought), it is about stone casting, and not just about the enablers thereof. 

Thanks to Jon Kaufman, btw, for including "You Know I'm No Good" on his annual mix CD however many Decembers ago that was (2007!), thereby inspiring me while Winehouse was still alive to get Back to Black, which anyone who doesn't have should buy right now.

Trainwreck

Crit

Preliminary note: the young couple in front of me seems to have decided that coming to the film loaded (at 2 in the afternoon; I'm thinking herbal rather than distilled) would enhance their viewing experience. I wonder will it enhance mine? 

Anthony Lane was disappointed in this, essentially because it isn't Young Adult, but hey, what is? And frankly, would we be happier with the titular Amy (Amy Schumer, who wrote and is, as the previously untutored world and I are discovering, absolutely hilarious, and if you don't believe me, watch this and this) not ending up with the love she deserves only to the degree that we all do (another worthwhile text re this theme here). I'll buy that Amy doesn't exactly earn her happy ending to the extent that, say, a Scrooge or a Phil Connors does, but Schumer earns my tears via my laughter, and that's always a fair exchange for me. Oh, and hey, LeBron? Seriously? Best acting by a jock since . . . since . . . somebody help me out here. And don't give me Kareem in Airplane!: Kareem was funny as a jock pretending to be a navigator, but he never pretended to be an actor. LeBron is flat-out a brilliant comic actor.

Follow-up to preliminary note: pretty much a nonfactor, as the crowd was laughing loud enough to drown them out, except when the guy did what he thought was a comic faux-sob at a critical emotional juncture. Oh, and I'm glad he remembered to come back and get the bag he left behind.

Trailers

• Diary of a Teenage Girl--Looks provocative and quite possibly good.
• Sisters--Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, OK?
• Scouts [sic] Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse--Rotten Tomatoes is calling this Scouts vs. Zombies, making it  tricky to find. Looks unlikely.

Amphibious

The Princess and the Frog

(2009)

Cheeseblab (aka Grampus): Veronica, Jack, your mother calls this one of her favorite Disney movies, maybe her favorite. Do you agree? 

J: Yes. 

CB: Why? 

J: I just do. 

V: I agree with her too, because it has very strong females. Most of the time in the movies the princesses get saved by other people, but in this she doesn't just sit around and do nothing. I like how they do a perspective from not the rich girl who gets most of what she wants, but the girl who is working very hard to get what she believes in. 

CB: What about [Randy Newman's] music? 

V: The songs were magnificent; I like upbeat songs, so it's amazing for me. 

CB: Anything else? 

V: It was very funny while also saying serious things about life and death.