Deaths of salesmen

Glengarry Glen Ross

(1992)

This is stagy as hell, but when you have a playwright and a cast like you have here, you don't really need car chases. Mametian words and syllables, sentences and overlapping sentence fragments; Pacino and Lemmon and Arkin and Spacey and Harris and Baldwin and grotesque, gruesome, grueling desperation; what's not to grimace?

But I've had enough, and it's time for someone else to take my copy--and while you're at it, click here for other giveaways.

Ham & cheese

To Kill a Mockingbird

(1962)

Another Deaccession Friday, and I'm ready to dump a beloved classic. I'll stipulate that Gregory Peck is remarkable performing one of the toughest tasks an actor ever faces, coupling saintliness and humanity, and the young man who plays Boo Radley does as fine a job as you could ever ask at portraying a rural southern cliché, but I can't bear those children ever again. So please, someone, take this!

Deadheads

To Die For

(1995)

Stuff I'd forgotten:

• that it's based on a novel by Joyce Maynard, who has a cameo as defense lawyer for Suzanne (Nicole Kidman)
• that the screenplay is by Buck Henry, who also plays a crotchety homeroom teacher

Stuff I remembered:

• that it's pretty funny, in a shooting-dumb-people-in-a-barrel sort of way

Stuff that meant nothing to me before:

• that the mother of Larry (Matt Dillon) is played by Maria Tucci, whom I now know to be married to a friend and author of mine, whose name I won't drop here, but through a bizarre coincidence, the film immediately above this in the index of titles is a documentary by their daughter about their son

On balance, a creepily fun entertainment, but I've had enough of it, so it's up for grabs. Click the link below to see what else is still free to a good home.

Dying animals

Elegy

(2008)

Disliked this film even before I disliked the novel it's based on, but a friend who was shedding objects preparatory to leaving town gave me this, which obliged me to have another look before passing it along to . . . why, to you if you want it!

I shortchanged director Isabel Coixet in my previous review: not only did she supervise the (excellent) music in the film, she was also the lead camera operator, though how challenging can it have been to make Penélope Cruz look good, clothed and naked?

In the beginning was the Word

Quills

(2000)

A film about intellectual freedom, more ambitious than interesting, more interesting than good, wherein the Marquis de Sade (Geoffrey Rush) liberates chambermaids (Kate Winslet) and oppressed brides (Amelia Warner) and corrupts men of God (Joaquin Phoenix) and science (Michael Caine).

Darn that dream

Alice

(1990)

At the start of Woody Allen's birthday weekend, I wasn't really serious about deaccessioning this, as I remembered its having grown in my estimation the past couple of screenings, but this time I found it less than the sum of its parts, and so, yes: it's free to the first taker.

It's not bad, mind you--Mia Farrow adeptly portrays the titular one-percenter coming to realize how empty in her Upper East Side lot, Alec Baldwin is predictably winning in a small role as the ghost of Alice's young love, and Bernadette Peters steals her one scene and practically the whole film as her muse. But the battle lines are drawn pretty one-sidedly, the end is rushed, and the magic isn't nearly as magical as it's meant to be.

Simoom

The English Patient

(1996)

OK, I've seen enough of that--who wants my copy? Oh, it's beautiful, full of beautiful people (this was the first times I was really aware of Kristin Scott Thomas, for example, and I've been in love ever since) and beautiful sand, but at bottom it's thoroughly formulaic and sentimental.

Simian I am

Monkeybone

(2001)

An amusing enough film with good special effects and some spectacular physical comedy by Chris Kattan but ultimately a fairly unimaginative treatment of the id-superego battle at its center. Three times is enough for me; somebody else's turn.

Tramp, tramp, tramp

Charlie: The Life and Art of Charles Chaplin

(2003)

A perfectly serviceable, if overlong, documentary directed by Richard Schickel and featuring great clips and some of Hollywood's best talking heads, including Scorsese, Woody Allen, Milos Forman, and Bill Irwin. I've seen it, I've enjoyed it, and it's somebody else's turn. Incidentally, a few others are still available. Let me know.

It ain't me, babe

Notes on a Scandal

(2006)

This was deaccessioned to me by a friend who was moving, and it's a close call, but I'm prepared to re-deaccession if someone asks for it. Saw a little bit more of the machinery in the film this time than last, but still am awed by the leads' performances. I've had this novel since it first came out in paper, and I really should just sit down and read it at some point.

The end of Rico

Little Caesar

(1931)

Crime doesn't pay, after it does. There's not much about this that I find appealing, so it's deaccession time--let me know if you want it. Also still available: The Manchurian Candidate and Eat Drink Man Woman.

Father cooks best

Yin shi nan nu (Eat Drink Man Woman)

(1994)

An affecting, if somewhat formulaic, saga of an emotionally repressed widower and his master-chef skills that keep his three grown daughters at home. One of the truly gorgeous food movies, and probably an unwise choice for the night before I'm cooking for guests myself.

By University of Illinois film school product Ang Lee. A close call whether to deaccession or not, but I decided yes--and then discovered I can stream it from Netflix anyway. So . . . a taker?

Killer queen

The Manchurian Candidate

(1962)

Everyone should see John Frankenheimer's well-crafted, unsubtle, programmatic tale of Cold War commie brainwashing once; no one should see it twice; I've now seen in thrice. Any takers?

Location, location, location

Poltergeist

(1982)

When will people in scary movies get it through their thick skulls that it's never a good time to take a bath or shower? Just stay dirty until you see the end credits start to roll.

This is better than I remembered from the last time I watched it, 5-6 years ago, which in turn was probably 3-4 years after I bought the DVD way cheap, during one of the phases of my life when I was buying the DVD of every movie about which I had moderately positive memories as long as I could get it way cheap. Though the special effects are hokey, there are quite a few convincing scares--better than I remembered, but still deaccessionable, free to the first claimant.

Important things I'd forgotten:

1. the Spielberg connection: not only did he produce, he contributed the story and cowrote the screenplay. Furthermore, the suburban setting is identical in spirit and look to that of the same year's E.T., though if we're to credit the flora and the mention of I-74, this probably takes place in North Carolina.
2. that the family's motel-savvy, hickey-wearing 16-year-old daughter was played by the tragic Dominique Dunne (actually 22 when the film was made, but with no more birthdays ahead of her).

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.

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?

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?

Blame it on Rio

Wild Orchid

(1990)

"Wait," you're saying, "why do you even have a copy of this to be deaccessioning?" Because a friend insisted that I take his extra copy, which is weird enough, but I think he might actually have upgraded to BluRay, which, honestly, do we even want to think about that?

You've heard that this is dreadful, but that doesn't really do it justice--it is profoundly awful, it is mega-crappy, it is rotten-flower putrid. What it really is is a porn film only with not nearly enough sex, way too much pretense, weaker dialogue, less plausible character motivations, and, at least in the case of the lead female (Carré Otis), less competent acting.

Please, someone claim this so I don't have to put it on the freebie table at work!

Aw, Father, there ain't no future playin' basketball

Angels with Dirty Faces

(1938)

Got this in a Warner set of gangster films, and this is only the second time I've ever seen it. And notwithstanding the sometimes-too-cutely-criminal Dead End Kids, for a half-hour, maybe more, this is pretty good (though I never like seeing Bogart play a lily-liver, do you?).

But after a while, the gooey goodness of Pat O'Brien's priest--the childhood friend of James Cagney's gangster, natch--just gums the works up beyond any salvation but the eschatological. So--anybody want it?

They ain't afraida no sequel

Ghostbusters 2

(1989)

Ordinarily I would hate to break up a set, but let's face it: I didn't buy the set to have the set; I bought the set to have Ghostbusters, and because the set was really cheap (and may have been the only way at the time to get the film I wanted). This is . . . well, watchable once, or maybe twice with a long gap between, but I certainly don't ever need to see it again. So on the basis of that ringing endorsement, who will take it off my hands? (By the way, The Matrix is still available, too.)