June 2003

• Finding Nemo (6/1, NoHa)--This one, too (completing my G-rated weekend), is great to look at, but it doesn’t rise to the jaw-dropping level of Toy Story, by which everything else in the Pixar genre has to be judged. The writing isn’t as good--the story is similar to, but far less sophisticated than, the best animated film I saw last year, the Oscar-winning Spirited Away, and there aren’t as many jokes for the old folks as in the two TS films. David Ansen of Newsweek, the movie reviewer I trust most other than Jennie, called this this best big-studio release of the year so far, and looking back over what I’ve seen, I’m almost ready to agree--it’s better than Daredevil, X2, or Bruce Almighty--but I enjoyed A Mighty Wind more. Oh--and Holes, meaning it’s not even the best Disney film I’ve seen this year.
• Only the Strong Survive (6/22, Orange [2002])--It’s great to see Isaac Hayes and Sam Moore (of Sam & Dave) and Rufus Thomas, etc., but the unifying theme of the documentary seems to be simply, "Look at all the old soul singers I found." The ever-present producer is consistently annoying (in part because he seems to make no qualitative distinctions between the Chi-Lites and Jerry Butler--everyone is great), and Mary Wilson, still with a terrific voice at 60-something, is just pathetic singing "Love Child," thus assuming without irony and with no apparent self-awareness, the persona of a ghetto teen resisting sex because she doesn’t want to perpetuate the cycle of illegitimacy.
• Respiro (6/22, Madison [2002])--A Sicilian slice of life featuring a wife and mother of 3 tottering on the brink of an emotional breakdown. Except that you’re never really convinced of that, because the film seems so determined not to overdramatize that it barely dramatizes at all, even when the woman deserts her family and is presumed dead. Still, it’s believable, and the characters are sympathetic. I guess it’s Thoreau’s life of quiet desperation.
• 28 Days Later (6/28, Cine [2002])--Jesus, how intense; not a great film, but the most gripping I’ve seen in ages. Owes a lot to Night of the Living Dead. Like that one--and every horror movie ever made--it raises a lot of questions better left unthought-about, but like all really good horror movies, the implausibility doesn’t matter. And it’s not just a horror flick, either--or at least not just a horror flick in the conventional sense. Some of the scariest scenes are just of the empty streets of London, shots that are reminiscent of the empty-Times Square dream sequence in Vanilla Sky, and which make you wonder how the hell they managed to get all that real estate empty to shoot it that way. [40]
• L’Homme du train/Man on the Train (6/28, YSC [2002])--A tender love story between a bank robber and the 70-ish retired schoolteacher who befriends him, each of whom envies the other’s life. Very funny and very sad and very French; one of the best things I’ve seen this year. Would make a great double feature w/ The Good Thief.
• The Hulk (6/29, NoHa)--Gotta give Ang Lee credit for fearlessness: he’s unafraid to tackle Jane Austen, ’70s Connecticut key parties, and the Western. But the comic book--or at least this one--seems not to be his thing. Actually, the opening credits were great, and the breakneck backstory establishment were very good; not until the big green guy showed up did the picture become . . . well, boring. The Hulk himself looks cartoonish, completely out of place, and the special effects are completely underwhelming, in part, I think (and I’ve thought about this a lot) because, unlike the wonderful FX in Spiderman and the first X-Men, they’re based not on grace or strangeness but on brute strength, which just ain’t all that interesting.

July 2003

• Capturing the Friedmans (7/4, YSC)--"What is truth?" asked Pilate; this documentary about long-ago allegations of sexual abuse suggests that after a while, truth is (1) uncapturable and (2) irrelevant. Which doesn’t keep us from listening to the Rashomonlike array of "truths" (except that in fact the issue here may be a lot more complex than in Rashomon) and trying to figure out whom to believe, and when. Brutal, and remarkably well done.
• Whale Rider (7/5, Orange [2002])--A surprisingly beautiful film. My one-sentence review of Bend It Like Beckham applies equally to this, but the relationship between the roadblock adult and the girl is much more complex here, and there’s a lot more metaphysically at stake.
• The Matrix Reloaded (7/5, Orange)--Best thing I can say for this is that I got my ticket free for buying the original movie on DVD. Oh, that’s not fair: there are a few good moments, like Trinity riding her motorcycle against freeway traffic, but mostly the film just takes itself way too seriously.
• The Eye (7/6, Ang. [2002])--Wow. For 85 minutes, this is a very good, beautifully atmospheric, creepy movie. Then it takes a turn I didn’t anticipate and transcends the genre. Excellent.
• The Weather Underground (7/6, FF [2002])--A documentary that both moved me and made me think. Cleverly structured, with Vietnam footage mostly familiar as stills (the Vietcong prisoner getting his brains blown out, the naked little girl running down the road to escape a napalm attack) seducing you to agree that institutionalized insanity might indeed call for an insane response, but always in the back of your head is the "Yeah, but . . . " That voice is finally articulated by a surviving Weatherman who now owns a bar (and won $10K on Jeopardy!) and acknowledges that the road of violence justified by moral certainty ends in Oklahoma City or at the World Trade Center.
• Hell’s Highway (7/6, Cin. Vil.)--A ragged documentary about ragged documentaries--the series of films made to scare teens into driving safely. The filmmakers do one of those "And then we learned something we’d had no idea of when we started" deals, but it turns out to be a red herring. Most noteworthy element of my cinematic experience was seeing the woman from Cinemania in the audience--in the very theater where I’d seen the film. (And hearing her, too: she had a bad cough throughout, but of course made no move to leave.)
• Benzina (Gasoline) (7/6, Quad [2001])--Thelma and Louise with the lesbian subtext promoted to text and the driving in circles rather than a straight line.
• Pirates of the Caribbean (7/13, NoHa)--"This is just like what the Greeks did at Troy, only they were in a horse instead of dresses. Wooden horse." The film features writing like that throughout, and a campily hilarious performance by Johnny Depp. Furthermore, regardless of Keira Knightly's acting ability (and she's barely out of her teens, if that, so the book is hardly closed), she is clearly making some savvy career decisions, wherein she is positioned to play very attractive young women with balls. Literal balls in Bend It Like Beckham, of course, and here she gets to be rescuer as well as rescued, and she even gets to do a bit of swashbucking. The film drags a bit in the final reel--and is never as much fun when Depp is offscreen--but it is a damn good summer popcorn cruncher. Oh, but if you're sitting through the end credits thinking, "These are the longest damn end credits I've ever seen; if I knew there wasn't going to be a bonus scene afterward, I'd leave," go ahead and leave. There *is* in fact a bonus scene, but it's not worth the wait. [50]
• Jet Lag (7/18, YSC [2002])--Unsurprising but sweet, and you have to appreciate seeing a cell phone flushed down the toilet as an inciting incident. Irresistible to a closet romantic who believes that love really ought to work out. One grotesquely implausible sequence, though, has Binoche’s character getting up from an airport coffee shop and, apparently about 10 minutes later, on her plane which is taxiing down the runway.
• Swimming Pool (7/19, Orange [2002])--Miss Marple type goes to France to write, meets her publisher’s wacky daughter, adventures ensue. An interesting film, but a more admirable than likable one, based on a narrative trick that isn’t really set up fairly.
• Rivers and Tides (7/20, Cine [2001])--A documentary about the Scottish artish Andy Goldsworthy, who creates art from things in nature, often intended to go back into nature, in some cases almost immediately. Never before have I had it made so clear to me that some art must be made in defiance (or, rather, defiant indifference) to any logic save that this is who the artist is and what he does, and that what he does makes him who he is. Fantastically beautiful and exciting film.
• The Housekeeper (7/26, YSC [2002])--This is what the French do well: make an ostensibly "light" comedy that has deceptive substance. A story about loneliness and bitterness and the relief of same, but with the consequence being ill-advised love. Not a great film, but a small gem.
• Seabiscuit (7/31, Beverly, Champaign)--Two gripes: David McCullough, whose voice is perfect for Ken Burns’s documentaries, doesn’t belong here (or, rather, the documentary feel is out of line here), and at the other extreme, Bill Macy, whom I love, is like fingernails on the blackboard every time he speaks. Otherwise, though, a good, effective tearjerker, if less wonderful than I had hoped.

August 2003

• Northfork (8/7, YSC)--Golly, what a weird flick, and I’m not sure it earns all its weirdness. At its best, it’s like a Faulkner or O’Connor short story, simultaneously funny and weird and wise. But too often, I miss the humor and the wisdom. Good to see Daryl Hannah again, though, even if she is bald.
• Camp (8/8, YSC)--Sweet, engaging, and completely unoriginal. I sat there watching it and thinking, "Jennifer & Drew could do this--and will do better than this if they keep at it." It’s like a ’30s musical whose "plot" is just an excuse to cobble together the musical numbers. But the musical numbers are mostly worth the cobbling.
• Dirty Pretty Things (8/9, YSC [2002])--The best film I’ve seen in a long time about illegal immigration and the black-market kidney trade. In fact, a good mystery film, though Audrey Tatou is about as convincing as a Turk as Conan O’Brien would be. I hope we see more of the lead actor, whose long African name I can’t recall.
• The Holy Land (8/10, YSC [2001])--This was barely on my list to see, but I liked it far more than I would have imagined: part familiar story, part exotic culture; sweet with an undercurrent of inevitable terror; and partly a good episode of Cheers set in Jerusalem.
• Masked and Anonymous (8/15, YSC)--Imagine a universe in which everyone talks like a Bob Dylan song. . . . Once you get past the annoyance that all the characters talk alike, it’s actually a lot of fun to visit that universe, and the soundtrack is a must. Not nearly as aimless and confusing as the critics say. A bit reminiscent of Repo Man in the postapocalyptic L.A. street scenes--and then Tracey Walters shows up as a sleazy hotel desk clerk! [60]
• Secret Lives of Dentists (8/17, Cine [2002])--Very funny, and far more heartbreaking than funny: Campbell Scott as the emotionally repressed husband, Hope Davis as his unfaithful wife, and Denis Leary as the Greek chorus. I’m in love w/ Davis, of course, and I can’t think of anything Scott has done that wasn’t just about perfect.
• Freaky Friday (8/24, NoHa)--Yes, it’s just a silly, gimmicky movie, but the performances by Lindsay Lohan and especially Jamie Lee Curtis (I’m not kidding!) make this more than just worthwhile. This is not the sort of movie the Academy pays attention to, so Curtis probably won’t get the Oscar nomination she so richly deserves.
• The Magdalene Sisters (8/30, Orange)--Or One Flew over the Crucifix. A perfectly competent film that reveals something else creepy we didn’t know about the Catholic Church, but aside from that revelation, there’s nothing new or special here--or nuanced, either. I did not love The Secret Lives of Altar Boys, but at least Jodie Foster’s terrifying nun in that film was, in the audience’s eyes, if not in the characters’, a human being with defensible reasons for her behavior; the mother superior here is simply Sister Ratched.
• Thirteen (8/30, YSC)--Is it a measure of how squirmy this film made me that I initially rendered the title as Sixteen. The film flirts with exploitativeness, but ultimately it earns everything it demands of us, and its demands are as scary as anything Ridley Scott has ever done. And weirdly, it is much the same film as Freaky Friday, albeit from a perspective 180 degrees removed: for in that film, mother accidentally becomes daughter and thus gains understanding and empathy, while in this one, mother (Holly Hunter, in yet another amazing and fearless performance) tries to be like a teenager, but in so doing forfeits any possibility of understanding and empathy. Probably the toughest film of the year (City of God having been a 2002 pic), if not one of the best.
• The Other Side of the Bed (8/31, Loew’s 34th Street)--Spanish musical sex farce--need I say more? Actually, that said, there’s nothing else fresh here--the musical numbers are a kick, but there aren’t enough of them, and ultimately the whole thing just drags.
• Autumn Spring (8/31, Quad [2001])--Utterly charming Czech film about an elderly man’s refusal to grow up. Funny, sad, irresistible.
• Venus Boyz (8/31, Quad [2001])--Amazing documentary about drag kings. I don’t claim to know much about drag queens, but my impression is that there are two ways to go: beautiful or famous, and given the sizable overlap between the two, that’s really only about 1½ ways to go. Women who perform as men, we learn, not only occupy every spot on the male-to-female continuum, they veer off into other dimensions where that continuum is irrelevant. I have never had such an education in the meaning of gender. Moreover, much of the film is hilarious. Definitely the highlight of this M4.
• Suddenly (8/31, FF [2002])--An Argentine film, reminiscent of Gasoline in its portrayal of lesbians on the run in a violent world, but infinitely less formulaic and more satisfying, and in the end, surprisingly sweet and hopeful.

September 2003

• American Splendor (9/12, YSC)--Paul Giamatti has been doing excellent work in small quirky parts for years, and it’s great to see him get the chance to carry a film as good as this one, about reality-comic book writer (but not illustrator!) Harvey Pekar. I foresee an editing Oscar nomination for the brilliant interweaving of at least three different realities.
• Robot Stories (9/19, YSC [Film Fest New Haven])--Greg Pak, the filmmaker, has contributed shorts to several other FFNHs, and this is essentially a quartet of shorts united by the theme of interaction between machines and humans. Like much of Pak’s work, it’s smart but ultimately weighed down by sentiment. [70]
• The Technical Writer (9/19, YSC [FFNH])--The film that asks the question, "Didn’t Tatum O’Neal used to be able to act?" A very hip, ostensibly dark and sexy film that offers less than meets the eye (though what meets the eye is very good--a very well shot film). This got the jury prize as best feature, and that in itself is something of a comment on FFNH.
• OT: Our Town (9/20, YSC [FFNH])--A remarkable documentary I wouldn’t have known to see but for a rave by David Ansen in Newsweek a few weeks ago. Two teachers at a school in Compton put on a play, the school’s first in more than 20 years, and they choose the Thornton Wilder chestnut, which seemingly has nothing to do with their inner-city black and Hispanic students’ lives. The film shows us the students’ initial resistance, their struggle to make the material their own, and their struggles with their images of themselves as opening night approaches and their doubts remain. Just a gripping, thrilling film.
• The Event (9/20, YSC [FFNH])--Starring Olympia Dukakis and featuring Parker Posey, this is one of the few films shown at the festival that will get fairly wide play--I saw the trailer for it at the Quad on one of my M4s. In fact, I saw the trailer twice in two hours, and the first time, I thought, "Yes, absolutely," and the second time I thought, "Could be awfully sentimental." What it actually turned out to be was a beautifully made, sinfully cynical and simplistic film. What can be worse than having the side you’re on in an argument--in this case, about the right to assisted suicide--make the argument in such a slick and dishonest way as to give the other side ammunition. Nothing at the festival made me angrier.
• Justice (9/21, YSC [FFNH])--An odd film, fairly good, certainly by standards of this festival, and unusually honest and sympathetic in its airing of impulses often unfairly linked with the right wing--admiration for "real heroes," like cops and firemen--but in the end a victim to its very open-mindedness, I think, as it leaves you wondering where it stands and seems to suggest that having a pretty woman inexplicably fall for you is the best way to get over wanting revenge for 9/11. An enlightening look inside the comic book biz.
• High School (9/21, Whitney Humanities Center [FFNH])--A special showing of Frederick Wiseman’s remarkable 1968 documentary, which would have changed my life had I seen it in high school. Wiseman uses no voiceover commentary, but what he chooses to film makes it pretty clear that he views this white, middle-class high school as a place where the goal is to cajole every bit of individuality and skepticism out of our next generation of men in the gray flannel suit. A chilling horror film.
• The Animation Show (9/21, YSC [FFNH])--This collection by Mike Judge and FFNH veteran Don Hertzfeld came straight from a run at Film Forum, and it was a strong end to a lackluster festival, though some of the pieces left me cold. The most hilarious piece was something by Hertzfeld that FFNH showed several years ago called "Rejected," in which the animator’s 2d-grade-level drawing (think early Matt Groening, but not as sophisticated) is scripted with absurdist lines like "My spoon is too big," "I’m a banana," and my personal favorite, "My anus is bleeding." Well, I guess you had to be there. In the past, shorts have been the festival’s strengths, but aside from a marathon program contributed by the Boston Underground Film Festival, I saw only a handful of memorable shorts, a lot of mediocrity, and a few genuine stinkers. Certainly the most thought-provoking was a documentary called "Nigger or Not," which explored the question of whether the word is ever acceptable, regardless of context. That was followed by a very interesting panel presentation, whose only weakness was a lack of any articulate voice to make the case for the black-on-black use of the word as a term of endearment and all-purpose epithet. Still, it was a good thing for a middle-class honky to be a part of. The best non-BUFF short I saw was the only one in a program of seven that was worth a damn. It was called "The Vest," and it was about a young girl whose prized garment is a reversible vest made by her mother--prized until a "friend" at school teases her that the garment is home-made and thus no good. The 10-minute film is warm without being sentimental, funny without shortchanging its serious issue; the young actress nails the no-win irony of the situation perfectly. A beautiful film. The funniest short I saw preceded the cynical The Event: "Cry for Bobo." Its premise is that clowns are a despised minority group--so it is working a serious issue, but it doesn’t get bogged down in it. Desperate, Bobo turns to crime--but naturally, clownish, pointless crime. Much of the humor is based on the absurdity that the clowns, who always appear in full makeup, are able to disguise themselves to avoid apprehension. And the tragic showdown ends when the police gun Bobo down after he brandishes a gun--which of course shoots only a scroll that says "bang." Several of the BUFF shorts were good, but I’m tired, and after all, those weren’t really FFNH selections anyway. Tell you what: if you have a chance to see any shorts, run some titles past me & I’ll tell you whether any sound familiar.
• Anything Else (9/27, Orange)--Here’s something I hadn’t done for a while at a new Woody Allen movie: laugh out loud. The first and biggest guffaw came when Jason Biggs’s character says to Allen’s, "Obviously, you’re not familiar with analysis." Unfortunately, Woody isn’t the star, and when he’s not on the screen, the film is far more annoying than amusing.
• Lost in Translation (9/28, Orange)--OK, once and for all let’s forgive Sofia Coppola for Godfather Part III; she’s not an actor, OK? She’s a director, and here she has directed a perfect definition of "bittersweet." Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson are perfect as the impossibly mismatched never-to-be lovers, and both do their best and most effective work with silence and their faces. A beautiful film, one of my favorites of the year.

October 2003

• Casa de los Babys (10/3, YSC)--Either the distributor shipped the theater the wrong second reel, or Sayles had run a ballsy and brilliant gambit: about a third of the speech in the film is in Spanish, but in the middle third of the film as I saw it, there are no subtitles. Which puts the nonfluent in the audience, me, for example, in the same position as the nonfluent American women in the film who have come to an unnamed Latin American country to adopt. Whether the effect was planned or an accident (I’m inclined to believe the former; otherwise there would presumably have been Spanish subtitles for the English in that reel), it doesn’t really matter in terms of understanding the film, which is about cultural imperialism, a frequent theme for Sayles, but one he never treats in a kneejerk way.
• Duplex (10/4, Milford Fourplex)--Wouldn’t have gone based on the trailer, but it got a pretty good Times review, and I’m a fan of both Stiller and Barrymore. A few good moments, but mostly predictable and unfunny, and it has that DeVito (he directed) mean-spiritedness about it that I just don’t respond to well. [80]
• School of Rock (10/5, NoHa)--Oh, my god, what fun. What I said about Bend It Like Beckham--completely formulaic, completely predictable, completely irresistible--applies here as well, only more so. My face still hurts from smiling.
• Intolerable Cruelty (10/14, NoHa)--Hilarious, brilliant in a popcorny forgettable sort of way. Not altogether a Coen brothers film, but the hybrid w/ TV-type comedy works surprisingly well, largely because Clooney has the cornfed panache to carry it off. And Catherine Zeta-Jones, never exactly plain, is in this film the most beautiful evil woman I’ve ever seen.
• Mystic River (10/18, Orange)--Critics are calling this Eastwood’s breakthrough to greatness, the film that represents an apology for the glorification of violence in much of his acting and directing career. Well, it is the latter, and it is remarkably effective in its atmospherics, but the more I think about it the less convinced I am that it comes anywhere near greatness. The exposition early in the film is extraordinarily clunky, and the implausibility and reliance on coincidence of the resolution is worthy of a bad Elizabethan revenge tragedy. Which is not to say I didn’t like it; it is only to say that the emperor, if not naked, is not as lavishly clothed as some have suggested.
• Kill Bill, Vol. 1 (10/19, NoHa)--Fantastic, and I mean that quite literally. There are many reasons not to like it, but that it is not brilliant filmmaking is not among them. The turning point for me, at which I moved from willingness to give it a fair shake to being absolutely mesmerized, is an anime sequence. It’s wonderful in its own right, but it also effectively reveals that the rest of the film is a live-action anime, and all the spurting blood is easier to take in those terms. An amazing film, maybe his best yet--I’d watch it again tonight if I had the DVD, and I’ll be ready for the special Vols. 1 & 2 DVD as soon as it hits the market.

November 2003

• Sylvia (11/1, Madison)--As a former English grad student who studied and wrote on Plath’s poetry, I had to see this despite so-so reviews. It disappointed, but less in the ways I’d been expected to than in oversimplifying her suicide to a result of her inability to hang onto her man. She had demons aplenty before she ever met Ted Hughes, and though the breakdown of the relationship surely meshed with her existing depression, it is depressing for me to see her reduced to a pathetic wronged woman concerned about noting more than whether he is "still fucking" the other woman.
• The Station Agent (11/1, Madison)--Three perfect performance carry a paper-thin slice-of-life plot and make this one of the best films I’m seen this year. It reminds me a bit of You Can Count on Me, which I saw in the same theater, just in terms of the way it tunnels in and makes you know these people, and care about them. And because, like You Can Count, it never could have been made by a major studio. Bonus: excellent score by my friend and former upstairs neighbor Stephen Trask.
• Pieces of April (11/7, YSC)--This wins the award for widest qualitative chasm between trailer (which looked jokey and obvious) and film (smart, funny, and human). The brilliant thing about this is that it hurtles you toward what seems an inevitably sentimental conclusion, then finesses that, because the point clearly was the journey, not the destination. Bonus: music by Stephin Merritt, including some things from Magnetic Fields’ wonderful 69 Love Songs.
• Elf (11/8, NoHa)--This, on the other hand, is absolutely true to its trailer, which helped persuade me, against all logic, that I’d enjoy spending 90 minutes with Will Ferrell. Even the inevitable true-meaning-of-Xmas schmaltz at the end is redeemed in part by a witty parody of Lord of the Rings’ Rangers--here, Central Park Rangers. And Zooey Deschanel can sing! Her duet with Leon Redbone on "Baby, It’s Cold Outside" should keep a few more people than usual in their seats for the end credits.
• Master and Commander: Far Side of the World (11/14, YSC)--Yes, this is what only Hollywood can do: the big pulse-pounder. There are no doubt a thousand possible factual quibbles, but bottom line: the movie gets the job done.
• The Human Stain (11/15, Orange)--The reviews had lowered my expectations considerably, but if this weren’t an adaptation of a splendid novel, it would, I suspect, be universally hailed as a splendid film. I have no problem with the casting: Hopkins’s admitted physical stretch is not beyond my ability to willingly suspend disbelief, and speaking as someone who once loved a woman very similar to Faunia Farley, I think Kidman nails "trailer trash." (There is one close-up on her--or rather, Farley’s--work-wrecked hands, though, that I confess struck me as fake.) My only complaint about the cast was Gary Sinese’s wooden performance as Zuckerman. [90]
• Bus 174 (11/16, Village East)--I kept imagining how easy it would be for Hollywood to fictionalize this story and make the confused homeless protagonist into Sonny from Dog Day Afternoon. And in fact there are many voices (one insufferable sociologist in particular) who work very hard to give meaning to Sandro’s bus hijacking. Not that it doesn’t have meaning--not that the circumstances of his pitifully short life aren’t a mortal indictment of Brazilian society. But the worst indictment is the ultimate stupidity and meaninglessness of his death, and that of the one hostage he (as well as a cop) untimately shot.
• Être et avoir (11/16, Cin. Vil.)--I miscalculated and got in several minutes late, but if I’d had a few minutes more in this one-room elementary school in rural France, with its beautiful children and its teacher, who looks like Roy Scheider but acts like Mr. Rogers, I might have had to run off to teach in a similar school myself. Charmant.
• The Revolution Will Not Be Televised (11/16, Cin. Vil.)--A wonderful accidental documentary by a Canadian film crew that happened to be doing a piece on Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez when the political and military reactionaries staged their short-lived coup in 2002. Not since All the President’s Men has the real-life triumph of the good guys be depicted so exhilaratingly on film.
• Yossi and Jagger (11/16, Quad)--An interesting premise--a gay love affair in the Israeli army--but calling attention to clichéd events (Jagger says, "It’s just like an American movie") doesn’t make them any less clichéd.
• The Matrix Revolutions (11/17, NoHa)--Had I been able to stay awake, perhaps I’d have appreciated it more, perhaps not. As it is, I appreciate only that the series is over (there were suspicious openings left at the end, but I suspect that the disappointing critical and box-office response to installments 2 & 3 this year will clinch its end). I’ll watch my DVD of the first one again when I get my good TV, but 2 & 3 were a waste of time.
• Shattered Glass (11/22, Orange)--Of course, as a former journalist, I had to see this despite lukewarm reviews. It’s entertaining and occasionally powerful, but it loses points at the very opening with scrolling text that says The New Republic staff "is comprised of" X number of reporters rather than "comprises."
• Elephant (11/28, YSC)--Like Zero Day, which showed at Film Fest New Haven in '02 and then had a well-reviewed theatrical release this year, this is based on a Columbine-like killing spree, but the films are otherwise unlike. This one follows each of several future victims and the two perpetrators in an overlapping schoolday chronology, such that we get to know, very superficially, each of these kids before the violence begins. A very powerful film, though more than once I wondered whether the emperor (Gus Van Sant) is really naked.
• Bad Santa (11/29, Orange)--Well, unlikely Xmas movies are 2 for 2 with me: this is outrageous and obscene and hilarious. One thing that really makes it work is that while the Billy Bob Thornton character is awful, he’s not cruelly awful, he’s just self-involvedly and self-destructively awful. The film is surprisingly non-mean-spirited in much the same way There’s Something About Mary is.
• My Flesh and Blood (11/30, Angelika)--A woman adopts more than a dozen children, most handicapped in some way (two have no legs, e.g.; one living and one dead suffer[ed] from a rare disease that essentially breaks down what holds the flesh together; one was horribly burned in her crib and now has no external ears, no hair, no face, really; one has cystic fibrosis and borderline psychotic desertion anger). If this all sounds Reader’s Digesty uplifting, it’s far more than that. This woman has obviously adopted so many children to deal with demons in her past, and she knows it--but she is still an extraordinary hero. An astonishing film, and an excellent start to my 7th M4.
• El Bonaerensa (11/30, FF)--A year ago, when I was still seeing 3 or 4 foreign films a year rather than sometimes seeing that many in a day, I would have found this far more gripping. As it is, this Argentine film about a locksmith who goes to police academy after being arrested in a burglary is an interesting slice of life. Its main distinction: [100]
• Hukkle (11/30, Cin. Vil.)--This Hungarian film without dialogue reminded me of nothing so much as Microcosmos and Winged Migration--only with people, too. It seems to be all about images and sounds (the title apparently comes from the insistent hiccups of a grandfatherly looking fellow we watch at the bus stop for several minutes), but in the late going we discover that there’s a narrative--a murder mystery, in fact! At first, I thought, "Well, that’s really unnecessary," but thinking about it I realized that the point is that things happen when we’re not looking for things to happen, and that it takes the right sort of eyes to sort out the meaning from apparent meaningless. But whether the murder mystery seems tacked on or not, it’s a remarkable film, and the moment at which a U.S. fighter jet is frozen in time while flying under a bridge drew audible "wow"s from more than one person in my audience.
• Die Mommie Die (11/30, Loew’s 34th)--Camp with a kapital K! A parody of soapy ’50s films, particularly those starring Bette Davis and Joan Crawford as sisters who hate each other. The dialogue and the acting are hilariously broad, but the real key is the casting of the washed-up, slutty diva: one Charles Busch, who wrote the play on which the film is based. This, like The Other Side of the Bed, is part of the Sundance series. Wide release seems unlikely, but if it happens, do not miss this.

December 2003

• Les Invasions barbares (The barbarian invasions) (12/4, LP)--My first venture above 34th on an M4, but this was really an M2x2: 2 movies, 2 museums (Natural History for the Petra exhibit, the Met for El Greco). A wonderful film, even better than I expected, very Big Chillish, but I suspect it will stand up better than that--and here the focus isn’t dead yet, but is dying of cancer. A synopsis makes it sound sentimental: his friends (including a wife and two mistresses) gather around and he reconciles with his children, but any tears are well-earned.
• In America (12/4, USq)--My name is Dan, and I’m a filmaholic. I hadn’t planned to see this, but a combination of stupidity and a sore foot from breaking in new shoes left me at Union Square with the option of heading back w/out a movie or seeing anything I had even the vaguest interest in, and you know how I had to choose. Unfortunately, the film is if anything even more syrupy than the trailer made me fear.
• Something's Gotta Give (12/13, Orange)--This is a story about Jack and Diane . . . It’s not a great film, but it’s mostly a very good one (until it goes, as Jennie put it, a little Nora Ephron at the end), and a joy to watch those two at work. What I liked most about it, I think, is that Jack so gleefully plays an obvious parody of his real self, and that his character comes, with surprising grace, to an awareness of mortality and the romantic implications thereof. One that should not be missed.
• Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (12/20; NoHa)--How can something be simultaneously great and disappointing? When greatness is expected. You can never be a Fellowship of the Ring virgin again, and that film blew me away as neither of the other two has. Still, a wonderful trilogy, and contrary to many women’s complaints (including, quite conspicuously, Caryn James in today’s Times), it is not about special effects; it’s a whole bunch of love stories. True, most are what the late critic Leslie Fiedler would call homoerotic love stories, but so what? (Hint: to make it through 200 intermissionless minutes, put lots of salt on your popcorn!)
• Stuck on You (12/24, NoHa)--Another surprise from the Farrellys, a love story between conjoined twins that just happens to function quite effectively as a metaphor for my late lamented marriage. Not uproariously funny as their best has been, but probably their sweetest film--and let’s face it: all their films are a lot sweeter than is generally recognized.
• Big Fish (12/25, Orange)--Intermittently charming and moving, but as hard as it tries to be magical, it worked at that level for me only once, during a final sequence that finally reveals that the whole film has been about passing on the ability to storytell. Unfortunately, a lot of what comes before is watertreading.
• Cold Mountain (12/26, Orange)--I did not jump on the Charles Frazier bandwagon when the novel came out: I found it too consciously, painstakingly "literary." The film suffers from a little of that, too--the lead characters seem more ideas (and ideals) than people, but Renée Zellweger’s character (and performance) perform the vital function of rooting this in reality after the battle scenes have performed that function early on. A very good film, though not, ultimately, the great film it tries so hard to be.
• 21 Grams (12/31, Mad)--I saved the best for last--the best film I’ve seen in several years, in fact. So emotionally gripping that I was on the verge of tears much of the time, even found it hard to breathe sometimes. I read a complaint that the scrambled chronology seemed designed to mask the narrative implausibility; I don’t buy that, but if so, so what? If so, it worked, and isn’t that what art is about, pulling the viewer into your idiosyncratic vision? The three leads are all brilliant, Penn in particular more affecting for me here than in what struck me as an excellent but rote performance in Mystic River. What a way to end the Year of 100 Movies! [110]