Prisons, workhouses

Scrooge

(1951)

The tragic tale of a proud GOP conservative filibustered into liberal submission by socialist ghosts.

The pain of it

True Grit

(1969)

Well, hell, yeah: of course they gave Duke an Oscar®--who were they gonna give it to?--Kim Freakin' Darby? Glen Freakin' Campbell?

Buzz has it that the Coens' version (which I'll be seeing in a couple of days) retains a lot more of the language of Charles Portis's novel (whose editor, I just learned, is an author and a friend of mine). Well, if their script is better than this one, I'm ready to put their film--which has actual actors in the cast--in the pantheon right now, along with the novel, because the script I just saw performed, often poorly, is one of my favorite non-Tarantino scripts in a long, long time.

Oh, biggest surprise: the use of the verb "to bust a cap" in exactly the 1990s gangsta sense.

Men with walkie talkies

E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial

(1982)

Yup, another Jesus movie, complete with postresurrection appearance at the mouth of a tomblike van shrouded and with sacred heart glowing, then an acension before which Mary falls to her knees.

But I actually think of this as one of the best Wizard of Oz movies since The Wizard of Oz. It is also doubtless the first film I ever took my (not quite 6 then) daughter to that included the expressions "douchebag" and "penis-breath." Come to think of it, it was also the first film I took my (then 66 and 63) parents to that included those expressions. Somehow we all survived.

Wings of desire

Black Swan

Crit

Prima ballerina Nina (Natalie Portman) is technically solid, but as her company master (worst. boss. ever.) helpfully points out, she is artistically repressed because sexually repressed. Fortunately, she is also absolutely cuckoo and delusional, always helpful for an an artist. This pic raises as many what-actually-happened? questions as did Inception, but if anything provides even fewer answers.

Darren Aronofsky has never been shy about stirring genre schlock into his intelligent films, and here he gives us an art-house creepy, slashy, supernatchy. Judged by the standards of those genres--i.e., how much I squirmed--it's wildly successful, but I can't really say I liked it much.

Trailers

• Water for Elephants--Fairly screams "from the literary novel of the same title."

Shaved by a drunken barber

Meet John Doe

(1941)

How many movies do you suppose there have been about Jesus? Hell, Capra himself made one five years before this, and another one two years before this, and another five years later, and this has elements of all of those. But part of what makes this inferior to those is just how doggone literal he gets about this one. "You don't have to die to keep the John Doe ideal alive," Barbara Stanwyck's character pleads in the big rooftop scene. "Someone already died for that once. The first John Doe. And he's kept that ideal alive for nearly 2,000 years. It was he who kept it alive in them. And he'll go on keeping it alive for ever and always--for every John Doe movement these men kill, a new one will be born. That's why those bells are ringing, John. They're calling to us, not to give up but to keep on fighting, to keep on pitching."

Good god, as it were.

Sidetracked

Ostre sledované vlaky (Closely watched trains)

(1966)

Ah, the standard coming (as it were)-of-age story: young Czechoslovakian station dispatcher is menaced by Nazis and premature ejaculation. Actually, merely impotence, but the filmmakers accurately sensed that in any language, "premature ejaculation" is funnier.

I'd had this on my DVR hard (as it were) drive for more than 2 years, and why I'd never watched it before I don't know, but in doing so, I got a jump on my 2011 New Year's resolution, about which more . . . well, in 2011, duh.

Such are promises

The Fighter

Crit

Funny that the guy who tries to make his living beating other guys senseless is just about the least-violent, quietest soul in the story. And not coincidentally, Mark Wahlberg, who plays the gentle boxer, is one of the few members of the cast who doesn't throw a dramatic rabbit punch at some point.

 

But Oscar® loves big, and Christian Bale is a lock for a nomination (though whether lead or supporting is a fair question), and Melissa Leo has a shot as well. Not that they haven't earned it, but the best stuff happening on the screen is the least showy, and Wahlberg has become a life master at that.

Trailers

• Thor--That's the Mighty Thor to you. In 3D.
• No Strings Attached--Wait, didn't we just see the woman-who-wants-uncommitted-sex bit last weekend?