The hairy ape

Human Nature

(2001)

Manohla and Tony wrote this weekend about revisiting films, well timed for me, as I had chosen to try again with the first Michel Gondry-Charlie Kaufman project, predating Spotless Mind. I didn't love this one when I saw it in the theater, and I guess I have to blame the person I saw it with for that gross misjudgment. It seems like I may have thought it too overtly didactic at the time, but anyone who takes the didacticism more than a hair seriously must have been raised in the wild. It is a brilliant satire--and by now I guess it's safe to call it an underrated one. But not by me anymore.

The night of the jackal

Carlos

(2010)

I've spent far too many hours watching this tonight to devote more than a few minutes writing about it, but I have to say that while I enjoyed it, while I found it a very good film (or series of films), I'm not really clear how it made best-of-the-year lists.

In the narrative arc--a man who lives by violence drifts increasingly from his early oddly idealistic value system--Carlos is clearly meant to put us in mind of Michael Corleone, but if Michael's enterprises had gone as consistently awry as these, he'd have come home from that dinner at the Italian restaurant in a doggie bag.

A better iconic analogue might be Elvis Presley--addicted to notoriety, loose in his judgment of the best uses of his talent, and forever fighting the battle of the bulge. At his puffiest, Édgar Ramírez even resembles the King a bit. I guess the sequel should be a remake of Jailhouse Rock.

I won't say any more than I have to, if that

Get Shorty

(1995)

This is one of those movies I love so much that I have to stop myself from watching it too often--and yet tonight I discovered that it had been nearly 5 years since the last time. Wonderful Elmore Leonard dialogue, perfect performances from top to bottom. Just plain fun. I don't know what the hell happened with the sequel.

The best defense

The Lincoln Lawyer

Crit

I don't remember much about T. S. Eliot's play Murder in the Cathedral (hey, it was high school; I was 15), but one couplet has always stuck with me, when Thomas à Becket counts it "the greatest treason / To do the right deed for the wrong reason." This film flips that, as Matthew McConaughey's defense lawyer Mick Haller--who frankly doesn't seem to lose a lot of sleep over ethics--finds himself in a trap that compels him to do the wrong thing for the right reason.

Not a great film--until the big twist that establishes the cetral dilemma, we have little reason to be involved beyond the slickness of the production values and the prettiness of the people, but that hook sets deep, so we forgive the because-the-plot-needs-it implausibilities of his divorce from Marisa Tomei's assistant D.A. despite the fact that they remain deeply in love, hot for each other, and mutually devoted to their daughter (yeah, yeah, "My job is keeping scumbags off the street, yours is to keep putting them out there," but still . . . ) and Josh Lucas's asst. DA's violating the rule that anyone who's ever seen a courtroom drama knows: never ask a question in court that you don't already know the answer to.

The film's greatest treason? Not enough Bill Macy.

Trailers

• Water for Elephants--A radically different trailer from the one I've seen repeatedly before, which must not have been working. This one is more plot-, backstory-, and Robert Pattinson-centric.
• Conan the Barbarian--No, seriously! Looks barbaric.

57 channels and nothing on

The Cable Guy

(1996)

I've been hearing for years that this is one of the most misunderstood and underrated films of the past couple of decades, and now I have proven it. Because, good god, it can't be as bad as I think it is; it can't be as unfunny and unrewarding in its squirm inducement as it seemed. Its advocates credit it with creating discomfort that somehow equals artistic achievement by demanding intellectual engagement, so my perception must just be wrong that what it elicits is the vicarious embarrassment that any jackass behaving idiotically in public can induce in us. I readily admit it: I have failed to understand it; I have failed to appreciate it properly; hell, I'll say it's better than Citizen Kane as long as you promise I'll never have to see it again.

Maintenant, et à l'heure de notre mort

Des hommes et des dieux (Of gods and men)

Crit

Is there anything harder in narrative than portraying the angelically good as human? This remarkable film, based on the real-life abduction and beheading of seven Trappist monks in Algeria in 1996, does the job brilliantly. That the monks are doomed is clear from the start, the only question being whether they'll be killed by the corrupt government or the Islamist revolutionaries, a question that apparently remains unanswered in fact.

In any case, what matters is what the men, each of whom essentially has to reenact Jesus' suffering in Gethsemane, do with their doom. A sad, beautiful, inspiring film, with a climactic sequence involving red wine and music from Swan Lake that is as stunningly joyful as any I've seen lately.

The Last Lions

Crit

Wow--nature seriously red in tooth and claw. Reminded me (in a good way) of the classic Disney nature documentaries (this is from National Geographic) that do a little anthropomorphizing, but not enough to alienate us. It's a simple survival story, a lioness and 3 cubs, with many gripping twists.

Cute as lace pants

Murder, My Sweet

(1944)

This was a Friday-night candidate for deaccession, and it didn't clinch staying in my library until the final reel, with the untangling of the plot and the comic/romantic denouement. It's still true that Dick Powell is a pale imitation of a Philip Marlowe, but the brilliant Ukrainian character actor Mike Mazurki makes up for that as the moose-brained, moose-brawned Moose Malloy.