Two for the Weekend

THE SANDLOT is lazily written, horribly acted, altogether miserable, and a laugh riot if you happen to be a five-year-old boy. It's a story about some Boomer kid in the early '60s who moves to the San Fernando Valley and falls in, improbably enough, with a pack of Babe Ruth worshippers. It was like something a guy who grew up in New York would imagine growing up in California to be. This movie made my soul bleed.


MR. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON, on the other hand, was surprisingly successful. As a reasonably cynical Washingtonian, I didn't expect to be taken in by Capra's paean to Americana; nevertheless, I bought it hook, line, and sinker. I think the movie sold me in a scene in which Mr. Smith has a brief conversation with a senior senator's daughter. Instead of focusing on Smith, the camera focuses on his hat. It shifts from left hand to right, gets dropped again and again, and does more to tell me its owner's state of mind than would an extreme closeup. Some movies are great because people generally think they're great. Some are great because they really are. MR. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON, thankfully, is the latter.

Strangers on a Train

Wow, what a terrific movie.

I knew very little about STRANGERS ON A TRAIN. Sure, I'd read the
basic setup, but I thought it was about two very evil men one-upping
each other for an hour and a half.

Boy, was I surprised, and not just about the characters. I was
surprised by the film's ability to deliver such clever
characterizations while never slowing down the action. I was
surprised by the sharp, perceptive performances. I was surprised by
plotting and framing that ratcheted the tension up and up and up,
delivering a payoff that surely ranks among the best climactic
sequences in the history of film.

I just plain loved STRANGERS ON A TRAIN. But I wouldn't give it the
time of day if it wandered up and said hello.

The Memory of a Killer

It's an old story: someone doublecrosses an assassin, and before long the bodies start piling up. You've got your good guys and bad guys trying to find the killer, and you've got your principled hit man working his way to the top, exacting revenge for the doublecross and bringing down The Man. THE MEMORY OF A KILLER, a Belgian picture from 2003, hews to this template, and it works as a character study and a police procedural. The character in question, Angelo Ledda, is a contract killer with early-stage Alzheimer's. The police procedural revolves around the detectives on his trail; and the genre-standard close calls, tantalizing clues, and conflicted detectives all play their parts seamlessly. It's a fine movie, but it's hampered by a head-scratchingly poor aesthetic choice.

TMK uses quick-cuts, flashing lights, and disorientation to indicate lapses in Ledda's cognition, but they do more than that. They annoy the the viewer. Additionally, it uses the hurry-up technique of cutting parts of footsteps and intermediate body language out of everyday events. I suspect that this is supposed to lend a sense of urgency to the proceedings, but it just gave the impression that the filmmaker's weren't sufficiently interested in the characters to let us settle in with them.

Don't get me wrong. THE MEMORY OF A KILLER (The Alzheimer's Case, in the original language), is a perfectly fine movie. But these choices relegate it to the second tier. Too bad.